NUEVOS ACTORES Y VIEJAS PROBLEMÁTICAS EN AMERICA LATINA. SOBRE EL RE-ARRAIGO DE LA ECONOMÍA EN ARGENTINA, BOLIVIA Y VENEZUELA

Abstract

Once they acceded to power, Argentina, Bolivia and Venezuela's new political actors, surfing on the booming trade of the early 2000s, forged a productive alliance with the exporting primary sector. In fact, they relied on this trade expansion to develop fiscal and welfare policies and, in the case of Bolivia and Venezuela, reinforce state interventionism through increasing public participation. In short, they opted for economic re-embeddedness, within Polanyi's meaning of the term. This change of direction was made possible by the return to political action. Still, there have been impediments to the re-embedding process: the burden of the external debt, the very poor redistribution of the gains from the export growth, and the elite's determined rejection of the process are frustrating the magnitude of the changes.