Latin America and IPE

The paper will address why developing countries remain segregated into area studies of IR and
why at the same time Latin American IR remains so attached to a statist/realist methodology.
Globalization has had an impact on policy in Latin America but hardly any impact on the way
the policy process is conceived and understood, beyond simple assertions of perforated or porous
sovereignty. The paper thus seeks to reinterpret dominant understandings of Latin American
political economy in the light of the intellectual challenges posed by globalisation, and examine
the light this in turn sheds on the ways key globalisation debates are conducted in IPE.

Much of Latin American studies in IR remain attached to a statist/realist perspective. This is the
puzzle we have set out to address. I will first start by accepting this proposition as true since it is
part of conventional wisdom that not only Latin America but a good deal of the developing
world share an overly state centred approach and have failed in recent time to challenge
orthodoxy (for Latin America see Phillips, 2004; Tickner, 2002; for China see Breslin, mimeo;
for general area studies see Payne, 1998). But with a view to confronting a larger analytical
problem and generating a forward looking approach, I will subsequently attempt to qualify this
proposition. I will first delve at the historical context that marked the enquiry in international
relations and then see how studies matched (or mis-matched) the context. Ultimately the idea is
to look at the broader set of questions which deal with the definition of IR and the demarcation
of intellectual boundaries. The casting of a wider net over past trajectory can take into account
the body of literature that has moved substantively far beyond the technically-driven,
functionally-inspired questions of “foreign” policy-making. We shall see that when we introduce
such distinctions (moving from a closed essentially in-bred view to an open perspective of how
the discipline is organised and constructed) we can move beyond sterile and frustrating
arguments on to a constructive, inclusive and more forward-looking view, one that takes into
account the broader concerns in the field and not just the questions posed by state bureaucracies
and those aspiring to be part of it. I finish off with some forward-looking pointers to address
today’s state of flux; the emerging issues in our mindset and the questions that a new
combination of reason and purpose might address. 1. The mark of history Before WWII the main
line of thought was a result of the confluence of legalistic and moralistic enquiries on external
relations, largely restricted to problems of international law, issues in the diplomatic history of
particular countries, and general description of the historical linkages between sets of countries
or Latin America as a whole and vis-a-vis the United States or Europe. When in the postwar
context international studies - narrowly defined- grew as a valid university subject budding out
of politics, the field in Latin America remained heavily marked by a juridical perspective. As it
developed, good parts of it (though not all) eventually acquired a power-politics approach and
almost all of the field carried a nationalistic flavour. Nationalism guided both economic and
political life especially since World War II.. Economic nationalism played a progressive role in
developing countries. Instead of uncritically accepting the laissez faire doctrine that considered
the interest of the world as a whole, nationalism was used as a means to de-mystify the (lost or
promised?) paradise of universal free trade and to unpack the clash of concrete interests of
concrete countries. If the interests of the whole and the interests of the part coincided in the long
run, the time of politics could not wait. Nationalism in developing countries was born out of the
dream to shed the colonial past; of the need to build an identity to confront it and means to
sustain it. Nations dream of being free on this earth and the guiding star of this quest for
emancipation became the sovereign state. True, the vision of a nation allowed the taming of
many ethnic and cultural differences that often cut across national frontiers throughout the world.
But nationalism carried more than symbolic value. 1 Even if we agree with Gellner’s statement
(1964) that political nationalism is not an awakening to self-consciousness, but that it invents
nations where they did not exist, the political power of nationalism is unquestionable -regardless
of whatever tensions it may present with its philosophical power. Nationalism in Latin America
as in other parts of the developing world became the entry ticket to the world of statehood and an
(THE) organising principle of political life. Some countries could unveil the haziness of
nationalism better than others, but few could avoid being enslaved to a compulsion to resolve
perceived mutilations of their territory: India invaded Goa; Argentina would still like to get the
Falklands; Bolivia aspires to recover its coast in the Pacific Ocean, etc. “There are two sides to
this nationalism: a negative aspect, derived from the struggle against domination or open tutelage
by some foreign power, and a positive aspect based on a desire to define and promote the
national personality vis-à-vis that of other countries” (Pinto, 1965 p 13) Mexico was doomed
because it was set so far from God and so near the US. In 1945 in Argentina the fiery power of
the slogan Braden 2 or Peron played a role that cannot be neglected from view. (James 1988) Not
only did it allow the latter to obtain the winning ticket in the 1946 election, outstripping the
opposition with a landslide victory, but it captured the imagination and became an emblematic
principle of re-affirmation for a subsequent generation of activists. Positing that there was a
fundamental divergence of interest between nations content with the status quo and nations
wishing to change, nationalism was used in self-defense and it became an organizing principle in
the thought of the developing world. As usual, teleology anticipated analysis. Purpose, conscious
or not, is the raw material of all social sciences which are both an enquiry into what is and into
what ought to be. 2. Ideas, Interests and Identities Cast in ideal-type manner, the mission of the
state was argued to be the defense of the national interest- both a defense from “external
plunder” and the aspiration to a better 1 For an insightingful yet dispassionate understanding of
the spirit of the times see Rabotnikof (2003) 2 Spruille Braden had been the US ambassador to
the country during 1945 and was later appointed distribution of the national pie. Thus nationalism
was functional to the consolidation of Latin American states as aspiring modern nation-states. The
natural reflection in IR was realism. Realism was an extension of the national aspiration, which served to
organise and legitimise modern state pursuits. The national interest was pegged on the state apparatus
and its ability to promote industrialization, create employment and redistribute income. “Industry
became a gigantic deus ex machina expected to solve social and political problems, change attitudes,
and bring prosperity. To support industry was not only to act on the side of history but was -and still is-
patriotic” (Veliz, 1965: 5). The first plan in a developing country (Argentina, 1947) aimed at economic
equality and social justice; the first World Bank mission (to Colombia in 1950) aimed to fulfill basic
human needs (Morawetz, 1977).Both roads at the time showed the lowering tolerance for inequality.
But nationalism was a Janus with a rather ugly face as well. The influence of military governments and
narrow (paranoid?) security concerns compounded the nationalistic bias given by IR´s birthmark.
Military dictatorships were the rule during the second half of the XX century; civilian government tended
to be a fragile exception, with ever an eye kept on the stirrings from the barracks. Even when not
formally in power Latin American states were often shaped by the military (Cardoso and Faletto, 1979;
Stepan 1971 for Brazil; Nun & Portantiero, 1987; Rouquie, 1975 for Argentina). O’Donnell (1972) gave a
full picture in his model of bureaucratic authoritarianism Militarization and over-securitisation of the
agenda led to struggles for regional leadership in the region. Every country pitted against its neighbors
fearing the imperialistic, ambitious and evil interests of all others. Realism fed the anti-communist
crusade that reigned in all parts of the world during the Cold War and was akin to the thinking of the
military. The obsession with security and a so-called foreign infiltration became part of classic studies
and they found theoretical dressings in the realist paradigm. The Latin American mainstream was a
reflection of these concerns. (Escudé, 1997). The narrow study of IR was based on questioning the bias
in the interstate order; but it had to be countered with more statehood: drafting armies, building steel
mills, running a flagship airline and other so-called power capabilities. Armed with this conception of
power it aimed to offset the failure to fully realize the values of security and power. In many countries,
state capitalism under the leadership of various combinations of militarists, technocrats and charismatic
leaders would be the conveyor belt for this aspiration, which had its roots in highly articulated, centralist
and nationalist schools of economic thought which flourished in many guises throughout the world after
the war. Economics too, even though focusing on exchange, rested on a closed system perspective. A
stream of studies emerged as an extension of the national aspiration with a voluntaristic and at times
even transcendental bias. There was gulf between many of these new writings and earlier juridical ones:
whereas the former were largely interested in international public law, the latter were largely interested
in “explaining and solving the problem of underdevelopment” (Muñoz, 1996:4-5). In Latin America,
hopes were pinned on a foreign policy that could become an instrument to offset the weakness and
vulnerability of states in the division of labour. Foreign policy was in essence the external promoter of
“the economic model”. The study of international relations frequently became an ideological affirmation
forged by the search of a future when foreign interference would not corrupt societies. Foreign policy
analyses abounded, with the centre of discipline being mostly occupied with the study of bilateral
relations (with the US, with Europe, with neighboring countries, etc) (Dominguez, 1978). While in
Central America peace studies flourished as nowhere else in the hemisphere (Rojas Aravena and Solis
Rivera,1996), in other parts of the region, IR went to great lengths to reflect on the question of
autonomy (Tokatlian and Russell, 2003). A survey of studies on Latin America’s foreign relations revealed
three recurrent topics: 1. A desire to maximize national and regional autonomy; 2. The need to advance
toward development; and 3. The towering importance of the United States for all the countries in the
region (Muñoz 1996). The question of autonomy had regional variations: it was more a specifically South
American issue than a wider Latin American one. In the Northern part of the region the accent was put
on the pressing question of sovereignty: the region had historically been the object of frequent use of
force by the United States. “It is thus not surprising that most of the literature on the subject of
autonomy was produced in South America, and more specifically, in the Southern Cone” (Tokatlián and
Russell, 2003: 7). The engrained siege mentality was aggravated when the US instigated revolt and used
force to bring about the downfall of the government of Presidente Allende in Chile in 1973. Although
some circumspection was then lost, the concern with placing autonomy and interventionism in terms of
the world economy gained ascendancy and became a valid academic pursuit. 3. The development
dimension At the same time, but wading in very different waters in the confluence of development
studies and sociology, Latin America began to witness a wave of writings that came under the general
label of structuralism or dependency in the mid 60s. A neo- marxist school of thought had already been
growing strongly in parallel underpinned by the theories of unequal exchange. The running thread in
both was the emphasis on unequal exchange; the raw material was drawn from the traumas of
American expansionism in the hemisphere (but not only there). Whereas the economists trained in
Cambridge such as the Argentinean Oscar Braun focused on monopoly pricing, unequal exchange, etc.,
sociologists looked at the class nature of the state: both started to study the behaviour and performance
of multinational corporations. This school of thought has been lost from sight in most present day
analyses, but at the time it was both very vibrant and amazingly productive. The body of work could
come together under the rubric of a generic new left with either socialist or social democratic
inclinations. Their works were published in New Left Review, Monthly Review, The Review of Radical
Political Economy, World Development, Desarrollo Economico, Cuadernos de la CEPAL, Estudios
Internacionales, Revista Latinomericana de Sociología, Revista Mexicana de Sociología, Estudos CEBRAP,
etc. American diplomacy was not pictured as quite diplomatic, but instead as intrusive and imperialistic;
imperial intervention was a requirement of “monopoly capitalism”. Referents in the US were Magdoff,
Baran and Sweezy, Kolko. Emerging from the shadow of US intervention and interference, studies of the
many manifestations of hegemony blossomed (Borón, 1981; Maira, 1986). Many of these studies took
on a class analysis of the state, but the approach was granted wider heuristical value with the concept of
the relative autonomy of the state (for a review see Fortin, 1982) and drawing on the influential studies
on populism and power blocs of Ernesto Laclau (1977) and others. The encroaching shadow of Goliath
led a group of scholars based in Mexico to set up a centre for understanding and monitoring the political
and economic events in the US and their implication for Latin America. The Instituto de Estudios the
Estados Unidos at CIDE set up a monthly bulletin and a bi-annual journal in the late 70s to that effect.
The questions of concern were the US use of its military supremacy to secure economic privileges; the
link between the international expansion of firms and foreign policy, etc. By focusing on economic
requirements rather than on diplomacy and inter-state relations they were miles away from the realist
paradigm obsessed with security and power. Although some of these studies did take up traditional
concerns and the realist conception of sovereignty at face value, they made insightful inroads into “the
external and internal sources” of foreign policy. A habit of thinking in Manichean terms allowed the
realist and the marxist traditions to run in parallel- for some time at least. Nonetheless, in the US,
Krasner´s Defending the National Interest (1978) was the reaction of a towering realist to the increasing
sway of the marxist interpretation of foreign policy – althouug, by a simplification of its assumptions and
a very clever atttempt of theoretical homogeneisation, it was easily dismissed. Nonetheless, other
regions of the world remained unconvinced of the evidence of the independence of foreign policy from
economic requirements. The view that what was good for General Motors was good for the US was
rather hard to dispel. 3 When the simplified view of US interest was eroded it was not because of a
reification of the national interest untainted by the dictats of economic interests (á la Krasner) but for a
more complex view of transnational capital as well as of the interaction between the world of
economics and the realm of politics. The Transnational Institute founded in 1973 made early inroads
with Orlando Letelier at the helm, soon killed by Pinochet´s deadly secret police in Washington DC in
1976, exposing how closely intellectual pusuits and political committments were meshing. Ideals and
values were then playing a role beyond the simple selection of issues for research, or the order in which
they were dealt with. The Instituto Latinoamericano de Estudios Transnacionales (ILET) founded in
Mexico City in 1977 played a pioneering role in bringing together the external and the domestic, the
economic and the political. The studies carried out by ILET in Mexico went beyond mere denunciation
and showed a mature and sober understanding of concrete topics in relation to the international
division of labour, such as the political economy of the motor vehicle or the pharmaceutical industries.
Much the same was happening in the fields of politics and in other regions: the studies on the nature of
the state (in a legitimacy crisis or the 3 A point of some relevance is that Krasner´s (1978) chapter on the
use of force after 1950 to protect US investment abroad is all drawn from interventions in Latin America:
Guatemala 1954 ; Cuba 1962 ; The Dominican Republic 1965; and Chile 1973. interaction between the
international and domestic dimensions of the regional arms race, etc, that came from the Chilean
campus of FLACSO (Lechner, 1977; Varas et al 1979), or its ability to carry out “associated” and
“dependent development” (Cardoso, 1971 and 1974; Peter Evans 1977) that were pouring out of Brazil
did not share a view of the state as a self-contained or homogenous actor. The analogy of the billiard
ball was by then only a relic of some past. In sum, the intellectual landscape cannot be seen merely
through the lens of realism. Much fuel was coming from the strength and popularity of sociology as well
as the vigour of development studies. The picture is thus one not of realist predominance but of
disciplinarian reductionism: of narrow definitions and demarcations. For one thing, if methodological
nationalism is automatically reduced to realism, then realism did predominate. But there is an even
more substantive point to make. The sudies that grew out of sociology and development were not
considered to be IR (they were naturally not part of economics; but also because of the international
entry point they were neither an integral part of sociology or even politics, much more concerned with
issues such as domestic institutionalization and political parties). Therefore, the point that realism
dominated was never truly dissipated. If the facts are clear, their explanation remains a matter of
standing dispute. It is even more difficult to explain why, after nationalism ceased to play the
progressive role it might have played initially and, moreover, came subsequently to be intertwined with
harsh right wing military dictatorships and brutal repression to the point of genocide, the study of IR
(narrowly defined) remained state- centric. By the time the military reigned supreme in a good part of
Latin America and even after they were ousted, the massive body of evidence on the terrorist state and
evidence of how human rights activists had used global networks to save victims (Sikkink and Martin,
1993; Barahona de Brito,1993; Panizza, 1995; Jelin and Hershberg, 1996) failed to influence and
modernise mainstream IR in Latin America. The domestic mechanisms for citizen-subject domination
remained a matter of study for activists or for politics and sociology. A more citizen centric rationality
emerged only with extreme paucity and in a rather disjuncted manner. 4. The boundaries of the
discipline (structural but also personal) • Mainstream IR was born as an extension of imperial concerns.
Stanley Hoffman (1977) called IR a [North] American social science. Gilpin (1981) wrote about its
Western bias. Thus a restricted focus, even a self-styled demarcation was born: l´etat c´est moi. This
organisational boundary setting framed IR and set its original foundational questions. Other intellectual
parameters and empirical referents did not reach the radar screen (of conference circuits, journals,
funding etc). Other traditions were neglected from view and even deprecated as too ideological or as
smacking too much of journalism. • In the same way that economics came to be organised by a nation-
bound methodology, the state being until only quite recently the unit of analysis, a nationalist
methodology also prevailed in the study of politics and in IR. • In parallel to the conformation of
boundaries in IR, the study of development also grew to become a field in its own right. The paths of
these two bodies of issues and literature seldom crossed. The dependency theory that later stemmed
from development studies (writ large) looked at the complex interaction of internal and external
dimensions of development: there was an early interweaving of two logics –the logic of capitalism (and
its embodiment in the international division of labor) and the logic of sovereignty (and its attempted
realization in a world of statehood). • Dependency theory shared common ground, even an ontological
starting point with IPE. The late seventies versions of dependency were coterminous with IPE and, in
particular, to the abundant US body of literature on interdependence and studies on transnational
actors, transnational enterprises, etc that emerged in those years. But mainstream IPE and dependency
studies lived in mutual neglect. The demarcation of IPE was constructed explicitly on a rejection of the
state centric toolbox: it became a project concerned with political economy at the systemic level
(international, transnational or global ) it was meant to be the study of the wood rather than the trees
(Strange, 1997) • Dependencia did focus on the wood but with a view to the special predicament of the
weak and with a transformational inspiration it tried to understand what the system had in store for the
underdogs; the concern was with the have-nots and their autonomy or their room to manouevre.
However, coinciding as it did with the bias to economic nationalism and distrust of US imperial power
and insofar as this body of thought became normative, it tended to lean on import substitution and
nationalistic economic planning for greater independence. It had a state centric approach; as a body of
thinking it led to the advocation of foreign policies that broke bonds of dependency and thus gave
further impetus to the field of foreign policy analysis. • The drawing of the boundaries of IPE carried
with it an “unhappy” consequence (Phillips 2004). With the exception of the “core trees” that shape the
wood and dominate the webs of systemic power, other countries and regions - trees that still comprise
the global political economy and are fundamentally constitutive of it- were generally ignored. • Thus
dependency theorists and IPE largely ignored each other. Dependency perspectives remained central to
the study of politics and societies in the developing world. As such these issues were restricted to area
studies and provided nurture to the burgeoning field of comparative political economy; thus they never
became mainstreamed into the wider telescopic view of IR. As the sociology of knowledge has always
shown, regardlesss of how abstract and theoretical knowledge is, its referent is always rooted in social
reality. 5. A new calling? A new spirit? Globalization and democratization have shed the paranoia of
yesteryear and created a climate of cooperation in most countries, with most countries, most of the
time.(Edwards and Gaventa, 2001; Tussie and Botto, 2003; Tussie and Riggirozzi, 2003) Although the
arms race in the region has not disappeared, new security threats cannot be fully grasped through the
lenses of realism. (Rojas Aravena and Smith, 1994) The US once on the side of the devil became briefly
the source of life-saving investment. A spate of writings on “mature relations” and shared values has
now seen the light. (Mares & Rojas Aravena, 2001; Kelly & Romero, 2002; Norden & Russell, 2003) The
new climate might contribute to make inroads into the dominance of state-centric approaches. Will it
also allow a rehabilitation of development studies? If liberalism has captured the mindset, can the Latin
American mainstream move beyond power and autonomy? Can these attributes be conceptualized
today in contextual rather than absolute terms? Can the siege mentality be abandoned and foreign
policy shift from the vision of the holy grail of autonomy to the holy grail of citizen-based good causes?
Will economic liberalism extend to citizen-centric views? Will these be meshed with a development
dimension? And ultimately, can development and liberalism come together? Has the calling that
inspired the initial enquiries been tempered? Have the reasons that motivated such calling vanished?
What is the new spirit of the times? What new shape, if any, will the combination of reason and purpose
take when 44 percent of the population still live below the poverty line?

…………………………………………………….

Bibliography

Anderson Benedict (1983): Imagined Communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism.
London: Verso Edition. Barahona de Brito, Alexandra (1993): “Truth and Justice in the Consolidation of
Democracy in Chile and Uruguay” in Comparative Politics, 46. Blaney, David (1996): “Reconceptualizing
autonomy: the difference dependency theory makes”, in Review of International Political Economy,
vol.3, Issue 2, Summer. Borón, Atilio (1981) "Latin America: Between Hobbes and Friedman," in New Left
Review 130, November/December. Breslin, Shaun (2003), “Area Studies, IR and IPE: Rethinking the study
of China’s international relations”, mimeo, University of Warwick. Cardoso, Fernando Henrique (1974):
“A Tradiçoes de Desenvolvimento –Associado”, Estudos Cebrap. Cardoso, Fernando Henrique (1971):
Política e Desenvolvimento em Sociedades Dependentes. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Zahar. Cardoso,
Fernand Henrique and Enzo Faletto (1979): Dependency and Development in Latin America. Berkeley:
University of California Press. Dominguez, Jorge (1978): “Consensus and Divergences: The State of the
Literature on the Inter-American Relations in the 1970’s”, Latin American Research Review, 13. Edwards,
Michael and John Gaventa (Eds.) (2001): Global Citizen Action. Boulder: Lynne Reinner Publishers.
Escudé, Carlos (1997): Foreign Policy Theory in Menem’s Argentina. Florida: University Press of Florida.
Gellner, Ernest (1964): Thought and Change. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. James, Daniel (1988)
Resistance and integration: Peronism and the Argentine working class, 1946-1976. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. Kelly, Janet and Carlos Romero (2003) The United States and Venezuela:
Relations Between Friends. London: Routledge Krasner, Stephen D (1978): Defending the National
Interest. Raw Materials Investment and U.S. Foreign Policy. Princenton: Princenton University Press
Lagos, E. Ricardo (1965): La concentración del poder económico. Santiago de Chile: Editorial Pacífico.
Laclau, Ernesto (1977): Politics and ideology in Marxist theory. London: Verso Edition. Lechner, M
(1977): La crisis del estado en América Latina. Caracas: Editorial El Cid Maira, Luis, (Ed.) (1986): ¿Una
nueva era de hegemonía norteamericana?. Buenos Aires: Grupo Editor Latinoamericano. Mares, David
and Francisco Rojas Aravena (2003): The United States and Chile: Coming in from the Cold. London:
Routledge. Muñoz, Heraldo (1996): “Themes in Latin American Foreign Relations”, in Muñoz Heraldo
and Joseph Tulchin (Eds.), Latin American Nations in World Politics. Boulder: Westview Press. Norden,
Debora and Roberto Russell (2003) The United States and Argentina: Changing Relations in the World.
London: Routledge.