| This thesis assesses the regional implications of Argentina's industrial restructuring in the context of the country's capitalist crisis. Argentina's economic reorganization in the 1980s has been a socially constructed response to the limitations of the incomplete Fordist regime of capital accumulation developed after World War II. By changing social regulations, Argentine capitalism has adjusted production relations and created a new political-economic environment for production.The study links concepts found in Regulation Theory and in the structuralist literature to explain the collapse of the inward-looking industrialization process, regulation changes during the crisis, the spatial integration of the economy to assist resource reallocation, state incentives for regional capital accumulation and labour market formation, and locational changes in firms and industries.New Argentine capitalism (i.e. agricultural producers, large manufacturers, and financiers) has favoured large corporations and oligopolistic formations. Raw-material processing industries have expanded while consumer-goods industries have contracted specially in the centre region. Resource endowments and new labour markets have combined to attract manufacturing to peripheral locations.The study claims that the crisis of Argentina's 'incomplete' Fordism has been a consequence of misleading industrial policies and political-economic instability related to struggles for social power rather than a direct result of the Fordist crisis in industrialized economies. |
