Resumen de Economía Política Global latinoamericana: un campo de estudio efervescente entre el desarrollo y el regionalismo
- español
Este artículo tiene como objetivo contribuir a un debate reciente para revalorizar los aportes de América Latina a la Economía Política Internacional (EPI) desde una perspectiva más amplia y plural ofrecida por la Economía Política Global (EPG). Más que una disciplina, este enfoque representa un campo de estudio donde coexisten diversas posiciones teóricas, metodológicas, epistemológicas y ontológicas con base local para el reconocimiento equitativo de las teorías y aportes generados en el Sur Global. Aunque no representa un planteamiento contrahegemónico al pensamiento occidental, la EPG cuestiona la aplicabilidad de las teorías preponderantes de la EPI al considerarlas limitadas en términos de explicación y replicabilidad para Latinoamérica.
Desde el análisis histórico, se propone comparar los eventos políticos y económicos más relevantes que propiciaron la creación de un campo regional en EPG. De esa forma, este documento aborda cómo el estructuralismo y las teorías del desarrollo se convirtieron en los pilares de una escuela de pensamiento latinoamericana que luego se ha expandido a un subcampo individual de investigación en la región. Se argumenta que estos aportes pueden identificarse como una vertiente particular construida principalmente sobre el debate de los términos de intercambio y de los estudios de desarrollo en general, pero con ramificaciones posteriores que han insertado debates en la región sobre regionalismo e inserción internacional, así como también el financiamiento para el desarrollo y variedades de capitalismo, dentro de una discusión que ha crecido en las últimas décadas.
El artículo se divide en cuatro apartados que abordan los principales aportes de la EPG latinoamericana. Primero, se sintetizan los debates seminales en la construcción del campo de la EPG latinoamericana del estructuralismo y las teorías de la dependencia. Segundo, se destaca la importancia de la integración regional y el regionalismo como pilares centrales de la Escuela Latinoamericana de EPG. Tercero, se da cuenta de cómo los análisis más recientes sobre financiamiento para el desarrollo y variedades de capitalismo han contribuido a alimentar la EPG latinoamericana. Finalmente, se analiza si el campo de la EPI es de carácter global o se enfrenta a una nueva etapa en la que se revaloriza y destaca la contribución y singularidad de los debates regionales.
- English
This article aims to contribute to a recent debate to re-evaluate Latin America’s contributions to International Political Economy (IPE) from a broader and more pluralistic perspective offered by Global Political Economy (GPE). This approach emerges as a set of conversations and questions about the world order that are answered from diverse perspectives and conceptual umbrellas. Thus, rather than a discipline, it represents a field of study where diverse theoretical, methodological, epistemological and ontological positions coexist with a local basis for the equal recognition of theories and contributions generated in the Global South (Seabrooke and Young, 2017).Although it does not represent a counter-hegemonic approach to Western thought (Vivares, 2020), the GPE recognises that each region has its own intellectual traditions and, above all, intellectual production that does not always find space in the dominant theories of the North for its demand for agency (Deciancio and Quiliconi, 2020). Hence, I question the applicability of the prevailing theories of IPE as limited in terms of explanation and replicability for Latin America.Northern IPE has had a dichotomous view of the world divided into positivist versus interpretivist in terms of knowledge production, or, more broadly, a geopolitical division into North American versus British schools focused on power politics and economics under very different points of view. These are self-centred perspectives on Anglo-Saxon thought that place Latin American ideas on the periphery, considering them as area studies rather than regional contributions to IPE (Tussie, 2020).It has not been taken into account that, since the late 1940s, Latin America has questioned the alleged universality of growth theories, constructing a local debate separate from the prevailing theories given its own discussions on development. The Latin American schools of structuralism and heterodox economics took a critical view of the ontological basis of orthodox trade, arguing that knowledge is always partial or fragmentary in origin and that international trade is unevenly distributed between developed and developing countries. Nor has consideration been given to later discussions of regionalism, financing for development and more recently to studies of varieties of capitalism that have arisen in Latin America.Despite the relevance and continuity of debates in Latin America, these ideas, which were put forward even before IPE was formally constituted as an area of study in the North, have been ignored by the dominant currents. As if this were not enough, within the region itself, it has been claimed that neoliberalism conquered this space and that, along with it, the critical debate on IPE had disappeared in Latin America (Palma, 2009). Against this background, this paper highlights how the GPE can contribute to a broader research agenda in which the contributions of the Global South are recognised. From a historical analysis, it proposes to compare the most relevant political and economic events that led to the creation of a regional field in GPE. The article contrasts the seminal contributions of structuralism, development and dependency theories to the GPE and the debates that subsequently emerged on regionalism, financing for development and the varieties of capitalism that constitute a Latin American school of thought in the GPE.In this way, it addresses how structuralism and development theories became the pillars of a Latin American school of thought that has had international insertion as an articulating concept in the regional search for spaces of agency within the international system. Latin American contributions to the GPE have always revolved around the themes of development and international insertion based on their own epistemological and methodological contributions.At the ontological level, Latin American theories broke with the acceptance of the universality of positivist and orthodox theories by establishing the need to incorporate reflectivist and critical approaches, and above all, theoretical debates around economics and development have contributed to the generation of an innovative methodology based on historical structuralism. Dependency theory mainly contributed to this methodological transformation, highlighting the importance of understanding the region’s international insertion based on the relationship between internal structures ‘as agents’ and the political and economic power of the rest of the world as ‘the structure’.Under a historical-critical analysis based on the peripheral condition, the region promoted a new understanding of IPE that examined how external and internal factors determined the political economy and social relations in Latin American countries. While structuralism favoured an inward-looking development policy, largely through import substitution industrialisation (ISI), dependency theory suggested the need for a new international economic order and, in one of its strands, a transition to socialism as a way out of the problem of underdevelopment; for many dependentists the goal was to reform capitalism domestically and internationally (Kay, 1998).Contributions on regionalism and financial issues have also been important for the development of the Latin American GPE. Historically, both ideas on Latin American regionalism and debates on financing for development emerged as a way of resisting great power interventions or achieving autonomy (Deciancio, 2018; Simonoff and Lorenzini, 2019). Thus, economic integration, regionalism and financing for development became key themes in the Latin American School of IPE, underpinning the quest to improve patterns of international insertion.It is argued that these contributions can be identified as a particular strand built primarily on the terms of trade debate and development studies in general, but with later ramifications that have inserted debates in the region on regionalism and international insertion, as well as financing for development and varieties of capitalism, into a discussion that has grown in recent decades and has become effervescent and eclectic. In particular, it is argued that Latin American GPE has developed on the margins of conventional IPE but within a rich and vibrant regional debate, which has generally been related on the one hand to the political practice of development (Tickner, 2008; Tussie, 2020) and, on the other, to the creation of regional integration initiatives (Perrotta, 2018).The article is divided into four sections that address the main contributions of the Latin American GPE. First, the seminal debates in the construction of the field of Latin American GPE from structuralism and dependency theories are synthesized. Second, it highlights the importance of regional integration and regionalism as central pillars of the Latin American School of EPG. Thirdly, it discusses how more recent analyses of financing for development and varieties of capitalism have contributed to nurturing the Latin American GPE. Finally, it examines whether the GPE field is global in nature or is facing a new phase in which the contribution and uniqueness of regional debates is revalued and highlighted.
