Comparative capitalisms and Latin American neodevelopmentalism: A

critical political economy view

Matthias Ebenau (Queen Mary, University of London, UK and Universidad Católica

de Córdoba, Argentina)

Abstract

This article engages critically with an emerging Brazilian research programme, ‘Varieties of
Capitalism and Development in Latin America’, a perspective which seeks to ascertain the
institutional chances of, and limits to, implementing state-led ‘national development
strategies’. Adopting a critical political economy viewpoint, the text discusses the deficiencies
inherent to this perspective and its neoinstitutionalist and neodevelopmentalist fundamentals.
In particular, it questions the vision of the world economy as an arena of free competition and
that of the nation-state as a ‘collective actor’, both of which are politically and analytically
problematic. These criticisms are substantiated through evidence drawn from a case analysis of
the recent trajectory of the Argentine neodevelopmentalist project.

Keywords: comparative capitalisms, development, neodevelopmentalism, Varieties of

Capitalism, Argentina

This is a pre-print version of an article which will be published as part of a special issue on
‘Critical perspectives on the diversity of contemporary capitalism’ of the journal Capital & Class in
early 2014.

1
Introduction

This article seeks to contribute critically to the ‘globalisation’ of comparative capitalisms (CC)
research by engaging with an emerging (predominantly) Brazilian research programme which
seeks to put this field’s insights and methodological tools to use for understanding
contemporary economic trajectories in Latin America. For lack of a better name, I will call this
programme Varieties of Capitalism and Development in Latin America (VoC&D-LA), after one of
its key publications (Boschi, 2011). In this introduction, I first provide a brief contextualisation
of the topic, before sketching out the central argument and structure of the article.
CC research has long had its centre of gravity in the so-called advanced capitalist world
regions. Only over the past few years, CC scholars’ attention has increasingly turned to the
specific forms capitalism would take outside the traditional centres. From the late 1990s
onwards, first a significant body of literature emerged which sought to provide systematic
comparative analyses of post-socialist capitalism in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). This was
followed by a series of studies focusing on the so-called ‘developing’ and ‘emerging’ economies
of the Latin American subcontinent (for an overview see Ebenau, 2013). However, due to the
particularities in the forms which the capitalist mode of production assumes in the region and
its modes of insertion into the global economy, approaches that were built on a mere
broadening of conventional CC perspectives, such as VoC’s ‘hierarchical market economy’
(HME) extension, were often found wanting by critics (see e.g. Ebenau, 2012; Fernández and
Alfaro, 2011; Schrank, 2009; Sheahan, 2002; see also Fishwick in this special issue).
Against this background, the recent emergence of the more ‘home-grown’ VoC&D-LA
programme constitutes an innovative and politically relevant contribution to the ongoing
globalisation of CC scholarship, and in particular its expansion to Latin America and its
adoption by researchers based in the region. Taking a critical political economy viewpoint, this
article presents an engagement with the research programme itself and its theoretical and
intellectual foundations. Briefly put, its main argument is that VoC&D-LA, while representing a
considerable advance over previous attempts to extend CC scholarship to Latin America, still
suffers from a number of significant analytical and political fallacies, rooted in its
neoinstitutionalist and neodevelopmentalist fundamentals. These are related principally to

2
deficient visions of the global economy and the capitalist nation-state, which will be discussed
below.
In the following section, I give an overview of the central tenets of VoC&D-LA, followed by a
critical, historically grounded analysis of its theoretical suppositions and political implications.
Subsequently, I will substantiate the latter by means of a more specific case study of the recent
Argentine economic trajectory. The conclusion relates this analysis to the wider argument and
presents elements of an alternative political and research agenda.

‘Varieties of Capitalism and Development in Latin America’

The core of the VoC&D-LA research programme consists of a group of scholars around Renato
R. Boschi, most of them Brazilian and working at or in association with the Núcleo de Estudos
de Empresariado, Instituições e Capitalismo at Rio de Janeiro State University. Politically,
VoC&D-LA is closely related to neodevelopmentalist thought, which is being developed by
scholars such as Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira. In theoretical terms, like most CC scholarship the
research programme is rooted in variants of the neoinstitutionalist paradigm. In order to
provide a grounded understanding of VoC&D-LA, I will outline its specific research agenda and
policy recommendations in conjunction with a discussion of these fundamentals.
Neodevelopmentalism is a body of political thought that has developed over the last ten or
so years, particularly in Latin America. Drawing its inspiration principally from the experiences
of the East Asian developmental states, nowadays it is one of the key influences on the more
‘moderate’ centre-left governments of the region, in countries such as Brazil, Argentina,
Uruguay and Peru. Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira, a former Brazilian minister and leading thinker
on neodevelopmentalism, presents it as a ‘third way’ between the discredited neoliberal
Washington Consensus and the older, inward-looking developmentalism which had
underpinned attempts at import-substitution industrialisation up to the 1970s. Bresser-Pereira
and other proponents envisage neodevelopmentalism as the basis for ‘national development
strategies’ which, in principle, could be universalised to middle-income countries throughout
the region and beyond (Bresser-Pereira, 2007, 2010; O’Connor, 2010; Sicsú et al., 2007).

3
 Neodevelopmentalism perceives today’s global economy as an arena of competition, not only
between capitalist enterprises but also between nation-states, whose representatives seek to
support ‘their’ firms in order to derive maximum benefits for ‘national development’.
Globalisation, Bresser-Pereira (2010: 34–44) argues, did not reduce the significance of states and
their governments, but gave them even more strategic significance. The best way to reach the
desired ‘national development’ in the present context is to pursue an export-oriented approach,
while maintaining control over the central macroeconomic variables, especially foreign
exchange and interest rates. Key to this programme is the implementation of a ‘national
development strategy’, defined as ‘concerted economic action oriented toward economic
growth that has the nation as its collective actor and the state as its basic instrument o f
collective action’ (Bresser-Pereira, 2010: 59).
Such a ‘national development strategy’ or ‘project’, characterised by an orientation towards
achieving growth and international competitiveness, a form of normative nationalism, an
emphasis on class conciliation, and crucial importance attributed to the role of government,
also constitutes a central theme throughout the writings of scholars associated with VoC&D-LA
(e.g. Boschi and Gaitán, 2009; Diniz, 2011; Gaitán, 2011). It can thus be considered the hinge
which connects neodevelopmentalism as a political agenda to VoC&D-LA as a policy-oriented
research programme. In this vein, the fundamental intellectual challenge which the scholars
around Boschi pose to themselves could be described as that of ascertaining the institutional
possibilities for governments to articulate and implement the ‘national development strategies’
to which neodevelopmentalism aspires (e.g. Boschi and Gaitán, 2008: 5; Diniz, 2011: 37-9). The
neoinstitutionalist CC literature, in turn, with its focus on political and economic possibilities
resulting from the specific historical trajectories of distinct economies, constitutes an obvious
point of theoretical reference for this purpose. From within the broad neoinstitutionalist
paradigm, scholars associated with VoC&D-LA draw on a range of perspectives, including the
rational choice-inspired VoC approach as well as historical and sociological variants (e.g. the
various contributions in Boschi, 2011).
Within this broad panorama, arguably the defining trait of VoC&D-LA is the emphasis which
is placed on the role of the state and government. More specifically, the state-centred
institutionalism which mainly emerged from debates on the rise of the East Asian ‘tigers’ from

4
the 1960s onwards (see particularly Evans, 1995; Weiss, 1998) constitutes an important point of
orientation for the Brazilian research programme (see e.g. Condé and Delgado, 2009; Diniz,
2011). The contributing scholars share its perspective regarding the central function of state
institutions under the aegis of (neo-)developmentalism: to guarantee effective coordination
between ‘the public’ and ‘the private’ with the aim of augmenting competitiveness and growth,
national rent and, consequently, social welfare (Diniz, 2011; see also Boschi and Gaitán, 2008;
Gaitán, 2011). Through reference to the theoretical-conceptual framework associated with the
various forms of neoinstitutionalism, the VoC&D-LA research programme complements and
refines the neodevelopmentalist agenda proposed by Bresser-Pereira and others. In the view of
the contributing scholars, government is responsible, among other things, for directing
investment flows, incentivising key sectors, stimulating competitiveness by exposing
enterprises to international competition and, generally, directing the economic behaviour of
private actors without depriving them of their independence. To this end, it is seen to require
regulatory and bureaucratic capacity, autonomy vis-à-vis the private sector, and the ability to
effectively implement its decisions.
For all this, it is argued, the political system acquires central significance, especially with
regard to its capacity to process and regulate conflicts between social actors. If this capacity is
high, the ‘strategic elites’ may be able to constitute a ‘social support coalition’, which can in
turn sustain successful collective action in the pursuit of the predetermined socio -economic
goals. Simultaneously, strong private interest associations are needed, in particular on the
business side, to constitute capable interlocutors for the state. In this sense, by forging a
‘public-private synergy’, the government and associated state institutions can ultimately make
up for the failures of purely market-based coordination and, conversely, drive forward the
formation of durable competitive advantages (Boschi and Gaitán, 2008; 2009; Diniz, 2011;
Gaitán, 2011). Empirically, VoC&D-LA’s research agenda is concretised through a series of
studies which focus on the institutional foundations and the comparative performance of the
various neodevelopmentalist projects in Latin America. Many analyses are concerned with
specific aspects of the recent Brazilian and Argentine experiences, whereby Brazil’s
development bank BNDES is often regarded as the neodevelopmentalist institution par
excellence (see particularly the contributions in Boschi and Santana, 2012; Boschi, 2011).

5
 On the basis of this sketch of the outlines of VoC&D-LA and its neodevelopmentalist and
neoinstitutionalist fundamentals, in the following section I now present a critical , historically
grounded, theoretical-conceptual engagement with the research programme.

A critical political economy perspective on VoC&D-LA

The VoC&D-LA research programme represents an innovative way of applying the insights and
tools developed in CC scholarship to better understand contemporary Latin American
trajectories and the possibilities of realising strategies capable of bringing about the economic
and social improvements conventionally associated with the term ‘development’. Its merits lie
particularly in its critique of the failed neoliberal model of dependent development and its
reappraisal of the potential role of state action in setting the course for more desirable
trajectories. These strengths mean that VoC&D-LA is more successful at grasping the
specificities of capitalism in Latin America, including its problems and possible ways of
overcoming them, than previous attempts at extending CC frameworks. Nevertheless, the
research programme continues to suffer from significant shortcomings which are deeply
ingrained in neodevelopmentalism and neoinstitutionalist CC. The following discussion is
structured around their two main common denominators, namely VoC&D-LA’s problematic
conceptualisations of the global economy and of the capitalist nation-state.
In conceptual terms, neodevelopmentalism, and along with it the VoC&D-LA researchers,
conceive of the world economy as an ensemble of national economies which compete with each
other through their respective national companies. Politically, they recommend that
governments and firms from middle-income countries such as Brazil or Argentina embrace
global economic competition as a means for achieving their ‘national development’ aims. An
important problem here is the envisioning of transnational economic competition as a positive-
sum game which promises gains for all sorts of firms and countries, whatever their initial
position, if only they tackle the task of competitive insertion in the ‘right’ way. This masks the
fact that the undirected struggle for global market shares has produced structural
unemployment and excess capacities in a great many productive sectors, which is related to the

6
general tendency towards over-accumulation on a world scale. This tendency is highlighted by
critical political economy scholarship rooted in the Marxian tradition (cf. Kaplinsky, 2005; see
also Clarke, 2001). In such a situation, the success of some producers will necessarily come at
the cost of others, be they already established or aspiring competitors (Kaplinsky, 2005: 229-31).
In other words, the optimism of VoC&D-LA proponents regarding the chances held by global
competitive insertion is questionable due to an important fallacy of composition in the
underlying argument.
Moreover, despite neodevelopmentalists’ insistence on the continued importance of
government action for seizing the potential benefits of global competition, the fact remains
that governments’ strategic capacities are extremely unevenly distributed. Of course, the
quality of institutions and economic policies, factors that are emphasised by proponents of
VoC&D-LA, is important. But there are also structural issues, such as capital and resource
endowments, the predominant insertion of local producers into global networks, etc., which
individual governments would find very difficult and often impossible to change. In this regard,
the insistence on policy and institutional quality in VoC&D-LA is excessively monothematic.
Crucially, scant attention is paid to how the paradigmatic East Asian ‘tiger’ economies’ rise was
made possible not just by the strength of their state apparatuses but also by specific historical
and exceptionally favourable economic and geopolitical conditions (see e.g. Chibber, 1999).
Such conditions cannot simply be assumed to hold in the same way for present -day Latin
America, especially given the general durability of the structural positioning of given territories
in the world economy (as highlighted by world systems theorists, among others (cf. Babones,
2012)).
In sum, the fact that global competition presently produces far more losers than winners is a
result of the general tendency towards overaccumulation and the highly unequal and durable
structures which frame it. In consequence, while the governments of some countries may be
successful at fostering an improvement in the positioning of local firms in global competition,
this is not an economic strategy which is likely to bring about the desired results throughout
poorer world regions. Neodevelopmentalism as a mere competition strategy may help to
elevate the position of some middle-income countries but will, in turn, cement the peripheral
status of a great many other economies.

7
 A second area where a critical political economy perspective calls into question the VoC&D-
LA research programme is its conceptualisation of the capitalist nation-state. As sketched out
above, the state, represented principally by government, is seen as capable of constituting and
leading the nation as a ‘collective actor’ and consequently guiding it onto a virtuous economic
path. Thus, both conceptually and politically, government appears as the central actor of the
political economy. A state-business alliance, in turn, is regarded as fundamental for the pursuit
of competitiveness and growth. For its part, labour is only considered insofar as an adequate
distribution of rents is assumed to be necessary to secure sufficient internal demand and the
stability of the neodevelopmentalist ‘social support coalition’. Thus, while VoC&D-LA only
occasionally exhibits the authoritarian undertones of many of the ‘neo-Listian’ perspectives on
the East Asian developmental states (cf. Selwyn, 2009: 162-7), the absence of social and labour
conflict is still seen as a hallmark of success of neodevelopmentalist projects. Nevertheless,
historical evidence on the great social conquests under capitalism, such as the creation of the
more effective welfare states in the 20 th century, calls into question such a view, since it shows
that they were achieved precisely through organised labour militancy and class politics (see e.g.
Esping-Andersen, 1990). Conversely, their weakness and/or suppression in the case of earlier
developmentalist projects has limited their beneficial social effects, not least in the case of
Brazil itself (cf. Chibber, 2005; on Brazil see Ebenau and Liberatore, 2013).
A related shortcoming of the VoC&D-LA research programme is the unproblematic
assumption of the ‘national’ orientation of capitals which are chiefly anchored in a given
country. Without doubt physical space and cultural place continue to constitute relevant
factors in shaping business strategies. But this does not mean that there is a straightforward
association of interests between a nationally defined society and firms which operate under its
name. Rather, firms’ ‘home societies’, not unlike other local contexts, are marked by a
permanent tug of war between capitals, state actors, and labour regarding the appropriation of
socially produced wealth, whose outcomes depend on the relative power positions of these
different players (Dicken, 2011: 221-38). It follows that the state-business coalitions, which are
seen in VoC&D-LA as the basic units of neodevelopmentalist political projects, will have to
involve a much higher degree of disciplining and coercion if they are to bring about positive

8
results for the majority of the populations in question. The above-cited historical evidence
supports such an argument.
In sum, the rather naïve conceptualisation of the national state inherent in
neodevelopmentalism and VoC&D-LA fails to capture adequately the connection between the
conflictual relations among social classes and state institutions, concrete government policies,
and so on. From a critical political economy perspective, there is no such thing as a genuine
‘national interest’, but rather a conflictual relationship between classes, to which the state
apparatuses are constitutively connected. Neodevelopmentalist rhetoric regarding ‘national
projects’, if successful, will in fact cover up the class character of the respective political
strategies which privilege an alliance with business over a proactive role for labour in pushing
for increased social protection, a more equal distribution of the fruits of production and
eventually a democratisation of the economy.
The purpose of the next section is to provide more detailed empirical evidence supporting
the general critical considerations regarding the VoC&D-LA research programme and its
neodevelopmentalist and neoinstitutionalist fundamentals. This will be drawn from an analysis
of some aspects of the recent trajectory of the Argentine economy.

The ‘Argentine miracle’ revisited1

In 2003, following a socially devastating crisis of the previous neoliberal model, Argentines
elected a centre-left government. It was based on a labour and social movement platform and
of a clear neodevelopmentalist orientation. The evolution of the Argentine economy under the
presidency of Néstor Kirchner (2003-7) and later that of his wife and successor Cristina
Fernández de Kirchner (since 2007) presents us with an interesting case for the discussion at
hand. Not only does it figure extensively in the empirical studies conducted by researchers
associated with VoC&D-LA, but some analysts even consider it a particularly successful
instance of neodevelopmentalism, especially during the earlier years of this political project
(see e.g. Batista Jr., 2005; Bresser-Pereira, 2010: 47f, 119). I will first provide a short general
sketch of the recent trajectory, before turning to a critical evaluation, focusing as an example on

9
the problems which beset a more beneficial competitive insertion of Argentine producers into
the global economy.
Arguably the single most important policy change following the crisis of 2001-2 was the
replacement of currency convertibility with a managed exchange rate regime. Further
significant policy changes in line with the agenda proposed by neodevelopmentalists and the
VoC&D-LA research programme included the establishment of an expansive fiscal policy, and a
strengthening of social and labour policy. Also, a series of new programmes to foment firms’
export competitiveness were created (Ebenau and Liberatore, 2013). Until now, Argentine
neodevelopmentalism has proven a relatively successful policy paradigm. For some years,
output and export growth rates have been very dynamic, and considerable social progress has
been made, leading to a recuperation and partial improvement on the pre-crisis levels of
relevant economic and social indicators. Especially on the social side, the performance of
indicators such as disposable incomes and economic (in-)equality has far surpassed that of
neighbouring Brazil. An important component of these developments was a strong industrial
recovery and expansion. Still, significant old contradictions remain and new ones have
emerged. These contradictions are growing, thus calling into question the continued adequacy
of the neodevelopmentalist strategy and associated research efforts (for synthetic critical
evaluations see e.g. Ebenau and Liberatore, 2013; Féliz, 2012; Varesi, 2010).
Despite a pronounced increase in exports, the quality of the international inserti on of
Argentine producers has remained almost unchanged. From 2000 to 2011, the value of total
exports has climbed from US$26.3 to US$84 billion while the value of imports rose from US$25.2
to US$73.9 billion. However, the greatest increase originated from agricultural products and
lightly processed commodities such as crude vegetable oils, soy pellets, etc. Taken together,
these continue to account for about 64% of export values and a full 91% of volumes. These
activities correspond to the traditional profile of Argentine exports and are largely based on
static comparative advantages. Due to their low ratios of value-added in situ and technology
intensity, their positive effects for productive development, employment generation, etc., to
which neodevelopmentalism aspires, are scarce (Bisang et al., 2009; López and Ramos, 2009).
At the same time, the manufacturing sector has returned to producing large trade deficits,

10
reaching US$30 billion in 2011. These document the very weak interlinking of exporters with the
local productive structure.2
In sum, despite the generalised expansion in world trade and other favourable macro
conditions, Argentine producers’ possibilities for a more beneficial global insertion in high
technology and high value-added activities themselves are quite limited. This is not only due to
their incapacity to take advantage of existing opportunities, but also to the structurally
problematic competitive position of Argentine firms, shared by those of many other countries
with similar wage/productivity relations (Kaplinsky, 2005). The latter are caught in the middle
between their counterparts from localities with low wage costs such as China and also Brazil,
that outcompete them on the ‘low road’ of mature, more standardised manufacturing segments,
and those from high-wage, high-productivity zones such as Western Germany, which dominate
in the so-called ‘high road’ activities at the cutting-edge of technological development (Féliz
and López, 2012: 102-6). Generally speaking, an industrial policy strategy can be very valuable
when it comes to exploiting existing opportunities, but unless it effectively puts Argentine
producers into a position where they can compete successfully in either strategic segment, its
reach will remain limited. These options render more visible the class character of the choice of
economic strategies, given that each will play more or less to the interests of specific socio-
economic groups.
The policy of maintaining low labour costs in dollar terms has in recent years been
complemented by the government’s permissive stance regarding price-driven inflation, adopted
as a response to firms’ complaints about shrinking international competitiveness and profit
margins. Taken together, these factors point towards a ‘low road’ direction. In their wake, the
positive developments of real wages and other social indicators, which had characterised the
first years of the neodevelopmentalist project, have slowed down considerably or even come to
a halt in some cases (CIFRA-CTA, 2012). This, in turn, has exacerbated the faltering of industrial
expansion, given this was based principally on the recuperation of domestic markets,
transmitted for instance through the demand for construction.
On the other hand, assuming that Argentine firms could eventually outcompete already
established producers in ‘high road’ activities, successfully taking this path requires, as
exponents of the VoC&D-LA research programme remark, competent and sympathetic

11
interlocutors on the business side. However, a closer analysis of the current Argentine scenario
supports the doubts raised regarding the mere assumption of this willingness in the context of a
‘national development strategy’. While the neodevelopmentalist governments appealed from
their beginnings to the need to (re-)build a ‘national bourgeoisie’ as part of a broader ‘national
project’ (cf. Chibber, 2005: 226–8) and have led several initiatives to form sectorial compacts in
both the agrarian and the manufacturing sectors, these have met with lukewarm responses
from business. Especially the agrarian bourgeoisie, which controls the traditional powerhouse
of the Argentine economy, continues to show all characteristics of a ‘dependent’ capitalist
fraction (cf. Marini, 1981: 49-55), accommodating itself to the position of peripheral economic
insertion while taking no special interest in productive upgrading or the expansion of the
domestic market. More specifically, over recent years this segment of the bourgeoisie has
benefited from elevated commodity rents while upholding an intense struggle with the
government over the share the latter appropriates in order to finance social policy and
initiatives geared towards fostering higher value-added production and exports (Ebenau and
Suau Arinci, 2012).
Thus, the neodevelopmentalist project which emerged from the crisis of Argentine
neoliberalism is, on the one hand, exposed to permanent contestation from important fractions
of the business elites. On the other hand, the project seems to be gradually losing the support
from organised labour and popular movements which it originally enjoyed, due to its apparent
inability to sustain the social improvements of the earlier years in the face of this contestation
and the structural limits imposed by the global economic context. This loss of support becomes
evident, for instance, in declining approval rates for the Fernández government and the
fracturing of its union support bloc (Ebenau and Liberatore, 2013).
In sum, the neodevelopmentalist project in Argentina presently seems to be caught between
a rock and a hard place. In the final section, I will relate the findings of this analysis of the
structural limits and contradictions which beset the ‘Argentine miracle’ to the critique of the
VoC&D-LA research programme, and draw conclusions for an alternative policy and research
agenda.

12
Conclusions

Scholars associated with the VoC&D-LA research programme have rightly pointed out the role
which institutional and policy weaknesses, in particular the lack of a viable long-term industrial
strategy, played in sustaining and aggravating the situation just described. They have also
convincingly shown how Argentina fares worse in institutional terms when compared to Brazil
(see e.g. Balestro, 2012; Gaitán, 2012). This diagnosis is widely shared by students of the
contemporary Argentine economy, whatever their position regarding the desired approach for
overcoming its problems (e.g. Azpiazu and Schorr, 2010: 227-88; Baruj et al., 2009: 119-23).
Still, our analysis of Argentine neodevelopmentalism after 2003 has also documented a
number of noteworthy aspects with regards to the lacunae and contradictions of this rather
restricted perspective. First, the possibilities for Argentine producers to achieve a more
beneficial insertion into the global economy have remained limited, despite favourable macro -
conditions, due to fierce competition from both ‘high road’ and ‘low road’ locations.
Government initiatives to help set producers onto a ‘high road’ path have often met with
indifference and sometimes outright hostility by influential business fractions. Attempts at
appeasing business, in turn, are leading to an increasing alienation of labour and social
movements. Still, these problems did not prevent the Argentine neodevelopmentalist project
from achieving partially impressive social improvements.
Taken together, these results lend support to the political economy critique of VoC&D-LA
set out in this article, in particular its insistence on: a more realistic conceptualisation of the
potential benefits to be derived from global competition for the populations of countries such
as Brazil and Argentina; paying greater attention to the limits of the strategic capacities of such
countries’ governments; being aware of the productive role of class politics and labour
militancy; and the importance of society’s disciplinary capacities vis-à-vis capitalist enterprises
if business success is to be converted into social progress.
So what are the implications for future research on capitalist variegation and the possible
future trajectories in Latin America, and territories outside the world economy’s traditional
centres more generally? As should have become clear throughout this text, many problems
raised by VoC&D-LA, such as the necessity of studying the institutional conditions for

13
implementing efficient industrial policy strategies, are and remain highly relevant. At the same
time, however, these need to be complemented by critical analyses of the positioning of the
specific forms of capitalism in the global economy and the consequences for the chances and
limits of local policy formulation. Finally, we need to study more extensively, and without the
problem-solving bias inherent in VoC&D-LA, issues related to class agency and the necessary
disciplining of capital. For all this, the ‘globalisation’ of CC research must be further enriched
with an appraisal of theories and concepts from the critical political economy family, such as
dependency perspectives (Ebenau, 2012). Politically, these arguments obviously tie in with
demands for a more egalitarian and democratic global economic order, and for a
democratisation and socialisation of production.

Acknowledgement

I am grateful to Moisés Balestro, Ian Bruff, Christian May, Andreas Nölke, Facundo Parés and
Ben Selwyn for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.

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Notes
1
Apart from the cited secondary sources, this analysis is also based on approximately 40 in-
depth qualitative interviews which I, alongside Victoria Liberatore, Facundo Parés and Lucía
Suau Arinci, have conducted with entrepreneurs from both the agrarian and the automobile
sectors, authorities of sectoral business associations, trade union officials and relevant
government officials, as part of the project ‘Condiciones institucionales y relacionales de la
competititivdad empresarial y su relación con un buen desempeño socio-económico’, which is
based at the Catholic University of Córdoba, Argentina.
2
My calculations based on data retrieved from CEPAL’s BADECEL database
(http://websie.eclac.cl/badecel/basededatos.asp, last accessed 07/03/13).
17