1. Robo para la corona.

2. (I steal for the Crown.)

3. – Jose Luis Manzano, Argentine Minister of the Interior, 1989

Argentina: potential and paradox

Few large developing countries would seem as well-positioned for sustained democratic and economic development as Argentina, yet few swing so sharply between breakthrough and near-collapse. At the beginning of the twentieth century Argentina was one of the world’s wealthiest countries, but entered a long decline (on political aspects of that process see Waisman 1987). At the start of the twenty-first it experienced a spectacular economic crisis, devastating citizens’ savings and incomes, and precipitating a series of brief and unsuccessful presidencies. That happened despite almost two decades of democratic politics, at least judging by formal institutional criteria, and a dozen years’ economic reforms based on the most fashionable neoliberal ideas. A decade hence Argentina has done much to revive its economy, and electoral politics remains firmly in place. Yet its future is hard to predict.