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The Alfonsín Administration and the Promotion of Democratic Values in the Southern Cone and the Andes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 1999

DOMINIQUE FOURNIER
DOMINIQUE FOURNIER
Affiliation:
Washington, D.C.
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Abstract

This article seeks to demonstrate the need to incorporate the international component of political strategy into analysis of the behaviour of democratising elites, a standpoint that too often has been neglected in democratisation theory. It explores a little-known aspect of Argentina's foreign policy that took place under the stewardship of the transitional democratic administration of President Raúl Alfonsín (1983-1989). Specifically, it reveals that the first-freely elected administration that followed the Procesco military dictatorship articulated and implemented a strategy that aimed at defending and promoting democratic values in relation to Argentina's Southern Cone and Andean neighbours. Argentine bilateral relations with Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Chile are analysed through this analytical standpoint. It is argued that the Alfonsín government pursued such a policy out of a blend of fear for its own perpetuation and principled beliefs about the value of democracy as a mode of governance.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , February 1999 , pp. 39 - 74
Copyright
© 1999 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

The article is based on a chapter of my doctoral dissertation, ‘The International Dimension of Democratic Transitions: Argentina and Chile’, University of Oxford, 1996. Most of the research upon which this article is based was made possible by a doctoral research fellowship provided by the Fonds de Chercheurs et d'aide à la recherche of the Province of Québec, Canada and the Latin American Inter-Faculty Committee of the University of Oxford. I would like to thank the Forum for Democratic Studies, Alan Angell, Laurence Whitehead and Sean Burges for their help and encouragement.