If you pay close attention to what I have said you will find no more detemined defender [of capital] than myself, for I know that the defense of the interests of businessmen, industrialists, merchants is the defense of the very state itself. (Juan Peron speaking to members of the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange, circa 1944, quoted in Crawley 1984, 75–76). We don’t see ourselves as a government...but in our concept the Histradut is the beginnings of the Jewish socialist state, and who knows but we may succeed and have one? (David Ben-Gurion addressing the Third Histradut Convention, 1927, quoted in Teveth 1987, 345).
Abstract
This is an attempt at a systematic comparison of the heterodox stabilization plans instituted by Argentina and Israel in 1985. Despite the remarkably similar stabilization plans instituted, Israel managed to dramatically reduce its inflation rate, while Argentina’s experience was exactly the opposite. This article suggests that the explanation for the different outcomes can be found in the variations in state power, autonomy, and capacity. In israel, state power was more effectively mobilized to pursue the goal of stabilization than in Argentina, where the state was riddled by special interests and lacked any semblance of cohesion.
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Henri J. Barkey is an associate professor of international relations at Lehigh University. He is the author ofThe State and the Industrialization Crisis in Turkey (1990) and editor ofThe Politics of Economic Reform in the Middle East (1992).
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Barkey, H.J. When politics matter: Economic stabilization in Argentina and Israel. St Comp Int Dev 29, 41–67 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02802947
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02802947