ABSTRACT
It is not an easy task to describe in concise terms the process that resulted in each of the US policy responses to the multitude of crises and mini-crises that characterized the renegotiations involving Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina between 1982 and 1985. In the past decade, interest has been revived in "the state" as an explanatory variable. There is little doubt that an intellectual revolution is under-way because, in the not-to distant past, the dominant theories and research agendas of the social sciences rarely addressed the concept of the state. Nineteenth century social theorists, particularly in Germany - in tune with the realities of social change and politics underway on the European continent - refused, even after extensive industrialization had taken place, to accept the de-emphasis of the state typical of those scholars who focused their thinking on Britain. In foreign economic policy in general, pluralism should remain the catch-all that it has largely become.
