ABSTRACT
Argentine politics are usually described as eccentric, or at least unconventional, for a number of reasons. Economically, Argentina was a rich country that went from wealth to bankruptcy over a period of about seventy years, between 1930 and 2001. Socially, it has always had the most developed middle class and the most educated population in Latin America – a region where strong middle classes and universal education are extremely rare. Politically, it saw the emergence and predominance of rather autochthonous political movements, which included the most relevant and elusive example of Peronism. Internationally, it was the country in the western hemisphere that (apart from Cuba) most frequently opposed American foreign policies, although it never sided openly with either Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. Argentina has been one of the most economically developed and one of the least politically stable countries in Latin America, a paradox first explained by Guillermo O’Donnell in the 1970s.1 In spite of all these particularities, the cycles of Argentine politics since 1930 matched with international developments taking place at the time. This chapter argues that both the frequent democratic breakdowns and processes of redemocratization that followed were linked to international factors.
