ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the domestic conjunctures of Argentina, Brazil and Chile, focusing especially on the decade of the 1970s. The relevance of studying the beliefs and principles guiding policy design, as well as its implementation, lies in the importance given here to domestic factors in the development of an image of self, that is, of how a state comes to see itself. As discussed in Chapter Two, a government's perception of the success, failure, strength, weakness, vulnerability, and so on, of its own state's performance will affect its perceived range of available policy options. In other words, how a government assesses its own and its country's performance may expand or restrict the scope of foreign policy choices that it visualizes as possible, and thereby, alternatives not envisaged before may become apparent, or, similarly, alternatives seen as possible before are later ruled out.
