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Neoliberal Globalization and the Argentine Great Depression: Deconstructing the Discourses of the IMF and Private Finance

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Neoliberal Globalization and the Argentine Great Depression: Deconstructing the Discourses of the IMF and Private Finance Introduction Neoliberal globalization and the Argentine Great Depression: deconstructing the discourses of the IMF and private finance By Christian Hernandez A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Political Science and International Studies College of Social Sciences The University of Birmingham November 2017 Word count: 79,734 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Abstract Despite the waning prominence of the vast and diverse literature on globalization, the debate remains unresolved, as globalization’s logics continue to buttress neoliberal economics (Hay & Smith, 2013; Smith, 2005). As Cameron and Palan posited thirteen years ago, “the spread of globalization in practice continues unabated” (2004). Of importance herein is how neoliberal globalization is understood, as a concept and in material terms (Marsh, 2009), as well as how it has spread spatiotemporally (Peck & Tickell, 2012). Contributing to constructivist globalization scholarship, this thesis argues that ideas are central to how “material reality” or “globalization in practice” is shaped and understood (Schmidt, 2013). Henceforth, it interrogates the space for alternatives to globalization’s logics by focusing on the ways ideas shape policy and normative understandings by (respectively) examining the IMF-Argentine consultations (1976-2006), and the discourses of the financial press (1997-2006). The methodology builds on Broome and Seabrooke’s (2007) historical content analysis. The findings show that in both cases ideas entertained came from within globalization’s logics, resulting in policies and a discourse that reflected and reinforced these ideas. Ultimately, this thesis shows the centrality of ideas to “real outcomes,” as well as how they are used to construct understandings thereof. For Hugh, Brock, Jessica, and Jennifer. Acknowledgements I would like send a very special thank you to my lead supervisor Nicola Smith. I truly appreciate your years of support, encouragement, and perhaps most importantly your patience. Your work has influenced and inspired my own. Thank you for taking on my thesis. Secondly, I would also like to thank David Bailey for being an excellent co-supervisor. I am grateful for the time you have taken to comment and share your insights on my work. Together with Nicola, your readings were indispensable in completing my thesis. I would also like to thank Peter Burnham for providing me my first teaching opportunities within the POLSIS department. To my cohorts on the 10th floor, thank you for the camaraderie and friendship throughout the years. Of honorable mention were the many great pubs around Birmingham, which we all frequented, and also for serving as sanctuary of sorts. Lastly, I’d like to thank my wife Jennifer for her strength, as well as her faith in me. So far it has been an amazing ride together, and she has shown her endurance by not only helping me see this through, but giving me two baby boys along the journey. Yes, my wife and I have had two children (now 5 and 3 months) during my period of study. In these 6 years, I have gotten a little taste of underpaid as well as unpaid labor, while serving as a researcher, and during certain stretches moonlighting— both figuratively and literary— as the sole care provider for the two young chaps. Likewise, the PhD and care of these children has been both challenging and rewarding. However, the economic, social, and even psychological plight of unpaid or unsupported laborers is an issue that I have now experienced firsthand. In turn, it has opened me to the struggle and issues of modern day feminists—who have my support and sympathies. As the cliché goes, “it takes a village to raise a child.” Table of Contents Introduction Globalization and Argentina: an introduction Section I. Neoliberal Globalization: theories and methodology 1. Globalization and ideas still matter 2. Case study and methods Section II. The IMF-Argentine coordinative discourses: a historical analysis (1976- 2006) 3. The IMF’s early approach: analyzing Article IV consultations from 1976-1989 4. The Article IV policy mix under Menem (1989-1999) 5. A requiem for flexibility: policy bias during Argentina’s Great Depression (2000-2006) Section III. Analyzing the communicative discourses of finance in Argentina (1997-2006) 6. From mergers to early fissures: the case of Scotiabank and Citibank (1997-2001) 7. Discourses during the Argentine Great Depression: capital controls and Scotia’s default 8. Discourses in default: chronicling the collapse of Scotiabank and Crédit Agricole Conclusion The implications of neoliberal globalization’s rigid discourses Expanded Table of Contents Globalization and Argentina: an introduction ......................................................................................... 1 Issues with the globalization debate and the “waves” typology: a measurable phenomenon or a complex, non-linear reality? ..................................................................................................................... 5 1. Globalization and ideas still matter ..................................................................................................... 29 1.1 Identifying the prominent positions within the globalization debate ................................................ 32 1.1.1 The neoclassical roots of globalization’s hyperglobalist thesis ................................................. 33 1.1.2 Global skepticism, regionalism, and the importance of the state ............................................... 39 1.1.3 Transformational or complex thesis: globalization as a complex, non-linear process ............... 43 1.1.4 The limitations of the hyperglobalist, skeptical and transformationalist positions .................... 51 1.2 Global constructions ......................................................................................................................... 52 1.2.1 Social constructivism: the notion that ideas matter .................................................................... 53 1.3 Critiquing constructivism: accounting for material factors and spatiotemporal dynamics ............... 57 1.3.1 Interrogating the spaces of neoliberalism .................................................................................. 59 1.4 Reasserting the importance of discursive institutionalism: a systematic framework for interrogating ideas, structures, and outcomes ............................................................................................................... 62 2. Case study and methods: interrogating the space for alternatives within policy and general discourses ................................................................................................................................................... 70 2.1 Why Argentina: exploring the room for heterodoxy within ideational and policy spaces ................ 71 2.2 Why the IMF: the importance of the gauging coordinative discourses within policy spaces .......... 74 2.2.2 A flexible and “experimental” IMF in the face of an existential crisis? .................................... 77 2.3 Interrogating ideational spaces: an analysis of the communicative discourses of international finance within Argentina’s financial press .............................................................................................. 82 2.3.1 The corporate press and financial markets: fundamentals or fundamentalism? ........................ 83 2.4 Methods for scoring the IMF Article IV consultations (chapters 3-5) .............................................. 89 2.4.1 The scoring criterion for the IMF Article IV consultations ....................................................... 92 2.5 Methods for section three: the communicative discourse of finance (Chapters 6, 7, 8) ................... 97 2.5.1 Coding, collating, and scoring press biases ............................................................................... 99 2.5.2 A cumulative overview of the collated data ............................................................................. 102 3. The IMF’s early approach: analyzing article IV consultations from 1976-1989 .......................... 106 3.1 Grading economic efficiency during the dirty war (1976-1982) .................................................... 107 3.1.1 The IMF’s Tax and Trade Policy Mix (1976-1982) ................................................................ 112 3.1.2 The IMF’s Fiscal Policy Mix (1976-1982) .............................................................................. 113 3.1.3 The IMF’s Regulatory and Private Sector Policy Mix (1976-1982) ........................................ 116 3.2 The Alfonsín Administration (1983-1989) ..................................................................................... 118 3.2.2 The IMF’s fiscal policy mix (1983-1989) ................................................................................ 122 3.2.3
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