When was argentina established

Ramirez eventually broke relations with Germany and Japan on January 26, , but resigned in favor of his vice-president, General Edelmiro Farrell a few weeks later on February 25, Armour was instructed to return to Washington on June 27, Edward L. The United States resumed normal diplomatic relations with Argentina and formally recognized the Farrell government on April 19, , according to a State Department notice released that same day.

The decision came from a meeting of the Inter-American Conference in Mexico City , where all the participants agreed to resume relations with Argentina following its declaration of war against the Axis powers.

Menu Menu. For the pre period, a simple linear interpolation is used between and to yield an overall annual variation in per capita GDP over time. At face value, the evidence clearly suggests that until Argentina managed to parallel the US per capita output level. Following a relatively smaller output decline during the Great Depression in the early s, Argentina embarked on a path of comparatively greater output stagnation relative to the United States and a markedly slower rate of economic growth, especially in the years following the military coup.

Figure 1 b, maps the long-run development of Argentina compared with other countries. Source: Bolt and van Zanden In their broadest form, the de jure political institutions capture the set of rules allocating political power through a formal institutional framework such as electoral law and the constitution. The de facto political institutions denote the ability to engage in various forms of collective action and contest the political power of the elites.

The distinction between de jure and de facto political institutions is crucial, because the balance of the de jure and de facto political power of the elites tends to shape the structure and equilibrium of economic institutions and, together with procedural details, bears directly on economic performance Summerhill Acemoglu and Robinson a suggest that both sets of political institutions exert a strong form of temporal persistence.

Footnote 9. The underlying polity index comprises six subindicators that capture the distribution of de jure political power: a competitiveness of executive recruitment, b openness of executive recruitment, c executive constraints, d de jure competitiveness of political participation, e formal regulation of political participation, and f competitiveness of political participation Treier and Jackman ; Marshall et al.

In its broadest form, the index of democracy captures the ability of nonelites to engage in various forms of collective action and to contest the political power of the elites in free and fair regular elections. The index of democracy comprises two underlying subindices: a the index of political competition and b the index of political participation. First, the index of political competition is constructed on the basis of the percentage share of votes cast for smaller political parties and independents in parliamentary elections or their share of the number of seats in the parliament.

Second, the index of political participation is composed of the percentage of the adult population that voted in the elections, which broadly reflects the ability of nonelites to contest the political power of elites and to engage in the process of collective action. The use of voting rates as an indicator of de facto political institutions has been the subject of scholarly criticism. Many avenues besides voting rates exist for influencing collective action.

In this respect, a political competition index might overtly neglect proportional representation versus a first-past-the-post system, because the index yields higher values for systems having a greater number of small parties. Hence, countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States automatically score much lower on a de facto institutional metric than do countries with proportional representation, even though they are stable democracies that recognize the rule of law, possibly to a much greater degree than many countries with proportional representation.

Despite such easily acknowledged limitations, voting rates provide an easily trackable indicator of de facto political rights that can be compared across countries and over time. Although a measure of informal norms would be more appropriate for such purposes, no such indices or data currently exist for the greater part of the time series being studied in this paper.

My aim is to construct consistent and both internally and externally valid indices of de jure and de facto political institutions in which the maximum temporal and spatial variance is extracted from each underlying component Bollen ; Pemstein et al. To this end, I have used the factor analytic FA approach to construct the de jure and de facto indices of political institutions.

The two indices are constructed from eight different subindicators. The rotated components indicate that the first dimension correlates strongly with four Polity IV indicators, which reflects the structure of de jure political institutions. The second major dimension correlates strongly with political competition, executive constraints, and political participation, which is characteristic of de facto political institutions. In Fig. Source: Marshall et al. Because the goal is to construct the counterfactual scenario of long-run development without institutional breakdowns, the proposed empirical strategy does not facilitate the measurement of breakdowns from a substantive point of view.

The period in which the breakdown of checks and balances and the democratic institutions evolved is used as a starting point to build a counterfactual scenario. The counterfactual series on de jure and de facto political institutions are constructed by building eight specific counterfactual scenarios that meet the de jure and de facto institutional design.

The importance of physical geography and factor endowments for long-run development has been confirmed empirically by several researchers, including Engerman and Sokoloff ; Bloom and Sachs ; Gallup et al. Others are convinced that culture played the decisive role and held long-lasting implications for growth and development Guiso et al.

Still other scholars believe that precolonial biological and genetic setup explain contrasting development paths taken by Argentina Spolaore and Wacziarg , ; Nunn and Qian ; Cook In the present study of 28 countries, the ability to contain the omitted variable bias by controlling for the set of observable factors is constrained by the limited data available for the temporal period. The covariates used to address the omitted variable bias are assigned to three major groupings: a geography and factor endowments, b legal history, c culture, and d production factors.

The data on geography are from Nunn and Puga Nine distinctive physical geography covariates are included in the set of conditioning variables: a latitude, b longitude, c terrain ruggedness, d soil quality, e fraction of the land area covered by desert, f fraction of the land area in the tropical zone, g percentage of the land area within km of the coast, h an indicator variable measuring whether the country is landlocked or not, and i precipitation levels.

Latitude and longitude variables are expressed in standard decimal degrees for the geographic centroid of the country. The distance from coast covariate is calculated as the simple unweighted fraction of the area within a km radius of the closest ice-free coast in equirectangular projection, with standard parallels determined at 30 degrees on the basis of sea and sea ice area features, excluding inland water surfaces. Rainfall precipitation is denoted as the depth of total annual rainfall expressed in millimeters.

The data on legal history are from La Porta et al. Because not a single country in the sample is characterized by socialist law, this particular subgroup is excluded from the full sample. The legal origin is captured by a simple indicator variable, and given its time invariance, the underlying indicators reflect the long-run differences between countries in their rates of economic growth across different streams of legal tradition. The data on culture are from Alesina et al.

Because the standard culture covariates do not stretch back in time on a year basis, three distinctive time-invariant covariates are included in the set of conditioning variables: a ethnic fractionalization, b linguistic fractionalization, and c religious fractionalization. Because such measures appear to be highly stable and persistent over time, the relationship with respect to long-run development is apparent.

The set of fractionalization covariates captures the cultural differences across countries. The underlying measure of fractionalization is constructed as a simple Hirschman—Herfindahl concentration index by subtracting the shares of ethnic, linguistic, or religious groups from unity.

Higher values of the index correspond to greater ethnic, linguistic, and religious homogeneity in the population in space and time. The data on production factors are from Feenstra et al. Notice that since the production factor variables are available for the post period only, the analysis with the production factors is restricted to this specific period. The sample used in the empirical analysis to establish the contribution of de jure and de facto political institutions to long-run development comprises 28 countries for the period — on an annual basis, with 19 covariates in the set of independent variables, which totals baseline country-year observations.

Table 2 reports the underlying descriptive statistics for the full unrestricted sample. This section discusses the conditional long-run development effects of de jure and de facto political institutions followed by a discussion of synthetic counterfactual estimates.

In Table 3 , the effects of de jure and de facto political institutions on long-run development are presented in depth. The results clearly highlight the fundamental importance of the de jure and de facto political institutions in shaping the paths of long-run development.

Columns 1 through 4 display the evidence using the full sample. In column 1 , the point estimates suggest that a one-basis-point improvement in the latent index of de jure political institutions is associated with a 2. The de jure and de facto political institutions account for up to 73 percent of the between-country and within-country differences in per capita income. In the absence of the covariates, the unconditional estimates of de jure and de facto institutional effects on long-run development are likely to be conflated by omitted variable bias.

In column 2 , the geography covariates are added to the list of control variables. The evidence indicates that the core effects of de jure and de facto political institutions appear to be highly insensitive to the direct and confounding effects of physical geography on long-run development. In column 3 , the legal history and tradition covariates from La Porta et al. The underlying effects of the de jure and de facto political institutions remain intact and statistically significant at 1 percent.

In the absence of controlling for the legal history and tradition, the de jure point estimate is likely to be slightly biased upward, by 23 percent, whereas the directional bias does not seem to affect the de facto point estimate. In column 4 , the culture covariates are added to the set of conditioning variables in the full-model specification, which does not exclude either group of long-run development confounders. The results further highlight the ubiquitous presence of omitted variable bias in the absence of the full-model specification.

Adding culture covariates to the set of conditioning variables suggests that culture does make a difference in long-run development but, at the same time, does not seem either to dominate the full effects or to render the de jure and de facto political institutions insignificant in explaining the paths of long-run development. Compared to column 1 , the de jure coefficient drops to 0. Conversely, the point estimate on the de facto political institutions remains essentially intact and does not appear to be wholly driven by the set of conditioning variables.

Broadly speaking, the evidence clearly suggests that the de jure and de facto political institutions tend to produce one of the most crucial differences in the paths of long-run development. The shift toward more pluralist, participatory, and open-access de jure political institutions and the effective enforcement of those institutions are associated with large and pervasive gains in per capita income, which do not seem to be linked to the broad set of control variables that systemically affect the paths of long-run development.

In columns 5 through 8 , the set of model specifications from columns 1 through 4 is replicated on the sample excluding Argentina. The purpose of the replication is to check whether including Argentina makes a difference in the size and direction of the effects of de jure and de facto political institutions on long-run development. The evidence largely suggests that excluding Argentina from the core sample does not yield quantitatively and directionally different point estimates, even though it yields a 3.

The de jure and de facto estimates remain essentially balanced and unchanged compared to the set of specifications from columns 1 through 4. Table 4 reports the production function estimates of the augmented Solow growth model with physical and human capital stock measures along with the de jure and de facto institutional quality variables.

Columns 1 — 4 report the set of estimated model specifications that nest the basic Solow growth model without the human capital stock. Consistent with the prior evidence on the Solow model, the estimates suggest strong and large effects of the capital stock on per capita output differences across countries. Conditional on the effect of capital accumulation, the estimated contribution of de jure institutional quality to long-run growth is between 2. In columns 3 and 4 , the estimated effect of de facto institutional quality to per capita output differences is noticeably smaller compared to the baseline estimates in Sect.

The production function estimates suggest that the contribution of de facto institutional quality is around 0. Columns 5 — 8 nest the augmented Solow growth model with human capital accumulation. The results confirm strong and positive first-order effects of physical capital accumulation and human capital investment on long-run growth differences across countries. In columns 5 and 6 , adding the human capital investment variable to the Solow growth model, reduces the contribution of de jure institutional quality to 2.

In columns 7 and 8 , we show that the magnitude of the de facto institutional quality effect on per capita output is in the range between 0. The evidence clearly suggests a partial remedy such as addressing the standard omitted variable bias, and the endogeneity concerns, renders the estimated OLS effects of de jure and de facto institutional quality on long-run growth and development biased upward. These biases are particularly acute when considering the effect of de facto political institutions on long-run growth, which appears to be somewhat more important in the set of baseline estimates.

The synthetic setup replicates the specification from column 8 in Table 3 and adds the initial level of de jure and de facto institutions to the specification. A similar composition is indicated for the military coup, with Chile, the United States, and Uruguay composing the key donor pool.

Across all breakdowns, Chile appears to be one of the largest donor countries, followed by the United States, Uruguay, Switzerland, Germany, and Mexico.

For each synthetic counterfactual scenario, the root-mean-square prediction error from the nested specification appears to be very low and stable, ranging from 0. In Table 6 , a summary of the long-run development scenarios without institutional breakdowns is presented. The counterfactual estimates indicate large per capita income gains over time in the absence of key institutional breakdowns and largely suggest that, without such breakdowns, Argentina would currently be among the rich countries if it had followed the institutional development trends of the key donor countries.

In per capita income terms, this income level is equivalent to that of Spain or Italy. The synthetic control estimates used here imply that such a drastic long-run change in the development path would have shifted Argentina from its status today as an underdeveloped, upper-middle-income country to that of a rich country, with its income level on the same footing as that of Spain, Italy, Slovenia, and New Zealand.

The evidence largely suggests that, compared to the countries on the parallel trend line, the synthetic Argentina exhibits a markedly higher per capita income level in the long run. Contrary to widespread belief, the evidence supports the notion that such a transition to democracy might also have encouraged the wealth and income redistribution that led to effects on long-run development that were just as harmful as the institutional breakdowns that started with the coup.

Figure 3 summarizes the synthetic counterfactual scenario for each quantified institutional breakdown. Real GDP per Capita of Argentina and counterfactual scenario of institutional breakdowns: synthetic control estimates, — This section briefly discusses the alternative difference-in-differences DD counterfactual setup of the long-run development model as a robustness check on the validity of synthetic control estimates.

Suppose the de jure and de facto institutional breakdowns take place in country j at time t. First, to gauge the effects of institutional breakdowns, use the following equation to show the underlying counterfactual distribution of the de jure and de facto set of political institutions:. Second, invoke the core fixed effects long-run development in Eq. Fourth, use the de jure and de facto long-run development point estimates, and compute the path of long-run development with the alternative time series in the postbreakdown period conditional on the observed covariates and their point estimates in Table 3.

Using the spliced de jure and de facto institutional time series for Argentina, one can compute the counterfactual path of long-run development as:. By default, Eq. If Argentina had had US-style de jure and de facto political institutions in place since , the counterfactual estimate implies that its long-run per capita output would have been 45 percent higher than the actual one by the end of the estimation period.

This paper exploits moments of institutional breakdown to consistently estimate the contribution of de jure and de facto political institutions to long-run development. It achieved remarkable rates of economic growth but never finished its transition to democracy. Had the institutional breakdowns not occurred and had Argentina followed the trends established in similar countries in developing de jure and de facto political institutions, its per capita output would have improved dramatically.

In the long run, the absence of institutional breakdowns is associated with a 45 percent increase in per capita output. In the counterfactual scenario, the long-run benefits of an absence of institutional breakdowns are pervasive, robust, and large-scale improvements in long-run development. Instead, Argentina perpetuated nearly a century of institutional instability that undermined the security of property rights, increased transaction costs, and essentially led to the abandonment of the rule of law.

The institutional breakdowns triggered by powerful elites were chiefly characterized by uninterrupted forced resignations of Supreme Court justices, declaration of economic and political emergencies, nationalization of firms, prosecution and torture of political opponents, nullification of the Constitution, rampant government favoritism, and media censorship. Had the military coup never happened, and had Argentina avoided the subsequent institutional breakdowns and the populist Peronist-style divide-and-rule politics, the synthetic control and difference-in-differences estimates described herein imply that the country would have experienced a robust upward growth.

The limited data on the layers of economic, legal, and other types of institutions preclude a systematic counterfactual investigation of an alternative development path with a different set of economic and legal institutions and public policies than the actual ones.

From the normative perspective, the analysis highlights important interplay between the de jure and de facto political institutions, institutional breakdowns, and long-run development.

First, the effects of institutional breakdowns such as the forced resignation of Supreme Court justices are unlikely to disappear. They hold negative, long-lasting implications for the path of growth and development and may trigger the adverse side of path dependence. Second, technological and development breakthroughs are unlikely to be nurtured by broad-based and pluralist de jure and de facto political institutions per se because such institutions may be insufficient to create a framework based on secure property rights and low transaction costs that could underpin the path to sustained growth.

Third, the onset of institutional breakdowns typically invokes rampant government favoritism of powerful groups in the absence of constraints on the various sources of power. This study provides one of the first attempts to systematically assess the long-run development costs of institutional breakdowns. Given its inherent limitations, four related issues remain unclear. First, why do some societies fall into the trap of institutional breakdowns while others manage to attain stable, broad-based, and enduring de jure and de facto political institutions?

Second, do institutional breakdowns affect the proximate causes of growth and development such as human capital formation, physical capital formation, and demographic changes? Third, how long does it take for societies to recover economically from institutional breakdowns? And fourth, are institutional breakdowns outside Argentina fundamentally different and, if so, in what ways? Given the limitations inherent in this paper, these perplexing questions provide fruitful venues for future research.

If the paper is accepted for publication, the dataset will be uploaded onto the data repository i. Harvard Dataverse with the full statistical code of the results to facilitate and encourage the replication.

Wenzel , —37 offers a very clear explanation for the disconnection between the Constitution with its subsequent amendments and the long tradition of Spanish colonial institutions:. Concessions to freedom were calculated, not principled, as the ruling oligarchs shrewdly applied the personal guarantees necessary to attract immigration and capital, while using the state to foment economic growth. The system was economically liberal, but not in a civil or political sense… As long as they could stay in power, and as long as the money kept rolling in, the oligarchs maintained the veneer of a liberal order.

But as soon as they started to lose power through electoral reform and the subsequent middle class erosion of their power base, and the economy faltered, the proverbial iron fist broke out of the velvet glove, and the military formally broke the constitutional order in Their party, PAN, consistently manipulated elections using fraudulent techniques and voter intimidation.

Before , 38 changes of justices are recorded, 12 of which are accounted for by retirement, 20 by death, and 6 by voluntary resignation. Only four Supreme Court justice changes are accounted for by death and just one by retirement. The remaining 59 changes resulted from voluntary resignation 18 changes , involuntary resignation 20 changes , impeachment 4 changes , or forced removal 17 changes.

In between were various shades of nondemocratic governments ranging from restricted democracies to full military regimes. The political history of Argentina is one of incessant instability and conflict. But, the nature of Argentine society meant that democracy was not stable. In the antebellum period, the South was particularly poor…; had an urbanization rate of 9 percent as opposed to 30 percent in the Northeast; had relatively few railroads or canals; and was technologically stagnant.

The economy was based on slavery and labor-intensive cotton production, and in many states it was illegal to teach slaves how to read and write. After the Civil War, with the abolition of slavery and enfranchisement of the freed slaves, one might have anticipated a dramatic change in economic institutions.

Instead, what emerged was a labor-intensive, low-wage, low-education, and repressive economy that in many ways looked remarkably like that of the antebellum South. Why did the Southern Equilibrium persist? Despite losing the Civil War, antebellum elites managed to sustain their political control of the South, particularly after the reconstruction ended in … They successfully blocked the economic reforms that might have undermined this power… They also derailed political reforms they opposed, and freed slaves were quickly disenfranchised through the use of literacy tests and poll taxes.

Consequently, although slavery was abolished, Southern elites still possessed considerable de facto power through their control over economic resources, their greater education, and their relative ability to engage in collective action. Consequently, he who molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statues or pronounces decisions. J Am Stat Assoc — Article Google Scholar. Democracy, inequality, and growth in historical perspective.

Quart J Econ 4 — Am Polit Sci Rev 95 3 — Am Econ Rev 96 2 — Cambridge University Press, New York. Google Scholar. Crown Business, New York. Am Econ Rev 91 5 — Acemoglu D, Johnson S, Robinson JA Reversal of fortune: geography and institutions in the making of modern world income distribution. J Monetary Econ 50 1 — Am Econ Rev 95 2 — Bull Latin Am Res 11 3 — Adelman J Frontier development: land, labour, and capital on the wheatlands of Argentina and Canada, — Oxford University Press, New York.

Buenos Aires, insisting on leadership of the nation or nothing, refuses to join. The issue is again resolved on the battlefield.

In the following year Mitre a distinguished author and historian as well as soldier is elected president. He moves the capital to Buenos Aires, where it has remained ever since - though its status as permanent capital is not formally accepted until Argentina, after fifty years of independence, has finally established its political identity.

Meanwhile its economic nature is about to undergo a transformation. From gauchos to peones: late 19th century. The Argentinian pampas has traditionally been a lawless area, the preserve of wild cattle and horses descendants of animals which have escaped from Spanish domestic use and of equally wild gauchos. The only indigenous inhabitants of the area, the American Indians, are nearly exterminated by the colonists in a series of 19th-century wars.

In the remaining Indians are either killed or are driven south into Patagonia in a campaign commanded by Julio Roca, a general who is voted into the presidency of Argentina in on the strength of this success. His victory over the Indians is a significant step in a process which is steadily transforming the pampas.

As elsewhere in the world during the 19th century, the arrival of the railway opens up remote regions. Agricultural labourers can be easily attracted into previously inaccessible areas, and their products can be cheaply transported out. At much the same time barbed wire becomes available to fence in large areas. The owners of the great estancias ranches realize that wild herds and gauchos are an uneconomic use of these rolling acres. Far more profitable is the breeding of cattle and sheep; and in many parts of the pampas an even higher yield can be derived from harvests of wheat and corn.

The gaucho is no longer needed. The demand, in his place, is for peones or farm labourers. With this new window of economic opportunity, the Argentinian government encourages immigration from Europe. By far the largest group of new arrivals are from Italy and Spain, with the Italians slightly the more numerous of the two.

But there are also appreciable numbers of French, Germans, Poles, Turks and Russian Jews more than three million newcomers arrive from Europe between and Since , the poverty rate has been cut by more than half. The employment rate has reached record highs and the country's agricultural products are in strong demand from China. In this election, voters looked past red flags such as rising inflation.

In , inflation rose over 20 percent, second only to Venezuela in Latin America. Clearly what mattered most to voters was a booming economy. President Fernndez won with 54 percent of the vote. Her closest opponent received 17 percent. With a margin of 37 percent, it was the widest victory since Argentina restored its democracy in In December , a spokesman for President Fernndez announced that she had thyroid cancer and would undergo surgery on January 4.

During a televised address the spokesman said there was "no existence of metastasis. In , Argentina was shocked when Fernndez's husband, the country's previous president, died of a heart attack at age The news of Fernndez's diagnosis also shook up a country that has long revered Eva "Evita" Peron, wife of legendary leader Juan Peron.

Peron died of cancer in at age Like Eva Peron, Fernndez is popular for her efforts to help the impoverished. President Fernndez was one of several leaders in the region recently diagnosed with cancer. President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil was treated for lymphoma in In , Paraguay's president, Fernando Lugo, was treated for non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

Venezuela's Hugo Chvez underwent treatment for an undisclosed type of cancer in In early January , President Fernndez's surgery was carried out without complications, putting her on course to return to work as planned later in the month.

In March , the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that rape victims can get an abortion. The ruling was historic because most abortions are illegal in Argentina. Before the ruling, a judge had to decide, case by case, which victims could get abortions. Typically, a judge ruled for the abortion only if the woman had mental disabilities. The new rule allowed any victim of rape to receive an abortion without a court order. Two months later, the Senate unanimously passed a law allowing people to alter their gender on official documents without psychiatric diagnosis or surgery.

Public and private medical practitioners are now required to give free hormone therapy and gender reassignment surgery to all transgenders who desire it, including anyone under the age of The new law has gone well beyond measures passed over the last ten years in Britain and Spain.

Those two countries passed laws allowing people to change their gender and name after receiving a psychiatric diagnosis of gender dysphoria. In , Argentina became the first Latin American country to legalize gay marriage.

The May gender identity law has also made Argentina a world leader in transgender rights. On Monday, April 16, , President Cristina Fernndez stated on national television that the government would seize 51 percent of YPF, the country's largest oil company. During her televised speech, Fernndez explained that of Argentina's new 51 percent share, the nation's provinces would receive 49 percent and the central government 51 percent.

The announcement created immediate tension with the European Union and Spain. The Spanish government said it would retaliate. Jos Manuel Garca Margallo, Spain's foreign minister, said that Argentina "broke the climate of cordiality and friendship. He was serving a life sentence for crimes against humanity for his role in political killings and disappearances during Argentina's Dirty War in the s.

At least 15, people were killed or disappeared in that war, although human rights advocates say that figure is low and the actual number is closer to 30, For the third time in 25 years, Argentina defaulted on its debt.

The creditors demanded payment of approximately 1. The default could trigger an even bigger hike in inflation and cause the value of the peso to continue to fall.

On Jan. The attack killed 85 people and injured hundreds more.