![]() LATIN AMERICAN STRUCTURALISM AND THE PROPOSAL OF STRUCTURAL CHANGE: STATE-LED INDUSTRIALIZATION Finally, we analyse how state intervention is conceived in each of these contexts, paying attention to the impacts and consequences derived from the conception of state intervention that promotes structural change. In this sense, the functioning and transformations of capitalism from 1950 onwards are taken into account as well as the diagnoses and the subsequent strategies promoted by the ECLAC to ultimately achieve the structural change under those different historical contexts. We consider the global context in which these ideas and their variations are produced. To clarify this process, the paper analyses the continuities and discontinuities regarding the concept of structural change in ECLAC's structuralist and neo-structuralist theoretical production. That is to say, to reflect from a "peripheral perspective", as Prebisch noted in his initial writings in the ECLAC (Prebisch, 1951) and he then later highlighted the point during his last theoretical production years ( Prebisch, 1984). ![]() ![]() The following stand out: the role of power in the formation of differentiated productive structures, the conflicting dynamics of peripheral capitalism, the role of the state as the development-subject, and, particularly, the importance of formulating local ideas to problematize Latin American development. ![]() This theoretical redefinition implied a remarkable displacement of concepts that, although being central in structuralism, appeared anachronistic under the new context. The very notion of the "structural change" was one of the pillars on which that redefinition took place. However, notwithstanding this pretension of continuity, the renewed discourse of the "structural change", or the intention of "Changing Productive Patterns with Social Equity" ( CEPAL, 1990), certainly implied an important rupture regarding the main concepts of the structuralist tradition. The prefix "neo" was intended to represent, at least discursively, an updated version of the original structuralism with the new challenges imposed by globalization. As a result, and facing an imminent capitalist reconfiguration ( Fernández, 2017), the ECLAC revised its initial proposals to overcome its theoretical limitations and adapt them to the new context ( Bielschowsky, 1998).Ĭonceptually, the new proposal of the ECLAC was called "neo-structuralism" ( Sunkel & Zuleta, 1990). This, boosted by the centre after the end of the Fordist-Keynesian mode of development, gained political and academic relevance in Latin America and repositioned a new understading of the development process ( Toye, 1987). On the other hand, structuralism showed increasing difficulties in the face of the Neoliberal counter-attack ( Kay, 1993 Sztulwark, 2005). Despite this strategy's initial good results, restrictions associated with the impossibility of advancing in the "difficult substitution" and overcoming the technological and financial dependence on central economies soon became evident. On the one hand, the characteristics of industrialization did not allow Latin America to develop ( Hirschman, 1968). However, there were many obstacles early on in Latin America. This would allow them to obtain a share of the benefits of technical progress and progressively raise the standard of living of the masses ( Prebisch, 1949). The theoretical framework argued that Latin American countries, as peripheral economies, should transform their productive structure by industrializing. Two of the main contributions of Latin American structuralism, created within the Economic Commission for Latin American and the Caribbean (ECLAC), were the original analysis of these economies' problems to promote economic development and the proposal to carry out a state-led structural change.
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