Introduction

Argentina has a federal political and administrative structure consisting of a national government, 23 provincial governments (with their local administrations) plus an autonomous city that functions de facto as an additional federative entity. However, this country, unlike other similar cases, shows a “centripetal” or “centralized” type of federalism, given its importance in many aspects of the country's political and administrative structure (Gibson and Falleti, 2007) given the importance of the national level in many aspects of policy. According to the constitutional design, the primary responsibilities of the subunits are education, security, health, and local development, while the nation is in charge of large infrastructure works, foreign policy, and macroeconomic policy, among others. Therefore, the so-called intergovernmental coordination function between the nation and the provinces is important.

Federalism consists of an institutional design that combines the selfgovernment of the provinces and municipalities with the major national interests (Cao, 2008). This shared governance is exercised through a variety of forms and institutions: from a second chamber of the federal legislature that provides for the representation of territorial interests at the legislative level, to regional veto powers in concurrent political spheres, to cooperation in the arenas of intergovernmental relations (formal and informal). In addition, the reform of the state in the 1990s gave more powers to the provinces and municipalities through the processes of decentralization, demonopolization, and privatization of many governmental activities. This makes necessary, beyond the legislative arena, structures that coordinate the different executive levels in the nation and the provinces to carry out public policies with a certain degree of effectiveness.

At the level of the executive branch, sectoral policies are articulated through coordination and negotiation instances within the federal councils, which are within the orbit of the national ministries. We can think of them not only as instances of political and administrative coordination but also as spaces for the production of knowledge for the formulation of public policies. To guide their actions, they not only make political agreements and administrative decisions, but a complex federal country needs to resort to certain evidence and the elaboration of expert knowledge.

This elaboration of knowledge in these organizations is materialized in books, technical reports, scientific articles, and working papers, among other types of communications.