Introduction

Since the 1960s, the social sciences have experienced a flourishing development. Not only at the level of the creation of degree programs and centers in public and private universities, but also in civil society organizations. To mention a few of them, the Di Tella Institute, the Institute for Social Development, and later, in the 1970s, the Centro de Estudios de Estado y Sociedad (Center for the Study of State and Society [CEDES]) deserves to be mentioned. Several of these centers developed very relevant research, both under Argentine and foreign funding. They promoted the publication of books as well as research papers and scientific journals; some of them survive today as Desarrollo Económico.

Created in 1975, the year before the military coup that would give way to the cruelest military dictatorship in Argentina, the organization was a shelter for independent scientific production while the universities and a large part of the intellectual field were persecuted and its members were dismissed, harassed, and many of them had to go into exile or formed part of the long lists of the disappeared. Financed by international entities and the action of its members, the foundation survived among the few “catacombs” of independent knowledge in Argentina. Oscar Oszlak, Guillermo O’Donnell, and Marcelo Cavarozzi, among others, developed their activities there. Among its conceptual production, the formation of the state in the country and categories such as statehood, “bureaucratic-authoritarian State”, and more recently the “Open State” stand out.

The areas of CEDES have been much broader and the exchange and work in common constitute an example in the construction of networks and nodes that have demonstrated a high prestige, both in the country and abroad. The approach we are adopting in this work is indebted to a tradition that has been strongly developing in Latin America and which in recent years has been called “disciplinary studies”.

Within Argentina, two associations were central to the development of this type of studies. On the one hand, the Argentine Association of Public Administration Studies and the Argentine Society of Political Analysis. Within their spaces, the concern for the reconstruction of the field of administration and public policies in the country began to take shape. To this must be added the importance of the National Institute of Public Administration as a central area for research, education, and training, as well as the safeguarding of documentation and the library.