¹ By ‘economic elites’ this article refers to the leading economic groups and businessmen across sectors, including in particular the large landowners, bankers, and the manufacturers who controlled the executive board of the Unión Industrial Argentina.

² An important example of this is Peter H. Smith, Argentine and the Failure of Democracy: Conflict among Political Elites 1904–1955 (Madison, Wisconsin, 1974).

³ See Ansaldi, Waldo, ‘La interferencia está en el canal: mediaciones políticas (partidarias y corporativas) en la construcción de la democracia en Argentina’, Boletín Americanista, no. 44 (1994), pp. 7–25Google Scholar, and Sergio Berensztein and Horacio Spector, ‘Business, Government, and Law’, in Gerardo della Paolera and Alan M. Taylor (eds.), A New Economic History of Argentina (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 330–1 and 349–54. My article challenges an extended version of this argument which has insisted on a decisive role in economic policy for Argentine entrepreneurs, and has exaggerated the tendency towards corporatist-style decision-making in Argentina since the early 1920s. I understand corporatism to be a process of decision-making characterised by the presence of extra-parliamentary arrangements among groups representing different economic and social interests. Corporatist arrangements do not imply the total suppression of parliamentary decision-making or, for the purposes of this analysis, the establishment of an authoritarian system. Rather, corporatist institutions in this period could be considered to be a supplement or a reinforcement of crumbling liberal institutions. Paul H. Lewis, The Crisis of Argentine Capitalism (Chapel Hill, 1990), p. 1, referred to the Argentine political system as one ‘in which power is thoroughly spread out among well-organized and entrenched interests that it is an almost perfect example of entropy’. Ansaldi, ‘La interferencia’, has insisted on the important role of private interest groups in Argentina from an early date. Moreover, he emphasised the significance of corporatist arrangements for explaining the instability of Argentine democracy. I argue the contrary.

⁴ Charles Maier, Recasting Bourgeois Europe: Stabilization in France, Germany, and Italy in the Decade After World War I (Princeton, 1975). The idea of a process of stabilisation in Argentina after World War I has been emphasised by Horowitz, Joel. However, as Horowitz has stated, it is not evident that Argentina's stabilisation was related to a process of corporatist arrangements: see ‘Argentina's Failed General Strike of 1921: A Critical Moment in the Radical Relations with Unions’, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 75, no. 1 (1995), p. 77CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Many Latin American nations developed corporatist institutions and arrangements, linked in many cases to populist governments: see, among others, Renato Monseff Perissinotto (ed.), Entrepreneurs, State and Interest Representation in Brazil (New York, 2003); Guillermo O'Donnell, ‘Corporatism and the Question of the State’, in James M. Malloy (ed.), Authoritarianism and Corporatism in Latin America (Pittsburgh, PA, 1977); Philippe C. Schmitter, Interest Conflict and Political Change in Brazil (Stanford, CA, 1971); Wiarda, Howard, ‘Corporatism and Development in the Iberic-Latin World: Persistent Strains and New Variations’, Review of Politics, vol. 36, no. 1, (1974), pp. 3–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Collier, Ruth Berins and Collier, David, ‘Inducements versus Constraints: Disaggregating “Corporatism”’, American Political Science Review, vol. 73, no. 4 (1979), pp. 967–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ The crisis of parliamentary representation that became apparent after the coup d'état of 1930 in fact began during the last years of democratic rule in the 1920s when the legislature was unable to deal with critical issues such as the elaboration of the budget: see Tulio Halperín Donghi, Vida y muerte de la República Verdadera (1910–1930) (Buenos Aires, 1999), p. 153.

⁶ The process of decision-making could be moulded in other, more informal ways, as well. As Edward Beatty has stated in a different historical context, by rejecting or accepting government decisions private actors can help to shape economic policies: see Edward Beatty, Institutions and Investments: The Political Basis of Industrialization in Mexico before 1911 (Palo Alto, CA, 2001), p. 13. However, throught most of the first half of the twentieth century private actors in Argentina demonstrated a weak capacity and an unwillingness to reject official decisions.

⁷ Natalio R. Botana and Ezequiel Gallo, De la República posible a la República verdadera (1880–1910) (Buenos Aires, 1997), pp. 41 and ff.

⁸ The Sociedad Rural was founded in 1866 by the most forward-looking rural entrepreneurs. During the first two decades of its existence it had serious trouble in gathering the support of its hypothetical constituency, while politicians and other members of the ‘educated classes’ participated in its membership due to its message of ‘progress’, one of the key concepts in the ideology embraced by Argentine conservative rulers during the second half of the nineteenth century. On the Sociedad Rural and its difficulties in representing rural entrepreneurs in its early years, see Roy Hora, The Landowners of the Argentine Pampas: A Social and Political History, 1860–1945 (Oxford, 2001), pp. 8–44. The beginnings of the UIA were no less troublesome and only after years of struggle did it achieve an important role as the representative body of the manufacturers. Fernando Rocchi has described this period as one of ‘representation without constituency’ (representación sin representados): see Rocchi, ‘Un largo camino a casa: empresarios, trabajadores e identidad industrial en Argentina, 1880–1930’, in Juan Suriano (ed.), La cuestión social en Argentina 1870–1943 (Buenos Aires, 2000), p. 163.

⁹ For a sharp critique of neoclassical approaches that emphasise rent-seeking behaviour and interest group conflict as the key for understanding the state, see Shapiro, Helen and Taylor, Lance, ‘The State and Industrial Strategy’, World Development, vol. 8, no. 16 (1990), pp. 861–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ The Areópago was the Superior Tribunal of Ancient Athens.

¹¹ Hora, The Landowners, pp. 141–6.

¹² Revista de Economía Argentina (REA), no. 163 (February 1932), p. 147. The secretary of this commission was the young economist, Raúl Prebisch. Several commercial, banking and industrial associations met at the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange and launched a campaign against the new taxes. However, the most important institutions participating in this meeting were foreign, most of the activities represented were linked to either commerce or finance, and the three most significant business interest groups in the country, the SRA, the UIA, and CACIP, were absent: National Archives, Records of the Department of State Relating to the Internal Affairs of Argentina, 1910–1929, M 514, 835.512/37, Buenos Aires, 17 August 1923.

¹³ On Bunge and the Revista de Economía Argentina, see Jorge F. Pantaleón, ‘El surgimiento de la nueva economía argentina: el caso Bunge’, in Federico Neiburg and Mariano Plotkin (eds.), Intelectuales y expertos: la construcción del conocimiento social en Argentina (Buenos Aires, 2004). On Bunge's political influence, see Belini, Claudio, ‘El grupo Bunge y la política económica del primer peronismo, 1943–1952’, Latin American Research Review, vol. 41, no. 1 (2006), pp. 30–1CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Falcoff, Mark, ‘Economic Dependency in a Conservative Mirror: Alejandro Bunge and the Argentine Frustration, 1919–1943’, Inter-American Economic Affairs, vol. 35, no. 4 (1982), pp. 57–75Google Scholar. On Bunge's ideas see de Imaz, José Luis, ‘Alejandro E. Bunge, economista y sociólogo’, Desarrollo Económico, vol. 55 (1974), pp. 545–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cristina Lucchini, María, Blanco, Teodoro V. and Cerra, Ángel, ‘El pensamiento industrialista argentino en el período de entreguerras – el estudio de un caso: la influencia de List en Bunge’, Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe, vol. 11, no. 2 (2000), pp. 151–70Google Scholar.

¹⁴ La Vanguardia stated with irony: ‘Taking advantage of parliamentary holidays, the Minister of Finance has decided to create a second national congress’, and warned that the Sociedad Rural had become a ‘co-legislative power’ (La Vanguardia, 14 July 1923 and 8 August 1923).

¹⁵ REA, vol. II (1923), p. 149.

¹⁶ Even the socialist newspaper, always suspicious of ‘capitalist interference’, recognised that ‘Thanks to the prodigious diligence of the Super Technocrat Alejandro Bunge, the Areópago has still some functions to carry out’, La Vanguardia, 22 August 1923.

¹⁷ La Vanguardia, 7 November 1923.

¹⁸ Boletín de la Unión Industrial Argentina, no. 659 (15 November 1923), p. 3.

¹⁹ La Nación, 23 September 1924.

²⁰ Landowners, large industrialists, bankers, and merchants called themselves fuerzas vivas (literally ‘living forces’), emphasising their essential contribution to the wellbeing of the nation.

²¹ Luis Colombo, ‘La industria nacional’, REA, no. 100 (October 1926), p. 290. Colombo was the most charismatic leader of Argentine manufacturers during the first half of the twentieth century. Elected president of the UIA in 1926, he remained in office for twenty years and oriented the industrial association towards a more public stance and a more aggressive political strategy. Colombo created his own public persona, organising conferences, giving speeches on the radio about the necessity of protecting national industry, and so on. A short biography of this industrial leader can be found in Jorge Schvarzer, Empresarios del pasado: La Unión Industrial Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1991), pp. 59–62.

²² Mauricio Pérez Catán, ‘Desorientación económica. Necesidad de crear un consejo económico nacional’, REA, no. 117 (March 1928), p. 228.

²³ Argentine ad valorem customs duties were based upon a scheme of official valuations (avalúos) instead of the actual prices in the world market. These official valuations were fixed in 1906, but they had been left behind by the rise in international prices that resulted from wartime inflation in Europe. To catch up with the actual world market prices, the Argentine congress increased the avalúos in 1923: see Solberg, Carl, ‘The Tariff and Politics in Argentina 1916–1930’, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 53, no. 2 (1973), p. 275CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁴ Ibid., p. 276.

²⁵ On the manufacturers' concern about tariffs and their lobbying activity, see for example Texto del Memorial con que la Unión Industrial Argentina respondió a la consulta que le formulara la Comisión de Presupuesto y Hacienda de la H. Cámara de Diputados sobre el actual estado económico del país (Buenos Aires, 1922), pp. 56–7. On the importance of Congress for the design of customs duties, see Rocchi, Fernando, ‘El imperio del pragmatismo: intereses, ideas e imágenes en la política industrial del orden conservador’, Anuario IEHS, no. 13 (1998), p. 103Google Scholar, and Solberg, ‘The Tariff’, pp. 264–7.

²⁶ See, among others, Horowitz, ‘Argentina's Failed General Strike’; David Rock, Politics in Argentina, 1890–1930: The Rise and Fall of Radicalism (London, 1975); Korzeniewicz, Roberto P., ‘The Labor Politics of Radicalism: The Santa Fe Crisis of 1928’, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol 73, no. 1 (1993), pp. 1–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁷ Letter reproduced in REA, no. 60 (June 1923), p. 470.

²⁸ Boletín de la Unión Industrial Argentina, vol. 37, no. 657 (15 September 1923), p. 7.

²⁹ The ambuiguity of the word ‘trabajo’ in Spanish (work and labour) helped the entrepreneurs' claims.

³⁰ Although the anarchist position was weaker after 1920, the reluctance of trade unions to ‘institutionalise’ their relationships with the government remained strong, as the example of the overwhelming opposition to a programme of pensions for retirees launched by the Radical administration in 1923 demonstrates: see Horowitz, Joel, ‘Cuando las elites y los trabajadores coincidieron: la resistencia al programa de bienestar patrocinado por el gobierno argentino, 1923–24’, Anuario IEHS, no. 16 (2001), p. 116Google Scholar.

³¹ For a more detailed account of Molina's failed income tax, see José Antonio Sánchez Román, ‘Economic Elites, Regional Cleavages, and the First Attempts at Introducing the Income Tax in Argentina’, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 88, no. 2 (forthcoming, May 2008).

³² For an excellent analysis of this process see, Halperín Donghi, La república imposible (1930–1945) (Buenos Aires, 2004).

³³ The members were a former Minister of Interior and Foreign Affairs, a former Minister of Finance, a former President of the Banco de la Nación, the former Vice President of the same institution, the Director of the Banco de la Nación, two university professors, a representative of the railway companies, Horacio N. Bruzzone, representing the Rural Society, Ernesto Aguirre, representing the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange, Alberto Méndez Casariego, representing the CACIP, and Luis Colombo, president of the UIA: National Archives, Department of State, Records of the Department of State Relating to Internal Affairs of Argentina, 1930–1934, M 1230, 835.51/852, Buenos Aires (1 November 1932).

³⁴ The ‘Patriotic Loan’ was an emergency issue of public bonds sold among members of the upper classes that provided the Treasury with 150 million pesos.

³⁵ La Nación sided with the members of the Advisory Committee who wished to encourage more flexible credit and monetary policies, and accused the government of reinforcing the economic malaise. Meanwhile La Prensa maintained that any policy that might promote inflation was unsound. La Nación, 5 November 1932 and 21 November 1932 and La Prensa, 8 November 1932.

³⁶ La Prensa, 8 November 1932.

³⁷ Bunge did not conceal his enthusiasm toward the new government: ‘The country is fortunate (de parabienes). After a needed political revolution in order to heal and dignify the country, a financial revolution followed, to put the finances and the credit of the Nation and provinces in order’: REA, no. 152 (February 1931), p. 103.

³⁸ REA, no. 151 (January 1931), p. 89.

³⁹ REA, no. 149 (November 1930), p. 315.

⁴⁰ Among other examples Alejandro Show stated in 1933, ‘Deflation is not cured with deflation, deflation will be cured by increasing expenditure’: REA, nos. 177–178 (March–April 1993), p. 167; on Bunge's view on inflation, see Halperín Donghi, La República imposible, pp. 132–3.

⁴¹ Ibid., p. 128.

⁴² La Nación, 21 November 1932.

⁴³ See Gerardo Della Paolera and Alan M. Taylor, Tensando el ancla: la Caja de Conversión argentina y la búsqueda de la estabilidad macroeconómica, 1880–1935 (Buenos Aires, 2003), p. 218.

⁴⁴ Peter Alhadeff, ‘The Economic Formulae of the 1930s: a Reassessment’, in Guido di Tella and D. C. M. Platt (eds.), The Political Economy of Argentina, 1880–1946 (Oxford, 1986), p. 102.

⁴⁵ Department of Overseas Trade, Economic Conditions in the Argentine Republic (London, 1931), p. 13.

⁴⁶ REA, no. 163 (February 1932), p. 147.

⁴⁷ REA, no. 159 (September 1931), p. 156.

⁴⁸ José F. Uriburu, Mensaje del Presidente provisional de la Nación al pueblo de la república: la obra de gobierno y la administración del 6 de septiembre de 1930 al 6 de septiembre de 1931 (Buenos Aires, 1931).

⁴⁹ República Argentina. Ministerio de Hacienda de la Nación, Despachos de la Junta Consultiva Honoraria designada por Decreto del P. E. de octubre 18 de 1932 (Buenos Aires, 1932), pp. 17–18.

⁵⁰ Boletín de la Unión Industrial Argentina, no. 767 (November 1932), p. 19.

⁵¹ La Nación, 21 November 1932. Nonetheless, La Nación maintained a contradictory attitude, resembling the economic elites in this aspect. Whereas it criticised the reluctance of the government to allow greater autonomy for the interest groups it defended the need for a bigger economic role for the state without advancing toward corporatist-style representation: see: Ricardo Sidicaro, La política mirada desde arriba: las ideas del diario La Nación, 1909–1989 (Buenos Aires, 1993), chapters 5 and 6.

⁵² Cámara de Senadores, Diario de Sesiones, 7 August 1934, p. 745.

⁵³ Ricardo Sidicaro, Los tres peronismos: estado y poder económico 1946–55/1973–76/1989–99 (Buenos Aires, 2002), pp. 29–30. A list of committees, councils, etc., created between 1930 and 1940, with participation by the private sectors, is provided in Berensztein and Spector, ‘Business, Government and Law’, pp. 350–1.

⁵⁴ Memoria de la Bolsa de Comercio de Buenos Aires, 1933, pp. 29–30.

⁵⁵ Memoria de la Bolsa de Comercio de Buenos Aires, 1936, pp. 9–10.

⁵⁶ The failure of the Pinedo Plan, a programme of economic recovery launched by the government at the beginning of the Second World War and supported by important groups of entrepreneurs is a good example of this. Pinedo's project was defeated in Congress, where the government faced a hostile Radical majority: see, among others: Miguel Murmis and Juan Carlos Portantiero, Estudios sobre los orígenes del peronismo (Buenos Aires, 1971), pp. 36–42; Llach, Juan José, ‘El Plan Pinedo de 1940, su significado histórico y los orígenes de la economía política del peronismo’, Desarrollo Económico, vol. 23, no. 92 (1984), pp. 515–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cramer, Gisela, ‘Argentine Riddle: The Pinedo Plan of 1940 and the Political Economy of the Early War Years’, Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 30, no. 3 (1998), pp. 519–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁷ As Sidicaro, Los tres peronismos, p. 43, has pointed out this fiscal device was a clear antecedent of the programme of control of rural exports under the IAPI created by Perón.

⁵⁸ Bolsa de Comercio de Buenos Aires, Sociedad Rural Argentina, Unión Industrial Argentina, CACIP, ‘Consideraciones sobre los proyectos financieros e impositivos a estudio del Honorable Congreso de la Nación’, Anales de la Sociedad Rural Argentina, vol. 76, no. 9 (September 1942), pp. 716 and ff.

⁵⁹ Dirección General del Impuesto a los Réditos, Memoria Año 1942, pp. 32–3.

⁶⁰ ‘Consideraciones sobre los proyectos’, p. 745.

⁶¹ Dirección General del Impuesto a los Réditos, Memoria Año 1942, p. 27.

⁶² Dirección General del Impuesto a los Réditos, Memoria Año 1942, p. 30.

⁶³ ‘de los impuesto, El fin y forma’, La Nación, 10 June 1942, also in Anales de la Sociedad Rural Argentina, vol. 76 (June 1942), p. 479Google Scholar.

⁶⁴ Anales de la Sociedad Rural Argentina, vol. LXXVI, no. 9 (September 1942), p. 717.

⁶⁵ Decreto de 6 de Julio de 1943, constituyendo la Comisión Honoraria Asesora del Gobierno Nacional (Buenos Aires, 6 July 1943). This was in fact a general strategy of a government bereft of social supporters and anxious to establish a solid relationship with relevant sectors of civil society. Thus between June 1943 and December 1944 the UIA was required to participate in 33 official boards and committees and at the end of 1943 the government heeded to a traditional petition of the manufacturers' association and created the Secretariat of Industry and Commerce: see Horowitz, Joel, ‘Industrialists and the Rise of Perón, 1943–1946: Some Implications for the Conceptualization of Peronism’, The Americas, vol. 47, no. 2 (1990), p. 201CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁶ Luoise Doyon, ‘El crecimiento sindical’, in Juan Carlos Torre, La formación del sindicalismo peronista (Buenos Aires, 1988), p. 171.

⁶⁷ Workers participated in other committees created by the military government discussing important issues such as pensions or wages. However, this participation began in 1944, when Perón was establishing his power base in the Secretary of Labour. See Joel Horowitz, Argentine Unions, the State and the Rise of Perón (Berkeley, 1990), chapter 9.

⁶⁸ Anuales de la Sociedad Rural Argentina, vol. 76, no. 9 (September 1942), pp. 715 and 718.

⁶⁹ To some extent the economic elites continued to identify themselves without referring to class notions, such as capital versus labour, etc. However, most Argentineans realised by the mid-1940s that their society was firmly anchored to class cleavages: see Tulio Halperín Donghi, La larga agonía de la Argentina peronista (Buenos Aires, 1994), p. 27.

⁷⁰ ‘Consideraciones sobre los proyectos’, pp. 721–22.

⁷¹ Luis Alberto Romero has referred to the period of 1920–1943 as the period of ‘maturity of civil society’: see Roberto Di Stefano et al., De las cofradías a las organizaciones de la sociedad civil: historia de la iniciativa asociativa en Argentina, 1776–1990 (Buenos Aires, 2002), p. 171.

⁷² Gobierno de la Nación, Dictamen de la Comisión Honoraria Asesora del Gobierno Nacional para el estudio de los problemas fiscales (Buenos Aires, 1944), p. 1.

⁷³ For an interesting exploration of this problem, see Claus Offe, ‘The Attribution of Public Status to Interest Groups: Observation on the West German Case’, in Suzanne Berger (ed.), Organizing Interests in Western Europe: Pluralism, Corporatism, and the Transformation of Politics (Cambridge, 1981).

⁷⁴ Dictamen de la Comisión, p. 1.

⁷⁵ On the vertical structure of the UIA and the control of the institution by a sector of manufacturers, see Schvarzer, Empresarios del pasado. On the challenge to the attempted monopoly over the Sociedad Rural's representation of the rural sector, see Manzetti, Luigi, ‘The Evolution of Agricultural Interest Groups in Argentina’, Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 24, no. 3 (1992), pp. 585–616CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁶ Dictamen de la Comisión, p. 26.

⁷⁷ Ibid., p. 26.

⁷⁸ Ibid., p. 28.

⁷⁹ Ibid., p. 1.

⁸⁰ Economic uncertainty could be an important stimulus to cooperation among social actors and the state, as the establishment of the welfare state in Western Europe after the Second World War demonstrates: see Shapiro and Taylor, ‘The State and Industrial Strategy’, pp. 873–5.

⁸¹ Philippe C. Schmitter, ‘Modes of Interest Intermediation and Models of Societal Change in Western Europe’, in Philippe C. Schmitter and Gerhard Lehmbruck, Trends toward Corporatist Intermediation (London and Beverly Hills, 1979). On the development and final constriction of a dynamic civil society in Buenos Aires before 1880, see Hilda Sabato, The Many and the Few: Political Participation in Republican Buenos Aires, (Stanford, CA, 2001). On the emergence of a powerful autonomous state in Argentina after 1880, see Tulio Halperín Donghi, Proyecto y construcción de una nación (Argentina, 1846–1880) (Caracas, 1982), prologue.

⁸² See, among others, James P. Brennan, ‘El empresariado: la política de cohabitación y oposición’, in Juan Carlos Torre (ed.), Nueva Historia Argentina: VIII, Los años peronistas (1943–1955) (Buenos Aires 2002), pp. 408–11; Juan Carlos Torre, La vieja guardia sindical y Perón: sobre los orígenes del peronismo (Buenos Aires, 1990), pp. 93–5; Carlos H. Waisman, Reversal of Development in Argentina: Postwar Counterrevolutionary Policies and their Structural Consequences (Princeton, 1987), chapters 5 and 6; Tulio Halperin Donghi, La Argentina en el callejón (Montevideo, 1964), pp. 52–3. Other authors, however, emphasise the common interests of Perón and the entrepreneurs in the early stages of his presidency, especially regarding the development of an industrial policy: see, for instance, Cristina Lucchini, Apoyo empresarial en los orígenes del peronismo (Buenos Aires, 1990).

⁸³ Schmitter, ‘Modes of Interest’, p. 67.