“Banishing the sorcerer”: adjustment and modernization of the state apparatus during the Arturo Frondizi´s administration (1958-1962)

Abstract

In this paper we intend to analyze the policy of adjustment in the national State in Argentina promoted by the government of Arturo Frondizi at the end of 1958. This policy was structured on the basis of two great precepts: the rationalization of the state apparatus and the modernization of its functioning. The need to transform the state dynamics was raised in the framework of the changes in the forms of capital accumulation and the class conflict opened after the military coup against Peronism in 1955. In that context, the developmentalist policy of state rationalization and modernization was an attempt to respond to the new difficulties imposed by social conflict and the accumulation of capital during the complex phase of the ISI, via reduction of the fiscal deficit, privatization of public companies and reordering of the state apparatus; at the same time, the modernization was aimed at adapting the bureaucratic organization of the state to the changes and needs of the economic and social development expected from the productive renovation and the investment of foreign capital.