Regional policies in Argentina. Feeling of tension among the State, the governance and the regional space.

Abstract

This work is an intervention on the recent theoretical and empirical debate about the characteristics of the regional economic development policies and its governance dynamics, with an exploratory analysis on Argentina (Santa Fe) during 2001-2015. In the context of a transformed Argentinian state (devolution, rescaling regions, and rise of governance), this work suggest that there has been an exaggerated faith on the governance networks capacity to implement regional policies, and that it has been problematic for the effectiveness of those policies. It suggest a debate around three articulated hypothesis: i) that there has been little or no support from the State to the governance networks; ii) that there has been an inadequate relation among the different levels of regulation (national, regional, local); iii) that there has been a big gap between the policies ideas about the regional space of governance and the existing space of governance where policies implement. The research aim to rethink, from within the regional State, the regional economic regeneration policies.