The political economy of the agro‐export boom under the Kirchners: Hegemony and passive revolution in Argentina

Abstract

Abstract Since the mid‐1990s, the economy and politics of Argentina have been closely intertwined with the expansion of agro‐exports—a process initiated with neoliberalization and continued under “post‐neoliberal” governments. The administrations of Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner are among the left‐of‐centre, neo‐developmental governments that were elected to power in Latin America in recent decades. This paper engages Gramsci's concepts of passive revolution and hegemony to analyse the political economy of the agrarian boom in Argentina, focusing on the frictions and contradictions of this national‐popular project. I inspect the political economy of the agro‐export boom, scrutinizing the political alliances and conflicts of the Kirchner governments, and the dilemmas that they have created for peasant movements. Between 2003 and 2015, peasant organizations supported the Kirchners as they discursively confronted Argentine agribusiness. Yet the neo‐developmental approach of their administrations did little to address the socio‐environmental impacts of the agro‐export boom and the glaring material inequalities of rural Argentina, and instead supported authoritarian governors and favoured global agribusiness corporations.

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