18 - Academic policy analysis: the development of production in public administration and policy studies in Argentina (2001–2019)

Summary

Introduction

Modern political science was born in the 1920s, from the theoreticalmethodological developments of behaviorism, and epistemologically consolidated as a science since the 1950s (Almond, 2001; Guerrero Orozco, 2001). In this sense, the discipline incorporated descriptive and explanatory elements for the analysis of phenomena inherent to politics, similar to economics and sociology. From this moment on, political science studies experienced rapid growth, which gave rise to a great diversity of lines of research and fields of action (Almond, 2001).

In parallel, in the second half of the 20th century, in the US, public policy studies began to develop, aimed at improving the administrative performance and governmental actions of the state through the promotion of a new discipline: policy sciences. This approach, pioneered by Harold Lasswell, defended the need to create an interdisciplinary field of expert knowledge, with a strong emphasis on rational governmental planning to improve the quality of democracy (Ramió, 2017; Cardozo, 2020). As a result of this separation, it was not until the 1980s that the study of public policy was consolidated within political science, establishing itself today as a legitimate subdiscipline in the academic world and, in particular, the sphere of multilateral and development agencies, and has even spread to other disciplines within the social sciences (Valencia Agudelo and Alexis Álvarez, 2008).

In Latin America, the study of public policies emerged in the 1960s, with the development of implementation studies and the analysis of the results of the particular model of the welfare state in the region. In the following decade, comparative studies gained visibility, and structuralist currents appeared, questioning the effective capacity of states to formulate public policies with autonomy. In the 1980s, government agendas and their definition problems began to be studied, as well as the configurations of actors that influence the public policy cycle. In the 1990s, due to the sharp changes in development models and in the structure of Latin American states as a result of neoliberal reforms, there was a renewal of public policy studies, incorporating new ways of understanding the state and democracy. In particular, discussions on the role of citizenship in public decision-making stand out (Valencia Agudelo and Alexis Álvarez, 2008).

In Argentina, the production on state and public policies was initially linked to the development of social sciences and law.