In the folds of market protection policies. Corporate power, liberalization and protectionism: the "precios cuidados" case in Argentina

Abstract

It tends to be a temptation for the intellect, either guided by a search for argument economy or the result of Structuralism’s influence vestiges, to reduce social phenomena complexity to binary options. The globalization process, its consequences and implications, did not escape this temptation. In fact, under the liberalization / protectionism pair, the density involved in the transnationalization process was made invisible. And so were its variants and resistances. In this sense, the present research seeks to account for as well as to depict the complexity of this relationship, based on the Precios Cuidados policy analysis in Argentina and its (voluntary) acceptance by local retailers. Our main argument is that it implied a window of opportunity -within a framework of more fluid negotiations with government officials- for global commerce flow interests’ management. We will attempt to show that by breaking with certain vestiges of "binary reasoning," it begins to become intelligible that conditions that energize global trade flow, may lay in the very folds of particular market protection policy designs. Only then can the relationship between the State and its otherness – i.e. the market structure- be understood in all its complexity.