Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

In recent years countries have realized, perhaps more than ever, the importance of trade to achieving sustainable economic growth. This article is based on the relevance of logistics to achieve sustained economic development based on international competitiveness. In contrast to the traditional view of business where the focus was on production, currently global companies see logistics as a powerful tool to generate strategic and competitive advantages that enables the connection to those global value chains. Logistics connects firms to international markets through reliable supply chain networks. The aim of this article is, therefore, to review the main logistics performance components in Latin America and especially in Argentina to show the relationship between those components and their competitiveness. These performance data will allow to visualize the gap with the best positioned countries and identify policy actions for improving the current rates and reduce the gap.

The aim of this paper is to characterize the Argentinan foreign policy during the administrations of Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2007-2015). The contribution pretends to analize the main factors driving a model of foreign policy with an autonomic orientation –a national economic development model; restriction on the interference of foreign actors in decision-making processes; deepening regional relations; and diversification of external relations-. In order to do this, we examine the neodevelopmentalist strategy and the cases of the payment to the IMF and the Paris Club, the adjustments in the relations with the United States, the South American integration, and the links with the developing countries.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the South-South cooperation initiatives (SSC) of Brazil and Argentina in the present 21st century as a public policy, notably from 2003, in a comparative perspective. To this end, these analysis focus on the SSC frameworks in the two countries that come from the foreign policies and the rising policy of international development cooperation, providing certain stability for the implementation of the technical cooperation projects. The introduction presents the South-South cooperation in Latin America and the Caribbean, a common context that characterizes and, at the same time, derives from the initiatives of countries such as Brazil and Argentina. In the first part, the SouthSouth Cooperation is discussed as a foreign policy area (issue area), considering 2003 as a milestone for both countries. The second part presents the institutional structures and operating mechanisms from which we can evidence in both countries the consolidation of a policy for international development cooperation (IDC). In the third and last part, we compare the experiences of the two countries, highlighting their similarities and singularities in relation to their political frameworks. At the end, some considerations on the SSC global scenario and scientific field are presented.

Assuming that relations between the United States (US) and Latin America are strongly determined by the security agenda, this article proposes to examine the cooperative link that Washington established with Bogota based on the fight against drug trafficking and terrorism as a way of approach the type of relationship that proposes the north country for Latin America in the twenty-first century. Consequently, we try to support the observation of two trends, on the one hand, the strengthening of militarization of US influence and its driving by the Department of Defense and, on the other, the militarized US involvement in the armed conflict in Colombia by including it as part of the fight against international terrorism. The methodology used to prepare the writing is qualitative and applies to an investigative process based on primary and secondary sources.

This paper analizes, from a socio-economical and political point of view, the composition of the Argentine foreign ministers under the Bolivian-Paraguayan border dispute that would lead to the Chaco War (1932-1935) and the peace negotiations after it, held in Buenos Aires, in which the Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs played and important role. It has allowed us to determine if those who were in charge of the Argentine foreign policy, in one of the top moments reached by Argentine diplomacy in history, represented a homogeneous group that acted in an attempt to achieve certain coincident interests.

This research is theoretically framed in the internationalization process of sub-national governments. Since 1990 the executive branch of Entre Ríos Province (Argentina) has developed several actions of decentralized cooperation (international treaties, letters of intent and concrete actions). It hypothesizes that all actions have tackled a wide range of topics with external partners as a response to economic interests of Entre Ríos Province bureaucracy. This has been possible due to competences acknowledged and established by a specific legal framework. The analysis was based on a descriptive and exploratory methodological design, employing several techniques such as literature review, document analysis and interviews to key informants. It concludes that most actions have encompassed economic development and production with governmental actors (national and sub-national) located in “the South”. International cooperation has been on the public policy agenda intermittently without materializing in a Secretary or main and permanent office with its own budget and personnel. As a result, decentralized international cooperation of Entre Ríos province lacked planning, coordination and monitoring.

Existent analyses on the creation of the South American Defense Council (CDS) are based on power-related variables, which stress Brazilian leadership and an increasing power asymmetry regarding Argentina. This article questions those variables in view of their limitations and instead highlights ideational factors that intervened in the construction of a regional security model. Using constructivism and epistemic community conceptualization the article analysis the influence of ideational variables on Argentina’s and Brazil’s national interest formation on regional defense cooperation, identifying how, since democratization, the ideas of a set of actors shaped strategic identities. To this end, respective processes of defense policy formulation are reconstructed, with an emphasis on the actors involved in each country and the dialogue between them. The central argument is that, in order to understand both CDS creation and characteristics, the coincidences between both strategic identities must be taken into account: Argentina’s strategic identity based on the defensive model and cooperative security and Brazilian one, built on the deterrence model and the global player international role.

Extracto de texto: "En el último lustro se han conmemorado varias fechas muy significativas para el Régimen Antártico. En 2011, los 50 años de la entrada en vigor del Tratado Antártico (TA), en 2014 los 10 años de funcionamiento de la Secretaría, con sede en Buenos Aires, y este año 2016, los 25 del Protocolo para la Protección del Medio Ambiente Antártico..."

This article deals with non-tariff barriers as a permanent problem in MERCOSUR. First, it analyses the international definition of “barriers”, which creates difficulties to identify them and generates discussions on their legitimacy. It shows that MERCOSUR regulations faced also both problems. Second, the article addresses the main conflicts emerged from non-tariff barriers imposed by Argentina against Brazilian imports. It demonstrates that MERCOSUR regulations early defined non-tariff barriers as illegitimate instruments in the integration process, but because of the lack of effective regional mechanisms to deal with them, they became ordinary. The dissatisfaction of different agents with the performance of the consultative mechanisms and the regional court had as a consequence a bilateral approach to trade conflicts, perpetuating the relation among weak regional regulations and preferences of national leaders for political negotiations as a vicious cycle.

VARIOS AUTORES (2014). La política exterior de Cristina Fernández al finalizar sumandato, Editorial de la Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Rosario, 520 páginas