Impact of regime type on argentinean central government budgetary priorities 1961-82: a test of the o'donnell thesis

Abstract

A large body of literature on Argentina suggests that transitions from military to civilian regimes bring about fundamental changes in policy-making in general and in economic, social, and military priorities in particular. This view has been developed by O'Donnell in his path breaking thesis about the emergence of new forms of authoratarianism in Latin America. According to O'Donnell each suocessive government is an alliance of various distinct interest groups. Each alliance is imbued with a distinct sense of what should be done and at whose expense and translates the goals and interests of the members of the coalition into public policies. The purpose of this paper is to test the O'Donnell thesis i.e., to determine the possib1e existence and nature of structural changes in the government's budgetary priorities associated with regime change. The empirical results yield considerable support to the general thesis that regime type in Argentina has a major impact on the amount and relative share of resources...