Editorial

Abstract

Ingmar Bergman's central thesis in The Serpent's Egg (1977) is the predictability of the future. Objective observation of events and their interconnectedness will allow us to intuit the direction of their subsequent development. Bergman set his story in 1920s Germany; the corollary of his narrative is that the rise of Nazism to power was preceded and fueled by a variety of everyday actions of the protagonists, in themselves devoid of the magnitude or complexity to achieve that result, executed without necessary intentionality, in the context of military defeat and the economic crisis, which did not make it inevitable, but neither did it make it impossible. The memory of Bergman's film is relevant because of the widespread disorientation faced by the chain of events that had been unfolding before everyone's eyes over the past forty or fifty years: the loss of legitimacy and crisis of late capitalism, the progressive hollowing out of the welfare state and its national-popular variants in the peripheries, the deepening of social fragmentation, the emergence of new protagonists, new practices and new cultural constructs, and the reformulation of power relations, all of which acted as conditions enabling the combination of elements pointing in a certain direction. These events were not seen or interpreted, despite the fact that, since the late 1990s and particularly since the crisis in the mid-1990s, several studies have been keenly focusing on these transformations, their dynamics, and the possible effects of the decisions taken within this framework. Consequently, there was no way to anticipate their subsequent course. The path dependency of neo-institutionalist theories was useful for looking back (where we were coming from), but it was useless for looking forward. That is, where that path might lead. This edition of the RPPP brings together texts that address some of the changes taking place in recent years in our country in terms of public policy, within the framework of the most far-reaching and profound transformations in the regional and global order and as a correlate of these. Hernán Ouviña's work explores the main similarities and differences between the political and economic adjustment promoted during Carlos Menem's presidency and the program implemented by the current government. Valeria Ojeda's text focuses, from an ethnographic perspective, on the aggressive rhetoric toward public sector workers that accompanies the policy of mass layoffs. It also investigates the impact of this policy on the subjective dimensions of labor relations, which are targeted by a particularly disparaging state discourse. Javier Ortega addresses the specific case of the Tax Regime for Large Investments (RIGI), a variant of the promotion of so-called "economic development zones" to attract investment that began in the People's Republic of China and was subsequently adopted with variations in other countries, including several in Latin America. Changes in the objectives that guide government functions entail formal or informal modifications in management organization and practices. María Eugenia Coutinho addresses the changes that the composition of government cabinets in Argentina has undergone since the late 1990s, in response to shifts in the policy objectives of different administrations, and to the moments and alternatives experienced by a single administration. Access to public information was a constant demand from sectors of the public itself during this period, culminating in the creation of the Agency for Access to Public Information (AAIP) in 2017. Beatriz Anchorena highlights the implementation of a new methodology to monitor the transparency policies of national public sector agencies with the participation of multiple public actors and civil society representatives. The distance that can exist between normative statements or the creation of new institutions and effective social practices varies according to a variety of factors. The many resistances or alternatives that the actual reality of our societies creates to adapt to the modernizing or democratizing impetus of governments and their administrative bodies are well known. This is the "shortcut culture" or "jeito" of societies of "weak obedience" (Medellín Torres). The self-sufficiency of technocracy characterizes these situations as examples of backwardness and, in general, of tradition. There is some of this, no doubt, but the experience of the "Washington Consensus" type reforms shows that the effective validity of the "New Public Management" and its effectiveness in producing results and no longer in the bureaucratic compliance with general norms—a vulgar version of the "Weberian model"—very often entails resorting to adaptations, reinterpretations, and heterodoxies, or at least extending the practice of resorting to the administrative principle of "merit, opportunity, and convenience," putting it in tension with the principles of transparency and legality presented as barriers against opacity and arbitrariness. Javier Ortega's discussion on the RIGI shows that the consideration of what can or should be considered "necessity" and "urgency" is ultimately a matter that is resolved according to concrete situations and specific objectives, much more than formal regulations—the old Schmittian question of who decides the exception. Erick Navarro Esparza's article on the public policy evaluation system in the Mexican state of Guanajuato illustrates, through a concrete example, the gap that often exists between institutional innovations and effective management practices: the institution exists and the procedure is carried out, but its results are not applied. This is an issue on which disciplines such as anthropology and cultural studies have much to contribute to the analysis of public policies.