Labour Control and Developmental State Theory: A New Perspective on Import-Substitution Industrialisation in Latin America

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link. open access articleDrawing on historical research on the period of import-substitution industrialisation (ISI) in Chile and Argentina between the 1930s and 1960s, this article claims that developmental state theory (DST) on Latin America obfuscates a crucial feature of state intervention in the region. Specifically, despite a long-standing interest in state-society relations, it has thus far been unable to adequately incorporate labour-state relations and labour control in the workplace. This is because, in various guises, DST privileges state-society relations mediated by institutions from which labour is implicitly or explicitly excluded. In seeking to extend the analytical lens of DST, I combine critical labour relations and labour process theories to identify the purposive establishment of ‘regimes of labour control’ via changing institutional and workplace relations. Using this framework, I show how the often-vacillating strategies pursued by the state under ISI in Chile and Argentina and its inefficient outcomes can be better understood by incorporating these efforts designed to exert control over labour