Latin American International

Political Economy: contributions beyond

the transatlantic divide

CINTIA QUILICONI AND JULISSA CASTRO SILVA *

The debate among scholars about what constitutes the field of International
Relations (IR) has gained importance since the beginning of the twenty-first
century. Stanley Hoffmann’s characterization of IR as an ‘American discipline’1
generated an important debate2 about the extent to which IR is global and about
what the parameters of the discipline might be, when what seems to predominate
is a transatlantic core that constitutes the mainstream of the discipline vis-à-vis a
non-western periphery that has generally been neglected.3
In a similar vein, the way in which International Political Economy (IPE) as a
subfield of IR developed in Anglo-Saxon countries set the main standards for its
study in other regions of the world, focusing attention on the ways that markets
and power operate globally. Susan Strange’s call to overcome the mutual neglect of
international economics and IR led to the establishment of IPE as a discipline in the
global North.4 Those debates developed with different perspectives in the United
States and United Kingdom, but established a transatlantic order and hierarchy that
separated mainstream IPE from the periphery, as Benjamin Cohen clearly demon-
strates in his seminal book on the intellectual history of the subfield.5
Recently, various authors have highlighted a pattern of underappreciation of
Latin American agency in the history of IPE6 and shown how it has been ‘misrec-

* This article is part of the special section in the January 2024 issue of International Affairs on ‘Missing voices:
Latin American perspectives in International Relations’, guest-edited by Ricardo Villanueva, Jessica De Alba-
Ulloa, Pedro González Olvera and María Elena Lorenzini.
1
Stanley Hoffmann, ‘An American social science: International Relations’, Daedalus 106: 3, 1977, pp. 41–60.
2
Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan, ‘Why is there no non-Western international relations theory? An intro-
duction’, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 7: 3, 2007, pp. 287–312, https://doi.org/10.1093/irap/lcm012;
Amitav Acharya, ‘Global International Relations (IR) and regional worlds: a new agenda for international
studies’, International Studies Quarterly 58: 4, 2014, pp. 647–59, https://doi.org/10.1111/isqu.12171; Arlene B.
Tickner, ‘Latin American IR and the primacy of lo práctico’, International Studies Review 10: 4, 2008, pp. 735–48,
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2486.2008.00829.x.
3
Thomas Risse, Wiebke Wemheuer-Vogelaar and Frank Havemann, ‘IR theory and the core–periphery struc-
ture of global IR: lessons from citation analysis’, International Studies Review 24: 3, 2022, pp. 1–38, https://doi.
org/10.1093/isr/viac029.
4
Susan Strange, ‘International economics and International Relations: a case of mutual neglect’, International
Affairs 46: 2, 1970, pp. 304–15, https://doi.org/10.2307/2613829.
5
Benjamin Cohen, International political economy: an intellectual history (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2008).
6
Eric Helleiner and Antulio Rosales, ‘Peripheral thoughts for global IPE: Latin American ideational innova-
tion and the diffusion of the nineteenth century free trade doctrine’, International Studies Quarterly 61: 4, 2017,
pp. 924–34, https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqx063.

International Affairs 100: 1 (2024) 000–000; doi: 10.1093/ia/

© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal Institute of International Affairs.All rights
reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com

INTA100_1_QuiliconiSilva.indd 1 11/27/23 3:08 PM

 Cintia Quiliconi and Julissa Castro Silva
ognized, labelled as a misfit and misperceived’ by the IR mainstream.7 Thus,
an analysis of how the subfield developed in Latin America provides an oppor-
tunity to appreciate new characteristics, and a whole set of conceptualizations
and approaches that are different from those of the developed world. Viewing
international insertion from the periphery has been a constant focus of Latin
American IPE that brings new problems, ideas and concerns to the traditional
way of analysing this subfield.
In that respect, this article argues that a true development of IPE as a field of
global study will only be possible if it is recognized that each region has its own
distinctive features, and therefore its own defined approaches with regard to how
the market and power operate in the world, but those alternative views do not
always find a place for their analysis among North American theories of IPE.8
Hence recent debates, embedded in the field of Global IR and linked with IPE, have
highlighted national and regional contributions that have been developed outside
the mainstream. This article is part of a debate that seeks to raise awareness of the
contributions by Latin America to IPE9 and, in addition, relates to an emerging
concern that underlines the connections between thought and political practice.10
Therefore, although this article starts by analysing the initial foundations of
IPE in the region, its main contribution is to examine how the subfield has devel-
oped over the past 21 years by studying what has been published regionally in
the leading journals on the subjects of IR and IPE. We recognize that specialist
journals are central elements in the production, transmission and dissemination of
knowledge, and are important places for intellectual debate in order to evaluate
how the production of knowledge about IPE in Latin America has developed.11
7
Diana Tussie, ‘Relaciones Internacionales y Economía Política Internacional: notas para el debate’, Relaciones
Internacionales 24: 48, 2015, pp. 155–75, https://revistas.unlp.edu.ar/RRII-IRI/article/view/1457; Diana Tussie
and Fabrício Chagas-Bastos, ‘Misrecognised, misfit and misperceived: why not a Latin American school of IPE?’,
Review of International Political Economy, 30: 3, 2023, pp. 891–913, https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2022.205690
2. (Unless otherwise noted at point of citation, all URLs cited in this article were accessible on 4 Oct. 2023.)
8
Melisa Deciancio and Cintia Quiliconi, ‘Widening the “global conversation”: highlighting the voices of IPE
in the global South’, All Azimuth 9: 2, 2020, pp. 249–65, https://doi.org/10.20991/allazimuth.726271; Cintia
Quiliconi, ‘Economía política global latinoamericana: un campo de estudio efervescente entre el desarrollo y
el regionalismo’, Relaciones Internacionales, vol. 50, 2022, pp. 127–44, https://doi.org/10.15366/relacionesinter-
nacionales2022.50.006.
9
Melisa Deciancio, ‘La Economía Política Internacional en el campo de las Relaciones Internacionales argenti-
nas’, Desafíos 30: 2, 2018, pp. 15–42, https://doi.org/10.12804/revistas.urosario.edu.co/desafios/a.6106; Decian-
cio and Quiliconi, ‘Widening the “global conversation”’; José Gabriel Palma, ‘Why did the Latin American
critical tradition in the social sciences become practically extinct?’, in Mark Blyth, ed., Routledge handbook of
International Political Economy (IPE): IPE as a global conversation (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2009),
pp. 243–65; Juliana Peixoto Batista, ‘La EPI y las Relaciones Internacionales, ¿Dónde está el derecho?’, Rela-
ciones Internacionales 26: 52, 2017, pp. 181–94, https://doi.org/10.24215/23142766e009; Quiliconi, ‘Economía
política global latinoamericana’; Pía Riggirozzi and Diana Tussie, ‘A global conversation: rethinking IPE
in post-hegemonic scenarios’, Contexto Internacional 37: 3, 2015, pp. 1041–68, https://doi.org/10.1590/S0102-
85292015000300009; Diana Tussie, ‘The tailoring of IPE in Latin America: lost, misfit or misperceived?’, in
Ernesto Vivares, ed., The Routledge handbook to global political economy: conversations and inquiries (Abingdon and
New York: Routledge, 2020), pp. 92–110; Ernesto Vivares, ‘Global conversations and inquiries’, in Vivares,
ed., The Routledge handbook to global political economy, pp. 9–25.
10
Daniel W. Drezner and Amrita Narlikar, ‘International relations: the “how not to” guide’, International Affairs
98: 5, 2022, pp. 1499–513, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiac190; Amrita Narlikar, ‘Because they matter’: recognise
diversity—globalise research, GIGA Focus—Global, vol. 1, 2016, pp. 1–10. https://www.giga-hamburg.de/
assets/tracked/pure/24348529/gf_global_1601_en.pdf.
11
Ole Wæver, ‘The sociology of a not so international discipline: American and European developments in Interna-
2
International Affairs 100: 1, 2024

INTA100_1_QuiliconiSilva.indd 2 11/27/23 3:08 PM

 Latin American International Political Economy
This article analyses the main themes and approaches that have occupied Latin
American thinking about IPE in the twenty-first century, across publications from
five countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico. These countries
have been selected as the most important in the region, not only because of their
size but in particular because of the way in which the discipline of IR—and conse-
quently, the subfield of IPE—have developed in them. An analysis of the contents
of these countries’ main IR journals has enabled us to highlight interconnected
agendas and matters of particular interest in IPE for the countries in question.
This article emphasizes three central arguments. First, the field of IPE in Latin
America has developed before its conception in the Anglo-Saxon world, but has
done so within discussions about economic development and international inser-
tion. In that sense, Latin American IPE has developed separately from mainstream
views, because the distinctiveness of problems in the region was a poor fit with the
conceptual approaches that English-speaking core scholars developed.12 As Craig
Murphy has pointed out, the ideas of the founding fathers of Latin American IPE
became a left-out body of scholarship. They were ignored by mainstream IPE,
which felt uneasy about Latin American critique of inequality and its dissatisfac-
tion with the global political economy of the 1970s.13 Second, despite the fact that
some authors classify this as a defunct tradition,14 an analysis of progress in the
field and of publications in Latin American journals shows that there is a vibrancy
in the debate about IPE and that the intellectual tradition of the 1950s and 1960s is
under constant revision. In fact, publications analysed in this article demonstrate
a two-way neglect between the global North and the global South, but scholars
from the global South in general—and from Latin America in particular—increas-
ingly experience a tension between, on the one hand, developing methodolog-
ical and theoretical tools, anchored to regional topics with policy relevance and
local visibility, and, on the other hand, validating their knowledge production
according to mainstream IPE theoretical and methodological standards.15 Third,
in contrast to the bias in mainstream IR that leads it to focus on policy successes,
as highlighted by Daniel Drezner and Amrita Narlikar16 in a recent issue of this
journal, discussions about Latin American IPE have been closely related to the
formulation of policies that have often examined adversities and failures regarding
those policies, related to the different crises that the region has had to face. This

tional Relations’, International Organization 52: 4, 1998, pp. 687–727, https://doi.org/10.1162/002081898550725;

Peter Marcus Kristensen, ‘Revisiting the “American social science”—mapping the geography of International
Relations’, International Studies Perspectives 16: 3, 2015, pp. 246–69, https://doi.org/10.1111/insp.12061; Carolina
Cepeda-Másmela and Arlene B. Tickner, ‘International Relations (IR) in Colombia’, in Oxford research encyclo-
pedia of international studies, publ. online 24 Feb. 2022, https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.683.
12
We thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing out this idea.
13
Craig N. Murphy, ‘Do the left-out matter?’ in Nicola Phillips and Catherine Weaver, eds, International Political
Economy: debating the past, present and future (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2011), pp. 160–68.
14
Palma, ‘Why did the Latin American critical tradition in the social sciences become practically extinct?’; Mark
Blyth, ‘Introduction: IPE as a global conversation’, in Blyth, ed., Routledge handbook of International Political
Economy, pp. 1–20.
15
Daniela Vanesa Perrotta, ‘El campo de estudios de la integración regional y su aporte a las Relaciones Inter-
nacionales: una mirada desde América Latina’, Relaciones Internacionales, vol. 38, 2018, pp. 9–39, https://doi.
org/10.15366/relacionesinternacionales2018.38.001.
16
Drezner and Narlikar, ‘International relations’.
3
International Affairs 100: 1, 2024

INTA100_1_QuiliconiSilva.indd 3 11/27/23 3:08 PM

 Cintia Quiliconi and Julissa Castro Silva
situation widens even more the gap between mainstream and Latin American IPE,
due to the fact that ‘scholars who came to IPE from places of greater satisfac-
tion with the world were, understandably, not particularly interested in questions
about the origins of global inequality’,17 a situation that encourages asymmetries
in publications and usually misclassifies research on developing countries as area
studies instead of IPE.
An empirical analysis shows that there is a self-awareness in Latin America
about locally produced IPE with unique discussions and features. A close relation-
ship can be seen between the geographical localization of the authors and the
debates and published topics that are mainly rooted in the region. Case-studies
have been the principal method used to provide a theoretical/empirical analysis
linked to the domestic and/or international context with which the case-studies
are concerned. Hence, Latin American IPE is presented as practical in its thinking
and problem-solving in its objectives, given the needs of the peripheral countries
in which it operates. In this sense, Latin American IPE scholars kicked off discus-
sions with ideational localizations that offer a critique to mainstream neoclassical
international economics concepts, particularly anchored to the idea of asymmetry
and inequality encompassed in the centre–periphery model. In addition, and as
is the case with IR, publications by men predominate, although this varies from
country to country within the region.
This article is divided into four sections. The first summarizes the main contri-
butions by Latin America to studies on IPE from a historical perspective, starting
with structuralism, dependency theory and discussions about autonomy. The
second deals with how the field has evolved over the last three decades. In the
third section, we discuss the empirical findings from the analysis of the contents
of 1,660 articles on IPE published by the main IR journals in the region. This
analysis recognizes that IPE in Latin America is an active field that has encom-
passed varying empirical and theoretical perspectives which are driving the current
regional debate in line with the changes in the global economic system and the
formulation of public policies. Finally, some conclusions are drawn.

The historical roots of Latin American IPE

The development of Latin American IPE represents one of the region’s major
contributions to global studies of IR.18 From the middle of the twentieth century,
three debates—on structuralism, dependency and autonomy—have been key in
shaping the study of IPE in Latin America—not in a way that has been isolated
from reality, but rather in coordination with the practical problems faced by
decision-makers concerning the global changes to capital and trade.19
17
Murphy, ‘Do the left-out matter?’ pp. 166.
18
Amitav Acharya, ‘Global International Relations (IR) and regional worlds’; Tussie, ‘Relaciones Internacion-
ales y Economía Política Internacional’; Melisa Deciancio, ‘International Relations from the South: a regional
research agenda for global IR’, International Studies Review 18: 1, 2016, pp. 106–19, https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/
viv020.
19
Deciancio and Quiliconi, ‘Widening the “global conversation”’; Stefano Palestini, ‘From dependency theories
to mechanisms of dependency’, in Melisa Deciancio, Diana Tussie and Amitav Acharya, eds, Latin America
4
International Affairs 100: 1, 2024

INTA100_1_QuiliconiSilva.indd 4 11/27/23 3:08 PM

 Latin American International Political Economy
Thus, historically, the analysis of Latin American IPE has not been divorced
from political practice: it has retained its focus on development within discussions
that have revolved around concepts such as dependency, autonomy and centre–
periphery.20 For the region, its international insertion cannot be understood
without the starting point of asymmetrical trade relations with the world framed
within discussions about development and regionalism.21
This critical tradition, influenced by the theory of modernization,22 was rolled
out through two core concepts: structuralism, and the theory of dependency, which
was developed further in the following decades. As José Gabriel Palma points out,
although an important divergence occurred between these views, one fundamental
characteristic of this intellectual tradition is that it was associated with a growing
debate about the underdevelopment of the region which clearly showed that Latin
America was not progressing along the same path as the industrialized countries.23
Therefore, it seemed necessary to find a new form of agency in the international
system that, for the structuralists, came with the help of a renewed and active role
of the state in economic terms and that, for the Marxist dependency theorists, came
from a radical revolutionary political change from the left.
Structuralism arose as a critique of the orthodox view of the economy provided
by the theory of modernization, where development was seen as a universal process
tied to the view of progress driven by industrialized societies. In contrast, in Latin
America a body of literature emerged from authors such as Raúl Prebisch,24 Celso
Furtado,25 Osvaldo Sunkel,26 Aníbal Pinto27 and Aldo Ferrer,28 who promoted
a new way of understanding development, defined in relation to external and
internal factors that determined the political economy of the countries in the
region.
In contrast to structuralism, some of the debates about dependency suggested
the need for a new international economic order and, in its Marxist dimension,
a transition to socialism as a way of escaping from the problem of underdevel-
opment. For both perspectives, regionalism was the way not only to reduce
the asymmetry that was present within the patterns of world trade, but also to
improve the region’s insertion into the international arena by means of political
alliances and common strategies for economic development.
in global International Relations (New York: Routledge, 2022), pp. 182–9; Perrotta, ‘El campo de estudios de la
integración regional y su aporte a las Relaciones Internacionales’.
20
Fabricio Chagas-Bastos, ‘La invención de la inserción internacional: fundaciones históricas y conceptuales’,
Análisis Político 31: 94, 2018, pp. 10–30, https://doi.org/10.15446/anpol.v31n94.78305; Tickner, ‘Latin American
IR and the primacy of lo práctico’; Arlene B. Tickner, ‘Hearing Latin American voices in International Rela-
tions studies’, International Studies Perspectives 4: 4, 2003, pp. 325–50, https://doi.org/10.1111/1528-3577.404001.
21
Tussie, ‘Relaciones Internacionales y Economía Política Internacional’.
22
See Tickner, ‘Latin American IR and the primacy of lo práctico’, p. 736.
23
Palma, ‘Why did the Latin American critical tradition in the social sciences become practically extinct?’.
24
Raúl Prebisch, El desarrollo económico de la América Latina y algunos de sus principales problemas (Santiago: United
Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean—CEPAL, 1949).
25
Celso Furtado, Formación económica del Brasil (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1962).
26
Osvaldo Sunkel, ‘Un esquema general para el análisis de la inflación’, Economía 18: 62, 1959, pp. 1–14.
27
Aníbal Pinto, ‘El Estado, la empresa privada y las inversiones extranjeras en la promoción del desarrollo
económico’, Panorama Económico 10: 150, 1956, pp. 105–148.
28
Aldo Ferrer, ‘Crisis y alternativas de la política económica argentina. Una respuesta’, Desarrollo Económico
17: 68, 1978, pp. 647–53, https://doi.org/10.2307/3466413.
5
International Affairs 100: 1, 2024

INTA100_1_QuiliconiSilva.indd 5 11/27/23 3:08 PM

 Cintia Quiliconi and Julissa Castro Silva
Regionalism was seen as the route for moving from dependency to autonomy.
Authors such as Juan Carlos Puig29 and Hélio Jaguaribe30 saw the possibility of
autonomous and coordinated international action on the part of the periph-
eral countries as a way of overcoming the structural weaknesses imposed by
the capitalist system.31 In particular, and in a related debate, Puig32 also stressed
financing for development. However, in contrast to the centre–periphery idea in
the thinking of the structuralists and dependency theorists, Jaguaribe:
portray[ed] the world order as a differentiated system in which distinct states occupy varied
positions [of power] based upon their territorial integrity, self-determination and capacity
to sanction eventual aggressors, and not just their role in the global division of labor.33

These approaches indicate that the autonomy debates are focused on the subfield
of foreign policy rather than on that of IPE and, in that sense, bring them closer
to traditional views of IR. Thus, the autonomy debate is associated with views
of a national developmentalist nature which have positive approaches to the role
that national elites can play in the search for margins of manoeuvre. In addition, as
Arlene Tickner points out, a proper evaluation of realism occurred in the region,
and this contributed to the idea that a strong elite was indispensable in terms of
the ability of public policy to protect national interests. Moreover, the concept
of autonomy was closely related to that of power, another guiding principle of
realism, in so far as it was seen as a tool for the protection of national sovereignty
and development.34
José Fernández Alonso35 points out that autonomy has been evident in the
Latin American political agenda since the early days of independence, and that
it has remained current in contemporary debates about financial matters. These
debates took place in connection with loans—initially mainly from private English
banks, then in relation to the Bretton Woods system and regional organizations
such as the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Development Bank
of Latin America and the Caribbean, and later, from 1989, when a large number
of conditional loans were forthcoming from international financial institutions
in connection with the Washington Consensus. By contrast, in the twenty-first
century, Latin America moved towards a new paradigm in development financing
promoted by the boom in commodities and new centres of international financing,
especially those emanating from China.
29
Juan Carlos Puig, ‘La política exterior argentina y sus tendencias profundas’, Revista Argentina de Relaciones
Internacionales 1: 1, 1975, pp. 7–21; Juan Carlos Puig, ‘Integración y autonomía de América Latina en las
postrimerías del siglo XX’, Integración Latinoamericana 11: 109, 1986, pp. 40–62.
30
Hélio Jaguaribe, ‘Dependencia y autonomía en América Latina’, in Hélio Jaguaribe, Aldo Ferrer, Miguel
Wionczek and Theotônio dos Santos, eds, La dependencia económica en América Latina (México: Siglo XXI
Editores, 1969), pp. 1–85.
31
Deciancio, ‘International Relations from the South’, p. 100.
32
Juan Carlos Puig, ‘La vocación autonomista en América Latina: heterodoxia y secesionismo’, Revista de Derecho
Internacional y Ciencias Diplomáticas, vol. 39/40, 1971.
33
Tickner, ‘Latin American IR and the primacy of lo práctico’, p. 741.
34
Tickner, ‘Latin American IR and the primacy of lo práctico’, p. 742.
35
José Fernández Alonso, ‘Governing development in South America: between old and new challenges’, in Pía
Riggirozzi and Christopher Wylde, eds, Handbook of South American governance (Abingdon and New York:
Routledge, 2018), pp. 137–146.
6
International Affairs 100: 1, 2024

INTA100_1_QuiliconiSilva.indd 6 11/27/23 3:08 PM

 Latin American International Political Economy
Regionalism and development financing both became widely discussed topics
in the twentieth century, and their transformations were debated into the new
millennium. Although dependency theories are not always explicitly quoted in
publications, Stefano Palestini36 argues that they have remained current in the
studies undertaken by a new generation of Latin American academics within the
field of IPE. Not only are the debates focused on regionalism as an autonomy
tool or on development financing as forms of dependent capitalism, but other
asymmetrical forms of relationship between the domestic and the international
are also present when considering the availability of ‘room for manoeuvre’ for
countries in the region.
The notion of inequality is central in the centre–periphery distinction of both
structuralism and dependency theory, and has permeated the whole debate on
regional IPE. However, as Palestini and Aldo Madariaga37 point out, the struc-
turalist economists applied this distinction to countries or national units, whereas
dependency theorists extended this difference in asymmetrical relations to other
levels of analysis that went beyond the national economy towards the regional
level, global value chains and/or the level of the global political economy. For
example, Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto’s seminal book, Depen-
dency and development in Latin America,38 proposed a historical–structuralist
approach in which the global, local or national dimensions of capitalism were
seen as mutually co-constituted. Therefore, dependency theory does not tie
the analysis of capitalism to the national or international dichotomy, but rather
aims to connect both levels, and in that sense links in turn the subdisciplines of
Comparative Political Economy and IPE.39
Thus, the basic premises of dependency theory have not disappeared from the
debates around Latin American development in the twenty-first century and can
be found, as we shall see, in the most recent regional publications, where two
tendencies stand out. First, although Latin American countries retained political
and administrative autonomy after the period of colonization, the region has
always faced a dichotomy between its discursive political autonomy and its material
financial, commercial and, ultimately, political dependency. This economic
dependency came from the forging of alliances at a political level, with interna-
tional players such as Great Britain in the nineteenth century, the United States in
the twentieth century, and China in the twenty-first. In that respect, historically
both notions of Latin American regionalism and the debates about development
financing emerged as a means of resisting the interventions of the great powers or
of achieving autonomy.40 This is reflected in the regional academic production.

36
Palestini, ‘From dependency theories to mechanisms of dependency’, p. 183.
37
Stefano Palestini and Aldo Madariaga, ‘Introduction: dependency as a research program: from situations to
mechanisms of dependency’, in Aldo Madariaga and Stefano Palestini, eds, Dependent capitalisms in contemporary
Latin America and Europe (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), pp. 1–25.
38
Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto, Dependency and development in Latin America, transl. by Marjory
Mattingly Urquidi (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1979).
39
Palestini and Madariaga, ‘Introduction’, p. 3.
40
Alejandro Simonoff and María Elena Lorenzini, ‘Autonomía e integración en las teorías del sur: desentrañando
el pensamiento de Hélio Jaguaribe y Juan Carlos Puig’, Iberoamericana—Nordic Journal of Latin American and
7
International Affairs 100: 1, 2024

INTA100_1_QuiliconiSilva.indd 7 11/27/23 3:08 PM

 Cintia Quiliconi and Julissa Castro Silva
Second, the debates driven by the industrialization of the twentieth century
were focused on understanding the position of the region in the capitalist system.
The centre–periphery structure became a central concept of Latin American IPE,
providing a theoretical and empirical basis for fostering state-led development,
instead of that led by laissez-faire or market principles.41 In this way, the discussions
about IPE have been developed in Latin America under the label of the political
economy of development. This is because regional thinking is articulated around
the place that Latin America occupies in the global economy, the debates being
anchored locally in developing countries, where the centre–periphery discussion
weighed heavily. These discussions are present even today, as we shall see in the
next section.

Contemporary debates about Latin American IPE

The debt crisis in the 1980s and the arrival of neo-liberalism in the 1990s prompted
a change in the topics for debate in the context of Latin American IPE.42 Concepts
such as dependency or autonomy did not disappear from the debate about IPE, but
they ceased to be central to it, because domestic changes in line with a new inter-
national economic context brought to the fore a wider range of subjects which
prioritized different approaches.
The structural reforms brought about by the Washington Consensus in Latin
America resulted in trade liberalization, and with it the proliferation of trading
blocs such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA, succeeded
in 2018 by USMCA, the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement) and the
Southern Common Market (Mercosur), as well as the redesign of other schemes
like the Andean Community.
Latin American specialists tried to get the ongoing economic changes to make
sense, so they examined economic liberalization, international alliances and new
trading coalitions.43 In fact, technocratic and economist-minded approaches
predominated in this discussion of multilateralism and regionalism, addressing the
stages of commercial integration and its limitations in developing countries. These
analyses were especially encouraged by the creation of Mercosur in 1991, which
stimulated fruitful debates on regional integration44 that increasingly related to
global North IPE literature.
With the arrival in the region of the new century, and of several governments
of the left against the background of the commodities boom, a new agenda of
interest was fostered, where the state returned to the centre of analyses of IPE and

Caribbean Studies 4: 1, 2019, pp. 96–106, https://doi.org/10.16993/iberoamericana.417.

41
Quiliconi, ‘Economía política global latinoamericana’, p. 131.
42
Tussie, ‘Relaciones Internacionales y Economía Política Internacional’.
43
Tussie, ‘The tailoring of IPE in Latin America’, p. 99.
44
Roberto Bouzas, ‘Mercosur’s external trade negotiations: dealing with a congested agenda’, in Riordan Roett,
ed., Mercosur: regional integration, world markets (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1999), pp. 81–94;
Pedro da Motta Veiga, ‘Brazil in Mercosur: reciprocal influence’, in Roett, ed., Mercosur, pp. 25–34; Laura
Gómez-Mera, ‘How “new” is the “new regionalism” in the Americas? The case of MERCOSUR’, Journal of
International Relations and Development, vol. 11, 2008, pp. 279–307, https://doi.org/10.1057/jird.2008.14.
8
International Affairs 100: 1, 2024

INTA100_1_QuiliconiSilva.indd 8 11/27/23 3:08 PM

 Latin American International Political Economy
traditional approaches began to be reconsidered, as well as new ways of insertion
into the international system under the aegis of the global South.45 In Europe, an
important debate on globalization and regionalism began at the end of the 1990s;
this ‘new regionalism approach’46 later made its way to Latin America, especially
via new generations of academics who studied in that continent and applied some
of those concepts to Latin American regionalism.47 In the 2000s, new agendas
and approaches to South American regionalism appeared, as a response both to
the creation of new regional organizations such as the Bolivarian Alliance for the
Peoples of Our America (ALBA), the Community of Latin American and Carib-
bean States (CELAC) and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and
to the changing focus of regional organizations like Mercosur, which added social
themes to its commercial agenda. This debate defined new concepts and gave rise
to what the literature has called ‘regionalism with adjectives’48 as, for example,
post-liberal,49 post-hegemonic50 and strategic.51
Today Latin America provides a rich eclectic discussion about IPE, based on
a variety of empirical studies and theoretical approaches over a broad range of
subjects that deal with regionalism, development, dependency, external debt,
illegal trade, South–South cooperation and globalization, as well as the varieties
of dependent capitalism. For each one of these subjects, it is appropriate not only
to analyse which players are promoting or resisting a particular policy, but also to
identify who is raising these topics, how they are being raised and from where.52
The following section analyses how the field of Latin American IPE has developed
in the twenty-first century in regional publications.

45
Fabricio Chagas-Bastos, ‘Between “lo práctico” and “lo posible”: international insertion as an innovation
in Latin America’s contribution to global IR’, in Deciancio, Tussie and Acharya, eds, Latin America in global
International Relations, pp. 202–19.
46
Björn Hettne and Fredrik Söderbaum, ‘Theorizing the rise of regionness’, in Shaun Breslin, Christopher W.
Hughes, Nicola Phillips and Ben Rosamond, eds, New regionalisms in the global political economy: theories and cases
(London and New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 33–47.
47
Pía Riggirozzi and Diana Tussie, eds, The rise of post-hegemonic regionalism: the case of Latin America (Dordrecht:
Springer, 2012); Ernesto Vivares, ‘Toward a political economy of new South American regionalism’, in
Ernesto Vivares, ed., Exploring the new South American regionalism (NSAR) (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), pp. 9–28.
48
Perrotta, ‘El campo de estudios de la integración regional y su aporte a las Relaciones Internacionales’, p. 24.
49
José Antonio Sanahuja, ‘La construcción de una región: Suramérica y el regionalismo posliberal’, in Manuel
Cienfuegos and José Antonio Sanahuja, eds, Una región en construcción. UNASUR y la integración en América del
Sur (Barcelona: Fundació CIDOB, 2010), pp. 87–134.
50
Riggirozzi and Tussie, eds, The rise of post-hegemonic regionalism; Thomas Legler, ‘Post-hegemonic regionalism
and sovereignty in Latin America: optimists, skeptics and an emerging research agenda’, Contexto Internacional
35: 2, 2013, pp. 325–52, https://doi.org/10.1590/S0102-85292013000200001.
51
Maribel Aponte, El nuevo regionalismo estratégico: los primeros diez años del ALBA-TCP (Buenos Aires: CLACSO,
2014); José Briceño Ruíz, ‘Ejes y modelos en la etapa actual de la integración económica regional en América
Latina’, Estudios Internacionales, 45: 175, 2013, pp. 9–39, https://doi.org/10.5354/0719-3769.2013.27352.
52
Mathis Lohaus and Wiebke Wemheuer-Vogelaar, ‘Who publishes where? Exploring the geographic diversity
of global IR journals’, International Studies Review 23, 2021, pp. 645–69, https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/viaa062;
Gerardo Munck and Richard Snyder, ‘Who publishes in comparative politics? Studying the world from the
United States’, PS: Political Science & Politics 40: 2, 2007, pp. 339–46, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096507070552;
Leonardo Ramos and Marina Scotelaro, ‘O estado da arte da EPI no Brasil: possibilidades para se pensar (e
praticar) uma EPI a partir de baixo’, Desafíos 30: 2, 2018, pp. 127–57.
9
International Affairs 100: 1, 2024

INTA100_1_QuiliconiSilva.indd 9 11/27/23 3:08 PM

 Cintia Quiliconi and Julissa Castro Silva

Publications focusing on IPE in Latin America, 2000–2021

Despite the existence of a strong connection between thought and practice, as
highlighted by several authors in connection to Latin American IPE throughout
its historical development,53 the production of knowledge has not been homoge-
neous. The Andean region and Central America, except for Colombia, provide
a limited output of publications concerned with IR which in turn may contain
articles on IPE. On the other hand, some countries—such as Argentina, Brazil,
Chile, Colombia and Mexico—have journals with a recent track record of 20
years or more of uninterrupted publication in the field of IR. In addition, these
journals are indexed in at least one of the academic databases such as Scimago
Scopus, REDALYC, Web of Science or Latindex, and are also recognized publica-
tions by the literature on the development of IR fields in these countries.54 Hence,
eleven journals from these five countries were chosen as referents for the explora-
tion of the state of the art of IPE in Latin America.
Table 1 shows the number of articles on IPE by countries and journals. We
have recorded the total number and relative percentage of articles in each of the
five selected countries. Similarly, we indicate the main sources that have provided
information and their relative shares of the total in relation to the journals included
in this study, to aid comparisons on a global basis.
In total, 1,660 articles relating to IPE were identified from the eleven journals
chosen in the period between 2000 and 2021. The selected time-frame takes
account of the development of the discipline in Latin America in the last 21 years
and provides a broad and current panorama of regional knowledge in IPE. This
exploratory study of the academic publications indicates not only what has been
published on IPE in the region, but also who has published, and how and where
they have done so. In terms of methodology, the articles were initially classified in
accordance with the information provided by title, abstract and keywords. Where
the journals did not provide abstracts, or these did not contain comprehensive
information,55 the full documents were read.

53
Deciancio and Quiliconi, ‘Widening the “global conversation”’; Tickner, ‘Latin American IR and the primacy
of lo práctico’; Tussie, ‘Relaciones Internacionales y Economía Política Internacional’.
54
See Carolina Cepeda-Másmela and Arlene B. Tickner, ‘International Relations (IR) in Colombia’, Oxford
research encyclopedia of international studies, publ. online 24 Feb. 2022, https://doi.org/10.1093/acre-
fore/9780190846626.013.683; Melisa Deciancio, ‘La Economía Política Internacional en el campo de las Rela-
ciones Internacionales argentinas’, Arturo Santa Cruz, ‘IR in Mexico’, Oxford research encyclopedia of international
studies, publ. online 22 Nov. 2022, https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.743; Dawisson Belém
Lopes, João Paulo Nicolini and Thales Carvalho, ‘200 years of International Relations in Brazil: issues, theo-
ries, and methods’, Oxford research encyclopedia of international studies, publ. online 18 May 2022, https://
doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.744; Lorena Oyarzún-Serrano and Claudia Fuentes-Julio, ‘The
study of International Relations in Chile’, Oxford research encyclopedia of international studies, publ. online
22 March 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.755.
55
This refers in particular to the lack of clarity in explaining the methodology used in the research within the
summary of the article. Although some texts did not provide any methodology, and a category was created
for these, others preferred to record it in the introduction.
10
International Affairs 100: 1, 2024

INTA100_1_QuiliconiSilva.indd 10 11/27/23 3:08 PM

 Latin American International Political Economy
Table 1: Articles on IPE by journals and countries, 2000–2021

Country Total % Journal Total %

articles by articles by
country journal
Argentina 199 12% Cuadernos de Política Exterior 55 3.3%
Argentina (CUPEA)
Revista Relaciones Internacio- 144 8.7%
nales
Brazil 890 53.6% Brazilian Journal of Political 664 40.0%
Economy (BJPE)
Revista Brasileira de Política 139 8.4%
Internacional
Contexto Internacional 87 5.2%
Chile 194 11.7% Revista de Ciencia Política 29 1.8%
Estudios Internacionales 165 9.9%
Colombia 206 12.4% Colombia Internacional 136 8.2%
Análisis Político 70 4.2%
Mexico 171 10.3% Foro Internacional 119 7.2%
Revista Relaciones Internacio- 52 3.1%
nales de la UNAM
Total 1660 100%

As indicated in table 1, Brazil accounted for the greatest share of the articles in
our study (53.6 per cent). The concentration of articles in that country is not solely
due to the greater number of journals chosen (three, instead of two for each of
the rest of the selected countries), but to the fact that it is the only country in the
region that has a publication specializing in IPE—which led to our including that
publication as an additional journal for Brazil. This journal, the Brazilian Journal
of Political Economy (BJPE) provided 40 per cent of the total number of articles
analysed, followed at some distance by the Chilean journal Estudios Internacionales,
which accounted for 9.9 per cent.
Despite the marked difference in the percentage of publications contributed by
the BJPE in comparison to the other journals, it was retained in the study due to
the fact that its subject specialization connects directly with the area of interest in
this research. However, in order to avoid any kind of bias, two figures are provided
below, in which data relating to all the chosen journals are compared against data
for ten of the journals, excluding the BJPE.
11
International Affairs 100: 1, 2024

INTA100_1_QuiliconiSilva.indd 11 11/27/23 3:08 PM

 Cintia Quiliconi and Julissa Castro Silva
Following the selection and review of the articles, the analysis of the publica-
tions was carried out using the qualitative software NVivo, which enabled the
coding of the documents according to their content. The qualitative coding was
mainly inductive and based on reading of the documents, with the main variables
being identified as: authors’ gender (assumed by names), language, co-author-
ship, affiliation (location), type of analysis (qualitative/quantitative), approach or
methodology, and subjects covered.
The publications on IPE in Latin American countries do not show an annual
progression, but they do indicate a sustained interest across the 21-year period
under investigation. With an average of 75 articles per year, the main subjects
around which academic discussion has revolved reveal a strong connection between
the domestic and the international. Hence, the problems of domestic development
have been emphasized, but without overlooking economic relations within the
region, as well as with external players like the US, which holds an important
place in matters of political-economic interest in the region. International institu-
tions like the IMF, the WTO, the World Bank, the IDB and the OECD, as well
as players that have recently developed their links with the region, such as China
or the BRICS group of countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa),
are also included in the research, but consideration of them varies by country.
The analysis of non-state players and their participation in the economy is limited
overall; however, companies and those involved in the illegal economy stood out
within the comparative analysis.
Figure 1 shows the main topics identified, comparing aggregate results for all
eleven journals against the smaller sample of ten journals which excludes the BJPE.

Figure 1: Topics covered within Latin American IPE, 2000-2021; number

of articles
900
800
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
Se per rica
a
N ted ism

Br eo- acr BR y
il– ve co ICS

)
U ion e

op tem

nt A ies
en n

Af enta cs
R al tr t

na ut cy
ob lism

iza y

a m
n

ec y
Gl era s

Ill per ery

a– om n

SA
io en

ut ial in
eg ad

om
ep io
b e

tio

al her
rg om

i
in C ratio
io A den

ric lis
-li at

ut m m
Ce atin pan
So nc Ch
at m

D lizat
ni a l

(IB
co sys

i- h
e o St

on

So lop no
re m
l o on

eg ip
m ip
rn op

e
n

an
a
te el

az d e o e
In dev

–
h– ina

L
h
ic

h
M
ut F
om

Ch
at
on

rn
Ec

N
te

So
In

a–
di
In

All the journals No BJPE

12
International Affairs 100: 1, 2024

INTA100_1_QuiliconiSilva.indd 12 11/27/23 3:08 PM

 Latin American International Political Economy
The classification of the articles based on their contents identified 21 thematic
categories. Bearing in mind that most of the publications did not deal exclusively
with one topic, emphasis was placed on those that related to the debates that
emerged in the twentieth century and to contemporary IPE discussions. Hence,
more than one category per article was accepted, but topics that were unrepre-
sentative of IPE were omitted.
The analysis showed that Latin American studies on economic development, a
central debate in the twentieth century, have remained as a central preoccupation
until the present day. The category ‘economic development’ covered 21 per cent
of the articles, and it tied in with other discussions in the same article, such as on
the terms of economic exchange within a structure defined as centre–periphery,
dependency, autonomy, neo-developmentalism, South–South cooperation
or regionalism. Even excluding articles published in the BJPE, the category of
‘economic development’ remained in first place.
However, there was a clear difference when contrasting the number of publica-
tions that recorded ‘macroeconomics’ as a category when including and excluding
the BJPE. Thus, the number of codings for ‘macroeconomics’—which deals with
subjects such as investment, inflation, the monetary system, foreign debt and the
capital account—went from 245 to 20 when the BJPE was excluded, indicating
the latter’s strong economic focus. Although subjects connected with the import
and export of goods and services form part of the macroeconomic analysis, it
was decided to classify these discussions under ‘international trade’ as a separate
category, given the latter’s importance.
Other, less marked, differences are to be found with respect to the category
of ‘financial system’ (186 codings including the BJPE, compared to 76 excluding
it), ‘centre–periphery’ (110 compared to 50), and ‘neo-developmentalism’ (55
compared to 14). This last topic is an emerging debate in the Southern Cone and
first appeared in the twenty-first century; it aims to bring up to date the discus-
sions that were held about development in the middle of the twentieth century,
in the context of today’s highly interconnected and financialized world.56 Other
topics such as ‘dependency’ (141 codings) and ‘autonomy’ (119 codings) remained
in the top ten across all publications. Similarly, the topic ‘neo-liberalism’ remained
in the top ten despite the number of codings falling from 346 for the full sample to
199 excluding the BJPE. These traditional topics in academic discussions of Latin
American IPE have remained applicable through debates about international trade
and asymmetrical economic relations, in particular those that relate to the US.
In the publications studied there was a predominant pattern of expounding on
regionally based theories, but the debates of mainstream IPE were also discern-
ible. These have permeated Latin American IPE since the 1990s, given that many
56
Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira, ‘From classical developmentalism and post-Keynesian macroeconomics to new
developmentalism’, Brazilian Journal of Political Economy 39: 2, 2019, pp. 187–210, https://doi.org/10.1590/0101-
31572019-2966; Fernando J. Cardim de Carvalho, ‘Financial flows and the new developmentalism’, Brazilian
Journal of Political Economy 38: 1, 2018, pp. 115–24, https://doi.org/10.1590/0101-31572018v38n01a07; Jan Kregel,
‘Reflections on the old and new developmentalism’, Brazilian Journal of Political Economy 38: 1, 2018, pp. 70–75,
https://doi.org/10.1590/0101-31572018v38n01a04.

13
International Affairs 100: 1, 2024

INTA100_1_QuiliconiSilva.indd 13 11/27/23 3:08 PM

 Cintia Quiliconi and Julissa Castro Silva
current established Latin American scholars undertook their graduate studies in
the global North. However, mainstream IPE debates do not appear at the core
of regional publications; there is a two-way neglect, given that IPE in the global
North seems to analyse different phenomena. It is true that whereas mainstream
IPE has predominant gatekeeping dynamics, Latin American IPE has also devel-
oped its own traditions and debates. The way IPE developed in the Anglo-Saxon
sphere set the main bases of its study in other regions, focusing on the way markets
and power operate worldwide. However, with respect to the way IPE devel-
oped in Latin America, particularities related to discussions of development and
asymmetries emerged, as did a whole set of conceptualizations and questions that
differ considerably from those in the mainstream.
Figure 1 showed the greater or lesser incidence of discussions on a series of topics
in Latin American academic output on IPE over the studied period. However, the
regional classification does not necessarily coincide with the comparable national
figures for each of the five Latin American countries. Figure 2 shows the preva-
lence of the different topics in each country analysed.
As figure 2 shows, the journals based in Argentina, Brazil and Colombia have
prioritized articles on the topic of ‘economic development’, which is the leading
category in each of these countries. However, the next most commonly coded
subjects—which can be assumed to be considered as next in importance—vary in
each case. While in Argentina ‘regionalism’ is the second most commonly empha-
sized category, in Brazil ‘macroeconomics’ ranks second, while Colombia targets its
analysis on its relations with the US. In addition, a significant subject in Colombia,
but which does not code highly for the other countries, is ‘illegal economy’.
In spite of the geographical distance between Chile and Mexico, there is a
subject alignment between these two countries in relation to the most commonly
coded topics under analysis. Publications in both countries have highlighted
‘international trade’, ‘economic development’ and ‘regionalism’ in that order,
indicating a strong relationship between academic debate and the international
insertion strategy supported by these countries based on free trade.
It is worth mentioning that one subject which consistently ranks highly for
every country is ‘regionalism’. This can be explained given the multiple affilia-
tions and memberships that Latin American countries have in regional schemes
and which often they share. Similarly, ‘United States’ and ‘globalization’ represent
topics of discussion that are of mutual interest among the countries in our study.
However, Colombia’s interest in the discussion of these topics stands out, with a
total of 101 articles being coded to either or both categories (56 to ‘United States’
and 45 to ‘globalization’, followed respectively by Mexico (39 categorizations for
‘United States’) and Chile (40 for ‘globalization’).
Thus, Mexico trails Colombia in terms of the number of articles in its publica-
tions that examine the subject of bilateral relations with the US. Despite the impor-
tance that the US has for Mexico, the subject is often not dealt with within the topic
of bilateral economic relations, but rather under articles focused on the NAFTA or
its successor, the USMCA, which fall into the subject area of ‘regionalism’.

14
International Affairs 100: 1, 2024

INTA100_1_QuiliconiSilva.indd 14 11/27/23 3:08 PM

 Latin American International Political Economy
Figure 2: Main IPE topics coded by country, 2000–2021
Argentina Economic Brazil Economic
development development
120 600
International Autonomy 500 Macroeconomics
100 Regionalism
organization 400
80
60 300
Globalization 200 Financial system
Dependency 40 Neo-liberalism
100
20
0
0
United States Neo-liberalism
Autonomy International trade

International
Regionalism
organization
Globalization United States
International
South–South trade
cooperation

Chile International trade Mexico International trade

100 80
Economic Economic
Companies 80 China 70
development 60 development
60 50
40
Dependency 40 Regionalism Globalization 30 Regionalism
20 20
0 10
0
China Globalization
Dependency United States

China–Latin
Neo-liberalism
America Financial system Neo-liberalism
United States
Companies
Economic
Colombia development
80
Companies United States
60
40
China–Latin
Neo-liberalism
America 20
0

Dependency Globalization

International
Regionalism
trade
Illegal economy

In addition, although it is notable that Mexico and Brazil recorded relatively

low codings for ‘globalization’, while the other three countries retained a relatively
similar interest in this category, this is due to the fact that they have substantial
domestic markets. Moreover, it should be remembered that in the case of Mexico
the most important links in terms of regional value chains have come through
NAFTA/USMCA. The US accounts for 85 per cent of Mexico’s foreign trade,
and therefore this agreement (coded under ‘regionalism’, as seen above) is the main
topic of discussion. Conversely, Brazilian publications have retained their greater
focus of analysis on domestic economic policies and development rather than on
external relations, given, first, the limited relevance of international trade within
Brazil’s economy and, second, that the country is among the most protectionist
of the large emerging markets.57
57
Cynthia Arnson and Jorge Heine, ‘Puentes sobre el Pacífico: América Latina y Asia en el nuevo siglo’, in
15
International Affairs 100: 1, 2024

INTA100_1_QuiliconiSilva.indd 15 11/27/23 3:08 PM

 Cintia Quiliconi and Julissa Castro Silva
Both the general analysis and the country-by-country comparisons show that
beyond the predominance of the practical orientation of the topics on which the
studies on IPE in Latin America are focused, together with development as a central
concept, there is no single regional identity in terms of the agenda of interest dealt
with by the publications. However, a number of ‘hubs’ can be discerned, based
on the top five coded categories in each country’s publications. Two hubs have
been identified: the first corresponds to Argentina and Brazil, countries that show
greater subject linkages and form a relatively solid hub based on 12 IPE topics58
among the 21 considered. It is interesting to note the shared importance in these
two countries of subjects such as economic development, autonomy, dependency
and centre–periphery, indicating the continuing currency of discussions that were
the focus of studies on Latin American IPE in the twentieth century. By contrast,
Chile and Mexico connect as another hub, but on a much more limited basis of
only four shared topics.59 They only surpass Argentina and Brazil on the topic
of ‘international trade’ if the BJPE is excluded from the analysis. The emphasis
placed by publications in these two countries on this particular topic is connected
to their mutual practice of a policy of economic openness.
In subject terms Colombia is not linked in its analyses with any other country;
instead, it offers its own agenda concerning the category ‘illegal economy’, as
mentioned above. This category has particular significance in Colombia, not only
because of the emphasis that civil conflict has placed on its national agenda, but
also because of the drug-trafficking and other activities that have arisen from it.
The specificities of this case show the need to develop a more in-depth study of
the theory and practice of IPE in the Andean sub-region.
Another aspect that was analysed in our efforts to establish the specific charac-
teristics of Latin American IPE concerns is who has written about it and how
they have done so. As with any other discipline, the subfield of IPE belongs to
those who practise it.60 Hence, it is appropriate to examine the assumed gender of
the authors and whether their publications are collaborative or not, as well as to
understand the objectives behind the articles in theoretical–empirical terms, with
the aim of revealing the specific characteristics of Latin American IPE.
The results of this study show that IPE in Latin America is dominated by authors
assumed to be men, who produced 67 per cent of the articles analysed (1,105 publi-
cations in total, of which 862 were sole-authored and 243 co-authored between
authors assumed to be male). 20 per cent of the publications were by authors
assumed to be women (331 articles, 285 being sole-authored and 46 co-authored)
and 13 per cent (224 articles) were assumed to have been co-authored by men
and women. Of the total number of co-authored publications (513) the greatest
number were by authors assumed to be male (47 per cent, or 243 articles), although
Cynthia Arnson, Jorge Heine and Christine Zaino, eds, Puentes sobre el Pacífico: Latinoamérica y Asia en el nuevo
siglo (Washington DC and Lima: Wilson Center and Universidad del Pacífico, 2015), pp. 19–44.
58
These are: economic development, regionalism, international organization, South–South cooperation, China,
autonomy, dependency, macroeconomics, centre–periphery, semi-periphery, BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India,
China and South Africa) and IBSA (a grouping of India, Brazil and South Africa).
59
These are: regionalism, international organization, international trade and macroeconomics.
60
Munck and Snyder, ‘Who publishes in comparative politics?’.
16
International Affairs 100: 1, 2024

INTA100_1_QuiliconiSilva.indd 16 11/27/23 3:08 PM

 Latin American International Political Economy
collaborations between authors of both/all genders (44 per cent, 224 articles) were
also important. By contrast, collaboration between authors assumed to be women
was low (at 9 per cent, or 46 articles). It can be inferred from these figures that
women prefer to publish sole-authored articles, but when they collaborate as
co-authors they prefer to do so with men more often than with female colleagues.
The comparative analysis of the journals by country reveals important details,
such as in which countries there is a greater equality of authorship according to
assumed gender. In this respect, Argentina stands out from the rest of the countries
studied with a similar proportion of articles written by authors assumed to be
men (57 per cent) and women (43 per cent). Although authors assumed to be men
have a predominance in every case, the difference is most marked in Brazil, where
authors assumed to be men account for 82 per cent of articles; the corresponding
figure is 76 per cent in Chile, 74 per cent in Colombia and 69 per cent in Mexico.
The geographical location of the authors was also studied, as indicated by
their institutional affiliation. This made it possible to identify the interconnec-
tion of subjects with the people who are writing about them. The results show
that authors, regardless of their assumed gender, publish predominantly in the
countries in which they have a national affiliation. In the analysis there is a
predominant pattern in the articles produced by Latin American institutions in
the journals of the region, representing 79 per cent of the total number of publi-
cations on IPE, and this is likely to be connected to the low level of internation-
alization of the journals analysed, as well as language barriers. The second region
represented is Europe, with 13 per cent, and from this it can be concluded that
Europe is the leading referent for Latin American IPE at the global level, given
the limited participation of authors from other continents. For example, the US
(4 per cent) and Canada (0.7 per cent) have low rates of participation in the total
number of publications.
The methods and approaches used by the authors to develop the discussions
that set the agenda for Latin American IPE provide some core features: the knowl-
edge generated is highly qualitative (94 per cent) and is mostly presented through
case-studies (53 per cent) that to a large extent are concerned with the national
and the international policy of the countries studied, or others which maintain
links with them. A comparative analysis appears in 13 per cent of the publications
and, in turn, indicates the dynamics that different players operate around a partic-
ular subject. Within the methods referred to, as well as through other referents
such as historical, bibliographical and normative methods, the predominant one
is practice-orientated and also has a close relationship with policy formulation.
There are often analyses of policy failures connected with the crises that the region
has faced, especially in the economic sphere, and these therefore serve as ex post
analyses that examine, respond, and react to the countries’ policies.
Within these debates, the articles published in the journals analysed have dealt
with different policies that emerged during the economic depression of 1930,61 the
61
Marcelo de Paiva Abreu, ‘Foreign debt policies in South America, 1929–1945’, Brazilian Journal of Political
Economy 20: 3, 2000, pp. 253–66, https://doi.org/10.1590/0101-31572000-1082; Pedro Cezar Dutra Fonseca,
17
International Affairs 100: 1, 2024

INTA100_1_QuiliconiSilva.indd 17 11/27/23 3:08 PM

 Cintia Quiliconi and Julissa Castro Silva
failings of import substituting industrialization (ISI),62 the debt crisis and struc-
tural adjustment programmes,63 the financial crisis of the 1990s64 and the financial
crisis which began in 2008.65 Recently noteworthy debates have centred on the
end of the raw materials boom and the trade war between China and the US,
within the discussions that have led to a rethinking about Latin America’s trade
relationships with those extraregional players.66 Overall, the objective was to
understand the importance of these phenomena in the policies of Latin American
countries, and also to expose their failings; for example, the failure of the anti-
drugs policy in a number of Latin American countries67 or the setbacks to Latin
American regionalism.68 When the BJPE is excluded, the theoretical approach
(21 per cent) comes second in researchers’ preferences, not necessarily in order to
create new theories but rather to provide a theoretical framework that explains
the empirical analysis. In that vein, we find a growing debate in Brazil, and to a
lesser extent in Argentina, around neo-developmentalism. Luiz Carlos Bresser-
Pereira, a former Brazilian finance minister, academic and editor of the BJPE,

‘Sobre a intencionalidade da política industrializante do Brasil na década de 1930’, Revista de Economia Política
23: 1, 2003, pp. 138–53, https://doi.org/10.1590/0101-31572003-0720.
62
Anil Hira, ‘Did ISI fail and is neoliberalism the answer for Latin America? Re-assessing common wisdom
regarding economic policies in the region’, Brazilian Journal of Political Economy 27: 3, 2007, pp. 345–56, https://
doi.org/10.1590/S0101-31572007000300002; María de Lourdes Rollemberg Mollo and Pedro Cezar Dutra
Fonseca, ‘Desenvolvimentismo e novo-desenvolvimentismo: raízes teóricas e precisões conceituais’, Revista
de Economia Política 33: 2, 2013, pp. 222–39, https://doi.org/10.1590/S0101-31572013000200002.
63
Fernando J. Cardim de Carvalho, ‘The changing role and strategies of the IMF and the perspectives for the
emerging countries’, Brazilian Journal of Political Economy 20: 1, 2000, pp. 3–18, https://doi.org/10.1590/0101-
31572000-1065.
64
Roberto Frenkel, ‘Globalización y crisis financieras en América Latina’, Revista de Economia Política 23: 3, 2003,
pp. 437–55, https://doi.org/10.1590/0101-31572004-0671.
65
Aaron Tauss, ‘Contextualizing the current crisis: post-Fordism, neoliberal restructuring, and financialization’,
Colombia Internacional, vol. 76, 2012, pp. 51–79, https://doi.org/10.7440/colombiaint76.2012.03.
66
Erika Judith Barzola and Paola Andrea Baroni, ‘El acercamiento de China a América del Sur’, Colombia Inter-
nacional, vol. 93, 2018, pp. 119–45, https://doi.org/10.7440/colombiaint93.2018.05; Roberto Goulart Meneses
and Milton Carlos Bragatti, ‘Dragon in the “backyard”: China’s investment and trade in Latin America in the
context of crisis’, Brazilian Journal of Political Economy 40: 3, 2020, pp. 446–61, https://doi.org/10.1590/0101-
31572020-2963; Daniel Liebetreu, ‘¿Dependencia con características chinas? Un estudio de caso de la inversión
china en Chile ’, Cuadernos de Política Exterior Argentina, vol. 133, 2021, pp. 81–102, https://doi.org/10.35305/
cc.vi133.111; Gabriel Esteban Merino, ‘Guerra comercial y América Latina’, Revista de Relaciones Internacionales
de la UNAM, vol. 134, 2019, pp. 67–98, https://www.revistas.unam.mx/index.php/rri/article/view/70083;
Sandra Zapata and Aldo Martínez-Hernández, ‘La política exterior latinoamericana ante la potencia
hegemónica de Estados Unidos y la potencia emergente de China’, Colombia Internacional, vol. 104, 2020,
pp. 63–93, https://doi.org/10.7440/colombiaint104.2020.03.
67
Daniel Alejandro Cieza, ‘Economía ilícita, control social y violencia: notas sobre el crimen organizado y
consecuencias del narcotráfico y su represión en algunos países latinoamericanos’, Relaciones Internacionales
18: 37, 2009, pp. 111–30, https://revistas.unlp.edu.ar/RRII-IRI/article/view/1310; Wanderley dos Reis Nasci-
mento Júnior and Rafaela Cristina Silva de Souza, ‘Narcoterrorismo e neoliberalismo: condicionamentos e
(re) enquadramentos do conflito social colombiano’, Relaciones Internacionales 30: 61, 2021, pp. 123–43, https://
doi.org/10.24215/23142766e138.
68
Arturo Cancino Cadena and Carolina Albornoz Herrán, ‘La integración regional como instrumento de
desarrollo para América Latina’, Colombia Internacional, vol. 66, 2007, pp. 120–46, https://doi.org/10.7440/
colombiaint66.2007.06; Luciana Gil, ‘La industria manufacturera Argentina desde los inicios del MERCO-
SUR: an approach to trade conflicts (1991–2008)’, Relaciones Internacionales 29: 59, 2020, pp. 132–54, https://
doi.org/10.24215/23142766e105; Arturo Oropeza García, ‘El TLCAN y la necesidad de su replanteamiento’,
Revista de Estudios Internacionales 38: 149, 2005, pp. 67–76, https://doi.org/10.5354/0719-3769.2005.14510; Cintia
Quiliconi and Raúl Salgado Espinoza, ‘Latin American integration: regionalism à la carte in a multipolar
world?’, Colombia Internacional, vol. 92, 2017, pp. 15–41, https://doi.org/10.7440/colombiaint92.2017.01; Ian
Thomson, ‘El ferrocarril transandino: un desastre financiero de cien años que todavía atrae a los inversores’,
Revista de Estudios Internacionales 38: 148, 2005, pp. 67–76, https://doi.org/10.5354/0719-3769.2005.14423.
18
International Affairs 100: 1, 2024

INTA100_1_QuiliconiSilva.indd 18 11/27/23 3:08 PM

 Latin American International Political Economy
offers neo-developmentalism as a ‘third way’ between the neo-liberal Washington
Consensus and the ideas around development which were conceived from within
in the context of the ISI of the 1970s.69

Conclusions
The development of IPE in Latin America in the twenty-first century has not
taken it very far from its origins as a subfield. Different strategies are at play in the
academic output of Latin America and of the periphery in general. On the one
hand, there are the academic elites who usually undertook at least their graduate
studies in the global North, who write in English and publish with effort in
mainstream journals, with the aim of joining international networks, but often
sacrificing local visibility. These authors, who constitute a minority across Latin
America, conform to the standards of knowledge production in mainstream IPE.
On the other hand, there are the academics who write in their mother tongue and
publish in regional journals that do not appear in the key indices of the North, but
who in doing so generate discussions and debates in the local academic commu-
nity that are firmly rooted in the analysis of policies and the Latin American IPE
tradition.70 The analysis in this article has presented the important local output
in the subfield of IPE over the last twenty years. In other words, although the IR
journals of Latin America occupy a peripheral and marginal place in mainstream
rankings and debates, this does not invalidate the high standard of their output and
their scientific–academic quality. Hence, it is hoped that this study contributes to
the open debate about the establishment of a global IPE by offering an in-depth
analysis of this field of study in the region from its main subjects and, associated
with that, of the characteristics that define its authors and its geographical roots.
This two-way neglect between mainstream and Latin American IPE has become
an asymmetric dynamic since internationalization of academic standards in Latin
America started to increasingly reward publications and training in the global
North to the detriment of local autonomy. This generates an increasing intel-
lectual dependency, given the lack of dialogue and the need for scholars based in
Latin America to reach international standards. The focus that this article places
on Latin America and its journals shows the dissonance between what is published
in mainstream IPE and what is being discussed on the ground, pointing out that
there is a left-out body of scholars who, despite their own traditions, increasingly
try to look beyond them in order to overcome the two-way neglect from the past.
This article shows that both the place and the context have contributed
independent knowledge to studies of IPE in the region, irrespective of the gender
of the authors. Those who have published have retained their national affilia-
tions and offer limited ties of regional and international interconnection at the
69
Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira, ‘Five models of capitalism’, Brazilian Journal of Political Economy 32: 1, 2012,
pp. 21–32, https://doi.org/10.1590/S0101-31572012000100002.
70
Fernanda Beigel, ‘Las relaciones de poder en la ciencia mundial: un anti-ranking para conocer la ciencia produ-
cida en la periferia’, Nueva Sociedad, vol. 274, 2018, p. 13–28, https://nuso.org/articulo/las-relaciones-de-poder-
en-la-ciencia-mundial/.
19
International Affairs 100: 1, 2024

INTA100_1_QuiliconiSilva.indd 19 11/27/23 3:08 PM

 Cintia Quiliconi and Julissa Castro Silva
level of co-authorship. The predominance of authors located in South and North
America, particularly in Mexico, with the same distribution as the journals used
for this research, leads to a consideration of the processes whereby knowledge is
accrued at a national level. In other words, the thinking and the writing come
from the region and are intended for the region, with regard to the geographical
setting which is closest to where the authors practise professionally. In this way
there is a strong relationship between the authors’ geographical localization and
the topics published, most of which are rooted in the region.
The empirical analysis indicates that, despite the fact that the field of IPE in
Latin America is dominated by male academic output, there has been no indication
of any subject differentiation between genders. Both men and women in different
proportions have engaged with the intellectual tradition of Latin American IPE
from the 1950s and 1960s as well as with more recent debates. Concepts such
as ‘economic development’, which had a strong presence in twentieth-century
discussions, including prior to the formal inception of IPE in the Anglo-Saxon
arena, have remained a key concern in the academic thinking of the new century.
Similarly, topics such as autonomy, dependency or centre–periphery have
remained constantly under review. For its part, regionalism remains a central topic
of Latin American international insertion, whether in the context of harmoniza-
tion or in opposition to liberalism or to the US.71
This production of articles, to which other, more recent, topics have been
added—such as the relationship of China with the region, South–South cooper-
ation or the illegal economy—show a markedly qualitative mode of inference
as against quantitative or mixed methods. Similarly, case-studies have been the
preferred principal method for the provision of a theoretical/empirical analysis
that may connect with the domestic and/or international context with which they
are concerned. Thus, as Leonardo Ramos and Marina Scotelaro,72 and Arlene
Tickner,73 have indicated, what has been captured is the pre-eminence of the
practical in academic analysis, thereby confirming a great paradox: although the
South is criticized for its lack of theoretical development, in the North they are
still discussing how to connect the theoretical with the implementation of policy.
A detailed and sensitive understanding of the context is key for the opening
of a dialogue about how concepts and ideas travel across regions and cultures,74
thereby widening the scope of the field of IPE. The orientation of Latin American
IPE retains a close relationship with the formulation of policies that often examine
failures of policy relating to different crisis contexts that the region has faced,
especially in the economic sphere. Hence, Latin American IPE comes across as
practical in its thinking and problem-solving in its objectives, given the needs of
the countries in which it has developed. Far from appearing to be defunct, it is
an active and constantly developing debate which deserves proper recognition
beyond the transatlantic domination of IPE.
71
Riggirozzi and Tussie, The rise of post-hegemonic regionalism.
72
Ramos and Scotelaro, ‘O estado da arte da EPI no Brasil’.
73
Tickner, ‘Latin American IR and the primacy of lo práctico’.
74
Deciancio and Quiliconi, ‘Widening the “global conversation”’; Narlikar, ‘“Because they matter”’.
20
International Affairs 100: 1, 2024

INTA100_1_QuiliconiSilva.indd 20 11/27/23 3:08 PM