The use of default as a boost to heterodox economic policy

Abstract

The defaults of external public debt in the years 2001 in Argentina and 2008 in Ecuador acquire their true meaning when analysed in the context of the social conflicts that characterize the demise of neoliberal policy regimes and the tensions between different fractions of capital for a leading role in conducting the process of accumulation in each country. The processes of debt restructuring and new public borrowing have created the conditions for an impulse in public spending that has stimulated economic growth and facilitated a pacification of social conflict and political instability. The movements in public debt have moreover acted as a lever for a repositioning of the role of the State and the forging of a geopolitical landscape which reflects a new moment in the correlation of social forces and of hegemony in the world economy.