El Estado Ausente: Crisis de Capacidad Institucional, Ruptura de Pactos y la Emergencia de Nuevas Formas de Acción Colectiva en Corrientes (1998-2001)

Abstract

The text analyzes the institutional collapse of the Argentine province of Corrientes as a laboratory case for studying what happens when the state loses its capacity to articulate social life. Using Oszlak's three-level framework, it reconstructs how the combination of fiscal clientelism, political paralysis (three governors in a matter of months), and legislative blockade led to the default on salaries for public employees and retirees, the collapse of health and education services, and the emergence of the "self-convened" movement with roadblocks and the takeover of the Belgrano Bridge. It interprets the federal intervention of December 1999 as a "position-taking" by the national state to reconstitute the shattered distributive and domination pacts. It closes by drawing a parallel between the "Correntinazo" and the 2001 "Argentinazo", presenting the Corrientes crisis as a dress rehearsal for the national collapse.