Studies on Subnational Politics in Argentina: An Overview across Different Disciplines and Perspectives. The Contributions of an Analytical Scale and Its Affinity with an Approach Centered on Political Actors and Their Practices

Abstract

Studies on subnational politics have undergone remarkable development in Argentina in recent years. This article offers an analytical review across different disciplines, identifying lines of research and perspectives on subnational politics.

It shows how this scale of analysis makes it possible to render more complex and to question interpretations of the State, democracy, and political parties, taking into account social and political actors and processes that remain unknown from a “national” perspective. What is ultimately called into question is the very construction of the “national” level itself, considered in its co-constitutive dimensions with provincial political processes.

Finally, the paper reflects on the affinity between a subnational scale of analysis and a theoretical-methodological approach centered on the agency of political actors. It identifies, on the one hand, a fundamentally deductive line of research that addresses political phenomena in terms of variables and, on the other, a line in which the study of subnational political actors, their characteristics, and their practices appears as a path toward generating hypotheses and interpretations about political phenomena.