Social policies strategizing in Latin America: A cognitive return on the regional experience and on the shift of their reference frames

Emphasizing a cognitive approach of the processes of constitution, consolidation and weakening of the Latin American Welfare State model, this paper aims at retracing the historical evolution of public policies’ normative frame of reference that have shaped the ways of State’s economic and social intervention in the semi-industrialized countries of the region –among those Argentina, which had been a “pioneer” on several aspects and pioneered again although differently in the recent period. Its experience of the last thirty years let us illustrate the main questions underlying the framing of this problem area. In other words, the passage from the social to the political question in the framework of economic and financial globalization which seems to strengthen pressures for the States’ alignment, promoting  transnational policies as well as new forms of leadership with differentiated local impacts. In the background of an analysis searching to underscore a comparative perspective at the regional scale, the notions of regulation and deregulation appear in tension at the basis of different transformations of public action and of goals and tools of social intervention. Even more in institutional contexts less stabilized than those of European societies, where the Welfare State forms were built and developed during the second Post-War for strengthening social cohesion. Social protection systems are deeply challenged by financial crisis at present. This approach intends to focus on the social policies and their main trends in this context of restructuring. The goal is to identify regarding to the experience of crisis in Latin America, the social construction and reforms of social policies which took place during and after this period, so to discuss the frame of social relationships between restructuring of social State and contemporary definitions of social policies. Our proposal searches to advance some comparative analytical perspectives of this social policy making and results.