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State Institutions, Ideology, and Autonomous Technological Development: Computers and Nuclear Energy in Argentina and Brazil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2022

Emanuel Adler
Emanuel Adler*
Affiliation:
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
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This article will examine the efforts made by Argentina and Brazil to attain a measure of technological autonomy in the fields of computers and nuclear energy. Grieco's study of the Indian computer industry and separate studies of the Brazilian computer industry by Evans and Adler have shown the inadequacy of the arguments raised by the dependency literature, namely, that in areas of highly sophisticated technology, owned mainly by multinational corporations, the developing country will fail in any attempt to achieve domestic technological development.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , 1988 , pp. 59 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 by Latin American Research Review

Footnotes

*

I wish to thank the anonymous LARR referees, the Institute of International Studies and the Center for Latin American Studies in Berkeley, the Institute for the Study of World Politics in New York, the Tinker Foundation, and the Leonard Davis Institute of International Relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

References

Notes

1. Joseph M. Grieco, Between Dependency and Autonomy: India's Experience with the International Computer Industry (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984).

2. Peter B. Evans, “State, Capital, and the Transformation of Dependence: The Brazilian Computer Case,” World Development 14, no. 7 (1986):791-808; and Emanuel Adler, “Ideological ‘Guerrillas’ and the Quest for Technological Autonomy: Brazil's Domestic Computer Industry,” International Organization 40, no. 3 (Summer 1986):673–705. See also Emanuel Adler, The Power of Ideology: The Quest for Technological Autonomy in Argentina and Brazil (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987).

3. “By the late 1970s,” wrote Martin Fransman, “the ‘rigid’ dependency view showed signs of becoming what [Imre] Lakatos refers to as a ‘degenerating scientific research program’: The ‘hard core’ of this program, containing amongst others the view that indigenous technological development was impossible as a result of the unavoidable reliance of Third World countries on imported technology, seemed increasingly to be untenable. In large part, the dependency program's degeneracy was attributable to its inability to explain … the apparent economic success of a number of more industrialized Third World countries.” Martin Fransman, “Conceptualizing Technical Change in the Third World in the 1980s: An Interpretive Survey,” Journal of Development Studies 21, no. 4 (July 1985):607-8.

4. See Peter Evans, Dependent Development: The Alliance of Multinational, State, and Local Capital in Brazil (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979).

5. Albert Hirschman reminds us that a relationship exists between an initial asymmetry—such as the dependency of the weak and poor on the strong and rich—and some built-in tendency toward its elimination or reduction. He emphasizes that a basic economic disparity generates a disparity of attention that may favor the dependent country. See Albert O. Hirschman, “Beyond Asymmetry: Critical Notes on Myself as a Young Man and Some Other Old Friends,” in Special Issue on Dependence and Dependency in the Global System, edited by James Caporaso, International Organization 32, no. 1 (Winter 1978):47.

6. Hirschman has pointed out that policymakers may decide to tackle different kinds of problems in accordance with their perception of their countries in the context of international dependency. In Latin America, merely paying attention to the problem is a problem-solving mechanism. Furthermore, observers tend to link problems in such a way as to enhance the attention given to the politically and economically underprivileged. Elaborate theories with a strong ideological content have been used to forge the causal link between privileged and “stepchild” problems. See Albert O. Hirschman, Journeys toward Progress: Studies of Economic Policy-Making in Latin America (New York: Norton, 1973), 229–31. The widely known “Sábato triangle,” a regime for the development of domestic technology and industry based on interrelationships between the state, domestic scientific and technological infrastructure, and domestic industry, is a striking example of such a theory. See Jorge Sábato and Natalio Botana, La ciencia y la tecnología en el desarrollo futuro de América Latina (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1970).

7. Technological and industrial projects can and should be evaluated by such criteria as industrial performance, the reduction of poverty, income inequality and unemployment, and the enhancement of national security. But this study, in trying to answer the paradoxical questions raised above, will focus only on the quest for and partial attainment of domestic technological and industrial development. The autonomy concept used here does not mean total self-reliance but the ability of developing countries to adapt foreign technology and to innovate, so as to substitute domestic technology and products for foreign ones.

8. Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925-1975 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1982), 18.

9. See, for example, David G. Becker, The New Bourgeoisie and the Limits of Dependency: Mining, Class, and Power in “Revolutionary” Peru (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983), 6; Evans, “State, Capital, and the Transformation of Dependence,” 905; and Theda Skocpol, “Bringing the State Back In: Strategies of Analysis in Current Research” in Bringing the State Back In, edited by Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 9–14.

10. Skocpol, “Bringing the State Back In,” 14.

11. Becker, New Bourgeoisie, 6.

12. Douglas C. Bennett and Kenneth E. Sharpe, Transnational Corporations versus the State: The Political Economy of the Mexican Auto Industry (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985), 250.

13. Stephen Toulmin, Human Understanding: The Collective Use and Evolution of Concepts (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972), 350.

14. John S. Odell, U.S. International Monetary Policy: Markets, Power, and Ideas as Sources of Change (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982), 362–63.

15. Lorand B. Szalay and Rita Mae Kelly, “Political Ideology and Subjective Culture: Conceptualization and Empirical Assessment,” American Political Science Review 76, no. 3 (Sept. 1982):585.

16. Gary Gereffi, The Pharmaceutical Industry and Dependency in the Third World (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983), 27–28.

17. Skocpol, “Bringing the State Back In,” 9–10.

18. This statement was taken in an interview with a prominent official in Lima in May of 1980.

19. On the special relationship between technocrats and military regimes in Latin America, see Guillermo O'Donnell, Modernization and Bureaucratic Authoritarianism: Studies in Latin American Politics (Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California, 1973).

20. SEI, Boletim Informativo 3, no. 11 (June-Sept. 1983):10-11.

21. Data News, 15 May 1984, p. 4; and Evans, “State, Capital, and the Transformation of Dependence,” 796.

22. The “economic miracle” refers to the years 1968–1973, when Brazil's gross domestic product (GDP) grew at an average yearly rate of 10.1 percent. See Adler, “Ideological ‘Guerrillas,‘” 682.

23. See Simon Schwartzman, Formação da Comunidade Científica no Brasil (São Paulo: Editora Nacional, 1979), 302.

24. Ricardo A. C. Saur, mimeo issued by the Câmara dos Deputados in Brasília, 1977, on the hearings before the Câmara, p. 16.

25. Ibid., 4.

26. Evans has termed the opportunities generated by international, technological, and market changes moments of transition. See “State, Capital, and the Transformation of Dependence,” 803–4. See also Adler, “Ideological ‘Guerrillas,‘” 682–86.

27. Evans, “State, Capital, and the Transformation of Dependence,” 799.

28. Juan F. Rada, The Impact of Microelectronics and Information Technology: Case Studies in Latin America (Paris: UNESCO, 1982), 57, 70. In 1975 Argentina's electronics industry employed over twenty-one thousand persons, incorporated about 50 percent of value added (1974), compared with 29 percent for the Republic of Korea; and its productivity output per worker was valued at $12,400, compared with $2,450 in the Republic of Korea. The industry's development has been geared essentially to the internal market and has shown a high degree of integration among the different subsectors. Furthermore, its development was based to a great extent on local technology. In 1974 only 17 percent of the firms had entered into technology import contracts, and only 37 percent of the sector's total output was based on foreign technology. During the same year, foreign firms controlled 30 percent of total output. See Rada, Impact of Microelectronics, 58–59.

29. Albert O. Hirschman, Essays in Trespassing: Economics to Politics and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 140. Fracasomanía also means to “shut oneself off from newly emerging cues and insights as well as from the increased confidence in one's capabilities which should otherwise arise.” See Hirschman, journey toward Progress, 245.

30. Oscar Varsavsky, Estilos tecnológicos (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Periferia, 1974); and Marco histórico constructivo (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de America Latina, 1975).

31. These data come from Eugenio Lahera Parada, “FATE y CIFRA: un estudio de caso en difusión y desarrollo de tecnología digital en Argentina,” 1976 manuscript, 5–6, 16, 21.

32. CNEA, transcript of Rear Admiral Carlos Castro Madero's press conference, 1982, “Energía atómica: el uranio de los privados,” Mercado, 11 Nov. 1982, 43–44.

33. Daniel Poneman, Nuclear Power in the Developing World (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1982), 74.

34. Jorge Sábato, “Atomic Energy in Argentina: A Case History,” World Development 1, no. 8 (Aug. 1973):26.

35. See H. Leibovich, J. Coll, and K. Backhaus, “Good Experience of Transferring Technology,” in CNEA, The Argentine Nuclear Development Plan (selected reprints from Nuclear Engineering International, Sept. 1982), Nov. 1982, p. 6; and José Mirabelli, “Argentina: Steady Progress amid National Turbulence,” International Herald Tribune, 30–31 Oct. 1982, p. 9-S.

36. Countries that have signed the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty must fulfill international norms and rules regarding the transfer of nuclear technology. The International Atomic Energy Agency supervises the application of international safeguards.

37. Jorge Sábato, “Atomic Energy in Argentina,” 25; see also his “Energía nuclear en Argentina, autonomía tecnológica y desarrollo industrial,” paper presented at the Seminaron Industrial Energy Management, UNIDO, São Paulo, 18–21 Oct. 1982, 4.

38. Ronald Richter, an Austrian refugee physicist, turned Argentina's nuclear program into a world affair. He was named by President Juan Domingo Perón in 1949 to establish a laboratory on Huemul Island in Lake Nahuel Huapí for research and development on nuclear power. At a press conference in March 1951, Perón told the world that the laboratory had successfully carried out nuclear fusion. The whole affair turned out to be a fiasco, and an investigating committee appointed by Perón described it as a fraud. In 1952 Richter was dismissed and the laboratory was dismantled.

39. Personal interview with Jorge Sábato in Buenos Aires, 30 May 1980. At that time, Sábato was retired from the CNEA and the Bariloche Foundation.

40. Sábato, “Energía nuclear en Argentina,” 3, 5.

41. Poneman, Nuclear Power in the Developing World, 191.

42. Poneman reports that even when the number of planned nuclear plants was being cut, some CNEA top personnel were happy because they feared that too many reactors built too quickly might have jeopardized the entire nuclear effort. Ibid., 184.

43. Ibid., 132.

44. Douglas L. Tweedale, “Argentina,” in Nuclear Power in Developing Countries, edited by James Everett Katz and Onkar S. Marwah (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1982), 92–93.

45. See, for example, Ricardo Guedes Ferreira Pinto, “Liliputianos e Lapucianos: Os Caminhos da Física no Brasil (1810 a 1949),” M. A. thesis, Instituto Universitário de Pesquisas do Rio de Janeiro, 1978; and James W. Rowe, “Science and Politics in Brazil: Background of the 1967 Debate on Nuclear Energy Policy,” in The Social Reality of Scientific Myth, edited by Kalman H. Silvert (New York: American Universities Field Staff, 1969), 115.

46. The Brazilian-West German agreement included four 1245-MW pressurized water reactors, with an option for another four by 1990; the development of facilities for uranium enrichment; a uranium prospecting venture; the construction of a plant to produce fuel elements and a pilot plant for reprocessing nuclear fuel; the establishment of an engineering firm to handle key segments in constructing the plants; and a plant to manufacture large components. The program was estimated at ten billion dollars and was expected to produce ten thousand megawatts of electricity by 1990. To implement the agreement, Brazil set up a governmental company called NUCLEBRAS, which cooperated with the West German companies to create joint ventures. For more information on the Brazil-West German agreement, see República Federativa do Brasil, A Questão Nuclear: Relatório da Comissão Parlamentar de Inquérito do Senado Federal, Resolução 69/78, Diário do Congresso Nacional, sec. 2, supplement to no. 104, Brasília, 17 Aug. 1982 (hereafter cited as 1982 Senate Nuclear Inquiry Report).

47. See Alan Riding, “Brazil's Leader Reports Success in the Enriching of Uranium,” The New York Times, 6 Sept. 1987, p. 25.

48. Veja, 19 Jan. 1983, 74.

49. Poneman, Nuclear Power in the Developing World, 45.

50. “The Nuclear Plan Mushrooms,” Latin American Weekly Report, 31 July 1981, 9.

51. 1982 Senate Nuclear Inquiry Report, p. 92. See also Jacqueline Pitanaguy Romani, “Apoio Institucional a Ciência e Tecnologia no Brasil” (preliminary draft), CET/SUP/CNPq, April 1977; and Maria Cristina Leal, “Caminhos e Descaminhos do Brasil Nuclear, 1945–1958,” M.A. thesis, Instituto Universitário de Pesquisas do Rio de Janeiro, 1982.

52. For more information on the CNEN's first ten years, see Rowe, “Science and Politics in Brazil,” 110–22.

53. Hartmut Krugmann, “The German-Brazilian Nuclear Deal,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 37, no. 2 (Feb. 1981):35.

54. Luiz Pinguelli Rosa, A Política Nuclear e o Caminho das Armas Atômicas (Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 1985), 41.

55. 1982 Senate Nuclear Inquiry Report, p. 259.

56. “A Aventura Nuclear,” O Estado de São Paulo, 18 Oct. 1983, p. 4. The price per installed kilowatt of nuclear-generated electricity was estimated at three thousand dollars, according to Pinguelli Rosa, A Política Nuclear, 41.

57. “Brazilian Nuclear Power: Do-It-Yourself Reprocessing,” The Economist, 24 Jan. 1987, 80.

58. See note 26.

59. Bennett and Sharpe, Transnational Corporations versus the State, 250.