Workers’ factory takeovers and new state policies in Argentina: towards an ‘institutionalisation’ of non-governmental public action?

English In the last decade many Argentine enterprises became bankrupt, inspiring thousands of workers to take them over and resume production by forming cooperatives. In 2004, the Programme for Self-Managed Work became the instrument by which the government ‘institutionalised’ the takeovers, depoliticising the radical aspects of workers’ actions in exchange for financial and technical assistance in pursuit of workers’ objectives of job preservation and self-managed work. This article presents results from (1) an ongoing ESRC research project on ‘The Movement of the Unemployed in Argentina‘(RES-155-25-0007), NGPA Programme, LSE and (2) previous research on social mobilisation and policy change in Argentina (2002–03).