Autonomía y descentralización en la construcción del Estado argentino (1860-1940): Por una historia política de los conceptos jurídico-administrativos

Abstract

Taking as a starting point a critical position against the uses of the words autonomy and autarchy in Altamira´s works in 1950, this essay focuses on the semantic that the administrative law poured into them during the XX century and the problems and political implications which that involved. Nevertheless, that methodological suggestion called for a deeper reconstruction based on the question of how the displacement of the semantics of those two concepts occurred and which was the bond between that change and the building of the National State. To do that, in this work it was taken as a prolific example the experience of the State-nation building in Argentina during 1860-1940, to witness the role the Administrative Law played in it. That task required not only a contextualization but, at the same time, a consideration about the way in which discourses and political power were related. Therefore this work undertakes a parallel study on the education of lawyers ?the creation of the Administrative Law chair at the University of Buenos Aires; the link between the State and the social question that allowed the consolidation of the first; and finally, a textual study of the concept of autonomy and autarchy in the administrative and constitutional literature written at that time.