Burocracias Líquidas [Liquid bureaucracies]

Abstract

"El artículo de investigación aborda desde un punto de vista teórico y práctico cómo se construyen capacidades estatales en Agencias de Regulación. La hipótesis es que la Aduana argentina construyó “capacidades” para enfrentar con éxito dos fraudes: el “robo de cables de cobre” y la operación “Maquinaria Agrícola”; ambos fueron de diseño complejo y perpetrados por organizaciones criminales sofisticadas. Lo que permitió al organismo público diseñar y construir respuestas eficaces en ambos casos fue producto de que su accionar fue consistente con el esquema descripto por Malcolm Sparrow denominado “Paradigma Emergente de Agencias Regulatorias” (PEAR) y que se diferencia con modelos de Mano Dura (MD) y Mano Blanda (MB) tradicionales en este tipo de Agencias. El artículo se propone trascender la problemática del caso concreto de la Aduana y que sus conclusiones sean útiles para pensar la construcción de capacidades en agencias regulatorias desde el punto de vista teórico y empírico" ["This article aims to analyze, both from a theoretical and a practical standpoint, how state capacities are build in regulatory agencies and government bureaucracies. The main hypothesis under analysis in this paper is that the Argentine Customs Office built such state capacities in order to “successfully” face two fraudulent business operations called: “the theft of the copper wires” and “operation agricultural machinery”. Both illegal operations were highly complex in their design and were perpetrated by sophisticated criminal organizations. We suggest that what allowed the public agencies to build and develop effective responses in both cases was that its “operation management” and practices were consistent with what Malcolm Sparrow has denominated “Emerging Paradigm in Regulatory Agencies”. Moreover, we find that this model of operation is really different from two other stereotypical manners of operation such as the “Hard Hand”, and “Soft Hand”. Finally, this article seeks to transcend the particular case of the Argentina Customs Office, and we hope that the conclusions reached will be useful at understanding how state capacities are built in other regulatory agencies, both from a practical and a theoretical point of view"]