Dr Christopher Wylde

Senior Lecturer - Politics and International Relations
Subject Lead (Research, School of Law and Society)

Email: christopher.wylde@stmarys.ac.uk
Tel: 020 8240 8269

Biography

Dr. Wylde joined the Department of Business, Law, and Society in January 2019 as the Programme Director for Politics and International Relations. His research is on the political economy of development, particularly in post-crisis states, with a focus on the political economy of post 2001 crisis Argentina, and changing meta-theoretical interpretations of those changes.

Chris has published widely on post-crisis Argentina, as well on the rise of the left in the first decade of the 21^st Century in Latin America. These publications include two research monographs: Latin America After Neoliberalism: Developmental Regimes in Post-Crisis States, and Emerging Markets and the State.

The first book is an examination of the so-called ‘pink tide’ that swept across the Latin American continent from the election of Hugo Chávez in 1998, with detailed case studies of Lula’s Brazil and the Kirchner’s Argentina. The book also attempts to provide a meta-theoretical framework - termed the Developmental Regime - derived from the discipline of (international) political economy of development in order to understand, interpret, and illuminate the policy changes identified through fieldwork in both Brazil and Argentina.

The second book seeks to extend and enhance this Developmental Regime approach to develop a robust framework for understanding capitalist states at early stages of development and why they follow certain development trajectories rather than others; contextualised within a Comparative Political Economy approach examining Malaysia and Argentina. This book was short-listed for the BISA-IPEG Annual Book Prize in 2018.

Before joining St. Mary’s Chris worked as an Associate Professor at Richmond, the American International University in London; a Teaching Fellow in International Political Economy at the University of York; a Visiting Lecturer in International Studies at UUM in Malaysia; and as an Investigador Visitante at FLACSO Argentina. He was awarded his PhD by the University of Leeds in 2010, which was on post-crisis Argentine political economy 2003-2007, funded by an ESRC 1+3 studentship.

Teaching

Chris teaches on the Politics and International Relations BA and the Diplomacy and International Relations MA.

Chris currently teaches on courses concerning International Relations theory, Global Governance, Research Methods, and the Political Economy of Development, as well as individual research projects (dissertations) at both undergraduate and post-graduate level.

Academic spotlight

My advice would be to make the most of what the university has to offer in the widest possible sense, to help hone your research skills and facilitate intellectual discovery. This will ultimately help you to decide where you want your degree to take you and what you’re most interested in.

A politics career can take you almost anywhere you want to go, so make sure you keep an open mind when thinking about your future career after your studies.

Read the full interview

Research

Areas of research supervision

The political economy of development
Theory of the state
IPE, and comparative development studies – particularly Argentina and/or Brazil (also Latin America more widely) as well as Malaysia (or SE Asia more widely)

Research profile

Current Research Projects

Chris is currently preparing a manuscript for Rowman & Littlefield on the nature of Power in the Americas from colonisation to the “Pink Tide”. This book will represent the formalisation of his thoughts and lectures from one of his modules that he teaches at Richmond, the American International University in London called “Power in the Americas”.

Chris is also working on exploring the theoretical differences between neo-structuralism and post-neoliberalism. Both concepts have become fashionable when discussing Latin American development and have, to some extent, been used inter-changeably. This research project contents that this should not be the case, and attempts to assess “what’s at stake” in this key contemporary debate in Latin American political economy.

Previous Research Projects

1. Handbook of South American Governance

Governance in South America is signified by strategies pursued by state and non-state actors directed to enhancing (some aspect of) their capabilities and powers of agency. It is about the spaces and the practices available, demanded or created to ‘make politics happen’. This framework lends explanatory power to understand how governance has been defined and practiced in South America.

Pía Riggirozzi and Christopher Wylde bring together leading experts to explore what demands and dilemmas have shaped understanding and practice of governance in South America in and across the region. The Handbook suggests that governance dilemmas of inequitable and unfulfilled political economic governance in South America have been constant historical features, yet addressed and negotiated in different ways.

Building from an introduction to key issues defining governance in South America, this Handbook proceeds to examine institutions, actors and practices in governance focusing on three core processes: evolution of socio-economic and political justice claims as central to the demands of governance; governance frameworks foregrounding particular issues and often privileging particular forms of political practice; and iterative and cumulative processes leading to new demands of governance addressing recognition and identity politics.

This Handbook will be a key reference for those concerned with the study of South America, South American political economy, regional governance, and the politics of development.

2. Emerging Markets and the State

This book, through an analysis of case studies in Latin America and Southeast Asia, sets out to understand the form and function of contemporary states seeking to guide and cajole markets, hoping to stimulate economic growth and generate robust development outcomes.

In the context of contemporary globalization, and the hegemony of a neoliberal mode of capital accumulation, independent state-directed development has moved away from the reach of many emerging markets. Wylde’s analysis reveals that, contrary to much of the literature espousing the ‘end of the state’, the role of the state in the 21st century development process continues to be of pivotal importance.

3. De la Crisis de 2001 al Kirchnerismo

Comprehensively revised and updated in the context of the rise of Mauricio Macri, this translated version of Argentina since the 2001 crisis is published by leading Argentine academic publisher Prometeo.

Focusing on the Kirchner's as a political regime and using the election of Mauricio Macri to the presidency of Argentina as a key point of departure, this book looks to understand the Kirchner era in its entirety, recognising that its form and character were fundamentally shaped by the nature of the 2001 crisis.

4. Argentina since the 2001 crisis

Bringing together contributions from both emerging and established scholars, this volume explores the myriad effects and legacies of Argentina’s 2001-02 social, economic and political implosion and is unique in its interrogation of the nature and effects of crisis. It seeks to reject false dichotomies of ‘old’ and ‘new’; instead synthesizing them in order to incorporate both elements of continuity and elements of change into its analysis.

The authors assert that responses to crisis do not only involve the merging of old and new, but that they are also, concurrently responses to both old and new problems – many of which were evident in the 1990s and earlier.

Crisis is shown to manifest itself in a number of realms – political, economic, social – and the responses to it and associated recovery are thus analyzed and interpreted through a myriad of lenses in order to adequately capture the nature of the salient dynamics that are present within them.

In this way, the volume seeks to adopt a more nuanced approach to analyzing Argentina since 2001 as well as crisis more generally.

5. Latin America After Neoliberalism

The multiple-faceted crisis of 2001-02 in Argentina spelled the end of IMF domination in Argentine economic policy. The post-crisis administration of Nestor Kirchner abandoned IMF tutelage and instead embraced the principles of neodesarrollismo, fundamentally reforming the role of the state in the market, in society, and in its intersection with global capital.

Greater state involvement in the market and a renegotiation of the Peronist social contract served to fundamentally alter the political economy of post-crisis Argentina, and facilitated a dramatic economic recovery that continued until the global financial crisis from 2007 onwards.

Brazil’s post crisis (1998) economic performance has also been commendable, and now represents one of the countries that is considered to be a powerhouse of the future (exemplified by its ‘BRIC’ status).

As in Argentina, there have been important economic changes that have facilitated changes in Brazilian political economy in general, making a transition from neoliberal policies and forms of political economy in the 1990s to a distinctive new form of political economy under the premiership of Lula.

Such recoveries bring into question the continuing efficacy of neoliberal political economy in post-crisis states, and sharpen focus on the role of the ‘developmental regime’. This book therefore seeks to place the Argentine crisis of 2001/02 and the Brazilian crisis of 1998 in the context of crisis in general, both in regional and global settings.

The post-crisis responses of Argentina and Brazil will be analysed in respect of regional responses – given the regional process characterised as the ‘Rise of the Pink Tide’, and identify any theoretical implications that result from such an investigation.

In addition, such processes will be analysed from a global perspective – comparing and contrasting post-crisis political economy in Latin America with that in East Asia and Europe/US. Therefore, can the developmental regime model be applied to Latin America more broadly, and does it represent a helpful meta-theoretical model for understanding contemporary Latin American political economy? What are the implications for post-crisis recovery of the Developmental Regime model when compared to other forms of political economy: namely neoliberalism.

Publications

Research Monographs

Wylde, C. (2018) Emerging Markets and the State: Post-neoliberal Regimes in Latin America and Asia (London: PalgraveMacmillan). Short-Listed for the BISA Annual Book Prize 2018
Wylde, C. (2012) Latin America After Neoliberalism: Developmental Regimes in Post-Crisis States (London: PalgraveMacmillan). Nominated for the BISA-IPEG Annual Book Prize 2013

Peer Reviewed Journal Articles

Wylde, C. (2018) ‘Twenty-First Century Developmental States? Argentina under the Kirchners’, Third World Quarterly, 39(6), 1115-1132.
Wylde, C. (2016) 'Post-Neoliberal Developmental Regimes in Latin America: Argentina under Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner', New Political Economy, 21(3), 322-341.
Wylde, C. (2014) ‘The Developmental State is dead, long live the Developmental Regime! Interpreting Nestór Kirchner’s Argentina 2003-2007, Journal of International Relations and Development, 17(2), 191-219.
Wylde, C. (2012) ‘Continuidad o cambio?: Política económica argentina posterior a la crisis y el gobierno de Néstor Kirchner, 2003-2007’, Íconos: Revista de Ciencias Sociales, Vol. 43, May, 109-133.
Wylde, C. (2011) ‘State, Society, and Markets in Argentina: The Political Economy of Neodesarrollismo under Néstor Kirchner, 2003-2007’, Bulletin of Latin American Research, 30(4), 436-452.

Edited volumes

Wylde, C. & Riggirozzi, P. (2018) The Handbook of South American Governance (London: Routledge).
Wylde, C., Levey, C. & Ozarow, D. (2015) De la Crisis del 2001 al Kirchnerismo: Cambios y Continuidades (Buenos Aires: Prometeo).
Wylde, C., Levey, C., & Ozarow, D. (2014) ‘Argentina Since the 2001 Crisis: Recovering the Past, Reclaiming the Future’ (London: PalgraveMacmillan).

Book Chapters

Wylde, C. (forthcoming) 'Post-neoliberalism' in Wylde, C. and Riggirozzi, P. (eds.) The Handbook of South American Governance (London: Routledge).
Wylde, C. (2016) ‘The Developmental State’ in Grugel, J. & Hammett, D. (eds.) The Handbook of International Development (London: PalgraveMacmillan).
Wylde, C. (2015) Continuidad y cambio en la interpretación de los cambios rotundos: reexaminando la crisis argentina de 2001-2002, in Wylde, C., Levey, C., & Ozarow, D. (eds.) ‘De la Crisis del 2001 al Kirchnerismo: Camnbios y Continuidades (Buenos Aires: Prometeo).
Wylde, C., Levey, C., & Ozarow, D. (2015) ‘Un repaso a la crisis argentina de 2001: cambios y continuidades’, in Wylde,C., Levey, C., & Ozarow, D. (eds.) ‘De la Crisis del 2001 al Kirchnerismo: Camnbios y Continuidades (Buenos Aires: Prometeo).
Wylde, C. (2014) 'Revisiting the Argentine Crisis a Decade on: Changes and Continuities?', in Wylde, C., Levey, C., & Ozarow, D. ‘Argentina Since the 2001 Crisis: Recovering the Past, Reclaiming the Future’ (London: PalgraveMacmillan).
Wylde, C. (2014) ‘Causes of the Argentine Financial Crisis: Economic Imbalance and Social Upheaval’, in Wylde, C., Levey, C., & Ozarow, D. ‘Argentina Since the 2001 Crisis: Recovering the Past, Reclaiming the Future’ (London: PalgraveMacmillan).
Wylde, C. (2013) ‘International Political Economy’, in Sani, M.A. & Zengeni, K.T. (eds.) International Relations, (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Wylde, C. (2012) ‘State-Civil Society Relations in Post-Crisis Argentina’, in B. Cannon & P. Kirby (eds.) Civil Society and the State in Left-Led Latin America: Challenges and Limitations to Democratisation, (London: Zed).

Working Papers

Wylde, C. (2010) Argentina, Kirchner, and Neodesarrollismo: The Impact of the 2001 Financial Crisis on Argentine Development 2003-2007, Documento de Trabajo No. 46, Area de Relaciones Internacionales, FLACSO/Argentina.
Wylde, C. (2010) Continuity or Change?: Néstor Kirchner and Argentine Economic Policy 2003-2007, Documento de Trabajo No. 44, Área de Relaciones Internacionales, FLACSO/Argentina.

Book Reviews

Wylde, C. (2016) Democracy Against Neoliberalism in Argentina and Brazil, Ferrero, J.P., London: PalgraveMacmillan, Journal of Latin American Studies.
Wylde, C. (2015) Rethinking Latin America: Development, Hegemony, and Social Transformation, Munck, R., London: PalgraveMacmillan, Journal of Latin American Studies, 47(3).
Wylde, C. (2013) Populism in Europe and the Americas: Threat or Corrective for Democracy? Muddle, C. and Kaltwasser, C.R. (eds.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012, Latin American Politics and Society, 55(4).
Wylde, C. (2013) Owning Development: Creating policy norms in the IMF and World Bank, Park, S. & Vetterlein, A. (eds.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012, International Development Planning Review, 35(4).
Wylde, C. (2010) What’s Left in Latin America? Regime Change in New Times, Petras, J. & Veltmeyer, H. (Surrey: Ashgate), 2009, European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Vol. 88 (October).

Select Conference Papers

Wylde, C. (2016) ‘The Beginning of the End, or the end of the Beginning? Post-neoliberalism in Latin America, LASA, New York.
Wylde, C. (2015) ‘US-Latin American Relations in the Twenty-First Century’, The Search for a New Global Balance: America’s Changing Role in the World Conference, Salzburg.
Wylde, C. (2015) ‘Post-Neoliberal Developmental Regimes in Latin America: Argentina under Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’, LASA, San Juan.
Wylde, C. (2014) ‘The IPE of Post-neoliberalism: Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in Argentina’, ISA-FLACSO Annual Conference, Buenos Aires.
Wylde, C. (2014) ‘Argentina since 2001: Reclaiming the Past, Recovering the Future’, SLAS Annual Conference, Birkbeck University, London.
Wylde, C. (2013) The political economy of post-neoliberal Latin America: Developmental Regimes in Post-Crisis Argentina and Brazil, CIPR Workshop, New Orleans.
Wylde, C. (2012) ‘Challenging the Left/Right Divide in Malaysia: A politico-business class in a pseudo democracy’, IPSA Annual Conference, Madrid.
Wylde, C. (2012) ‘The beginning of the end or the end of the beginning? Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Kirchnerismo, and the changing relationships of the Argentine state’, SLAS Annual Conference, Sheffield.
Wylde, C. (2011) ‘The Causes of the Argentine Financial Crisis: Economic Imbalance and Social Upheaval’, ISA Conference - Crisis, Response and Recovery: One Decade on from the Argentinazo 2001-2010, London.
Wylde, C. (2011) ‘Beyond the Developmental State? Post-crisis Developmental Regimes in Malaysia and Argentina’, AAS-ICAS 2011, Honolulu, Hawaii.
Wylde, C. (2010) ‘Argentina, Kirchner, and Neodesarrollismo: Argentine political economy 2003-2007’, Conference at the University of Nottingham: The Pink Tide: Reconfiguring politics, power, and political economy in the Americas?
Wylde, C. (2010) ‘Argentina, Kirchnerismo, and Neodesarrollismo: Argentine political economy under the administration of Nestor Kirchner 2003-2007’, ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops, Muenster, Germany. (Nominated for the Wildenmann’s 2010 Prize).
Wylde, C. (2010) SLAS Annual Conference 2010, Bristol. Presented paper entitled: “Beyond the Neoliberal State? Argentina under Nestor Kirchner 2003-2007”.
Wylde, C. (2009) ‘Argentina, Kirchner, and Neodesarrollismo: The impact of the 2001 financial crisis on Argentine development 2003-2007’, SLAS Annual Conference, Leeds.
Wylde, C. (2008) ‘Continuity or change? Argentine political economy after the financial crisis of 2001’, SLAS Annual Conference, Liverpool.

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