Inevitable and unpredictable, the strengthening of the right beyond the action and structure dichotomy: the international space as a source of legitimacy for latin-american Think Tanks

Abstract

This article departs from a reconstruction of the theoretical debate about the rise of the conservative right, marked by dichotomies as action / structure, local / global and politics / economics, to defend an approach that thinks the articulation between these dimensions through a structural look for the new modalities international circulation of local elites. Based on this operation, I try to show how these new modalities of international action constituted a new position in the social space of production and diffusion of knowledge, in the figure of Think Tanks. In a the intertwining of distinct logics, the Think Tanks began to compete with higher education institutions, in particular public research universities. Those universities had undergone a democratization process since the 2000s, a period that coincides with the growing expansion and legitimization of Think Tanks in Latin America. This article proposes that these new modalities of international action can only be understood structurally, that means, in light of the social hierarchies that constitute the formation of intellectual elites in these national societies.