Massimiliano Trentin
The project investigates the transnational politics of the negotiations on international debts and assets that took place in the 1980s. These latter were marked by a long series of defaults, moratoria on repayment, renegotiations of existing loans and negotiations on new loans. While in many ways financial turbulence remained in the following years, the early 1990s can be said to mark a periodizing junction: while the "Brady Plan" reduced the systemic risks of the debt/asset morass, the so-called "Washington consensus", largely encapsulating the original creditors' view, clearly emerged as the hegemonic doctrine on debt/asset issues. Such complex phenomenon has passed down onto history under the label of the "international debt crisis" (sometimes also as "the Latin American debt crisis", given the high incidence of Latin American countries among debtors).
A wide literature has dealt with the subject, with renewed interest during the "great recession" in 2008. Most of such literature, however, suffers from two interrelated flaws: first, there are only a few case studies based on archival research; second, there appears to be a perspective bias, for which the creditors always got the upper hand. Yet, history is rich with cases that prove that debtors can either have it their way, or force creditors to compromise. In order to observe the playing out of the respective strengths and weaknesses of creditors and debtors in the the 1980s and early 1990s, the project, thus, investigates the negotiations empirically: by searching numerous archives from creditors, debtors, international and transnational organizations; adopting a broad approach that keeps account of the interactions of transnational factors in determining the final outcome of the negotiations. Through a reasoned selection of case studies, the project will have allowed a thorough reconstruction of a crucial process of the international relations of the recent past, with possible useful policy-relevant indications for our time.