Policies for national and regional development
Whether a country designs or merely assembles is not a natural consequence of anything: it is the result of policy decisions that can be studied.
01Why there is technology policy
No country buys development off a supermarket shelf. What can be bought are products; the capacity to design, maintain and improve them is built, and that building takes decades and decisions. Technology policy is the set of public decisions about what gets researched, what is produced locally, what is imported and who pays the bill.
Should a country produce what it already knows how to make cheaply —comparative advantages— or build capabilities in sectors where it is not yet competitive, betting that it will become so? Comparative advantages are built: nobody was born making semiconductors. The discussion is about how much it costs to build them, who finances it and for how long.
For an electronic engineer this is not abstract: it determines whether you will work designing or assembling, whether there are laboratories where a product can be certified, whether funding exists for a development, and whether your knowledge has somewhere to be applied without emigrating.
02Sábato’s triangle
In 1968, the Argentine physicist Jorge Sábato and the political scientist Natalio Botana published the most cited model in the region. It says that a country’s technological capacity does not depend on having good scientists or good factories separately, but on the relationships among three vertices:
Tap each vertex or each side to see what it represents, and then try the cases: the diagnosis changes depending on which relationship is weak.
Sábato distinguished three types of relationships: intra-vertex (how each one is organized internally), inter-vertex (the sides of the triangle) and extra-vertex (the links with the outside world). His thesis: underdeveloped countries tend to have reasonable vertices and weak sides. Good scientists who do not talk to industry; industry that imports technology instead of asking for it domestically; a State that funds without coordinating.
03Development models and their effects
| Model | Idea | Risk |
|---|---|---|
| Import substitution | Produce locally what was previously bought abroad, protecting the domestic market | Without a competitiveness requirement, a country can end up making expensive, outdated goods |
| Openness and specialization | Produce what you are already competitive in and import the rest | Capabilities are lost that later take decades to rebuild |
| Sector promotion | Tax benefits or credit for a chosen sector | If the benefit does not require local design in return, assembly is funded with no transfer |
| Public procurement as an engine | The State buys from local suppliers and thereby creates a market | Requires technical capacity in the buyer to specify and control properly |
Putting together equipment from imported kits creates jobs and saves foreign currency in the short term, but if the regime does not require incorporating design, product engineering and local suppliers, no installed capacity remains when the benefit ends. The industrial promotion regime of Tierra del Fuego —in force since 1972 under Law 19,640— is the Argentine case where that debate was most intense, with strong arguments on both sides: jobs and productive sovereignty on one, fiscal cost and little local integration on the other.
04The Argentine system, in concrete terms
Argentina has a science and technology system that is comparatively dense for the region:
| Institution | What it does | Where it touches electronics |
|---|---|---|
| CONICET | Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council: research in all disciplines, with its own institutes and in universities | Materials, microelectronics, signal processing |
| INTI | The National Institute of Industrial Technology: industrial technology, testing and certification | Laboratories for electromagnetic compatibility, electrical safety, metrology |
| CNEA | The National Atomic Energy Commission: nuclear energy and its associated technologies | Nuclear instrumentation, control electronics, detectors |
| CONAE | The National Space Activities Commission: space activities | Satellites, communication systems, telemetry |
| Agencia I+D+i | The national R&D&I Agency: funds projects through competitive grants | Subsidies and loans for technological development in companies |
| Universities | They educate, and they also do research and transfer | The UTN, with its network of regional faculties, is a clear case of a link with industry |
The underlying legal framework is Law 25,467 on Science, Technology and Innovation (2001), which organizes the system and defines responsibilities. Multi-year plans and later funding laws were built on it.
INVAP, a state-owned company from Río Negro province born of an agreement with the CNEA, designs and exports nuclear research reactors, radars and satellites. The geostationary communications satellites ARSAT-1 and ARSAT-2 were integrated in the country: they placed Argentina in a very small group of countries able to do so.
Fate Electrónica, in the 1970s, came to manufacture electronic calculators of its own design —the Cifra line— with integrated circuits and serial production. Its closure at the end of that decade, with the change in economic policy, is the most cited example of capacity built and lost.
05The regional dimension
No country in the region has, by itself, the market that would justify a state-of-the-art semiconductor fab: a modern plant costs tens of billions of dollars. Hence the importance of regional integration —common standards, joint purchasing, shared projects— and of choosing well the niches where it is possible to compete: scientific instrumentation, electronics for agriculture, embedded systems, control software, engineering services.
The realistic strategy is not “make everything” but to position yourself in the higher-value links: designing, integrating, certifying and maintaining, even if the wafer comes from abroad. That requires trained engineers, testing laboratories and continuity in the rules.
06Activities
Choose an electronic product made in Argentina and map its triangle: what each vertex does, which side is weakest and what specific measure would strengthen it.
Find a currently open call for funding technological development, read the terms and summarize: who can apply, what it funds, what counterpart it requires and what outcome is expected.
Prepare, in two groups, the arguments for and against the Tierra del Fuego promotion regime, with figures on employment, fiscal cost and local integration. Each group must be able to state the best version of the opposing argument.
07Ideas worth revisiting
- “Good scientists are enough.” Sábato showed that without a link to production, knowledge does not turn into capacity.
- “Technology is just imported, end of story.” The artifact is imported; the capacity to maintain it, adapt it and improve it does not come in the box.
- Confusing assembling with manufacturing. The difference lies in where the design is done.
- Assuming that technology policy is only money. Public procurement, standards, certification and training weigh as much as funding.
- Measuring success only in publications or only in revenue: the triangle asks you to look at both and, above all, at the relationship between them.
08Self-assessment
What are the three vertices of Sábato’s triangle?
Government, the productive structure and the scientific-technological infrastructure.
What does it mean for the sides to be weak?
That the vertices exist but are not linked: research does not reach production, industry does not demand local knowledge and the State funds without coordinating.
What is the risk of industrial promotion with no local design requirement?
That the assembly of imported kits becomes entrenched: there are jobs while the benefit lasts, but no technological capacity is left installed.
Name two institutions of the Argentine system and what they contribute to electronics.
For example, the INTI with electromagnetic compatibility and electrical safety testing, and the CONAE with the development of satellite systems.
Why do people speak of “built” comparative advantages?
Because competitiveness in a sector is not a natural given: it is built with investment, training and time. No country was born making semiconductors.
09Further reading
- Jorge A. Sábato and Natalio Botana. La ciencia y la tecnología en el desarrollo futuro de América Latina. 1968; reprinted in several anthologies (in Spanish). The original text of the triangle, short and still relevant.
- Oscar Varsavsky. Ciencia, política y cientificismo. CEAL, 1969 (in Spanish). An uncomfortable and fundamental critique: what research is for and for whom it is done in a peripheral country.
- Amílcar Herrera. Ciencia y política en América Latina. Siglo XXI, 1971 (in Spanish). Distinguishes explicit science policy from implicit science policy, which is the one that really rules.
- Jorge Katz and Bernardo Kosacoff. El proceso de industrialización en la Argentina. CEPAL / CEAL (in Spanish). Argentine industrial history with data, useful for discussing the models in section 3.