Introduction

Throughout the last 50 years, Argentina has undergone many difficult trials, including economic and political crises as well as the transition from an authoritarian dictatorship to a consolidated democracy. In this period, the Argentine state and public sector have been altered many times in drastic ways, yet the institution in charge of training public workers has remained one and the same: the National Institute of Public Administration (INAP).

This does not mean the institute has gone unchanged. Since its foundation in 1973, INAP has seen important changes in its structure, its budget and staff, and its relationship with the rest of the administrative apparatus. The purpose of this chapter is to study the history of INAP while providing its historical context; that is to say, to identify the way it has responded to the political and economic climates through the years and the main continuities and transformations it has experienced.

Because of its status as the main training agency for all workers of the national public sector, INAP should be considered a leading institution in the Argentine state. This chapter attempts to comprehend the reasons behind its stability as such. This implies reconstructing the history of the institute and considering its main features through an analytical lens that allows for a non-deterministic understanding of the evolution of public organizations. In other words, it is important to reject a teleological view that considers the history of INAP as a linear progression, and focus instead on the contingence of critical periods where several different choices might have been made.

The hypothesis that guides this research is that INAP was valued by different governments, regardless of their specific agendas, as a key organization for the public administration. Even if the importance given to the institute differed largely through the years, or the aims for which such an institution was so relevant differed greatly, there was enough consensus to ensure the continuity of the institute from government to government. This chapter aims to analyze this phenomenon with a focus on three elements: its internal structure; its budget and staffing; and its relationships to other institutions, both in Argentina and abroad.

Three main sources of information were used. First, legal documentation (laws, decrees, regulations, and so on) as well as internal documents produced by INAP about its own history. Second, previous research on this area, which will be shortly described and organized.