Each record describes something a country built that the indicators do not capture. The source provides the published number; the mechanism is our interpretation.
Scores describe outcomes. These records describe how a country acted, what it needed and what happened. 742 of 742 records include a mechanism. They do not affect scores.
Argentina's energy ministry reported that Vaca Muerta supplied 54.9% of national oil output and 50.1% of national gas output in December 2024, within a year in which national oil production reached its highest level since 2003 and gas its highest since 2006.
Argentina combined state control of the resource and export rules with private drilling, midstream investment and a price framework intended to make unconventional wells financeable, turning a large geological resource into a growing national production base.
Preconditions
A regulatory and export regime stable enough for firms to commit to long-cycle drilling and pipelines
Specialist suppliers, skilled labour and transport infrastructure for high-volume unconventional operations
Public institutions able to collect production data, manage environmental trade-offs and negotiate infrastructure access
Where else it has been used: Resource booms travel only when public rules and private execution reinforce each other. Vaca Muerta is useful evidence of that interface, while its externalities and policy dependence keep the collaboration claim bounded.
Limits: Production shares show geological and industrial output, not the net fiscal return, environmental effects, local infrastructure strain or the durability of investment under changing prices and regulation. The government account attributes the rise to regulation and private investment, but this record does not isolate either contribution or establish the field's full lifecycle economics.
Argentina ended hyperinflation by fixing the peso to the dollar by law in April 1991, taking annual inflation from 4,923 percent in 1989 to 3.9 percent in 1994, and the regime held until it collapsed in the 2001-2002 crisis.
Congress fixed the exchange rate one-to-one to the dollar by statute and barred the central bank from printing unbacked pesos, which converted a monetary promise nobody believed into a law that was costly to break.
Preconditions
Dollar reserves large enough to back the monetary base
A legislature willing to bind itself and its successors
Prices and contracts already partly dollarised, so the anchor was credible on day one
Where else it has been used: Currency boards were copied widely in the 1990s, from Estonia to Bulgaria, and they worked as stabilisers. Argentina is the case every copy now studies for the exit problem: the law had no honest way out.
Limits: The IMF and World Bank series for Argentina do not reach these years, so the numbers come from a teaching case that republishes the official table, and the 1989 figure is a December-to-December change where other publications give 3,079 percent as the annual average. Ending inflation is what the indicator asks for, but the fixed parity that delivered the stabilisation also removed the tools that could have absorbed the shocks of 1999-2001, so the case evidences a response that consumed its own durability. The collapse later cost Argentina its statistical credibility too, which is why the official series is hard to cite today.
๐ฆ๐ทArgentinasince 2009still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
Argentina's Asignaciรณn Universal por Hijo (AUH) reached 4,083,987 children and adolescents in June 2024, with 2,324,716 adult titulars receiving the benefit through the national social-security administration and its health, vaccination and education conditions.
Argentina made children the legal beneficiaries of a national cash transfer, used ANSES identity and household records to deliver it at scale and held back a share until families documented health, vaccination and education conditions.
Preconditions
A national identity and social-security database that can link children, adult titulars and payment accounts
Schools and health services able to verify conditions without turning documentation into a barrier
A durable budget and appeal process that can keep the entitlement responsive through inflation and labour-market shocks
Where else it has been used: Child benefits travel when the register, payment system and service verification are treated as one capability. Argentina's AUH illustrates both the reach of that architecture and the need to measure exclusion and real purchasing power separately.
Limits: Beneficiary counts show the reach of a transfer system, not whether payment is adequate, households complete the required checks or children experience better outcomes. ANSES reports the administrative totals, while the record does not establish a causal effect or reveal how many eligible families remain outside the registry.
๐ฆ๐ทArgentinasince 2010still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
Argentina's SUBE system distributed more than five million cards and recorded about 6.7 million new cards in 2024, while expanding the network to more than 30,000 recharge points and making SUBE Digital available in every locality.
Argentina built one interoperable fare and data layer across jurisdictions, then used the transaction record to target subsidies, integrate transfers and add a mobile payment option without abandoning the physical card for people who need it.
Preconditions
A national standard that transport operators and provincial and municipal systems can adopt
Retail and digital channels that keep cards and recharging usable outside major cities
A public data and subsidy authority able to reconcile transactions with operator payments
Where else it has been used: A common fare rail travels when it solves a state problem as well as a passenger problem. SUBE's value is the combination of inclusion, operational data and subsidy control, not the card alone.
Limits: Cards and recharge points measure access to the payment rail, not travel-time improvements, fare affordability, service reliability or the accuracy of subsidies. The ministry's figures describe distribution and availability, while the record does not independently audit usage, system uptime or the effect of later open-payment reforms.
๐ฆ๐ทArgentinasince 2011still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
The national water resources secretariat contracted the state technology firm INVAP in 2011 to build Argentine weather radars, and by December 2024 the network operated 14 radars feeding an operations centre at the national weather service, after 11 had covered 40 percent of the territory together with three INTA radars in 2023.
The water resources secretariat bought radars from INVAP, the state-owned engineering firm, instead of importing them, and later contracted INVAP to operate and maintain the network while the national weather service ran a central operations centre.
Preconditions
A domestic firm with prior radar and complex-systems experience (INVAP)
A ministry willing to fund a multi-stage build across changes of government
Provinces supplying sites, power and fibre under cooperation agreements
Where else it has been used: Most countries import weather radars; Argentina's choice to build them domestically is the unusual part, and the slow third stage shows the cost of depending on one national supplier and one budget line.
Limits: A radar count is an input to early warning, not demonstrated capacity to prepare for and recover from a shock, which is what the indicator asks for; nothing here shows that warnings reached people or reduced losses. Both figures are the government's own announcements, and the count is inconsistent across them: 11 radars plus a prototype in March 2023 and 14 in December 2024, so it is unclear whether the prototype is counted. The 2011 start is a contract signature, and the sources do not date the first operational radar. The March 2023 announcement announced a third stage of 10 more radars (RMA12 to RMA21) for 70 percent coverage, and by December 2024 only about three had been added. Later installations in 2025 were reported but not verified here at an official source. The 40 percent coverage figure includes three radars owned by INTA, outside the network.
Argentina's government review found that the ARSAT-3 construction programme, approved in 2015 with a 2019 launch plan, was suspended in 2016โ17; the unbuilt satellite forced two later orbital-protection operations and left the original nationwide broadband objective undelivered.
Argentina stopped an already contracted satellite mission when financing and programme continuity broke, then had to buy temporary orbital-protection services while a successor design was reconsidered; the episode exposes how a strategic project depends on continuity beyond one administration.
Preconditions
A multi-year financing and procurement plan protected from abrupt political and management turnover
Technical programme governance that can distinguish a redesign from an indefinite suspension
An orbital and service-continuity plan that prices the cost of delay before a launch slot is at risk
Where else it has been used: Strategic technology programmes travel with continuity mechanisms, not only engineering talent. ARSAT-3 is a useful reversal because it records the cost of stopping a national capability before the replacement is ready.
Limits: The review documents a suspension and its operational consequences, not the complete engineering, procurement or commercial case for a third satellite. ARSAT later reformulated the mission as SG-1, so the record describes the original ARSAT-3 programme's failure to deliver rather than claiming that Argentina abandoned satellite capability altogether.
๐ฆ๐ทArgentinasince 1981still operatingbears on Large project delivery
Argentina's state nuclear operator connected Atucha II to the grid in June 2014, almost 33 years after construction began in July 1981, and began commercial operation in May 2016, after a build halted in 1994 and restarted in 2006.
The state nuclear company NA-SA and the atomic energy commission CNEA restarted a German-designed reactor abandoned mid-build, under a 2006 national reactivation plan, and finished it with Argentine engineering after the original vendor's nuclear business had left the field.
Preconditions
A standing nuclear institution (CNEA) that kept engineers and know-how through the suspension
State finance able to fund a restart once the fiscal crisis passed
A design close enough to Atucha I that domestic teams could complete and license it
Where else it has been used: Restarting a long-suspended nuclear build has rarely worked elsewhere; Brazil's Angra 3 is the comparable case and remains unfinished, which is why Atucha II is cited as proof of completion rather than of efficient delivery.
Limits: The 32.9 years is computed from two month-precision dates in an IAEA table, and the national regulator dates the start to 1982, so the figure could be a year shorter. No cost figure was found at an official source, so the record carries schedule only, and the indicator asks for cost too. Most of the delay is a 12-year suspension (1994 to 2006) caused by fiscal crisis and policy, not slow building, so the number mixes a stopped project with a slow one. The IAEA data are reported to the IAEA by the national authorities. The plant's energy availability factor of about 53 percent over 2015 to 2025 shows that completion did not bring reliable output, and the record should not be read as a success story beyond the fact of delivery.