The constitution of the repertoire of right-wing collective actions in democratic Argentina

ESTEBAN IGLESIAS

Argentina´s Right-Wing Universe During the Democratic Period (1983-2023): processes, actors and issues

Routledege

Lugar: New York; Año: 2023; p. 165 - 177

The process of democratic restoration, which has been under way since the 1983’s general elections, has brought a profound change in the political scene. The path and the processes of mobilization did not escape this situation. From these processes we propose to describe a set of right-wing collective actions, which can be inscribed in two traditions: the “national-reactionary” and the “liberal-conservative” (Morresi, Saferstein y Vicente, 2021). An analysis of the development of right-wing protest reveals two periods: the first one, from 1983 to 2001, when collective actions were episodic and spasmodic in nature; and the second one, from 2001 to the present, when collective actions constituted a “repertoire” of the protest organized mainly around a family of the right wing, the neoliberal, showing demands referred to security, family and anti-tax or lower taxes. In this sense, it should be noted that the collective actions of the right were promoted thanks to the reactivation of the confrontation organized around the antagonism Kirchnerismo/anti-Kirchnerismo. The hypothesis underlying this work is that the constitution of a repertoire of collective action is explained by the transformations in the political perceptions of the citizenry and by the dynamics of political polarization that unleashed the well-known “rural conflict” in 2008.