Argentina: Democracy, Authoritarianism and the Pursuit of Order

BOHOSLAVSKY, ERNESTO; MORRESI, SERGIO DANIEL

The Right in the Americas Distinct Trajectories and Hemispheric Convergences, from the Origins to the Present

Routledge

Lugar: Nueva York; Año: 2023; p. 58 - 75

Ernesto Bohoslavsky and Sergio Daniel Morresi explain how for decades Argentina lacked a stable and autonomous political right, able to play by the rules of democracy. The absence of a politically competitive right-wing party during most of the twentieth century has been identified as the source of Argentina’s traditional political challenges: coups d’état, lack of élite commitment with democracy and little or no capacity to process social conflicts via republican institutions. The authors detail how economic and cultural élites in that country, even if internally fragmented, nonetheless systematically identified themselves with a peculiar blend of liberal-conservative tradition that rejected social, political, or cultural inclusion of popular sectors, embracing a hierarchical order, in tense coexistence with democratic principles as their structuring axis. Liberal-conservatives did not hesitate to resort to undemocratic and illiberal practices to maintain their privileges, occasionally even collaborating with their right-wing rivals: Catholic nationalists (culturally reactionary, politically authoritarian and economically against free markets, and favouring a strong state). However, by the end of the twentieth century the élites learned to coexist within the liberal democratic framework. Their disruptive potential was thus limited, allowing the growth of right-wing political movements with more independent agendas, and enhanced electoral appeal.In Section 1 they summarize some of the main socio-historical Argentine traits and present its most important political actors in analytical perspective. In Section 2, they introduce a chronological approach to the nationalist and liberal-conservative traditions between the rise of mass democracy in 1916 and the abrupt end of the Peronist government in 1955. Next section focuses on the most violent and unstable period of Argentine political life, that included recurrent and violent dictatorships until 1983. In Section 4, they move forward to the period between the restoration of democracy into the present (2019); here, we examine Neoliberalism as the primary right-wing current in contemporary Argentina as well as its convergence with National-populism. Finally, in the last section, they summarize their findings