Argentina: The Difficulties of the Partisan Right and the Case of the PRO Party,

MORRESI, SERGIO DANIEL; VOMMARO, GABRIEL

The Resilience of the Latin American Right

Johns Hopkins University Press

Lugar: Baltimore; Año: 2014; p. 319 - 345

The forces of the right have ruled Argentina for much of the last hundred years, despite this fact, however, conservative political parties have played only a minor role. This is due to several factors which include the fragmentation of the upper classes, the divorce between partisan and non-partisan elites, the Argentine history of coups - in which rightist forces played a leading role - and the fragmented party system that followed each dictatorship. However, the major reason that explains the weakness of the partisan right is its inability to successfully cope with populist forces, especially in their Peronist version. Since the new democratic period started in 1983, various right-wing parties have tried to exorcise the curse of their electoral failure using different strategies. So far, the most promising path appears to have been the subnational direction followed by Propuesta Republicana (Republican Proposal party, known by its shortened form, PRO). PRO has governed the City of Buenos Aires (CBA, which is the Argentine Federal Capital) since 2007 and now appears to be a strong competitor for the 2015 presidential elections. Born around the leadership of Mauricio Macri, a businessman with neoliberal ideas, PRO not only incorporates elements of the partisan and non-partisan classical right, but also recruits figures from the major national-popular Argentine parties and from the world of think tanks and NGOs. The aim of this chapter is to explain the relative success of PRO. To accomplish this task, we begin with a brief review of Argentine right-wing history, and we try to explain the weakness of its partisan expressions, later we present the context of the emergence of PRO, wherein we explore the post-2001-crisis scenario, the weight of subnational politics in Argentina, and some peculiarities of CBA. Next, we go on to explain the relative success of PRO examining data on PRO electoral outcomes and the party´s figures. Finally, we offer some remarks on the PRO´s place in Argentinian political space.