The Argentinean right and the new order of Cambiemos (2015-2019)

JUAN LUCCA; ESTEBAN IGLESIAS

Global Resurgence of the right. Conceptual and regional perspectives

Routledge

Lugar: Londres y Nueva York; Año: 2021; p. 198 - 213

In 2015, the arrival to the national government of the Cambiemos political coalition?composed by the Propuesta Republicana (PRO), seconded by the Unión Cívica Radical (UCR) and accompanied by the Coalición Cívica (CC) and some minor parties?truly constitutes a new order in recent Argentine history. Especially since, over the last seventy years, the Peronism?anti-Peronism cleavage had become the major axis of political representation, on the one hand, and since right-wing politics was associated to authoritarian experiences, rooted in minority interest groups and parties, or was subsidiary to different versions of Peronism (Gibson, 1996). The Cambiemos interregnum constitutes the first experience of an autonomous right-wing political force elected in a polyarchic way. However, due to its physiognomy and lineage of government, this period may be characterised as a newly minted version of the ?Conservative Order? in which the liberal and conservative components are strongly interwoven (Botana, 1986, pp. 14 and 50; Malamud, 1997). The politically conservative and economically liberal formula that had prevailed from the time of independence, with Mariano Moreno, to the barrage UCR waves and the maremagnun of Peronism was left in the background during the parade of authoritarian faces offered by the right in the second half of the twentieth century. However, having the neoliberal desertification and the rise of the ?new Anglo-Saxon right? as antecedents, the 2001 social and political crisis in Argentina gave birth to the forces that were to settle the political dispute over the next two decades: Propuesta Republicana (PRO) and Frente para la Victoria (FPV) (Vommaro, Morresi and Bellotti, 2015, pp. 483?490; Monestier, 2019, pp. 178?181; Souroujon, 2020). The first force is clearly embedded in a newly minted expression of the liberal conservative tradition while the second is inscribed in a reversion of the popular logic applied by Peronism. Led by the PRO, in 2015 Cambiemos new electoral coalition reinserted?once again in recent Argentine political history?Alberdi's formula: an attempt to reconcile the aspiration for ?[...] the equal values of a republic open to all, with the hierarchical values of a restrictive republic, limited to a few? (Botana, 1986, p. 46). In order to account for this new period of government under the liberal conservative formula, we will first determine the liberal characteristics of the government of Cambiemos as regards: 1) the idea of individual, 2) the role of the State and 3) the neoliberal worldview. Then, we will observe the particularities of the new conservatism embodied by Cambiemos in terms of: 1) family, 2) inequality and 3) the value of traditions and the use of history.