Centre-left (neo)populism. The Case of Kirchner

EMILIA CASTORINA

Universidad Católica (Santiago de Chile)

Congreso; 21 World Congress of Political Science; 2009

International Political Science Association

The aim of this paper is to define the new form of centre-left neoliberal populismo in Argentina since 2003. Kirchner’s governing strategy can best be described as being an alternative formula to the one applied in the 1990s to pull the country out the recession/crisis and at the same time to prevente or manage more effectively social and political unrest, which by no means involves a fundamental departing from the social bases of the 1990s. Midly reformist social welfare measures and a discourse in favor of popular classes did not mean significant redistribution of income or wealth. In fact, social inequality increased. Moreover, it’s been key in reproducing machine politics, clientelism, and patronage-politics in more effective ways than in the 1990s.