Politics of Argentina
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Template:Argentina main topics This article is about the political institutions and political parties of Argentina. Some necessary historical background is provided; for more details see the specific article on the history of Argentina.
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History
Argentina is a representative democracy. This has not always been the case. Since the 1930s, the democratic rule of the country has been repeatedly brought down by coups d'etat and assumed by de facto military regimes. After World War II and the destitution of Juan Domingo Perón, the recurring economic and institutional crises fostered the rise of illegal military governments.
The last dictatorship, started in 1976, began its fall in 1982 after the defeat in the Falklands/Malvinas war, and ended on 1983 with the democratic election of Raúl Alfonsín. Alfonsín faced important challenges, including a military uprising, and resigned six months before the end of his term, but the country was not in clear danger of becoming subject to a dictatorship again. Carlos Menem was the president for six more years and made a pact with Alfonsín in order to achieve a constitutional reform that would allow him to be reelected. He ruled for four more years, until 1999, and then Fernando de la Rúa was elected. This was the first time in decades that an Argentine president properly finished his term and passed on his charge to another democratically elected president.
De la Rúa, however, could not manage the Argentine economic crisis and finally resigned in 2001, amid violent riots. Several short-lived interim presidents came and went, until Congress finally chose Eduardo Duhalde to rule until some sort of social and economic peace could be restored. Duhalde took care of the most critical matters and called for democratic elections, where Néstor Kirchner was chosen (for the first time employing the ballotage system). Kirchner took office on 25 May 2003 and is the current president of Argentina, to serve until 2007.
Form of government
The Argentine constitution of 1853, as revised in 1994, mandates a separation of powers into executive, legislative, and judicial branches at the national and provincial level. Each province also has its own constitution, roughly mirroring the structure of the national constitution.
The president and vice president used to be elected indirectly by an electoral college to a single six-year term, and not allowed to seek immediate reelection. The constitutional reform of 1994, among other things, reduced the presidential term to four years, abolished the electoral college in favor of direct voting, and limited the president and vice president to two consecutive terms; they are allowed to stand for a third term or more after an interval of at least one term. The president appoints cabinet ministers and the constitution grants him considerable power, including a line-item veto.
Provinces traditionally sent two senators, elected by provincial legislatures, to the upper house of Congress. Voters in the federal capital of Buenos Aires elected an electoral college which chose the city's senators. The revised constitution mandated a transition (beginning in 2001) to direct election for all senators, and the addition of a third senator representing the largest minority party from each province and the capital. The revised constitution reduced senatorial terms from 9 to 6 years. One-third of the Senate will stand for reelection every two years.
Members of the Chamber of Deputies are directly elected to four-year terms. Voters elect half the members of the lower house every two years through a system of proportional representation.
Other important 1994 constitutional changes included the creation of a senior coordinating minister to serve under the president, and autonomy for the city of Buenos Aires, which now elects its own mayor.
The constitution establishes the judiciary as an independently-govern entity. The president appoints members of the Supreme Court with the consent of the Senate. Other federal judges are appointed by the president on the recommendation of a magistrates' council, which also administrates the judiciary. The Supreme Court has the power, first asserted in 1854, to declare legislative acts unconstitutional.
In 2003, following conflicts of interest with the executive, the Kirchner administration adopted a new way of appointing justices: while this power remains in the President's hands, several candidates must be presented, their trajectory and background made known to the general public, other magistrates, the press, etc., and their criticisms collected and submitted to the executive.
Political parties
Template:Election argentina Argentina's two largest political parties are the Justicialist Party (Partido Justicialista, or PJ), which evolved out of Juan Perón's efforts in the 1940s to expand the role of labor in the political process (see Peronism), and the Radical Civic Union (Unión Cívica Radical, or UCR), founded in 1890. Traditionally, the UCR had more urban middle-class support and the PJ more labor support, but both parties are now broadly based.
A grouping of mostly left-leaning parties and former Peronists — the Front for a Country in Solidarity (Frente por un País Solidario, or FrePaSo) — emerged in the 1990s as a serious political contender to the PJ, especially in the federal capital. In August 1997, the UCR and FrePaSo formed a coalition called the Alliance for Work, Justice and Education (informally la Alianza "the Alliance"). The Alliance succeeded in taking Fernando de la Rúa (UCR) to the presidency, with Carlos Álvarez (FrePaSo) as vice-president; but Álvarez resigned in 2000 after a scandal related to bribes in the Senate (the President's party refused to support or investigate the denunciations), and the Alliance was in practice broken from that moment on.
After this episode, followed by the resignation of Fernando de la Rúa (who had to the flee from the government house in a helicopter), the UCR's reputation was severely damaged, and the party lost many of its supporters. To some people, de la Rúa's flight, coupled with the resignation of Raúl Alfonsín in 1989, confirmed the idea that the Radical party was not fit to rule, though it must be noted that in both cases Peronist activists are believed to have fueled popular discontent and even incited revolts to bring about this result.
Smaller parties occupy various positions on the political spectrum and some are active only in certain provinces.
Historically, organized labor (largely tied to the Peronist Party) and the armed forces also have played significant roles in national life. Labor's political power was significantly weakened by free market reforms during the 1990s, as well as the cooptation of labor leaders by the Menem administration. They now seem to be returning to their former position, since the current government focuses on a productive model with local industry as one of the top priorities.
The armed forces are firmly under civilian control. Repudiated by the public after a period of military rule marked by human rights violations, economic decline, and military defeat, the Argentine military today is a downsized, volunteer force focused largely on international peacekeeping. While Menem and de la Rúa simply reduced their funding, Kirchner has effected an "ideological cleansing", removing a large portion of the top ranks and replacing them with younger leaders with a explicit commitment to preserve human rights and submit to the decisions of the civilian government.
In recent times two newer parties have gained weight in the political scene. One of them, the ARI, was formed upon the initiative of Elisa Carrió, former member of the UCR, and presented itself as a non-compromising front against corruption and for progressive ideas. The ARI took the place of the defunct Alliance in the ideological spectrum.
Carrió came close fourth in the last presidential election, after a very austere campaign. She is known as a devout, somewhat mystically oriented Catholic, and frequently criticizes what she sees as pettiness and short-term vision on the part of the current administration, employing an assortment of quotations from social philosophers and even the Bible; however, her influence has diminished lately, as the Kirchner administration harvests a measure of success and she becomes more extravagant.
The other party, called Recrear, is also led by a former Radical party member, Ricardo López Murphy, who was briefly a minister of Economy of Fernando de la Rúa. Recrear captured the moderate right-wing spectrum of voters, especially urban voters of the middle and upper classes. López Murphy came third in the last presidential elections, with a platform that emphasized a fight against corruption and for transparency, attempting to appeal to voters who felt right about the neo-liberal outlook of the 1990s but would not give their vote to a candidate they viewed as corrupt (Carlos Menem). López Murphy continues to criticize populism and state assistentialism, and is preparing alliances with several local right-wing parties for the upcoming legislative elections (especially targeting the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires).
Policy
Each administration has had its own priorities. President Alfonsín took office upon a cession of power from the last military junta, and his main task was to ensure a peaceful transition. In the end he was overcome by an economic crisis that led to a bout of hyperinflation.
President Menem first had to control inflation and stabilize the economy, which he did by adopting a series of radical measures including a fixed parity between the Argentine peso and the US dollar. He then engaged in a program to turn Argentina into a free market economy, which included privatization of state companies, fewer import barriers, and in general a diminishing of state regulation in all areas. These measures, however, crippled the local industrial basis, produced massive unemployment and poverty, and left Argentina indebted.
Menem's administration was also regarded by many as corrupt and frivolous. The executive had a visible influence on the decissions of the judiciary, especially the Supreme Court, and displayed a certain contempt for the political minorities. Moreover, it did nothing to reduce political corruption and inefficiency, which has always plagued Argentina.
Fernando de la Rúa's term was notoriously ineffective on all accounts. Elected with a popular mandate to reanimate the economy and crack down on the rampant corruption of the Menem administration, de la Rúa was unable or unwilling to perform these tasks. He continued basically on the same economic course as Menem ("on autopilot"), which ultimately led to the 2001 crash and his resignation.
Eduardo Duhalde's interim term was marked by the need of pacifying the country and softening the impact of the crisis on the citizens after the forced devaluation of the local currency, which lost three quarters of its value in a matter of months. Duhalde employed a mixture of traditional Peronist populism (in the form of a monetary subsidy for heads of families) and neo-Keynesian economic principles to stabilize the economy and bring peace to the streets.
Néstor Kirchner, which belongs to the moderate center-left wing of Peronism (rooted in the leftist Peronist factions of the 1970s), continued Duhalde's measures (even keeping his minister of Economy, Roberto Lavagna) and added some heterodox economics. Heavy taxes on exports have served to keep local prices of valuable commodities on check, while collecting huge revenue (especially from oil products and agricultural exports like soy). The restrictive monetary policy of the 1990s has become aggressively expansive; the Central Bank has injected large amounts of cash into the economy and bought dollars from the free currency market in order to accumulate reserves. The fiscal policy is also expansive; the government has risen private and public salaries by decree on several occasions, and has encouraged negotiations between the private sector and the labor movements.
Political divisions
See the main article as well as the list of provinces of Argentina.
Other data and summary
- May Revolution (self-elected government, still nominally loyal to the king of Spain) on 25 May 1810 (public holiday, Día de la Revolución)
- Independence from Spain declared on 9 July 1816 (public holiday, Día de la Independencia)
- Constitution approved on 1 May 1853, last revised on August 1994.
- Legal system: mixture of United States and West European legal systems; has not accepted compulsory ICJ jurisdiction.
- Suffrage: 18 years of age; universal; obligatory
Government
- Executive branch:
- Chief of state and head of government: President Néstor Kirchner
- Vice-president: Daniel Scioli
- Cabinet appointed by the president
- Legislative branch: bicameral National Congress or Congreso Nacional, consists of:
- Senate (72 seats; each province elects three members; one-third of the members being elected every two years to six-year terms)
- Chamber of Deputies (257 seats; one-half of the members elected every two years to four-year terms)
- Judiciary:
- Federal judges and others with different jurisdictions
- Supreme Court with nine members, appointed by the President with approval of the Senate, may be deposed by Congress.
Elections
- President and vice-president elected on the same voting ticket, by direct popular vote, using the ballotage system, for four-year terms, with the possibility of reelection for one more term.
- Last held: 27 April 2003 (first turn of the ballotage)
- Results:
- Néstor Kirchner elected President by 22.0% of the votes (4,232,052 votes)
- Carlos Saúl Menem: 24.4% (4,686,646 votes) (withdrew from runoff)
- Ricardo López Murphy: 16.3% (3,144,528 votes)
- Senate: transition phase began in 2001 elections when all seats were fully contested; each district randomly drew to determine whether its senators would serve a two-year, four-year, or full six-year term, beginning a rotating cycle renovating a third of the body every two years;
- Chamber of Deputies: last held between April and November 2003 (next to be held 23 October 2005)
- Results:
- Senate (seats by bloc or party): Peronist 40, UCR 20, Frepaso 1, other 11
- Chamber of Deputies (seats by bloc or party): Alliance 124 (UCR 85, Frepaso 36, others 3), Peronist 101, AR 12, other 20
Parties and leaders
- Argentinos por una República de Iguales (ARI) ("Argentinians for a Republic of Equals"), Elisa Carrió
- Frente Grande (FG) ("Big Front"), Aníbal Ibarra
- Partido Justicialista (PJ) ("Justicialist Party"), Néstor Kirchner
- Unión Cívica Radical (UCR) ("Radical Civic Union"), Raúl Alfonsín
- Recrear ("Recreate"), Ricardo López Murphy
- Partido Socialista (PS) ("Socialist Party"), Rubén Giustiniani
- Several provincial parties
Political pressure groups and leaders
Argentine Association of Pharmaceutical Labs (CILFA); Argentine Industrial Union (manufacturers' association); Argentine Rural Society (large landowners' association); Armed Forces; business organizations; General Confederation of Labor or CGT (Peronist-leaning umbrella labor organization); Peronist-dominated labor movement; Roman Catholic Church; students
International organization participation:
AfDB, ALADI, Australia Group, BCIE, CCC, ECLAC, FAO, G- 6, G-11, G-15, G-19, G-24, G-77, IADB, IAEA, IBRD, ICAO, ICC, ICC, ICFTU, ICRM, IDA, IFAD, IFC, IFRCS, IHO, ILO, IMF, International Maritime Organization, Inmarsat, Intelsat, Interpol, IOC, IOM, ISO, ITU, LAES, LAIA, Mercosur, MINURSO, MIPONUH, MNNA, MTCR, NSG, OAS, OPANAL, OPCW, PCA, RG, UN, UN Security Council (temporary), UNCTAD, UNESCO, UNFICYP, UNHCR, UNIDO, UNIKOM, UNITAR, UNMIBH, UNMIK, UNMOP, UNTAET, UNTSO, UNU, UPU, WCL, WFTU, WHO, WIPO, WMO, WToO, WTrO, Zangger Committee
References
- This article incorporates information from The World Factbook, which is in the public domain.
- U.S. Department of State websitefr:Politique de l'Argentine
es:Gobierno y política de Argentina pt:Política da Argentina