Political system of Argentina

The political system of Argentina is organized in the form of a presidential republic . Argentina is a democratic federal state (federal state) with a strong position of the state president ( presidential system of government ) and extensive autonomy of the 23 provinces and the autonomous city of Buenos Aires . The member states each have their own constitution, which is subordinate to the federal constitution, and have their own executive and legislative bodies. The jurisdiction is also organized below the federal level at the state level. The constitution of Argentina dates from 1853.

The executive has a great deal of leeway when it comes to ordinances ( decrees ) and thus also legislative powers; the separation of powers is thereby restricted.

The President is the head of state and the highest executive body . The legislature has two chambers : Chamber of Deputies ( Cámara de Diputados ) and Senado de la Nación Argentina . Both together form the national congress .

Traditionally, the country is a party democracy , but the party landscape has become increasingly fragmented in recent decades and is now characterized by changing electoral alliances, which is also favored by the fact that the votes in all national elections with the exception of the presidential elections are counted at the provincial level and converted into seats and list connections are allowed in presidential elections . The traditional popular parties Unión Cívica Radical (UCR) and Partido Justicialista (PJ) have lost a large part of their influence since the Argentina crisis and have internally split into several wings, which has favored the formation and rapid rise of new parties.

In the 2019 democracy index of the British magazine The Economist, the country ranks 48th out of 167 countries and is therefore considered an "incomplete democracy". In the country report Freedom in the World 2017 by the US non-governmental organization Freedom House , the country's political system is rated as “free”.

Political system

legislative branch

Argentine National Congress in Buenos Aires

Rear front of the congress building, right the House of Representatives

Congress Palace is reflected in the MPs office building.

The legislature at the federal or national level consists of the Congress ( Congreso de la Nación ), which in turn is divided into two chambers : the Chamber of Deputies ( Cámara de diputados ) and the Senate ( Senado ).

The members of both houses are elected by the population. Argentinian women got the right to vote in 1947 through Eva Perón's influence on her husband, President Juan Perón . The seat of the House of Representatives and the Senate is the Congress Palace in Buenos Aires.

The main tasks of the congress are:

Tax legislation (direct and indirect taxes)
Government loans
Control over the state budget
Approval of international treaties

The legislation is similar to that in the United States . The President's countersignature is required in order for projects approved in Congress to become law. If the signature is refused for the whole project or only in part, a two-thirds majority in both chambers of the Congress is required to override this veto .

If a legislative proposal fails in a parliamentary chamber, it can no longer be introduced in this chamber in the current financial year.

Chamber of Deputies

The Chamber of Deputies ( Cámara de diputados ) , currently consisting of 257 parliamentarians, represents the interests of the Argentine people as a whole. The representatives are elected in the national structures by proportional representation. The constituencies are divided among the provinces. One MP corresponds to around 33,000 inhabitants, with the lower limit being set at at least 16,500 inhabitants. A population census takes place at least every 10 years in order to adapt the constituencies to current circumstances. Half of the MPs are re-elected every two years, resulting in a legislative period of four years for one MP. There is no limit to the number of legislative terms allowed for an MP. To be eligible for election as a Member of Parliament, you must be at least 25 years of age. You must also be an Argentinian citizen and have a permanent residence for at least two years in the constituency for which you are applying for the right to stand.

The Chamber of Deputies has the exclusive legislative competence in tax law and in the formation of troops as well as shared with the Senate and the executive in almost all other areas of law. In addition, it accepts or rejects those laws that are introduced through popular initiatives; conversely, it also has the right to bind the approbation of certain laws to a referendum ( consulta popular ) or to use it purely for advice.

Furthermore, she can initiate impeachment proceedings (so-called juicio político , Spanish for political (court) process , comparable to impeachment ) against the president, vice-president, head of cabinet, any minister and the members of the Supreme Court, which must then be accepted by the Senate.

According to the constitution, the distribution of seats to the provinces and the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires (between 5 and 70 seats per province) is redetermined at every nationwide census, and the number of seats must not be reduced in any case even if the population in individual provinces decreases.

Because of two defects in this system, the voting weight of the individual voter differs greatly depending on the province. The current number of seats is based on the 1980 census; it has not changed since 1983. Since then, the population of the individual provinces has grown differently. Another distortion arises from the minimum of 5 MPs that each province is entitled to. The number of MPs is only increased from 500,000 inhabitants; the smallest province of Tierra del Fuego has only 127,000 inhabitants.

The allocation of seats to the provinces and the voting weight:

province	Number of seats	Population (2008)	Inhabitants per MP
Buenos Aires	70	15.052.177	218.147
Autonomous City of Buenos Aires	25th	3,042,581	121,703
Catamarca	5	388.416	77,683
Chaco	7th	1,052,185	150.312
Chubut	5	460,684	92,136
Cordoba	18th	3,340,041	185,558
Corrientes	7th	1,013,443	144,778
Entre Ríos	9	1,255,787	139,532
Formosa	5	539.883	107,977
Jujuy	6th	679.975	113,323
La Pampa	5	333,550	66,710
La Rioja	5	341.207	68.241
Mendoza	10	1,729,660	172.966
Misiones	7th	1,077,987	153.998
Neuquén	5	547.742	109,548
Río Negro	5	597.476	119,592
Salta	7th	1,224,022	174,860
San Juan	6th	695.640	115.940
San Luis	5	437,544	87.509
Santa Cruz	5	225,920	45.184
Santa Fe	19th	3,242,551	170,661
Santiago del Estero	7th	865,546	123,649
Tierra del Fuego	5	126.212	25,242
Tucuman	9	1,475,384	163.932

senate

The Senate consists of 72 members (3 per province and 3 for the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires) and represents the interests of the provinces. The members of the Senate are elected by majority vote. The party that receives the most votes in a province's Senate elections can send two senators. The second largest party receives a senatorial seat. A third of the senators are elected every two years. In contrast to the system in the German Bundesrat , in which the individual countries receive packages of votes based on their population size, each senator has one vote that can be used freely. In order to be eligible for election as a senator, the following requirements must be met:

Minimum age: 30 years
Argentine citizenship for at least six years
At least 2000 pesos annual income
Resident of the province in which the right to stand for election is to be exercised for at least two years

Re-election after the end of the term of office is unlimited.

In addition to the approval of legislative initiatives from the Chamber of Deputies, which require its vote, the Senate takes initiatives relating to the law on the distribution of tax revenues to the provinces ( Ley convenio del régimen de coparticipación federal ) and other laws, the interests of the provinces affect yourself. Furthermore, certain initiatives of the President require his approval: the declaration of a state of emergency and the appointment of so-called authorized ministers with special rights ( ministros plenipotenciarios ), federal judges, business officers ( encargados de negocios ) and high officers of the armed forces.

The Senate is headed by the Vice President, who is also known as the Senate President. However, the latter only has voting rights if a vote results in a draw, otherwise his role is limited to mediation tasks with the government.

executive

The Presidential Palace, Casa Rosada , in the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires

According to the constitution of 1853, the Executive Poder Ejecutivo de la Nación (PEN) formally consists of the President ( Presidente de la Nación ). He is the head of government . He appoints the Cabinet of Ministers including the Head of Cabinet ( Jefe de Gabinete ), but the constitution does not understand them as part of the executive branch (the terms Poder Ejecutivo de la Nación and Presidente de la Nación are understood synonymously there), but under constitutional law they are also the Executive can be attributed. The prevailing opinion is that the Argentine president is both head of state and head of government. The president is directly elected by the population. The president can only be deposed through an impeachment procedure ( juicio político ), which must be approved by both chambers of the Congress with a two-thirds majority. The President is also the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces ( Commander in Chief ). The current President, Alberto Ángel Fernández , has been in office since December 2019.

In addition to the normal government ordinances , the executive branch has the right to issue emergency ordinances ( decrees ) with the status of law , the so-called Decretos de Necesidad y Urgencia (DNU ). They are limited to areas outside of criminal law , tax law , electoral law and political party law. Since the criteria for when an emergency situation occurs are not precisely regulated, this instrument is also often used outside of crisis situations. Néstor Kirchner , Eduardo Duhalde and Carlos Menem in particular made extensive use of it, while Raúl Alfonsín and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (until 2011) made far less use of the DNU. The DNUs can be rejected by Congress, but this requires an absolute majority in both chambers, and they retain their legal status until a decision in Congress.

The head of cabinet holds a special position. He heads the cabinet and partially assumes the functions of the head of government, so that Argentina can be described as an at least formally semi-presidential system of government . The head of cabinet is politically responsible to the Congress and can be removed from it by a simultaneous absolute majority in the House of Representatives and Senate. The power imbalance between the president and the head of cabinet is considerable, however, as the head of cabinet only has executive and advisory powers and can be recalled by the president at any time.

Another office is that of ministros plenipotenciarios ( ministers plenipotentiary ), to which any minister can be appointed by the president. These have special rights, but are also politically obliged to the Congress and can be removed by it with an absolute majority in both chambers.

The Vice-President exercises the executive branch on a representative basis during the absence, illness or death of the President, but otherwise belongs to the legislature as President of the Senate.

Cabinet members can take part in debates in Congress, but have no voting rights. Working as a cabinet member is incompatible with a mandate as a member of parliament or as a senator. The head of cabinet can be removed from office with an absolute majority in the House of Representatives and Senate or by the President.

According to the constitution, the cabinet members are not part of the executive branch and mostly have an advisory role. Their tasks also include executing the President's instructions.

In 2018, the Cabinet of Ministers consisted of the following departments:

Ministerio de Educación, Cultura, Ciencia y Tecnología (Ministry of Education, Culture, Science and Technology)

Ministerio de Defensa (Ministry of Defense)
Ministerio de Salud y Desarrollo Social (Ministry of Health and Social Development)
Ministerio de Hacienda (Ministry of Finance)
Ministerio del Interior, Obras Públicas y Vivienda (Ministry of the Interior, Public Works and Housing)

Ministerio de Justicia y Derechos Humanos (Ministry of Justice and Human Rights)

Ministerio de Producción y Trabajo (Ministry of Economy and Labor)
Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores y Culto (Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Religion)
Ministerio de Seguridad (Ministry of Security)
Ministerio de Transporte (Ministry of Transport)

Judiciary

Main building of the Supreme Court of Argentina

As far as the judiciary is concerned, there has long been a lack of autonomy from the executive. The last reform took place in 2003.

The federal judiciary ( Justicia federal ) has the highest national body, the Supreme Court ( Corte Suprema de la Nación Argentina ), which has existed since January 15, 1863, and 17 federal judicial districts have been set up, each of which is assigned an area for whose cases it is responsible and the Consejo de la Magistratura , which administers federal justice and elects judges.

The federal judiciary is responsible in the following cases:

in constitutional questions and cases involving federal laws; the Supreme Court can review laws for constitutional compliance
in cases involving international treaties or in which one of the participants belongs to foreign representations (consuls and ambassadors)
in cases in which one of the federal ministers is a participant
in cases resulting from a conflict between several provinces, a province and residents of other provinces, a province and its own residents, and between provinces, their residents and foreign actors.
in appeal procedures.

In all other cases, the provincial judiciary is responsible.

The Supreme Court has a total of 9 members (President, Vice-President and 7 other judges). The requirements for the office of judge correspond to those of a senator. In addition, relevant training and at least 8 years of professional experience must be demonstrated.

Supreme Court justices are proposed by the President. After a hearing, which must be made available to the public, the candidacy is usually discussed in society. In addition to the population, the country's media, human rights groups, academic circles and numerous NGOs participate . After this process, the President will officially forward his proposal to the Senate. A two-thirds majority is required to be elected judge.

A special procedure ( juicio político ) is required to remove a judge at the Supreme Court of Justice , with the Senate again having the central position. Only cases of abuse can lead to an impeachment.

Other federal bodies

The Defensor del Pueblo de la Nación (literally defender of the people of the nation ) assumes the functions of an ombudsman and supports citizens in the exercise of their rights, especially with regard to fundamental rights and human rights guaranteed by the constitution. He is elected by the Congress for a five-year term and must achieve a two-thirds majority in both chambers.

The Auditoría General de la Nación is an independent body that organizes the interaction of the state institutions as a whole and assists the Congress in this. Its president is appointed by the opposition party with the largest number of seats in Congress (the House of Representatives and Senate together).

Vertical separation of powers

There are three levels in the vertical separation of powers : federal state (Nación), partial state (provinces and the autonomous city of Buenos Aires) and municipalities (municipios and comunas) . All three levels have their own executive and legislative organs, the federal state and the sub-states including the federal capital also have their own judiciary.

Municipal law is determined at the provincial level and thus differs considerably from one region to another. For example, there are provinces in which the municipalities are also administrative administrative units and therefore occupy a clearly defined area (example: Province of Buenos Aires). In others, the municipalities are limited to the political structure, the administrative division differs from this (example: Córdoba). The difference between Municipios and Comunas is the smaller size of the Comunas, which also have fewer organs, but this also differs from province to province. The comunas of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires are not independent political units, but rather can be compared with neighborhood representatives, the entire urban area is considered a municipal area.

The Departamentos (subdivisions of the provinces) and Pedanías (subdivisions of the Departamentos) are in contrast to the Partidos of the Province of Buenos Aires, which are at the same time also Municipios , no political units and have no official organs, but only have administrative significance. The same is true for the regions that span multiple provinces.

Electoral system and political participation

Nationwide elections are the presidential elections, the senate elections and the elections to the House of Representatives, there are also elections at the provincial and municipal level and forms of direct democracy. The election is compulsory, free and secret at all levels.

Presidential election

Since the constitutional reform in 1994, the president and vice-president have been elected directly by the people in a single, nationwide election every four years. Because of the strong position of the executive, this election is the one that has received by far the greatest media coverage. Before 1994, with the exception of 1951 and 1973, the election was indirect and took place via an electoral meeting .

The candidates compete against each other in so-called fórmulas (formulas), which consist of a president and a vice-president. There are two special cases:

That a presidential candidate presents himself to multiple vice presidential candidates in multiple formulas (which was last done in 1990). In this case, the votes of the various formulas are not added up, but each formula counts for itself.
That a formula works for several parties. In this case, the votes are added as if it were a single party.

The winner is the formula that:

receives an absolute majority (more than 50% of the valid votes),
is the only formula that receives more than 45% of the valid votes,
receives more than 40% of the valid votes if the difference to the second strongest formula is more than 10 percentage points.

If none of the formulas achieve one of these goals, there is a runoff between the two strongest formulas. If one of the top two winners does not take part in the runoff election, the other candidate is considered the winner, as in 2003, when Néstor Kirchner was declared the winner because Carlos Menem had refused .

Elections to the Chamber of Deputies and Senate

The elections for the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate are held using a complicated electoral process.

The Chamber of Deputies renews half of its (currently 257) seats every two years, while the Senate renews a third of its 72 seats. The election, the year of which coincides with the presidential election, is designed as a nationwide election; the subsequent election is held in all provinces at different times and usually together with the elections to the provincial parliament.

In the House of Representatives, each province is entitled to a certain number of seats according to a key based on the respective number of inhabitants, which are occupied by proportional representation according to the D'Hondt procedure . There is no statutory threshold clause , but in practice, with the exception of the Province of Buenos Aires, which currently has 70 MPs, one party must reach well over five percent to be able to represent MPs. In the smallest provinces, which have the minimum number of five MPs, this natural threshold is 20 percent.

In contrast, each province has three seats in the Senate, regardless of its population. The occupancy of the seats is determined by a special form of majority voting, in which the strongest party occupies two seats and the second strongest one. Since 2001, the Senate elections in the provinces have taken place at different times, with the provinces being divided into three blocks determined by drawing lots, each of which was scheduled for a specific election year.

Provincial and municipal elections

The elections to the legislative and executive branches of the provinces are regulated differently in each province. There are provinces with a unicameral parliament and those with a bicameral parliament, and the electoral system also shows some glaring differences. The executive (governors and the mayor of Buenos Aires) are determined by majority vote, but there are also differences here, for example in some provinces there is a runoff election if there is no absolute majority in the first ballot, in others the relative majority counts .

The system of elections at the municipal level is also determined by the provinces.

Other forms of political participation

In the constitutional reform of 1994, representative democracy in Argentina was expanded to include the possibility of direct democratic elements. The most important procedures implemented so far are popular initiative, referendum and referendum .

The popular initiative was introduced by federal law in 1996. If a certain demand can obtain the support of 1.5% of the population, guaranteed by signature, it must be brought to the Chamber of Deputies, where it is decided.

In the case of a referendum ( consulta popular ), the Congress can convene the people to a referendum or plebiscite. While in the first case ( referendum ) the people themselves vote on the law, the plebiscite is not mandatory and serves to obtain opinions on political decisions that have already been taken.

Criticism of the electoral system and reform approaches

The currently valid electoral laws stipulate that each party or electoral alliance prints its own ballot paper on which its own candidates are indicated, and the voter then chooses the ballot paper of the party they favor in the voting booth. In order to guarantee the availability of the ballot papers, each party may designate one person (the so-called fiscal de mesa , for example: urn lawyer) to control the voting booths. This system has led to increasing criticism in recent decades.

One of the problems is that it makes it possible for voters in the voting booth to steal ballots from opposing parties, which happened several times in the 2007 election , for example . This fact leads to the fact that the parties have to pay numerous people to control these adversities at every ballot box, which only the largest manage across the board. A second problem is the possibility for the parties to distribute the ballot papers days or weeks before the election, which leads to a clientelistic approach ("voter purchase" through small donations when accepting the ballot paper, for example at election events) and the use of the ballot papers as propaganda material . There are also distortions, since in elections that take place in parallel (which almost always happens) it has so far been allowed and customary for the parties to print all candidates for all elections on one piece of paper, which the voter then wishes to shuffle candidates , has to be cut apart, which rarely happens.

To solve the problems, there are various initiatives at the state and provincial level that call for the replacement of party ballots with a single ballot based on the European model. The opposition parties UCR and ARI submitted such a bill to the Senate in April 2008, and the provinces of Córdoba and Santa Fe will use the single ballot system in provincial elections from 2011 onwards. There are also experiments with voting computers in individual municipalities.

Another point of criticism is the lack of transparency in the party primaries . Since the 1990s, the so-called Ley de Lemas (a form of list connection) was introduced in some provinces , which allows several candidates per party to run in elections with their own lists, the votes for each list are added. However, this system is also criticized, for example by the citizens' initiative Reforma Política para la República , which calls for a comprehensive reform, but described this system as confusing for voters. The province of Santa Fe abolished this electoral variant in 2004 and replaced it with open primaries, in which all voters, regardless of party affiliation, determine the candidates of each party. This system was also adopted by the state for the 2011 presidential election.

Important political currents

Argentine politics has been shaped by very different political currents throughout its history. Often there were conflicts between two antagonistic positions that shaped certain epochs in the country's political history. The movements are arranged chronologically according to their first significant occurrence in Argentine history.

The Creole independence movement

Historians usually see the beginning of a genuine political life in the viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata towards the end of the 18th century, when autonomist ideologies influenced by the American independence movement and the French Revolution found support for the first time in the bourgeoisie of Buenos Aires . These ideas, which became more and more popular after the English invasions in 1806 and 1807, triggered by the situation in Europe during the reign of Santiago Liniers, led to the first tensions in the city council of Buenos Aires, the Cabildo , which held governance during the brief English occupation and was then able to establish itself as a powerful organ in the viceroyalty.

Liniers' successor Baltasar de Cisneros could not stop this development either, so that in the May Revolution of 1810 an autonomous government was proclaimed for the first time. However, this initially met with fierce resistance in the other provinces, so that the government junta had to fight for its authority militarily. This first political conflict was only resolved after the war of independence (1823).

For a short time there were also conflicts between monarchists and republicans between 1810 and 1820, although the republican side clearly retained the upper hand. A monarchist form of government was only seriously discussed in the run-up to the Tucumán Congress in 1816, but was rejected by a majority.

Unitarians and Federalists

The period between independence in 1816 and the unification of the Argentine Republic in 1860 was marked by the conflict between the Unitarians, who favored a tightly organized central state , and the federalists , who wanted to preserve the autonomy of the provinces. The origin of the conflict was the quasi-monopoly of the province of Buenos Aires on foreign trade, which created numerous dependencies in the other parts of the country, especially through export taxes that were levied on goods from within the country, only benefiting Buenos Aires itself and so gradually a development gap generated.

This met with resistance from the representatives of the interests of the cattle breeders and handicraft businesses in the country, who saw their development opportunities limited and therefore challenged this monopoly. A federal constitution, they argue, should guarantee the fairer distribution of this income. The Unitarians countered this with the view that due to the small number of inhabitants and population density, a stable state structure would only be possible through a tight central state. The Unitarians were mostly composed of representatives of the bourgeoisie and urban trade.

The conflict broke out as early as 1817, before the end of the wars of independence, when the newly founded National Congress had passed a unitarian provisional constitution, the Reglamento Provisionalio . In 1819, a Unitarian constitution was passed, which led to revolts in the federally dominated parts of the country, which plunged the still loose Provincias Unidas del Río de la Plata into civil war. A brief unification of the country in 1826 under the Unitarian Bernardino Rivadavia , who created the office of President and who was the first to hold it, failed not only as a result of differences with the federalists, but also because of foreign policy failures in the dispute over the Banda Oriental (today's Uruguay ) with Brazil , which is why he resigned after a year and his successor Vicente López y Planes gave up the project of a centralized state and abolished the office of president again.

The federalist Juan Manuel de Rosas , who held the post of governor of Buenos Aires from 1829–1832 and then from 1833, was able to achieve a through a moderate federalist course paired with a supremacy of the province of Buenos Aires, accompanied by severe state terrorist repression against the opposition achieve some stability but fail to unite the country. When Rosas was overthrown in 1853 and the federal, liberal and republican constitution of Argentina, which is still valid today , was passed under the leadership of Justo José de Urquiza , Buenos Aires, ruled by Bartolomé Miter , split off in protest.

After the defeat at the Battle of Cepeda (1859) , the Province of Buenos Aires formally rejoined the confederation. However, the conflict was only resolved with the Battle of Pavón in 1861 and subsequent conquests of almost all provinces by the Unitarians in 1862, in which they were able to defeat Urquiza. With this victory they were able to secure their political influence in the reunified republic, force the transfer of the capital from Paraná to Buenos Aires and change the constitution in a number of decisive points. Miter was elected president in 1862.

The conservative-liberal movement

An influential conservative-liberal movement has existed in Argentina since the late 19th century, which can only be assigned to a party, the Partido Autonomista Nacional , in its early days and which later expressed itself in particular in the form of military dictatorships .

This movement is closely linked to the modelo agroexportador , an orthodox-liberal economic model that was particularly geared towards the export of raw materials. The movement traditionally represents the interests of the large landowners.

Partido Autonomista Nacional

The Partido Autonomista Nacional was an oligarchically oriented conservative and market liberal party that held the presidency between its founding in 1874 and 1916 without interruption and laid the foundations for the export-oriented economic model during this period.

After the effective reintegration of the Province of Buenos Aires into the Argentine Republic, the Partido Autonomista split off from Partido Unitario in 1862 . Under the leadership of Adolfo Alsina , it gathered the radical political forces of the Unitarians, who refused to incorporate the province into a federal state. Nicolás Avellaneda , Minister of Education under President Sarmiento and candidate for his successor, managed in the course of the 1860s and early 1870s to unite the moderate Unitarians around Miter with the federalists around Urquiza in the Partido Nacional . In the presidential election in 1874, Alsina decided to give up his ambitions in the face of the overwhelming power of the opposing side and joined Avellaneda's candidacy to maintain his influence. The two parties thus merged to form the Partido Autonomista Nacional.

During the reign, the PAN deepened the liberal-conservative economic model that had already been introduced by the Unitarians around Miter. It promoted exports and free trade, as well as immigration via the so-called Ley Avellaneda , which made it easier for new citizens to enter the labor market. Politically, however, a strictly authoritarian course was pursued, in which, through manipulation of the elections, other political groups and later also the mostly opposition immigrants themselves, who were influenced by European political ideals such as socialism and anarchism , founded political associations and the first trade unions, participation and entry into the the parliaments was denied. These mechanisms were given the catchphrase máquina electoral (voting machine) and provoked the first protests around 1890.

The growing opposition from the Unión Cívica Radical eventually led to the seizure of power by a more liberal movement in the PAN, around Roque Sáenz Peña . From 1905 the conservative camp had also split up. Sáenz Peña, supported by the Conservatives, was elected president in 1910 and introduced extensive liberalization and finally in 1912 free suffrage. This ultimately became the PAN's undoing, as it first led to its complete fragmentation into the Partido Conservador and the Partido Demócrata Progresista and in 1916 to the change of power to the UCR. The two conservative parties could not break the dominance of the UCR until 1930, but supported the coup against Hipólito Yrigoyen in 1930.

Formations from 1930

With the military dictatorship from 1930 to 1932 by José Félix Uriburu , the conservatives came back to power. In 1931 the Partido Demócrata Nacional (PDN) was founded in the milieu of the Partido Conservador , which, together with the UCR spin-off Unión Cívica Radical Antipersonalista and the conservative spin-off of the socialists, the Partido Socialista Independiente, formed the so-called Concordancia , a political cartel in which the Power remained until 1943. Due to the numerous anti-democratic scandals (especially electoral fraud ), this period went down in Argentine history as the década infame (infamous decade).

In the first Peronist era, the movement opposed Perón and played a key role in the 1955 coup, which led to a renewed military dictatorship and a ban on Peronists (see Peronism section below). Nevertheless, none of the successor parties to the PDN was able to gain influence in the subsequent elections. It only came back to power with the 1966 military coup, the Revolución Argentina . The so-called process of national reorganization , the military dictatorship between 1976 and 1983, is also part of the conservative-liberal current, which was particularly evident in the orthodox-liberal anti-inflation measures of this time.

After 1983 the parties of the movement remained meaningless for a long time, even if elements of the agro-exporting model were taken over again during the reign of the Peronist Carlos Menem and this was also supported by the Unión del Centro Democrático . The right-wing conservative part gathered in the Movimiento por la Dignidad y la Independencia (MODIN), which achieved some respectable success in the 1990s and which in 2011 became part of the nationalist party Partido del Campo Popular .

The economically liberal parties Acción por la República (from 1998) and Recrear para el Crecimiento (from 2003) split off from the PJ and the UCR. Recrear and the conservative Compromiso para el Cambio formed the electoral alliance Propuesta Republicana (PRO) in 2005 , which in 2007 succeeded in establishing the government of one of the states with the autonomous city of Buenos Aires . In 2010, CPC and Recrear merged into one regular party under the same name. With Mauricio Macri, the PRO has been the nation's president since 2015 .

Radicalism (UCR)

The oldest still existing People's Party in Argentina is the Unión Cívica Radical (UCR), which has taken power several times in history. She provided the president in the election periods 1916–1930, between 1958 and 1966 (with interruptions), 1983–1989 and 1999–2001. Today the party is integrated into several electoral alliances, only in a few provinces, especially in its stronghold of Cordoba , does it appear as a single entity and under its own party name.

Their contents profile in Argentina radicalism ( radicalismo is called) that social democratic (she is a member of the Socialist International ), conservative and federalist elements and is based on the middle class, which is traditionally its largest constituencies. After redemocratization in 1983, the party expanded its program to include the working class, which contributed to the electoral success of Raúl Alfonsín in 1983.

The success of this party, along with Peronism, is one of the reasons why there is no polarization between right and left in Argentina . In the two-party system with Peronism that existed de facto from 1945 onwards, there was therefore no agreement as to which of these parties represented the right or the left.

Noteworthy spin-offs from the UCR are the Partido Intransigente , which was founded in 1958 under the name UCR Intransigente and was President Arturo Frondizi from 1958-62. More recent spin-offs are the social democratic Coalición Cívica ARI (from 2002) and the conservative-liberal Recrear para el Crecimiento (from 2003, 2010 absorbed into the PRO party ), both of which had more influence than the parent party at times in some regions, but often with it Formed alliances. In the 2015 presidential election , the UCR formed the Cambiemos electoral alliance with the ARI and the Propuesta Republicana . After their victory, she was involved in the government under Mauricio Macri until 2019.

Socialism and anarchism

The socialist current formed in the last three decades of the 19th century. It was introduced into the country by European immigrants of various nationalities who founded workers' associations, unions and, in 1896, the first socialist party, Partido Socialista .

Despite the initial support from the workers, no strong socialist movement has yet been able to establish itself in Argentina. At one point, the radicalism of the UCR covered some of the socialist positions. More important, however, was the success of Peronism , which from the first reign of Juan Perón (1946–51) developed into the most influential movement in the trade unions and the labor movement, but which was strictly anti-communist. The Partido Socialista remained an insignificant small party for a long time and developed in the course of the 20th century towards social democracy . From the 1990s onwards, the city of Rosario became the most important stronghold , where she won the post of mayor in 1995, and in 2007 she won the post of governor of the province of Santa Fe . Numerous parties have split off from the PS since 1917, some of which represent much more radical directions of socialism, such as Trotskyism and Maoism . However, they are largely meaningless at both the state and provincial levels.

From the 1990s onwards, other social democratic parties also enjoyed success. This includes the Frente Grande , which reached second place in the 1995 presidential elections in the Frente País Solidario electoral alliance and which formed a coalition government with the UCR from 1999. However, it became meaningless after the Argentina crisis. As a social democratic split from the UCR, however, the Afirmación para una República Igualitaria was able to establish itself in the party landscape from 2003.

The most influential anarchist organization was the Federación Obrera Regional Argentina (FORA), founded in 1901 , which ruled the labor movement until the 1930s. From 1915, however, pluralistic currents split off from the FORA, which later co-founded the largely politically neutral CGT , and by 1930 the anarchist wing had largely lost its importance.

Peronism

The Peronist movement, today, along with radicalism and its secession, the most influential movement in Argentina, goes back to Juan Perón , who was president between 1946 and 1955 and between 1973 and 1974. Its pillar is the Partido Justicialista (PJ, mostly called the Peronist Party in German ), which was founded by Perón as the successor to the Partido Laborista , a social democratic workers' party . The PJ held the presidency in the electoral periods 1946–1955, 1973–1976, 1989–1999 and 2003–2015; it was banned twice over the years (1955–63 and 1966–73).

The profile of the party changed significantly over the years; it was personally centered on the figure of Perón himself. In its early days, it strived for an economically and foreign-politically independent, moderately nationalist Argentina, took up ideas of the movement for a third way between socialism and capitalism and was primarily geared towards the working class and entrepreneurship, its political opponent was the agricultural sector. However, this changed as early as Perón's third presidency 1973-74, in which her government was strongly conservative.

After the suspension of party activities during the Argentine military dictatorship in 1976, the so-called Neoperonists emerged, who opened the party to new ideologies such as liberalism and social democracy . In 1989, Carlos Menem was the first neoperonist to come to power. The former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner can also be attributed to this direction, which is ideologically not uniform. There are strong differences between the social democratically oriented Frente para la Victoria by Néstor and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and the Frente de Todos, which has ruled since 2019, to the conservative group around Menem and Adolfo Rodríguez Saá , but also to the liberal wing around José Manuel de la Sota .

As a split-off from the Peronists, the Nueva Dirigencia party , which was dissident with Menem's group, was of importance for a time, but was never able to occupy key positions in Argentine politics and sank again in 2001 into insignificance.

Political parties

For a long time Argentina was shaped by the two traditional people's parties Unión Cívica Radical (UCR) and Partido Justicialista (PJ), which have alternated in power in the democratic times since 1916. Recently, both have lost influence and split into different wings and parties.

Another typical characteristic of the Argentine party landscape is the tendency towards regional parties and alliances. This is made possible by the unlimited approval of list connections at all levels.

Party law

According to the Argentine Political Parties Act, there are two types of parties: national parties and district parties. National parties must be recognized in at least five districts (including the provinces and the autonomous city of Buenos Aires ). The list of recognized parties is updated annually by the Federal Justice Chamber; only parties on this list are allowed to participate in elections.

In order to be recognized as a party in a district, the party must (since the last reform of the party law in 2009) have demonstrably a membership that exceeds 4 per thousand of the eligible voters in the respective district or, alternatively, 4,000 people in districts with more than 1,000. 000 inhabitants. New parties have 150 days after registering with the electoral authorities to provide evidence of this number.

Party status is revoked, among other things, if the number of members falls below this value, if the party either received less than 2 percent of the number of eligible voters or did not participate in the last two general elections in the respective district, or if more than no internal elections have taken place in the party for four years. Membership ( afiliación ) in parties is basically free, which is why some of the parties have very high membership numbers (the Peronist Party has more than 3 million members). Membership in more than one party is not possible.

Funds for election campaigns are distributed equally 50% to the participating parties in an election, 50% an amount depending on the share of votes in the last election. Furthermore, all parties are allowed to broadcast free election advertising on the radio (radio and television) according to a fixed quota .

Donations to political parties from legal entities have been prohibited since 2009.

The parties have two options to cooperate with each other: On the one hand, they can form electoral alliances that are only valid for one election and in which at least one nationally active party must participate in national elections. The electoral alliances set up common candidates for the respective election ( list associations ). On the other hand, they can enter into permanent alliances, so-called confederations , which are valid until they are dissolved or their participants lose their party status. These confederations draw up common lists of candidates on a permanent basis.

Political constellation after the Argentina crisis

The political constellation has changed significantly since the 2001/02 Argentina crisis . The UCR and PJ, which had dominated national politics up to this point, split after this crisis. Therefore, the main blocs no longer coincide with the party lines, but are occupied by electoral alliances. The Argentine sociologist Roberto Bacman came to the conclusion in a study for the opinion research institute CEOP in 2007 that the reason for this fragmentation lay in the failure of the dollar parity in 2001, which, as a "social contract", stabilized the political camps in the 1990s and both PJ and UCR had been represented as dogma. After the failure of this policy in the Argentina crisis, there were no longer any identification points with the economic and political models of the parties, which led to the decline of the traditional voter blocs, especially in the 2003 presidential election. Since 2005 there has been a tendency towards renewed stabilization.

The Frente para la Victoria (Front for Victory, abbreviated FPV or FV ), which ruled from 2003 to 2015 , originally a pure community of interests within the PJ, has since 2003 developed into a center-left alliance supported by numerous regional and small parties. which, in addition to the majority of the PJ itself, also includes some members of the UCR (including the former Vice President of the government Fernández Julio Cobos ). It is programmatically close to social democracy , while neo-Keynesian approaches are favored in economic policy . Because of the dominance of the Kirchner couple, it is often referred to colloquially as Kirchnerismo . Between Néstor Kirchner's assumption of chairmanship of the PJ in April 2008 and his death in 2010, the PJ temporarily stabilized behind the FPV's program.

The largest opposition bloc is occupied by the UCR, the Partido Socialista , the center-left party Generación para un Encuentro Nacional (GEN) and the allied alliance Coalición Cívica (CC), which mainly oversees the UCR split-off Unión por Todos and the social democratic Afirmación para una República Igualitaria belong to. The group entered the 2009 elections under the name Acuerdo Cívico y Social (ACyS). It is also part of the center-left sector, but differs from the FV in that it is more geared towards the urban middle class and has a more agrarian policy. In 2010 the Coalición Cívica left the ACyS.

A second important opposition bloc is the conservative-liberal group of Peronists, which has been appearing under the name Peronismo Federal (Federal Peronism) since 2008 , has clearly distanced itself from the Frente para la Victoria and is running in alternating alliances in elections. The term menemismo for this block (after Carlos Menem, who dominated the group until 2003 ) is now less common because new leaders have emerged. Another significant force in the conservative spectrum is the Propuesta Republicana (abbreviated PRO ), which is particularly strong in the city of Buenos Aires. It has been cooperating (along with some conservative regional parties) since 2009 with the Peronismo Federal (under the abbreviation Unión-Pro ), which has allowed it to expand its influence to other provinces.

The socialist left has been fragmented since the little success of the Frente País Solidario government in 1999–2001; some of the parties now belong to one of the Frente para la Victoria or the Coalición Cívica. Nevertheless, numerous small parties remained independent, which run an active extra-parliamentary opposition with demonstrations, but are insignificant at the parliamentary level. The moderate left alliance Proyecto Sur , which emerged from the Partido Socialista Auténtico and has been one of the stronger groups in the city of Buenos Aires since 2009 and is represented with some seats for Buenos Aires in the National Congress, was temporarily successful . However, it is not active as a party at the state level.

For the 2015 presidential election, the Cambiemos electoral alliance was formed from several parties. It was mainly worn by the Unión Cívica Radical , the Coalición Cívica ARI and the Propuesta Republicana . From the latter, the presidential candidate Mauricio Macri was chosen in internal elections , who ultimately also won the presidential election. It is considered neoliberal or conservative.

In 2019 Macri was voted out of office and the Peronist electoral formula Alberto Fernández (President) and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner from the Frente de Todos took over government.

literature

José A. Friedl Zapata, Institute for Foreign Relations Stuttgart (Ed.): Argentina. Erdmann Verlag, Tübingen / Basel 1978, ISBN 3-7711-0307-X . (Country monographs)
Nikolaus Werz: Argentina Wochenschau Verlag, Schwalbach / Ts 2012, ISBN 978-3-89974-813-0 .
Marcelo Cavarozzi: Autoritarismo y democracia (1955-1996). Eudeba, Buenos Aires 2002, ISBN 950-23-1197-3 .
César Reinaldo García: Historia de los grupos y partidos políticos de la República Argentina desde 1810 a 1983. Sainte-Claire, Buenos Aires 1983.

Web links

Wikisource: Constitution of Argentina (Spanish) - sources and full texts

Constitution of Argentina
National Congress website (span.)
List of authorized parties in Argentina (official government source)

Individual evidence

^ ^A ^b ^c Nations of the World: A political, economic & business handbook . 2008, p. 56

↑ University of Bern , wipo.int: Constitution of Argentina

↑ Democracy-Index 2019 Overview chart with comparative values to previous years , on economist.com

↑ Argentina. Retrieved January 3, 2018 .

↑ ^a ^b Constitution of Argentina (English) ( Memento of the original of July 16, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Retrieved April 12, 2010. @1@ 2

↑ Official INDEC projection for 2001–2015 ( memento of the original from November 18, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 277 kB) based on the 2001 census @1@ 2

↑ Constitución de la Nación Argentina (1994) , Argentine Constitution, Article 99, paragraph 3, on Wikisource

↑ Cristina firmó un DNU cada mes y medio , Agencia CNA, May 27, 2011

↑ Martín Sebastián Viola, Andrea Viviana Abate: La división de poderes en el Estado argentino . In: Mesa Temática No 14 “Una revisión del principio de separación de poderes” . Mexico City 2010, juridicas.unam.mx ( Memento of the original dated September 4, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 191 kB) @1@ 2

^ Official website of the Argentine government: Organismos. Retrieved May 28, 2019 .

↑ Emilio Laferriere: Mecanismos de Democracia Directa en Argentina . ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF) Buenos Aires 2007@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.dd-la.ch

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d Piden cambiar el sistema de boletas . Clarin.com , November 1, 2007

↑ ^a ^b Boleta única para las elecciones, un reclamo de los opositores , Clarín.com, April 18, 2008

↑ Boleta única y fiscal público, ejes de la reforma . In: La Voz del Interior , September 21, 2008

↑ En Córdoba se votará el 7 de agosto con el sistema de boleta única . In: La Voz del Interior , April 1, 2011

↑ Cómo se votará con la única Boleta . In: El Litoral , February 13, 2011

↑ Ley de lemas ( Memento of the original from April 12, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2
↑ Derogaron hoy en Santa Fe la Ley de Lemas . In: La Nación , November 30, 2004
↑ Bielsa se impuso a Rossi en las internas abiertas de Santa Fe , Clarin.com, July 1, 2007
↑ Argentina celebrará sus primeras elecciones primarias abiertas, simultáneas y obligatorias en agosto de 2011 , March 31, 2010
↑ See Friedl Zapata 1978, pp. 98-104
↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Cf. Friedl Zapata 1978, p. 108 ff.
↑ La consolidación de la Argentina organizada . In: Historia General de las Relaciones Exteriores Argentinas , Universidad del CEMA
↑ See in detail Natalio R. Botana: El órden conservador . Hyspamerica, Buenos Aires 1977, section El sufragio: fraude y control electoral , p. 174 ff.
↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d Law 26571 (PDF; 51 kB) on the Reform of the Political Parties Act, 2009. Website of the Ministry of the Interior
↑ ^a ^b Political Parties Act 23.298 (PDF; 504 kB) Web presence of the Argentine Congress
↑ Roberto Bacman: Crisis de los partidos Políticos en Argentina: el de las Estallido lealtades tradicionales del voto . ( Memento of the original from August 20, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF) Centro de Estudios de Opinión Pública, 2007 (abstract) @1@ 2