Saturday, September 19, 2026
News and Views from the Global South
ARGENTINA: Democracy in Crisis
Marcela Valente
- Although a broad majority of Argentines value democracy, only a tiny minority believe in the ability of their democratic system and its institutions to overcome the country’s severe economic, social and political troubles.
Argentina is facing one of its worst crises ever, with the economy virtually paralysed for the past four years, unemployment standing at 21.4 percent, and more than half of the population of 37 million living in poverty.
But the prospect for coming up with solutions is dampened by the crisis of legitimacy suffered by the country’s political leaders.
Many Argentines are totally fed up with the political parties, lawmakers, government officials, and trade unionists as well, who are accused of failing to live up to their responsibilities and of being corrupt.
Only eight percent of respondents in Argentina said they were satisfied with the way democracy was working, in a regionwide Latin America survey carried out earlier this year by the Latinobarómetro consultancy – a far cry from the 75 percent in Costa Rica and 53 percent in Uruguay who said they were satisfied with democracy.
But that does not indicate that Argentines reject democracy, as reflected by the fact that 65 percent of those surveyed expressed their support for the democratic system – only a few percentage points lower than the proportion of Costa Ricans and Uruguayans who said they were in favour of democracy.
A recent study by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) also found that Argentines are disillusioned with the way democracy is functioning in their country.
In the UNDP report, 85 percent of respondents said they were dissatisfied or only slightly satisfied with democracy – down from 46 percent of those who were asked the same question five years.
The president of the ‘Asociación Conciencia’ (Awareness Association), Lucrecia Lacroze, said the problem was that up to now, Argentines saw democracy as a system that simply enabled them to vote, in municipal, legislative or presidential elections, every two years.
”The grave error that we committed during all of these years was to believe that the only way you had to participate was by voting,” Lacroze told IPS.
Asociación Conciencia was created with the aim of awakening citizen awareness, in 1983, just before the country returned to democracy after the 1976-1983 military dictatorship.
”But at this point, when the crisis is so acute, a change is occurring, and many people are beginning to understand that they should do something, and they really want to act,” she underlined.
”Argentines are just now understanding that citizens govern through their representatives, but that if their representatives have no legitimacy, then it is necessary to participate somehow to change things and come up with solutions to our problems,” the activist added.
Grassroots methods of participation have mushroomed in Argentina over the past year. Bankrupt factories have been put back into operation by their workers, neighbourhood assemblies discuss solutions to questions like gaps in health care, and street demonstrations to protest hikes in the rates of public services or the freeze on bank accounts put into place in December have become part of the landscape.
The economic collapse and consequent social upheaval led to the Dec 20 fall of the government of Fernando de la Rúa, who took office in late 1999 at the head of a centre-left Alliance, after two consecutive administrations led by Justicialista (Peronist) president Carlos Menem (1989-1999).
The protests and rioting also toppled de la Rúa’s successor, Peronist Adolfo Rodríguez Saa, just a week later.
The Jan 1 designation by Congress of another Peronist, Eduardo Duhalde, to complete de la Rúa’s four-year term resolved the immediate political crisis. But the social unrest continues.
Duhalde took several controversial steps, like overturning the ”convertibility” law or currency board that pegged the peso to the dollar for a decade, which led to a crash of the local currency, and ordering that all dollar-denominated bank deposits and loans be converted to pesos.
Due to such policies, Duhalde’s approval rating has sunk to just six percent, according to a survey conducted last month by the local polling firm Catterberg y Asociados.
”The public has already made a final judgement on his inability to overcome the crisis, and the Duhalde administration has no margin for recovery,” said Catterberg.
The president has announced early presidential elections, scheduled for Mar 30, six months before the end of his term.
Duhalde said on Oct 11 that his decision was final, and that even if for some reason the elections did not actually take place in March, he planned to step down on May 25, the day set for the change of government.
If at that moment no new president has been elected, he said, a caretaker president will have to be appointed.
But the respondents to the Catterberg y Asociados poll expressed little enthusiasm for the prospect of a change in president.
None of the leading presidential hopefuls have poll ratings of over 25 percent. There are also ”too many Argentines wondering who they could possibly vote for,” said political scientist Guillermo O’Donnell.
Some of the contenders for the presidential nominations, like Menem or Rodríguez Saa, are tainted by suspicions of corruption.
Meanwhile, the political leaders who enjoy an honest image are not perceived by poll respondents as capable of governing the country, and neither their economic proposals nor those close to them, who would be likely to form part of their government, are seen as reliable or convincing.
Lacroze, however, sees the doubts and scepticism as positive. ”People are worried, but not indifferent, and things will move forward this way,” she said.
”There is great awareness that the laws exist, but don’t work because there is no one capable of enforcing them. In Conciencia, we receive an incredible number of phone calls from people who want to participate,” she added.
O’Donell is less optimistic. He said that even though there is no threat of an imminent coup d’etat, democracy is still at risk in Argentina: ”Democracies do not only die sudden deaths, but can also die slowly, as is occurring here,” he warned.
In such processes, there are no decisive episodes, but a ”slow erosion” in which freedoms are gradually lost, the government’s legitimacy declines, and politicians ”shut themselves into increasingly autistic games,” such as what occurred on Oct 11, when Congress voted against impeaching the members of the Supreme Court.
By a narrow margin, the Chamber of Deputies voted against a motion for the impeachment of the nine Supreme Court judges, many of whom face legal charges for supposed criminal conduct – 44 lawsuits in the case of the Court’s president, Julio Nazareno.
The Catterberg y Asociados poll found that 81 percent of respondents living in large cities wanted the Supreme Court judges to resign.
The Supreme Court’s credibility has hit rock-bottom due to accusations that its rulings are biased, and because of several magistrates’ close ties to the heavily criticised traditional political parties.
The decision by the lower house of Congress ”is one of the things that disconcert the public,” said Lacroze. ”But we believe that a change will have to emerge out of all of this.”
However, she agreed that democracy in Argentina is facing one of its worst crises ever, despite the fact that the armed forces are no longer a threat.
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ARGENTINA: Democracy in Crisis
Marcela Valente
- Although a broad majority of Argentines value democracy, only a tiny minority believe in the ability of their democratic system and its institutions to overcome the country’s severe economic, social and political troubles.
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