Argentina: Can Milei’s “Radical, Untested” Ideas Supplant Peronist Clientelism?

Argentina’s not ready for Javier Milei’s “very radical, untested economic ideas,” says Dr. Christopher Sabatini, the Senior Research Fellow for Latin America at the foreign affairs think tank, Chatham House. While other observers insist that time is ripe for an alternative to the corrupt clientelism of Peronism.

For many of those who voted for Milei, however, the specifics of the policies were less important than the message: one that the president-elect amplified in his victory speech on Sunday night, declaring that ‘we are at the end of the caste model’ of politics, Sabatini notes (below):

It’s also uncertain how far Milei’s undoubted popular mandate will grant him the power to transform the country. Argentina’s system of clientelism runs deep, and it’s not clear that Milei’s party can forge the necessary alliances to dominate the country’s federal system to pass and implement his radical remake of the country’s economy and politics.

As an antisystem candidate and now president-elect, Milei is not a singular phenomenon in Latin America, according to Tulane University’s Virginia Oliveros and Emilia Simison. Dissatisfaction with the functioning of democracy was key to catapulting Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Nayib Bukele in El Salvador.

Milei, however, has significantly less political experience than either of them, and his proposals are a more radical break from the past than what even most political outsiders propose, they write for the Journal of Democracy. At the end of the day, both Milei’s unusual victory and his prospects for political survival may be linked to the most typical explanation of electoral outcomes in Latin America: the economic situation in general and inflation in particular. If he fails to improve the country’s economic prospects, one big question will remain: what will Milei do next?

#Argentina‘s @JMilei is not a singular phenomenon in Latin America. Dissatisfaction with democracy’s functioning was key to catapulting Bolsonaro in Brazil and Bukele in El Salvador, @Tulane‘s #VirginiaOliveros & #EmiliaSimison write @JoDemocracy. https://t.co/cpp1nFFgrQ

— Democracy Digest (@demdigest) November 22, 2023

“Milei will take office as the weakest president in Argentina’s history, despite his clear victory in the second round,” political analyst and consultant Sergio Berensztein told the Financial Times. “The first question for governability will be the system of alliances and pacts which Milei will construct.”