Break It All! A Preliminary Analysis of the Radical Dismantling of the Argentine Social Protection System under President Javier Milei

Abstract

This article analyzes the process of dismantling social protection policies in Argentina during the first eighteen months of Javier Milei’s government (2023–2025). Based on a qualitative-exploratory approach, supported by the analysis of legislation, decrees, and official resolutions, it examines changes in the organizational structure of the State and in the main cash transfer programs. The article engages with the international literature on policy termination and policy dismantling, highlighting how the Argentine government deployed explicit, gradual, hidden, and symbolic strategies to reduce the social state. It argues that the measures implemented were not limited to budgetary adjustments but rather constituted an ideational and normative reorientation toward a residual, targeted, and assistance-based model of social policy. The elimination of ministries and programs, the weakening of state capacities, and the punitive rationale of the new interventions represent a deliberate rupture with the welfare consensus built since democratization.