De matar a dejar morir. Biopolíticas de selección de la vida, Pilar Calveiro, Siglo XXI, Buenos Aires, 2025. 160 páginas
The Rise of Public Sector Unions in the 21st Century: a Theoretical Framework with Mixed Methods and Evidence from Argentina
Public sector unions are increasingly becoming the hegemonic contemporary labor actor in terms of membership and militancy in both advanced and emerging economies. However, political economy lacks a unified theoretical approach to study mobilization by state unions. The analysis of public sector union politics has been largely separated by regional (United States vs. Europe vs. Global South) and disciplinary (American politics vs. comparative politics/political sociology) divides. We contend that though both public and private workers belong to the subaltern classes, public sector union politics and mobilization have different foundations than in the private sector. Unlike private unions, state labor mobilization is essentially driven by what we call the “reverse economic cycle” (militancy increases in bad—rather than good—economic times), by the legal enforcement of bargaining rights (which in contrast to the private sector substantially varies across and within democracies), and by the likelihood of a political exchange between labor and the government. Argentine teachers between 2006 and 2019 provide an ideal laboratory to test this argument through a multilevel (i.e., national and subnational), mixed-methods strategy, which includes comparative and statistical assessments.
Abrasive Politics and Subjective Cultivation in the Digital Age: a Theoretical Approach to Far-right Populism in Argentina
This article analyzes the configuration of political subjectivities in the digital age, focusing on the rise of far-right populism in Argentina. Based on an original framework, it proposes the category of abrasive politics to describe a discursive modality characterized by the deliberate wearing down of social bonds and the mobilization of affects through digital platforms. Through a critical review of Cultivation Theory (Gerbner), the paper develops the original concept of subjective cultivation, examining how the algorithmic ecosystem fragments the public sphere and radicalizes political identities. It is argued that this dynamic establishes new forms of discursive hegemony that challenge democratic consensuses. The analysis concludes that abrasive politics transforms digital interaction into a territory of permanent confrontation and institutional erosion, distinguishing itself from traditional explanations based solely on polarization or echo chambers.
Employment, Income, Social Transfers, and Household Debt During the First Year of La Libertad Avanza’s Government
The article examines the main measures implemented by La Libertad Avanza during its first year in office and their effects on employment, income, non-contributory transfers, and household indebtedness. Javier Milei’s administration carried out a fiscal adjustment equivalent to approximately five percentage points of GDP, through two strategies: the so-called licuadora (“blender”), referring to the erosion of real incomes by granting nominal increases below inflation in wages, pensions, and social programs, and the motosierra (“chainsaw”), meaning deep and wide-ranging cuts to public spending, including public works, transfers to provinces, subsidies for public services, and public sector employment. The impact of these policies was socially regressive, leading to a marked deterioration in social protection, with the notable exception of transfers to households with children and adolescents. In this context, poverty reached historical highs, particularly in households with minors, although it declined in the second half of 2024. Indebtedness became a key survival strategy among the most vulnerable sectors, while higher-income households improved their living conditions by accessing credit for durable consumption and investment.
The Battle Against the State: Workers on the Front Line
La Libertad Avanza won the 2023 Argentine presidential elections with an anti-statist discourse similar to that deployed by other right-wing governments globally. The first measures translated this discourse into concrete institutional instruments to carry out a profound reform of the state structure and its powers, especially in those areas that constitute the ‘social arm’ of the state. In this context, we spoke with some public workers in different areas of the state (social development, health, labour, social security, gender, diversity), which are particularly threatened, some even already dismantled. We share some reflections aimed at understanding the specificity of recent reforms and, above all, what strategies of resistance and/or adaptation are being deployed by front-line workers and technical bureaucracies in the face of layoffs and the dismantling of agencies and policies.
Reconfigurations of Distributive Social Policies and their Effects on Household Living Conditions (2023-2024)
After the new government took office in December 2023, there was a reorientation not only of the economic regime but also in the ‘social policy’ regime. This article analyzes how the adjustment in social investment and its change in composition affected household incomes and living conditions. Public budget execution data and microdata from the Permanent Household Survey are used. The article finds evidence of procyclical behavior in social policy incomes during the worst phase of the economic shock in the first half of 2024, a reduction in the impact of social spending on poverty, and increasing reliance on assistance programs, with a focus on extreme poverty.
The Debate on Intermediation in Care Policies in Argentina: Between Clientelism and Participation
This paper analyzes the debate on intermediation in the management of social care policies at the national level in Argentina. We argue that the theoretical debate and public discussion have been structured in dichotomous perspectives: one that defines it in terms of clientelist practice and another that considers it a modality of genuine community participation. For this purpose, we examine the trajectory and management structure of two programs: food programs and early childhood policies, emphasizing the transformations that have occurred since the assumption of libertarian government. This study concludes, based on a variety of primary and secondary sources, that the effective development of these policies is closer to a participatory governance model, where responsibility is distributed among multiple actors in the production of the common good, in a critical field of intervention in vulnerable territories, overcoming the simplistic and polarized vision of the initial debate.
State Dismantling and the Revolution of Provisions. On Libertarian Governance in Argentina
The article describes the “dismantling” strategies at the national level implemented by President Milei’s government during the initial period of his administration (December 2023 - August 2025), with a focus on social policy areas. It is structured in five sections. The first section develops the hypothesis of the “expansive state without material prosperity,” a decisive precursor to the “anti-state narrative”: the paradox of the multiplication of state provisions and the number of people served, while social dissatisfaction and mass impoverishment also increase. The second section describes the policy of state dismantling. The third proposes the hypothesis of the “subsidiarity” of the national state with respect to provinces, families, and markets. The fourth presents the results of the anti-inflationary policy and its restrictive effects on mass consumption, poverty, employment, and wages.
Break It All! A Preliminary Analysis of the Radical Dismantling of the Argentine Social Protection System under President Javier Milei
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.
Las crisis políticas en las provincias argentinas 1983-2023 Cintia Rodrigo y Sebastián Mauro (compiladores), UNCAUS, Sáenz Peña, 2025. 514 páginas.
Rethinking “Revisionism” in International Relations
This article seeks to rethink the concept of "revisionism" from the perspective of International Relations scholarship developed in the global periphery. To do so, it reviews the mainstream literature on statu quo and revisionist states and reassesses these contributions through the analytical lenses of power-maximizing and defensive-positionalist logics. The article then reinterprets these categories through the concept of the vertical dimension of power, examining how interests associated with the statu quo and revisionism manifest themselves among peripheral or less powerful states in the international system.
[“Macri is Revolution”: the PRO and the Challenges of Right-wing Activism at the University of Buenos Aires
This article examines right-wing PRO militancy at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), a traditionally progressive environment. Unlike previous interpretations suggesting a sociocultural distance as an obstacle, this study argues that PRO's main difficulty at UBA lies in the party leadership's disinterest towards its university branch. Through qualitative fieldwork (2015-2019), the configuration of PRO-Universities is analyzed, highlighting its autonomy from Jóvenes PRO and the ability of pure PRO members to generate resources and adapt PRO's repertoires to university culture, even perceiving UBA as key for the «cultural battle». The 2018 crisis and 2019 defeat, rather than sociocultural distance, were decisive in the cessation of their activity.
Regional inequality and public policies: executive transfers in federal contexts
This paper analyzes the distribution of road funds from the Argentine national government to the provinces between 2008 and 2023. It assesses whether these transfers have been used as tools to compensate for regional disparities or whether they have responded to political variables. Fixed-effects panel models are used to estimate the impact of independent variables on the allocation of road funds. The results show that economic inequality and the structural power of subnational governments have no significant impact on the allocation of funds. In contrast, political variables, such as the partisan affinity between the governor and the president and the percentage of votes for the national government in the province, are significant and of high magnitude. This indicates that the distribution of funds responds to political considerations, which limits the use of this tool as a territorial development policy.
A political Theory of Indignation: Structure, Variation, and Translation of Grievance in Contemporary Democracies
This article offers an initial formulation of a political theory of indignation, understood as a structural form of conflict in contemporary democracies. Rather than conceiving it as a moral or psychological reaction to an unjust event, it is approached as a composite occurrence that articulates facts, signs, emotions, and processes of reinscription. From an aesthetic and affective perspective, the article argues that harm does not constitute a prior moral given, but rather a political construction that defines what can be experienced as intolerable. Building on this premise, the article identifies three social logics of indignation—collectivist, individualist, and libertarian-anomic—which configure distinct affective regimes of grievance. Each gives rise to specific forms of politicization: the first oriented toward structural redress and the expansion of social bonds; the second toward the restoration of moral and meritocratic order; the third toward disengagement and the negation of the common bond. Finally, the article examines how these grammars of indignation condition the political efficacy of processes of reinscription, leadership, and institutional mediation, proposing a reading of democracy as a field of contestation among heterogeneous sensibilities rather than as a stable system of representation.
«The Persistence of Local Caudillos in Latin America» de Tomáš Došek
IIt Does Matter II. The Tale of Neutrality. Unveiling the Normative and Epistemological Deficits of Political Science
Our discipline suffers from an epistemological-normative problem and responds from a circular justification. It confuses methodology and epistemology; it justifies methodologically before a philosophical problem. We believe that before an unsolvable problem, there is the possibility of renewing the epistemological, teaching and normative frameworks of the discipline; moreover, if we review the methodological and epistemological debates, we will find that within the hegemonic neo-positivism of current political science coexists an epistemology of virtue. The first section deals with reflection and teaching on the normative and epistemological deficits of our discipline. Subsequently, Political Theory will be problematized in relation to positive Political Theory and its impact on the teaching of our discipline with no reference to the normative. Finally, the last section will explain the advantages of assuming certain normative positions and of operating within the frameworks of an incipient, but promising, epistemology of virtue.
The Political Autonomy of Subnational Executives: Buenos Aires between 1991–1999 and 2002–2007
The concept under analysis in this work is the subnational political autonomy of governors in federal countries. The research question is: What factors favor the political autonomy of subnational executives? The argument that guides this research is that there are six factors that favor the political autonomy of subnational executives: 1) the institutional design of the province; 2) the territorial political capital; 3) the fiscal resources of the province; 4) the interference of the mayors and the president in the provincial party; 5) the political ambition of the governor; 6) the political ambition of the president. The hypothesis of this work is that the interaction between these factors modifies the political autonomy of governors: the more factors they have in their favor, the greater their capacity to carry out an autonomous government agenda. The cases of the governors of Buenos Aires, Eduardo Duhalde and Felipe Solá, are analyzed.
Public Policies and Indigenous Territorial Rights in Argentina (2021-present)
The work problematizes central social issues in indigenous matters, organization, access and use of the territory, from 2021 to the present in Argentina (February 2024). Through documentary analysis, interviews and participant observation, the positions of national legislators and national organizations of Indigenous Peoples were analyzed in the treatment of the extension of National Law 26,160 (2021) and reforms of territorial-environmental regulations (February 2024). The following were identified: the deepening of territorial conflicts and collusion of local political interests with extractivist sectors; irregular treatment of the extension of Law 26,160; criminalization of the Mapuche People; and destructuring of environmental protection regulations with foreignization of lands after the arrival of a far-right government administration. From Indigenous Peoples they maintained the indigenous policy of defense of ancestral community territories, opposing individualistic and extractivist logics. The indigenous issue faces new challenges in the face of denialist discourse, delegitimization of indigenous peoples and environmental-territorial protection.
«Legitimación y racionalización. Weber y Habermas: la dimensión normativa de un orden secularizado» de Enrique Serrano Gómez
«La Europa de nuestro tiempo. Desde la Segunda Guerra Mundial hasta la década de los ’90» de Walter Laqueur
«Derecha e izquierda. Razones y significados de una distinción política» de Norberto Bobbio
«El Estado y la teoría política» de Martín Carnoy
Reflections on the Falklands War. An Approach to the Topic
The conflict that became a war between Great Britain and Argentina in 1982 is analyzed by applying the logic of power relations in the international system, and also by considering the pressure of the international power structure on the diplomatic and strategic decisions of each of the States involved.
Economic Policy: The Distinctive Sign of the End of the 20th Century: The Globalization of the World Economy
This article analyzes the phenomenon of globalization of world economy as a hallmark of the modern era. It is defined as the organizational adaptation of global society to the development and evolution of the productive forces, which has superseded previous social organization. Consequences reach all spheres: economy, politics and society.
The Incorporation of Peronism into the Political Game: the Acceptance of an Unwanted Alternative
The civilian-military uprising of 1995 intended not only to overthrow the government of Juan Domingo Peron but also to proscribe Peronism till it disappeared. However, some years later —in 1966— the peronists emerged again victorious from an election. The article reveals how the resounding failure of “Revolución Libertadora’s” government turned into the factor that allowed the return of Peronism to the political game, after a period of tight anti-peronism that prevented it.
Electoral Evolution and Decisive Issues in Argentina from 1983-1995
The return of democracy in Argentina in 1983 opened a new period of electoral competition, where political parties recovered their role as the main political actors. Taking into account that in every election between 1983 and 1995 there has been a “critical” subject or issue discussed by the public opinion, the author verifies that the party that has gained greater influence on the design of the electoral agenda has had more chances of winning the election than the rest.
The Ecuadorian-Peruvian Border Conflict and Regional Security Mechanisms
The article aims to assess which has been the role played by regional institutions and security agencies in Latin America at the time of settling border disputes among its members. The focus is on the Peru-Ecuador conflict of 1995. The analysis is centered on the relation between the degree of political will of the actors involved and the role of the Organization of American States (OAS) in the process of conflict resolution.