A Decisive Step. Left-wing Parties after the Electoral Reform in Argentina

Abstract

In this paper we analyze the effects of implementing the system of open, simultaneous, and compulsory primaries (PASO) —one of the key pieces of the political-electoral reform enacted in Argentina in 2009—. According to its sponsors, this reform would achieve the following basic aims: democratization of the party structures, ordering of the political offer; and the streamlining of the parties, through an established minimal threshold of competition. This paper will focus on the adaptation by leftwing parties to the new regulations. We shall examine the electoral performance of these parties through three electoral processes in which the PASO were applied.

In the first two applications of the PASO system, the FIT was able to overcome the limitations of the electoral reform. But by 2015, on the other hand, fratricidal competition, adaptation to electioneering and the outrage of the pre-existing balances constituted a brake on the rise of the revolutionary left process.