tortured.
During the periods of civilian rule there were elections—
a democracy of sorts. But the political system was far from
inclusive. Since the rise of Perón in the 1940s, democratic
Argentina has been dominated by the political party he
created, the Partido Justicialista, usually just called the
Perónist Party. The Perónists won elections thanks to a
huge political machine, which succeeded by buying votes,
dispensing patronage, and engaging in corruption,
including government contracts and jobs in exchange for
political support. In a sense this was a democracy, but it
was not pluralistic. Power was highly concentrated in the
Perónist Party, which faced few constraints on what it could
do, at least in the period when the military restrained from
throwing it from power. As we saw earlier (this page–this
page), if the Supreme Court challenged a policy, so much
the worse for the Supreme Court.
In the 1940s, Perón had cultivated the labor movement
as a political base. When it was weakened by military
repression in the 1970s and ’80s, his party simply switched
to buying votes from others instead. Economic policies and
institutions were designed to deliver income to their
supporters, not to create a level playing field. When
President Menem faced a term limit that kept him from
being reelected in the 1990s, it was just more of the same;
he could simply rewrite the constitution and get rid of the
term limit. As El Corralito shows, even if Argentina has
elections and popularly elected governments, the
government is quite able to override property rights and
expropr