| The Method to the Madness: Understanding Argentina’s Power Dynamics

For the last century, Argentina has been well-known for its political and economic instability. Numerous national protests were held against educational and salary reforms in 2026 during the government of Javier Milei, a 55-year-old liberal economist who promised a radical change in the Argentinian system. During his first three years as president, Milei has tried to redirect the country’s political and economic compass, caught between an uncompromising Congress on one side, and a nation facing years of severe inflation and economic stagnation on the other side. The Argentine economist has presented himself as a savior to rescue Argentina from a corrupt political establishment. This is not unique to Milei. Historically, figures like Perón (the charismatic leader), Menem (the economic stabilizer), and Kirchner (the refounder) have utilized similar narratives. The narrative requires a sharp dichotomy: a “Savior” who embodies the pure will of the people, pitted against an entrenched “Establishment” (or “casta”) that seeks to preserve its privileges. It operates heavily on the logic of the mass multitude.
To someone unfamiliar with the Argentinian system, this might look like chaos. Therefore, to understand the dynamics, one must look at how power is distributed between Congress and the president.


| The “Engine Room” of the Constitution

While the Argentine Constitution borrows heavily from the 1787 United States model, the “engine room”, where power is distributed, was built for a fundamentally different purpose. On the one hand, American farmers sought to prevent the concentration of power in the hands of a tyrannical king. On the other hand, Argentina's founders faced the challenge of post-independence anarchy after breaking free from Spanish colonial rule. To forge a nation out of chaos, they combined their legacy of centralized authority with democratic checks and balances in a whole “engine room”6. However, this authority is not absolute. While the executive was designed to act, the reality is often more complex, and presidents frequently have to govern with a highly fragmented, opposition-led Congress. Today, when a president bypasses the Congress, they pull the “levers” in the center of decision-making originally built to empower the executive in times of crisis.


| The Tools of the Trade

When the Congress becomes a bottleneck (a procedural or partisan blockage that prevents laws from moving forward), the president has specific tools to bypass it. The most common tool is the Emergency Executive Order (“Decreto de Necesidad y Urgencia” - DNU), allowing the president to unilaterally enact sweeping legislative changes under the premise of an “emergency”. In a standard democracy, a law must be approved by Congress before it takes effect. A DNU reverses this logic: the president’s decree becomes law instantly. It remains active unless a slow-moving Congress manages to gather the vote to explicitly reject it. If Congress does nothing, the president wins. For example, President Milei bypassed legislative approval to enact his economic reforms via DNU 70/20235. With a single stroke of a pen, this massive decree repealed or modified over 300 laws overnight, radically deregulating the economy without a single congressional debate.