Essay On Populism Vs Peronism

Politics is one of the fundamental characteristics of a nation as political parties and policies shape a country’s development and economic stability. When looking at the political history of a nation or region is it impossible to fully understand its current state without investigating its political trajectory. Unlike the political system in The United States, Latin American countries possess a wider range of political factions accounting for a richer political history. An examination of Argentina, Mexico, Chile, and Venezuela's major political parties highlights how specific their policies frame our understanding of these nations’ development and democratic structures. In the case of Argentina, the two prominent parties are the Peronist

The UCR started off as radical because their target demographic was the middle class who did not have the right to vote, but over time became increasingly elitist. Conversely the Peronist party, started by Juan Peron, targeted the working class, as Peron himself was a classical populist. The Peronist party does not possess a strong ideological platform but rather uses the flexibility of classical populism in order to gain and maintain national support. Peronist Presidents Juan Peron, Isabel Peron, Nestor Kirchner and Christina Fernandez de Kirchner all functioned as populist rulers who appealed to the lower-class workers, sometimes formal workers and other times informal, as a way to maintain power. However, Peronist President Carlos Menem did not follow a populist agenda and rather attempted to open Argentina's economy through neoliberal reforms, the most damaging of which was his Convertibility Plan. This reform deeply effected Argentina and hurt the popularity of the party. In general Peronist Presidencies were not known for their democratic policies, sometimes categorized as "semiauthortarian" in terms of civil rights policies. Moreover, all the administrations were ripe with corruption and not until the