Neoliberal Meltdown and Social Protest: Argentina 2001—2002

Abstract

As a result of a variety of factors that in the final analysis point to the macro-economic design implemented for over a decade, poverty and social inequality accelerated throughout the 1990s in Argentina and contributed to the unfolding of a political crisis already in gestation for some time. It culminated in 2001—2002 with an extraordinary political mobilisation that brought down the government. However, the lack of political articulation of the massive social protests created conditions for the crisis to be processed in the short run by the institutional actors of the established political system. Against a backdrop of intense social turmoil, a set of assistance-oriented emergency policies was enacted along with changes in several macro-economic instruments. These measures proved capable of containing the most virulent expressions of social protest, thereby deferring treatment of the substantive causes of the crisis to a government that would arise out of the electoral process.