Political Personalism and Democratic Culture in San Luis, Argentina

Abstract

This paper addresses the phenomenon of political personalism, populism and democratic culture in the province of San Luis, Argentina, in the period 2015-2019 and intends to formulate a preliminary analysis to understand the complexity of the social and political phenomena experienced by San Luis. Since the advent of democracy in Argentina in December 1983, the brothers Alberto and Adolfo Rodríguez Saá have governed the province of San Luis. The Peronist party has a clear hegemony in San Luis, since December 1983, without interruptions. Political personalism has been relatively researched in the Latin American political / communicational field and under that concept different ideas and conceptions can be deployed. On the other hand, democratic culture is linked among other factors to mobilization and citizen participation. In this context, there is a perception that more and more citizens are disconnected from a political party in a context of electoral disorder and volatility, reducing the role of party representation and improving the personalization of the representative process. Personalism is related to representation: the public person is split from the group-partisan. The individual who has representation in the collegiate bodies adopts decisions more by autonomous decision convenient to their own interests, than by mandate of their represented. The weakening of political parties and the difficulties of representation have been factors that have promoted personalization as a political attitude and political personalization has also affected political parties by fragmenting and weakening them. The opacity of these democracies (Quiroga, 2016) is a breeding ground where political personalism finds a favorable environment for its presence in addition to existing in the case of San Luis, symbolization processes where the political leader is confused with popular symbols to achieve greater adherence of citizens. An opaque democracy is characterized as that in which a power (executive power) has more influence and imposes itself on the other powers.