The radical libertarian candidate Javier Milei surfed an anti-establishment wave to comfortably win Argentina’s highly polarized presidential runoff on Nov. 19 with 55.7 percent of the votes. He will take over a country battered by the worst economic crisis in two decades, rising poverty levels and one of the highest inflation rates in the world. His opponent Sergio Massa, currently minister of the economy, obtained the most votes in the first round, but the country’s catastrophic economic situation was like a millstone around Massa’s neck during a runoff in which the majority of voters wanted change. Massa’s defeat was so decisive that he may not even have a mandate to lead the reconstruction of Peronism, a movement that has governed Argentina for 28 of the last 40 years.
The radical libertarian candidate Javier Milei surfed an anti-establishment wave to comfortably win Argentina’s highly polarized presidential runoff on Nov. 19 with 55.7 percent of the votes. He will take over a country battered by the worst economic crisis in two decades, rising poverty levels and one of the highest inflation rates in the world. His opponent Sergio Massa, currently minister of the economy, obtained the most votes in the first round, but the country’s catastrophic economic situation was like a millstone around Massa’s neck during a runoff in which the majority of voters wanted change. Massa’s defeat was so decisive that he may not even have a mandate to lead the reconstruction of Peronism, a movement that has governed Argentina for 28 of the last 40 years.
Milei holds many extreme views. He believes climate change is a socialist hoax and that the mob violence of Jan. 6, 2021 in Washington, D.C. and Jan. 8, 2023 in Brazil’s capital, Brasília, had nothing to do with former U.S. and Brazilian Presidents Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, respectively. Many of his proposals are highly controversial, such as closing Argentina’s central bank and dollarizing the economy; privatizing education; eliminating all gun laws; criminalizing abortion; legalizing the sale of human organs; and downgrading diplomatic ties to countries such as Brazil and China, Argentina’s two major trading partners.
At first glance, Milei has a powerful mandate for implementing these ideas and transforming Argentina; after all, he won more votes than any candidate since 1983. The president-elect also proposes to radically reduce the size of the state, which doubled under Peronist governments over the past two decades. The day after his triumph, Milei confirmed his intent to privatize the majority state-owned energy company YPF, national news agency Telám, national radio station LRA Radio Nacional, and publicly owned television network TV Pública. “Everything that can be in the hands of the private sector will be in the hands of the private sector,” Milei said during a radio interview. He argued that there was no space for gradual reforms; instead, he said “drastic” measures were needed.
Yet Milei’s mandate for change—and his capacity to deliver it—may be smaller than it appears. In fact, the far-right libertarian may be, at least initially, one of the weakest Argentine presidents in decades. Given that only 30 percent of voters supported Milei in the election’s first round, it is safe to assume the president-elect received numerous votes in the runoff from people who do not support some of his most radical proposals and voted for him because they considered Massa even less palatable, especially in the economic realm.
More importantly, however, Milei—just like Trump and Bolsonaro before him—triumphed with a message of radical change without executive experience. He also lacks an established party structure and a large pool of allied technocrats he can appoint to key positions in his administration. Both Trump and Bolsonaro had to rely on experienced and more moderate bureaucrats to govern, many of whom considered themselves the “adults in the room” and often operated behind the scenes to tame some of their respective presidents’ most extreme impulses. The fact that most mainstream economists believe Milei’s plan for dollarizing Argentina’s economy is unworkable may strengthen attempts to kick some of his more radical ideas down the road.
In the case of Milei, those who aim to fill his administration with “adults” are former center-right president Mauricio Macri, who governed Argentina from 2015 to 2019, and Patricia Bullrich, Macri’s former security minister and also a candidate this election (she obtained 24 percent of votes in the first round). When it became clear that Milei and Massa would make it into the runoff, Macri convened Milei and Bullrich at his home and negotiated an agreement to help make Milei more palatable to centrist voters, and give credibility to his somewhat more moderate rhetoric, during the runoff. In return, Macri and Bullrich would gain some influence in the Milei government by placing several of their allies into key positions in the new administration. (Macri’s public support for Milei sealed the breakup of the center-right Together for Change coalition, as some of its members—such as Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, chief of government of Buenos Aires—refused to side with Milei in the runoff.)
While Milei said he would not announce cabinet appointments until his inauguration on Dec. 10, Macri and Bullrich allies are known to be actively participating in the transition negotiations, and several, such as economist Guillermo Nielsen and former Central Bank of Argentina executives Federico Sturzenegger, Demian Reidel, and Luis Caputo—all of whom have served in the Macri administration—may join the government.
The most likely dynamic in Milei’s government will thus be a tension between, on one hand, the president’s radical allies who were inspired by the candidate’s rhetoric to fight the “parasitic caste” and end “old politics,” and, on the other, the Macri and Bullrich allies who see Milei as a useful vessel to implement policies they like and who have long been part of the very political elite Milei had initially vowed to destroy.
There is some reason to believe the moderates have the capacity to win important battles. Milei even walked back several radical ideas during the runoff. And while he may be a highly effective rabble-rouser, his capacity to negotiate deals with congresspeople is notoriously limited: During his only term in Congress, Milei made few friends and only presented one, largely symbolic, law. Moreover, his La Libertad Avanza (LLA) party will hold just 39 of the 257 seats in the lower house and eight of 72 seats in the senate; thus, Milei will depend on support from more moderate forces to legislate. Even if all of Macri’s Republican Proposal (PRO) party legislators support Milei, the president-elect still won’t have a governing majority, which he will need to pass the 2024 budget, one of his first tasks as leader. And Milei’s coalition has not a single governor in Argentina’s 23 provinces.
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All of this shows that unless Milei strikes a political bargain with more centrist lawmakers, his capacity to implement his ambitious plans will be very limited. Despite an impressive victory, Milei now needs the help of the political “caste,” which he frequently demonized, to effectively govern Argentina. If he does not, his stint in the Casa Rosada may be shorter than expected. Just like several other Argentine presidents who lacked a governing majority in Congress, Milei may not even be able to finish his term—particularly since, as he readily recognizes, his policy proposals would, at least initially, increase poverty levels even further. The potential for social unrest in response to Milei’s proposed shock therapy is considerable. The 44 percent of voters who sided with Massa probably support the continuation of the current government’s generous subsidies and support programs, and at least half of Argentines depend on benefits from government-funded supplemental income and job programs.
That said, Macri and Bullrich’s ambitions to embed adults in the room and tame Milei may be, to some extent, wishful thinking. While the U.S. and Brazilian “deep states” were able to prevent Trump and Bolsonaro from overreaching—especially when they tried to overturn election results after failed attempts at reelection—Milei can hardly afford to abandon his core supporters completely and govern as Macri and Bullrich would have. As Milei’s biographer warns: “No-one can convince Milei to do the opposite of what his head dictates. And that brain, a labyrinth in which clones, sorcerers, mediums and God coexist, knows only one way of structuring itself.”
The adults in the room may be unable to prevent Milei from closing ministries, which he can do by presidential decree. If he feels unable to advance his agenda through traditional means, Milei may be tempted, as he suggested during the campaign, to take the unusual decision of organizing plebiscites on some issues to mobilize his supporters and overcome obstacles in Congress. In the foreign-policy realm, Milei may be convinced to walk back some of his promises (such as the one to abandon Mercosur), but he will hardly abandon all of them, and not least his promise to decline the invitation to join the BRICS grouping. In the same way, Milei’s decision to invite Bolsonaro to his inauguration suggests he does not plan to have a functioning working relationship with Brazil’s current head of state, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, whom he has repeatedly attacked on the campaign trail.
Finally, the geopolitical context will also determine how far Milei can go. Bolsonaro’s presidency provides an instructive example: During his first two years, Bolsonaro could swim in the slipstream of the Trump administration, which allowed him to pick Ernesto Araújo, an anti-globalist conspiracy theorist, as his top diplomat, and antagonize numerous leaders around the world. When Trump lost reelection in 2020, Bolsonaro had to adapt. He replaced Araújo with a bureaucrat and toned down his anti-China rhetoric. With U.S. President Joe Biden in the White House, the geopolitical environment for a far-right populist is set to be far more hostile—until, that is, the U.S. presidential election, in which Milei can be expected to publicly root for a Trump victory. The former U.S. president recently wrote Milei a warm congratulatory message—encouraging him to “Make Argentina Great Again.”
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