L'ordre ou la liberté?: La redéfinition de l'espace public de Buenos Aires au temps de la crise des démocraties libérales

Abstract

Since at least the 1850s, the streets of Buenos Aires have served as a complementary space for voters? involvement, which was considered valid under certain circumstances. However, the right of assembly was not the subject of a constitutional and legislative definition until 1949. In 1932, a Police Order on public meetings, driven by Agustín P. Justo?s government, tried to define and prescribe the rules of the political game in the streets of Buenos Aires. The article analyses this regulation on the right of assembly ? inspired by european jurists ? into the national and international context of crisis democracy crisis in the 1930s. Argentinian case shows an original local variation on the difficulties that liberal democracies had to face during the Interwar period. Despite the fact that some terms of argentinian politics were very similar with europeans ones, conflicts also took place in the context of a specific political culture in which the problem of representation was set from a different perspective.