Presidential Debates in Argentina

Abstract

This chapter analyzes presidential debates in Argentina. After describing institutional characteristics of Argentine political system and summarizing the debating tradition in the country, the chapter focuses on the first and the second presidential debates. While the former only took place in 2015 as an initiative supported by the civil society, the latter was held in 2019, fruit of a legal constriction. Despite these differences, both kinds of debates had to consider candidates’ political and technical preferences on the format of the debate and on the subjects to address. In addition, both debates captured large attention of the public and collected the usual criticism: a) debates are too rigid, b) they fail to disseminate real valuable information because of their lack of concrete proposals, and c) there are no real opponents but, rather, speakers addressing the audience unidirectionally.