COVID-19 and Political Crisis: State Capacity and Defiance in Argentina

Abstract

In this chapter, we propose that long-standing political, social, and economic crises and polarisation between social groups are central to understanding state capacity in Argentina. This is the context in which the health crisis generated by the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded. This brought to the fore how an allegiance to the national state could be achieved, especially in a state governed by an administration that had recently acceded to power, promoting a discourse of ‘collective healthcare’ and the development of the health system, while decreeing Preventive and Compulsory Social Isolation (ASPO). In this chapter, we discuss how the implementation of ASPO, an initiative to control the spread of the virus, represented a nexus through which a series of questions was revealed about state capacity and the adherence and defiance of sectors of the population to state policy.