Argentina's New Right-Wing and Bilateral Regional Ties: Building an External Agenda in a Debate Between Ideas and Pragmatism

Abstract

Argentina´s external insertion has traditionally been organised around three main axes: links with key international actors, regional ties that generally prioritise relations with neighbouring contexts, and extra-regional links. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss how right-wing governments have expressed themselves in the regional arena since redemocratisation, taking into account the pressing issues on their respective agendas in their political, economic and border-strategic dimensions at the bilateral level. The study focuses on the governments of Carlos Menem (1989–1999) and Mauricio Macri (2015-2019) as leaders of a new liberal- conservative and pragmatic right, the consolidation of which dates back to the mid-1980s. This new right, which rejects the past decades’ nationalist and militarist ideas, does not constitute a uniform nor static field. On the contrary, these administrations suggest that they are part of a political.