Political profession and dirty work in Argentina

Abstract

This article examines the political profession through the lens of dirty work, focusing on political assemblers (armadores políticos) in Argentina. Drawing on in-depth interviews with high-ranking officials and legislators, it analyzes the practical skills, moral judgments, and relational resources mobilized in behind-the-scenes political negotiations. The article shows that tasks widely perceived as morally tainted—such as bargaining, enforcing discipline, or managing fragile alliances—are central to political effectiveness and highly valued within the profession, even as they attract public suspicion and stigma. These practices generate a double standard of evaluation, opposing internal professionallegitimacy to external moral condemnation. By examining how political assemblers manage stigma through boundary work, reframing, and internal consolidation, the article connects the sociology of dirty work with debates on political professionalization. It argues that professional authority in politics is not built through the purification of practices but through the routinized handling of morally ambiguous tasks. Far from being a pathological deviation, dirty work emerges as a constitutive dimension of democratic governance and political professionalism.