Argentina midterms raise the question: What's so funny about compassionate realism?

Mauricio Macri's hold on La Casa Rosada lightly reinforced by small gains at the Argentina legislative midterms. Photograph: La Casa Rosada from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

The midterm elections in Argentina did little to settle the future of Argentina. President Mauricio Macri's movement gained a few seats, just enough to keep his project rolling forward.

That Macri's project is essentially austerity in a more extreme context is important for progressives to consider. It presents the epitome of what the Centre-Right consider the justification for strong dose of 'realism', but raises the question of why that has to be delivered in the form of harsh measures?

The Midterms elections covered a third of the Senate and half of the lower House. It would have been hoped by Cambiemos to be an opportunity to reinforce Macri's presidency with a stronger legislative contingent - just 16 of 72 in the Senate, with just 86 Deputies out of 257 in the Chamber, to around 46 and 105 for various Justicialist groups combined, respectively.

The four biggest parties each had about half of seats their Chamber seats up for reelection, while most of the Senate seats were being defended by Justicialists (Peronists).

As it happened Cambiemos made gains, though they were few. The coalition took 19 seats, not enough reach a majority, while those were offset by the 25 seats gained by former President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, rallying voters from various populist parties to her particular faction.

Even if this result is more than Macri and Cambiemos might have feared, it is still less than they will have hoped. Part of the reason why may be that, after two years in office, Macri has yet to deliver a deep sea shift in the country's economic condition.

That shouldn't really be a massive surprise, because two years is nothing. But the public are restless and what Macri has asked for is a huge change in approach from the Kirchnerist-Peronist years.

Not least are the cuts to subsidies that help with the cost of living for low income families. This is the austerity programme familiar to many progressives around the world.

In Argentina this has particular significance. In reason years, at the least, the Kirchnerist-Peronist populists - especially under the presidency of Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner - have tended to offer up big promises, comfortable lies to package harder truths and deeper crises.

Of relevance to all of those resisting austerity is the response of Centre-Right, Argentina as elsewhere: to serve up cold reality and a cold shoulder.

The Cambiemos coalition, that Macri has serving up a meagre helping, includes most of Argentina's Centre and Soft Left - social democrats and social liberals - and you have to wonder have these partners feel about their direction.

Macri has bet the house on austerity, in the meantime putting the poorest in some jeopardy, gambling that foreign private investors will step in and take a chance on Argentina. But it's yet to pan out that way.

The midterms buy Macri some space. Over that past year he has poured the blame for the present situation on the Kirchner "K" movement - calling it the "K Inheritance", probably fairly. But that approach will only work for so long.

Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is already building for a comeback, taking seats at the midterms while Macri's approval ratings hover dangerously low at 41%/46% (approve/disapprove).

Macri has offered some consolation to his Cambiemos partners. Last year he announced what he called a 'Marshall Plan' - a reference to the huge public investment made by the US government in it's allies after World War II.

In reality, it was a public-private investment initiative foucsed on lowering the cost of business - in that conservative vein of reduced costs hopefully leading to reduced prices and reduced cost of living.

But these pledges are coming alongside efforts to force Trade Unions and dockworkers to accept pro-competition measures - and while cornered, they are far from convinced.

All of this leads back to the central question. Populists offer an unrealistic view smothered in giveaways and the Right demand a reaction steeped in a cold austere reality. The question is, why can't we address reality with warmth?

Why is it so difficult to imagine a compassionate realism? To pursue a course that does not abandon the most vulnerable to the mercy of corporate interests and charity, when righting a sinking ship.

Politics in Argentina is raising this question. Progressives and their allies the world over need to find a way to respond.

In Argentina, Macri's broad Centre coalition secured the Presidency. Yet the question remains: when can the Left cut ties with neoliberals to pursue truly radical reforms?

Mauricio Macri, pictured casting his vote in the August primaries, united the Centre-Right and Centre-Left opposition to defeat the Kirchner candidate and become the first non-Peronist, non-UCR President. Photograph: Mauricio Macri vota by Mauricio Macri (License) (Cropped)

After twelve years in power, the Kirchnerist faction of the Peronist movement, in the form of the Partido Justicialista, lost their grip on the Presidency of Argentina (Watts & Goni, 2015). In the second round of voting Mauricio Macri, leading the broad centre coalition Cambiemos, defeated the Justicialista, and former President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, backed Frente para la Victoria candidate Daniel Scioli (BBC, 2015).

Macri's victory has been received positively as, possibly, the beginning for a new moderate Argentina (Cottle, 2015). And yet, while neoliberals, in particular, rejoice in a pro-market victory, Macri's Presidency has only come with the complicity of the centre-left, specifically the Union Civica Radicale (UCR, Radical Civic Union).

That tentative alliance raises the question of whether, sooner or later, those with Left-wing tendencies, particularly within UCR, will feel the need to go their own way - though there is a lot of work ahead before a progressive slate could win without some sort of agreement with, or against, the Peronist movement.

Not the least consideration is that the election of the conservative liberal Mauricio Macri will not, alone, be enough to change the direction of Argentina. Although, the defeat of Kirchner's populist Peronist candidate - which has brought a positive response from neoliberal pro-market voices - has been regarded as a new turn for Argentina and, possibly a little optimistically, the overthrow of populism (Rodriguez-Brizuela, 2015).

While the Peronists are still the largest group in the Congress, that may shift over the course of Macri's term as half of the Chamber of Deputies is elected every two years in legislative elections. And the efforts already launched by Macri at tackling Argentina's immense economic challenges have received praise (The Economist, 2016). So, for the moment, the momentum is with Macri.

However, Macri's support came from a coalition primarily divided between the Centre-Right party Propuesta Republicana (Republican Proposal, PRO) and the Centre-Left party Union Civica Radical - backed by a mix of supporters from across the centre (The Argentina Independent, 2015). So what of Macri's Radical partners?

Despite the party's name, the UCR is a moderate centre-left party, seen by the harder Left as bourgeois, that has for decades been caught between other factions. The traditional opponents of the Peronists, some internal and breakaway factions such as the Radicales K have nonetheless found themselves sometimes allies with Peronist factions, in pursuit of reforms that promise social justice and improvements to the lives of citizens (La Nacion, 2006).

Yet the authoritarian character of the Justicialista - with fears ranging from electoral fraud to intimidation and suppression of the press, along with policies like the confiscation of pension funds to plug financial holes (Marty, 2015; Crandall, 2012) - seems to have helped align the UCR with the opposition. That has led the UCR on the path joining Cambiemos, despite its mainstream, globalising, neoliberal approach (Rodriguez, 2015).

Now, it would not be a surprise to see the election of 2015 presented as a contest between the market and the state. Yet in reality, it was more after the fashion of the statist, populist and nationalist Peronists, holding a long-term authoritarian grip on power, versus a broad opposition, that Macri has succeeded in rallying around his open and 'neoliberal' way - that embraces the global system.

That is a story replicated across Europe in different shades - liberals and social democrats shackled to the neoliberal mainstream, in the face of rising fear and nationalism, rallying to protect positive gains embodied in the the establishment institutions. So why, the question might well be asked, would or should the Centre-Left consider breaking away from the Centre-Right? It is certainly clear that the global economic crisis is not over and that populist nationalism has not retreated - even in Argentina after its defeat.

The answer is because, ultimately, neoliberalism is no friend to social progress.

For all his moderate liberal credentials, as Mayor of Buenos Aires Mauricio Macri behaved in a typically neoliberal way - defunding social programs in search of competition at the expense of social security (Esperanza Casullo, 2015). And Argentina's Macrinomic path out of its present crisis will likely follow the same austerian path as many countries in Europe - particularly the UK under George Osborne Chancellorship.

But that doesn't mean that some overnight, clean break is imminent. Progressives in Argentina must build gradually towards an unshackling, because the election demonstrated that there is not yet much of a political space for a radical alternative to Peronist statism or the neoliberal market. Yet Macri's election has levered open the door and progressives must step into that new space to develop a fresh consensus around a just, sustainable and liberating alternative, amenable to the building of broad Left movement.

What can progressives learn from elections around the world?

Progressives have struggled in recent years to get their distinct narratives heard over the cry of populist nationalism. Photograph: Argentina Elections posters from 2013 by Beatrice Murch (License) (Cropped)

On Sunday there where general elections in two countries separated by eight thousand miles, including two half continents and an ocean. Yet they both told a similar story. In neither Argentina nor Poland was there a revival of the Centre-Left like that which brought Justin Trudeau to office in Canada.

In Argentina, the populist and nationalist Justicialist Party, of outgoing President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, had nearest competitors who were fiscal conservatives, ruling party dissenters, and small state neoliberal capitalists. In Poland, that contest was reversed, with the neoliberals in power and the populist nationalists as the main opposition.

In both cases, the populist and nationalist parties were victorious. For the Left, that serves as a stark reminder that there are many places where the progressive voice remains quiet in opposition to populist nationalism, or where centre-left collapsed during the seemingly global discrediting of social democracy and has yet to be rebuilt (Lawson, 2011; Guinan, 2013).

General elections in Argentina

In Argentina, President Kirchner had reached her term limit and so her successor Daniel Scioli was leading their populist coalition Frente para la Victoria (FpV, Front for Victory), dominated by their Peronist Justicialist Party (PJ, Partido Justicialista), into the election. Their main opposition was the broad centrist coalition Cambiemos (Let's Change), featuring Presidential candidate Mauricio Macri's Centre-Right Propuesta Republicana (PRO, Republican Proposal) and Centre-Left Union Civica Radical (UCR, Radical Civic Union). The third major group were the conservative UNA, Unidos por una Nueva Alternativa (United for a New Alternative), a dissenting faction of the ruling Justicialists.

In the Presidential primaries, Front for Victory took 38% of the vote, while Cambienos took 30% and the UNA took 20% (Hodari, 2015). FpV and Cambienos had 8 and 12 senate seats at stake, respectively (with the Radical Civic Union alone holding 7 of them), while the majority of the 130 lower house seats at stake were Justicialist, in total 84, with only 21 from Cambienos (again, the Radical Civic Union alone holding 13 of them).

These parties and coalitions went into an election with the national economy facing escalating inflation and stagnant wages, with a slow recovery from high unemployment on uncertain ground. The election was also mired in scandals, with fears of electoral fraud and intimidation, and somewhat unsettling outbursts from Scioli accusing social network users of plots to damage his image.

Observers had expressed exasperation at the impact of Peronist populism remaining strong, with its nationalists and crowd pleasing facets, for its obstruction of a much more serious debate (Lampa, 2015). Criticism was levelled at the parties only drawing vagaries between the centrist's Cambiemos' more neoliberal approach, toned down to fiscal responsibility, and the populist FpV's centralised state intervention.

The election itself produced a recognisable situation: a country divided multiple ways between several parties. In the Presidential election, there was no clear winner with FpV's Scioli and Cambiemos' Macri both claiming around 35%, with the UNA candidate Massa claiming 21%, which will have to be settled in a run-off in a month's time (Davies, 2015). In the Senate and the House of Representatives, the indications where that there would be more division, with FpV increasing its upper house seats but losing overall control of the lower house (Watts & Goni, 2015).

General elections in Poland

In Poland a similar situation had evolved where one essentially conservative party ruled with others as their primary opposition. Yet in Poland, the situation was slightly reversed. The ruling party where the neoliberal Civic Platform party and the opposition where the populist, nationalist, Eurosceptic, anti-immigration and anti-abortion  Law and Justice party (Nardelli, 2015).

Despite eight years in government and having steered the country through the economic crisis with relative calm, in comparison to other European countries, polling and a loss in the Presidential election in May showed that the Civic Platform party was losing support - falling from 39% at the last election to 25%. For progressives that would have been welcomed as part of the rising tide of support for the radical Left or the recovery of the Centre-Left.

Yet the Presidential election was won, not by the Left, but by the hard-Right Law and Justice party (The Guardian, 2015). That party took 30% at the last election but had risen in the polls to 36%. Meanwhile, efforts to assemble a United Left group to contest the election have only managed to gather around 9% in the polls.

When the exit polls where released, it became apparent that the shift from the Centre-Right to the hard-Right in Poland was in fact being undersold by polling data. Law and Justice were set to take 39% and enough seats to govern alone of the vote while their Centre-Right opponents had fallen even further to 24% (BBC, 2015).

Even more remarkable was that the exit polls suggested the complete failure of a parties of the Left to gain even a single seat. The United Left electoral alliance appear to have fallen short the 8% lower threshold (Cienski, 2015).

Progressives still haven't found their voice

In both countries, the full official results are still coming in. Yet what is clear is that elections in neither Argentina nor Poland have shown the strong progressive movements that the Left in other countries, like Canada and Portugal (Evans-Pritchard, 2015), have tapped into. The progressives parties that do play a prominent role, such as Argentina's Radical Civic Union, find themselves caught up in a politics polarised between conservative electoral factions that are split only over state intervention and whether they should pursue big state or small state conservatism.

Both elections serve as a stark reminder that the Left has still not found a convincing answer to popular nationalism. In the UK, Ed Miliband, under the influence of Blue Labour, simply tried to mimic it so as to steal it away from conservatives. Yet nationalism, and appeals to popular power, remain difficult subjects for the Left. Progressives are at once drawn to popular movements - to protests, marches and popular organisation - and critical of the dangers of suppression of the individual and irrationality inherent to them. The Left is also often seduced by the cohesion and commonality of national pride, even as it undermines internationalist humanitarian ideals.

If progressives are going to compete with and defeat conservatism - and the political divisions apparent across the world say it is very possible, whether it is popular, traditional or economic conservatism - they must build a convincing approach founded in co-operation and pluralism. Those are the characteristics by which the Left stands truly apart from the Right and progressives need to be brave in making the case for them, regardless of how much better nationalism may play with the crowd.