ABSTRACT
The chapter analyses how the concept of “republic” and how republican traditions appear in the legitimation strategies employed by right-wing party elites in Argentina since the 1983 democratic transition. First, we will summarise how, in Argentina, the republic’s conceptual history has always been deeply connected with key moments of the country’s political history: the May Revolution of 1810, the national organisation process that took place between 1853 and 1880, and the emergence of national popular movements such as Radicalism and Peronism at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Then, I compare the cases of Unión de Centro Democrático (UCEDÉ) and Propuesta Republicana (PRO), two political forces located at the centre-right-wing of the ideological geometric spectrum, which have been both electoral and culturally relevant to Argentine democracy. Finally, we will attempt to answer the following question: Why has the republic become the mainstay of right-wing parties’ criticism against Alfonsinism and Kirchnerism, that is, the vernacular versions of social democracy and left-wing populism?
