The Last Fascists: How Peronism Explains Argentina's Decline
This week, The Independent Review published my latest peer-reviewed research article, titled “Peronism: The Rise and Persistence of Fascism in Argentina.” The paper argues that Peronism is best understood as Argentina’s variant of fascism and that its rise and persistence are the primary explanation for the country’s long economic decline.
The argument unfolds in four parts. First, I outline how prosperous Argentina was by the early 20th century, when it consistently ranked among the top 10 world economies and how this was a function of its classical liberal policies, which included limited government intervention, open trade, and free immigration, among others. That began to change with a series of coups and the rise of fascist sentiment, which Colonel Juan Domingo Perón would ultimately embody in his Partido Justicialista and more broadly in the Peronist movement.
Second, I use Stanley Payne’s typology—which identifies fascism across three dimensions (its negations, ideology/goals, and style/organization)—and show how Peronism systematically checks all these boxes: It is anti-liberal, anti-communist, and anti-conservative; it defends a corporatist economic organization and a nationalist creed; and it promotes mass mobilization, a cult of personality, and the use of violence, among other policies. Perón’s own admiration for Mussolini is documented through his letters from Italy in the late 1930s.
Third, I argue that what makes Argentina’s case unique is that, unlike Italian or Spanish fascism, Peronism survived its founder. Even after Perón was ousted in 1955, the structural changes he imposed—such as monopoly trade unions, corporatist labor legislation, nationalizations, protection of crony industries, and high public spending—were never dismantled. Through various policies and constitutional changes, non-Peronist governments, including military ones, actually reinforced the Peronist system.
Fourth, I present the economic consequences of the persistence of Peronism in Argentina, which continues to retain the same ideology, symbols, and style as it did in the 1940s. The paper traces the country’s steep economic decline directly to a Peronist system of consistent protection of unproductive economic sectors, uncontrollable deficits, and recurring debt and hyperinflationary crises. The Peronist cycle of concentrated benefits for unions and protected industries—that diffuse costs to everyone else—is explained using Mancur Olson’s collective action logic and Paul Pierson’s politics of retrenchment. Alternative explanations (dependency theory, anomie, colonial legacy, and distributive conflict) are considered and rejected on the grounds that none can account for Argentina’s uniqueness relative to comparable countries.
The conclusion is that Argentina’s decline is unique precisely because it is the only country in the world where a genuinely fascist party has continued to win elections for nearly eight decades. I conclude with this paragraph:
The original Peronist ideology, negations, and symbols … are still present. Almost eighty years after its foundation, the Partido Justicialista still … has the same goals that it did in 1945. That is a unique phenomenon; in no other country does a fascist party still win elections. Italy and Spain are home to fascist nostalgics, but these have nowhere near the influence that they have in Argentina.… That unique phenomenon offers the best explanation for the unique outcome: Argentina’s economic downfall, which is unparalleled in the world.
The full paper can be found here.