With the argument of “freeing up” the market and “adjusting” public spending, the government has imposed a deep reform of the state and the legal architecture in Argentina, which has served to gut institutions. This reform – implemented through the Bases Law, DNU 70 and decrees based on the powers delegated by Congress – eliminates or restricts rights and public benefits, while expanding and reinforcing state violence.
This transformation did not grow out of extensive political debate or involve any existing mechanisms for democratic participation. On the contrary, it relied on extraordinary tools enabling the concentration of power, which were validated by Congress and the judiciary. The executive branch was able to move ahead thanks to decrees that were not reviewed by Congress, which delegated broad legislative powers to the executive, allowing it to intervene in nearly all aspects of the country’s social, economic and cultural life. It did so, many times, by evading restrictions in the Constitution – as with the reforms, by decree, of the security forces and the intelligence system.
Political clearance from the legislative branch
One of the pillars of this strategy was to legislate using Decrees of Necessity and Urgency (DNUs) and “delegated decrees.” In the Bases Law 27.742, Congress declared an administrative, economic, financial and energy emergency, and it empowered the executive to legislate for one full year – a faculty that is forbidden under normal circumstances. In addition, under the banner of an administrative reorganization, the executive branch went beyond the delegated functions and encroached on areas that are directly prohibited.
In practice, by approving this law, Congress abdicated its constitutional obligation to legislate and to oversee the decrees issued by the president under such conditions. The delegated powers allowed the executive to reorganize the state without any real legislative oversight.
Thus far, Congress has not reviewed DNU 70/23, which reformed or repealed more than 80 laws, including those on reforming the state, labor and trade-union rights, the healthcare system, the right to land and the environment, and the repeal of a housing rental law. It did not analyze the decree affecting migrant persons (366/25), or refugees (942/24). Or the one that reformed the national intelligence system (614/24), or the Argentine Federal Police (383/25). Nor did it review the decree eliminating the Socio-Urban Integration Fund – FISU (312/2025), or the one affecting the right to strike (340/25), or the promotion and protection of national culture (345 and 346/25). Or the changes in the nature of the National Genetic Data Bank, or the elimination of the National Commission for the Right to Identity (CoNaDI), or the restructuring of the National Memory Archive (344/24). It also failed to review the repeal of the indigenous territorial emergency (1083/24). And just before the year of extraordinary powers was to end on July 8, 2025, President Javier Milei issued a host of new delegated decrees that would have been difficult for Congress to review due to lack of time. After this year, it is clear that this delegation of powers consolidated a model of government in which the executive branch defines the rules, negotiates the reforms, and dodges formal intervention by Congress.
Citing the national emergency, Milei disbanded agencies, merged institutions, reconfigured structures, expanded the state’s repressive powers and cut funding for critical public policies, without going through Congress or enabling democratic spaces for discussion. And the judicial branch failed to provide effective oversight of the constitutionality of these decrees. This logic of government and political agreements erodes institutional counterweights and leaves those affected without recourse and without real representation.
A state that is only present for big corporations
The reforms that Milei’s government began a year and a half ago entail a structural transformation of the state’s objectives and functions, in some cases contrary to the Constitution. This is a model of minimal social protection and a stronger punitive approach.
In many areas, the state is withdrawing or reducing its participation: regulatory agencies have been dismantled and trust funds for productive development, urban integration, environmental protection, health, science, education and culture were dissolved. The government eliminated programs related to housing, scholarships, food assistance and microcredits. It closed or transformed entities that guaranteed rights in areas such as sexual health, gender-based violence, cultural diversity and access to basic services. The decrees issued most recently furthered the structural reform or elimination of areas on health, transportation and road safety, the economy, agriculture, industry, and modified the organic laws of the National Gendarmerie, the Argentine Naval Prefecture, the Airport Security Police and the Federal Penitentiary Service, which comes on top of the change to the Argentine Federal Police.
The state is bolstering its capacity for surveillance and repression. It is consolidating and prioritizing funding for the security forces and the intelligence, and social control, system. It is giving the security forces expanded powers to carry out intelligence activities and arrests without a judicial order, and allowing the State Intelligence Secretariat (SIDE) to engage in illegal intelligence gathering and political surveillance. It enabled greater intervention in protests, which are now considered crimes in many cases, along with social media tracking. This withdrawal of regulations and public benefits, coupled with an expanded punitive approach, redefines society’s link to the state – which is marked now by a lack of legal protection and exposure to increased surveillance and punishment.
This structural inequality has a direct social impact as well as a significant long-term effect: the loss of state capacities to respond to emergencies or to plan policies. The lack of protection is already a reality in healthcare services and in the price of medication, housing rentals, food and public services. On a federal level, the territorial disarticulation deepens substantial differences between people living in various parts of the country. But there is also another kind of impoverishment ahead that stems from defunding education, not investing in infrastructure, or eliminating the areas of the state dedicated to producing knowledge and development.
A legal order that fails to protect
The new legal framework is not limited to deregulation. In many cases, it creates new rules that consolidate the power of concentrated sectors. The Incentive Regime for Large Investments (known as RIGI), for example, grants unprecedented tax, exchange-rate and legal benefits to foreign companies. Some of the productive sectors included in the scheme, such as mining or the hydrocarbons industry, transform territories in a structural way. These impacts threaten the way of life of those who are settled and living there – when they are not directly incompatible with life. The terms establishing the RIGI create legal conditions for protecting investments from situations of social conflict. Furthermore, the state refuses to monitor environmental impacts and, in fact, sustains that climate change does not exist.
Since the beginning of its term in office, the government has sought to reduce labor rights, weaken protection against being fired, restrict collective bargaining and limit the right to strike. It eliminated regulations that protected consumers, tenants, small-scale producers and indigenous communities.
Drifting toward authoritarianism
The delegation of legislative powers, Congress’s political validation of the presidential decrees, and the lack of judicial oversight gave the government the ability to fulfill its desire to destroy and gut institutions and to deregulate government controls, benefits and rights. This is compounded by very intense government propaganda aimed at delegitimizing all forms of collective organization and by the stepped-up repression of social conflicts and expressions of dissent. We are drifting toward authoritarianism with no political or institutional impediments.
Photo: Adrián Escandar