Una genealogía del debate presidencial en la Argentina democrática (1983-2023)

Augusto Reina

doi:10.29105/rcp.v7i1.80

Authors

Augusto Reina Universidad de Buenos Aires https://orcid.org/0009-0001-9463-1449

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29105/rcp.v7i1.80

Keywords:

presidential debates, Argentina, political communication, mediatization, electoral campaigns, democracy

Abstract

This article traces the evolution of presidential debates in Argentina from the return of democracy in 1983 to the institutional consolidation of the format in 2023. Using a historical-analytical approach, it identifies four stages: a period of strategic resistance (1983–2011), a turning point driven by civil society (2015), normative institutionalization through Law 27.337 (2019), and a phase of functional adaptation (2023). Drawing on secondary sources, case analyses, prior empirical studies, and qualitative assessments of their communicational and political impact, the article argues that presidential debates in Argentina have moved beyond television spectacle to become central democratic rituals—though with limited influence on vote choice. More than instruments of deliberation, they now function as regulated arenas of symbolic validation: defining which leadership styles deserve representation, what language is tolerated in democratic competition, and what narrative of the nation prevails in prime time. The challenge today is less normative than political and cultural: preventing debates from being emptied of substance and reduced to sterile rituals caught between spectacularization and disaffection. In this light, the open question is no longer whether debates will take place, but what vision of democracy they enact each time it does.

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