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Objective/context: This article focuses on the Argentine party system during the cycle 2015-2019. Its main aim is to assess what has changed and what continues in this time period regarding the most established descriptions of this system. Methodology: The descriptive analysis lies on quantitative data. We use electoral results, census and opinion surveys data, and nationalization and fragmentation scores of the party system in three arenas of competition: presidential, legislative and the provincial one. Conclusions: The main finding of the analysis shows a rebalancing of forces in the competition for the presidency, with two increasingly nationalized political coalitions dominating the stage, concentrating electoral support, and with expectations of victory. The consolidation of these two national coalitions, one Peronist and the other non Peronist, has led to a strengthening of political spaces as meaningful entities for the electorate. However, provincial party systems have circumvented this trend, reinforcing their autonomy with regards to the national system. Originality: By including data of electoral behaviour, institutional power distribution, and at the same time figures of party-society linkages, this article offers a perspective that integrates two approaches on the Argentine party system that appeared until now dissociated. At the same time, the article addresses a recent period that had not yet been systematically studied. The data allows us to offer a novel interpretation regarding the current trends of the Argentine party system.

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The current processes have reignited the debate surrounding populism in Latin America; however, the category's theoretical status is far from being clarified. In this context, the article suggests that populism could contribute to political theory, starting from the open perspective of Ernesto Laclau, while also drawing on the definition of functional fields in its political analysis: populism as discourse; as a construction of a political subject; and as promoting the inclusion of all that has been excluded in the social order. Starting from these developments, the second part of the article uses these contributions to analyze the current political process in Argentina, and specifically the phenomenon of kirchnerism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers 'kirchnerism' and evism to be popular identity movements which have attempted to provide answers to the open social dislocations since the crisis of December 2001 in Argentina, and the cycle of protests from 2000-2005 in Bolivia. The emergence of both of these identity constructions has involved at least three simultaneous processes. Firstly, the gradual incorporation of public decision-making on subjects and demands which were formerly ignored; secondly, political divisions within communities; and, finally, establishing a nation within the new institutional framework currently in force. As these processes developed, some points of approach and distancing between the case studies were noted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]