President Javier Milei’s administration has inaugurated a novel political dynamic in Argentina characterised by pushing conflicts to the edge of the ideological frontier, only to pull back from the precipice in pragmatic fashion at the last second. To a certain extent, it represents the style of the “new caste” that has come to dominate top-level decision making, with the Caputo family front and centre. The agonising approval of the ‘ ’ bill at the Senate-level — it must now return to the Chamber of Deputies for the latest round of amendments to be ratified — was another example of the government’s strategy of “punctuated pragmatism,” by which President Milei and his anarcho-libertarian coalition unleash a brutal attack against their political adversaries that appears to completely break down any possibility of collaboration, and at the last second agree to typical political concessions in order to succeed.
The first part of the strategy responds to high-flying political strategist Santiago Caputo, the “architect” of Milei’s presidential campaign and apparently the only non-family member to belong to the inner circle of trust of the President. When push comes to shove and the Milei administration assumes it’s gone far enough, they bring out the pragmatist: Guillermo Francos. He absorbed the Cabinet chief post after Milei sacrificed his friend and former boss Nicolás Posse in the midst of the scandal at the Human Capital Ministry and the political.
