The Making of Citizenship in Argentinian Local Politics: Between Municipalization and Municipalism

Abstract

The new political and economic context has significantly modified townships' reality, at the levels of the political system, the management of government and the civil society in general. The transfer of attributions from higher levels of government to local ones is combined with growing social demands, and the sensation of political impotence and fragmentation. Likewise, the lack of representation of townships as local communities in which participation makes sense and community bonds can be reconstructed deepens the complexity of this scenario.

Townships in Argentina, with a long tradition as the poor relative of politics, are beginning to be considered as a primary domain of political exercise and citizen practice. Citizen action groups emerge at the cross-roads of a growing turn toward the local. They appear to encourage citizenship in the local domain toward government and community, by exercising rights and responsibilities. They attempt “to capitalize” this municipalization and turn it into municipalism. Today, townships are the field where politics keeps on being the art of giving oneself an identity as a member of a political community.

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