Argentina is a large country that takes up most of the Southern half of South America, sharing a long border with Chile. Argentina also borders Bolivia, Paraguay, Brazil and Uruguay, it also has a long coastline with the Southern Atlantic Ocean. Its capital city is Buenos Aires, a coastal city near to Uruguay’s border, iconic parts of the city include the Plaza de Mayo, where the presidential palace can also be found; a large 1908 opera house called the Teatro Colón and the MALBA museum. The country’s population is just over 44 million as of 2017. The currency used is the Argentine Peso, which exchanges currently to 1 Peso = 0.019 Pound Sterling or 1 Peso = 0.024 US Dollars. The official language is Spanish.
Featured photo: Map from Google Maps. Flag in the public domain. Edited flag and map together.
It is also of note that my country (the United Kingdom) went to war with Argentina over the disputed Falkland’s Islands off its coast. Argentina names the islands Islas Malvinas.
Government Type
Argentina is a federal presidential representative democratic republic. A federation means that the country has a number of provinces or states with their own governments and constitutions but are all in a union together under one federal government and national constitution. The likely most well-known and obvious federation is the United States of America.
Argentina has 23 self-governing provinces, with each represented and lead by an elected Governor. Buenos Aires, the capital city, is autonomous itself and not a part of any of the self-governing provinces and is where Federal Government is stationed. The Federal Government is led by a democratically elected President.
The Federal Government has an elected congress and each of the 23 self-governing provinces have their own elected legislative assemblies for local laws and governance. Federal law often supersedes local law if a situation of a province vs federal government arises.
The Executive Government
The Executive Government includes the Federal Government and President and also the Governor of each Province and their administrations also being local executive governments. The President is both Chief of State and Head of Government and so he represents the country as a whole internationally and controls many functions of government and his administration as well as having a number of special executive powers, again it is similar for the Governors of each province, except the Governor is representative to the federal government rather than internationally like the President is.
The President serves for 4 years and one person can serve a max of two terms (8 years) as President before they must step aside.
The President’s powers include signing bills into federal law that have been passed by the federal congress. The President appoints Judges to the Country’s Supreme Court with a confirmatory vote of two-thirds of the upper federal house, the president also appoints Federal Judges from candidate lists provided by the Council of the Magistracy and also getting consent on his appointments from the upper federal house. The President is able to grant pardons or commute punishments in relation to federal law, excluding impeachments by the lower federal house. Appoints and removes members of his administration, sometimes with consent of the upper federal house. The President is Commander-in-Chief of the country’s armed forces and with consent from congress, can declare war.
The Legislative Government
The Federal Legislative Government is a Bi-Cameral Parliament made up of the lower house, called the Chamber of Deputies and the upper house, called the Senate. Both houses are elected by the people of the nation in legislative elections. Deputies are elected for 4-year terms in conjunction with presidential elections while Senators serve 6-year terms, with groups of Senators elected in alternating elections, meaning that the Senate normally does not have all seats up at once in an election like the lower house does.
The Chamber of Deputies currently has 257 seats, which can change based on the population changes of the multi-seat constituencies. The Senate has a fixed number of seats, 72, three Senators elected from each province and another three elected from the capital city, Buenos Aires, representing their provinces and the city in Federal Government. The Vice-President presides over the Senate while a member, usually of the largest party in the Chamber of Deputies, is chosen as president of the chamber of deputies to preside over them.
Both of the houses main jobs are to introduce bills, debate them and then either vote them down or pass them through each other, with them ultimately signed into Federal Law by the President. But both houses also can have differing jobs and rules of what they can and cannot do compared to the other house.
For example, the Chamber of Deputies is specifically charged with levying taxes and also has the ability to accuse the President, any of his administration officials or Supreme Court Judges of crimes and impeach them.
The Legislative Assemblies of each province works similarly, with them elected in local legislative elections and debating on and passing local bills through them, which may ultimately be signed into local law by the said Governor of the province.
An extraordinary meet of both houses may be called on rare occasions, such as the changing or amendment of the country’s constitution, which requires a two-third vote in favor.
The Electoral System
The President and Vice-President are elected separate from the legislative government every 4-years. Presidential Elections and Legislative Elections. The President and Vice-President (elected together on one ballot) are elected by direct-popular vote with a 2nd round run-off if no candidate gets more than 40-45% of the vote, determined by two formulas.
The entirety of the House of Deputies is elected every 4-years from multi-seat constituencies in a proportional representation system using the D’Hondt method. The President’s party does not have to have a majority in Congress for him to remain in power.
Senator’s serve 6-year terms but not always in conjunction with one another, two of the three senate seats of a province or the city of Buenos Aires are given to the party with the largest vote share within that province or the city of Buenos Aires, while the 3rd seat is given to the party with the 2nd largest vote share.
Thank you for reading this and I hope you enjoyed it and/or learned something. Next up will be Armenia’s government system.
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