A blog of the Latin America Program
President Mauricio Macri’s controversial use of executive orders – known in Argentina as a decreto de necesidad y urgencia, or DNU – is back in the news after he issued two decrees in January, during the congressional recess. (Argentina’s congress holds ordinary sessions from March 1 to November 30.) The first was designed to fight corruption by requiring the forfeiture of illegally obtained assets (extinción de dominio), and the second established a new sports agency to replace the previous sports secretariat.
Whatever the merits of Mr. Macri’s latest DNUs, the practice hardly began under Cambiemos. Argentina has a strong executive branch, and its last five presidents have made regular use of DNUs. Indeed, Mr. Macri falls on the lower end of the presidential decree spectrum. So far, he has averaged 1.3 DNUs per month, slightly higher than Cristina Fernández de Kirchner during her eight years in office. Meanwhile, Ms. Fernández de Kirchner’s predecessor, Néstor Kirchner, was a DNU aficionado; he issued 239 DNUs during his four-year term, or 4.5 per month.
Latin America Program
The Wilson Center’s prestigious Latin America Program provides non-partisan expertise to a broad community of decision makers in the United States and Latin America on critical policy issues facing the Hemisphere. The Program provides insightful and actionable research for policymakers, private sector leaders, journalists, and public intellectuals in the United States and Latin America. To bridge the gap between scholarship and policy action, it fosters new inquiry, sponsors high-level public and private meetings among multiple stakeholders, and explores policy options to improve outcomes for citizens throughout the Americas. Drawing on the Wilson Center’s strength as the nation’s key non-partisan policy forum, the Program serves as a trusted source of analysis and a vital point of contact between the worlds of scholarship and action. Read more
Argentina Project
The Argentina Project is the premier institution for policy-relevant research on politics and economics in Argentina. Read more
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