6 - Scaling Up: The Logic of Perverse Incentives at the Subnational Level

Summary

When the government is faced with institutional obstacles that do not allow it to operate that is not a Peronist libretto, but a script by Francis Ford Coppola, and the result is not a manual for political conduct, but The Godfather.

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner

When at the start of her political campaign for a senate seat in Buenos Aires, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner compared Eduardo Duhalde, president and former governor of the province of Buenos Aires, with the Godfather, she decided to publicly burn the ships. After her husband, Néstor Kirchner, won the presidency in 2003, in large part because of Duhalde's support, the 2005 midterm elections presented the Kirchners with an important choice: they could either run with Duhalde, which would hand the reins of real power back to the former president and governor, or they could run against him, fracturing the close alliance that had propelled Néstor Kirchner to the presidency in 2003.

Although it was a midterm election, the national election of October 2005 was the turning point that defined the electoral results for the presidential election two years later. President Néstor Kirchner needed an electoral victory in the province of Buenos Aires to secure his place against Duhalde as the leader of the Peronist Party. Kirchner had won the 2003 election with only 22 percent of the vote after former President Carlos Menem decided to abandon the runoff election, and Duhalde had supplied him with the key electoral support of the voters of the province of Buenos Aires. Kirchner needed to use the midterms to show that he was a real president – not someone just occupying the office until the Peronist Party resolved its internal disputes.

Néstor Kirchner knew that as long as Duhalde was the boss in the province of Buenos Aires, his presidency was tied to Duhalde's policies. Hence, Kirchner's only chance for independence was to challenge 106Duhalde, his Godfather, in his own political territory. Using the race for a seat in the senate from the province of Buenos Aires as an opportunity, Kirchner placed his wife, Cristina Fernández, at the top of the FPV senatorial ballot for Buenos Aires. Duhalde responded by replicating Kirchner's strategy and placing his wife, Chiche Duhalde, at the top of the PJ ballot.