Peronist, in Argentine politics, a supporter of Juan Perón, a member of the Justicialist Party (Partido Justicialista; PJ), or an adherent of the populist and nationalistic policies that Perón espoused. Peronism has played an important part in Argentina’s history since the mid-1940s.
The Peronist movement arose as the personal following of Col. Juan Perón. In 1943, after participating in a successful military coup, Perón became Argentina’s minister of labour, a position through which he enacted various social measures to help the country’s growing class of urban industrial workers. Gaining the admiration of the masses, Perón called for the state to take a leading role in the economy to ensure cooperation between businesses and labour. In 1946 he was elected to the presidency with the strong support of the workers and their labour unions; he also gained the support of many lower-middle-class citizens and of the country’s industrialists. After Perón was overthrown and exiled in 1955 by the military, the leaderless Peronist movement was weakened by factional conflicts, since it was composed of many divergent elements, from left-wing trade unionists to right-wing authoritarian nationalists. Nonetheless, the movement remained the main civilian contender for power in Argentina.
Under the new name of the Justicialist Nationalist Movement (later the Justicialist Party), the Peronists swept back into power in 1973 when the military permitted the first general elections in 10 years. Perón returned from exile and became president. However, deep dissension between right-wing and left-wing Peronists erupted into terrorism and violence after Perón’s death in 1974, and the military overthrew Perón’s widow and successor as president, Isabel, in 1976. The Peronists lost the presidential election of 1983, but in 1989 their candidate, Carlos Saúl Menem, was elected to the presidency. Breaking with traditional Peronist policies, Menem implemented free-market-oriented policies, which expanded the party’s base to include the wealthy and business classes. In 1999 the Peronists lost the presidency, but, after massive rioting forced the resignation of Pres. Fernando de la Rúa in 2001, the Peronists recaptured the office: Eduardo Duhalde, former vice president to Menem, became president in January 2002.
By 2003 factional fighting within the Peronist party led to a split. Menem sought to regain the presidency in the April 2003 presidential election; however, because neither Menem nor the other Peronist candidates could gather enough support within the party, President Duhalde cancelled primary elections and authorized each Peronist candidate to run under the name of his own faction. It was the first time that the party had more than one official candidate in a presidential race. Menem thus ran against two other Peronist candidates as well as candidates from other parties. In the first round of voting, Menem led with one-fourth of the vote, finishing slightly ahead of Peronist candidate Néstor Kirchner, but failed to surpass the threshold necessary to win. Under pressure from many of his supporters, who realized that he had little chance of defeating Kirchner, Menem withdrew prior to the runoff, and Kirchner was elected by default.
Kirchner, a centre-left Peronist, was inaugurated in May 2003. He did not run for a second term in 2007 and instead supported the candidacy of his wife, Sen. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. She won by a significant margin and became Argentina’s first elected female president. She enjoyed a Peronist majority in both houses of Congress until the midterm legislative elections of June 2009, when her ruling coalition lost power in both houses. The results reflected her declining popularity, as well as that of her husband, who lost his race for a congressional seat. Fernández de Kirchner’s standing was buoyed by a robust economy, and her husband was poised for a second presidential run when he died in October 2010. Peronists rallied around Fernández de Kirchner, and in October 2011 she won a landslide victory in the presidential race and her ruling coalition regained its congressional majority. Her handpicked successor, Daniel Scioli, the former governor of Buenos Aires province, was not as lucky in the 2015 presidential election. Although he narrowly won the first round of voting in October, he failed to win the 45 percent of vote necessary to preclude a November runoff election, which he lost to conservative opponent Mauricio Macri, ending nearly 14 years of Peronist rule. Fernández de Kirchner looked to be the likely Peronist candidate in the 2019 presidential election, but she confronted expectations by instead asking Alberto Fernández, her husband’s former chief of staff, to be the standard bearer, with her as the vice presidential candidate. They resoundingly beat Macri to return the country to Peronist rule. In the 2023 presidential election the Peronist candidate, Sergio Massa, the economy minister, was defeated by far-right libertarian economist Javier Milei .