La Jefatura de Gabinete y las crisis políticas: el caso De la Rúa

Abstract

In 1994 the Argentine Constitution was reformed and a number of amendments were introduced. A new institution was presented as the key factor to improve the functioning of the Presidential Regime: the Cabinet Chief. This paper analyses the previous hypotheses maintained by the author in the last years about what the real effects on the political system could be. One hypothesis was that the Cabinet Chief would be ineffective to attenuate the strong Argentine presidentialism. The main hypothesis supported by the author, before the reform, was that the Cabinet Chief would be useless to avoid the institutional crisis caused by either the loss or the lack of presidential legitimacy. In order to rethink and prove this argument this work deals with the presidential crisis which ended with Fernando De la Rúa’s resignation and the role played by Crhystian Colombo, the last Cabinet Chief in the “Alianza” administration.