At the beginning of the century, Latin American Countries experienced the emergence of left wing governments led by unprecedented and charismatic figures that have changed, over the course of more than a decade, the way population understands and participates in political life. Given the serious problems that some of those governments are facing at the moment, especially in Argentina and Venezuela, everything seems to indicate that the populist models proposed by the Kirchnerismo in Argentina and Hugo Chávez in Venezuela did not succeed in offering an alternative to the previous neoliberal model.
The presidential elections held in November in Argentina and the elections to the National Assembly in Venezuela in December 2015, provided a real opportunity to investigate empirically the stability of the model proposed by these populist leaders. Argentina and Venezuela represent the most opposite cases inside the Latin American third wave of populism. Therefore, considering the contextual circumstances, this Master Thesis aimed to analyse to what extent the model in Venezuela and Argentina constitutes an alternative new political model to the previous neoliberal regimes. The analytic process has been driven by mixed-method research, the use of two case studies and a multifactorial conception of populism. Moreover, it included a description of the previous and current models together with a contraposition verification to elucidate the answer to the problem formulation proposed. As both trends are included in the so-called third wave of populism, a short description of the wave has been provided.
The research indicates that the Venezuelan Chavismo has offered a new alternative political model to the previous system while maintaining structural features from the previous model that places the Chavismo in a highly vulnerable situation towards the fluctuation of foreign markets. In the case of Argentina, the investigation leads to the conclusion that the model proposed by the Kirchnerismo has not offered a new political model but rather a Peronist model reformulation adapted to the Contemporary circumstances of Argentina. Therefore, Kirchnerismo has offered an alternative model but it cannot be described as new. In the same line as Venezuela, this model maintained structural features from the previous regime.