1. Structural Legislative Precedents

It is crucial to avoid the false dilemmas and polarization that characterize contemporary political discourse, as they fragment the possibility of building a collective future. A thorough electoral evaluation demands examining prior structural reforms, whose legal and social consequences offer enduring lessons. Two paradigmatic cases, enacted with broad consensus during the administration of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, illustrate how regulatory modifications redefine the social contract and the responsibility of the State.

The first of these is the reform of the Organic Charter of the Central Bank of the Argentine Republic (BCRA) through Law No. 26,739 in early 2012. This change was not merely semantic; it altered the primary purpose of the entity. The original wording established as its objective to "monitor the liquidity and proper functioning of the financial market". The reform replaced it with the mandate to "promote... monetary stability, financial stability, employment, and economic development with social equity". The fundamental difference between the two terms, according to standard English definitions, is qualitative: to monitor implies an attitude of supervision and preventive control to avoid anomalies; to promote, on the other hand, entails proactive action to achieve an end. The most relevant legal consequence of this metamorphosis is the potential impossibility of substantiating a lawsuit for damages against the State based on the failure to oversee the financial system, as evidenced in the 1999/2000 crisis in the country.

The second precedent is the enactment of Law No. 26,994, which unified the Civil and Commercial Code of the Nation, in force since August 2015. Although the original Preliminary Draft clearly outlined the civil liability of the State and its officials, the text finally promulgated excluded this matter, referring it to administrative law. This normative exclusion can be analyzed in light of the principle of non-regression in human rights matters, enshrined in international instruments such as the American Convention on Human Rights, since a subsequent provision should not undermine the guarantees of reparation previously recognized for citizens. These reforms, along with other events such as superficial declarations on illegal drugs without scientific backing or the nomination of candidates with pending judicial cases, configure a complex scenario where republican ethics and suitability for office become central axes of public debate.

2. Analysis of an Electoral Profile in Tension

To give concreteness to this analysis, let us consider a specific demographic profile: an Argentine citizen of 58 years of age, in a situation of economic vulnerability but with a university education. In this archetype, a fundamental internal tension converges between material urgency and the capacity to carry out a critical and structured analysis. Their rational evaluation priorities are articulated around four interdependent axes: the stability of the pension system and access to public health, the defense of purchasing power against inflation, the search for macroeconomic sustainability as an antidote to fiscal disorder, and the valuation of public education as a vector of upward social mobility.

From this perspective, the political offer is subjected to a calculation of risks and trade-offs. A stance of "Institutional Shock" and drastic fiscal adjustment may resonate with an aversion to deficit, but the reduction of the State represents a direct threat to short-term survival. Market institutionality and global openness evoke the memory of cyclical crises that hit vulnerable sectors hard, generating skepticism about its protective capacity. In contrast, the defense of the "Present State" and public services offers a social safety net that calms material uncertainty, although a critical university education may warn about the risks of inflationary stagnation and fiscal unsustainability. Moderate or "Third Way" options seem to synthesize order and social sensitivity, but their lack of forcefulness can be perceived as ineffective in a crisis context. For this profile, the decision is not abstract: it is a dilemma between prioritizing immediate social protection or betting on a structural macroeconomic correction that, to be effective, demands tolerating a high social cost in the present.

3. Reconfiguration through Ethics and Life Project

When the analysis transcends abstract demographics and anchors itself in a concrete life project, marked by the need for reactivation through intellect and art, the weighting of variables changes substantially. Experience establishes non-negotiable red lines, the main one being institutional integrity and the rejection of corruption and clientelistic appointments. For someone who has invested years in higher education, the designation of officials by obsequiousness rather than merit constitutes an attack on their identity and their main asset for personal reconstruction. This ethical limit rules out any political option perceived as tolerant of these systemic practices.

The reevaluation of shock stances reveals a temporal fallacy: macroeconomic stabilization is pursued as an end in itself, neglecting that the consequent strangulation of disposable income eliminates the "oxygen" necessary for any creative or professional project. The meritocracy promised in the long term becomes unattainable if immediate survival is not resolved. In opposition, the memory of environments of greater labor functionality, where despite macroeconomic volatility, knowledge was valued and allowed one to live with dignity, emerges as a pragmatic criterion. The final dilemma is thus presented as a wager: opting for a model that promises future order at the cost of an asphyxiating present, or for one that, even with risks of disorder, has historically demonstrated to offer a space for autonomous professional practice. The absence of figures who synthesize scientific evidence, defense of meritocracy, and social sensitivity leaves a void, forcing an exercise in prioritizing values rather than full adherence.

4. Philosophical Framework and Scientific Evidence

To provide robust support for this analysis, it is pertinent to resort to the philosophy of science of Mario Bunge, particularly his work Las Ciencias Sociales en Discusión (The Social Sciences in Discussion). Bunge systematically dismantles the dogmas of the predominant systems:

• The Fallacy of the Austrian School and Neoliberalism: Bunge criticizes the pretension of presenting economics as an a priori science, immune to empirical data. He qualifies this stance as a "rhetoric of reaction," based on the false assumption that the market is a closed and self-regulating system. History (the New Deal, post-war reconstruction in Europe and Japan) demonstrates that the modern economy requires planning and state intervention. Laissez-faire is, in practice, an ideological slogan that conceals the fact that megacorporations, in the face of crises, are the first to resort to state bailouts.
• The Deficiencies of Savage Capitalism and Statism: "Paleocapitalism" is evaluated as technically and morally defective: it fosters consumerism, environmental degradation, inequality, and unemployment, being unsustainable in the long term, especially in the Third World. On the other hand, he rejects communist statism (or "real socialism") for being morally inadmissible (oppression, lack of freedoms) and practically inefficient in the long run, by suppressing individual initiative and falling into an arrogant bureaucracy that confuses nationalization with true socialization.
• The Alternative: Integral Technoholodemocracy: Faced with this false dichotomy, Bunge proposes a system that amalgamates political and economic democracy. Its pillars are: qualified equality (which combines the guarantee of an adequate standard of living for all with meritocracy); cooperative property together with controlled competition (non-predatory); and flexible, participatory, and technically sound planning, supervised by a competent but limited State, which coordinates and protects essential public goods (health, education, environment) without falling into oppressive bureaucracy.
  
  For Bunge, a cooperative is, in essence, private property. It does not belong to the State nor is it an abstract public good, but to a specific group of individuals (the workers or users). The radical difference from traditional capitalism is that, instead of property being concentrated in one or a few shareholders who do not work in the company ("one share, one vote"), it is distributed among those who make it function ("one person, one vote"). This does not destroy private property but legitimizes it, aligning it with the Lockean principle that whoever works the land or the resource has the right to the fruits of that labor.
  
  In this way, cooperative property represents the necessary evolution of private property in an advanced industrial society: it does not violate it, it "sanitizes" it. It transforms property from being an instrument of hierarchical domination (boss-employee) into an instrument of freedom, equality, and solidarity (partner-workers), allowing industrialization and commercialization to serve the human being. In this framework, the State does not compete with cooperatives nor expropriate them; its role is to guarantee the legal framework for them to flourish and act as an arbiter to prevent large corporations from crushing them. The State reserves direct ownership only of strategic public goods (basic infrastructure, defense, justice), leaving the rest of the economy in the hands of private, preferably cooperative, initiative.

This philosophical framework is complemented by contemporary scientific evidence on electoral behavior. Recent studies confirm that chronic financial stress acts as a cognitive load that diminishes attentional capacity and impairs long-term decision-making (van der Veer et al., 2024). In turn, economic difficulties negatively impact memory function, threatening the stability necessary for executing life projects (Kezios et al., 2026). Information overload in chaotic political environments does not empower the citizen but makes them more vulnerable to simplistic narratives (Panish et al., 2025), while traumatic events linked to instability can durably shape voting behavior (Marsh, 2023). These findings validate the premise that an environment of economic suffocation is not only a material issue but corrodes the very faculties necessary to exercise full and rational citizenship.

5. Synthesis and Perspectives

The convergence between structural analysis, the evaluation of political profiles, and scientific support reveals that the electoral act, for the profile under study, moves away from abstract ideological ascription to become a sophisticated calculation of survival oriented towards a life project. The decision is settled in the choice of a lesser evil: accepting the risk of a shock that can annihilate the material conditions for creation, or tolerating a functional disorder that, with historical precedents, has allowed a margin for professional dignity and ethical integrity.

Ultimately, objective analysis suggests that the vote will be directed towards the option that best guarantees two non-negotiable conditions. The first is the preservation of personal ethics, avoiding subordination to corrupt systems that deny merit. The second is the preservation of a minimum economic maneuvering margin that frees up mental energy for intellectual and artistic reconstruction, instead of consuming it entirely in daily survival. The absence of leaderships that embody the perfect synthesis between rigor, evidence, and sensitivity does not nullify the usefulness of the analysis but rather vindicates it as an indispensable tool for ordering one's own ideas, reaffirming fundamental values, and understanding what future is being wagered on with each decision. As Benito Juárez's maxim reminds us, "Among individuals, as among nations, respect for the rights of others is peace," a principle that should guide any life and country project.

📚 Links of Interest and References

• Bunge, M. (1999). Las Ciencias Sociales en Discusión: Una Perspectiva Filosófica [The Social Sciences in Discussion: A Philosophical Perspective]. (Synthesis of chapters on Austrian Praxiology, Capitalism, Statism, and Integral Technoholodemocracy).
• Marsh, W. Z. C. (2023). Trauma and Turnout: The Political Consequences of Traumatic Events. American Political Science Review. Link to article.
• Panish, A. R., et al. (2025). Informed or Overwhelmed? Disentangling the Effects of Cognitive Ability and Information on Public Opinion. British Journal of Political Science. Link to article.
• van der Veer, A., et al. (2024). Tunneling, cognitive load and time orientation and their implications for decision making. PMC. Link to article.
• Kezios, K. L., et al. (2026). Changes in financial well-being and memory function. American Journal of Epidemiology. Link to article.