Carlos Saúl Menem: variations on the theme of populism

The labels neopopulist and/or neoliberal have been attached to Latin American political leaders in an effort to understand the post‐transition to democracy experiences. This article examines the appropriateness of such labels in the Argentine context in the 1990s. It is argued that describing Carlos Menem as either neopopulist or neoliberal obscures rather than illuminates the vicissitudes along the path to establishing the institutions of liberal democracy, a commitment the Argentine electorate made in 1983. An old‐style populist at heart, Menem's pragmatic embrace of the neoliberal zeitgeist can only be understood in the context of the social, political and economic upheavals of the 1980s in Argentina.