The Argentine Digital Leviathan: Between Neoliberal Retrenchment and Securitarian Expansion Portugués

Abstract

This article analyzes Javier Milei’s political experiment in Argentina as a hybrid model combining the retrenchment of the welfare state with an expansion of its digital surveillance capabilities. The authors examine how anarcho-capitalist discourse is amalgamated with neoconservative practices and tools from New Public Management, highlighting the paradox of a government that, while dismantling traditional administrative institutions, strengthens security and intelligence apparatuses through the intensive use of data and technology. This reconfiguration does not imply a simple absence of the State, but rather the consolidation of a “Digital Leviathan” that manages social conflict from economic adjustment through a dual strategy of minimal targeted assistance and technologically enhanced social control.