Phoenix 24
A book launch turned into a wider argument about power, liberty and the political use of history.
Buenos Aires
A new debate over Javier Milei’s intellectual relationship with Juan Bautista Alberdi has emerged from the presentation of Un presidente que sea como un rey. El Alberdi que Milei tiene en la cabeza, by journalist Patricia Kolesnicov. The event brought together constitutional lawyer Andrés Gil Domínguez, economist Daniel Pereyra and historian of economic thought Marcelo Ramal, who offered sharply different interpretations of whether Milei can legitimately present himself as an heir to Alberdi’s liberal tradition.
The central question comes directly from Milei’s own political language. On the night he won the presidency, he declared that his government would once again embrace Alberdi’s ideas. Kolesnicov’s book begins from that claim and asks what Alberdi actually meant, what elements of his thought Milei emphasizes and what parts do not fit comfortably within the current government’s narrative.
Gil Domínguez argued that the differences are fundamental. In his interpretation, Alberdi consistently sought constitutional limits on power, while Milei has shown a more confrontational relationship with institutional constraints. He also questioned whether Milei’s economic liberalism is matched by the political and civil liberalism that formed another important part of Alberdi’s intellectual world.
Pereyra took a more favorable view of Milei’s recovery of Alberdi as a public reference. He emphasized that the government has republished Las Bases with a presidential prologue describing it as a roadmap for government. At the same time, he clarified that the phrase giving the book its title, “a president who is like a king,” should not be read as an argument for monarchy. Alberdi’s model involved a strong executive operating within a constitutional framework.
Ramal shifted the discussion toward economic history. He argued that Alberdi’s nineteenth century liberalism was designed to break with colonial structures and encourage development, immigration and productive transformation. In his reading, contemporary liberalism operates in a very different social and historical context and therefore cannot simply be treated as a direct continuation of Alberdi’s project.
The debate ultimately moved beyond the question of resemblance. Kolesnicov reformulated the issue around a more political question: what purpose does Alberdi serve for Milei today? One interpretation is that invoking a foundational thinker provides historical legitimacy for a government presenting itself as an attempt to reconstruct Argentina from first principles.
That does not settle the comparison. It makes the comparison itself politically important.
Beyond the news, the pattern.