Argentina Trapped in Its Own Political Cognitive Dissonance

Argentina Trapped in Its Own Political Cognitive Dissonance

In recent years, Argentina seems to have built a national psychological armor that prevents it from confronting its deepest problems — and, with that, from moving forward as a society. That armor has a name: collective cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive dissonance describes that uncomfortable mental state that arises when a person holds two contradictory ideas: on one hand, “corruption is unacceptable”; on the other, “but my leader or my party did it, and it’s fine because….” The mind doesn’t tolerate that tension easily, so it protects itself by reinterpreting reality — relativizing, justifying, comparing (“but the others did the same”), or postponing judgment altogether.

A Mirror of Our Time

The numbers confirm it. According to Transparency International, Argentina scored 37 out of 100 in the 2024 Corruption Perception Index — exactly the same as the previous year — showing a clear stagnation. The country ranks 99th out of 180, below the global average.
At the same time, recent surveys show that corruption has overtaken inflation and unemployment as the main concern for Argentine citizens.

Why Doesn’t It Change?

The political-psychological mechanism is clear:

• Many citizens identify deeply with an ideology, a leader, or a party. That identification becomes part of their personal identity. To admit that this leader made mistakes is to admit one’s own mistake — and that hurts.
• Therefore, the mind acts to reduce that pain: by blaming the other side (“yes, they did wrong, but the others were worse”), by denying the meaning of the facts (“it’s not corruption, it’s governance”), or by relativizing (“in this context, it was necessary”).
• At the institutional level, the same dynamic weakens accountability. If corruption from the rival party is unacceptable, but corruption from “our side” is debatable, the rule of law erodes.

A Brake on Progress

This collective psychological profile carries a high price. When a society cannot objectively evaluate its leaders, public policy loses legitimacy. Citizens stop demanding results and start defending beliefs. Politics becomes a contest of faith rather than a search for efficiency.
As a result:

• Oversight mechanisms lose credibility.
• Reforms are diluted by loyalty pressures.
• Structural change — institutional, cultural, economic — is postponed, because questioning the leader feels like questioning oneself.

Recent Examples

Despite a change in administration, Argentina has shown no progress in its international corruption rankings.
And in a September 2025 poll, more than half of respondents said they believed President Javier Milei’s government harbored “a lot or quite a lot” of corruption.

Breaking the Spiral

Escaping this national dissonance will take more than administrative reforms; it requires a cultural shift in how Argentines relate to politics. Key steps include:

• Fostering collective self-criticism: recognizing mistakes is not betrayal, it’s maturity.
• Separating loyalty from evaluation: a good leader can err; a bad system cannot justify him.
• Building active citizenship that values results over rhetoric, demanding transparency and accountability regardless of political color.

Recognizing that the nation lives trapped in this dissonance — and that it limits every attempt at progress — is the first step toward change. Until Argentines stop justifying the unjustifiable, the country will keep speaking the language of transformation while moving in circles.