Kirchner is obviously desperate to find votes, but I'm curious about the long term effects of such a move. Note that Argentina is one of the countries that enforces compulsory voting, so it should be interesting to see what data this produces. According to El Pais (Spanish), the move is being described by Kirchner surrogates as a simple response to how much faster children mature nowadays. The article suggests (and previous commentary on that particular topic would likely agree) that it's directly tied to the Peronists efforts in cultivating what are described as "militancia juvenil" groups, which are hard to pin down in terms of what would be a good analogy without drawing direct comparisons to fascist youth groups that don't really describe the strange blend of populism, democracy, and demagoguery that characterizes the Peronist influence over the last half century. A small number of other countries have experimented with similar reductions without much dramatic happening, but I wonder if the context of Argentine politics and the political organizations the effort is linked to make for an altogether different recipe.
Kirchner does seem intent on taking the well worn cult of personality path. Unfortunate, even if expanding the vote seems like a democratic impulse at first blush. In the long run I think the ramifications are pretty clear.
With only a very vague notion of their actions they have always seemed to me analogous to really dedicated and highly motivated Young Republicans with uniforms. In a non-disparaging way either, just as that kind of youth group pseudo-political gang slash clubbe.
Well, they apparently have been around for a really long time, but I don't know much about them. I have the opportunity to talk to some people that definitely do know a lot about Argentina so I've put off doing a lot of casual searching until I get the chance.
I'm curious what exactly do they have to back up that claim about "children maturing faster than 70, 80 years ago". If anything the opposite seems more like it, between the overprotective parents and people putting off the "srs bsns" until they're quite a bit older.
I was thinking more in terms of adolescence/wisdom (the latter in particular being result of experience gain) The earlier start of physical changes is, certainly, likely to have impact, but i have to wonder if our cultural changes aren't at least countering that. In any case the article on adolescence in Wikipedia doesn't mention observations of similar effect when it comes to the mental development. Whether because there isn't any or because there's just no studies in that area, it's hard to tell without putting in some effort.
My guess would be that the Peronists have nothing to support that claim other than anecdotes about worldliness and their polling numbers among 16-18 year olds.
Under 18s aren't required to vote (unlike the rest of the population), and most probably won't. The ones in the freaky Kirchner (sorry, Peronist) fan clubs most likely will but they're more of a farce than a force. Bet you dollars to donuts the impact is functionally indistinguishable from random noise. Between the blatant manipulation of economic statistics and the mushy aborted fetus that is the national economy there's a better than even chance the opposition will win big in 2013 unless Ms Fernandez pulls a miracle out of her ass. On the plus side she'd dominate the American lecture circuit. Hot, powerful and politically talented? If she and Obama did tours together the punditocracy would die of lust.
Eh, I think she's alienated more people with things that smack of bad-old-days Peronism than Néstor Kirchner did. Speaking as someone who's fairly tolerant of countries in Argentina's position taking, eh, creative routes vis a vis creditors and the first world, I don't approve of the lady.
Kalle: the Nashis seem to me a much more brownshirted approach to organizing youth, particularly with regard to their reputation on ethnic tensions, but it's an interesting comparison. A friend of mine commented that this was functionally indistinguishable from the move the Sandinistas pulled shortly after coming to office, and it was the leverage attributed in part to that solid voting bloc that allowed them to remove the limits on re-election (hence Daniel Ortega reruns forever) despite being steadily less popular in governance than they had been in resistance. So I guess if you have specific things in mind you want to do with your youth bloc it's a bit different from those that have no plan for enlisting and applying youth votes, which in this case would be the Peronist opposition. I agree with Jason T's point: I think there's a lot to learn about Argentina's approach to debt, but most of it is how good ideas can be hijacked by assholes into self-destructive behavior. You can usually tell how close to that implosion a government is by how they act on the Malvinas/Falklands; by that measure, Argentina has long passed the threshold necessary to push capital and workforce flight from the country. As that same friend said in an aside: it was only days before the surrender in the Falklands that he witnessed newspapers in the country publishing headlines like "STILL WINNING". To think, Charlie Sheen gets the credit for that these days.
I can see having the voting age be younger than the draft age as a good thing, but aside from that... Plenty of kids 16 are sharp and mature, yet plenty of them are also naive fools. Though of course the same argument can be made for 18!
Or 20 or 30 or 40 or 50. Or 80. There really no age that guarantees that someone will be mature enough to vote. It only makes sense to set the voting age to coincide with other "adult" stuff, which is all going to be just as arbitrary. It might as well all match for fairness's sake.
