Disputes over gas: "tarifazo", collective action and public service in recent Argentina

Abstract

The article analyzes one process of resonance in the public arena in Argentina in the first year of the Alianza Cambiemos administration, linked to the social protests that occurred in 2016 in relation to the so-called "tarifazo" (price hike) of the public gas service. This problem allows us to account for a particular moment of more general societal conflicts over energy in the context of a general reorientation of various policies carried forward by the current government administration. With this purpose and oriented by qualitative social research, the social actors that promoted and accompanied these protests and the confrontational dynamic that distinguishes them are identified; evaluative and idiosyncratic criteria that were mobilized both by those and by the state actors are distinguished, and the extent to which the "tarifazo" enabled a window of opportunity to publicly discuss the problems of gas production and distribution was investigated.