The government of Argentina, within the framework of a federal system, is a presidential representative democratic republic. The President of Argentina is both head of state and head of government. Executive power is exercised by the President. Legislative power is vested in the National Congress. The Judiciary is independent from the Executive and from the Legislature, and is vested in the Supreme Court and the lower national tribunals.
Executive Branch
The current composition of the Executive Branch includes only the Head of State and President, formally given the power over the Administration to follow through with the interests of the Nation. The President is also the Chief of the Argentine Armed Forces.
The President and the Vice President are elected through universal suffrage by the nation considered as a whole. The Constitutional reform of 1994 introduced a two-round system by which the winning President-Vice President ticket has to receive either more than 45% of the overall valid votes, or at least 40% of it and a 10% lead over the runner-up. In any other case, the two leading tickets get to face a second round whose victor will be decided by a simple majority. This mechanism was not necessary in the 1995 election, when it could have first come into use, nor in the 1999 election, nor in the last two presidential elections, occurred in 2007 and 2011. However, it was instrumental in the selection of Néstor Kirchner in 2003.
The cabinet of ministers is appointed by the president, but is not technically part of the Executive Power. The Vice President belongs to the legislative branch, since the position also holds the presidency of the Senate.
Legislative branch
The National Congress () constitutes the legislative branch of government. The Congress consists of the Senate (72 seats), presided by the Vice-President of the Nation, and the Chamber of Deputies (257 seats), currently presided by Julián Domínguez, deputy for Buenos Aires province. Senators stay in office for six years, and deputies, for four.
Each of the Provinces and the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires elect deputies and senators directly. Deputies are representatives of the whole people of the Nation, while Senators represent their districts. Each district elects a number of deputies roughly proportional to their overall population by proportional representation, and three senators: two for the majority, and one for the first minority. Members of both chambers are allowed indefinite re-elections.
Every two years, each of the 24 electoral districts (the twenty-three Provinces and the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires) elects one half of their lower chamber representatives. Districts with an odd number of Deputies elect one more or one fewer of them on each election. As for the Senators, the twenty-four districts are divided into three groups consisting of eight districts. Every two years all eight districts of one of those groups elect all their three senators, assigning two of them from the party that obtains the majority, and one from the first minority party. Six years later, the same group of districts will hold its next senatorial elections.
Current situation
Following the 9/11 mid-term elections, half the Chamber of Deputies seats and one third of the seats in the Senate were subjected to the ballot box. The Front for Victory (FPV) and other allies of Néstor and Cristina Kirchner, Argentina's progressive ruling couple, secured 113 of 257 seats in the lower house, losing 24 seats and their previous absolute majority (the fractious Justicialist Party, to which the FPV formally adheres, continue to enjoy the control of the lower house since 1989). Among Justicialists representatives, a further 17 seats went to anti-Kirchnerites (mostly conservatives), gaining just one seat from the previous situation. The centrist social democratic Radical Civic Union, Argentina's oldest party, allied itself in various districts with the centrist Civic Coalition or with the social democratic Socialist Party, secured 77 seats, thus gaining 16. The conservative Republican Proposal secured 26 seats, gaining 12 from the previous election. A further 24 seats went to smaller parties, mostly provincially oriented, but also from the center-left spectrum.