Step inside the small Roca Museum in Buenos Aires’ Recoleta neighborhood and Argentina’s lost grandeur comes briefly back to life. Dedicated to Julio Argentino Roca, twice president during Argentina’s rapid late-19th-century economic expansion, it preserves vivid traces of the gilded era President Javier Milei wants to revive: a silver-mesh purse adorned with silver tassels, postcards from transatlantic trips, Roca’s finely crafted travel case and perfume, the menu from a banquet with his Chilean counterpart — even the music that played as they dined.

Step back into present-day Argentina and the climb toward Milei’s vision looks steep. The economy has all but certainly dipped into technical recession and formal jobs are in decline, increasingly leaving workers to rely on informal work or self-employment. Milei’s poll numbers have softened. Press coverage has turned gloomier. Markets still won’t lend to Argentina without a roughly 7 percentage-point premium over the US.

And yet, measured against where Argentina stood at the start of Milei’s presidency in late 2023, the results look stronger than most thought possible. The economy will probably post a second consecutive year of growth. Inflation, while still elevated, has fallen by an order of magnitude. Poverty is down 9 percentage points. Exports have roughly doubled. Perhaps more important, these gains rest on firmer macroeconomic ground than crisis-prone Argentina has known in decades. They could last.

None of this seemed obvious when Milei took office amid the chaos of fuel shortages, recurrent roadblocks and households stocking up on staples before the vote. A far more established centrist coalition led by former President Mauricio Macri, with a deep bench of reasonably well-credentialed officials, had tried just a few years earlier to put Argentina on firmer economic footing — and failed badly. I was part of that administration in economic-policy roles at the central bank and finance ministry.

Capable, honest colleagues across government agencies cleaned up how public-works contracts were awarded, restored the credibility and quality of public statistics and, among much else, digitized mountains of government paperwork. But such improvements were overwhelmed by a failure to grow the economy, tame inflation or reduce poverty — all areas where Milei has done much better.

How could a volatile political outsider with a fledgling party, a small minority in Congress and a governing team assembled largely on the fly possibly deliver these outcomes? And could Argentina’s experience offer a blueprint for the new crop of right-leaning governments taking power across Latin America — expected to be joined by Brazil after this weekend’s election? Three features of Milei’s governing style, along with plenty of serendipity and favorable circumstances, help explain both what worked and how much of it can be replicated elsewhere.

The first was ambition. Milei had to implement tough policies. He pitched them not merely as a way to avert macroeconomic Armageddon — which they did — but as the foundation for something grander. Become the freest country in the world. Reclaim Argentina’s place among developed nations. And an unabashed import: Make Argentina Great Again. For Argentines being asked to endure steep costs from Milei’s policies, the promise of national renewal gave the sacrifice a larger purpose. For investors, it offered the prospect not merely of stability but also of transformation.

Milei’s government has also been marked by unusual focus and clarity of direction. He may not have arrived with a deep team or set out to improve the myriad functions of a well-run central government. However, with a handful of seasoned figures around him — many borrowed from the Macri years — he set an unambiguous course on a few decisive issues, which he largely got right: zero deficit, no middlemen in social assistance, unreserved alignment with the US, a more open economy. Those crisp choices sent powerful signals and collectively explain much of the restored sense of order in the economy and on the streets.

Conviction and boldness, however, magnify the cost of error. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair recently captured the tradeoff in describing the unconventional style of leaders such as Milei as “ simultaneously high in potential risk and in potential effectiveness.”Milei’s approach worked because he got his main policy calls right. But not everything went to plan. Here, another trait of Milei and his team proved important: a capacity to retreat from positions and turn to pragmatism, however belatedly or begrudgingly, when reality demanded it.

An exchange-rate framework became increasingly constraining? It was relaxed.

The labor reform was too ambitious to make it through a divided congress? Out came a watered-down version. The willingness to change course when cornered helped preserve much of the upside of Milei’s ambition and focus while limiting their risks.

After the government lost a key local election in September 2025, Argentina was heading toward a run on its currency and debt, with virtually no reserves to fight it. Now a macro analyst, I spent a brutal Friday for the peso and bonds penning a note titled “Narrower Options as Market Stress Deepens.”I could see no good policy path. I ended the day disheartened, convinced that yet another attempt at stability was unraveling.

Before markets opened Monday, however, the US Treasury itself came to Argentina’s rescue — with a resounding expression of support, later followed by a $20 billion swap and direct purchases of Argentine pesos. Facing disaster, Milei’s economic team had reached for the unprecedented and the implausible.

To Milei admirers, the rescue illustrates the same freedom from dogma that appealed to voters: Milei had bet on Trump, and that bet paid off when the textbooks offered no answer. But the episode also points to the limits of explaining Argentina’s progress through Milei’s governing style alone. Circumstances — and at times sheer luck — mattered too.

His unreserved US alignment would have yielded much less under a more conventional US administration, more constrained by prudence and precedent and less inclined to factor in ideological — even personal — affinity. The growth outlook might also look much dimmer had years of pre-Milei investment in shale not finally begun to deliver an oil export boom. And Milei’s chainsaw could hardly have cut with so little resistance without the sense of chaos in which he took office.

But it would be unfair to explain away Argentina’s progress over the past three years on those grounds alone. Favorable conditions would hardly have produced the same results without choices Milei’s administration made, especially on fiscal and foreign policy.

Milei’s success is far less complete than government rhetoric sometimes suggests. Fiscal cuts and the opening of trade have been critical to stabilize the economy and put it on stronger foundations. But they have also imposed heavy costs on some groups. Public-sector employees — not just bureaucrats but teachers, nurses, scientists and police officers — earn on average 15% less in real terms than when Milei took office. Alongside the oil boom, manufacturing is down 7%. Macroeconomic stabilization and microeconomic reform have yet to translate into broadly shared prosperity.

Greater efforts to cushion the cost of the adjustment, or make it more fairly distributed, might have spared some of the pain — and reduced two important risks: a political backlash that could threaten the durability of Milei’s reforms, and damage to some of the social and economic foundations for long-term growth.

The first risk is political. The costs of Milei’s achievements leave their durability far from assured. His approval rating has dropped below 40%. It’s not at all obvious that in the October 2027 presidential election he would get the 40% minimum that makes a first-round victory possible. His high disapproval ratings would also leave him vulnerable in a runoff. Milei’s vitriolic attacks on the press and other critics and various scandals surrounding his administration may add to the political drag.

The second risk is structural. The shortcomings of Mileinomics risk weakening important economic and social pillars for sustainable and equitable growth. An overzealous pursuit of disinflation through currency strength may be driving excessive real exchange-rate appreciation, endangering potentially competitive manufacturing activities that could help make the economy more diversified and resilient. Indiscriminate civil-service cuts risk further eroding Argentina’s already thin state capacity, turning the claim that government does not work into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Reduced university funding threatens the pockets of world-class science that Argentina has sustained against the odds. All this undermines foundations of a middle-class ethos Argentina has long taken pride in.

For many Argentines, the grandeur that Milei invokes and the Roca Museum preserves may not capture everything the country should aspire to. The assets Argentina built over the century since, mixed as that legacy might be, are worth preserving and enhancing, too.

All of this might be set aside if Milei can rid Argentina of macroeconomic instability — the recurring curse that has for decades kept the country trapped in a maddening cycle of progress and reversal.

On that, Milei’s record has been strong enough to keep reelection in 2027 in play. And his legacy may no longer depend entirely on winning: To the extent his presidency has brought home the importance of basic macroeconomic discipline, a successor of almost any ideological stripe could preserve much of his program’s economic gains — and build on them. A return to economic populism is not yet off the table. But Milei’s presidency has at least opened a plausible path toward lasting stability and sustained growth.

So can other right-leaning governments across Latin America follow Argentina’s example? Only up to a point.

The importance of circumstances to Milei’s success suggests other governments would struggle to replicate the most radical of his policies. Other countries may have neither the need nor the political tolerance for reforms of comparable scale and speed, especially on the fiscal front. While Argentina may emerge stronger from its sharp adjustment, the recurrent crises that made it politically possible are hardly a desirable path for countries starting from firmer ground.

What may be more transferable is Milei’s approach to governing. In a political culture often hemmed in by polls, electoral calculus and entrenched orthodoxies, his ambition, clarity of purpose and willingness to disregard dogma when necessary offer lessons for like-minded politicians — and perhaps especially for more conventional ones.