Politics and Political Elites in Latin America: Challenges and Trends

357 Pages·2020·6.443 MB·English

by  Manuel Alcántara, Mercedes García Montero, Cristina Rivas Pérez

Latin American Societies
Current Challenges in Social Sciences
Manuel Alcántara
Mercedes García Montero
Cristina Rivas Pérez Editors
Politics and
Political Elites in
Latin America
Challenges and Trends
Latin American Societies
Current Challenges in Social Sciences
Series Editors
Adrian Albala, Instituto de Ciências Políticas (IPOL), University of Brasília,
Brasilia, Brasília, Brazil
Maria Jose Álvarez Rivadulla, Edificio Franco, Oficina GB 620, Universidad de
los Andes, Bogota, Colombia
Alejandro Natal, Department of Social Processes, Universidad Autónoma
Metropolitana, Lerma de Villada, Estado de México, Mexico
This series aims at presenting to the international community original contributions
by scholars working on Latin America. Such contributions will address the
challenges that Latin American societies currently face as well as the ways they deal
with these challenges. The series will be methodologically agnostic, that is: it
welcomes case studies, small-N comparative studies or studies covering the whole
region, as well as studies using qualitative or quantitative data (or a mix of both), as
long as they are empirically rigorous and based on high-quality research. Besides
exploring Latin American challenges, the series attempts to provide concepts,
findings and theories that may shed light on other regions. The series will focus on
seven axes of challenges:
1) Classes and inequalities
2) Crime, security and violence
3) Environmental threats
4) Collective action
5) Cultural change and resistance
6) Migrations
7) Political inclusion and representation
Both solicited and unsolicited proposals will be considered for publication in the
series.
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/16592
Manuel Alcántara • Mercedes García Montero
Cristina Rivas Pérez
Editors
Politics and Political Elites
in Latin America
Challenges and Trends
Editors
Manuel Alcántara Mercedes García Montero
Instituto de Iberoamérica Instituto de Iberoamérica
University of Salamanca University of Salamanca
Salamanca, Spain Salamanca, Spain
Cristina Rivas Pérez
Instituto de Iberoamérica
University of Salamanca
Salamanca, Spain
ISSN 2730-5538 ISSN 2730-5546 (electronic)
Latin American Societies
ISBN 978-3-030-51583-6 ISBN 978-3-030-51584-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51584-3
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Preface
After more than three decades of continuous democratic life, most Latin American
countries have achieved political standards as never before. Governments are now
adopted through free, competitive, periodic, and reasonably egalitarian elections.
Opposition forces have the chance to come peaceably to power, and divisions of
power and the rule of law are operating effectively under presidential systems. The
result is that Latin American countries have expanded their democratic procedures
in positive ways, albeit with obvious differences among them. Studies on the quality
of democracy (as from the Intelligence Economist Unit [IEU] or Bertelsmann
Transformation Index [BTI]) and on varieties of democracy (V-Dem) reveal both
advances and setbacks, but always accompanied by undisputed performance.
This book approaches a range of issues relevant to Latin American politics from
the perspective of national legislators, based on the conviction that the roles played
by parliamentarians—themselves a rich source of knowledge on regional and
national political life—deserve to be studied. This is an original study founded on
empirical support from the Political Elites of Latin America (PELA) research proj-
ect conducted at the University of Salamanca. PELA was launched in 1994 and has
since developed without interruption, conducting some 9000 personal interviews
with representative samples of legislators from 18 Latin American countries. These
interviews have been guided by closed questionnaires of about 100 questions each
(the academic material produced can be accessed at https://oir.org.es/pela/). The
introductory chapter of this book by Mélany Barragán, José Manuel Rivas, and
Cristina Rivas speaks to the potential of the rich PELA database.
The book is structured into two parts. The first eight chapters address important
aspects of representative democracy including political ambition, political trust and
trustworthiness, satisfaction with democracy, clientelism, and the quality of democ-
racy. Also discussed in this first section are three salient issues in contemporary
Latin American political dynamics: executive-legislative relations, participation by
women as representatives, and the significance of both China and the United States
to national politics throughout the region.
The chapter by Theresa Kernecker looks at the main explanations behind politi-
cal ambition and the value associated with top offices in Latin America, by way of
v
vi Preface
a descriptive analysis of the office-seeking ambitions of incumbent parliamentari-
ans. The consensus in the literature is that, as compared to US Congresspeople, poli-
ticians in Latin America are “progressively ambitious.” But actual results—the
offices that politicians successfully attain—raise the question of whether these
national deputies are really as progressively ambitious as their career moves may
suggest. The author asks whether deputies of the region might not in fact be “stati-
cally ambitious,” even when not reelected.
The objective of Cristina Rivas and Manuel Alcántara in Chap. 3 is to examine
the different levels of trust expressed by parliamentary elites in Latin America in the
main political institutions (the parliament, the president of the government, the judi-
ciary, and political parties) through development of a simple index of political con-
fidence (IPC). This permits observation of the evolution of trust across two decades,
encompassing a period in which the region has witnessed many diverse scenarios.
Analysis is given to whether political confidence has remained relatively stable over
the period, or whether it has shifted depending on the political and economic perfor-
mance of governments.
The chapter by Mar Martínez Rosón and Araceli Mateos focuses on satisfaction
with democracy, comparing data from PELA and the AmericasBarometer project to
better identify similarities and differences between citizens and representatives, and
contributing to a broader understanding of the Latin American context, still com-
paratively understudied. Results show that variables linked to institutional perfor-
mance influence the degree of satisfaction for both groups, even if notable differences
between citizens and their representatives emerge in other variables. For legislators,
trust is more relevant to satisfaction than to the existence of corruption, while for
citizens, the benefits and performance of public policies (health, infrastructure, edu-
cation) have a substantial effect.
Margarita Corral and Mar Martínez Rosón in Chap. 5 use ordered logistic mod-
els to assess the effects of structural, institutional, and political variables on vote
buying. In particular, they analyze the impact of the size and level of socioeconomic
development of districts, and the political experience and access to resources of
legislators, on the use of clientelistic practices, patronage, and pork-barrel projects
in exchange for electoral support. Results show that without regard to socioeco-
nomic variables, representatives of more populous districts will offer fewer con-
sumer goods, jobs, or projects to their communities in exchange for votes. Moreover,
legislators with prior political experience are more likely to offer all such incentives
when running for office, especially when they belong to the political party of the
incumbent president. When testing for the effects of a district’s socioeconomic
development, a significant inverse relationship with the offer of any of these incen-
tives is revealed.
Chapter 6 by Asbel Bohigues and Manuel Alcántara questions whether a link
exists between political elites and democracy. Combining the PELA and V-Dem
datasets, they examine the stated thoughts and opinions of elites to assess for pos-
sible impacts on (or relationships with) the distinct varieties of democracy. This
may be of great importance in a region now widely experiencing “democracy
fatigue.” Taking the main indexes from V-Dem as dependent variables, the authors
Preface vii
explore whether questions related to democracy from the perspective of political
elites have an impact on such outcomes as satisfaction with democracy, stability of
and trust in electoral processes, and ideology as measured on the left/right scale.
In their chapter, Ignacio Arana and Carolina Guerrero address the factors that
explain trust by legislators in sitting presidents. They go beyond conventional expla-
nations of executive-legislative conflict to investigate whether the personal charac-
teristics of presidents may be associated with the levels of trust assigned them by
legislators. An exploratory panel analysis is conducted to examine the causes of
trust in presidents by legislators, using survey data from PELA. The authors find
that factors capturing the interbranch distribution of power, the political context in
which executive relations take place, and the personal (biographical and psycho-
logical) characteristics of presidents are all relevant to degrees of trust, and they
argue that their findings support the need for a holistic approach to understanding
interpersonal trust, both among political elites and in executive-legislative relations.
Mercedes García Montero and Cecilia Rodríguez in their chapter seek to empiri-
cally prove whether certain theoretical arguments around political careers, as held
by gender institutionalism, provide an explanatory framework for the diverse pro-
files of legislators in the region. To this end, they address variables relating to politi-
cal and legislative careers, political experience, levels of dedication to politics, and
sufficiency of remuneration, as expressed by female and male parliamentarians.
Asbel Bohigues and Scott Morgenstern in Chap. 9 look to deepen our under-
standing of attitudes toward the United States and China by Latin American politi-
cal elites, with a focus on the predictors of support for these two powers. They rely
on data from PELA in analyzing two dimensions: opinions on the influence wielded
in the region by the United States and China, and the perceived trustworthiness of
their respective governments. The question is raised of whether views on these two
global powers, as held by Latin American political elites, are in any way related, and
whether the reasons behind rejection of (or support for) either or both of these pow-
ers can be seen as complementary.
The second part of this book presents more particularized studies of national
cases that highlight regional heterogeneity. These five chapters aim to examine the
attitudes of parliamentarians in no less than seven distinct political systems, with
regard to relevant issues including institutional trust, satisfaction with democracy,
executive-legislative relations, clientelism, and questions of gender. All these chap-
ters seek to help clarify the evolution of these attitudes over the course of the past
two decades.
Chapter 10, by Carlos Ranulfo Melo, Manoel Leornardo Santos, and Rafael
Câmara, compares elected deputies from Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay according to
their positioning on the left/right scale. Whatever the structural and historical differ-
ences between these three countries, their trajectories following military dictator-
ships make them comparable; these are cases of evident democratic stability and
institutional robustness, with relatively low levels of street protest. All have party
systems whose degree of structuring is far above the average for the region, where
left and right positions are discernible, and all have experienced left-wing govern-
ments of similar characteristic. Furthermore, the simplified context of the left/right
viii Preface
scale can be assumed in all three—even in Chile, where the religious question
assumes certain relevance, but not to the point where competition revolves around it.
The objective of the chapter by Cristian Márquez and Patricia Marenghi is to
offer a comprehensive study of the variability of democratic support and develop-
ment in Mexico, from the perspective of the political elite, using survey data from
PELA-USAL. An empirical-descriptive long-term analysis of the evolution of dem-
ocratic support and satisfaction with democracy addresses the coherence (or diver-
gence) between citizens and elites in this respect, observing patterns of change and
stability after two decades of democratization and comparing the conception of
democracy by Mexican elites with that of other Latin American countries.
Chapter 12, by Adriana Ramírez Baracaldo and José Manuel Rivas Otero,
focuses on the parliamentary opposition in Colombia, with the aim of identifying
the determinants that influence parliamentarians to declare themselves part of the
opposition. The central argument is that, in addition to party affiliation, the ideology
of representatives and their degree of confidence in the president are the main deter-
minants in this regard.
Finally, the two chapters by Daniel Chasquetti and Lucía Selios and by Mélany
Barragán describe the results of applying the PELA survey to Uruguay and to
Panama and Guatemala, respectively, from a comparative perspective. The authors
examine issues related to evaluation of these democratic regimes and their political
institutions, as well as issues of patronage, gender, and the ideological situation of
political actors.
The target audiences for this book will be scholars and students of comparative
politics in general, and especially those interested in problems relating to represen-
tative democracy and the opinions of political elites in Latin America.
This book is integrated into the research project “El rol representativo de mujeres
y hombres en los parlamentos latinoamericanos,” supported by the Spanish
Ministerio de Ciencia Innovación y Universidades. Ref.: RTI2018-094972-B-I00.
Salamanca, Spain Manuel Alcántara
Mercedes García Montero
Cristina Rivas Pérez
Contents
Part I D emocracy and Institutions
1 PELA-USAL: A Methodological Tool for the Study of Elites . . . . . . . 3
Mélany Barragán, Cristina Rivas Pérez,
and José Manuel Rivas Otero
2 Political Ambition in Latin America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Theresa Kernecker
3 Political Trust of Parliamentary Elites in Latin America . . . . . . . . . . 51
Cristina Rivas Pérez and Manuel Alcántara
4 Satisfaction with Democracy in Latin America: Perspectives
from Political Elites and Citizens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Mar Martínez Rosón and Araceli Mateos Díaz
5 Shopping for Votes in Latin America: When Do Legislators
Engage in Vote- Buying Practices? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Margarita Corral and Mar Martínez Rosón
6 Political Elites and Democratic Fatigue in Latin America . . . . . . . . . 129
Asbel Bohigues and Manuel Alcántara
7 Executive-Legislative Relations: When Do Legislators
Trust the President? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Ignacio Arana Araya and Carolina Guerrero Valencia
8 Political Paths and Gender in Latin America. An Analysis
of the Trajectories of Legislative Elites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Mercedes García Montero and Cecilia Graciela Rodríguez
9 Covariance of Latin American Elite Attitudes Towards
the USA and China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Asbel Bohigues and Scott Morgenstern
ix