Presidents, Parties, and Democratic Breakdown

Carlos Pereira and Marcus André Melo, "The Surprising Success of Multiparty Presidentialism." Journal of Democracy 23, 2 (July 2012): 156-170.

Abstract (gated):

The common wisdom is that when presidential political systems coincide with multiparty systems the result is gridlock; parties squabble and presidents are not able to stitch together the majorities they need to move forward with the business of governing. Latin America’s presidential systems were supposed to have been a disaster. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, however, presidentialism and multipartism seem to work rather well. E pur se muove, to quote Galileo. Over the last decade or so, multiparty presidentialism has become the modal form of presidential democracy, especially in Latin America. Once thought to be a precursor of democratic breakdowns, no compelling explanations have emerged to account for its success in countries such as Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay. The surprising sustainability of coalition-based presidentialism demands an explanation, yet political scientists are ill-equipped to answer this puzzle. 

I find this a bit problematic because it puts Latin American institutions in a vacuum. For studies on democratic breakdown, the critical issue is how institutions work in the context of crisis, not just how they function in the absence of crisis. For example, as Arturo Valenzuela wrote about Chile:

It is the principal thesis of this work that the main characteristic of the Chilean system by mid-twentieth century was a marked political polarization. Conflict and confrontation were mediated by a web of institutions and through the verdict of an electoral system which defined the power capabilities of political groups.*

So the problem is not presidents and parties per se, but how presidents and parties react to "marked political polarization." The record is not particularly good when you consider Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras, Paraguay, and Venezuela. The countries the authors note approvingly--Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay--have not seen that level of polarization. You could make an argument that political institutions are the reason for lower levels of polarization, but they only do so indirectly:

In multiparty presidential systems, even constitutionally strong executives may operate as perpetual formateurs, cobbling together a distinct voting coalition to support each important initiative. In such institutional environments, executives may assemble heterogeneous governing majorities using ideologically diverse political parties. Executives also must often use particularistic benefits (such as pork-barrel projects) along with political transfers (cabinet posts, other presidential appointments,¹² and policy concessions) in complex efforts aimed at garnering needed votes in congress.

This suggests that presidents can put something together to enact policies intended to reduce polarization. To be convincing, though, that needs a lot more evidence.

*Arturo Valenzuela, The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Chile (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978): xiii

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Krugman on Latin America

Andres Oppenheimer interviewed Paul Krugman and came away with Nobel Prize genius platitudes. Do some good stuff, not too much bad stuff, and you may get a better outcome. So in Mexico you need to get rid of the bad things, and bring in some good things.

“The best thing you could do for the Mexican economy would be to control the drug trade and the crime wave, and hope that the re-shoring of production from China (to Mexico) finally generates the economic miracle we keep waiting for,” he added.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/07/28/2916440/latin-americas-challenge-the-boring.html#storylink=cpy

OK, thanks! Now I feel much more educated than I did before the 30 seconds it took me to read the insights in this article. What about Brazil?

I don’t think there is an easy policy explanation about why Brazil has done better. It just seems that there seems to be more of an entrepreneurial drive

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/07/28/2916440/latin-americas-challenge-the-boring.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/07/28/2916440/latin-americas-challenge-the-boring.html#storylink=cpy

Brilliant!

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Chile's National Defense Strategy

Sebastián Piñera recently unveiled a new Estrategia Nacional de Seguridad y Defensa, which is getting some attention. It says that security is essentially everything: "seguridad ampliada." The document even includes equality of opportunity as security, then jumps to the need to keep the Panama Canal secure, and how Chile can help Africa.
Peru's La Republica was not happy that it was released before a decision came down on maritime borders, and sees it as too bellicose, but at least was glad it specifically mentioned respecting international tribunals.
Claudio Fuentes, who has long studied Chilean civil-military relations, was not happy that it brought the armed forces back into internal security. He ends with a call to the legislature, which historically has conceded defense to the executive branch.

Finalmente, la ENSD es concebida como una “política de políticas” que orienta la articulación de distintas políticas públicas sectoriales y define los intereses nacionales desde la perspectiva castrense. Senadores y diputados, así como la sociedad toda, deberían debatir la ENSD propuesta por el Gobierno, ya que por esta vía se redefinirían aspectos fundamentales de la función castrense, de la política exterior y de la institucionalidad democrática. 

I agree, though what is needed even more is constant work by the legislature, not just on a single document. There have been three Libros de Defensa published (the last in 2010) and now this document, but they are put together by the executive branch. The legislative role--especially increasing oversight--always gets short shrift.


Lastly, I've done work on Chilean intelligence, and was disappointed to see that it does not reduce military autonomy, but rather simply calls for putting more resources into intelligence.

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Why Castro's Statement Doesn't Matter

This almost qualifies as a rant, but is more properly just confusion. Why does the media see Raúl Castro's statement of willingness to talk with the United States as equals as noteworthy, even "surprising"? The Cuban government says this every year. Every. Single. Year.

Raúl Castro said in an interview in 2006 that he would hold talks as equals.

Raúl Castro offered to hold talks in 2007.

Raúl Castro offered to hold talks as equals in 2008.

Raúl Castro indicated to the Obama administration that it would hold talks as equals in 2009.

The Cuban foreign ministry said it would hold talks on any topic as long as it was between equals in 2010.

Jimmy Carter brought a message that Raúl Castro wanted talks as equals in 2011.

This isn't new, and it will have exactly zero effect on U.S.-Cuban relations.

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Drug flights

Check out this graphic on drug flights from the New York Times.

A picture is worth a thousand words, especially in the Honduran case, where the 2009 coup blew open the door to more drug trafficking. The Colombia-Venezuela border is a big fat mess, and Venezuela apparently is the friendly skies. The graphic comes from this story about the flights in Venezuela.

Keep in mind the note at the top, though. 80% of drugs don't come through flights.

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Latin America and China

Rhys Jenkins, "Latin America and China: A New Dependency?" Third World Quarterly 33, 7 (2012): 1337-1358.

Abstract (gated):

Economic relations between China and Latin America have grown rapidly over the past decade. This paper documents the growth of trade, foreign direct investment (fdi) and other financial flows between China and Latin America and identifies the interests of China in the region as a source of raw materials, a market for exports of manufactured goods and an area of diplomatic competition with Taiwan. It points to the asymmetric nature of the relationship in terms of the relative importance of bilateral trade to each partner, the composition of trade flows, and the balance of fdi flows. It shows that these show many of the characteristics of centre–periphery relations. However, China is far from becoming a new hegemonic power in Latin America and the latter's relations with the USA and Europe continue to be more significant than those with China.

Not terribly surprising, but useful in particular as a reminder that the economic relationship is similar to that outlined by dependency theory, but that the United States is not exactly being displaced.

The China-Latin America connections is a really hot scholarly topic at the moment.

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Kropf & Kimball's Helping America Vote

I recommend Martha Kropf and David Kimball's Helping America Vote: The Limits of Electoral Reform (2012). Martha is a friend and colleague down the hall here at UNC Charlotte, so I'm biased, but this is a nice, succinct look at the mess left in the wake of the 2000 presidential election and the unintended consequences of the 2002 Helping America Vote Act. Basically, our system of voting is even more messed up than you thought.

They discuss the issues of access (making sure there are as few barriers to voting as possible), favored more by Democrats) and integrity (making sure there is as little fraud as possible, more favored by Republicans) and how they came together in 2000 to make both political parties focus on voting technology as the main answer to the country's electoral problems. That did reduce residual votes, but the specific type of technology matters a lot and of course there is wide variation of technology even within states. Further, aside from technology, they show empirically how ballot design affects voting.

Another unintended consequences is the consolidation of polling places as a way to save money since the new technology is pricey (and keeps requiring updates). That, in turn, makes it harder for many people to vote because they have to travel farther to do so and/or because they don't know where to go. For this reason, consolidation leads to decreased turnout.

And finally, the individuals administering the elections matter. They have political preferences of their own, and how they are chosen varies considerably. As they discuss, that point has received far less attention than the machines.

Their discussion of the morass of local, state, and federal laws and regulations also reminded me a lot of immigration.  In both cases, you end up with a patchwork of confusion. States simultaneously want autonomy but also want the federal government to help fund reform.

A final point is that in the broad debate over the policy relevance of academia, the book shows how academic studies were important in defining problems of access and integrity.

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Romney and Argentina

Here's an article in the Telegraph about Mitt Romney's criticisms of Barack Obama's relations with Great Britain. He's mad about all the bad things Obama has done. You read a bit more, and you see that the British are a bit peeved about Obama's neutrality on the Falklands/Malvinas. Then you read even more and you find out that Romney actually cannot--or will not--articulate anything he would do differently.

A change in tone was reflected by the enthusiastic welcome extended to Mr Cameron during an official visit and dinner in March. However, British diplomats remain frustrated by their “transactional” relationship with the Obama White House and lack of support on issues such as the Falkland Islands. 

Mr Romney has not made any commitments on the Falklands, but several in his foreign policy team favour backing Britain and publicly rejecting claims of sovereignty by Christina Kirchner, the Argentine president. Under Mr Obama the US remains neutral. 

The advisers could not give detailed examples of how policy towards Britain would differ under Mr Romney. One conceded that on the European crisis: “I’m not sure what our policy response is.”

With regard to Latin America at least, this follows a pattern. There are critics aplenty about Obama's stance with regard to Argentina, but also of course to Venezuela and other countries. Yet as I've written before, these criticisms never seem to spell out a real alternative policy solution.

h/t Erik Loomis, though he was focusing on the "Anglo-Saxon" part

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Drought and Latin America

Both today and yesterday, NPR ran stories in the morning on my way to work about the drought in the midwestern United States, which has affected soybeans and corn in particular. That made me think of the fact that I often note the problem of Latin American economies relying on commodities, but rarely acknowledge when it works out well, at least in the short term. This drought will help Argentine farmers, who are chomping at the bit to increase corn exports. It will also help Brazilian soybean farmers, not to mention Brazilian corn farmers who are benefiting from U.S. companies needing animal feed.

The downside, of course, is that the average person in Latin America and everywhere else will see an increase in the cost of anything related to corn and soy, which are connected directly or indirectly to many different products. There was a lot of discussion about this type of issue back in 2007, when corn-based ethanol was all the rage, and it was making tortilla prices spike.

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The Plot to Kill Allende

From CIPER Chile, quite a post/interview. Meet the retired Air Force Captain, Jorge Silva, who was with General Alberto Bachelet when he died in prison. And why was Silva in prison in the first place? Because he was informed of an air force plot to assassinate President-elect Salvador Allende and chose to tell him about it, thus thwarting it.

Me sacaron. Por el tremendo pecado de haberle informado al Presidente electo de que intentaban asesinarlo. Por eso después del Golpe a mí casi me mataron, porque nunca entendieron que después de ese terrible episodio yo nunca más hablé con el Presidente Allende y tampoco con su secretario y con nadie de su entorno. No podían entender que no pedí ninguna prebenda y tampoco entregué nunca más información sobre la Fuerza Aérea. Y no tenían ninguna acusación en mi contra, porque nunca asistí a ninguna reunión de los contrarios al Golpe porque sabía que estaban infiltrados.

He was detained soon after the coup, tortured, spent three and a half years in prison, then left Chile in 1977.

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Electoral authoritarianism

Jay Ulfelder notes Juan Forero's piece in the Washington Post on Latin American countries with democratically elected leaders who use a variety of non-democratic means to consolidate power. He notes that there is more than meets the eye.

In fact, I think the over-reliance on charisma and populism as explanations for the emergence of these regimes speaks to a common error in the way many U.S. observers think about the nature of the problem. I get the sense that many U.S. analysts and officials still view Latin America through a Cold War lens that conflates leftist and anti-American policies with authoritarianism. This bias causes them to err on the side of including leftist governments on this list of “bad guys” while excluding more conservative ones. Thus, Bolivia and Ecuador keep landing on the roster of “new authoritarians” in spite of their ambiguities while cases like Honduras are more often overlooked or explained away. In 2003, when Brazil elected staunchly a leftist president for the first time since democracy was restored in the mid-1980s, there was a lot of grumbling in Washington about the threat of an authoritarian turn without a shred of real evidence to support it. 

Until we do a better job distinguishing between these various dimensions of politics, we’re going to have a hard time understanding what’s happening—not just in Latin America, but also in the Arab world, Africa, Asia, and even in Europe nowadays. More generally, while I’m always happy to see journalists engaging in this kind of comparative analysis, I would be even happier if they would talk to fewer politicians and activists and more analysts when they do.

I would add that an additional problem is that in these putatively authoritarian countries, the opposition has either a) been too weak and disorganized to win recent presidential elections; or b) simply overthrown left-leaning presidents it does not like. In practice this means we don't actually see a truly democratic end game, which would be a leftist president losing an election to someone more right-leaning. All of these analyses seem to assume that the left would never let it happen, but we don't yet have a case study.*

In other words, consolidation of power is not solely a matter of using the machinery of the state, but also is tied to the failures of the opposition. In the countries most commonly cited--Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador--the right is in shambles, deeply discredited for past failed policies. In small countries with weak institutions like Honduras and Paraguay, the right refused even to wait for the next presidential election.

* Chile is a partial case, but the Concertación is much more centrist than the other cases, so the switch to the center-right did not entail significant change.

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Romney in Spanish

Like John McCain in 2008, Mitt Romney is producing Spanish-language TV ads with a message on immigration that is much more conciliatory than what he says in English stump speeches and ads. Like McCain, Romney blames Barack Obama and Democrats for the failure of immigration reform. Like in 2008, there is not much truth to the ad, which is an attempt to grab some--any--Latino voters by appearing to sound reasonable. As with McCain, this strategy will not work. Currently, 70% of Latino voters are for Obama while 22% are for Romney, and there is no reason to believe that will change before the election.

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Amanda Cross' Death in a Tenured Position

I knew nothing about Amanda Cross' Death in a Tenured Position except that it was a murder mystery set in academia with a really lurid title. I did not know, for example, that it served as a statement against the sexism and homophobia that characterized Harvard (the book was published in 1981 and takes place in 1979). I also did not know that Amanda Cross was a psuedonym for Carolyn Heilbrun, who was a prominent professor of English at Columbia and wrote a series of mysteries starring Kate Fansler, an amatuer sleuth and--naturally--an English professor.

The story (which is entirely fictional) centers on the persecution of the first full professor of English at Harvard. She is isolated from the patriarchal department yet also angry that other women want her to be a role model. Therefore there is resentment on all sides, so when she is found dead from poison there are plenty of possibilities.

It's a good read. My only quibble is that the characters sound English, using words like "beastly" and "dotty." Who knows, maybe everyone did sound like the law professor in The Paper Chase.

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Conflict and intervention

Hugo Chávez says the Syrian conflict should be resolved peacefully and without foreign intervention. The former is nonsensical--the regime would never allow such a thing to happen--but in combination with the latter I wondered if Chávez would have made this argument for Nicaragua in 1979, for example.

Though he criticizes the U.S. all the time, his criteria for action are essentially identical. You determine your strategic interests and craft arguments accordingly that make no sense when viewed in a comparative context. So the U.S. argues that opening up to China is the way to bring capitalism and democracy, while in Cuba it is the opposite. Chávez does not care about conflict or intervention per se--he just naturally wants his allies to win. He applauded the fall of a tyrant in Egypt and railed against it in Libya.

This realist perspective is understandable, but for Venezuela, as with the U.S., it will erode the credibility of your purist rhetoric. Neither country is really for democracy all the time.

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Crazy threats

If I ever made New Year's resolutions, one would be to stop blogging about crazy commentaries. Or maybe I could try a kind of blogging Lent every once in a while. But sometimes I can't resist. Just read this from José Cárdenas. He criticizes everyone who fails to understand Hugo Chávez's wild desires. Then he outlines a threat that's so bizarre that I don't even need to comment on it:

Anyone who has actually bothered to listen to Mr. Chavez would know he is a devotee of asymmetric warfare as practiced by radical Islam, a doctrine which holds that in the face of overwhelmingly unfavorable military capabilities, one is compelled to employ all manner of irregular methods (i.e., terrorism, guerrilla warfare and insurgency) to balance the odds. In other words, you take advantage of every opportunity to harm your opponent’s interests wherever and whenever you can.

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Brazilian economy

I'm quoted in this story in the Rio Times about the Brazilian economy, with the main question being why is it slowing down, especially when compared to Mexico? This gets at my many posts on Latin American economies, China, and commodities. The more you rely on commodity exports to China, the more you will be hurt when China's appetite decreases.

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Robert Grudin's Book

Robert Grudin's novel Book (1992) is great fun, even more so if you are in academia. What I love about it is that it skewers parts of academia, but the author is an academic, with a wide variety of serious scholarly works to his credit, even some with titles he tends to make fun of in the novel. It takes a special kind of novelist to poke at what he clearly actually likes. This book is damned funny.

A controversial and not particularly well-liked English professor at a mid-sized university has disappeared. His claim to infamy is a novel he wrote that was published by a small press and quickly went out of print. Then it seems that all the copies of that book are disappearing too.

The book even has footnotes and glossaries, ostensibly for the non-academic reader, but hilarious. So, for example, right after "deconstructionist" he lists "defication," which means "deconstructionist term implying a connection between writing fiction and defecating" (p. 62). There is a quote from an article in the International Journal of Failed Results. He has footnotes talk about themselves as footnotes, angry about the message they are footnoting, and calling for more footnotes to join a rebellion. Over and over, Grudin pokes at academic rituals.

There was an unexpected layer of pure and wonderful irony to my reading experience. I had heard about the book and bought it used online. The copy I received had been marked up in places, ponderous and pompous, with references to Nietzsche and copious underlining. At first I found it annoying, but then it somehow became an organic part of the book itself. That anonymous previous reader was taking very seriously a text that was specifically intended to puncture seriousness.

Every profession has its perverse elements: just read a novel about Wall Street, for example. But in academia we tend to revel in it. Arcane jargon, infighting, insecurity about publication, concern about where you are on various totem poles and, yes, copious use of footnotes to denote erudition (not to mention using words like "erudition"). Every so often, it's useful to step back and think about which parts of these rituals are just ridiculous.

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Nicaragua canal

Remember José Santos Zelaya? He wanted a Nicaragua canal over a hundred years ago. Daniel Ortega is trying to revive the dream, though hopefully not the outcome (Santos Zelaya was overthrown by the United States).

A key problem now, as back then, is that Nicaragua is broke so apparently is trying to cobble together a disparate group of interested governments. Very hard to see this going anywhere given the price tag and difficulty of coordination (not just for construction but for control).

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Google Play books

If you are interested in Latin American history and enjoy going down internet rabbit holes, then I recommend playing around with Google Play. There are tons of old, out of copyright books that you can download in seconds.

Just browse Google Books and use advanced search to do older dates and limit the search to free ebooks. I've been checking out Graham H. Stuart's textbook Latin America and the United States, published in 1922.

Books look great on an iPad with Google's Play Books app. On an iPhone, though, they are doable but hard to read.

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Question of the day

How does the border fence actually still stand, given the fact that every inch of it seems to have a tunnel beneath?

Part of the answer, I guess, is that there is a booming business for engineers to make the tunnels structurally sound:

“I would suspect that professional engineers were cooperating with the builders, if not working on site,” said Doug Coleman, special agent in charge of the DEA's Phoenix field office. He said construction might have taken at least a year and cost an estimated $1.5 million to $2 million.

So all you engineering majors, maybe the job market doesn't look so bad after all.

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