Roberts 2012

• Introduction
• one the one hand, democratic regimes from the 1980s have proven remarkably durable adn resilient to crises (2)
• On the other hand, party systems have been far less stable
• Paradoxically, democratic consolidation has coincided with a crisis of representation and general disillusionment with the political establishment
• but this crisis affects different countries differently
• Critical junctures:
• neoliberal turn (3)
• reactive sequences against neoliberalism!
• Modes of political representation based in ISI were undermined by its collapse, specficially among the popular classes
• and party systems varied widely in their ability to channel these issues
• Broadly, these critical junctures dealigned parties, made their programmatic promises seem less sincere (especially thanks to bait and switch)
• Argument:
• when a populist/mass-based party undertook economic reform
• it often made the transition more politically viable
• but also dealigned the party from its constituents (4)
• when a right party undertook economic reform
• left party was able to channel dissent through the insittuions
• party alignment was "reinforced"
• in both cases, parties that undertook reforms were vulnerable to leftist challenges
• The Puzzle of Party System Stability in Latin America
• Presidentialized party systems may result in parties with unaccountable elites, ambiguous programmatic stands, but it doesn't help explain the wide variation in strength and durability of party systems (5)
• electoral competition has not stabilized party systems or crystallized partisan identities
• During neoliberal transition programmatic differentiation was tough, since there were such acute constraints on policy options available (7)
• by contrast, the left turn helped realign some of these party systems
• "neoliberal critical junctures and teh reactive sequences they spawned dislodged and reconfigured historic party systems, altering their programmatic alignments in was that heavily conditioned the stability ot partisan competition in the aftermath period" (8)
• Market Liberalization and Part system alignments during neoliberal critical junctures
• Critical junctures are designed to explain why similar types of political or economic challenges produce different, path dependent patterns of institutional change across a range of cases
• suggest neoliberal critical juncture from 1973-1998 (Chavez ended it) (9)
• it altered:
• the character and purpose of state power
• the patterns of association in civil society
• the ways in which societal interests and claims were articulated and represented in the political arena (Collier and Handlin 2009, Yashar 2005)
• Party systems before market adjustment: (10)
• labor mobilizing
• elitist (with clientelistic relations to popular sectors)
• these preconditions weighed heavily on results of critic juncture, but did not define them entirely
• three basic requirements of programmatic structuring of party systems
• parties must adopt relatively coherent stands on salient issues that divide teh body politic (11)
• policies adopted in office must bear resemblance to election platform
• bait and switch severs relationship between electoral verdicts and the content of public policy (12)
• there must be meaningful differences/policy alternatives between the competing parties
• often not true during ISI crisis
• The regionwide transition undermined all three of these basic conditions (13)
• lots of policy switching, left/populist parties went along with reforms, or did bait and switch (13)
• created internal party dissension among leftish parties
• often meant that popular sector connections to parties were severd, replaced with clientelistic relations (14)
• BUT if a conservative party initiated transition, and left remained in opposition, no dealignment
• Three possible outcomes: table on page 16
• parties aligned (contested liberalism), outcome was a durable party system (15)
• Brazil, Chile, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Uruguay
• Mexico, thanks to creation of PRD which replaced PRI as left
• ambiguously Nicaragua (17)
• dealigned (bait and witch), or neutral (no real left to contest) results on part system (neoliberal convergence), outcome was not a durable part system
• dealigned: Argentina, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela
• Neutral: Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay
• contested liberalism allowed for dissent to be challenged through stable forms of electoral competition (17)
• neoliberal convergence resulted in systems susceptible to destabilizing reactive sequences
• 17-25 goes through cases and uses electoral data, etc to prove this story
• 
  

Arnold and Samuels 2011

Jason Ross Arnold and and David J. Samuels 2011, "Evidence from Public Opinion" (31-51)

in  Levitsky, Steven, and Kenneth M. Roberts. 2011. The resurgence of the Latin American left. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

• Based on Latinobarimetro survey
• Big conclusions:
• No mass-level shift to the left of voters in LA (32)
• citizens see current wealth distribution as a problem, but also don't seem to be more unhappy with it than they ever have been before
• unhappy with performance of democracy, but not democracy itself (32-33)
• left vote is strongly correlated with anti-American sentiment (33)
• No region-wide leftward trend (35)
• voters did increasingly identify as left in Chile, El Salvador, Hoduras, Nicaragua, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela
• Even after left came to power, roughly 75% of respondents in the region believe distribution of wealth was unfair (36-37)
• Democracy:
• everyone unhappy with performance of democracy
• though even that score has decreased slightly, it's still high (38)
• mostly people are unhappy with the institutions as they exist (40)
• generally LAs Ok with democracy as a form of government, but this is often based on incumbent performance (43)
• most Latin Americans seem tot define democracy along liberal-type lines, not populist lines (Mexico is a notable exception) (45)
• Conclusion: Left turn is a bit of a misnomer, as because surveys do not show mass ideological shifts to the left among LA voters

Roberts 2009

Kenneth M. Roberts, Chapter 1: Beyond Neoliberalism: Popoular Responses to Social Changes in Latin America ,1-13

Burdick, John, Philip Oxhorn, and Kenneth M. Roberts. 2009. Beyond neoliberalism in Latin America?: societies and politics at the crossroads. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

• new era has seen the "repoliticization" of development (1-2)
• neoliberalism broke collective actors, but as labor unions declined new "popular subjects", like community-based organizations and indigenous movements, rejected com modification of their lives (2)
• this volume looks toward grassroots level to see uneven development, and uneven responses to market and societal change
• development conditions political and social change (see, e.g. neoliberalism and ISI, which both shaped society as well as the economy/development) (4-6)

Stronk 2013

Webber, Jeffery R., and Barry Carr, eds. 2013. The new Latin American left: cracks in the empire.

"Neoliberal Class Formation(s): The Informal Porletariat and "new" Workers' Organizations in Latin America" Susan Spronk 75-94

• Applies EP Thomspons "class struggle without class" ideas
• notes other authors (murillo 2001) saying that unions just tried to surivive, not fight enoliberalism
• But during the neoliberal period the locus of class struggle has moved out of the factory and into the streets/communities (82)
  partially because many people are employed informally/self-employed
• the focus of class strgugle has shifted from demands over wages to demands for basic subsistence
• piqueteros born of those who weren't represented by traditional unions
• at first hey were very radical, non-hierarchical, etc. etc.
• but then they were coopted by employment plans from Kirchner (except for more radical splinter) (83-84)
• Oscar Olivera and gas war people: start with everyday struggle, get imporved conditions, and then work towards socialism (85)
• but actual gains in both cases have been minimal
• CRITIQUE OF BOTH these organizations arises from an argument about "treating the symptoms versus treating the cause"
• (86-88) plant takeovers in Argentina and Venezuela face issues with government and with (previous) business owners
• but even outside of these issues, cooperativism doesn't undo the bad social relations, it just makes the workers their own bosses
• 
  

Webber and Carr 2013

Webber, Jeffery R., and Barry Carr, eds. 2013. The new Latin American left: cracks in the empire.

Introduction: the Latin American Left in Theory and Practice, Jeffrey R. Webber and Barry Carr 1-30

• Social contradictions of the neoliberal model generated a series of crises in the closing years of the 1990s and the opening moments of the current decade (3)
• Authors situate contemporary Latin American Left on continuum of "radical Left" to "izquierda permitida" (5)
• izquierda permitida signals deep continuities with neoliberal capitalism and adapts easily to US impoerial strategies.  In its regime form, it seeks to divide and coopt radical left social movements and parties"
• the radical left sees liberal capitalist democracy as a limited expression of popular sovereignty and seeks instead to democratic rule through all political, social, economic, and private spheres of life" (6)
• admittedly draws on Castaneda for this idea, but repurposes "bad" left as "really really awesomely radical" Left (my words)
• neostructuralism idea:  that commodities aren't what will compete on teh world market, but whole social systems (7)
• rejects market as god of all
• but admits an international market, suggests that the national institutions can be shaped (by heavy hand of government, if so desired) to make the nation as a whole produce things competitively
• somewhere between pure world market and pure national protection
• this is the izquierda permitida
• focus on redistributing wealth, not on undoing the market which causes inequality in the first place (8)

Hochstetler, Smith, Silva 2013

Silva, Eduardo, ed. 2013. Transnational activism and national movements in Latin America: bridging the divide.

"The Road Traveled" Kathryn Hochstetler, William C. Smith, and Eduardo Silva (Conclusion to edited volume)

Concluding remarks for the book, most of which connect different chapters

• ALternations to political opportunity structure ideas (Sikkink)
• must also include "levels of threat" as a factor
• when/if a threat disappears, a transnational network can fold (see FTAA fight for examples)
• also, even when both domestic and international arenas seem "closed", activists can/will still attempt to change things (not be discouraged, as Sikkink suggests)
• also whether "opportunities" can even bee objectively defined in the moment is challenged, undermining Sikkink's framework as a way to do anything but analyze post facto
• questions also about the ability to clearly distinguish between international and national levels...fights can be simultaneously about both
• Also, activists themselves can be brokers between national/international level, which can be problematic...if the activist/broker leaves the fight, the network may crumble
• Effects of the Left Turn
• easy to assume left would be good, but not always the case
• The impact of shifts in domestic opportunity structures hinge on the interaction of three factors (191):
• evolution of specific threats and international opportunities
• the perceptions of movement leaders
• and the relationship of activists to institutionalized politics
• if the Left helps us nationally, will activists abandon transnational moves?
• 
  

Levitsky and Murillo 2005b

"Building Castles in the Sand? The Politics of Institutional Weakness in Argentina" Levitsky and Murillo, 21-44

in Levitsky, Steven, and Maria Victoria Murillo. 2005. Argentine democracy: the politics of institutional weakness. University Park, Pa: Pennsylvania State University Press.

•  Central argument OF THE BOOK: the major cause of Argentina's under-performance was persistent and widespread institutional instability (21)
• The Origins of Institutional Instability
• between 1955 and 1972 Argentina politics were deadlocked (24)
• one the one hand, allowing Peronist party to compete in elections woul certainly result in Personit victory, which was unacceptable to many elites
• yet, on the other hand, keeping the Peronists out of elections was a major destabilizing influence
• eventually military leadership had to allow Peron back into power (25), then another military regime
• The brutality and dramatic failure of the military regime discredited the military in the eyes of the public (26)
• gave rise to broad public support for liberal democracy (Catterberg 1990
• and gave rise to a powerful human rights movement
• change in office between Alfonsín and Menem was first time democratic change of hands, but even then Alfonsín resigned early because of economic crisis, and there was a lot of institutional fluidity
• Argentina under Menem
• Menem abandoned traditional Peronism, set off on neoliberalism (27)
• among the fully democratic countries, Argentina carried out the most rapid and far-reaching reforms
• among the countries with the deepest crisis and radical reform, Argentina was the most democratic
• BUT many of the policy arrangements made by Menem proved to be economically unsustainable
• AND Menem did little to strengthen political institutions, and in same cases he weakened them
• The Politics of Radical Economic Reform: Why Menem was successful
• Menem's ability to end hyperinflation increased public support for him/his policies (28)
• The strength of the PJ helped Menem keep a solid electoral base
• the PJ's hegemony in the popular sectors limited possibility of anti-reofrm appeals (29)
• PJ's close ties to organized labor gave union leaders a stake in limiting opposition from working class
• Menem gave side payments and policy concessions to losers (30)
• unions protected pro-labor law
• industrialists were giving help in competing for privatization contracts
• governors wooed by putting off provincial budgetary adjustments
• Encroachment on legistlative and judicial perogatives
• lots of executive decrees
• court-packing and impeachments
• PROBLEMATIC LEGACIES (31)
• convertability left governmetn without tools to rspond to economic shocks or erosion of competitiveness
• public debt grew a lot
• reforms generated large-scale social exclusion (and middle class shrunk
• Democratic Institutions under Menem
• Menem frequently circumvented legistlaive process using decrees (32-33)
• M allowed little judicial independence (33)
• executive accountability decreased, allowing corruption to increase
• widespread perception of corruption and abuse eroded the credibility of Argentina's representative institutions (35)
• Party system and Political representation in the 1990s
• Alianza able to win on anti-corruption ticket (37)
• mostly because middle and upper-middle classed had little faith in credibility of government
• The Post-Menem Era
• Alianza failed to clean up politics (37)
• actually got caught up in its own curruption scandal, which it didn't handle very well (37-38)
• Alianza did poorly in economic arena
• inherited a recession *38)
• convertibility left them without policy tools, and convertibility was too popular to be touched
• in 1999 legislative vote 22% cast spoiled/blank votes
• three Presidents in 2 weeks
• third was Duhalde, who ended convertibility (39)
• economic plunged into chaos
• poliitcal system and parties pushed into crisis as well
• FREPASO and UCR disintegrated (40)
• 2003 elections:
• military made no move to intervene
• despite anger, no anti-establishment outsider received more than 2% of the vote (41)
• PJ finished 1-2-3 in presidential vote, all other partis wiped out
• PJ proved remarkably resilient
• Kirchner 1
• concentrated power in the executive (43)
• but his initiatives were more transparent and oriented toward institutional integrity
• rst of the story yet to be seen (chapter form 2005)....

Wibbels and Roberts 2010

Wibbels, Erik, and Kenneth Roberts. 2010. "The Politics of Economic Crisis in Latin America". Studies in Comparative International Development. 45 (4): 383-409.

• Introduction
• Most quantitative models show that strong unions and powerful left parties are associated with severe economic crises (383)
• BUT some evidence that the combination of left parties and strong unions can actually alleviate inflationary crises
• crisis differ in depth, duration, and frequency (384)
• but crises also need to be analytically separated from neoliberal economic reforms (previous scholarship tends to conflate these things)
• authors examine three types of crises (385)
• inflationary
• growth
• fiscal
• Political conditions tested:
• are new democracies more vulnerable to crises?
• what effects do sub-regime variables have, including executive powers, party systems, and electoral competition?
• how organized/powerful is labor and the left?
• Early reporting of results:
• different types of crises are independent and have distinct political correlates
• neither powerful executives nor high levels of democracy are correlated with crisis events or duration
• strength of electoral left and labor are correlated to more frequent crises...
• BUT left in power + strong unions can facilitate early exits from crises
• Methodological considerations
• drawbacks to current literature
• economic crises are often conflated with economic performance (386)
• crises differ in depth and duration
• any attempt to relate crises to political factors needs to include factors that explain variation in severity and duration
• Crises vary in type
• are some type of governments more prone to certain types of crises?
• finally, really need to disentangle crises from neoliberal turn (387)
• explanation of their variables (387-388)
• The Political Determinants of Economic Crisis
• most of these hypotheses built off existing literature
• regime level of analysis:
• literature supports two hypotheses regard new democracies, combined to form this one hypothesis: (388-389)
• H1: Economic crises will be more severe and prolonged in new democracies (389)
• sub-regime level
• party system fragmentation is an impediment to economic efficiency (Haggard and Kaufman 1995; Mainwaring 1999) -- mans executive can easily get legislative majority and push reforms/policies
• BUT also: fragmented party systems could make it less likely the executive will have legislative majority, and just add more veto players (Tsebelis 1995) -- meaning parties will have short-time horizons and not want to enact unfavorable policies
• but more veot players may result in gridlock, a sort of backdoor to stability, which will improve investors' outlook
• H2: the severity and duration of crises will have a U-shaped relationship with the number of effective political parties (390)
• close electoral compeititon could result in both parties uniting behind reforms, realizing that their future ability to govern may be constrained iuf current crisis isn't dealt with
• H3: economic crises will be more severe and prolonged in less competitive electoral environments
• presidents with a ton of power can push reforms
• H3: economic crises will be longer and more severe when the chief executive is weaker (391)
• Labor and the Left (392)
• H5a: economic crises will be longer and more severe when labor mobilizing or populist parties are strong
• H5b: economic crises will be longer and more severe when organized labor movements are strong
• H5c: economic crises will be longer and more severe when combined strength of left and labor is high
• Finally, politics should have the greatest impact on financial crises, less impact on inflationary crises, and the least impact on growth crises (393)
• Research Design
• crises are measured as deviations from the regional mean performance for the entire period under study (394)
• 13% of country-years experienced GDP crises
• 11% of country-years experienced inflationary crises
• 11% of country-years experienced fiscal crises
• the correlations between these crises are quite low
• countries predisposed to one type of crisis are not necessarily predisposed to another (395)
• on average, GDP crises (1.5 years) are shorter than fiscal crises (3.4 year) which are shorter than inflationary crises (5 years)
• also, depth and duration are distinct
• Results and Discussion
• "politics play a much stronger role in producing crises than they do in year-to-year performance" (397)
• more significant effect on the probability of inflationary and fiscal crises than growth crises
• Strongest indicators: labor and the Left
• strong left significantly increases probability of inflationary crises (397)
• strong unions significantly increases probability of inflationary crises , even more than left parties(398)
• BUT!!!!  electoral strength of the left increases probability of inflationary crises ONLY WHEN UNIONS ARE WEAK (398-399)
• strong left and labor unions allows governments to negotiate pacts between labor and capital on wages, investment, and employments that can temper redistributive demands (399)
• Other important indicators
• new regimes are more likely to have inflationary and/or fiscal crises (400)
• political competition was not significant
• increasing the power to the chief executive increases the probability of a fiscal crisis (emphasis in original)
• party system fragmentation is weird...has an inverted u-shaped relationship with inflationary and fiscal crises (401)
• could be that fragemented party systems block adjustment, but do block risky policies that could result in crisis
• My take: that sounds unlikely...fitting the theory to the data, not finding an explanation
• global economic conditions are not associated with inflation or fiscal crises
• Outside of the variables on the left and labor unions, no other variable is consistent across all the models (401)
• Duration of crisis
• political variables provide less insight into this (402)
• left will increase inflationary crisis length when labor is weak (402-403)
• left + labor = shorter inflationary crises (by about 3 months) (403)
• crises are shorter as party system fractionalization increases (404) -- ?????
• Conclusions
• the most important factor seems to be the nature of party-society linkages (405)
• countries with conservative parties and weak labor unions were less susceptible to crises in general

Ellner 2004

Ellner, Steve. 2004. "Leftist Goals and the Debate over Anti-Neoliberal Strategy in Latin America". Science &Amp; Society. 68 (1): 10-32.

• Introduction
• neoliberalism in 1990s led to economic stagnation and increase in executive power, not growth and democracy (10-11)
• compares three views of the Left (11)
• Center-left proposed by Jorge Castaneda
• Left that just focuses on anti-neoliberal strategy (Maria Harnecker)
• Left that is anti-neoliberal AS WELL AS anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism, James Petras
• Underlying debate stems from the fact that the anti-neoliberal strategy hasn't been well-articulated
• Center-Left strategy
• achieve social justice and nationalistic goals (12)
• but avoid far reaching reforms
• GOAL: Left will woo centrist voters away from the right
• a sort of neo-Asian tiger model (13)
• regimes that tried this (15)
• Concertación in Chile
• Caldera, Venezuela, 1993
• de la Rua, Argentina, 1999
• Fox, Mexico, 2000
• Results:
• Fox offered PRD a few cabinet positions, which they refused to take
• a bit of a caricature of this idea (16)
• Argentina and Chile won election, but did not push anti-neoliberal strategy, which made Left parties in these alliances lose legitimacy/credibility (16-18)
• left ends up taking a back seat to the center in essentially all of these cases (18)
•  these alliances help solidify democratic transitions (19)
• but they also spurred voter apathy
• to really work, anti-neoliberalism needs to be a harder line for Left parties (21)
• Anti-neoliberalism and anti-imperialism
• Harnecker proposes adopting neoliberal bylines such as efficiency in government, but gaining this by retraining workers (22)
• also, Left can seek alliances with non-left
• Petras: Left should join radical social movements (22)
• thinks there is continued relevance to anti-imperialism argument, doesn't see mutual benefit in globalization (23)
• According to Petras, Lula's alliances with national bourgeoisie is an abandonment of his progressive goals (25)
• Harnecker thinks Lula has made some of the most important anti-neoliberal moves
• neither author is sure of what Chávez is doing/wants to do (26)
• but Petras is willing ot look past his populism to highlight his anti-neoliberal and anti-imperialist ideas (27)
• Conclusion
• Castaneda's ideas focus on globalization, moderation based on inescapable fact of globalization (28)
• Harnecker sees left on defensive since their is not international socialist bloc anymore
• her idea: left can gain power, then slowly make changes on international scale
• focus just on anti-neoliberalism for the time being
• Petras wants it all, ideological purity of sorts, if you are going to be Left, be LEFT! (29)
• events have shown center-left hasn't been an effective strategy so far
• but Petra's approach seems a bit too radical, as seen because both Lula and Chavez had some alliances with middle class, at least to get to power (30)

Muirillo, Oliveros, and Vaishnav 2010

Murillo, Maria Victoria, Virginia Oliveros, and Milan Vaishnav. 2010. "Electoral Revolution or Democratic Alternation?" Latin American Research Review. 45 (3): 87-114. 

• Introduction
• Argument: Left wave is actually just the normalization of democratic politics (87)
• electoral accountability is still the primary mechanism of controlling the executive in the region's democracies (88)
• democratic elections have allowed voters to punish bad performers
• thus the rise of the Left is a result of retrospective voting
• they use Levitsky and Roberts' definition of the left, which is based on overarching redistributive goals irrespective of the strategies pursued to achieve those goals (89)
• Arnold and Samuels (2011...in Levitsky and Roberts) note that the Left turn has not been accompanied by citizens' self-placement on ideological scales (though some authors disagree...)
• other surveys agree, as does authors data, which shows leftward shift in votes, but not a giant shift (89-90)
• thus the authors test to see if voting is related to right-leaning candidates poor performance in the economic arena during the 1990s (90)
• Explaining the rise of the Left
• their take is that the sudden "backlash" and rise of the Left is actually due to the institutionalization of democracy and electoral accountability, not a radical swing to the Left (93)
• My take: so it's not a Marxist revolution, but why does that mean it's not a backlash? or even a radical backlash?!
• Democracy
• Hypothesis 1: failure of prior economic policies and poor economic growth will increase the share of Left voting ONLY WHEN there is a right wing candidate to blame (94)
• dependent on the extent of democratic experience in each country (95)
• Socioeconomic factors
• Inequality hypotheses (2 and 3)
• greater inequality = more left votes (95), OR
• U shaped curve (Debs and Helmke 2008):  same as above, but at some high point of inequality rich people start bribing poor to maintain current inequality (95-96)
• Left as a refuge from the economic insecurity of being in the global market, hypothesis 4 (96)
• Crisis of Political representation
• left-wing outsiders will benefit when crisis of representation comes under right wing leader (97)
• Empirical Model (97-100) 
•  Results
• high inflation under right-wing leader greatly increases likelihood of left-win (100)
• but reaction AGAINST left-wing governments in same situation is slightly stronger (101)
• but right wing governments are not necessarily rewarded for achieving growth (100-101)
• no support for income inequality arguments (101)
• no support for left-votes because of representation crisis under right government (103)
• weak/inconsistent support for globalization argument
• Conclusion
• inflation may be more visible than growth to everyday people, meaning voters may decide their vote on the former but not on the latter (106)
• strong effect of inflation and non-result by other hypotheses shows electoral accountability on economic issues is mostly at work in rise of Left

Luna 2010

"The left turns : why they happened and how they compare", Juan Pablo Luna 2010 

in Cameron, Maxwell A, and Eric Hershberg. 2010. Latin America's Left Turns: Politics, Policies, and Trajectories of Change. Boulder [Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers.

“Available narratives fail to identify and explain the important political and policy divergences that occur within each type, not distinguishing between cases pertaining to different leftist types and to crucial intragroup divergences.” (25)

To understand what (left) governments do while in office, need to consider partisan constraints and nonpartisan ones

in terms of partisan constraints:  Interest group fragmentation in LA means that parties need to cobble together heterogeneous coalitions to win elections.  This, in turn, means that once a governing left party is in office, it  faces stark distributive conflicts and usually competing interests from base.

Finally, there are exogenous constraints, particular to each country’s long-term development

Chile

• Little relationship between organized labor and Concertacion, creating few endogenous constraints.
• most Chileans seem alienated from politics, don’t identify with any party
• likely that voters switched from conservative vote in 2001 to Socialist in 2005 because both candidacies represented a “renovating swing”
• thus LOWER constraints for Concertacion
• progressive policy change will demand top-down leadership (Lagos or Bachelet will have to want to do it!)
• Moreover, ISI totally demolished, so there are no rents to be taken away
• Social groups marginalized, have become alienated from social mobilization in favor of individual market consumption and targeted poverty relief measures
• Concertacion will have to take the lead on creating a social democratic state
• however, business sectors still have lots of clout, can block lots of things

Uruguay

• party with ‘mass appeal’
• originally allied with organized labor, solidified their link in 1990s
• in 2000s got more support from the poor, who were usually coopted by mainstream parties
• 55% align themselves with party, 65% are ‘sympathizers’
• Overall structure of the party (good regional bases, alliances with interest groups, consolidated leadership, programmatic appeal) translates into higher levels of endogenous constraints
• Vazquez filled cabinet with FA people to keep fighting “inhouse”
• labor has mobilized against FA to get what it wants
• ISI only partially dismantled, so there are three Uruguays
• upper class who are market-oriented, trade with the world
• a group of legacy corporatists who rely on rents
• socially marginalized group who can’t compete on the market, but also don’t have access to rents in corp. system
• second is FA’s traditional base, third becoming more important to them
• CONCLUSION:
• should pay attention to partisan and nonpartisan constraints, shape ability of governments to make changes

Flores Macias 2012

Flores-Macias, Gustavo. 2012. After Neoliberalism?: The Left and Economic Reforms in Latin America. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

• Introduction
• Two findings
• left tide in Latina America does not have one unified economic policy (duh)
• some accept the market more, some are more statist (4)
• key factor in governments' ability to undertake drastic economic policy shifts depends on degree of party-system institutionalization
• stronger institutions, less radical shift possible (5)
• two types of party systems (low institutionalized and high) based on two factors
• type of candidate likely to reach power
• parties ability to influence executive's policies
• Chapter 2:
• five areas to show change in economic policy
• privatizations/nationalizations (26-27)
• if privatizations continued = promarket, interrupted=neutal, natioanlizatoins =statist
• government spending (27-28)
• deficit/surplus divided by GDP, compared to previous administration
•  statist if this ratio decreased in percentage points, promarket if increased
• Tax Reform (28-29)
• more taxes = statist
• poverty alleviation (29-30)
• means-tested programs are pro-market, non-means tested is statist, and continuing/slightly changing programs of previous administration is neutral
• table 2.1 (32)

Country/ Administration (book in 2012)	Privatization/ Nationalization	Taxation	Govt Spending	Trade/ Financial/ Monetary Liberalization	Poverty Alleviation	Overall Score
Venezuela Chavez (1999-)	Statist (-1)	Statist (-1)	Statist (-1)	Statist (-1)	Statist (-1)	-5
Ecuador Correa (2007-)	Statist (-1)	Statist (-1)	Statist (-1)	Statist (-1)	Neutral (0)	-4
Bolivia Morales (2006-)	Statist (-1)	Statist (-1)	Pro-market (+1)	Statist (-1)	Statist (-1)	-3
Argentina N Kirchner (2003-07)	Statist (-1)	Neutral (0)	Pro-market (+1)	Statist (-1)	Neutral (0)	-1
Nicaragua Ortega (2007-)	Neutral (0)	Statist (-1)	Pro-market (+1)	Pro-market (+1)	Neutral (0)	+1
Brazil Lula (2002-10)	Neutral (0)	Neutral (0)	Pro-market (+1)	Neutral (0)	Neutral (0)	+1
Uruguay Vazquez (2005-10)	Neutral (0)	Neutral (0)	Neutral (0)	Pro-market (+1)	Pro-market (+1)	+2
Chile Lagos (2000-06)	Pro-market (+1)	Neutral (0)	Pro-market (+1)	Pro-market (+1)	Neutral (0)	+3
Mexico Fox (2000-06)	Pro-market (+1)	Neutral (0)	Pro-market (+1)	Pro-market (+1)	Neutral (0)	+3
Colombia Uribe (2002-10)	Pro-market (+1)	Pro-market (+1)	Pro-market (+1)	Pro-market (+1)	Neutral (0)	+4

 

• Left governments varied in their economic policy, from very statist to very pro-market (56-57)
• Importantly, ALL the cases remained within the borders of the market economy...the variation was in the amount of state interaction. No country went to full-on socialism/planned economy (57-58)
• Chapter 3
• While other explanations are helpful (natural resources, prevailing economic conditions, depth of market reforms, interests groups, and executive power) (61)...
• Argument: Level of party system institutionalization is most explanatory across all cases
• derives from Flores-Macías (2010)
• institutionalization defines how likely anti-system candidate is to be elected and consensual/contentious politics
• paraphrasing 2010 article: high inst = less radical change, consensual = policy moderation (62-63)
• level institutionalization is agnostic..."radical" policy changes can go in teh statist or pro-market direction (66-67)
• e.g when neoliberal transformation happened, countries with the greatest institutionalization of party systems saw the least radical change (67)--authoritarian regimes are a little different story
• Other authors suggest that polarization and fragmentation of political paries can make a political system intractable, nothing can get done (71)
• but author argues that these ideas must be based on relative institutionalization of the party sytem (72)
• fragmentation and polarization only limit president when that fragmentation results in multiple veto points (72)
• if these parties do not play a consequential role in national politics, then polar/fragmentation will not stop radical change in policy
• (73) most fragmented party systems are Brazil (moderate reform), Colombia (no reform), and Ecuador and Venezuela (radical reform)
• pages 75-90 go through other authors' explanations
• while other explanations can be helpful in comparing single cases, across the whole set of cases in this book, party system institutionalization has the greatest cross-case explanatory leverage (92)
• Chapter 4: Venezuela
• argument: the political system deteriorated starting in the 1980s, and that led to strengthened anti-system candidates and weakened opposition to these candidates and Chávez's subsequent power
• Chávez certainly weakened it further
• AD's Pérez went bait and switch for neoliberalism, unions and parties in Congress stopped neoliberal turn under Pérez, economy eventually got worse, everyone lost faith in traditional parties
•  Brazil
• argument: Brazio's gradual institutionalization of the party system led to PT becoming less radical, thus Lula being less lefty in office
• evidence: no anti-system candidates, though some personalistic candidates have been able to switch parties and still win
• moderating of PT came as Lula lost on more radical platforms/demands
• also, moderate petistas who won office early on could funnel resources to other moderate buddies
• and importance/need of legislative coalitions moderated PT
• the way Congress is in Brazil a party needs at least one ally to get through legislation, so radical reforms could not be done
• Chile
• Chile has a highly institutionalized party system, which plays major moderating effects
• creates incentives for moderate candidates to become president
• incentives to reach compromise and build consensus in the legislature
• Conclusion
• some specific causes are helpful in individual case, but party-system institutionalization has a better, broader cross-case record of prediction
• leftist government have 'expanded the realm of what is economically feasible within a framework of general market orthodoxy' (186)
• type of party system (stable/unstable) is becoming an important predictor of economic instability (instability breeds instability)
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Baker and Greene 2011

Baker, Andy, and Kenneth G. Green. 2011. “The Latin American Left’s Mandate: Free-Market Policies and Issue Voting in New Democracies". World Politics. 63 (1): 43-77.

• Introduction
• Left Turn has been described as both a repudiation of economic POLICY, and a repudiation with economic PERFORMANCE (43)
• but if the Left came to power because of economic instability unhappiness between 1998 and 2002, then Left ha been given a PERFORMANCE mandate, not a programmatic mandate (44)
• left has only a moderate policy mandate
• Argument:
• the Left rose thanks to declining enthusiasm for market reforms, NOT by negative evaluations of previous government’s economic performance
• BUT voters policy opinions haven’t shifted radically, either
• There is now a preference for centrism:  people life free trade, but don’t like privatizations, for example
• Authors suggest there is a correspondence between public opinion (in favor of moderation) and many Left governments’ more moderate economic policies (45)
• this is a more optimistic picture, as voters are shown to be able to influence government policy
• How Sharp a Left Turn?
• Authors use a measure call “vote-revealed leftism” (VRL) which allows them to distinguish between leftist parties of different bents.  For example, Chavez’s radical party is scored as farther left than the Brazilian PT (47)
• Uses elections between 1995 and 2008 (48)
• Obviously see that voting for left has increased, not simply because of some alchemy of coalitions, etc (48)
• BUT the change in VRL is moderate, meaning the average Latin American voter moved from preferring a center-right candidate to preferring a center candidate (50)
• the left’s growing proportion of votes came at the expense of center and center-right voters, not from the right
• ALSO: the Left turn in Latin America has ONLY been a phenomenon of the PRESIDENTIAL races, not of the legislatures
• Why Has the Left Turn Occurred?
• Two scholarly trends:
• Radical policy mandate:  repudiation of market reforms (51) (Hunter 2007, Cleary 2006)
• Performance mandate:  simply democratic alternation (51) (Bruhn 2006; Haber 2005; Murillo, Oliveros, and Vaishnav 2010; Levitsky and Roberts 2011)
• But radical policy mandate problem: new leaders didn’t abandon entirely old Washington Consensus (51-52)
• ALSO: Left wave gathered force while economies were RECOVERING, not sinking, so performance mandate argument weakened as well (52)
• This article:
• Left has moderate policy mandate (52)
• citizens are moderate about views on Washington Consensus
• “Voter enthusiasm for market reforms declined moderately beginning in the late 19902 as utility prices increased (ME: due to privatizations) and the gains to consumers from trade liberalization (ME: lower prices, more goods) remained static, having accrued during the reform-initiation phase but fading from memory by the late 1990s.” (54)
• Research in public opinion finds the causal link between macroeconomic trends and support for market reforms to be modest at best (Baker 2009: Graham and Sukhtankar 2004) (54)
• Defining and Detecting Mandates
• In the 1990s voters elected statist candidates who subsequently initiated market reforms, so we cannot assume there will be policy agreement between electorates and winning candidates (55)
• The comparison focuses on aggregate-level attitudes and election outcomes across countries and over time (57)
• they test whether changes in public opinion over time leads to corresponding shifts in the ideological profile of voting behavior (56)
• If the policy mandate argument holds, then leftist candidates should be more successful and the polls in countries and in election years when market-oriented economic policies are less popular (57)
• If the performance mandate argument holds, then leftist challengers to non-leftist incumbents should be more successful in countries and election years with worse economic growth
• Measuring Mandates
• Policy mandate tests: (58)
• impact of economic policy preferences
• impact of mandate re: relations with USA
• Performance mandate tests (59)
• evaluations of general and personal economic situation
• crime (especially since right parties are usually “law and order” parties)
• perceptions of corruption
• support for mass democracy (e.g. when right candidates ruled during time of masses frustrated with current democratic process)
• a lot of these interact (60)
• test other scholars’ explanations as well:
• left should win where there has been a lot of market-driven volatility
• size of state spending (as percent of GDP)
• income inequality
• have right/other non-left parties disintegrated? i.e. no other functioning party to vote for (61)
• as democracy becomes more consolidated, people more willing to express their “true” feelings
• Determining the Latin American Left’s Mandate
• They collective electoral preferences of Latin Americans have moved left since 1995 (62)
• there is at least a strong temporal coincidence between declining enthusiasm for the market and increasing propensity to vote for the Left
• voters moved to the left after the economy started rebounding, so economic performance mandate takes a hit (62), voters likely did not vote left simply to punish poorly performing right incumbents
• many of the policy mandate variables were significant (64), including anti-Americanism
• none of the performance mandate variables were significant
• none of the “other explanations” variables were significant (68)
• The results thus far do not have any explanatory power, cannot tell why left rose in each country (69)
• When one takes Venezuela out, variation in mass support for the market explains a lot of the shift toward the Left (69, 72)
• ALSO, authors suggest: legislatures haven’t moved left because they have less to do with economic policymaking (ME: Do voters really make this distinction?!) (72)
•