The Success of the Left in Latin America: Untainted Parties, Market Reforms, and Voting Behavior

Chapter 1: Latin American Ideological Cycles in the Postwar Era

Chapter 1 Latin American Ideological Cycles in the Postwar Era Disappointment is the universal modern malady. It is also a basic spring of political change. People can never be fulfilled for long either in the public or in the private sphere. We try one, then the other, and frustration compels a change in course. Moreover, however effective a particular course may be in meeting one set of troubles, it generally falters and fails when new troubles arise. And many troubles are inherently insoluble. As political eras, whether dominated by public purpose or by private interest, run their course, they infallibly generate the desire for something different. It always becomes after a while “time for a change.” —Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Cycles of American History T he twenty-first century started with the Left in charge of Latin American politics. Venezuela elected Hugo Chávez president in 1999. In Brazil, the PT came to power in 2002, leading Luís Inácio “Lula” da Silva to the presidency. A left-wing faction of the Peronist Party headed by Néstor Kirchner won the 2003 presidential elections in Argentina. In Uruguay, the Frente Amplio, a coalition party identified with the Left, won the 2004 presidential and congressional elections with a majority vote. Evo Morales also attained the presidency of Bolivia with a majority of the vote in the 2005 elections. In Chile, the Concertación won the 2006 presidential election, bringing 17 Michelle Bachelet, a member of the Socialist Party, to the presidency.1 In Mexico, Manuel López Obrador from the Partido Revolucionario Democr ático (PRD) lost the presidential election held in July 2006 by only 1 percent of the vote. At the end of 2006, Nicaragua returned Daniel Ortega to the presidency; and in Ecuador, Rafael Correa was elected in the second round of the election with the support of leftist political parties and indigenous movements. The most recent members of this team are Guatemala, Paraguay, and El Salvador; all three have governments in which the president was elected with the support of left-wing parties; in El Salvador, the party itself is classified as leftist. This electoral trend in favor of leftist parties can also be seen in Latin Americans’ ideological self-placement. The AmericasBarometer data for 2010 reveal a slight shift to the left within the populace since 2004. The regional average was 6.17 in 2004, 5.77 in 2006, and 5.68 in 2010. However , several scholars have pointed out that this movement has been magni fied because, at least from voters’ perspectives, the region is still slightly to the right on the ideological spectrum (Murillo, Oliveros, and Vaishnav 2011; Seligson 2007). Or as Baker and Greene define it, “Latin American voters’ aggregate preferences have moved toward the left but not to the left” (2011: 50; original emphasis). Although some journalists and political analysts refer to this shift to the Left as something new, this chapter shows that the rise of the Left in Latin America is not a novel phenomenon .There have been other moments in Latin American history when the Left took the lead. Moreover, the factors that once caused the dominance of the Left in the region may be reoccurring to produce the current situation . Rather than experience a new political phenomenon, the region, in this view, is in the leftist phase of an “ideological cycle.” There is a great deal of evidence that ideological swings and ideological cycles occur in American politics (Stimson, MacKuen, and Erikson 1995; Stimson 1999; Erikson, MacKuen, and Stimson 2002). Change is a part of politics, and the alternation of political parties in the government is a desirable feature of democracies. If alternations, swings, and changes of political parties are a part of political life, it might well be the case that these movements reflect changes in the ideological leanings of the voters. Perhaps shifts in “ideology,” understood as self-placement in an ideological spectrum, do not occur, but subtler changes do. For example, 18 The Success of the Left in Latin America Stimson (1999) does not call it “ideology” but rather refers to the “public mood,” which can be briefly described as a set of preferences, and finds that it follows clearly observable cycles in American politics, and these cycles have an impact on the kind of policies that politicians enact. In other words, in the United States...