Argentine Democracy: The Politics of Institutional Weakness

5. Provincial Party Bosses: Keystone of the Argentine Congress

5 Provincial Party Bosses: Keystone of the Argentine Congress Mark P. Jones and Wonjae Hwang INTRODUCTION Between 1989 and 2003, in regard to the major policy issues of the day, legislative politics in Argentina was often very adversarial with a relatively homogenous legislative majority party (which was also the party of the president) employing its majority status to pass legislation that was strongly opposed by an equally homogenous principal minority party. The consequences of this dynamic were numerous legislative victories for the majority party and numerous legislative defeats for the principal minority party (as well as for most other opposition parties). The success of the majority party in the Argentine Congress stems from its functioning as an effective cartel. The origins of these cartels are, however , distinct from those in the U.S. Congress (Cox and McCubbins 1993). In the United States, the members of Congress are the crucial actors who delegate power to the party leadership, while in Argentina provincial-level Research for this project was supported by the National Science Foundation (SBR 9709695), the Centro de Estudios para el Desarrollo Institucional (cedi) de la Fundación Gobierno y Sociedad, and the Political Institutions and Public Choice (pipc) Program at Michigan State University. We thank Gerardo Adrogué, Rubén Bambaci, Paloma Bauer de la Isla, Silvina Danesi, Alberto DiPeco, Marcela Durrieu, Alberto Föhrig, Sebastián Galmarini, Ariel Godoy, Steven Levitsky, Sergio Massa, Victoria Murillo, Baldomero Rodrı́guez, David Rohde, and Rossana Surballe for answering questions and providing helpful assistance, suggestions , and comments. This chapter benefited from the ongoing collaborative study of the Argentine Congress by Jones with Sebastián Saiegh, Pablo Spiller, and Mariano Tommasi. 116 Argentine Democracy party bosses are the key players who engage in this delegation, but the end effect on the functioning of the national legislature is quite similar. The majority party leadership uses its majority status (especially agenda control ) to dominate the legislative process, excluding legislation it believes may pass despite its objection (negative agenda control), as well as implementing legislation it desires (positive agenda control). The opposition, lacking both negative and positive agenda control, is left in a very reactive position. The portrayal of Argentine politics during the 1990s presented in this chapter is at odds with studies that have attempted to explain the recent functioning of the country’s political system by focusing on the ambition, strategies, and behavior of one man: Carlos Saúl Menem (president from 1989 to 1999). Contrary to the underlying argument in these studies, the ability of President Menem to implement many (though not all) of his desired policy reforms in the 1990s was not due primarily to Argentina being a ‘‘delegative democracy,’’ Menem’s status as a ‘‘neopopulist president ,’’ or Menem’s ‘‘abuse’’ of constitutional decree authority. President Menem’s policy success was due much more to his ability to maintain the support of the provincial party bosses, support that was manifested in many respects by their delegation to the party leadership in Congress (and indirectly to President Menem).1 This delegation came at a price, however, and that price was the continued flow of resources to the provinces. To keep the resources flowing, President Menem increasingly was forced to contract debt in the international and, to a lesser extent, domestic capital markets. This growing debt burden was unsustainable and eventually contributed to the country’s economic and political collapse in December 2001. POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS AND PARTY POLITICS IN ARGENTINA This chapter focuses on the years 1989 (July 8) to 2003 (May 24), a period of profound economic and social transformation in Argentina (Corrales 2002; Etchemendy, this volume; Murillo 2001). This section provides a series of general conclusions that can be drawn from the recent literature on the Argentine political system.2 1. President Menem’s frequent use of executive decrees to bypass the Congress (Ferreira Rubio and Goretti 1998) is merely the logical extreme of this delegation of power by the provincial party bosses (via the Congress) to the president. 2. This section draws heavily on De Luca, Jones, and Tula 2002; Jones 2002 and 1997a; Jones and Hwang 2005; and Jones et al. 2002. Provincial Party Bosses 117 The Political Institutions Argentina is a presidential republic. The president is constitutionally quite powerful, possessing both a strong veto and executive decree authority (Magar 2001b; Negretto 2001). Argentina has a bicameral national legislature (Senate and Chamber of Deputies) as well as a...