Politicians and Politics in Latin America (review)

This volume is a collection of articles on political elites in contemporary Latin America (specifically, members of Congress) authored by a team of scholars at Spain's University of Salamanca. Their findings derive from a massive survey of Latin American congressmen conducted in three rounds between 1994 and 2006. The data analysis itself is limited to the second and third rounds because the first, exploratory, survey covered too few countries. In all, the survey covered 17 nations (excluding Brazil and Cuba), with some 1,000 interviews per round. By the last round, the Salamanca team managed to interview at least 57 percent of the congressmen in all but two countries (over 85 percent in some), guaranteeing a representative sample.

The book makes several important contributions. Not long ago, the study of Latin American politics focused on impersonal socioeconomic or historical forces such as imperialism, dependency, or economic modernization. More recently, political scientists have turned their attention to parties and other political institutions. By contrast, this research focuses on the attitudes of political elites. Responding to the institutionalists' battle cry that "institutions matter," Alcántara Sáez notes that "politicians matter" as well. As Congress's policy-making role has grown during Latin America's extended period of democracy, a number of valuable works on national legislatures have emerged, such as Morgenstern and Nacif's Legislative Politics in Latin America. But this book likely constitutes the most comprehensive examination to date on Latin American congressional attitudes.

The research is deeply grounded in mainstream political science, drawing heavily on studies of the U.S. Congress and American state legislatures, as well as comparative work on other democratic legislatures. Political scientists will be pleased by its rigorous quantitative analysis. But unfortunately, its extensive methodological discussions and use of sophisticated statistical techniques may repel nonacademic readers as well as academics in non-quantitative disciplines. Still, the findings—clearly presented without disciplinary jargon—shed light on a number of important regional issues and permit interesting comparisons between individual Latin American nations.

Some of the project's findings are comforting to democrats, while others are not. Congressional delegates in every country overwhelmingly claimed to prefer democracy over authoritarianism. Yet, a disturbing number admitted favoring the latter (10 percent or more in Chile, Guatemala, and Nicaragua on the second round; and 9 percent or more in Chile and El Salvador on the third) (p. 66). Politicians generally defined democracy in procedural terms and ranked "protection of individual rights and liberties" as the "main advantage of democracy" (p. 74). But in spite of the significant constitutional, institutional, and legal challenges that the region still faces in order to further consolidate democracy, the respondents generally considered the political problems facing their own country relatively unimportant. Indeed, although most congressional delegations rated economic challenges to be of "very high" or "high" importance, in not a single country did legislators rank political or social problems at those levels. Indeed, the Peruvians stood alone in viewing their social problems as even of "medium importance" (p. 90).

Furthermore, congressional perceptions often failed to match objective conditions in individual countries. For example, despite their nation's considerable political difficulties, Colombian, Paraguayan, and Venezuelan legislators all assigned political problems "very little importance." Similarly, notwithstanding their country's considerable racial tensions, class conflict, corruption, and violent crime, Guatemalan congressmen attached "low" or "very low" importance to the political, social, and economic problems facing their country. Conversely, Chilean congressmen, representing one of Latin America's most consolidated democracies and strongest economies, were more troubled by problems in all three areas (political, social, and economic) than their Guatemalan counterparts were. Similarly throughout Latin America, legislators' perceptions often were not congruent with public opinion. While citizens frequently have listed corruption as one of their country's major problems, few congressmen, predictably, assigned it much importance.