Since the mid-1990s, a quarter of the established political parties in Latin America have broken down. From one election to the next, they became irrelevant. In their wake, these dramatic and sudden breakdowns left a gaping hole in democratic representation. Party systems fragmented, making it difficult to forge lasting coalitions. New parties emerged as instant electoral vehicles for prominent personalities. Party breakdowns paved the way for unknown outsiders and anti-democratic candidates to attract votes and capture executive office.

The conventional wisdom among observers of Latin American politics has attributed party breakdowns to bad incumbent performance. But this explanation overpredicts breakdown. Other explanations focus on institutional or social changes. Although these changes posed new challenges for established parties, they cannot explain why some parties within a system broke down whereas others survive.

Prior studies focused either on specific cases of party breakdown in Latin America or on whole party systems that collapsed. Instead, this book is the first to explain why individual parties collapsed across a range of contexts. In Latin America in the 1980s and 1990s, political and economic crises divided the interests of party leaders and subleaders. In normal times, their interests are unlikely to clash. But in times of crisis, party leaders found they could gain short-term electoral benefit from charting a course that reversed party traditions and blurred their differences with their competitors. These reversals diluted their parties’ brands.

When party brands blur and when the differences between party alternatives become meaningless, even those party identities that once seemed unbending will wither. When diluted party brands are combined with poor performance, incumbent established parties break down.

Formal model of partisanship and vote choice

Consider a multiparty democracy with M parties. Voters develop a perception of a party's brand over time on the basis of observations of party behavior. This brand is the perceived position of the party on the real line. For a voter who observes n actions by a party, denote her jth observation by yj, where j ∈ {1,...,n}. Voters observe some subset of the actions taken by parties in each electoral cycle – with some voters of course drawing more observations from this distribution than others – and use these observations to update their beliefs about party brands. I assume that each observation yj is a random draw from a distribution of observable party actions with unknown mean μ and unknown variance σ2. For simplicity, I assume a normal distribution of party actions, meaning that yj∼iid N(μ, σ2) for all j. Denote the sample mean of yj by ȳ.

During any particular electoral cycle, let k○ denote the number of observations on which a voter's prior beliefs about the party are based, such that at the end of each electoral cycle kn = k○ + n. Similarly, let v○ denote the degrees of freedom in the uncertainty of the voter's prior beliefs, such that vn = v○ + n.

For convenience, I assume that an individual's prior belief about the mean and variance of a party's position is represented by the normal-inverse-chisquared distribution, such that the posterior and prior distributions are drawn from the same family of distributions. As a result, prior beliefs about μ and σ2 are given by μ, σ2|y ∼ N − χ2(μn, kn, vn, σ2n), where k○, v○, σ2○ > ○. Decomposing the joint distribution of μ and σ2 into p(μ, σ2) = p(μ|σ2)p(σ2), we find that the true distribution of party actions given its variance (μ|σ2) is normally distributed with mean μ○ and variance. Here represents the voter's best guess about the position of the party at time ○ – that is, her prior – and represents the amount of uncertainty about that best guess. That uncertainty is based on the actual variance in the distribution of party actions (σ2) and the number of observations on which a voter's prior beliefs are based (k○).

Political exclusion has been pervasive in Latin America. Portraits of fair-skinned men cover the walls of government buildings. Women, Afrodescendants, and indigenous peoples are scarcely seen in these portraits and barely present in the diplomatic corps, heads of government agencies, and, until recently, in national legislative chambers. Beginning in the last decade of the twentieth century, governments in more than a dozen countries modified political institutions to promote greater inclusion of members of social groups defined by gender, race, ethnicity, or a combination of these criteria (see Table 1.1). Between 1991 and 2013, fifteen Latin American governments approved national laws requiring political parties to nominate a minimum number of women as candidates in popular elections. Bolivia, Colombia, and Venezuela created small numbers of reserved legislative seats for indigenous peoples (and Colombia did the same for “black communities”), Peru required parties to include indigenous candidates on their lists in local elections in the Amazonian region, and Mexico engineered some two dozen single-member districts around areas where indigenous voters were a majority. Meanwhile, scores of Brazilian universities introduced admissions quotas by race and class, prompting the government to adopt a national law in 2012 imposing such quotas on the entire federal university system.

Official efforts to promote inclusion were informed by claims of organizations advocating the rights of historically excluded groups. The second wave of feminist movements mobilized across the region in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s to demand an end to violence and discrimination, an expansion of social policies, and access to political power (Alvarez, 1990; Baldez, 2002; Jaquette, 1994). In the Andes, Mexico, and Central America, groups foregrounded an indigenous political identity to demand recognition, autonomy, land, and presence in political decision making (Jung, 2008; Lucero, 2008; Yashar, 2005). Black movements challenged racism, entrenched inequalities, and the ways that national ideologies of mixture hid, and diluted, Afrodescendant identity (Caldwell, 2007; Hanchard, 1994; Paschel, 2010; Rahier, 2012).

At the same time, an emerging global discourse connected democratic legitimacy to social diversity in decision-making bodies. The Beijing Platform for Action, endorsed by 150 world governments in 1995, including 19 in Latin America, recommended that states take “positive action” to achieve equal representation of women and men in all governmental and public administration positions (United Nations, Report of the Fourth World Conference on Women, 1996).

Colombia is the only country in Latin America with mechanisms of political inclusion targeted explicitly at Afrodescendants and one of the three with reserved seats for indigenous peoples. Both measures originated in the 1991 Constitution, which created two reserved seats for indigenous peoples in the Senate and paved the way for legislation to construct two reserved seats for representatives of “black communities” in the lower house and one seat for indigenous peoples in the same chamber. In 2011, after some twenty years of experience, the Colombian Constitutional Court canceled elections in the reserved seats. Though based on a technicality, the sentence was issued amidst growing criticism of their failure to provide for the effective representation of Afrodescendant and indigenous interests. The Court's decision was challenged and the seats were reinstated in time for the 2014 elections. Yet the ruling was prescient, for the election results were disastrous. The two deputies who won on behalf of “black communities” were not recognized as Afrodescendant and allegedly had ties to drug traffickers, paramilitaries, and politicians jailed for such connections (see Figure 5.1 for photos of María del Socorro Bustamante (a) and Moises Orozco Vicuña (b)) (“¿Por qué se indignaron los negros?,” 2014; Villamizar, 2014).

What went wrong? The 2014 results were disappointing and depressing. But in light of the way the reserved seats were designed, they are not surprising. Electoral institutions did not create formal constituencies of minority voters to elect their own representatives. Instead, all voters nationwide had the option of casting votes for the reserved seats. Rules on ballot access did little to ensure that organizations fielding candidates for the seats had connections to disadvantaged groups and movements advocating their rights, the structure of the ballot was confusing to voters, and there was no upper limit imposed on the number of votes that could be cast.

This chapter shows how the configuration of electoral institutions created conditions for opportunistic political behavior that undermined the purpose of the constitution. Since minority voters were not grouped into special constituencies, politicians contesting the seats solicited votes nationwide and from all social groups, not just black and indigenous voters. Meanwhile, areas of the country where Afrodescendants and indigenous peoples were geographically concentrated tended to support traditional parties rather than cast votes for representatives of reserved seats (Agudelo, 2000, 2002; Escandón Vega, 2011).

In Latin America's history, women, Afrodescendants, and indigenous peoples were juridically excluded from full citizenship rights and politically disenfranchised (see, e.g., Andrews, 2004; Graham et al., 1990; Harris, 1964; Miller, 1991; Mörner, 1967; Wade, 1997). Over time, legal discrimination was reformed (at variable rates across countries and groups), but the patterns it forged remained. Inter-group differences in well-being today show a remarkable parallel to the sistema de castas created under the Spanish empire. Education, income levels, and experience of discrimination largely track skin color, with whites at the top and people with the darkest skin at the bottom (Telles, 2014b). Latin America's homosocial elite has anchored a status hierarchy privileging whiteness and maleness. Almost nowhere are women, Afrodescendants and indigenous people present in elected office in proportion to their overall numbers in the population. The political exclusion of disadvantaged groups reflects, and perpetuates, their subordinate social positions. Women, Afrodescendants, and indigenous peoples suffer lower wages; discrimination; a higher probability of being poor, unemployed, and living in inadequate conditions; and a greater likelihood of victimization and violence. These social and status inequalities are at odds with an inclusive, democratic society.

This chapter describes patterns of exclusion in Latin America by presenting data on the presence of women, Afrodescendants, and indigenous peoples in elected office. Women's numbers have grown in several countries, in some places dramatically, as a result of the introduction of gender quota laws. Indigenous peoples and Afrodescendants tend to be scarce in elected office, though their presence has risen in some countries. None of these excluded groups tend to cluster in their own party or set of parties. All tend to be elected from parties throughout the political spectrum. This chapter also describes the different mechanisms countries have adopted to promote inclusion, including candidate quotas in parties and reserved parliamentary seats. Appendix 2 presents a list of inclusion mechanisms used worldwide.

Terminology

In general, I use the term “Afrodescendant” to refer to people not currently living in Africa, or born there, but with ancestors originating from the region. The term was not very common as recently as ten years ago. Many scholars referred instead to “Afro-Latins” or more specifically to “Afro-Colombians,” “Afro-Brazilians,” “Afro-Cubans,” and the like, and also to “blacks” (see, e.g., Andrews, 2004; Sawyer, 2006; Telles, 2004; Wade, 1993). Scholarship published since 2010, however, has used the term “Afrodescendant” almost exclusively (see, e.g., Loveman, 2014; Telles, 2014b).

This appendix provides additional information about the dates and nature of my research trips and interviews conducted for the project.

Trips

Argentina (1998, 2000, 2009): Interviews with politicians, government officials, judges, lawyers, activists, academics, journalists; lectures at research institutions and national congress; participation in seminars

Bolivia (2005, 2009): Interviews with politicians, government officials, judges, lawyers, activists, academics, journalists, labor leaders, and a German priest; observation of protest marches from El Alto to La Paz

Brazil (1996, 1997, 2000, 2002 [2]): Interviews with politicians, government officials, judges, lawyers, activists, academics, journalists; administered survey to women members of Congress; lectures at national congress and academic institutions; participation in seminars at research institutions, NGOs, and national congress; participant observation in feminist movement campaigns, political meetings, and congressional lobbying; observation of committee meetings in national congress

Chile (1997, 1998 (2), 2012): Interviews with politicians, government officials, lawyers, activists, academics, journalists, religious officials; lectures at research institutions; participation in panels and workshops at academic institutions and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)

Colombia (2004): Interviews with politicians, government officials, judges, lawyers, activists, academics; observation of plenary sessions and committee meetings of Chamber of Deputies (I had a staff pass); lectures at academic institutions and NGOs

Mexico (1998, 2000 [2], 2001): Interviews with politicians, government officials, lawyers, activists, academics, journalists; observation of political meetings; participation in seminars, panels, and workshops at academic institutions and NGOs

Peru (1997, 2000): Interviews with politicians, government officials, lawyers, activists, academics; participation in seminars at NGOs; participant observation in political meetings

In addition, I made shorter trips to attend conferences and workshops with politicians, government officials, activists, and scholars. These included a 2011 trip to Costa Rica to participate in the Fourth Regional Conference of Afrodescendant Women, two trips to Nicaragua in 1996 and 1998 to participate in regional meetings on women and politics, and a 1999 trip to Venezuela for a workshop on women's leadership. I participated in several conferences and seminars in Washington, DC with women leaders and activists in Latin America organized by the Inter-American Dialogue and the Inter-American Development Bank.

The demands of Latin America's marginalized social groups for greater access to power gained traction in the 1990s and the first two decades of the 21st century. Women, whose presence in power lagged their participation at the middle and bottom of parties, civic organizations, unions, and the private sector, mobilized across parties to demand national laws imposing gender candidate quotas on political parties in legislative elections. Boosted by regional trends toward multiculturalism and global norms of ethnic and racial equality, movements of indigenous peoples and Afrodescendants claimed rights to recognition and autonomy, guarantees of political inclusion, and access to higher education.

Many advocates of gender quotas and ethnic reservations expected they would improve not just the inclusion of Latin America's marginalized social groups but also their political representation, and produce better policy outcomes. This book has shown that the process was not so simple. Inclusion is not the same as representation. In fact, in the Latin American countries studied in this book, group inclusion was produced through institutional mechanisms that precluded group representation, at least along formal, principal–agent lines. Women, Afrodescendant, and indigenous representatives have been elected not by constituencies constructed from their category but by voters as a whole. Women did not enter power on behalf of women, but divided across parties and accountable to party leaders. Indigenous and Afrodescendant representatives elected to reserved seats were not accountable to voters from those groups. The activists and movements who worked to achieve inclusion had little control over who was elected, allegedly to represent them.

This conclusion considers the implications of the story of political inclusion in Latin America for our understanding of gender, gender equality, race, and ethnicity. I propose a way to think about the relationship between inclusion and representation and urge scholars to look beyond the legislature for mechanisms to represent disadvantaged groups. Finally, I affirm the value of inclusion. Quotas and reservations may disappoint the activists who fought for them by failing to deliver good representation, and by elevating non feminists, corrupt politicians, and party hacks. They may derive from a misdiagnosis of the best way to promote policy change. They may further elite racial projects and inadequate solutions to underrepresentation. Nonetheless, mechanisms of inclusion help to diversify the ranks of political leaders. They help to erode gender and racial biases. And they signal that everyone counts as a citizen.

Brazil is home to the region's largest Afrodescendant population, longest tradition of race-based organizing, most institutionalized official system of data collection by skin color, and greatest (albeit recent) degree of state attention to racial inequality. Government agencies at all levels have introduced affirmative action programs to expand opportunities for nonwhites. Yet the state has eschewed candidate quotas or reserved seats. Instead, the principal form of affirmative action consists of admissions quotas in public universities aimed at poor Afrodescendants and other economically disadvantaged citizens. Starting in 2001, when the state legislature of Rio de Janeiro abruptly approved a 50 percent “social” quota and then a 40 percent race quota for two state universities, quota policies snowballed around the country. By 2012, when the national congress approved a law mandating quotas by class and race in all federal universities, 71 percent of all public universities already had affirmative action programs (Feres Júnior, Toste Daflon, & Campos, 2012).

As courts in the United States tightened the legal parameters surrounding consideration of race in university admissions, Brazil moved in the opposite direction. The Brazilian government's embrace of race as a category for public policy puts it at odds with its northern counterpart as well as with its own historical tendencies to deny the racialized nature of social inequalities. Official discourse and conventional wisdom denied the salience of race and insisted that discrimination revolved primarily around class. Why did the country suddenly seem to adopt an extreme, rigid form of affirmative action?

Brazil's quota policies may not be such a radical departure from its historic approach to race. Though the Afro-Brazilian movement fought for affirmative action and conceptualized quotas as a way to promote racial inequality, class criteria were actually more pervasive in the laws and policies eventually adopted. More universities have adopted quotas based on social class than on race, and the national law nests racial criteria within class criteria to preclude well-off blacks from taking advantage of the policies. Race is not an independently valid basis for affirmative action. It should be taken into account only after class.

This chapter accounts for the evolution of affirmative action policy in Brazil. I analyze the transition from the Cardoso era to the Workers’ Party administrations, explain the focus on higher education, and explore the relative weight of race- and class-criteria in affirmative action.

I began to observe inclusion without representation in the mid-1990s. I was consulting for the Inter-American Dialogue and participating in meetings with women politicians, government officials, and activists from all over the Americas. At those events, I witnessed disagreements about the objective of women's inclusion in power. Some believed that the point of women's presence was to advance the representation of women's interests and other democratic values. Others simply wanted women there, regardless of their views or behavior. As one very senior government official put it: “If there are going to be dictators, we want women dictators too.”

In light of these experiences, I had little faith in the hypothesis that the presence of more women in power would lead to better representation of women's interests and policy changes. I didn't believe that women and other disadvantaged groups had inherent interests. I had seen too much diversity among women, even among those from an elite political class willing to participate in women's meetings, to believe they would act collectively to pursue a political agenda without a great deal of prior work. Some women I met were committed feminists; others were more like Margaret Thatcher. Some had spent their careers fighting for human rights; others were relatives of golpistas.

Part of my early work involved identifying and analyzing various governmental initiatives to expand women's rights. States were creating new agencies for women, adopting national action plans and gender-sensitive budgets, modifying laws to combat violence, creating women's health programs, protecting rights of domestic workers, improving access to child care, and expanding services for victims of violence. These programs were not always well implemented or adequately funded, but their mere existence marked a dramatic change over the past.

I did not see greater government attention to women's rights as causally linked to women's greater numbers in power. Instead, I attributed policy changes to the influence of international norms and agreements, pressure from civic movements, and the autonomous action of highly placed and committed individuals. If anything, women's greater access to power was occurring simultaneously with other policy changes. In some places, there was representation without inclusion.

I came later to the study of Afrodescendants and indigenous peoples. Except in the case of Brazil – in which I had a longstanding interest and passion – my motivation was primarily comparative.

What happened after quota laws were adopted? Did women's presence in power improve? Were there changes to legislative behavior and advocacy of women's rights issues? Activists and scholars often justified gender quotas by referring not just to political inclusion but also to political representation. Greater numbers of women elected officials – so the argument goes – leads to more deliberation over gender equality and raises the chances that legal and policy changes expanding rights will be adopted. As Mansbridge puts it: “[The] descriptive representation by gender improves substantive outcomes for women in every polity for which we have a measure” (2005, p. 622). This “story of the critical mass theory” has helped women activists around the world convince policy makers to fix targets, usually 30 percent or higher, for women's presence in politics (Dahlerup, 2006b, pp. 514–517).

Yet analysis of existing research demonstrates that women's political presence is “neither absolutely necessary nor entirely sufficient” for legislative action on women's rights (Beckwith & Cowell-Meyers, 2007; Celis & Childs, 2008; Celis et al., 2008; Childs & Krook, 2006; Reingold, 2008, p. 128). Some women advocate gender equality more forcefully than others; some men are more supportive than some women; and different institutional contexts foster differing amounts of feminist activity (Reingold, 2008). What's more, studies differ in how they conceptualize and measure representative behavior to advance women's rights (which many scholars call “women's substantive representation”). Whereas some conceive it as a process of articulating, advocating, and discussing concerns expressed by many women, others view it as an outcome that is reflected in changes of laws and policies (Franceschet & Piscopo, 2008). These differences signal a lack of consensus among both scholars and advocates about what it means for women to “make a difference” in political life (Dahlerup, 2006b, p. 517).

Scholars who analyze the process of representation tend to focus on activities such as bill initiation, legislator priorities, committee behavior, speeches, and the like. These studies tend to show that women are more likely than men to sponsor feminist legislation, prioritize gender equality issues, and seek to convince other legislators to support gender equality initiatives (see, e.g., Reingold, 2000; Schwindt-Bayer, 2006, 2010; Swers, 2002; Thomas, 1994). However, there is less evidence that women's presence results in positive outcomes on women's rights (Childs & Krook, 2006, pp. 523–534; Reingold, 2008, pp. 131–132; Wang, 2013).

This chapter explores how intersectional differences and institutions helped structure the terms of inclusion by focusing on Bolivia, which applies both a gender parity law and reserved seats by ethnicity. The country's experience is puzzling. As is well known, the first (self-identified) indigenous president was elected in 2005 and reelected in 2009. Evo Morales and his party, the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS, Movement toward Socialism), have defended indigenous interests. After assuming office, Morales appointed people of indigenous descent to cabinet positions and required state officials to speak one of three indigenous languages (Aymara, Quechua, or Guaraní) (Albró, 2006, p. 210). He presided over a constitutional convention and adoption of a new constitution that upholds numerous indigenous rights, including collective land rights, political and legal autonomy, and control over natural resources (República de Bolívia, 2009, Article 30). The national development plan promotes universal health care and income supports while showcasing indigenous cosmovision – including the Andean principle of “living well” – as the paradigm for state policy (Johnson, 2010, p. 143).

Yet the MAS rejected a central demand of indigenous movements. They had requested thirty-six reserved seats in parliament: one for each pueblo (or people) recognized by the constitution. In the end, the electoral law approved by the MAS-dominated legislature guaranteed a mere seven seats to indigenous groups, one-fifth of the number originally proposed and a mere 5 percent of the total seats in the lower house of Congress.

When it came to women, the opposite occurred. In spite of its machista tendencies, the MAS adopted and applied a parity rule leading to the political inclusion of record numbers of women. Then, the Congress approved laws to establish parity between men and women in the national electoral court, the state electoral courts, the Constitutional Court, and in the selection of leaders in autonomous indigenous regions. Though not all of the party caucus agreed, and women deputies had to struggle against recalcitrant male legislators to get the rules adopted, the remarkable parity provisions were adopted without roadblocks, strikes, or intimidation.

Bolivia's indigenous-led government guaranteed indigenous peoples a mere 5 percent of parliamentary seats while women got a gender parity law granting them 50 percent of positions on candidate lists. Why was Evo Morales's government stingy in its response to the demands of indigenous movements for greater political inclusion?

In 1991, Argentina became the first country in the world to introduce a gender candidate quota to national electoral legislation. Since then, fifteen other Latin American countries followed suit (though Venezuela subsequently revoked the law). In 2014, the median country in the region – fifteen of nineteen, or 79 percent – applied gender quotas in every election. Not all the laws are perfect: in the years after adoption, many underwent reforms to facilitate implementation, add sanctions for noncompliance, and raise target percentages (see Table 2.6). Overall, the policies have led to major gains in women's presence in power in some countries; in others, the results have been less impressive.

Latin America's embrace of gender quotas led world trends. Overall, some fifty-six countries (and two polities – Kosovo and the Palestinian Authority) have national laws guaranteeing women's inclusion in politics through candidate quotas or reserved seats. Some forty-five countries apply such guarantees at the local level (Paxton & Hughes, 2013).

Why are so many countries adopting quotas? What is the problem that the policies are responding to? Why did some countries, but not others, introduce these measures? Did they succeed in getting more women elected? In a fascinating book, Ann Towns argues that the status of women has become a measure of civilization and a way to “evaluate and rank states in a hierarchical manner” (Towns, 2010, p. 6). Countries interested in improving their status in international society must attempt visibly to demonstrate their efforts to improve the condition of women. Policies like gender quotas offer a means for states to ascend in the global hierarchy. They adopt quotas to seem modern and to prove their credentials on democracy and human rights. In an earlier era, by contrast, it was the opposite phenomenon–women's political exclusion– that constituted an international status symbol. “Civilized” states kept women out of politics (Ibid., chapter 4).

The emergence of gender quotas as a “standard of modernity” may be a necessary condition for policy adoption. But it is not sufficient. Many more states are affected by, and participate in, international society than have quota policies. International norms and hierarchies are thus an important part of the explanation for quotas but do not adequately distinguish between adopters and nonadopters. To explain variation in policy patterns, we need to look at the political agency of women politicians.