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Organizing Interests and Coalitions in the Politics of Market Reform in Latin America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Ben Ross Schneider
Affiliation:
Northwestern University
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Abstract

A recent wave of deep empirical research provides a solid basis for a comparative reassessment of the role of coalitions in the politics of market reform in Latin America in the 1990s. This research confirms earlier findings that interest groups and distributional coalitions were not major protagonists in either antireform or proreform coalitions. The new research goes further empirically into analyzing the origins of interests, especially business interests, and finds them to be much more ambiguous and dynamic than assumed in earlier studies. Consequendy, other factors, especially organizations and the evolving macroeconomic context, were stronger influences on preferences regarding reform. Given the relative weakness of interest group coalitions, the article provides a typology and preliminary analysis of other kinds of coalitions—electoral, legislative, and policy—that have become more central to reform politics. These other types of coalitions still require further theoretical elaboration and empirical investigation in order to determine how they can best be deployed to illuminate reform politics.

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Review Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 2004

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References

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9 Kingstone (167) cites survey data from 1991 showing large majorities of businesspeople in fact favored trade liberalization.

10 What Barbara Geddes wrote a decade ago is still true: the conventional paradigm based on the centrality of economic interests, “decrepit and battered, lives on.” Geddes (fn. 7), 214.

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17 , Schneider, “Elusive Synergy: Business-Government Relations and Development,” Comparative Politics 31 (October 1998)Google Scholar. For studies that highlight the predominance of intersectoral diversification among large firms in Latin America, see , Nairn and Frances, Antonio, “The Venezuelan Private Sector: From Courting the State to Courting the Market,” in Goodman, Louis, ed., Lessons of the Venezuelan Experience (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Conaghan, Catherine, “Capitalists, Technocrats, and Politicians: Economic Policy Making and Democracy in the Central Andes,” in Mainwaring, Scott, O'Donnell, Guillermo, and Valenzuela, J. Samuel, eds., Issues in Democratic Consolidation (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Silva, Eduardo, The State and Capital in Chile: Business Elites, Technocrats, and Market Economics (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1996)Google Scholar; Kessler, Timothy P., “Political Capital: Mexican Financial Policy under Salinas,” World Politics 51 (October 1998), 42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and , Schneider, Business Politics and the State in 20th Century Latin America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 4951Google Scholar.

18 Naim(fn. 6), 86.

19 See Bates and Krueger (fn. 7), 457; and Schamis (fn. 2).

20 Schamis (fn. 2); Murillo, M. Victoria, “Political Bias in Policy Convergence: Privatization Choices in Latin America,” World Politics 54 (July 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kessler (fn. 17); Teichman (fn. 5); , Haggard, “Democratic Institutions, Economic Policy, and Development,” in Clague, Christopher, ed., Institutions and Economic Development (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 125Google Scholar.

21 Corrales(fn.3),25.

22 Ibid.

23 See Pinheiro, Armando and , Schneider, “The Fiscal Impact of Privatisation in Latin America,” Journal of Development Studies 31 (June 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In the sale of Telmex, for example, government officials maintained a vertical monopoly with postprivatization restrictions on competition in order to attract foreign capital, reduce the public debt, and develop the domestic capital market: “in the context of a fiscal crisis, maximizing the sale price of Telmex was an important government objective ...” Mariscal (fn. 2), xv.

24 Corrales (fn. 3) emphasizes this point and offers examples of businesses in Argentina that prior to 1991 bought privatized firms and then turned to oppose other privatizations.

25 Beyond the extreme case of Chile in the 1970s, much of the crucial empirical work on the political behavior of proreform rent seekers remains to be done. For example, Argentina is a crucial case of rent creation through “market” reform, yet scholars still disagree on the role of big business in the process of privatization. Teichman (fn. 5), for example, claims that large conglomerates were major beneficiaries of privatization and stalwart supporters of Menem, even before he was elected. Large conglomerates “made heavy campaign contributions to the Peronist Party: officially the top six conglomerates are reported to have contributed $700,000 each to Menem's 1989 campaign, while Bunge and Born claim that its actual contribution was $3 million (U.S.)” (p. 125, see also pp. 117-24). Cor-rales (fn. 3), by contrast, argues that some large firms supported Menem's candidacy precisely because they thought he would stall market reform (p. 29).

26 Haggard and Kaufman (fn. 1), 10.

27 See Stokes, Susan, Mandates and Democracy: Neoliberalism by Surprise in Latin America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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29 See Haggard (fn. 11), 40; and especially Eaton (fn. 2), 4.

30 Cox, Gary W. and McCubbins, Mathew D., “The Institutional Determinants of Economic Policy Outcomes,” in , Haggard and , McCubbins, eds., Presidents, Parliaments, and Policy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 27Google Scholar.

31 See Bresser-Pereira, Luiz Carlos, “The 1995 Public Management Reform in Brazil: Reflections of a Reformer,” in , Schneider and Heredia, Blanca, eds., Reinventing Leviathan (Miami: North-South Center Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Kingstone, Peter and Power, Timothy, eds., Democratic Brazil: Actors, Institutions, and Processes (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000)Google Scholar; and Melo, Marcus, Reformas Constitucionals no Brasil: Instituições e Processo Decisório (Constitutional reforms in Brazil: Institutions and decision making) (Rio de Janeiro: Revan, 2002)Google Scholar.

32 Weyland (fn. 12).

33 Edward Gibson offers one of the best examples of the interaction of reform policies and the electoral strategies of the reforming governments in Mexico and Argentina. See , Gibson, “The Populist Road to Market Reform: Policy and Electoral Coalitions in Mexico and Argentina,” World Politics 49 (April 1997)Google Scholar.

34 See, for example, Haggard and Kaufman (fn. 1), 166-70. For a full review, see Eaton (fn. 2), 7-14.

35 Siavelis, Peter, The President and Congress in Postauthoritarian Chile: Institutional Constraints to Democratic Consolidation (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 125Google Scholar.

36 The comparative literature on legislative coalitions in presidential regimes is incipient, and what does exist rarely focuses on economic reform. However, several pioneering studies have added this major new factor to analyses of governance and governability in Latin America, as well as to debates on the relative merits of presidential and parliamentary regimes. See Siavelis (fn. 35); Neto, Octavio Amorim, “Presidential Cabinets, Electoral Cycles, and Coalition Discipline in Brazil,” in Morgenstern, Scott and Nacif, Benito, eds., Legislative Politics in Latin America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002a)Google Scholar; Amorim Neto, “Presidential Policy-Making Strategies and Cabinet Formation in Latin America's Presidential Democracies, 1946-95” (Paper presented at the Conference on “El Gobierno Divido en Mexico,” Mexico City, May 2002b); Deheza, Grace Ivana, “Gobiernos de Coalición en el Sistema Presidencial: América del Sur,” in Nohlen, Dieter and Fernández, Mario, eds., El Presidencialismo Renovado (Presidentialism renewed) (Caracas: Nueva Sociedad, 1998)Google Scholar; and Bernhard Thibaut, “El Gobierno de Democracia Presidencial: Argentina, Brasil, Chile y Uruguay en una Perspectiva Comparada,” in Nohlen and Fernández.

37 Lisa Baldez and John Carey, “Budget Procedure and Fiscal Restraint in Posttransition Chile,” in Haggard and McCubbins (fn. 30), 116-18.

38 Siavelis(fn. 35), 55.

39 Amorim Neto (fn. 36,2002a), 59.

40 See Ames, Barry, The Deadlock of Democracy in Brazil (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and , Mainwaring, Rethinking Party Systems in the Third Wave of Democratization: The Case of Brazil (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999)Google Scholar versus the contrasting revisionist views in Figueiredo, Argelina Cheibub and Limongi, Fernando, Executivo e Legislativo na Nova Ordem Constitucional (Executive and legislature in the new constitutional order) (Rio de Janeiro: Fundação Getúlio Vargas, 1999)Google Scholar.

41 Amorim Neto (fn. 36, 2002a), 50, 69-75.

42 Amorim conducted a broader statistical analysis of postwar democratic governments in Latin America and found that presidents are more likely to appoint coalition cabinets if they lack constitutional decree powers, if they are closer to the center of the political spectrum, and if their parties have a sizable bloc in the legislature (fn. 36,2002b), 18.

43 Corrales (fn. 2); and Eaton (fn. 2).

44 Policy coalitions also go by several other names, such as “iron triangles,” “bureaucratic rings,” “change teams,” “technocracy,” or “policy networks.” See, respectively, Cox and McCubbins (fn. 30), 53-54; Cardoso, Fernando Henrique, Autoritarismo e Democratização (Authoritarianism and democratization) (Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1975)Google Scholar; , Waterbury, Exposed to Innumerable Delusions: Public Enterprise and State Power in Egypt, India, Mexico, and Turkey (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; , Schneider, “The Material Bases of Technocracy: Investor Confidence and Neoliberalism in Latin America,” in Centeno, Miguel and Silva, Patricio, eds., The Politics of Expertise in Latin America (London: Macmillan, 1998)Google Scholar; and Teichman (fn. 5). Teichman offers the fullest elaboration of the policy network approach.

45 Teichman (fn. 5), 18.

46 Ibid., 27.

47 Bates and Krueger (fn. 7), 463; and Schneider (fn. 44).

48 Williamson, John, The Progress ofPolicy Reform in Latin America (Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Economics, 1990)Google Scholar.

49 See also Haggard (fh. 11), 49.

50 See Heredia and Schneider, “The Political Economy of Administrative Reform in Developing Countries,” in Schneider and Heredia (fn. 31).

51 Eaton (fn. 2), 5.

52 , Weyland, “‘Growth with Equity’ in Chile's New Democracy?” Latin American Research Review 32, no. 1 (1997)Google Scholar; and Boylan, Delia, “Taxation and Transition: The Politics of the 1990 Chilean Tax Reform,” Latin American Research Review 31, no. 1 (1996)Google Scholar.

53 Bresser-Pereira (fn. 31); and Melo (fn. 31).

54 Basic political interests have also been subjected to closer empirical investigation, and simple assumptions of a primary interest in reelection rejected in favor of more inductive, contextualized characterizations. See especially Eaton (fn. 2); and Morgenstern and Nacif (fn. 36).

55 See, for example, Frieden (fn. 16), 5-6.

56 Bates and Krueger (fn. 7), 456. This conclusion is especially significant coming from two authors who did much to propagate rent-seeking models of policy making, which in turn influenced early exaggerated expectations on resistance to market reforms. See , Krueger, “The Political Economy of the Rent-Seeking Society,” American Economic Review 64 (June 1974)Google Scholar.

57 See, for example, Teichman (fn. 5), 56.

58 Haggard (fn. 11), 28.

59 Gibson (fn. 33).