Malaise in Representation in Latin American Countries: Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay

354 Pages·2017·4.466 MB·English

by  Alfredo Joignant, Mauricio Morales, Claudio Fuentes (eds.)

MALAISE IN
REPRESENTATION
IN LATIN AMERICAN
COUNTRIES
Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay
Edited by
Alfredo Joignant,
Mauricio Morales, and
Claudio Fuentes
Malaise in Representation
in Latin American Countries
Alfredo Joignant • Mauricio Morales • Claudio Fuentes
Editors
Malaise
in Representation
in Latin American
Countries
Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay
Editors
Alfredo Joignant Claudio Fuentes
Universidad Diego Portales Universidad Diego Portales
Santiago, Chile Santiago, Chile
Mauricio Morales
Universidad Diego Portales
Santiago, Chile
ISBN 978-1-137-59987-2 ISBN 978-1-137-59955-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59955-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016959486
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F
oreword
There can be no doubt that something important and profound occurred
in Chile in 2011. The student movement that erupted so dramatically that
year, and has since persisted, was initially about the country’s educational
model but soon also began to question the political order established by
the 1980 constitution. Not so long afterwards, just before the start of the
2014 Football World Cup in Brazil, a number of cities there saw surprising
outbursts of popular indignation, initially about the tournament’s high
economic cost but soon also about the political class and its growing signs
of corruption. In this same period (2010–2013), the Arab Spring was
blossoming into democratic regimes in countries like Tunisia and Libya
where they would previously have been unimaginable. And then, again
not so long afterwards, an original social movement erupted in Turkey,
starting in the Taksim Gezi Park and escalating into protest against the
Erdogan government’s censure policy.
It was in this turbulent political context, mostly in middle-income
countries, that Canada’s International Development Research Centre
(IDRC) approached the editors of this book with a view to analyzing
the problems of disaffection and malaise with democracy in the southern
cone of Latin America. That is where Chile came in. Given that it had for
years been held up as a model of transition to democracy and its peaceful
consolidation, it would be interesting to look at what had been happening
there since 2011 and compare it with two other middle-income countries
in the same sub-region (Argentina and Uruguay) in a bid to identify par-
ticular trends and, possibly, common patterns.
v
vi FOREWORD
To this end, we developed a research strategy that implied carrying
out public opinion surveys in Argentina (N = 1200), Chile (N = 1200),
and Uruguay (N = 1202) and surveys of an important sample of mem-
bers of both houses of these countries’ Congresses and their executives,
using a common questionnaire that was only slightly modified in order
to accommodate country-specific language usages (Argentina, N = 140;
Chile, N = 164; Uruguay, N = 121). The design of the population samples
(probabilistic) was identical and the questionnaires sought to capture the
ways in which political activity is perceived.1
The project that gave rise to this book began with a seminar in
Montevideo in July 2013, attended by most of the authors, and concluded
with a seminar in Santiago in July 2015 at which all the work published
here was presented and debated. As you will see, the authors are political
scientists and sociologists, which is in line with the decision of the editors
and the IDRC to analyze the same topic from a multidisciplinary perspec-
tive. Beyond the challenges that such a multidisciplinary approach implies,
the exercise proved an extremely gratifying experience, not least because
it is unusual (at least in Latin America) for political scientists and sociolo-
gists to analyze and discuss the same topic and to do so as part of the same
research project. It is our sincere belief that the future of the social sciences
will be multidisciplinary, putting behind them the petty disputes between
schools and scholars that can hamper scientific progress.
We are aware that the notion of malaise, although slightly more familiar
to sociologists, is a difficult one to use in political science. If we opted to
do so, it is because we firmly believe that the problems of distrust and dis-
affection are a far cry from the imprecise diagnosis of a “crisis of represen-
tation” or even worse a “crisis of democracy”. But the notion of malaise,
whose conceptualization is developed in the Introduction to this book, is
also attractive because it is widely used in ordinary everyday language and
it was well worth adopting this word as a category of analysis.
We would like to thank the Diego Portales University for the constant
support it has provided throughout the three years of this project. We
are also indebted to the Center for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies
(COES, CONICYT/FONDAP/15130009) and Fondecyt Project
1150790 for their support in 2015, the last and crucial year of writing
the manuscript. Our special recognition goes to Florencio Ceballos, the
IDRC program official who accompanied and constantly encouraged us
FOREWORD vii
from the start of the project and, through him, to the IDRC, for the
trust it put in us. We would also like to acknowledge the efficient support
we received from the team at the Diego Portales University’s Electoral
Observatory (Carlos Cantillana, Lucas Perelló, Gonzalo Contreras, Alexis
Marambio, Mario Herrera, Daniela Oliva, and Ignacio Soto).
Although some chapters of this book were written directly in English,
we would like to thank Ruth Bradley for her extraordinary editing and
translating skills. For at least one of the editors (Alfredo Joignant), she is
an essential part of his intellectual work and, at this stage, a friend.
Note
1. This material is available on request.
C
oNteNts
1 Malaise in Representation: Attitudes, Beliefs, Behaviors,
and Causalities 1
Alfredo Joignant, Mauricio Morales, and Claudio Fuentes
Part I Chile, a Chronic Malaise with and Among Elites 45
2 Discontent, Collective Protest, and Social Movements
in Chile 47
Nicolás M. Somma
3 Malaise and Democracy in Chile 69
Carolina Segovia
4 Elite–Mass Congruence in Chile 93
Peter M. Siavelis
5 Malaise in Representation in Chile: An 18-Year-Old
Debate in Search of Evidence 119
Patricio Navia
Part II Uruguay, the Antonym of Malaise 137
6 Political Opportunity Structure, Social Movements,
and Malaise in Representation in Uruguay, 1985–2014 139
Germán Bidegain and Víctor Tricot
ix
x CONTENTS
7 Weak Malaise with Democracy in Uruguay 161
Daniel Chasquetti
8 Political Congruence in Uruguay, 2014 187
Daniel Buquet and Lucía Selios
9 Uruguay: A Counterexample of Malaise in Representation:
A Propitious Transformation of the Old Party Democracy 211
Jorge Lanzaro and Rafael Piñeiro
Part III Argentina, the Malaise as Routine 233
10 Protest, Social Movements, and Malaise in Political
Representation in Argentina 235
Sebastián Pereyra
11 Malaise in Political Representation: Citizen Attitudes
and Sociocultural Tensions in Argentine Democracy 257
Mariana Heredia and Federico Lorenc Valcarce
12 Mass–Elite Congruence and Representation in Argentina 281
Noam Lupu and Zach Warner
13 Political Representation and Malaise in Representation
in Present-Day Argentina 303
Gabriel Vommaro
14 Malaise as a Symptom of Conflict: Argentina, Chile,
and Uruguay in Comparative Perspective 323
Manuel Alcántara and Timothy J. Power
Index 339
C
oNtributors
Manuel Alcántara is a professor at Universidad de Salamanca, Spain, and
Director of FLACSO-Spain. He has been General Secretary of Asociación
Latinoamericana de Ciencia Política (ALACIP) (2002–2009). His research
focuses on parliamentary elites, political parties, elections, and legislatures
in Latin America. He is the author of several books, notably El Oficio de
Político (Tecnos, 2012) as well as editor of Politicians and Politics in Latin
America (2008).
Germán Bidegain’s academic interests are democratic theory, compara-
tive politics, and social movements theory, especially in Latin American
politics. His research has been published by Latin American Politics and
Society, Revista de Ciencia Política, and Pléyade.
Daniel Buquet is a full professor at Social Science Faculty, Universidad
de la República, Uruguay. His research focuses on political parties and
electoral systems in Uruguay and Latin America. His research has been
published by Journal of Democracy, Electoral Studies, Revista de Ciencia
Política, Revista Uruguaya de Ciencia Política, Revista Debates, América
Latina Hoy, Política, Revista Sistema, and Perfiles Latinoamericanos.
Daniel Chasquetti is a full professor at Social Science Faculty, Universidad
de la República, Uruguay. His research focuses on legislative behavior,
political careers, and Uruguayan politics and has been published by
Legislative Studies Quarterly, Journal of Politics in Latin America, América
Latina Hoy, Revista de Ciencia Política, Revista Uruguaya de Ciencia
Política, and The Journal of Legislative Studies.
xi