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Coping with Economic Hardship in Argentina: How Material Interests Affect Individuals' Political Interests*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

Nancy R. Powers
Nancy R. Powers
Affiliation:
Florida State University
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Abstract

The political impact of difficult economic conditions in the democracies of the developing world depends in part on how people at the grass roots evaluate their political interests. This article argues that understanding the political interests of lower-income persons requires two separate analyses: how people think about their material conditions, which is affected by the type of material hardships and the objective capacity to cope with those conditions; and how people think about politics, given party and class identities and economic, historic and political contexts. Using in-depth interviews in Argentina, the research develops an analytical framework through which to evaluate the conditions under which people would, and would not, support a government that does not alleviate their economic difficulties. The analysis is used to examine recent events in Argentina and is applied to other cases.

Résumé

L'impact politique des conditions économiques difficiles qui prévalent dans les démocraties des pays en déeloppement dépend de l'évaluation que font les citoyens à bas revenus de leurs intérêts politiques. Pour comprendre cette évaluation il faut, d'une part, analyser leurs perceptions de leurs conditions matérielles, en tenant compte du fait que celles-ci sont influencées par les difficultés concrètes auxquelles ils sont soumis et la capacité objective qu'ils ont d'y faire face; d'autre part, il faut examiner ce qu'ils pensent des institutions politiques, en tenant compte du système des partis, des identités de classe et du contexte économique, historique et politique. En se référant à des entrevues approfondies réalisées en Argentine, cet article élabore un cadre analytique qui permet d'évaluer les conditions dans le cadre desquelles les citoyens sont susceptible d'appuyer ou de ne pas appuyer un gouvernement qui n'atténue pas les difficultés économiques. Ce cadre analytique est utilisé pour expliquer les évènements récents survenus en Argentine et dans d'autres pays.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , September 1999 , pp. 521 - 549
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1999

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References

1 “Poorer,” because the bifurcation between “poor” and nonpoor is relevant for policy makers, not for the people themselves, for whom material needs exist on a continuum. On regional conditions, see Lustig, Nora, ed., Coping with Austerity: Poverty and Inequality in Latin America (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1995), 4–5, 16–18Google Scholar; and Samuel A. Morley, “Structural Adjustment and the Determinants of Poverty in Latin America,” in ibid., 48.

2 This literature is vast. Major edited volumes on elites, institutions and social movements, respectively, include O'Donnell, Guillermo, Schmitter, Philippe C. and Whitehead, Laurence, eds., Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Prospects for Democracy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986Google Scholar); Mainwaring, Scott and Scully, Timothy R., eds., Building Democratic Institutions: Party Systems in Latin America (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995Google Scholar); and Eckstein, Susan, Power and Popular Protest: Latin American Social Movements (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989Google Scholar).

3 By material interests, I mean the subjective evaluation of one's material wants. By political interests, I mean the subjective beliefs about what one wants from government or from the political process. Defining political interests in this way focuses on actual desires and goals, both material and nonmaterial and rejects the view that interests beyond objective material conditions are merely false consciousness.

4 Illustrative examples include Borón, Atilio, La crisis en América Latina: Nuevos desafíos para la izquierda, EURAL Working Paper 79 (Buenos Aires: Centro de Investigaciones Europea-Latinoamericanos, 1990), 35–36Google Scholar; and Seligson, Mitchell A., “Central America at the Crossroads,” in Malloy, James M. and Seligson, Mitchell A., eds., Authoritarians and Democrats: Regime Transition in Latin America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1987), 177–187Google Scholar. A similar argument, predating the “transitions” literature, is Dahl, Robert, Polyarchy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), 103.Google Scholar

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19 Paraphrase from second meeting with author, March 29, 1992. Pseudonyms are used to identify the people interviewed.

20 Both quotations from taped interview with author, June 10, 1992.

21 The examples below come from the situations of Argentines interviewed. I thank Roberto DaMatta for first calling my attention to coping mechanisms. The theoretical basis for my discussion of resources and assets is from Haveman, Robert H., Poverty Policy and Poverty Research: The Great Society and the Social Sciences (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987Google Scholar); Ruggles, Patricia, Drawing the Line: Alternative Poverty Measures and Their Implications for Public Policy (Washington: Urban Institute Press, 1990Google Scholar); Sherraden, Michael, Assets and the Poor: A New American Welfare Policy (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1991Google Scholar); and Townsend, Concept of Poverty. Although I drafted the present analysis before discovering the similarity, Nelson describes coping strategies with some of the examples and terminology used here. Our applications of the concept are distinct. Nelson writes of the lack of coping capacity among the very poor as part of an explanation of the differential costs of economic adjustment among groups, whereas I will use the concept to help explain cross-cutting political attitudes toward economic policy and policy leaders. See Nelson, Joan M., “Poverty, Equity, and the Politics of Adjustment,” in Haggard, Stephan and Kaufman, Robert R., eds., The Politics of Economic Adjustment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 230–231.Google Scholar

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23 By capacity to cope, I mean the objective conditions that enable a person to cope with economic difficulties, rather than the psychological traits that enable some people to cope better with stress.

24 Programa Alimentario de la Municipalidad de Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires Municipal Nutrition Programme). Taped interview with Cecilia and husband, June 4,1992.

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27 On the 1995 election, see Carlos Gervasoni, “La Sustentabilidad Electoral de los Programas de Estabilización y Reforma Estructural: Los Casos de Argentina y Peru,” paper presented at the International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, Guadalajara, Mexico, 1997; Gibson, Edward, “Federalism and Electoral Coalitions: Making Market Reform Politically Viable in Argentina,”paper prepared for conference on Democracy, Nationalism, and Federalism, Oxford University, 1997Google Scholar; Powers, Nancy, “Re-electing Neoliberals: Competing Explanations for the Electoral Success of Fujimori and Menem,”paper presented at the International Congress of Latin American Studies Association, Guadalajara, Mexico, 1997Google Scholar; and Weyland, Kurt, “Swallowing the Bitter Pill: Sources of Popular Support for Neoliberal Reform in Latin America,” Comparative Political Studies 31, (1998), 539–568.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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29 Average real industrial wages were relatively stagnant during the early 1990s, at approximately 30 index points below what they had been in 1980 (in the midst of the authoritarian regime). See ECLAC, Economic Survey of Latin America and the Caribbean, 1996–1997 (Santiago: United Nations, 1997), 107.Google Scholar

30 This timing also affects firms. See Carlos Acuña, H. and Smith, William C., “The Political Economy of Structural Adjustment: The Logic of Support and Opposition to Neoliberal Reform,” in Smith, William C., Acuña, Carlos H. and Gamarra, Eduardo A., eds., Latin American Political Economy in the Age of Neoliberal Reform: Theoretical and Comparative Perspectives for the 1990s (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1994), 31.Google Scholar

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32 For a detailed discussion of this point, see Powers, “Poverty Looks at Democracy,” chap. 5.

33 Cornelius, “Urbanization.”

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40 Thus, whereas the voting studies cited in note 38 focused on one institution or structural feature (media, parliamentary design, unions, and so forth) that might facilitate attribution of blame, they ignore a great many contextual and identity factors that work in concert to shape grassroots political thinking about material interests. I argue for a more comprehensive framework for analyzing grassroots political views, which first accounts for the type of material conditions, and then recognizes the variety of identities and contexts that affect how and whether citizens evaluate those material conditions as political problems.

41 For further discussion of this point, see Powers, “Poverty Looks at Democracy,” 227–29; and Ostiguy, Pierre, “Peronismo y anti-peronismo: Bases socio-culturales de la identidad políticaen la Argentina,” Revista de Ciencias Sociales 6 (1997), 133–215Google Scholar.

42 Some evidence for the extent of inherited political identity in Argentina comes from surveys in 1984 and 1991, which found 38 per cent and 46 per cent of Argentines, respectively, said they shared their parents' political attitudes (World Values Study Group, World Values Survey, 1981–1984 and 1990–1993 [Computer file]; Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research version [Ann Arbor: Institute for Social Research 1994]).

43 Lewis-Beck, Economics and Elections, 57–67.

44 Taped interview with author, March 14, 1992.

45 World Bank, Argentina's Poor, 13.

46 See Sartori, Giovanni, “From the Sociology of Politics to Political Sociology,” in Lipset, Seymour Martin, ed., Politics and the Social Sciences (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), 83.Google Scholar

47 Przeworski, Adam, Capitalism and Social Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985CrossRefGoogle Scholar); and Sartori, “From the Sociology of Politics.”

48 See McGuire, James W., Peronism without Perón: Unions, Parties, and Democracy in Argentina (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997Google Scholar). Concerning Peronism compared to other populist movements, see Roberts, Kenneth M., “Neoliberalism and the Transformation of Populism in Latin America: The Peruvian Case,” World Politics 48 (10 1995), 84–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

49 Compare Ranis, Peter, Argentine Workers: Peronism and Contemporary Class Consciousness (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992), 116–127, 181Google Scholar. Ranis' study of working-class consciousness addresses a different question than here, yet is consistent with my findings. Ranis found Argentines “often see themselves in class terms” and recognize differing class interests; nevertheless, they do not expect government to respond only to their class's interests.

50 See Fundación de Investigaciones Económicas (F1EL), Indicadores de coyuntura (February 1994), 20.

51 Ranis, Argentine Workers, 209.

52 See Rosenthal, Gert, “Latin American and Caribbean Development in the 1980s and the Outlook for the Future,” CEPAL Review 39 (1989), 10–11Google Scholar. On trends in growth rates and wages, see ECLAC, Economic Survey 1995–96, 70, 99.

53 Lustig, ed., Coping with Austerity, 4–5.

54 See Ranis, Argentine Workers, 152–55 for similar findings.

55 These two conditions for political protest come from Tarrow, Sidney, Struggle, Politics, and Reform: Collective Action, Social Movements, and Cycles of Protest, Western Societies Program Occasional Paper 21 (2d ed.; Ithaca: Cornell Studies in International Affairs, 1991), 32–35.Google Scholar

56 These points are explored in more detail in Powers, “Politics of Poverty.”

57 Inglehart, Ronald and Abramson, Paul R., “Economic Security and Value Change,” American Political Science Review 88 (1994), 336–354.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

58 Przeworski, Adam, Democracy and the Market (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 190.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

59 Compare Lewis-Beck, Economics and Elections, 71–75.

60 See Powers, “The Politics of Poverty,” 122–24.

61 For differing interpretations of the 1995 election, see the sources in note 27.

62 “La Gendarmería volvió a reprimir en Jujuy y se extienden los conflictos,” Clarín (Buenos Aires), May 23, 1997.

63 Poll taken by Centre for Study of the New Majority, reported in “Argentina: Shades of Peron,” Luxner News South America Report (March 1, 1998). Available through http://web.lexis-nexis.com, Newsletter Database.

64 Inflation data from ECLAC, Economic Survey of Latin America and the Caribbean Summary 1997–1998 (Santiago: ECLAC, 1998), 30. Unemployment data from Argentine Ministry of Economy (http://www.indec.mecon.ar/comunica/c_eph/cplOO5.txt, retrieved August 29, 1998).

65 “La Iglesia, un plan inédito,” Clarín (Buenos Aires), August 8, 1995, 30.

66 March 9, 1998.

67 ECLAC, Economic Survey 1995–96, 90.

68 Propositions one, four and five concur with the three basic stages of perceptions leading to political demand-making in Cornelius, “Urbanization,” 1,128. Proposition five also supports conclusions in Linz and Stepan, “Political Crafting,” 46–48.