Comparative Public Policy in Latin America 9781442689947

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COMPARATIVE PUBLIC POLICY IN LATIN AMERICA

This pioneering collection offers a comprehensive investigation into how to study public policy in Latin America. Although this region exhibits many similarities with the North American and European countries that have traditionally served as sources for generating public policy knowledge, Latin American countries are also different in many fundamental ways. As such, existing policy concepts and frameworks may not always be the most effective tools of analysis for this unique region. To fill this gap, Comparative Public Policy in Latin America offers guidelines for refining current theories to suit Latin America’s contemporary institutional and socio-economic realities. The contributors accomplish this task by identifying the features of the region that shape public policy, including informal norms and practices, social inequality, and weak institutions. This book promises to become the definitive work on contemporary public policy in Latin America, essential for those who study the area as well as comparative public policy more broadly. (Studies in Comparative Political Economy and Public Policy) jordi díez is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Guelph. susan franceschet is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Calgary.

Studies in Comparative Political Economy and Public Policy Editors: MICHAEL HOWLETT, DAVID LAYCOCK (Simon Fraser University), and STEPHEN MCBRIDE (McMaster University) Studies in Comparative Political Economy and Public Policy is designed to showcase innovative approaches to political economy and public policy from a comparative perspective. While originating in Canada, the series will provide attractive offerings to a wide international audience, featuring studies with local, subnational, cross-national, and international empirical bases and theoretical frameworks. Editorial Advisory Board Jeffrey Ayres, St Michael’s College, Vermont Neil Bradford, University of Western Ontario Janine Brodie, University of Alberta William Carroll, University of Victoria William Coleman, McMaster University Rodney Haddow, University of Toronto Jane Jenson, Université de Montréal Laura Macdonald, Carleton University Riane Mahon, Carleton University Michael Mintrom, University of Auckland Grace Skogstad, University of Toronto Leah Vosko, York University Kent Weaver, Brookings Institution Linda White, University of Toronto Robert Young, University of Western Ontario For a list of books published in the series, see page 317.

Comparative Public Policy in Latin America

EDITED BY JORDI DÍEZ AND SUSAN FRANCESCHET

UN IVER SIT Y OF TORONTO P RESS Toronto Buffalo London

© University of Toronto Press 2012 Toronto Buffalo London www.utppublishing.com Printed in Canada ISBN 978-1-4426-4177-8 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-4426-1090-3 (paper)

Printed on acid-free, 100% post-consumer recycled paper with vegetable-based inks.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Comparative public policy in Latin America / edited by Jordi Díez and Susan Franceschet. (Studies in comparative political economy and public policy) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4426-4177-8 (bound). ISBN 978-1-4426-1090-3 (pbk.) 1. Political planning – Latin America. 2. Latin America – Social policy. 3. Latin America – Economic policy. 4. Latin America – Politics and government – 1980– . I. Díez, Jordi, 1970– II. Franceschet, Susan, 1965– III. Series: Studies in comparative political economy and public policy. JL960.C64 2012

320.6098

C2012-904968-9

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for its publishing activities.

To Antonio Franceschet and Francisco Díez

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Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Part I: Policy-Making and Policy Processes 1 Thinking about Politics and Policy-making in Contemporary Latin America 3 susan franceschet and jordi díez 2 Presidentialism and Policy-making in Latin America: The Case of Mexico 34 jordi díez 3 The New Institutionalism and Industrial Policy-making in Chile 54 judith teichman 4 Turbulent Times: Structural Reforms, Crisis, and Labour Policy in Argentina, 1990s–2000s 78 viviana patroni and ruth felder Part II: Advocacy and Policy Change 5 Public Policy by Other Means: Playing the Judicial Arena catalina smulovitz

105

viii

Contents

6 Federalism, Advocacy Networks, and Sexual Diversity Politics in Brazil 126 juan ma rs ia j 7 Agenda through Dispute: The Zoilamérica Narváez–Daniel Ortega Controversy 150 del ph in e l ac omb e ; t r anslat e d b y p hyllis aronoff and h o ward sc ott 8 Transnational Policy Networks and Public Security Policy in Argentina and Chile 176 mary ro s e ku bal Part III: Old and New Directions in Social Policy 9 The Limits of Anti-Poverty Policy: Citizenship, Accountability, and Semi-clientelism in Mexico’s Oportunidades Program 205 lucy l u ccisano and l aur a mac donald 10 Gendering Welfare State Regimes in Latin America: Argentina in Comparative Perspective 228 déb o ra l o p re i te 11 Social Policy Reform and Continuity under the Bachelet Administration 247 ro s sa na ca s ti g l i oni 12 Public Policy in Latin America: Towards a New Research Agenda 272 jord i d íez a nd susan fr anc esc het Contributors 287 Index

291

Acknowledgments

The main goal of this book is to make a case for greater scholarly attention to public policy and processes of policy-making in Latin America. We believe that doing so simultaneously affords insights into central questions of interest to Latin Americanists and also to political scientists more generally. The idea for this book emerged during a conversation between the co-editors following a panel (organized by Juan Marsiaj) at the 2007 meetings of the Latin American Studies Association in Montreal. The papers presented by the panellists addressed various issues relating to public policy in Latin America. The panel’s enthusiastic discussion led us to believe that putting together a volume on public policy in Latin America would be a worthwhile undertaking. As with most scholarly endeavours, we have accumulated numerous intellectual and organizational debts since the idea for the book first emerged. Most important, we would like to acknowledge the financial support of Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, which allowed us to hold a one-day workshop at the University of Calgary in April 2009. We are also grateful for the financial support provided by the Latin American Research Centre (LARC), the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies, the School of Public Policy, and the Department of Political Science at the University of Calgary, as well as the Department of Political Science at the University of Guelph. Two graduate students – Mike Zekulin and Marianne Pemberton – assisted with workshop organizing and follow-up work, and Tiffany Weagle from LARC provided invaluable help with myriad arrangements for the workshop. Others shared valuable feedback at various presentations of the book’s chapters: Candace Johnson provided helpful comments when the editors presented the central arguments of the book at a seminar at

x Acknowledgments

the University of Guelph, and Pablo Policzer provided astute feedback at the University of Calgary workshop and at a panel for the 21st IPSA World Congress of Political Science, Santiago, Chile, 2009. We are also grateful for the thoughtful comments and suggestions provided by the three external reviewers. Finally, we wish to thank the Defence Management Studies Program at the School of Policy Studies, Queen’s University, for its sponsorship of this publication. Our largest debts, of course, are to the book’s contributors, all of whom are engaged in individual and collective research projects that investigate public policy issues in Latin America using innovative approaches in comparative politics and policy studies. We are grateful that all of our contributors enthusiastically engaged with each other’s work at the 2009 workshop at the University of Calgary and helped to make this volume possible. A special note of thanks must go to Barry Norris, our copy editor, who, as a good make-up artist, has made us all look great. Finally, we extend our very warm thanks to Daniel Quinlan at the University of Toronto Press who showed enthusiasm for this project from the beginning and helped to bring the project to a successful end with utmost professionalism.

PART I Policy-Making and Policy Processes

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1 Thinking about Politics and Policymaking in Contemporary Latin America Susan Franceschet and Jordi Díez

Recent developments in Latin America pose a number of interesting questions for scholars of comparative public policy: Why have market reforms been pursued more vigorously in some countries than others? Why do some governments liberalize access to contraception and abortion while others restrict sexual and reproductive freedom? While numerous scholars are exploring these and other questions related to public policy, many situate their research in the literature on the policy issue under examination rather than on the policy-making process as a whole. As a result, there has not been sustained or in-depth attention to the more general factors that shape policy-making in Latin America, a gap this volume attempts to fill. We make a case for greater scholarly attention to processes of policy-making in Latin America, arguing that doing so would afford insights into questions of interest both to Latin Americanists and to political scientists more generally. We also offer a set of conceptual guidelines for studying policy-making in the region. Studying public policy in Latin America can shed light on a number of issues of concern to political scientists. First, if public policy is defined as government action (or inaction) in response to public problems (Pal 2006, 2), then analysing public policy provides insight into which problems, affecting which segments of the population, are actually perceived as ‘public’ and placed on the policy agenda. Likewise, if politics is about who gets what, when, and how (Laswell 1956), then public policy is a central means through which politics occurs. Studying public policy is thus a way of assessing the extent to which democratization in Latin America has provided opportunities for the poor and other marginalized groups to have their issues placed on the public agenda and their interests met. Although socio-economic indicators remain

4 Comparative Public Policy in Latin America

useful in telling us whether patterns of poverty and social inequality have changed since the recent transitions to democracy, it is only by studying the actual processes of policy-making that we can learn how and why these patterns are changing (or not). Studying public policy is therefore another way of investigating broader relations of power in the region while permitting insight into political processes more generally. A second reason to study public policy in Latin America is that, beyond a material dimension, public policies have important symbolic dimensions. Public goods, ranging from pensions to education, are distributed through public policies. But, as scholars of social policy have long noted, citizens – in particular, different categories of citizens – are actually constructed through social policies (Skocpol 1992; Lieberman 2002; Yashar 2005). Social policies, especially distributive or redistributive ones, both respond to and construct power relations among groups. This implies that unequal social relations are a product of public policies and also that public policy is a means through which to contest and change unequal social structures. Moreover, there are important ideational elements to this dynamic. Social policies can create universal citizenship rights or they can target particular groups whose access to benefits depends on membership in groups like ‘poor,’ ‘female head of household,’ or ‘un / under- employed.’ Often, negative connotations to these categories inhibit the construction of citizenship relations based on equality. Likewise, the very marginalization of targeted groups often makes them vulnerable to manipulation for electoral purposes, a dynamic that is equally corrosive to democratic citizenship. While it is clear that studying public policy is important for political scientists interested in contemporary Latin America, what is less clear is how one should approach the task. Studies of Latin American politics traditionally have been divided between those that posit a certain uniqueness about politics and policy-making in the region and those whose authors believe it unproblematic to apply more general theories and concepts to Latin American case studies. In this chapter, we engage with the question of how to study public policy in Latin America. We attempt to stake out a middle ground between the view that Latin America’s patterns of development and struggles with democracy render it unique and the view that general theories are useful for studying Latin America despite its historical and cultural specificities. We argue that it is important for students of Latin American politics to engage with contemporary debates in the field of comparative public policy, but that there are some potential pitfalls in transporting theories and

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concepts uncritically to different political realities. In practice, this means availing oneself of a conceptual framework for studying public policy that pays close attention to the historical, social, and politico-institutional context in which policies are debated, adopted, and implemented. Latin American Research Traditions and Theories of Politics and Public Policy Latin America has been an important source for the building and testing of theories of comparative politics: theories of modernization, development, authoritarianism, and transitions to democracy have all been informed by case studies from the region (see Munck 2007). At the same time, as Peter Smith notes, ‘social science on Latin America has evinced a cyclical tendency to embrace and discard grand theoretical schemes’ (1995, 9). Historically, scholars of Latin America tended to approach their subject matter as though the countries of the region were fundamentally unique, requiring theories and concepts derived from regional experience. In 1984, John Sloan wrote that ‘Latin American policymaking occurs in an atmosphere dominated by insecurity’ and that ‘there are qualitative differences between policy choices made in stable and unstable political systems’ (1984, 11, 18). There have been a number of debates about whether things such as historical legacies of colonialism, lack of consensus over such basic values as democracy, and excessively weak states – features that are common in much of the global South – mean that policy processes in these countries are fundamentally distinct from those in the global North. Donald Horowitz notes that many of the differences between North and South ‘usually amount to matters of degree rather than kind.’ Nonetheless, he explains that ‘small differences in the policy process can produce large differences in policy product and outcome’ (1989, 197). Attention to the context in which policy-making takes place is therefore critical. Although threats of military coups, civil war, and economic collapse have receded in much of the region, some countries remain fairly crisis prone. Even where democracy is relatively stable, widespread poverty, stubbornly high levels of inequality, and ineffective bureaucracies lead many scholars to be sceptical about applying concepts and theories derived from the experiences of the advanced industrialized democracies to Latin America. Other scholars, however, question this tendency, arguing that the lack of engagement by Latin Americanists with general theories of political science undermines both fields. Smith, for example,

6 Comparative Public Policy in Latin America

insists instead that the uniqueness of a region or individual country should be ‘a subject for investigation rather than an automatic premise’ (1995, 23), implying that general theories and concepts from the fields of comparative politics and public policy should serve as starting points for analysing Latin America. To some extent, Latin Americanists have become more engaged of late with central debates in comparative politics and are making more use of general theories in their research, especially approaches falling within the ‘new institutionalism.’ Yet theoretically informed studies of public policy more specifically are scarce. This remains true even though a great deal of scholarship on Latin America in the past three decades has involved research on public policy issues, including processes of market reform (privatization, liberalization, and labour market flexibility) and social policy reform (particularly in pensions, health care, and education). Much of this research, however, is situated in the literature focusing narrowly on specific policy issues, rather than on features of policy-making environments more broadly. This focus fails to capture the factors that ultimately shape politics and thereby determine the meaning of democracy and citizenship for individuals. Recent scholars of Latin America have drawn on general concepts and theories of public policy and comparative politics. For example, Kurt Weyland’s study of pension and health reform across five Latin American countries adapts theories of rationality and policy diffusion (2007); Mala Htun (2003) and Merike Blofield (2006) locate their studies of the policy process surrounding abortion and divorce in the comparative literature on moral policy-making; and Rossana Castiglioni (2005) draws on institutionalist theories to account for patterns of policy change and continuity in Chile and Uruguay. Research situated in the rational choice tradition is also expanding. Pablo Spiller and Mariano Tommasi (2007), for example, employ rational choice institutionalism to account for the ineffectiveness of policy-making in contemporary Argentina. Similarly, Spiller, Stein, and Tommasi compare policy processes in eight Latin American countries through the lens of rational choice institutionalism, noting that ‘the policymaking process can be understood as a process of bargains and exchanges (or transactions) among political actors’ (2008, 13). In their model, effective policy-making depends upon institutional design, particularly the extent to which there is a relatively small number of actors, a longer time horizon and more frequent interaction among actors, and effective third-party enforcement. Where institutions create these conditions, political actors are more likely to cooperate, resulting

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in more effective policy-making. But, as critics of rational choice institutionalism have pointed out, a framework that ignores the role of ideas or shared cultural norms that shape the sorts of policy options that are on the table or how issues become politicized in the first place is incomplete. Likewise, many rational choice models view the policy process in fairly static terms, ignoring the importance of history, timing, and context (Pierson 2004). Some of the best work on policy-making in Latin America thus combines insights from rational choice theory with approaches that emphasize context. In fact, most scholarship on public policy in Latin America maintains a focus on two of the central concerns of Latin Americanists: history and power inequalities. For example, Carmelo Mesa-Lago and Katharina Müller (2002) and María Lorena Cook (2007) highlight historical legacies and path dependency in accounting for policy reform relating to labour and pensions. Merike Blofield (2006) and Judith Teichman (2008) emphasize the critical role of social inequality in shaping policy outcomes on social policy and abortion and divorce laws. To some extent, these and other recent works demonstrate the value in beginning with general theories and then adapting them in light of the reality of Latin American countries, marked as they are by social and political patterns that emerge from the region’s unique history, culture, and power relations. A good example of this approach is the work of Gretchen Helmke and Steven Levitsky on ‘informal institutions’ in Latin American politics (2006). Although located in the tradition of ‘new institutionalism,’ it demonstrates that a focus on formal political institutions alone is incomplete. Fully understanding patterns of statesociety relations or the sources of influence on which various political actors can draw requires investigating the unwritten rules and norms that political actors follow and that carry real weight, despite their being ‘informal’ – that is, neither publicly communicated nor publicly sanctioned. Many of the informal rules of politics in Latin America reflect power relations or historical and cultural legacies that remain hidden from view in frameworks focused on formal institutions or actor-centred models of the policy process. Towards a Conceptual Framework for Studying Public Policy in Latin America Three aspects of Latin American politics are indispensable to any analysis of public policy: the state and state-society relations, the role institutions

8 Comparative Public Policy in Latin America

play in policy-making, and the effect of socio-economic inequalities on the policy process. Accordingly, studies of public policy in Latin America should take into account the broader contexts in which specific issues are defined as ‘problems’ to be addressed through public policy and in which potential solutions emerge and become subject to debate. When public policy first emerged as a distinct area for academic inquiry, the dominant approaches contained little room for analysing how broader relations of power and inequality structured access to the policy process. Since the 1980s, however, scholars have become far more attentive to the effect of broader socio-political contexts in shaping policy outcomes, thereby making this body of literature more relevant to studies of Latin America. In reviewing the evolution of the field of policy studies, we show that, while earlier works might have ignored a number of features of the policy process that are relevant for studying policy-making in Latin America, this is no longer the case. In the past few decades, scholars of public policy in Europe and North America have explored the roles of history, power structures, and institutions, while moving away from purely statecentred analyses. These developments make general theories of public policy more relevant for students of Latin American policy-making. When ‘policy analysis’ – sometimes called the ‘policy sciences’ – first emerged as a distinct field of study, it tended to ignore or downplay the political aspects of policy-making, prompting political scientists to call for more careful analysis of both the social and institutional context in which policies are made and implemented. Richard Simeon, for example, urged policy scholars to be attentive to the three most vital elements of political science: ‘power, conflict, and ideology.’ Simeon was particularly concerned about the narrowness of the emerging field of policy sciences, given the assumption of rationality in decision-making and its belief that the role of the policy scholar was to determine the ‘best’ policy. This approach overlooked the role of ideas and ideology in shaping perceptions about public problems and the appropriateness of various solutions, and failed to note that policy ‘solutions’ are likely to benefit some more than others (Simeon 1976, 550). Another criticism of early approaches to public policy was the focus on state actors and a corresponding lack of attention to the role of societal actors and broader power structures in society that shape how ‘public’ problems are perceived and how policy responses are debated, formulated, and implemented. In particular, the ‘stage heuristic’ model divided the policy process into five discrete stages (see Jones 1970; Anderson 1975; Brewer and deLeon 1983).1 Subsequent policy scholars

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concentrated on particular stages of the policy process, such as agenda setting and implementation (Pressman and Wildavsky 1973; Kingdon 1984; Nelson 1984; Mazmanian and Sabatier 1983). A central shortcoming of some of this work was the assumption that state actors are the most important drivers of public policy: as Joel Migdal has noted, for those who study policy and politics in the global South, using statecentred approaches ‘is a bit like looking at a mousetrap without at all understanding the mouse’ (1988, xvi). By the 1980s, however, the influence of the ‘policy stages’ approach declined even for those studying Europe and North America. Critics noted its failure to take into account causal relations among the various stages, its overwhelming focus on the passage of legislation, and the simplification of the process to one major policy cycle (Sabatier 2007, 7). These criticisms led to new theories and approaches that looked at policy processes beyond the state and integrated the multiplicity of actors that shape perceptions about policy problems, both within and outside the state, and decision-making processes within the state. Perhaps nothing illustrates this scholarly turn better than the emergence of the concept of ‘policy networks.’ Originally inspired by interorganizational theory, policy scholars began to conceptualize the policy process as consisting of a large and diverse number of state and non-state actors that are collectively inter-dependent and that participate in the making of public policy (Marsh and Rhodes 1992; Stones 1992; Marsh 1998; Thatcher 1998; Marsh and Smith 2000). The new analytical tool soon attracted the attention of an increasing number of policy scholars because it helped to overcome the limitations of simplistic state- and society-centred approaches and facilitated the study of varying relations between government and interest groups across different policy areas (Marsh and Rhodes 1992). Important work on public policy also challenged some of the assumptions of earlier scholarship. For example, the early pluralist assumption that power is equally distributed in society encountered growing criticism by the 1980s. While agreeing with the pluralist view that power in capitalist democracies was more widely distributed than in other contemporary societies, Walter Korpi (1985) drew from earlier criticisms of pluralism (for example, Schattschneider 1960) to argue that ‘power resources’ (access to capital and the means of production, as well as human capital) were not equally distributed, even in liberal democracies. Instead, Korpi suggested, the class-based distribution of power resources in capitalist democracies was a primary determinant of social policy. Furthermore, he said, the scope and content of welfare

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policies reflect class-related distributive conflict and partisan politics. Growing attention to the role of socio-economic class influenced a new generation of policy scholars who began to look at class configurations to account for social policy outcomes. This new approach is perhaps best illustrated by the classic work of Gøsta Esping-Andersen (1990), who argued that differences in social policy among advanced democracies result from the historical balance of power among class-based organizations. More recently, comparative policy scholars have examined the role of race to account for differences in welfare regimes and social policy (Lieberman 2002). By the 1980s, studies of public policy were also showing business interests to be overrepresented in policy-making, particularly in the United States. In an influential work, Gordon Adams (1981) found that decisions on the procurement of military equipment resulted from very particular relations that had developed among private defence contractors, members of Congress and officials from the Department of Defense. These relations, known as the ‘iron triangle,’ allowed business interests advantageous influence on decision- and policy-making. While some recent work shows that the influence of business in policy-making has fluctuated in cycles over periods of time (Vogel 2003) and that, at times, public-interest groups have been able to outmanoeuvre and defeat business influence (Vogel 1995), scholars appear to concur that, in general, business interests play a predominant role in US policy-making (Baumgartner et al. 2010). Despite these scholarly developments, by the mid-1990s there was a growing sense of frustration with some of the dominant approaches to comparative public policy, particularly in the area of social policy. Specifically, the assumption that a universal path of social policy modernization emerged out of a ‘logic of industrialism’ was increasingly challenged by the absence of policy convergence across the advanced industrialized democracies. But, in addition to criticizing dominant pluralist and neopluralist approaches, policy scholars were likewise growing sceptical of structuralist approaches that emphasized class relations and power resources as the primary explanation for the welfare policies adopted by governments. Instead, scholars began to explore, in explicitly comparative terms, how political struggles among classes were located in the broader historical and institutional contexts that influenced these struggles and their outcomes, and how subsequent policy outcomes were shaped by earlier policy/political settlements (Weir, Orloff, and Skocpol 1988, 16–17). According to Theda Skocpol

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and Edwin Amenta, ‘not only does politics create social policies, but social policies also create politics’ (1986, 149). Indeed, the concepts of ‘policy feedback’ and ‘path dependency’ are at the heart of much of the comparative social policy research conducted in the 1980s and 1990s by scholars such as Margaret Weir (Weir, Orloff, amd Skocpol 1988), Theda Skocpol (1992), and Paul Pierson (1994). For these and other scholars, historical legacies are key: state institutions emerge from, and thus reflect, earlier political and social struggles. Perhaps most important, the way political and social conflicts are settled at one point in time creates certain self-reinforcing dynamics, making particular outcomes more or less likely in the future. Likewise, policies themselves create path dependency because they ‘channel resources to (or from) particular actors, shift incentives that affect a range of relevant behaviours, facilitate or impede specific forms of collective action, and influence public opinion through a number of different mechanisms’ (Pierson 2006, 124–5). These ideas served as the basis for studying social policy in the United States and, particularly, the ‘exceptionalism’ of the American welfare state compared to the more robust welfare states common in western Europe. The body of work on social policy in the United States is thus a useful starting point for analysing public policy in Latin America, given that researchers were aiming to isolate the causal factors that gave rise to American ‘uniqueness.’ What is more, scholars assumed that comparison was not only possible, but, indeed, necessary. According to Amenta, a hallmark of this scholarship was its comparative method, whereby ‘policy developments in one country were analyzed with the backdrop of the experiences of other countries informing them’ (2003, 104). But rather than assuming modernization or convergence, driven by a uniform ‘logic of industrialism,’ scholars assumed that unique class relations, institutions, and historical legacies would give rise to varying policy outcomes. Likewise, some of the best work on politics and policy-making in Latin America has looked at the role of history (state formation and critical junctures), social structures (inequality), and institutions in shaping the policy process (see, for example, O’Donnell 1973; Anglade and Fortin 1990; Collier and Collier 1991; Mainwaring and Shugart 1997; Carey and Shugart 1998; López-Alves 2000; Baldez and Carey 2001; Jones 2001; Morgenstern and Nacif 2002; Samuels 2003; and Blofield 2006). Thus, the field of policy studies has undergone significant changes since it first emerged. Recent developments – in particular, the emphasis on historical and institutional context and the focus on both state and non-state actors – are highly relevant for studying policy-making

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in Latin America, where striking differences with the European and Anglo-American democracies persist. In the next section, we outline three features that we consider most relevant in understanding public policy in Latin America: state weakness and state-society relations, institutions, and inequality. It is important to note that, although we separate the three features for analytical purposes, they are to some extent overlapping in reality. State Weakness and State-Society Relations Scholars of Latin America repeatedly focus on the role of the state to explain a wide variety of political phenomena ranging from the adoption of economic models at various historical points to the implementation of political reforms and the relationship of national governments with international actors such as international financial institutions (see, for example, Stepan 1978; Bennett and Sharpe 1979; Evans 1979; Hamilton 1982; Grindle 1986; Haggard and Kaufman 1992; and Evans 1995). Because Latin American states are generally weak, although to different degrees, we argue that state weakness should be included into analyses of the policy process. State theorists have identified two key dimensions of state strength/weakness: state autonomy (the extent to which a state can act independently of dominant societal groups or powerful international actors) and state capacity (the state’s ability to perform basic functions and implement public policy). State Autonomy State autonomy is defined as the ability of a state – understood as the collection of organizations claiming control over territories and people – to formulate and pursue goals that are not simply reflective of the interests of social groups, classes, or society (Skocpol 1985, 9).2 In other words, a state is autonomous to the extent that it can act independently from outside pressures, both international and domestic. This concept has been at the core of explanations of political behaviour and policy outcomes in the global South, including Latin America – especially those dealing with economic policy. According to Stephan Haggard and Robert Kaufman, political institutions play a key role in economic decisions, and ‘the central theoretical debate in this area concerns the importance of state autonomy for the initiation and consolidation of fundamentally new policy directions’ (1992, 12).

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While there is no consensus on how autonomous Latin American states are, studies show that most possess relatively little autonomy visà-vis international actors, given most states’ dependent relationship within the international economic system. Early Marxist-inspired theories of Latin American development argued that the incorporation of Latin American colonies into the international capitalist system, through the extraction and export of primary commodities, rendered both local elites and national policies subservient to the international capitalist class, the ‘metropole bourgeoisie’ (see Wallerstein 1974; Amin 1976; Frank 1978). What is more, this relationship did not change fundamentally when the region gained political independence. Subsequent work by dependency theorists, however, rejected such a deterministic approach, arguing that, while the peripheral state cannot be understood without reference to the economic hegemony of the metropole, domestic class struggle also plays a role in shaping states’ lack of autonomy vis-à-vis international capital. For Cardoso and Faletto, domestic elites also benefited from their countries’ dependent relationship with international capital: Latin American political leaders were thus expressing the interests of their own export-based bourgeoisie and landholders, who acted as agents of foreign investments (1979, 129). These approaches are limited in accounting for policy change, however, as they overemphasize the role of international factors in policymaking and ignore the influence of domestic cultural, social, and political factors. According to Theda Skocpol, state autonomy is possible in dependent regions even when the interests of the international capitalist class are threatened (1985). These approaches nonetheless make an important contribution by pointing to constraints on policymaking posed by Latin America’s dependent position in the international political economy. For example, studies of the economic and social policies pursued by the military dictatorships during the 1970s and 1980s used the concept of state autonomy to explain policy outputs, demonstrating the importance of foreign influences on policy decisions (Hamilton 1982). Guillermo O’Donnell’s (1973) conceptualization of the ‘bureaucratic-authoritarian’ regimes in the Southern Cone in the 1960s and 1970s was clearly influenced by dependency thinking and the limits on economic development and democracy that emerge out of Latin America’s location in the global political economy. The concept of state autonomy is also useful to explain economic policymaking in post-transition Latin America. Studies of market reform during the 1980s and 1990s show that, in much of the region, state weakness

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vis-à-vis international lending institutions limited the policy options available to office holders (Stallings 1992; Rodrick 1996; Remmer 1998). Although many scholars have noted that, even in the global North, states have lost autonomy as the global economy has become increasingly liberalized and interconnected, in regions heavily reliant on foreign capital the international constraints policy-makers face are even greater. The threat of capital flight by foreign-exchange holders reduces the macroeconomic policy choices of national leaders (Haggard and Maxfield 1996), and policy-makers perceive pressure to deepen economic reform, despite internal opposition, as a signal to international lenders that the country is ‘open for business’ (Drazen 2000). Thus, a complete picture of the policy process in Latin America requires researchers to pay attention to the extent to which international pressures and constraints reduce policy options available to decision-makers. State autonomy with respect to domestic groups has also been central to studies of state-society relations in Latin America, where states tend to be weak vis-à-vis powerful social groups, often due to distinct processes of state formation in the region (López-Alves 2000). In one of the best studies on economic policy-making at the beginning of the twentieth century, Judith Teichman (1982) forcefully demonstrates that the inability of Argentina’s elites – though operating in a state considered one of the most autonomous at the time – to pursue industrialization was largely the result of the cattle-ranching class’s power to stall such efforts. Weak state autonomy continues to affect policy processes in contemporary Latin America. For example, the economic difficulties associated with the ‘exhaustion’ of the import substitution model of industrialization in the 1970s and 1980s were related to the inability of policy-makers to pursue economic policies independently of the interests of dominant economic groups, particularly industrialists who benefited from policies limiting external competition (Hamilton 1982; Barkey 1989). The fact that in many countries democratic transitions and economic liberalization occurred simultaneously makes questions regarding domestic state autonomy even more relevant. Market reforms have altered power relations significantly in the region: the state’s role in the economy has diminished dramatically, thereby reducing the leverage some social sectors enjoyed over policy-making while augmenting the influence of others. In principle, the new democratic regimes have opened more space for contestation and theoretically increased the ability of various social groups to influence policy. Political scientists have therefore been interested in how these concurrent processes either weaken or

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strengthen state autonomy, and what lessons these processes offer about how to study policy-making in post-transition Latin America. Studies of economic reforms show that, in some cases, technocratic elites have been able to insulate themselves from organized opposition groups that bear the brunt of the negative effects of reforms and that therefore seek to reverse them (Geddes 1994; Williamson 1994; Mainwaring and Shugart 1997). In this sense, states seem to be developing greater autonomy. More recent work, however, challenges such findings. Evidence from Mexico, traditionally assumed to possess a high level of autonomy, shows that significant support from non-state actors was needed for the government to carry out its program of economic reform (MacLeod 2004). Other work points to the very real influence that powerful economic actors in the region continue to have over the policy process even after the implementation of reforms (Teichman 2002). Yet, additional research demonstrates that, despite the preponderant influence over policy direction some social actors enjoy, some institutions retain a certain degree of insulation from societal pressure. For example, in a study of policy-making in Mexico during the 1990s, Eduardo Torres-Espinosa (1999) finds that pockets of a Weberian type of bureaucracy (autonomous and highly technical) exist, especially within the finance ministry. With respect to the impact of democratization, existing research shows an increased ability on the part of various sectors of society, including previously marginalized ones, to gain access to decision- and policy-making (Arvitzer 2002; Smulovitz and Peruzzotti 2003; Boesten 2006; Díez 2006; Garay 2007; Teichman 2009). However, the stark socioeconomic inequalities for which the region is notorious pose veritable challenges to the ability of excluded sectors to organize and influence policy. That the policy process has opened to some degree is beyond doubt, but this has not necessarily translated into an equal opening: in many countries in the region, the close links between political and economic elites continue to allow for direct access to the policy process by the most powerful groups, access that in certain cases has become institutionalized (Díez 2006). State Capacity State capacity refers to the ability of a state to perform basic functions, including tax collection and policing, and, like state autonomy, is a useful concept for analysing policy-making in Latin America, particularly

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for studies of policy implementation. Based on the Weberian conceptualization of the state (1968), and influenced by earlier work on a political system’s capacity to perform a variety of tasks (Almond and Powell 1966), Joel Migdal developed the concept of states’ ‘capabilities’ – their capacity to bring about changes in society through state planning, policies, and actions. Achieving these goals requires the ability to penetrate society, regulate social relationships, extract resources, and direct resources in determined ways (1988, 4). No state evidently conforms to Weber’s ideal type, which he himself called an ‘iron cage,’ and the capacity of states to perform all these functions is never absolute. Thus, in this view, to classify states along a dichotomized view of ‘weak’ or ‘strong’ is overly simplistic. Instead, it is best to conceive of statesociety relations as embedded with society (O’Donnell 1993; Evans 1995). O’Donnell argues that states are interwoven in complex and different ways with their respective societies and a clear separation of state and society simply does not exist. Yet the concept of states’ capabilities remains useful: it allows the researcher to establish (and account for) the gap that often exists between policy objectives and results. Scholarly explanations for low levels of state capacity in Latin America often rest on historical analyses of state formation. Throughout the region, state bureaucracies sought to establish control over vast territories that were never fully under the control of central units. These historical origins contributed to the emergence of weak states characterized today by wide gaps between policy formulation and implementation. This is best demonstrated by the historical inability of states to perform one of the most basic functions: tax collection. Charles Tilly (1985) famously argued that the ability of states to coerce citizens into paying taxes was a fundamental condition for the emergence of strong, centralized states. In Latin America, central authorities historically have been unable to penetrate societies to extract such resources, a phenomenon that has transcended various political regimes (Anglade and Fortin 1990).3 Such historical weakness was exacerbated by the reduction of the size of the state during the economic reform programs of the 1980s and 1990s, resulting in what O’Donnell has called the ‘state-society crisis’ (1993). He argues that ineffective states coexist with autonomous, also territorially based, spheres of power, rendering states unable to regulate social life across territories. Districts peripheral to the national centre ‘create (or reinforce) systems of local power which tend to reach extremes of violent, personalistic rule – patrimonial, even sultanistic – open to all sorts of violent and arbitrary practices’ (1994, x).

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This situation has rendered such states unable to perform even the most basic functions, which has led to their inability to monopolize the use of force, enforce laws, provide security, and or extract resources through taxation from certain sectors of society. While a certain ‘slippage’ occurs during policy implementation, especially where implementing bureaucracies are ‘captured’ by highly mobilized interest groups (Ellerman 2005), in Latin America weak state capacity often has led to a complete inability to implement policies. In some cases, attempts at policy implementation have been met with violence by non-state actors (Díez 2006, 128–34). Even in Mexico, a state assumed to be strong, the implementation of the ambitious privatization program of the 1990s would not have been possible without the support of non-state actors (MacLeod 2004). Given the low autonomy and weak capacity of most Latin American countries, the nature of state institutions and state-society relations is a critical starting point for analysing public policy in the region. Institutions There is now widespread acceptance among political scientists that institutions and institutional design matter. Especially since the most recent transitions to democracy, scholars of Latin America have debated the effects of presidentialism, constitutions, decentralization, and, more recently, the judicialization of politics on the policy-making process. Yet the proliferation of such studies does not necessarily help us understand how to study institutions, which institutions to study, or what might be unique about those in Latin America. Although the contributions to this volume advocate a variety of positions regarding the analytic value of institutionalism, in this chapter we make three central claims about the role of institutions in Latin America. First, we urge researchers to be attentive to the historical, social, and ideational context in which institutions emerge. A careful analysis of the power relations present at the time of creation will reveal the way institutions often reinforce unequal power relations and mobilize bias in favour of certain social groups. Policy outcomes often reflect the historical power relations embedded in institutions. Where these relationships are unequal, as they so often are in Latin America, paying attention to historical origins is critical. According to Pierson and Skocpol, even if power inequalities are modest initially, they can become deeply entrenched and reinforced through institutional practices and dominant

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ways of political understanding (2002, 700). Given Latin America’s historical legacies of social exclusion based on class, gender, race, and ethnicity, inequalities often have been reproduced through public policies that target social assistance to discrete categories of individuals rather than create universal citizenship rights. Second, researchers should be attentive to the relative weakness of many institutions in Latin America and, as O’Donnell has noted, the relative absence of institutions of horizontal accountability – namely, ‘the controls that state agencies are supposed to exercise over other state agencies’ (1996, 17–18). Weak and inefficient bureaucracies are a characteristic of numerous Latin American countries, creating policymaking processes that are more likely to respond to the interests of powerful groups and undermining the effective implementation of public policies that respond to the needs of poor majorities. Another problem that has plagued Latin American countries – namely, the excessive power wielded by unconstrained and unaccountable presidents – is likewise related to the weakness of the formal institutions of policymaking, whether legislatures, judiciaries, or administrative agencies to fulfil oversight or accountability functions. But it would be misleading to conclude that policy-making in Latin America occurs predominantly in the context of weak institutions. While some institutions are indeed weak and ineffective, O’Donnell also notes that others are strong and are not necessarily those that provide for robust democracy, full and equal citizenship, and effective policy-making. Instead, he argues, one of the most deeply entrenched institutions in the region is particularism, or clientelism (1996, 3). Our third claim follows from this: researchers should pay careful attention to what O’Donnell labels ‘informal institutionalization’ (1996) and what Gretchen Helmke and Steven Levitsky call simply ‘informal institutions,’ defined as ‘socially shared rules, usually unwritten, that are created, communicated, and enforced outside officially sanctioned channels’ (2006, 5). Informal rules can play a determinant role in policy-making in Latin America – indeed, some scholars have argued that examining the formal rules governing institutions would be misleading because of the wide gap between formal (written) rules of behaviour and the actual rules that political actors follow (O’Donnell 1996; Ferraro 2008). While scholars have commonly drawn a distinction between rules (assumed to be formal) and norms or ideas (assumed to be informal), the concept of informal institutions goes further than simply taking ideas or culture into account. Indeed, a hallmark of the ‘new’ institutionalism

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is its embrace of the normative and ideational aspects of institutions. Paying attention to informal institutions is therefore consistent with both sociological and historical institutionalism. Of all the variants of ‘new’ institutionalism, sociological institutionalism (SI) defines institutions the most broadly, including not only formal rules, but also norms, cognitive scripts, and moral templates that provide frames for human action and interaction. Sociological institutionalists do not draw a boundary between culture and institutions, instead viewing the two as inexorably intertwined (Hall and Taylor 1996, 947). Historical institutionalism (HI) also defines institutions broadly, yet stops short of viewing culture and institutions as indistinguishable. Nonetheless, HI scholars consider institutions to be reflections of dominant ideas in society, the polity, and even the prevailing economic structure (Hall and Taylor 1996; Pierson and Skocpol 2002). Both variants of institutionalism thus contain space for exploring the informal sources of institutionalized behaviour. Importantly, however, Helmke and Levitsky warn scholars not to equate informal institutions with culture or with mere behavioural regularities. Instead, to be considered an informal institution, the behaviour must be patterned, rules bound, and rooted in shared expectations (rather than simply in shared values) about how others will behave (Helmke and Levitsky 2005, 727). A commonly cited example is the difference between removing one’s hat in church versus removing one’s coat in a restaurant. The former is an example of an informal institution because violating the rule triggers a response: social disapproval. Failing to remove one’s coat in a restaurant might be considered odd, but would not provoke disapproval. The example demonstrates that informal institutions are defined by the existence of some mechanism for punishing those who fail to comply. While sanctions for violating informal institutions are different from those for violating formal rules – in the sense that they are not applied by official or public bodies – researchers nonetheless can observe them. In addition to social disapproval, such sanctions might include being shut out of networks of influence or power or failing to be nominated or appointed to political positions. Examples of informal institutions abound in Latin America. They include unwritten rules of organization and fundraising in Argentina’s Peronist party, the norms of consensus seeking and the distribution of candidacies and government posts in the coalition of parties that governed Chile between 1990 and 2010, and the informal community justice institutions in Bolivia and Peru (Freidenberg and Levitsky 2006;

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Siavelis 2006; Van Cott 2006). In some cases, informal rules provide correctives to formal rules that fail to produce optimal outcomes; elsewhere, informal rules undermine democratic practices. Scholars of Chilean politics, for example, have noted that despite a constitution that concentrates power in the executive, an informal institution of consultation and consensus seeking has emerged that ultimately constrains presidential power in potentially democratic ways (Siavelis 2006). In other countries, some informal institutions are more corrosive of democratic practices and the rule of law – norms that protect and even reward police involved in extrajudicial killings of known criminals are an example (Brinks 2006). The above examples illustrate the value added of this conceptualization of informal institutions. This approach goes beyond acknowledging the role of culture, symbols, and meaning frames found in sociological institutionalism. In fact, blurring the boundary between culture and institutions, as SI scholars often do, closes off theoretical space for exploring the effect of different cultural norms on political outcomes, either cross-nationally or over time. Scholars of public policy need to explore whether ideas rooted in particular or broader cultures reinforce or undermine existing institutions. Viewing culture and institutions as inseparable does not allow for an investigation into the incompatibilities of deeply entrenched cultural norms, like particularism or even machismo, and institutions that are supposed to promote democracy and the rule of law. Inequality and the Policy Process in Latin America Latin America is notable for its staggeringly high levels of income and asset inequality. While other regions of the world also have high (and even higher) levels of poverty, Latin America stands out as having the world’s highest levels of inequality. Indeed, international organizations argue that inequality in Latin America not only undermines democracy, but also obstructs economic growth and poverty reduction. Although scholars frequently take inequality as the dependent variable and ask whether and how public policies mitigate or exacerbate inequality, inequality can also be considered an independent variable that shapes policy-making. Social inequality affects policy-making in three ways: First, it creates the conditions that both give birth to and reproduce certain informal institutions – particularly clientelism. Second, inequality shapes public

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opinion in ways that undermine the politicization of problems related to inequality – thus also undermining social cohesiveness and cross-class solidarity – thereby depriving progressive social movements and advocacy groups of a broader social base to mobilize for policy change. Third, inequality shapes who participates in policy-making: those without resources are far less likely to gain access to the policy process. Largely, however, inequality shapes the context in which policymaking takes place by inhibiting the placing of certain issues on the policy agenda. This is akin to the argument of Bachrach and Baratz (1962) about the mobilization of bias, which keeps certain issues off the policy agenda. Evidence of this abounds: despite widespread poverty, the bulk of social spending involves regressive rather than progressive components, targeting the middle and upper sectors rather than the poor (Huber 2009, 652). Merike Blofield (2006) argues, moreover, that inequality shapes the problem-framing and agenda-setting stages of the policy process, influencing public attitudes towards public policies, especially ones that redistribute wealth, but also allowing elites to frame social problems in individualist terms – by suggesting, for example, that poverty results from laziness and moral failing – rather than in public or collective terms. Public opinion on inequality is also more polarized in Latin America than in European democracies, with implications for how inequality is treated in the policy process (Blofield and Luna 2011). Given the lack of consensus on appropriate responses to inequality, with public opinion clustering at the extremes rather than in the centre, parties that target the median voter avoid politicizing inequality as a policy issue. Similarly, inequality is said to be corrosive of social solidarity (O’Donnell 1998). Yet some sense of solidarity and common public interest is critical to marshalling support for redistributive social policies to reverse patterns of inequality. Thus, inequality generates a certain degree of path dependence: the political effect of inequality – lack of social solidarity and polarized public opinion – serves as an obstacle to the kinds of policy solutions that would reduce inequality. Inequality also fosters clientelistic relations, which, in turn, have an important effect on the policy process. Clientelism, understood as a relationship between two individuals of unequal power that is characterized by an exchange of loyalty and support for material benefits, tends to be more salient, and resilient, in societies with high levels of socio-economic disparities and where the management and distribution of resources is concentrated in fewer hands. Even in democratic political contexts, in which the dispersion of power is theoretically higher, socio-economic

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inequalities and high levels of poverty are strongly associated with the entrenchment of clientelism. In fact, Herbert Kitschelt (2000) has found that clientelism is more prevalent in democracies that exhibit higher levels of socio-economic inequalities and that it tends to acquire important degrees of institutionalization. Further, clientelism is bound up with state weakness. Clientelism influences public policy implementation, especially of distributive social policies, while clientelistic practices affect the distribution of goods and services by favouring and rewarding individuals who support certain political actors. This phenomenon contributes to widening the gap between policy objectives and their implementation as the latter assumes a particularistic dimension. As Jonathan Fox (1994) argues, clientelism is one of the most important obstacles to the spread and adoption of universalistic ideas of citizenship in the interaction between state and society in posttransition Latin America, a phenomenon that, in turn, reinforces socioeconomic inequalities. This is what Terry Lynn Karl has termed the region’s ‘vicious cycle’ (2004). The particularistic implementation of distributive policy also contributes to the alienation of individuals from the state: by breeding cynicism about institutions and the state in general, it inhibits their desire and ability to organize and influence the policymaking process (O’Donnell 1997). Moreover, clientelism strengthens informal power structures dominated by regional elites, especially in rural areas, thus undermining the state’s ability to implement non-distributive policies, such as those related to law and order (O’Donnell 1993). Socio-economic inequality also fragments potential collective actors and deprives the poor and the marginalized of the resources necessary to participate in the political arena. Scholars of social movements have noted that collective actors improve their chances of influencing public policy when they can craft coalitions that transcend class lines and attract support from wider segments of the population. When the poor and the marginalized attract support from the middle class, they are more likely to have their policy concerns heard. Middle-class participants not only have greater financial resources to dedicate to collective organizing; they also are more likely to have the skills, expertise, and personal contacts that increase their chances of successful advocacy. Indeed, the success of the pro-democracy movements that emerged in many Latin American countries in the 1970s and 1980s illustrates the  importance of broad-based mobilization that includes members of the middle class and the lower classes (popular sectors). Unfortunately, the unity and shared purposes that held these coalitions together during

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their struggle against dictatorship was not sustained in the posttransition environments. A number of researchers have documented the processes through which popular sector organizations were actively demobilized (for example, Oxhorn 1995) and increasingly squeezed out of arenas in which their policy concerns could be heard (Schild 1998). Once deprived of middle-class allies with greater resources to mount collective action, the poor are less likely to find ways to express their grievances in public arenas. Taking into account the effect of neoliberal market reforms on the poor sheds further light on the difficulties of engaging in sustained collective action. One of the most destructive outcomes of the economic reforms adopted in the 1980s and 1990s is the growing informalization and precariousness of work. Today, the majority of Latin American workers participate in the informal economy, entirely lacking the legal protections, decent wages, and social benefits provided by formal employment (Hoffman and Portes 2003). According to Philip Oxhorn, precarious employment and economic insecurity mean that ‘the necessity of day-to-day survival may make public participation and collective action seem at best a luxury one can no longer afford, and at worst a wasted effort’ (2007, 128). Inequality, therefore, serves to inhibit the ability of the poor to engage in the kind of collective effort that could put their concerns on the public agenda. Overview of the Book The chapters in the first part of the book explore various aspects of policy-making and policy processes in Mexico, Chile, and Argentina. In Chapter 2, Jordi Díez uses the case study of Mexico to examine processes of change and continuity in the role of executives in policy-making. He argues that, while the stabilization of democratic governance has allowed previously weak political institutions, such as legislatures and courts, to have a larger input into the policy process, the executive branch continues to dominate. Díez shows that presidents continue to be central to policy-making, given their ability to derive power from an array of sources, such as personal relations, informal yet widely accepted practices, and the large discretion they enjoy in the exercise of administrative and regulatory powers. In Chapter 3, Judith Teichman uses the case of industrial policy in Chile to argue that, while an institutional focus is important, the wider context of power relations and the struggles among social forces should be considered to obtain a full

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understanding of the policy process in that country. In Chapter 4, Viviana Patroni and Ruth Felder show that, while Argentina’s labour policies are shaped by structural factors, they are also influenced by the ideas inherent in social identities: during the past two Peronist administrations, policy has been geared towards resolving contention over social policy, a process directly shaped by the identity of Peronism, which has relied substantially on the distribution of rewards to the support base through clientelism. The chapters in Part II explore the themes of advocacy and policy change. In Chapter 5, Catalina Smulovitz shows that two very novel phenomena have emerged in the region over the past decade: the increased role of the judiciary in politics and the use of law and rightsframed discourses as political tools by sectors of civil society. Smulovitz argues that these developments have important consequences for the formulation of public policies, the type of actors that participate in policy-making, and the topics that gain public attention. Courts are redefining public policies decided by representative authorities, and citizens and organized social actors are using the courts and the law not only to address private demands but also to advance social demands and to redefine and reject the passage of certain public policies. In Chapter 6, Juan Marsiaj explores advocacy networks in Brazil in the context of federalism. Looking at the formulation of sexual diversity policy in two states, Bahia and Rio de Janeiro, Marsiaj reveals that a great degree of variation exists in the level of access to decision-making arenas that social movement activists are able to attain. He argues that socio-economic structure and the dominant political culture, as well as the ideological environment and make-up of government, strongly shape the degree of openness of subnational policy venues in the Brazilian federation. In Chapter 7, Delphine Lacombe argues that understanding agenda setting and problem definition requires attention to the broader social and political context. Exploring the theme of violence against women through the controversy surrounding the abuse of Zoilamérica Narváez in Nicaragua, Lacombe makes a case for examining the cognitive, social, and political environments that surround a problem when studying the policy process. In Chapter 8, Mary Rose Kubal explores the influence of international actors and transnational policy networks on the diffusion and adoption of public security policies in Argentina and Chile. Kubal’s analysis draws attention to the importance of state strength and the role that civil society plays in the implementation of policy.

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The third part of the volume turns to old and new directions in social policy. In Chapter 9, Lucy Luccisano and Laura Macdonald analyse the implementation of social policy in Mexico, concentrating on an innovative and highly influential poverty-reduction program, Oportunidades. This program was among the first to adopt conditional cash transfers (CCTs), an approach to poverty reduction that has now become widespread throughout the global South. Despite an important array of mechanisms developed to diminish the clientelistic implementation of the program, Luccisano and Macdonald show that clientelism continues to characterize the distribution of the program’s benefits. The authors argue that socio-economic inequalities are at the root of these practices and that such programs are unlikely to be effective so long as wide social disparities continue. In Chapter 10, Débora Lopreite draws attention to the gendered bases of social policy in Argentina, arguing that, while social policies are shaped by broader socio-economic changes, they are also influenced by societal ideas of gender relations. In Chapter 11, Rossana Castiglioni analyses social policy in Chile during the administration of Concertación president Michelle Bachelet. Castiglioni looks at the evolution of three areas of social policy – pensions, education, and health care – and argues that, even in an administration committed to equality and progressive reform, there was more continuity than change in social policy due to institutional, societal and ideational factors. The book’s concluding chapter returns to the main themes outlined in this chapter – weak states, informal institutions, and inequality – and summarizes the main contributions of the various chapters in relation to these three themes. It also adds two new issues that emerge in the case studies: the role of ideas and the more recent ‘shift to the left’ in the region.

NOTES 1 These stages are: agenda setting, policy formulation, decision-making (policy adoption), policy implementation, and, finally, policy evaluation. 2 State autonomy was originally conceptualized by Marxist thinking and referred strictly to the ability of states to act independently of capitalist classes (Miliband 1969; Poulantzas 1972). The concept has been expanded to include independence of action vis-à-vis powerful social groups, not only elites (Haggard and Kaufman 1982; Centeno 1994).

26 Comparative Public Policy in Latin America 3 To this day, Latin America is the least-taxed region of the world, with a tax burden amounting to 16 per cent of gross domestic product, compared with an average of 36 per cent for member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (Centrángolo and Gómez Sabaini 2006).

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Huber, Evelyne. 2009. ‘Politics and Inequality in Latin America.’ PS: Political Science and Politics 42, no. 4: 651–5. Jones, Charles. 1970. An Introduction to the Study of Public Policy. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Jones, Mark. 2001. ‘Political Institutions and Public Policy in Argentina: An Overview of the Formation and Execution of the National Budget.’ In Presidents, Parliaments, and Policy, ed. Stephan Haggard and Matthew McCubbins. New York: Cambridge University Press. Karl, Terry Lynn. 2004. ‘The Vicious Cycle of Inequality in Latin America.’ In What Justice? Whose Justice? ed. Susan Eva Eckstein and Timothy P. Wickham-Crowley. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kingdon, John W. 1995. Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies. New York: Harper Collins. Kitschelt, Herbert. 2000. ‘Linkages between Citizens and Politicians in Democratic Politics.’ Comparative Political Studies 6, no. 7: 845–79. Korpi, Walter. 1985. ‘Power Resources Approach vs. Action and Conflict: On Casual and Intentional Explanations in the Study of Power.’ Sociological Theory 3, no. 2: 31–45. Laswell, Harold. 1956. The Decision Process: Seven Categories of Functional Analysis. College Park: University of Maryland Press. Lieberman, Robert C. 2002. ‘Political Institutions and the Politics of Race in the Development of the Modern Welfare State.’ In Restructuring the Welfare State: Political Institutions and Policy Change, ed. Bo Rothstein and Sven Steinmo. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. López-Alves, Fernando. 2000. State Formation and Democracy in Latin America, 1810–1900. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. MacLeod, Dag. 2004. ‘Privatization and the Limits of State Autonomy in Mexico: Rethinking the Orthodox Paradox.’ Latin American Perspectives 32, no. 4: 36–64. Mainwaring, Scott, and Mathew S. Shugart. 1997. Presidentialism and Democracy in Latin America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Marsh, David. 1998. Comparing Policy Networks. Buckingham, UK; Philadelphia: Open University Press. Marsh, David, and R.A.W. Rhodes. 1992. Policy Networks in British Government. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Marsh, David, and Martin Smith. 2000. ‘Understanding Policy Networks: Towards a Dialectical Approach.’ Policy Studies 48, no. 1: 4–21. Mazmanian, Daniel A., and Paul S. Sabatier. 1983. Implementation and Public Policy. Glenview, IL: Scott Foresman. Mesa-Lago, Carmelo, and Katharina Müller. 2002. ‘The Politics of Pension Reform in Latin America.’ Journal of Latin American Studies 34, no. 3: 687–715.

30 Comparative Public Policy in Latin America Migdal, Joel. 1988. Strong Societies, Weak States: State-Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Miliband, Ralph. 1969. The State in Capitalist Society: The Analysis of the Western System of Power. London: Winfield and Nelson. Morgenstern, Scott, and Benito Nacif. 2001. Legislative Politics in Latin America. New York: Cambridge University Press. Munck, Gerardo. 2007. Regimes and Democracy in Latin America: Theories and Methods. New York: Oxford University Press. Nelson, Barbara. 1984. Making an Issue of Child Abuse: Political Agenda Setting for Social Problems. Chicago: Chicago University Press. O’Donnell, Guillermo. 1973. Modernization and Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism: Studies in South American Politics. Berkeley, CA: Institute for International Studies. – 1993. ‘On the State, Democratization and Some Conceptual Problems: A Latin American View with Glances at Some Post-Communist Countries.’ World Development 21, no. 8: 1355–69. – 1996. ‘Illusions about Consolidation.’ Journal of Democracy 7, no. 2: 34–51. – 1998. ‘Poverty and Inequality in Latin America: Some Political Reflections.’In Poverty and Inequality in Latin America: Issues and Challenges, ed. Víctor E. Tokman and Guillermo O’Donnell. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Oxhorn, Philip D. 1995. Organizing Civil Society: The Popular Sectors and the Struggle for Democracy in Chile. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. – 2007. ‘Neopluralism and Citizenship in Latin America.’ In Citizenship in Latin America, ed. Joseph S. Tulchin and Meg Ruthenburg. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Pal, Leslie. 2006. Beyond Policy Analysis: Public Issue Management in Turbulent Times. Toronto: Nelson. Pierson, Paul. 1994. Dismantling the Welfare State? Reagan, Thatcher, and the Politics of Retrenchment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. – 2004. Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. – 2006. ‘Public Policies as Institutions.’ In Rethinking Political Institutions: The Art of the State, ed. Ian Shapiro, Stephen Skowronek, and Daniel Galvin. New York: New York University Press. Pierson, Paul, and Theda Skocpol. 2002. ‘Historical Institutionalism in Contemporary Political Science.’ In Political Science: State of the Discipline, ed. Ira Katznelson and Helen Milner. New York: W.W. Norton. Poulantzas, Nico. 1972. ‘The Problem with the Capitalist State.’ In Ideology in Social Science: Readings in Critical Sociological Theory, ed. Robin Blackburn. New York: Pantheon.

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Pressman, Jeffrey, and Aaron Wildavsky. 1973. Implementation. Berkeley: University of California Press. Remmer, Karl L. 1998. ‘The Politics of Neoliberal Economic Reform in South America, 1980–1994.’ Studies in Comparative International Development 33, no. 2: 3–29. Rodrick, D. 1996. ‘Understanding Economic Policy Reform.’ Journal of Economic Literature 34, no. 1: 9–41. Sabatier, Paul A. 2007. Theories of the Policy Process. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Samuels, David. 2003. Ambition, Federalism, and Legislative Politics in Brazil. New York: Cambridge University Press. Schattschneider, E.E. 1960. The Semisovereign People: A Realist’s View of Democracy in America. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Schild, Verónica. 1998. ‘Market Citizenship and the “New Democracies”: The Ambiguous Legacies of the Contemporary Chilean Women’s Movement.’ Social Politics 5, no. 2: 232–49. Siavelis, Peter. 2006. ‘Accommodating Informal Institutions and Chilean Democracy.’ In Informal Institutions and Democracy: Lessons from Latin America, ed. Gretchen Helmke and Steven Levitsky. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Simeon, Richard. 1976. ‘Studying Public Policy.’ Canadian Journal of Political Science 9, no. 4: 548–80. Skocpol, Theda. 1985. ‘Bringing the State Back In: Strategies of Analysis in Current Research.’ In Bringing the State Back In, ed. Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. – 1992. Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Skocpol, Theda, and Edwin Amenta. 1986. ‘States and Social Policies.’ Annual Review of Sociology 12: 131–57. Sloan, John W. 1984. Public Policy in Latin America: A Comparative Survey. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Smith, Peter H. 1995. ‘The Changing Agenda for Social Science Research on Latin America.’ In Latin America in Comparative Perspective: New Approaches to Methods and Analysis, ed. Peter H. Smith. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Smulovitz, Catalina, and Enrique Peruzzotti. 2003. ‘Societal and Horizontal Controls: Two Cases of a Fruitful Relationship.’ In Democratic Accountability in Latin America, ed. Scott Mainwaring and Christopher Welna. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

32 Comparative Public Policy in Latin America Spiller, Pablo T., Ernesto Stein, and Mariano Tommasi. 2008. ‘Political Institutions, Policymaking, and Policy: An Introduction.’ In Policymaking in Latin America: How Politics Shapes Policies, ed. Ernesto Stein and Mariano Tommasi. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Spiller, Pablo T., and Mariano Tommasi. 2007. The Institutional Foundations of Public Policy in Argentina. New York: Cambridge University Press. Stallings, Barbara. 1992. ‘International Influence on Economic Policy: Debt, Stabilization, and Structural Reform.’ In The Politics of Economic Adjustment: International Constraints, Distributive Conflict, and the State, ed. Stephen Haggard and Robert R. Kaufman. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Stepan, Alfred. 1978. State and Society: Peru in Comparative Perspective. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Stones, R. 1992. ‘International Monetary Relations, Policy Networks and the Labour Government’s Policy of Non-devaluation 1964–1967.’ In Policy Networks in British Government, ed. D. Marsh and R.A.W. Rhodes. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Teichman, Judith. 1982. ‘Businessmen and Politics in the Process of Economic Development: Argentina and Canada.’ Canadian Journal of Political Science 15, no. 1: 7–66. – 2002. The Politics of Freeing Markets in Latin America: Argentina, Chile, and Mexico. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. – 2008. ‘Competing Visions of Democracy and Development in the Era of Neo-Liberalism in Mexico and Chile.’ International Political Science Review 30, no. 1: 67–87. – 2009. ‘Redistributive Conflict and Social Policy in Latin America.’ World Development 36, no. 3: 446–60. Thatcher, Mark. 1998. ‘The Development of Policy Network Analyses.’ Journal of Theoretical Politics 10, no. 4: 386–416. Tilly, Charles. 1985. ‘War Making and State Making as Organized Crime.’ In Bringing the State Back In, ed. Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Torres Espinosa, Eduardo. 1999. Bureaucracy and Politics in Mexico: The Case of the Secretariat of Programming and Budget. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. Van Cott, Donna Lee. 2006. ‘Dispensing Justice at the Margins of Formality: The Informal Rule of Law in Latin America.’ In Informal Institutions and Democracy in Latin America, ed. Grethcen Helmke and Steven Levitsky. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Vogel, David. 1995. Trading Up: Consumer and Environmental Regulation in a Global Economy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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– 2003 Fluctuating Fortunes: The Political Power of Business in America. New York: Basic Books. Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1974. The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World Economy in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Academic Press. Weber, Max. 1968. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. New York: Bedminster Books. Weir, Margaret, Ann Shola Orloff, and Theda Skocpol. 1988. ‘Introduction: Understanding American Social Politics.’ In The Politics of Social Policy in the United States, ed. Margaret Weir, Ann Shola Orloff, and Theda Skocpol. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Weyland, Kurt. 2007. Bounded Rationality and Policy Diffusion: Social Sector Reform in Latin America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Williamson, John, ed. 1994. The Political Economy of Policy Reform. Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics. Yashar, Deborah. 2005. Contesting Citizenship in Latin America: The Rise of Indigenous Movements and the Postliberal Challenge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

2 Presidentialism and Policy-making in Latin America: The Case of Mexico jordi díez

Among formal institutions, the executive branch of government plays the most important role in the setting of the agenda and the making of public policy in advanced democratic states. While recent work on public policy has shown that the number of actors and institutions involved in the policy process has increased as a result of a variety of phenomena, such as globalization and the proliferation of policy experts (Hajer 2003; Pal 2006; Smith and Orsini 2008), the executive continues to be the most important actor in the making of policy (Kingdon 2003; Pal 2006; Sabatier 2007). In presidential systems, such as those in the United States and most of Latin America, presidential power is constitutionally controlled by the distribution of power among the three branches of government, through a system of horizontal accountability more generally known as ‘checks and balances.’ In federal systems of government, presidential power is further weakened by its distribution among levels of government. While the executive is the most important policy actor, congresses, judiciaries, and subnational governments play important roles given that they are generally accorded constitutional prerogatives in the making of policy. The study of public policy, therefore, should take into account the manner in which power is distributed among these various institutions and how they, in turn, shape the formulation of policy. In the United States, until the administration of George W. Bush (2000–8) altered the clear separation of power between the executive and legislative branches of government through President Bush’s increased reliance on ‘signing statements,’1 the ability of US presidents to set the agenda and to formulate policy had been limited largely to the prerogatives accorded to their office by the constitution. At the same

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time, the US Congress plays a critical role in the formulation of policy and is widely considered to be the second most important actor in the policy process.2 The US system is important for the study of policymaking in Latin America since most countries in the region have adopted presidential systems of government modelled after it.3 Latin American presidents, however, traditionally have not had similar checks on their policy-making power as in the US system but instead have concentrated it in their office through a variety of institutional, personal, and cultural resources. As a result, Latin American institutions constitutionally designed to be central policy actors have been rendered weak. Legislatures, for example, historically have been either mostly reactive to policy emanating from the executive or ‘rubber stamp’ institutions that have acquiesced mechanically to the policy proposals submitted by the president (Close 1995; Morgenstern and Nacif 2002). US presidents have non-constitutional resources at their disposal that allow them to influence the policy process directly, such as their ability to hire and fire public servants, the relative organizational cohesiveness of their office, and the public attention their policy objectives attain (Kingdon 2003, 24–6). The resources available to Latin American presidents, in contrast, are much greater, and have allowed them to concentrate power in the executive branch to a far greater extent than their US counterparts. Latin American presidents consequently have dominated the policy-making process. Such concentration of power in the hands of Latin American presidents is perhaps best captured by a concept used in the study of Mexican politics during the period of one-party rule by the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI, or Institutional Revolutionary Party) from 1929 to 2000, that of presidencialismo, which referred to the high concentration of power that rested in the executive and its effective domination of the legislative and judicial branches of government.4 Roderic Camp defines ‘presidentialism’ as ‘the concept that most political power lies in the hands of the president and all that is good or bad in government policy stems from the president’ (2007, 10). Several features of Mexican politics during the PRI’s rule allowed for such concentration of power, including, most evidently, the control of the ruling party of all aspects of national life and the use of ‘meta-constitutional’ powers (Carpizo 1978).5 This chapter looks at the evolution of presidentialism in transitional Mexico to explore the role presidencies play in policy-making in Latin America. The Mexican case is useful in this exercise as its president was once one of the most powerful in the region. However, the PRI’s

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loss of a majority of the lower house of Congress in 1997 and of the presidency in the 2000 general elections significantly altered the balance of power among the various branches of government, and the president no longer has the omnipotence in policy-making he once had. Indeed, one of the most salient features of the administration of Vicente Fox (2000–6) was his inability to achieve several of his policy objectives due to his failure to pass them through a congress in which no party held a majority. The main reason is that when the president’s party does not control congress, the president’s policy-making strength diminishes dramatically. While the change in the executive-legislative balance of power induced by Mexico’s transition from one-party rule to multiparty democracy has challenged the usefulness of the concept of presidencialismo in the study of contemporary Mexican politics, and while there is no doubt that the Mexican presidency is not as powerful an office as it once was, given the array of institutional, cultural, and organizational factors that make Latin American presidencies significantly more powerful than that in the United States, an adapted version of presidentialism can be of great use in the study of policy-making in Latin America more widely. The concentration of power in the office of Latin American presidents can be captured by the concept of ‘hyperpresidentialism.’ Even in the case of Mexico, which legally has one of the weakest presidencies in the hemisphere, the president enjoys significant levels of discretion in the use of administrative and regulatory powers that allow him to influence the policy process in a direct and fundamental way, and at times even to thwart the will of Congress. Moreover, formal institutional rules, such as the clause that bars members of Congress from serving consecutive terms, as well as vestiges of corporatist practices, continue to make the Mexican presidency a dominant institution in the policy process. Hyperpresidentialism, as I use the concept in this chapter, differs from the stylized view on Latin American presidentialism that some political scientists have adopted. These analysts see the concentration of power in Latin American executives – sometimes understood as ‘neopopulism’ – as the result of a personalization of power by presidents, in a confrontational way, who show disdain for democratic institutions, especially legislatures (Linz 1990; O’Donnell 1991; Weyland 2001, 2003). My use of the concept, however, belongs to a different understanding, one that looks at the de jure and de facto sources of presidential power and that does not necessarily regard it as inherently antidemocratic.6

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Presidentialism in Latin America For the most part, Latin American countries adopted systems of government modelled after the US presidential system at independence and, after the last phase of military rule, these systems were restored – in fact, the region has the largest number of presidential systems in the world. In these systems, power at the national level is constitutionally divided among the three branches of government: the executive branch is accountable to the legislative and judicial branches, which function as mechanisms to check executive power. Because of the similarity of their systems of government, the public policy-making process in Latin American countries theoretically should function in similar ways as in the United States. Even though Latin American executives are given constitutional prerogatives that make them the most influential actors in the policy process, legislatures also generally have strong policymaking prerogatives and supreme courts possess the power of judicial review. Several factors, however, have contributed to the undue concentration of power in the hands of presidents who, as a result, have dominated the policy-making process. The first of these factors derives from corporatist mechanisms of interest mediation between state and society that are present in many countries of the region. The establishment of corporatist structures during the 1940s and 1950s under populist regimes created links between state and society that became the primary channel through which societal demands could be advanced into government and, ultimately, the policy process. Corporatism thus rendered the legislative branch of government – the foremost mechanism of representation in democratic societies and the primary check on executive power – very weak.7 For the most part, policy under corporatism was formulated by a small group of individuals made up of the president, his advisors, and corporatist leaders. This is especially the case in some policy areas, such as labour policy – for example, in the setting of minimum-wage levels. Corporatist leaders, such as union representatives, then, in many cases have been significantly more influential in the policy process than have congressional leaders. A second source of presidentialism derives from the economic and political instability that has been a constant in the region for decades. As in most democratic systems, Latin American presidents have the constitutional prerogative to invoke emergency powers, such as estado de sitio (states of siege) and estado de emergencia (states of emergency),

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which allow them to suppress basic civil rights such as habeas corpus and to legislate by decree. Because of (real or imagined) socio-political crises – for example, the radicalization of some groups in the 1960s – or the economic crises the region underwent in the 1980s, Latin American presidents have tended to rely on these tools to concentrate power in their hands. The cases of Argentina and Peru during the 1990s are the most notable ones, and it is on the former that Guillermo O’Donnell largely based his conceptualization of ‘delegative democracy’ (1991). The reliance on decree powers to legislate is not limited to times of crisis, however: decretísmo, or rule by decree, is a culturally accepted and widespread practice. Indeed, in Argentina, for example, the administration of Néstor Kirchner (2003–7) issued more decrees than the decretista par excellence, Carlos Menem (1989–99) (Carnes and Zarazaga 2007).8 While some legislatures have the ability to delay, change, or challenge presidential decrees, others – such as those in Argentina and Brazil – are completely powerless (Jones 1997). Thus, decretísmo – both in times of crisis and in ‘normal’ politics – has contributed to the concentration of power in the executive branch and its dominance of the policy process. Third, as some authors have suggested, culture plays an important role in the concentration of power in Latin American executives (see, for example, Véliz 1980). Like their US and French counterparts, Latin American presidents embody multiple roles: they are heads of state, chief executives, and commanders-in-chief of the armed forces, all of which make them powerful political actors. In Latin America, however, presidents also personify the state and their figures command a great deal of respect and authority; seen as national patrones, presidents are held responsible for the well-being of the nation. Such command of authority, in turn, fosters deep feelings of loyalty not only among sectors of society, but also among civil servants, who have a propensity to support policy initiatives emanating from the executive, often in exchange for presidential favours and patronage. It has also been argued that the centralization of power in the hands of the executive is related to the particular process that has characterized the adoption of liberal ideas in Latin America. Maxwell Cameron argues that Latin American societies are cultural hybrids that combine colonial and native American traditions, and that the superimposition of liberal political institutions on such ‘hybrid’ cultures reduces the possibility of consensus on basic legal institutions, allowing for the centralization of power in the hands of presidents (2002). As Cameron reminds us, in Latin America, liberalism

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– based on the idea that majority rule must be limited to the protection of fundamental rights and freedoms and the enforcing of limits on the power of the state – is historically associated with authoritarian practices (139); for example, liberal elites have carried out the expropriation and redistribution of communal lands. Cameron argues that ‘democratic Caesarism is the natural counterpart to enfeebled legislatures and corrupt judiciaries. In most of the region, the executive is the main deliberative institution and, since it is also the branch of governments that controls the coercive apparatus, it has the power to act as legislator, judge and executor at all once’ (2007, 25). The role culture plays in this process is evidently difficult to determine, but there is no question that presidents in Latin America do engage in patronage, favours, and the distribution of benefits in an attempt to obtain the support, and loyalty, of civil servants and legislators (Mainwaring and Shugart 1997; Cox and Morgenstern 2002). Whereas US presidents cannot appoint to their cabinets sitting members of Congress, many Latin American presidents are able to do so, and indeed traditionally have done so (Amorim Neto 1998), thereby ensuring not only party discipline but also acquiescence from legislators (Morgenstern 1994).9 A fourth source of presidentialism emerges from the ‘imperial prerogatives’ at the disposal of Latin American presidents, prerogatives not found in other presidential systems. In many Latin American countries, presidents have vast appointment powers, filling thousands of positions in the civil service at the national level and unilaterally appointing judges and directors of national agencies, rather than the hundreds appointed by US presidents.10 Moreover, in the United States, many of these appointments, including cabinet posts, must be ratified by Congress. This is not always the case in Latin America, where the appointment powers of presidents ensures the existence of loyal supporters in the bureaucracy and judiciary, thereby increasing their ability to count on support among these groups for their policy goals. Latin American presidents also possess wide regulatory powers. In presidential systems, legislation requires subsequent regulations that specify in detail how it will be implemented. While in the United States the drafting of these secondary pieces of legislation falls under the jurisdiction of arm’s-length, independent institutions, some of which are overseen by Congress, in many Latin American countries they fall exclusively under the jurisdiction of the president’s office. Moreover, presidents tend to use this prerogative to change the spirit of laws

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passed by congresses with which they disagree, and at times to thwart them; some presidents also have ‘paraconstitutional powers’ that allow them to change laws by the stroke of a pen (Shugart and Carey 1992). A fifth and final source of presidentialism is the existence of informal institutions that advance policy initiatives favoured by the executive. As noted in Chapter 1, informal institutions such as patron-client relations and patrimonialism play a critical role in the politics of the region, and are used by presidents to advance their legislative agenda. For example, in post-transitional Chile, an informal institution known as the cuoteo was a mechanism for distributing cabinet seats based on the electoral strength of the members of the Concertación coalition that governed the country between 1990 and 2010. Peter Siavelis argues that the cuoteo was critical to intra-coalition stability and was therefore more important for Chilean presidents than were formal institutions in ensuring legislative success for their initiatives (2006). The cuoteo, along with the practice of negotiating key policy issues before they were formally introduced, provided for widespread party input into ministerial decision-making and an incentive for coalition maintenance, which extended to the legislature and, in turn, allowed the president to govern successfully and pass legislation (Siavelis 2009, 111). Informal institutions also allow presidents to use non-parliamentary social actors to enhance executive power and authority and ultimately to influence the legislative process. Brian Crisp demonstrates that, despite the relative constitutional weakness of Venezuelan presidents, they are nonetheless the most important policy players in that country, using decree powers to establish ‘high-profile commissions’ that bring together ‘executive branch authorities and the representative of interest groups to study issues of the president’s choice’ (1997, 175). These commissions have often been charged with drafting legislation that the president presents to Congress, reflecting the president’s interests and preferences. Given the highly disciplined nature of party voting in the Venezuelan Congress, party leaders simply instruct their members to vote for these initiatives. Continuity and Change in Mexican Presidencialismo During the rule of the PRI, Mexico’s political system became extremely centralized and the policy-making process was dominated by the executive. Over the past decade, however, the country’s transition to what essentially constitutes a three-party system has brought about

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fundamental changes to the distribution of power, dispersing it among a higher number of actors and institutions. The policy-making process consequently has become less exclusionary. Nevertheless, even with these changes, the executive continues to be a central actor in the policy process as it relies on several important, and at times obscure, policy instruments at its disposal. Policy-making during PRI Rule There is consensus in the literature, deriving from analyses of individual policies, that the specificities of the Mexican political system shaped the policy-making process during the PRI’s traditional rule (see, for example, Grindle 1977; Story 1986; Bailey 1988; Teichman 1988, 1995). In short, the authoritarian nature of Mexican politics made the policymaking process highly hierarchical and exclusionary (Moreno Salazar 1993, 22; Aguilar Villanueva 1994, 33; Cabrero Mendoza 2000, 196–9). In effect, during the PRI rule, the system was so exclusionary that one could not speak of public policy but rather of ‘governmental policy’ (Cabrero Mendoza 2000, 2). During the formulation process, policies were initiated by a small group of individuals, usually composed of the president, some cabinet ministers, and top political advisors (Grindle 1977; Story 1986; Teichman 1988, 1995), but given the high concentration of power in the executive, the president possessed ultimate authority over which policies would be submitted for legislative approval (Greenberg 1970; Grindle 1977; Story 1986; Bailey 1988; Teichman 1988).11 This exclusionary process was further reinforced by the phenomenon of camarillismo: because the president appointed his cabinet personally, he would ‘entrust’ with the formulation and design of policy only those whom he considered loyal to him, in an almost secretive fashion (Greenberg 1970; Grindle 1977; Centeno 1997). Presidencialismo reinforced the exclusionary character of the formulation of policy during PRI traditional rule. Given that, until the 1997 elections, the PRI enjoyed full control of the legislative branch of government and maintained strong top-down control of party members, policies adopted by the president and his camarilla were submitted to Congress and approved with virtually no opposition. There were few occasions when PRI members of Congress opposed policies introduced by the executive. The highly exclusionary nature of policy formulation during this time meant that societal groups not belonging to the corporatist structure essentially had no say over the process. Public discussion over policy was

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not only discouraged, it was traditionally suppressed through various means involving coercion and censorship (Bailey 1988).12 Once the specifics of a certain policy were elaborated, the minister responsible for its implementation would start a long process of political participation, accommodation, and negotiation through his ministry’s bureaucracy. Consequently, policy implementation was the only stage that individuals could influence. The implementation of policy in Mexico traditionally was carried out through the corporatist structure and along patron-client relations. Unlike the Weberian model of an effective and independent bureaucracy, the Mexican bureaucracy generally functioned along clientelistic arrangements, with public officials in charge of the day-to-day responsibilities of the distribution and allocation of resources in a clientelistic fashion (Greenberg 1970; Grindle 1977, 1988; Kaufman 1977; Story 1986; Bailey 1988).13 Bureaucrats ultimately would decide which individuals and sectors of society (their respective clienteles) would obtain which benefits, thus becoming the de facto interpreters and brokers of a given policy. As a result, ‘slippage’ often occurred in the way policies, program, and projects were pursued after they were announced. The policy implementation process was seen as a fundamental element of Mexican politics. Indeed, it has been argued that the stability of the Mexican political system during the PRI’s traditional rule is partly attributable to the politics of the implementation process, given that it minimized the number of ‘losers’ when a policy was adopted (Grindle 1988, 139). Despite the highly centralized nature of the policy process during the PRI’s rule, the constitutional powers of the president are quite weak compared to those of other Latin American presidents: according to a ranking elaborated by Scott Morgenstern, Mexico’s constitutional presidential powers are weaker than those of Argentina, Brazil, and Chile (2002, 436–40).14 Instead, the Mexican constitution grants the legislative branch of government substantial powers. The president can neither dissolve the legislature nor interfere in its actions (Casar 1999). Moreover, it is Congress that possesses the broadest array of constitutional prerogatives in economic, politico-administrative, judicial, and social policy, and also controls the prerogatives granted to the executive (Casar 2002, 116–17).15 On economic policy, for example, legislative powers over the elaboration of the federal budget are significant: Articles 74 and 75 of the Mexican constitution establish that the federal budget must be approved by the Chamber of Deputies; that the latter has the authority to modify it; and that the president does not have the

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right to veto any modification that may result from the passage of the bill through the lower house (Weldon 2002).16 In effect, powers conferred on the legislature have increased since the enacting of the 1917 constitution. María Amparo Casar points out that, of three hundred constitutional amendments prior to 1997, more than fifty corresponded to articles dealing with congressional powers, and the majority of these changes increased the power of the legislature (2002, 117). Congress, then, at least on paper, is constitutionally empowered to be an active actor in the policy process. Democratization and the Policy Process The democratization of Mexico’s political system has resulted in a dispersion of policy-making power as a result of three main processes. First, Mexico has transitioned away from an authoritarian system to a competitive three-party system. Since the PRI’s loss of a majority in the lower chamber of Congress in 1997, no single party has been able to secure a congressional majority, and power has therefore shifted along the executive-legislative axis towards the legislative branch of government. Given that the Mexican Congress constitutionally possesses important policy-making prerogatives, it has emerged as a powerful institution in transitional Mexico to the extent that the president simply cannot achieve his policy objectives without its support. The number of bills introduced into Congress and the success rate of those introduced by the president do indeed point to change in the balance of power. For example, during the first half of the Ernesto Zedillo administration (1994–7), 223 bills were presented; in the second half of Zedillo’s term (1997–2000), the number increased to 674 and then, during the first half of the Fox administration (2000–3) to 1,128 (Weldon 2004), yet the success rate of these bills declined from 99 per cent to 67 per cent over the period. Second, largely as a consequence of major judicial reforms introduced by Zedillo in 1994, the Mexican Supreme Court has become much more independent and, in fact, has begun to influence the process of policy-making, especially social policy.17 Third, power has been dispersed as a result of decentralization, which was accelerated in the mid-1990s under Zedillo’s plan to establish a ‘new federalism’ (Ward and Rodríguez 1999; Díaz Cayeros 2001). This process resulted in the transfer of administrative control to lower levels of government in areas involving education, health, poverty alleviation, and development projects. While in 1995 only 20 per cent of the budget

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of the social development ministry was managed directly by the states, by 1997 65 per cent had been decentralized (Rocha Menocal 2001, 519). These changes have prompted some observers to suggest that a ‘new constitutional order’ has emerged in Mexico and that presidentialism is now defunct. Stephen Zamora and José Ramón Cossío, for example, have argued that ‘the new politics of Mexico have removed much of the disjunction that previously existed between the Mexican constitution as written and the Mexican constitution as applied under conditions of an authoritarian government’ (2006, 412). In terms of policy-making, some have gone as far as to suggest that these changes have brought the president’s powers more in line with his constitutional powers and that the president is more a ‘guardian of policy stability’ than a promoter of policy change (Nacif 2005, 2). While there is no question that these concurrent processes have brought about fundamental changes to the distribution of power in the Mexican political system and have also opened up the policy process to a larger number of institutions and actors, the Mexican presidency remains central to the policy process. Indeed, given the historical dominance of the executive, the expectation still exists in many quarters that the president remains a strong figure and that the presidency, not the legislative branch, should continue to initiate most influential bills (Camp 2007). More specifically, structural and institutional reasons continue to tilt the balance of power towards the executive branch of government in many ways much further than is the case for the presidents of, say, the United States and France. Even though the Mexican president is, by Latin American standards, constitutionally weak, a recent Supreme Court ruling has lessened that weakness. Prior to this ruling, the rules surrounding the use of presidential vetoes rendered Mexican presidents unable to modify or revise congressional bills. Instead, presidents could only declare a ‘package veto.’ Even when such a veto was employed, the bill would then return to the legislature and, should a two-thirds majority be achieved, the president would have no alternative but to sign it into law. This deprived presidents of the power to modify policy according to their preferences. In 2005, however, the Supreme Court handed down a significant ruling in a dispute over the passage of the 2004 federal budget. President Fox objected to certain provisions of the budget, however, and sought to include some ‘objections’ before signing it into law. The lower chamber resisted, and the case was taken to the Court by those who contended that it amounted to a constitutional veto. The Court ruled that

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the president did have the right to include those observations, essentially establishing a partial veto and enhancing the power of the president to influence policy. The executive branch also derives significant power from its ability to fill numerous senior posts both in cabinet and the administration. Unlike in other countries where the ratification of the legislature is required, in Mexico the president can appoint his cabinet members freely without the consent of the legislature. This ability evidently allows him to select members who will support his policy initiatives without having to compromise with opposing legislators. Moreover, because of the important roles that trust and loyalty play in Mexican politics, the lack of a legislative ratification mechanism means that the president is likely to appoint individuals who are loyal to him, thereby minimizing dissent. Similarly, while some of the most important senior-level administrative positions – such as that of the director general of the national oil company PEMEX18 – require congressional consent, many others, including the heads of the national water commission (Comisión Nacional del Agua, or CONAGUA) and the national electricity commission (Comisión Federal de Electricidad), do not. Essential to our understanding of the policy process is the fact that some national agencies wield significant policy-making authority given that they are highly centralized state-owned institutions that essentially control national monopolies. Not only does Congress lack the prerogative to appoint these officials, but there are no mechanisms for forcing them to step down, even when they are accused of serious corruptive practices, as was CONAGUA’s director under the Fox administration (Díez 2006). Thus, in such areas, the formulation of policy is in fact completely outside Congress’s purview and influence. Further, despite Congress’s significant policy-making prerogatives and its increasing exercise of those prerogatives in recent years, constitutional term limits – a single term of three years for deputies and six years for senators – greatly challenge the ability of members of Congress to develop or accumulate lawmaking and policy expertise. This lack of knowledge is exacerbated by the lack of resources to conduct research, scant technical support, and the extremely brief period (usually six months) during which Congress is in session. The lack of expertise is especially notable in some policy areas, and gives the executive branch substantial leverage over the making of policy. This is the case for one of the most important policy areas in contemporary Mexico: national security. Few members of Congress have an interest or experience in

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security matters, and their ability to influence defence and security policy is severely restricted (Díez 2008). Instead, defence and security policy is essentially formulated by the president, his advisers, and the top brass of the military with little input from Congress or society. Moreover, even though Congress has the constitutional authority to oversee the implementation of defence policy as well as the armed forces, the exercise of that authority is weak. Furthermore, even where congressional approval is required – for example, concerning the deployment of troops outside the national territory – that approval at times has been ignored, essentially violating the constitution (Díez 2008). Remnants of corporatist mechanisms of state-society mediation also contribute to the concentration of power in the executive. Even though the PRI’s loss of the presidency in 2000 to the opposition Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) challenged the corporatist structures that were the pillars of the regime, corporatism has not completely disappeared (Camp 2007). While some corporate institutions undoubtedly have been weakened by the process of political change, this certainly has not been the case for others, such as the powerful national teachers’ union, Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación, whose leader, Elba Esther Gordillo, is one of the most influential politicians in Mexico and who operates according to a logic similar to that of corporatist leaders under the PRI’s rule (Cano 2008). Gordillo forged a political alliance with the Fox administration that has been maintained during the term of Felipe Calderón, an alliance that has contributed to PAN’s electoral successes. Moreover, her influence is not limited to the electoral arena, but extends also to the policy-making level. In effect, because of the relatively close relationship she has with the president,19 she has played, in exchange for presidential support, a key role in applying pressure on members of Congress to pass legislation (Cano 2008), thereby contributing to the enhanced supremacy of the president in the making of education policy (Aviles 2007; Martínez 2007).20 The extensive regulatory authority the president’s office possesses also contributes to significant domination of the policy process. As we have seen, the enactment of laws requires secondary legislation, or regulations (reglamentos), that specify in detail how a law is going to be implemented. However, while a congressional majority is needed for the passage of legislation, the drafting of regulations, according to Article 89 of the Mexican constitution, falls strictly under the jurisdiction of the executive, which reserves the right to draft them without requiring the consent of Congress. This constitutional prerogative therefore allows the president not only to change the spirit of a given

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law, but also potentially to block the implementation of policy by not enacting a regulation. Importantly, neither Congress nor the judiciary has the ability to force the executive to draft these regulations. Although research on this type of policy influence is limited, existing research points to its importance and potential abuse. For example, following the passage of a significant reform to the country’s forestry law in 1997 that established severe penalties for the illegal felling of trees, these penalties were altered (and lowered) unilaterally by the president’s office even though they had been agreed upon with members of Congress (Díez 2006). The case of the hazardous and toxic waste regulation is perhaps more telling. Despite efforts to manage the disposal of hazardous and toxic waste – more than 90 per cent of which is released, untreated, into the natural environment – through a major environmental reform undertaken in the mid-1990s and unanimously supported by members of Congress, and despite Mexico’s many international commitments, the administrations of Zedillo and Fox failed to enact the implementing regulation. Congress, especially the Senate, urged the executive to do so on several occasions, to no avail (Díez 2006). The abuse of such regulatory power is best shown by Fox’s decision to declare, on 22 April 2004, a ‘complete regulatory moratorium’ on all policy areas with the objective of fostering competitiveness and investment, ordering his ministers not to introduce any regulations whatsoever. The moratorium was renewed a year later and extended until the last day of the Fox administration. Conclusion Mexico’s process of democratization has brought the real powers of the presidency in line with those granted to it by the constitution. From an extremely powerful office during hegemonic PRI rule, the executive branch appears to have become just one among many policy actors because of its constitutional weakness. Yet despite this undoubted diminution of the president’s power, he continues to be the most dominant player in the policy process. The number of successful initiatives the executive branch has sent to Congress has decreased, but the president still has a significantly higher level of legislative success (82 per cent of proposed bills in the 2000–3 period compared with 15.9 per cent of bills proposed by opposition parties) (Nacif 2005). Moreover, the president still wields significant policy-making authority in areas where Congress essentially has no say (water policy) or where it simply lacks either

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interest or expertise (defence). Furthermore, vestiges of corporatism (in education) and unchecked regulatory powers give the president a clear advantage over other policy actors, including the legislature. As a result, there is a need to look at a variety of sources that are not clear at first glance but that afford the president policy-making authority. Accordingly, a reworked definition of presidencialismo, as captured by the concept of hyperpresidentialism, is helpful to understanding the policy process in Latin America, as it allows one to identify these sources of authority as well as additional actors and institutions that play an important role in the formulation and implementation of public policy.

NOTES 1 Signing statements refer to obscure provisions at the disposal of the US president that allow him to interpret bills emanating from Congress as he sees fit by inserting a written comment in which he decides to implement only those parts that he thinks are constitutional. While these policy tools have been used by presidents dating back to the Monroe administration in the early 1800s, George W. Bush relied on their use in an unprecedented manner, prompting some to suggest that he rendered the executive less accountable to the legislature through a concentration of power in the president’s hands (Drew 2006). 2 This is demonstrated by the work of John Kingdon: 91 per cent of the 247 Washington officials he interviewed stated that it was an important institution, placing it second to the executive (2003). 3 Several exceptions exist, such as Bolivia, which has a hybrid system combining elements of presidential and parliamentary models. 4 I use the term presidentialism as a translation of the concept of presidencialismo, not to refer to a presidential system of government, which is the common use in the English-language political science literature. 5 These refer to assumed unwritten, yet generally recognized, powers (Cornelius and Craig 1996, 34). 6 For a similar analysis, see Nino (1995). 7 As Scott Morgenstern suggests, Latin American legislatures have been further weakened by the paltry financial resources at the disposal of legislators and their low re-election rates, which inhibit their professionalization (2002, 414). 8 Kirchner issued 5,450 decrees during his administration, Menem 2,797 (Carnes and Zarazaga 2007, 37).

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9 In the United States, no sitting member of Congress can become a cabinet minister. In Latin America, as in France, the suplente system (in which members of Congress are elected with a legislative partner), allows members of Congress to leave their legislative positions temporarily, passing their roles to their suplentes, and to return later on. 10 Ben Schneider has calculated that, in Brazil, the number ranges from 15,000 to 100,000 (1987, as cited in Evans 1995, 61). 11 Sometimes policies are initiated by a cabinet minister, who tries to advance the interest of his or her own ministry. However, the minister has to embark upon a process of ‘convincing’ the president that a policy is recommendable, something over which the president has ultimate control. 12 Full censorship was never implemented by the PRI during its traditional rule. Authoritarianism in Mexico was characterized by considerably more freedom of expression than was the case in other Latin American authoritarian regimes. Instead, controls were more subtle (for example, through payments to journalists) and the regime allowed limited dissenting voices some freedom of expression. A good case in point is the weekly Proceso, which was allowed to take a highly critical position of the PRI. For the best account of the PRI’s control of the media during its traditional rule, see Lawson (2001). 13 Pockets of a Weberian type of bureaucracy (autonomous and highly technical) existed, especially within the finance ministry (Torres Espinosa 1999). 14 According to such ranking, out of the five powers Morgenstern presents, Mexico’s president is at the bottom end of the scale in four of them. In terms of his budgetary powers, Morgenstern assigns Mexico a minus one, showing the relative weakness of the Mexican president in the drafting of the budget. See Morgenstern (2002, table 14.8). 15 For a list of these prerogatives, see the appendixes in Casar (1999, 2002). 16 Three pieces of legislation make up the federal budget: Presupuesto de egresos de la Federación (appropriations law), Ley de ingresos (revenue law), and Ley de miscelánea fiscal (tax law). The last two must be approved by both houses whereas the first needs only the approval of the lower house. 17 For a succinct overview of some examples, see Zamora and Cossío (2006). Perhaps the most salient example is the 2008 ruling by the Court that the abortion law passed by Mexico City in 2007 was constitutional, paving the way for the passage of similar legislation in other subnational jurisdictions. 18 This appointment, which must be approved by the Senate, became a legal requirement with the passage of highly controversial energy reforms introduced in 2008. 19 This relationship is perhaps best captured by the fact that Gordillo’s sonin-law is a deputy minister of education.

50 Comparative Public Policy in Latin America 20 Calderón’s main education plan (La alianza para la calidad de la educación), unveiled in 2008, was developed in conjunction with the union Gordillo represents. REFERENCES Aguilar Villanueva, Luis F. 1994. ‘Estudio Introductorio.’ In El Estudio de las políticas públicas, ed. Luis F. Aguilar Villanueva. Mexico City: Miguel Ángel Porrúa. Amorim Neto, Octavio. 1998. ‘The Presidential Calculus: Executive Policymaking and Cabinet Formation in the Americas.’ Comparative Political Studies 39, no. 4: 415–40. Aviles, Carina. 2007. ‘Elba Esther Gordillo y Calderón mantendrán secuestrada la educación: profesores.’ La Jornada (Mexico City), 21 May. Bailey, John. 1988. Governing Mexico: Statecraft of Crisis Management. New York: St Martin’s Press. Cabrero Mendoza, Ernesto. 1995. La nueva gestión municipal en México: análisis de experiencias innovadoras en gobiernos locales. Mexico City: CIDE/Miguel Ángel Porrua. Cameron, Maxwell. 2002. ‘Democracy and the Separation of Powers: Threats, Dilemmas and Opportunities in Latin America.’ Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 29, no. 53: 133–59. – 2007. ‘Citizenship Deficits in Latin American Democracies.’ Convergencia: Revista de Ciencias Sociales 14, no. 45: 11–30. Camp, Roderic Ai. 2007. Politics in Mexico: The Democratic Consolidation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cano, Arturo. 2008. Doña Perpetua: el poder y la opulencia de Elba Esther Gordillo. Mexico City: Grijalbo. Carnes, Matthew E., and Rodrigo Zarazaga. 2007. ‘Institutionalizing Emergency at the Cost of Democracy: Presidential Power and Decrees of Necessity and Urgency under Menem and Kirchner in Argentina.’ Paper delivered at the 2007 Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, Montreal, 5–7 September. Carpizo, Jorge. 1978. El Presidencialismo en México. Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno. Casar, María Amparo. 1999. ‘Las relaciones entre el poder ejecutivo y el legislativo: el caso de México.’ Política y Gobierno 6, no. 1: 83–128. – 2002. ‘Executive-Legislative Relations: The Case of Mexico.’ In Legislative Politics in Latin America, ed. Scott Morgenstern and Benito Nacif. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Centeno, Miguel Angel. 1997. Democracy within Reason: Technocratic Revolution in Mexico. University Park: Pennsylvania University Press. Close, David. 1995. Legislatures and the New Democracies in Latin America. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Cornelius, Wayne, and Anne Craig. 1996. The Mexican Political System in Transition. La Jolla: University of California, Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies. Cox, Gary W., and Scott Morgenstern. 2002. ‘Epilogue: Latin America’s Reactive Assemblies and Reactive Proactive Presidents.’ In Legislative Politics in Latin America, ed. Scott Morgenstern and Benito Nacif. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Crisp, Brian. 1997. ‘Presidential Behaviour in a System with Strong Parties: Venezuela, 1958–1995.’ In Presidentialism and Democracy in Latin America, ed. Scott Mainwaring and Matthew S. Shugart. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Díaz Cayeros, A. 2001. ‘Federalism in Mexico: An Interim in Report.’ In Dilemmas of Change in Mexican Politics, ed. Kevin Middlebrook. La Jolla: University of California, Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies. Díez, Jordi. 2006. Political Change and Environmental Policymaking in Mexico. New York: Routledge. – 2008. ‘Legislative Oversight of the Armed Forces in Mexico.’ Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 24, no. 1: 113–45. Drew, Elizabeth. 2006. ‘Power Grab.’ New York Review of Books, 2 June. Evans, Peter. 1995, Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Greenberg, Martin. 1970. Bureaucracy and Development: A Mexican Case Study. Lexington, MA: Heath Lexington Books. Grindle, Merilee. 1977. Bureaucrats, Politicians and Peasants in Mexico: A Case Study in Public Policy. Berkeley: University of California Press. – 1988. Searching for Rural Development: Labor Migration and Employment in Mexico. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Hajer, Maarten. 2003. ‘Policy without Polity: Policy Analysis and the Institutional Void.’ Policy Sciences 36, no. 2: 175–95. Jones, Mark. 1997. ‘Evaluating Argentina’s Presidential Democracy: 1983– 1995.’ In Presidentialism and Democracy in Latin America, ed. Scott Mainwaring and Matthew S. Shugart. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kaufman, Robert R. 1977. ‘Mexico and Latin American Authoritarianism.’ In Authoritarianism in Mexico, ed. José Luis Reyna and Richard S. Weinert. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues.

52 Comparative Public Policy in Latin America Kingdon, John. 2003. Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies. New York: Longman. Lawson, Chappell H. 2002. Building the Fourth State: Democratization and the Rise of the Free Press in Mexico. Berkeley: University of California Press. Linz, Juan. 1990. ‘The Perils of Presidentialism.’ Journal of Democracy 51, no. 1: 51–69. Mainwaring, Scott, and Matthew S. Shugart, eds. 1997. Presidentialism and Democracy in Latin America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Martínez, Nurit. 2007. ‘El poder creciente de Elba Esther Gordillo.’ El Universal (Mexico City), 5 August. Morgenstern, Scott. 1994. Patterns of Legislative Politics: Roll-call Voting in Latin America and the United States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. – 2002. ‘Explaining Legislative Politics in Latin America.’ In Legislative Politics in Latin America, ed. Scott Morgenstern and Benito Nacif. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Morgenstern, Scott, and Benito Nacif, eds. 2002. Legislative Politics in Latin America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moreno Salazar, Pedro H. 1993. ‘Esposición crítica de enfoques estadounidenses para el análisis de la políticas públicas.’ Revista de Administración Pública 84: 9–23. Nacif, Benito. 2005. ‘The Fall of the Dominant Presidency: Lawmaking under Divided Government in Mexico.’ Paper presented at the conference ‘What Kind of Democracy Has Mexico? The Evolution of Presidentialism and Federalism,’ University of California, San Diego, 4–5 March. Nino, Carlos S. 1995. ‘Hyper-presidentialism and Constitutional Reform in Argentina.’ In Institutional Design in New Democracies: Eastern Europe and Latin America, ed. Arend Lijphart and Carlos H. Waisman. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. O’Donnell, Guillermo A. 1991. ‘Democracia Delegativa.’ Novos Estudos 31: 25–40. Pal, Leslie. 2006. Beyond Policy Analysis: Public Issue Management in Turbulent Times, 3rd ed. Scarborough, ON: Thomson and Nelson. Rocha Menocal, Alina. 2001. ‘Do Old Habits Die Hard? A Statistical Exploration of the Politicisation of Progresa, Mexico’s Latest Federal Alleviation Programme, under the Zedillo Administration.’ Journal of Latin American Studies 33, no. 3: 513–38. Sabatier, Paul A. 2007. Theories of the Policy Process. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Schneider, Ben. 1987. ‘Politics within the State: Elite Bureaucrats and Industrial Policy in Authoritarian Brazil.’ PhD diss., Department of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley.

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Shugart, Matthew, and John Carey. 1992. Presidents and Assemblies: Constitutional Design and Electoral Dynamics. New York: Cambridge University Press. Siavelis, Peter M. 2006. ‘Accommodating Informal Institutions and Chilean Democracy.’ In Informal Institutions and Democracy: Lessons from Latin America, ed. Gretchen Helmke and Steven Levitsky. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. – 2009. ‘Executive-Legislative Relations in Latin America.’ In Latin American Democracy: Emerging Reality or Endangered Species? ed. Richard L. Millet, Jennifer S. Holmes, and Orlando J. Pérez. New York: Routledge. Smith, Miriam, and Michael Orsini, eds. 2008. Critical Policy Studies. Vancouver: UBC Press. Story, Dale. 1986. Industry, the State, and Public Policy in Mexico. Austin: University of Texas Press. Teichman, Judith, A. 1988. Policymaking in Mexico: From Boom to Crisis. Boston: Allen and Unwin. – 1995. Privatization and Political Change in Mexico. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Torres Espinosa, Eduardo. 1999. Bureaucracy and Politics in Mexico: The Case of the Secretariat of Programming and Budget. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. Véliz, Claudio. 1980. The Centralist Tradition of Latin America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Ward, Peter, and Victoria E. Rodríguez. 1999. ‘New Federalism, IntraGovernmental Relations and Co-governance in Mexico.’ Journal of Latin American Studies 31, no. 3: 673–710. Weldon, Jeffrey A. 2002. ‘The Legal and Partisan Framework of the Legislative Delegation of the Budget in Mexico.’ In Legislative Politics in Latin America, ed. Scott Morgenstern and Benito Nacif. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. – 2004. ‘Changing Patterns of Executive-Legislative Relations in Mexico.’ In Dilemmas of Political Change in Mexico, ed. Kevin J. Middlebrook. London: Institute of Latin American Studies. Weyland, Kurt. 2001. ‘Clarifying a Contested Concept: Populism in the Study of Latin American Politics.’ Comparative Politics 34, no. 1: 1–22. – 2003. ‘Neopopulism and Neoliberalism in Latin America: How Much Affinity?’ Third World Quarterly 24, no. 6: 1095–115. Zamora, Stephen, and José Ramón Cossío. 2006. ‘Mexican Constitutionalism after Presidencialismo.’ International Journal of Constitutional Law 4, no. 2: 411–37.

3 The New Institutionalism and Industrial Policy-making in Chile Judith Teichman

Over the past fifteen years North American political scientists have given increasing attention to institutions. Emerging initially from within US political science, ‘new institutionalism’ was a reaction to the societycentred approaches that explained politics and policy-making by focusing on individuals, groups, classes, and social movements. While rational choice institutionalists predominated in the public policy field initially, the new approach soon became popular among a wide spectrum of public policy specialists. A variety of observers have noted the marked heterogeneity within the approach, including a lack of consensus on what constitutes ‘institutions’ (Hall and Taylor 1996; Thelen 1999; Steinmo 2008). While some new institutionalists focus on formal institutions, others on informal ones, and still others on the norms arising from institutions, all agree that institutions, however defined, are the most important variable and the starting point in explaining policy outcomes. In examining industrial policy outcomes in Chile, this chapter takes the position that, while an institutional focus has an important contribution to make in understanding Chilean industrial policy, the wider context of power relations and the struggles among social forces should be considered to obtain a full understanding of the policy process. One institution in particular, the Corporación de Fomento de la Producción de Chile (CORFO), Chile’s Production Development Corporation, has played an absolutely crucial role in industrial policy, but understanding how it was able to do so requires an appreciation of the broader context of politics, power, and social forces. The term ‘social forces’ refers to both broadly and narrowly constituted social categories that have formal or informal organizational features and shared interests. Social forces can be social classes in the classic

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understanding of the term, defined by their relationship to production (peasants, workers),1 fractions of social classes, groups claiming religious or ethnic identities, and social movements. Social forces can also exist within the state. Hence the state bureaucracy, the military, or factions within these groups also constitute social forces.2 The goals of social forces are not fixed, and are heavily shaped by the political contexts within which they exist.3 Social forces can wield power aggressively or their power might be latent, as can occur, for example, with electoral constituencies when leadership power contenders articulate or even manipulate the demands or interests of relatively quiescent social forces. Social forces shape state formation and state institutions, but states and their institutions also mould social forces. In developed countries, states are more likely to mediate social forces, whereas in the global South, where states tend to be weaker, states can become thoroughly penetrated and manipulated by social forces (Migdal 1994, 25). Finally, countries vary in the degree of social force penetration of the state, and, in specific cases, different parts of the state can be subject to varying degrees of penetration. Hence, particularly when states are weak and social forces strong, institutional evolution cannot be considered apart from the role of social forces and the distribution of power among them. Observers have identified three streams of the new institutionalism: rational choice, historical institutionalism, and sociological institutionalism. Sociological institutionalists go furthest in defining institutions in a non-materialist (non-formal) way, as cognitive frameworks involving norms, values, culture, and ideas that are separate from formal structures (Campbell 1998). Institutions, according to this viewpoint, mould individual action by providing cognitive scripts and models that guide action. Institutions shape action because they influence what one can imagine doing. However, the values and norms governing behaviour, particularly political behaviour, can be fully understood only through a careful examination of their evolution through history – an exercise that is likely to reveal the interplay between the struggles of social forces and institutional development.4 The analysis in this chapter supports this aspect of the sociological approach. One problem of sociological institutionalism, however – also shared by historical institutionalism, as explained further below – is its difficulty in explaining change. This difficulty arises from the fact that sociological institutionalists see action as heavily shaped by the institutional environment, with the consequence that actors have difficulty seeing alternatives, making change unlikely.

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Historical institutionalism covers an extremely broad range of literatures. Indeed, the range of works it encompasses is so broad that one might question whether the category actually constitutes a single genre. Public policy analysis is but a relatively minor subset of historical institutionalism. In general, historical institutionalism is problem driven rather than policy driven, concerned to explain such ‘big’ questions as transitions to democracy and social identities in politics, among others (Pierson and Skocpol 2002, 694).5 While historical institutionalists incorporate a consideration of extra-institutional factors such as context, including social forces, there is a marked tendency to place the weight of the analysis on formal institutional structures (Pierson and Skocpol 2002; Schmidt 2006, 4). Furthermore, one of the widely acknowledged features of historical institutionalism is its heavy reliance on explanations involving path dependency, which assumes that, once established, institutions acquire a life of their own, driving policy processes and generating feedback mechanisms that ensure their perpetuation over time. Hence, like sociological institutionalism, historical institutionalism has difficulty accounting for change since it regards institutional structures and policy legacies as reinforcing certain ideas and shaping group behaviour. Once path-dependent processes are under way, historical institutionalists seldom contemplate the radical and rapid alteration or elimination of institutional arrangements. Indeed, one of the recognized drawbacks of most versions of historical institutionalism is the difficulty it has in explaining change, particularly sudden change (Pierson 2004, 103; Schmidt 2006, 6). Understandably institutionalism has been considerably more useful in explaining policy continuity. Recent attempts by institutionalists to explain policy change have pointed to changes in the institutions themselves, arising from such developments as conflict between institutions, institutional displacement, breakdown, and malfunction (Lieberman 2002; Steinmo 2008, 138). This difficulty in accounting for policy change makes mainstream historical institutionalism alone insufficient in accounting for policy in the Chilean case. Historically Chile has experienced dramatic swings in policy, particularly in economic policy, that cannot be accounted for solely by reference to institutional experiences. For Chile, explaining both change and continuity in policy requires a consideration of social forces operating outside and within the state. Notably, institutional path dependency has not thwarted dramatic policy changes in Chile. Social forces bent upon radical policy change, when faced with institutional resistance, have not hesitated to destroy

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old institutions and establish new ones. In short the approach taken in this chapter is one that maintains a careful consideration of institutional development but shifts the emphasis towards the examination of social force attitudes, relative strength, and configuration. Doing so enhances our understanding of policy outcomes in a society like Chile, where formal institutions have been historically weak and where social forces have been able to alter institutional arrangements and past policy practices rapidly and thoroughly. The new institutionalism assumes a variety of conditions that have been either absent or only partly present in Chile. It assumes the pluralist notion of interest groups as cross-cutting affiliations that add coherence to society rather than the existence of highly compartmentalized categories that, in Chile, have divided – indeed, polarized – society. Some authors who take the new institutionalist approach assume that a country’s institutions and actors are bound together by a basic consensus on the way politics and the economy operate. While today there is unity at the elite political level on politics and economic policy, the Chilean public continues to be deeply divided on basic issues surrounding the nature of democracy and support for the Chilean economic model.6 Although the Chilean state is strong by Latin American standards and its politics and policy process have been more institutionalized than in most other Latin American cases, compared with the northern countries that inspired the new institutionalism literature the Chilean state is weak and its institutions and their operation are often shaped by extra-state pressures (Sandbrook et al. 2007, 170–1). Institutions do help us to understand policy processes, but consideration of institutions alone is insufficient. A complete understanding of policy outcome requires a grasp of the political power struggles among contending social forces because these struggles have powerfully structured institutional development and policy opportunities. Social Forces and Chile’s Institutions: 1930 to the Present Between the early part of the twentieth century and the mid-1960s Chilean policy-making occurred within a context of liberal democratic pluralism (competitive elections, political freedoms, alteration in power), lodged within a profoundly Latin American socio-economic context involving a high degree of inequality and a poor peasantry politically dominated by powerful landowners. The country was characterized by the early consolidation of a politically united landed / commercial / mining business

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group, known as the ‘oligarchy.’ The highly dependent relationship between the peasantry and the country’s big landowners, which allowed landlords to control the votes of their tenants, in combination with the  overrepresentation of rural areas in Congress, enabled landlords both to support electoral democracy and to protect their interests against any attempt to improve peasants’ lives, particularly through land redistribution. Between 1930 and 1973 electoral institutions progressively incorporated workers’ demands for improved wages, working conditions, and benefits, and, by the 1960s, peasants’ demands for land. But in doing so, those institutions came under increasing strain as the oligarchy’s willingness to tolerate the changed policy environment evaporated. By the mid-1960s the country’s political centre was crumbling as politics became deeply polarized. Institutional arrangements certainly exacerbated this tendency to political polarization. The electoral system, which involved overlapping and varied terms for elected office, encouraged an ongoing competitive struggle among the parties for political support (Sigmund 1977, 16). Parties on the left explicitly appealed to miners and other members of the organized working class, and later to rural wage labourers on the basis of a highly militant Marxist ideology. The centrist Partido Demócrata Cristiano (Christian Democratic Party) then entered the political fray, competing intensely against the leftist political parties for the support of labour, the urban poor, and the peasantry. The propensity of political parties to join forces with labour was no doubt encouraged by an additional institutional arrangement, the 1931 labour law, which kept the trade union movement weak and made workers seek out parties that could represent their interests. However, this institutional factor, itself a direct result of the oligarchy’s attempt to keep the trade union movement weak, would not have had an impact had it not been for the ongoing repression of working-class demands between 1938 and the mid-1960s. Such action pushed workers inexorably towards the opposition political left. Chile’s long and relatively successful experience with electoral democracy produced a series of governments that pursued popular but, increasingly, deeply divisive policies. With the presidency of Eduardo Frei Montalva (1964–70), a Christian Democrat, the move towards land redistribution and the establishment of national control of the foreignowned copper mines were already causing concern and alienation on the part of the propertied classes. But it was the move of the Unidad Popular (UP, Popular Unity) coalition under President Salvador Allende

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Gossens (1970–3) to large-scale nationalization in industry and land redistribution that triggered panic among the propertied classes. While institutional disintegration (the immobilization of Congress, the inability of the political system to oversee any sort of compromise on policy issues) set the stage for the 1973 coup, that disintegration was reflective of deeper underlying developments: ideological polarization and a marked increase in class struggle and class fear. From the mid-1960s the social basis of the regime shifted. As President Frei carried forward his promised land reform, business withdrew support from the Christian Democratic regime, and that party increasingly recruited urban poor, working class, and peasant support. The UP, a coalition of almost all left-leaning parties in Chile, including the Communist Party, drew support largely from the organized working class and rural workers (especially those engaged in wage labour), as the private sector and much of the middle and upper class moved in strong opposition. Political and party pressures, backed by increasingly mobilized social forces, drove bureaucratic preferences and policy outcomes from the mid-1960s on, particularly during the Allende years, when political mobilization reached its height (Cleaves 1974, 105; Velasco 1994; Montecinos 1998, 20, 46, 50–5). Indeed, the Chilean state bureaucracy did not constitute an autonomous institution even though it was increasingly populated by highly trained individuals (Montecinos 1998, 5). Not only were almost all middle- and upper-administrative levels the spoils of government, but Chilean ministries and public agencies were accustomed to competing for scarce state resources and frequently would recruit and use societal forces to protect or expand their institutional interests (Cleaves 1974, 29).7 In this period it is difficult to distinguish between institutions of the state and the clienteles they served, so heavily permeated was the state by social forces. The parties of the UP and an important fraction of the Christian Democratic Party called for the eradication of capitalism within the context of the democratic constitutional order (Sigmund 1977, 24–6). As business confidence plummeted, production declined and economic chaos ensued. With the additional impediment of a US credit blockade (the consequence of the state’s takeover of the foreign-owned copper companies), the fiscal deficit soared and inflation hit 500 per cent. The stage was set for the 1973 military coup. The fundamental alteration of the institutional framework that occurred after the coup reflected a new alliance of social forces bent upon

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ending the socialist experiment. The military, an organization heavily insulated from society, held politics and politicians in low regard and wished to see an end to the chaos of democratic government. Its strongest allies were the country’s most powerful industrial, financial, and landed interests (O’Brien and Roddick 1983, 71; Silva 1996, 105). A small group of radical market-reform technocrats known as the ‘Chicago boys,’8 who were closely integrated with conglomerate executives, quickly gained the military’s confidence and formed an integral part of the ruling alliance. Owners of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), where conflicts over wages and working conditions had been especially acute (Martínez and Díaz 1996, 77), also supported the military takeover, as did segments of the middle class, concerned with the recent economic deterioration. But these latter groups were junior partners and were soon marginalized. When the economy entered into crisis in the early 1980s, the ruling alliance broadened to include a wider crosssection of business interests beyond the big conglomerates, but the majority of the population remained firmly excluded from politics and policy-making (Silva 1996, 156). After the economic collapse of the early 1980s, the economic model took a much more pragmatic turn, reintroducing a role for the state. During the military period, state institutions and the norms of political behaviour and expectations were rapidly revamped with the objective of dismantling both the organizations that had represented workers and peasants and the social gains of the earlier era. Electoral institutions were disbanded – Congress was closed, parties were prohibited – and the activities of trade unions and peasant organizations were proscribed. Social spending dropped and health care and pensions were privatized, creating privileged arrangements for the middle and upper classes and inadequate ones for everyone else. The use of political repression created a ‘culture of fear’ that would leave a profound legacy of political quiescence for many years following the return to electoral democracy (Politzer 2001). A new, highly centralized policy-making apparatus was established, while a new constitution enshrined a neoliberal vision of economy and politics. The return to civilian rule in 1990 ushered in yet another period of institutional transformation9 and signalled an alteration, once again, in the social basis of the state. The alliance of centrist and leftist parties known as the Concertación, which ruled Chile between 1990 and 2010, drew electoral support from the urban lower and working and middle classes.10 The Chilean political transition, however, was a ‘pacted’ (negotiated)

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one. In the face of harsh repression, party leaders negotiated the transition with the military and, in doing so, committed themselves to the basic features of the new market model, the protection of private property, and the pursuit of economic policies, such as fiscal restraint, that would ensure business confidence. Indeed, the Concertación assiduously took care to win over the private sector. Hence, although the coalition had a broad electoral base, it was strongly resistant to labour and civil society involvement in policy development (Teichman 2009) and allowed privileged access to business interests (Teichman 2001, 92). While most of the authoritarian features of the Chilean political system left by the military regime have been eliminated, an important legacy that continues to constrain the power and policy impact of cabinet ministers is the 1975 law giving the finance minister ultimate authority over all decisions with financial implications. Chilean industrial policy has developed within the context of this tumultuous history, and has been powerfully shaped by it. In each phase, the social base of the state and institutional features interacted to shape policy outcomes. Industrial Policy-making: 1938–73 It was not until the 1938 election of the Frente Popular (Popular Front)11 that Chile began to engage in an explicit industrialization drive. The program was typical of Latin American countries at the time in that it depended heavily on the importation of capital goods and inputs. Many of its bureaucratic policy-makers were heavily influenced by the structuralism of ECLA (the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean), the predominant industrial ideological paradigm of the period (Hira 1998, 44).12 Quotas on imports, combined with high levels of tariff protection, were the main policy instruments used to encourage private industrial enterprises. The key organization charged with leading Chile’s industrial development was CORFO, established in 1939. CORFO, which still exists today, has undergone important alterations in functions and purpose as regime and industrial strategies have changed over time. In this initial phase, CORFO supervised the development of infrastructure, provided financing to the private sector, and created enterprises in a variety of important economic sectors where the private sector was unwilling or unable to invest.13 But the establishment of CORFO came at a price – one that would shape industrial policy in important ways. Because the

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big landowners were resistant to industrialization, the Popular Front government made a deal with the parties of the political right to support the establishment of CORFO in exchange for suspension of a new law that would have allowed rural unionization. The decision to leave the rural sector untouched – necessary to bring on side powerful and recalcitrant landed interests – shaped an industrialization process that involved the neglect of agricultural productivity and the abandonment, in these years, of the possibility of an industrialization integrated with agriculture. State weakness and the colonization of the state by particular industrial interests shaped the country’s industrial policy, in particular its inordinate focus on light, non-durable consumer goods and its heavy reliance on import substitution.14 Industrialists moulded industrial policy through their direct representation within the state. The ruling body of CORFO included representatives from all the key entrepreneurial organizations, including the major organization representing industrialists (Drake 1978, 217–18), and members from the private sector sat on the boards of directors of a number of state companies, including the state-owned steel, petroleum, and electricity companies, that CORFO created (Loveman 1988, 260). Indeed, industrialists were the most successful in permeating the state, with their representative association taking part in more commissions than did any other business group (Silva 1996, 3). Of particular importance in shaping industrial policy was the fact that industry was represented on the commission responsible for import licences – which accounted for the perpetuation of a highly protected light industrial sector. Industrialists used their positions within the state to ensure overly generous protection of alreadyexisting industry, thereby discouraging an industrial policy vision of industrial integration. Within industry, non-durable consumer goods (food processing, clothing, textiles) received by far the most generous protection, non-metallic mineral products, furniture, and base metals received less protection, while the least protected were machinery and equipment and a few intermediate products (Mamalakis 1976, 172). Hence Chilean industry was characterized by a number of serious deficiencies. It lacked any foreign-exchange earning capacity given its high level of protection and consequent lack of competitiveness; indeed, given industry’s heavy dependence upon imported inputs and capital goods, it required foreign exchange to continue operating. This dependence put industry in serious jeopardy when the main source of foreign exchange and industrial financing (the country’s mining sector)

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began to decline (Mamalakis and Reynolds 1965, 64). Political leaders were not unaware of these problems, but the broader political context made it impossible to address them. As the political situation deteriorated in 1968–9 in the face of mounting unrest and strike action, plans for further trade liberalization and measures to enhance industrial efficiency were shelved (Velasco 1994, 392). Despite the permeability of the state and the growing level of political polarization, there was nevertheless at least one niche within the Chilean state that eventually would develop bureaucratic capacity and a distinct set of policy goals. Beneath the turbulence of the growing political struggles, CORFO began to create a layer of technocracy that was able to isolate itself, to some extent, from political pressures. This bureaucratic layer developed various new projects and was fairly effective at keeping its activities and decisions away from the immediate influence of the government (Drake 1978, 219; Fáundez 1988, 46). Between 1945 and 1950, CORFO began to develop sectoral plans for a number of basic industries, such as steel, oil, cement, and electricity. During the years of the Frei administration (1964–70) CORFO advanced the idea of developing an internationally competitive agricultural processing industry, particularly in pulp and paper, and it took measures to increase production in the fishing industry (Hira 1998, 46). It also began to research the best foreign and local business practices and to promote the creation of ‘leader processing firms’ to assist in the adoption and diffusion of modern processing industries. In 1967 it established a plan for fruit development that provided a variety of measures essential for export success, such as market analysis, technology, credits, and tariff drawbacks (Kurtz 2001, 5), and, throughout the 1960s, it called for the development of the forestry industry (Cypher 2004). CORFO technocrats formulated an industrial strategy that included the restructuring of the productive apparatus to provide for greater efficiency and specialization in industrial production in order to stimulate industrial exports (Muñoz Gomá and Celedón 1996, 304). Despite the political chaos of the Popular Unity years CORFO oversaw the creation of a variety of committees for sectoral development, established to formulate industry-specific development policies involving the coordination of sectors and the fulfilment of targets. These committees involved representation from both firms and workers (Mamalakis 1976, 170). Many of these CORFO initiatives eventually would contribute, in important ways, to economic growth after 1985. But they would remain dormant beneath the intense political turmoil of

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the period, thereby demonstrating that even insulated institutions are affected by larger political processes The Military, the Dismantling of Import Substitution Industrialization, and the New Economic Model The 1973 military coup ushered in a dramatic reversal of past economic policy, including a fundamental change in industrial policy. The renewed economic downturn in 1974 convinced the military ruler, Augusto Pinochet, that drastic action was needed and made way for the predominance of the Chicago boys and their radical neoliberal economic program popularly known as the ‘shock treatment’ (the Plan for Economic Recovery). That program involved drastic cuts in government expenditures, deregulation of financial markets, steep trade liberalization, and privatization. The new package of policies triggered the reconstitution of the business class. It caused the demise of many light consumer goods industrialists and eventually gave rise to a new entrepreneurial class engaged in producing non-traditional agricultural processed exports. Steep trade liberalization – the 1975 economic program stipulated that by 1978 all import tariffs were to be reduced to a uniform 10 per cent and that all quantitative restrictions be removed – produced the almost immediate bankruptcy of a large number of small and medium light consumer goods industries. Bankruptcies were particularly high in sectors such as textiles and leather goods that had been the most highly protected (Edwards and Cox Edwards 1987, 23). Industrial exports – largely those based on natural resources – increased their share of total exports from 14.5 per cent in 1974 to 33 per cent by 1982 (Griffiths-Jones 1987, 24). The Chicago boys, however, faced considerable opposition to the achievement of their project of deep and immediate reduction of industrial protection. Much of the state bureaucracy, including the military, supported state protection for industry. Many bureaucrats and industrialists, even those associated with large firms, supported policy reform but called for a much more gradual approach. The fact that the regime was a military dictatorship backed by the threat of force was important in breaking down this intra- and extra-state resistance: the severe fracturing of the state and the path dependency of pre-existing institutional arrangements with their channels for societal influence were quickly and thoroughly eliminated. Indeed, the radical reform program introduced in 1975, which signified the dismantling of much

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of the country’s industrial sector, drew almost in its entirety from an earlier plan that had been formulated by a small group of conglomerate executives and technocrats who, during the Allende years, had been excluded from, and strongly opposed to, the Allende regime.15 Despite the powerful and determinant impact of social forces on the state and its operations, however, remnants of previously existing industrial development ideas continued to survive within the state, particularly within CORFO. With the push for privatization, the military government appeared determined to eliminate what had been one of the main responsibilities of CORFO, that of running the five hundred or so enterprises it had acquired by 1973. Initially, under military rule, CORFO’s primary function was that of ensuring the return of the enterprises acquired under Allende to their previous owners. But even though CORFO was under attack by the military regime, initiatives developed in earlier years began to come to fruition. Indeed, despite the anti-state rhetoric of market liberalization, CORFO steadily expanded its panoply of state export-promotion measures. Even in the face of the 1975 radical market program, CORFO took measures to stimulate the forestry and related industries. It provided credits and subsidies, financed projects for technological development, and fostered the development of the paper, cardboard, and wood industries. With CORFO under attack by the military, some CORFO bureaucrats made lateral moves to establish new institutions that would make important contributions to industrial growth and export expansion. One of the most important of these was the Fundación Chile (Cypher 2004).16 A semipublic agency providing support for the export sector, its purpose replicated one of the original functions of CORFO, that of developing new firms in areas where private capital would not invest and then selling them to the private sector. The Fundación initiated salmon farming in 1982 and engaged in the first commercial production of salmon in 1986–7; by the 1990s salmon had become one of Chile’s major exports (Ffrench-Davis 2002, 148). Another key export-promotion agency to emerge during the period was PROCHILE, established in 1974. PROCHILE’s role in stimulating exports increased enormously after 1985, when it stepped up its promotion of the establishment of business associations engaged in the adoption of new methods, standards, and activities that would lead to expansion into export markets. Such an association of firms was key in the tomato industry (Pérez-Alemán 2000, 50) and in the wine industry, where a state-inspired winemakers association allowed specialized

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medium-sized wine growers to find an export niche in an industry dominated by big producers (Agosín 1999, 96). In the fishing industry, as well, direct state promotion was vital, especially in the area of credit access (Kurtz 2001, 7). There is no question that much of the groundwork for many of these new developments had been laid in earlier years, at least a decade before the military came to power – especially in CORFO. Technical expertise and initiatives in industrial export promotion apparently had survived the turbulence of hypermobilization, a socialist experiment, and a foray into radical neoliberalism. Indeed, the base of the new industrial policy had even survived the near destruction of the very institution within which the new policy initiatives had germinated. However, these projects had to await an opportune moment to emerge. A variety of circumstances was propitious to the emergence of these initiatives in export promotion, particularly after 1985. Factors that encouraged entrepreneurs to seek out international markets included the restriction of domestic demand (a consequence of the economic crisis), exchange-rate depreciation, and the repression of labour, which reduced the cost of labour (Edwards and Cox Edwards 1987, 124; Agosín 1999, 85). In addition, the removal of heavy tariff and quota protection made it cheaper and easier for potential exporters to acquire inputs; indeed, this was an important factor in propelling the export of wood products and pulp. The economic collapse of the early 1980s played an essential role in discrediting the radical neoliberal model and in encouraging increased state support for export promotion. This latter development was an integral aspect of the state’s broadening of its entrepreneurial base of support. At the same time, historical contextual conditions, stemming from policies initiated prior to the military takeover, provided both the incentives and the opportunities for the change in industrial policy. The expansion of the university educational system, particularly in training agricultural economists and agronomists through the 1960s (Agosín 1999, 94), was an essential component of the later success of the new economic model. University graduates, many of whom had entered the government only to become unemployed with the political turbulence of the 1970s, entered the private sector and formed the core of the country’s new dynamic export-orientated entrepreneurial class (Shurman 1996). The land redistribution of the 1960s and 1970s, followed by the privatization drive of the military period, allowed many of these people to  acquire land, thereby making possible the emergence of some ten

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thousand industrial farmers tied to trading companies that exported (Martínez and Díaz 1996, 2). The emergence of the new industrial model became possible only once the resistance on the part of supporters of the old import substitution industrialization model to the measures necessary for export promotion was destroyed. The radical neoliberalism of the early years of the military dictatorship required a devastating economic crisis before a more pragmatic and more statist export-orientated model could emerge. Although economic ideas had an impact, the way in which economic ideas played out was closely linked to the relative strength and struggles of social forces. At the same time the panoply of exportpromotion measures that came to the fore after 1985 most certainly stemmed from CORFO. While the post-1985 export model contemplated a level of state intervention at variance with the earlier radical neoliberal vision, it was also distinct from the ECLA prescriptions of the day, which showed little concern with export promotion. Industrial Strategy under the Concertación and the Alliance for Change Between 1990 and 2010, four civilian presidents from the Concertación (Patricio Aylwin, Eduardo Frei, Ricardo Lagos, and Michelle Bachelet) came to power in Chile. In 2010, Chileans elected a centre-right coalition, known as the Alliance for Change, led by Sebastían Piñera. Compared with the pre-1973 years, the state was now much stronger and was no longer so deeply permeated by social forces. Policy-making, including industrial policy, most assuredly remained highly centralized. Yet alterations in industrial policy stemmed from broad political and economic considerations, shaped by formal institutions only insofar as the return to electoral democracy necessitated a consideration of social welfare and employment. In addition, powerful business interests continued to shape a new industrial export strategy that germinated under the Concertación, but compellingly came to the fore under the current administration. These administrations all remained firmly committed to a free market model. The Concertación deepened the neoliberal economic model by continuing to reduce tariffs – from 15 per cent to 11 per cent in 1991 and to 6 per cent in 1997. The privatization program was expanded to include state-owned airlines, ports, highways, and mining companies. The Concertación introduced a number of new ingredients particularly

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relevant to industrial development, and paid increasing attention to export opportunities for SMEs. For instance, in addition to promoting research as well as associations of SMEs to make them more competitive, CORFO began to provide financing for new enterprises, especially those wishing to enter export markets. It also took up the responsibility of promoting investment in economically undeveloped regions. To focus on these functions, in 1997 CORFO transferred the remaining public enterprises in its hands to a new entity, the Sistema de Empresas (SEP, System Administrator of Enterprises). PROCHILE continued to support groups of enterprises in their search for export markets, often channelling financing from CORFO. But the Concertación also instituted a new program, the Proyectos de Fomento (PROFOS, Development Projects), through which it turned its attention to sectors such as textiles and footwear that had been adversely affected by the economic model of the past decades. By 1997 there were 305 PROFOS involving 3,400 SMEs in these sectors (PérezAlemán 2000, 49, 50). Similarly the Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Tecnológico y Productivo (FONTEC, National Fund for Technological and Productive Development), established in 1991 to provide funding and subsidies to promote research and technological development, has supported a significant number of SMEs (Alarcón and Stumpo 2001, 180–3). In addition the Concertación administrations pursued market diversification through a long list of trade agreements with a wide variety of countries, particularly in Latin America, where bilateral trade agreements, have been key to opening up new markets for manufactured goods in the long-abandoned consumer goods industries. Indeed, Chile’s exports to Latin American countries, increasingly and in the majority, are manufactured goods. Between 1990 and 2001 the volume of Chile’s exports grew at an average annual rate of 9 per cent, led by the growth of non-traditional exports, although the rate of growth was slower during the second half of the nineties (Ffrench-Davis 2002, 152). After the economic crisis of the 1980s exports of manufactured products based on natural resources (fish meal, fresh fruit, pulp and paper) reinitiated growth, but by the end of the 1990s these products accounted for less than 30 per cent of exports. Meanwhile the export of manufactures not based on natural resources – as well as of manufactures based on new types of natural resources, such as textiles, apparel, plastic products, paper, and household furniture – became more dynamic, reaching 35 per cent of total exports by the second half of the 1990s (Ffrench-Davis 2002, 154). However, these declined

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as a proportion of exports thereafter. The Concertación also showed concern for stimulating activities that would provide high-value-added employment. In 2000 it introduced a new strategy of seeking high-technology investors with the objective of attracting technology-intensive foreign investment and assisting companies interested in establishing permanent operations in Chile. The program, administered by CORFO, aimed to encourage competitiveness, new investment, better jobs, and equal opportunities for Chileans. In 2006 it claimed already to have attracted fifty new investment projects (CORFO 2006). With the rise in the international price of copper in the early 2000s, however, the Chilean export profile began to alter substantially. Copper increased its proportion of the value of Chilean exports, reaching 59 per cent by 2010, while non-traditional exports lost their importance as drivers of the Chilean economy. In 2005 President Lagos established the National Council of Innovation for Competitiveness with the aim of proposing measures to improve innovation in order to increase the country’s export capacity. The Council’s 2006 report firmly rejected the notion that the country ought to move away from export dependence on natural resources. Rather, the goal should be to build on the past success of natural resources-led growth by introducing advanced technology in the natural resources sectors where Chile already has a comparative advantage. Natural resources were to be springboards to development (Agosin, Larraín, and Grau 2010, 14). The difficulty in moving into markets for manufactured goods not linked to the country’s natural resources was no doubt instrumental in this new direction. At the same time the influence of resources-based industrialists was also an important ingredient. Two members of the Commission were powerful members of the private sector, one of whom (Bruno Philippi Irarrázabal) was the director of SOFOFA (the Federation of Chilean Industry) between 2005 and 2009 (CNIC 2006, 2).17 The Piñera administration gave strong support to the Council’s 2010 report, which spelled out in detail the export sectors that were to receive government support. These included food packaging, food additives, and mining equipment – all sectors closely tied to the country’s powerful resourcesbased industrialists. These industries, it was hoped, would now drive exports and employment growth. In a very general sense institutional legacies stemming from the military period and earlier undoubtedly played a role in the Concertación’s industrial policy. The concentration of power in the executive, the predominance of the finance ministry over all aspects of economic policy,

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and the continuation of military appointees in that ministry into the period of civilian rule helped to keep at bay possible pressures to diverge from the neoliberal path. However, the Concertación’s commitment to trade liberalization, the expansion of exports, and the pursuit of export markets never wavered, in contrast to other policy legacies of the military regime, such as tax policy, social spending, education policy, and heath services, which the Concertación either changed or attempted to change. As a center-right government with strong business support, Piñera’s Alliance for Change did not require any institutional legacy to keep it on the neoliberal track. However, like the Concertación, it has also backed state support for export expansion (a distinctly nonneoliberal position) and has maintained high levels of social spending. Once again, extra-state pressures and features appear to have been critically important as explanatory variables. To maintain business confidence and, initially, to satisfy the military, the Concertación had a strongly felt need to demonstrate its ability to administer a healthy capitalist economy. It also had promised a redress of the inequality and economic injustice of the military years, and, indeed, its continued electoral fortunes depended on its ability to address the social deficit. Its industrial policy therefore continued to focus on export markets, but with an increasing emphasis on employment generation since SMEs provide the vast majority of employment. The Piñera administration, having faced a popular election and subsequently been confronted with a sharp decline in popularity, has courted popular support by promising to eradicate poverty, by maintaining levels of social spending, and by pursuing measures to improve access to quality education and health care. The Concertación’s economic policy direction represented an extremely fragile compromise between a still-powerful private sector and a relatively weak electoral base in the working and lower-middle classes, including a weak labour movement. Business continued to have a wide array of institutionalized channels through which it could influence policy, participating in working commissions on economic policy, in the Foro de Producción, a consultative body, in monthly meetings with the head of the central bank, and in the negotiation of trade agreements. No special channel was created for SMEs, however, and there is no evidence that entrepreneurs in these firms pressed for this particular policy thrust. Hence, it is likely that the Concertación’s concern for SMEs stemmed from the desire to support employmentgenerating activities.

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At the same time, the labour regime remained highly flexible, despite attempts to make the labour code more protective of labour rights. Instead, every such attempt was blocked by Chile’s powerful private sector, which argued that revision would harm the country’s export competitiveness. Labour protection in the rural sector, the site of Chile’s highly successful export-orientated food-processing industry, remained especially weak. Differences between labour and government have become sharply polarized during the Piñera presidency as the administration remained firmly committed to a flexible labour regime. The Concertación pursued an industrial policy that very much reflected the contradictory, broader social force pressures and economic legacy it faced. On the one hand, it accepted the major features of the neoliberal economic model as bequeathed to it by the military regime: trade liberalization, the pursuit of export markets, and fiscal responsibility in state spending. On the other hand, it pledged to rectify the social deficit and inequality left by the military period and faced pressure from the leftist parties in the coalition and from its electoral base to do this. It also inherited and continued to develop a set of export-promotion instruments. The pursuit of a labour-intensive export strategy was the core of this compromise: the balancing act of keeping the private sector on side while improving social welfare shaped an economic and industrial strategy that sought export promotion and employment expansion. In pursuing this strategy, the Concertación sought to reshape CORFO and add new programs. One of these new programs involved support for the expansion of resources-related activities, a strategy that the current administration has enthusiastically endorsed. Conclusion The contribution of the new institutionalism to our understanding of the evolution of Chilean industrial policy can be helpful only if viewed within the country’s context of fierce contestation between social forces. This is because social forces have been so instrumental in permeating, shaping, eliminating, and establishing institutions to serve their interests. Between 1938 and 1970, the state was heavily permeated by social forces, particularly industrial business interests. This permeation shaped an import substitution industrialization policy that responded directly to those particular interests. The political turmoil and growing political polarization of the 1964–73 period inhibited state technocrats from even attempting to influence the direction of policy. The military

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coup of 1973 signalled the resurgence of the oligarchy, excluded from policy during the socialist experiment of 1970–3, and a virtual destruction of much of the state infrastructure of the previous period. The repressive character of the military regime was key to breaking down both bureaucratic and institutional resistance. The economic plan of the military did not arise from within any formal institutional structure; rather, it was essentially the creation of the oppositional social force. The regime created new norms, institutions, and procedures that facilitated many aspects of the new market economic strategy. Considerable institutional continuity was apparent with the four Concertación administrations – so heavily burdened by both the institutional legacy of the military period and its economic model. While Chile returned to the status of a competitive electoral democracy, economic policy-making remained heavily concentrated in the executive, in particular in the finance ministry. I have argued, however, that broad political concerns of the leadership about maintaining its base of electoral support and support from business, rather than institutional legacies, were important in shaping industrial policy under these four administrations. Nevertheless one institutional continuity was an essential ingredient in shaping economic and industrial policy after 1985: the state development agency CORFO. Although it came under attack during the initial period of military government, it survived and strengthened its activities. Many of its initiatives had germinated years earlier, and its technocrats appear to have survived, although some moved laterally to pursue their policy goals. CORFO’s role, although exceptional, is important. Its activism, which represented one of the key contradictions of Chile’s free market strategy, was instrumental in the success of the economic model. Struggles among social forces and consequent profound institutional and policy changes had to occur, however, before CORFO’s ideas could come to fruition. There are important reasons to incorporate an understanding of the role of social forces in explaining policy outcomes in Chile even though that country has made a successful transition to electoral democracy. Chile’s institutions today bear the imprint of the country’s tumultuous past. To understand fully their behaviour today, it is important to consider that past and the way in which social forces have powerfully shaped institutional realities. Furthermore, the Chilean state, compared with countries of the industrial North, remains weak. It has not been able to mediate successfully between contending social forces on an

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important cross-section of issues from reform of health care to reform of the labour code and the educational system. Indeed, there is considerable evidence that serious inequality in policy access remains, with the business community retaining important privileges in this regard. Meanwhile, much of civil society remains frustrated in its ability to be heard (Teichman 2009). In this context explanations of policy outcomes might do well to consider the possibility of the inordinate influence over institutions on the part of powerful social forces. Finally, Chilean society is deeply divided over fundamental issues of democracy and economy. The roots of these differences have been powerfully shaped by the interplay among the interests of social forces, policy ideas, and institutions. While institutions have contributed and will continue to contribute to policy outcomes, institutional behaviour and norms will continue to shift in response to the pressures of social forces. A search for this interactive process is the most fruitful way to explain policy outcomes in Chile.

NOTES 1 As Migdal points out, however, this term is often not helpful for many countries of the global South (1994, 19). 2 The term social class is not appropriate because, as we shall see, the military and the technocrats were key actors in institutional change and policy development. 3 Perspectives differ on the question of how collective actors come to understand their ‘goals’ or ‘interests.’ While ideas, once they have taken hold, can certainly be important in driving policy change (Hall 1989), we need to understand why certain ideas resonate more than others and why a particular set of ideas resonates when it does. Context, including the material conditions and threats to material welfare, can be important explanatory variables. 4 For example, protracted struggles among social forces in nineteenthcentury Latin America gave rise to the acceptance of caudillismo (personal power) as an effective instrument of nation building and state formation (see Burns and Charlip 2007, 110–11). 5 Hence, policy is likely to be only one among a variety of variables that explain outcomes. 6 While the political leadership maintains support for the neoliberal model along with a firm belief that social injustice can be addressed effectively

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7 8

9

10

11 12

13 14 15

through astute economic and social policy, a sizable portion of the public, particularly supporters of political parties of the left, labour, and civil society activists, oppose the current economic model, claiming that it produces high levels of inequality and poor-quality employment. While the political leadership sees democracy in terms of electoral democracy, a portion of the Chilean public sees democracy as a political arrangement addressing social injustice and entailing extensive civil society input into policy outside of electoral politics (Klesner 2001; Teichman 2009) Cleaves’s study documents this relationship between the housing ministry and the association representing the country’s construction contractors. The Chicago boys were named for their education in economics at the University of Chicago, an experience that occurred as a consequence of an exchange program established between the Catholic University of Chile and the University of Chicago in the 1950s. The institutional transformation following military rule has been a protracted one because the 1981 constitution (amended in 1988) established a variety of formal arrangements designed to perpetuate the power of the military and the political right. A constitutional reform in 2005 eliminated all but one of these arrangements. The most important parties in the Concertación alliance are the Partido Demócrata Cristiano (Christian Democratic Party), and two socialist parties, the Partido Socialista (Socialist Party) and the Partido por la Democracia (Party for Democracy). The Front, led by the Partido Radical (Radical Party), also included the Socialist and Communist parties. However, as we shall see, it was vested interests much more than ECLA’s ideas that shaped the specifics of Chilean industrial policy. ECLA structuralism contemplated industrial integration through the establishment of backward linkages in the capital goods sector, something that did not occur in Chile, as explained below. Between 1940 and 1946, it created thirty-two enterprises in, among other sectors, electricity, steel, and petroleum. Although this situation was true of all of the Latin American countries that industrialized, it was most marked in the Chilean case (Thorpe 1998, 138). Known as the ‘Monday Club,’ the group included seven executives of two of the country’s largest conglomerates (whose firms had been taken over by the Allende government), in addition to a number of the Chicago economists who would eventually obtain government positions. The president of the right-wing El Mercurio newspaper was also a member (O’Brien and Roddick 1983, 34).

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16 A key figure in the establishment of Fundación Chile, established in 1976, was Ratil Saez, a military officer, economist, and former head of CORFO. 17 The other business member was Juan Claro González, whose entrepreneurial interests are closely tied to natural resources industries. He serves as chair of Embotelladora SA, a beverage company, and as chief executive officer and president of Metrogas SA, a gas distribution company (Bloomberg Business Week, 2 October 2011, http://investing.businessweek.com/ research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=8283636; accessed 2 October 2011). Claro González is also a former president of SOFOFA and of the Consejo Nacional de Innovación para la Competitividad (CNIC 2011). REFERENCES Agosín, Manuel R. 1999. ‘Comercio y crecimiento en Chile.’ Revista de la CEPAL 68 (August): 79–100. Agosín, Manuel R., Christian Larraín, and Nicolás Grau. 2010.‘Industrial Policy in Chile.” IDB Working Paper Series IDB-WP-170. Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank. Alarcón, Celia, and Giovanni Stumpo. 2001. ‘Políticas para pequeñas y medianas empresas en Chile.’ Revista de la CEPAL 74 (August): 175–91. Burns, E. Bradford, and Julie A. Charlip. 2007. Latin America: An Interpretive History, 8th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson. Campbell, John L. 1998. ‘Institutional Analysis and the Role of Ideas in Political Economy.’ Theory and Society 27, no. 3: 377–409. Cleaves, Peter S. 1974. Bureaucratic Politics and Administration in Chile. Berkeley: University of California Press. CNIC (Consejo Nacional de Innovación para la Competitividad). 2006. Informe Final. Santiago. – 2011. ‘Miembros del Consejo.’ Santiago. http://www.cnic.cl/content/view /476989/Miembros-del-Consejo.html#content-top (accessed 2 October 2011). CORFO. 2006. ‘CORFO’s High Technology Investment Program.’ Santiago: Corporación de Fomento de la Producción de Chile. http://www.corfo.cl/ biotechnology/incentives/high_technology.html (accessed 17 March 2009). Cypher, James M. 2004. ‘Is Chile a Neoliberal Success?’ Dollars and Sense (September/October). http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/South_ America/Neoliberal_Success_Chile.html (accessed 17 April 2009). Drake, Paul W. 1978. Socialism and Populism in Chile, 1932–52. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Edwards, Sebastian, and Cox Edwards, Alejandra. 1987. Monetarism and Liberalization: The Chilean Experiment. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger.

76 Comparative Public Policy in Latin America Fáundez, Julio. 1988. Marxism and Democracy in Chile: From 1932 to the Fall of Allende. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Ffrench-Davis, Ricardo. 2002. ‘El impacto de las exportaciones sobre el crecimiento en Chile.’ Revista de la CEPAL 76 (April): 143–60. Griffith-Jones, Stephany. 1987. Chile to 1991: The End of an Era? Special Report 1073. London: Economist Intelligence Unit. Hall, Peter A., ed. 1989. The Political Power of Economic Ideas. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hall, Peter A., and Rosemary Taylor. 1996. ‘Political Science and the Three Institutionalisms.’ Political Studies 44, no. 5: 936–57. Hira, Anil. 1998. Ideas and Economic Policy in Latin America: Regional, National, and Organizational Case Studies. Westport, CT: Praeger. Klesner, Joseph. L. 2001. ‘Legacies of Authoritarianism: Political Attitudes in Chile and Mexico.’ In Citizen Views of Democracy in Latin America, ed. Roderic A. Camp. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Kurtz, Marcus J. 2001. ‘State Developmentalism without a Developmental State: The Public Foundations of the “Free Market” Miracle in Chile.’ Latin American Politics and Society 43, no. 2: 1–25. Lieberman, Robert C. 2002. ‘Ideas, Institutions, and Political Order: Explaining Political Change.’ American Political Science Review 96, no. 4: 697–712. Loveman, Brian. 1988. The Legacy of Hispanic Capitalism, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mamalakis, Markos J. 1976. The Growth and Structure of the Chilean Economy: From Independence to Allende. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Mamalakis, Markos J., and Clark Winton Reynolds. 1965. Essays on the Chilean Economy. Homewood, IL: Richard D. Irwin. Martínez, Javier, and Álvaro Díaz. 1996. Chile: The Great Transformation. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Migdal, Joel S. 1994. ‘The State in Society: An Approach to Struggles for Domination.’ In State Power and Social Forces: Domination and Transformation in the Third World, ed. Joel S. Migdal, Atul Kohi, and Vivienne Shue. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Montecinos, Veronica. 1998. Economists, Politics and the State: Chile, 1958–1994. Amsterdam: CEDLA. Muñoz Gomá, Oscar, and Carmen Celedón. 1996. ‘Chile in Transition: Economic and Political Strategies.’ In Economic Policy and the Transition to Democracy: The Latin American Experience, ed. Juan Antonio Morales and Gary McMahon. New York: St Martin’s Press. O’Brien, Phil, and Jackie Roddick. 1983. Chile, the Pinochet Decade: The Rise and Fall of the Chicago Boys. London: Latin American Bureau.

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Pérez-Alemán, Paola. 2000. ‘Learning, Adjustment and Economic Development: Transforming Firms, the State and Associations in Chile.’ World Development 28, no. 1: 41–55. Pierson, Paul. 2004. Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Pierson, Paul, and Theda Skocpol. 2002. ‘Historical Institutionalism in Contemporary Political Science.’ In Political Science: The State of the Discipline, ed. Helen Milner and Ira Katznelson. New York: W.W. Norton. Politzer, Patricia. 2001. Fear in Chile: Lives under Pinochet. New York: New Press. Sandbrook, Richard, Marc Edelman, Patrick Heller, and Judith Teichman. 2007. Social Democracy in the Global Periphery: Origins, Challenges, Prospects. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schmidt, Vivien A. 2006. ‘Give Peace a Chance: Reconciling Four (not Three) “New Institutionalisms.”’ Paper prepared for the Annual Meetings of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia, 31 August–3 September. http://sws1.bu.edu/VSCHMIDT/documents/givepeaceachancefinal.pdf. Shurman, Rachel A. 1996. ‘Chile’s New Entrepreneurs and the “Economic Miracle”: The Invisible Hand or a Hand from the State?’ Studies in Comparative International Development 31, no. 3: 83–109. Sigmund, Paul E. 1977. The Overthrow of Allende and the Politics of Chile, 1964– 1976. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Silva, Eduardo. 1996. The State and Capital in Chile: Business Elites, Technocrats, and Market Economics. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Steinmo, Sven. 2008. ‘Historical Institutionalism.’ In Approaches and Methodologies in the Social Sciences, ed. Donatella della Porta and Michael Keating. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Teichman, Judith. 2001. The Politics of Freeing Markets in Latin America: Chile, Argentina, and Mexico. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. – 2009. ‘Competing Visions of Democracy and Development in the Era of Neoliberalism in Mexico and Chile.’ International Political Science Review 30, no. 1: 67–87. Thelen, Kathleen. 1999. ‘Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics.’ Annual Review of Political Science 2 (June): 369–404. Thorpe, R. 1998. Progress, Poverty and Exclusion: An Economic History of Latin America in the 20th Century. Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank. Velasco, Andrés. 1994. ‘The State and Economic Policy: Chile 1952–1992.’ In The Chilean Economy: Policy Lessons and Challenges, ed. Barry P. Bosworth, Rudiger Dornbusch, and Raúl Labán. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.

4 Turbulent Times: Structural Reforms, Crisis, and Labour Policy in Argentina, 1990s–2000s Viviana Patroni and Ruth Felder

Few aspects in the political, economic, and social life of Argentina have been untouched by the momentous transformation the country has undergone over the past thirty years. Changes in labour policy stand as an unequivocal illustration of the scope and depth of this transformation. They also provide significant insight into the declining capacity of organized labour to affect the country’s political, economic, and social realities. The ingredients in the volatile mix that account for the drastic changes in labour policy that have occurred appear all the more conflicting when one considers the nature of the reforms in the area of labour regulation introduced by President Carlos Menem (1989–99) as part of his administration’s restructuring package. Elected as the leading candidate for the Peronist Partido Justicialista (PJ, Justicialist Party), which traditionally has been the historical ally of organized labour – in particular, the Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT, General Confederation of Labour) – and its main political conduit, Menem moved swiftly to introduce legal reforms that reversed labour rights. Workers were also affected by a recession and a daunting increase in unemployment levels. By the end of the 1990s, the policy reforms had pushed the country into a deep crisis. After the crisis of December 2001 and a subsequently turbulent transition period, the economy experienced a turn for the better by 2003. That year marked the inauguration of a new Peronist administration able to gain high levels of popular support on the basis of its commitment to altering the course of development the country had followed since the mid-1970s. In fact, President Néstor Kirchner (2003–7) succeeded in rebuilding support for government institutions at a moment when public opinion was unquestionably damning towards politics and politicians alike. Without question, the momentous acceleration

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of economic growth that accompanied Kirchner’s term in office was the rudder that allowed him to stay the course in a transition riddled with challenges. In this chapter we assess both employment policy in Argentina since 1989 and its impact on the transformation of labour markets. While we identify new trends since 2003, our general premise is that, even under a more progressive political context, labour policy reforms have been conditioned by the depth of the economic transformation and by the need to contain social conflict. Accordingly our first argument is that the structural transformation of the country’s economy and the requirements for accumulation under these new conditions set the limits within which labour policy might seek to extend labour rights and reverse policies that increase labour market flexibility. During the 1990s a fundamental part of the PJ’s strategy to contain social conflict was the enlargement and consolidation of clientelistic networks among the population most affected by the escalating crisis in employment. This move towards clientelism represented a shift away from the use of corporatism as means of controlling labour.1 Some of these practices have continued since 2003. Since then, however, there has also been a renewed reliance on more traditional forms of corporatism and on a laboriously managed relationship between the government and other representatives of the labour movement. Our second argument, therefore, is that the two Peronist administrations since 2003 have used labour policy to consolidate a more diversified approach to responding to the demands emanating from a highly heterogeneous working class. We take into account the influence of these structural and political dimensions on policy-making to explain the dynamics of both continuity and change since 2003. A significant body of literature in the field of public policy in Latin America has focused on variations in the institutional capacity of the state as the independent variable that explains sustained economic growth and democracy. While institutional capacity is an important factor in the determination of public agendas and in policy formulation and implementation, we analyse public policy from a political perspective. In keeping with the objectives of this volume, we place public policy within the context of a broader process of social transformation through which state action is articulated with the action of non-state actors. The effects of such articulation and the particular historical context in which policies come to acquire political meaning determine the pattern of change over time.

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Understanding public policy in this way implies that it condenses social processes characterized by conflict among diverse interests and perspectives sustained by actors with very different capabilities and resources. It is for this reason that actors come to identify the problems to be addressed through policy, the alternatives to be proposed as solutions, the resources necessary to implement these solutions, and the distribution of the costs involved in their execution, through processes marked by conflict, negotiation, and concessions (Palumbo and Calista 1990). It is precisely these conflicts, negotiations, and concessions that constitute crucial elements in identifying and interpreting the contradictions and ambiguities embedded in public policies. Our chapter is divided into five sections. First, we trace the trajectory of structural reforms since the 1990s and their impact on the reality of work for most Argentines. Second, we focus on labour legislation reform during the 1990s. Next, we consider the employment programs that were created to address some of the most pressing needs during the 1990s, as well as the political use of these programs. In the two final sections, we address the main changes that have taken place since 2003 in Argentina’s labour market policies. The Reality of Reforms: Neoliberalism, Labour Policy, and the Transformation of Labour Markets Although the first attempt at labour market reform in Argentina based on what is now usually referred to as neoliberalism dates back to the mid-1970s – that is, during the time of the last military dictatorship (1976–83), it was only in the 1990s that reforms acquired their most dynamic and destructive shape. A broad consensus justifying these reforms regardless of their cost was moulded in the aftermath of the hyperinflationary surge of the late 1980s. In fact, it was in 1991 that the Convertibility Plan, establishing a fixed exchange rate between the domestic currency and the US dollar, set the framework within which the last wave of structural reforms acquired new strength.2 While the Plan was effective in reducing inflation,3 the country’s most pressing problem at the time, and while it facilitated economic growth early in the 1990s, the very combination of trade and financial liberalization, privatization, and the reorientation of the state’s regulatory functions over the economy created the conditions for an unprecedented crisis. By the end of the 1990s Argentina was dealing with recession, alarming rates of unemployment, increasing poverty, social unrest, increasing fiscal

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hardship, and a spiralling climb in public debt. Moreover, in the context of a fixed exchange rate, sustained high interest rates, and increasing prices for services provided by the privatized sector, wages and other labour costs were among the very few means on hand to reduce production costs. Economic restructuring inflicted profoundly negative changes on the performance of labour markets. The first and probably the key variable was the performance of the industrial sector, which was directly affected by the conditions imposed by the Convertibility Plan. Currency appreciation, a growing problem as the decade progressed, in combination with trade liberalization, forced national industries to compete with artificially low-priced imports. A sizable segment of domestic industry was simply unable to adjust to these new conditions: by 1998 the industrial sector contributed only 17 per cent of Argentina’s gross domestic product (GDP) compared with 22.4 per cent in 1982. Second, those firms that adjusted to the new conditions did so by adopting new technology, a strategy favoured by an overvalued exchange rate. Because most of this technology tended to be capital intensive (Gastaldi et al. 1997, 87), labour absorption was negatively affected. In general, improvements in productivity constitute a positive aspect of the incorporation of new technology. As Leiva (2008, 113–16) argues, however, growing productivity can also result from raising the ratio of capital to labour by reducing the number of workers. Increasing the intensity of work was certainly one way in which productivity improvements occurred in Argentina. Moreover, increasing productivity was not sufficient to reverse the decline of wages. Thus, by the end of the 1990s, real wages were 23 per cent below their 1986 level and 30 per cent below their 1980 level (Mancebo 1998, 187). The weakening structural position of labour unions was a key variable in explaining rising labour productivity in this period (Monza 1995, 146). These trends were reinforced by a third characteristic of the period: although there were spurts of economic growth, the main characteristic of the Argentine economy during most of the 1990s, especially the latter half of the decade, was its propensity to crisis and stagnation. Some exports performed well during the 1990s, but these were mostly resource-intensive products demanding intensive capital use. Exports, therefore, could not generate sufficient employment to compensate for the displacement of workers in other sectors of the economy. The nature of economic growth and decline during the 1990s was, then, a critical variable in the radical transformation of labour markets

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in Argentina. The following statistics provide a good indication of the devastating results of neoliberalism. Unemployment increased from 6 per cent in 1991 to 18.3 per cent in 2001. In that same year underemployment affected another 16.3 per cent of workers. In 2000 the number of non-registered jobs – that is, work that does not provide health care, social security, paid vacations, or other forms of protection under the law – increased to 40 per cent. These figures only worsened after the meltdown between December 2001 and early 2002. Thus, by May 2002, unemployment rose to 21.5 per cent and underemployment to 18.6 per cent. Figures for poverty and indigence levels reached their all-time historical high in modern Argentina such that, in May 2002, 53 per cent of the population was living below the poverty line and 24.8 per cent was living in extreme poverty (INDEC n.d.a). Structural changes and their impact on labour markets were also reflected in the distribution of income: while in 1974 the poorest 10 per cent of the population received 4 per cent of the national income, by 2003 the figure was only 1.9 per cent. Alternatively, the richest 10 per cent saw its share of national income soar from 21.2 per cent to 31.7 per cent during the same period. It is also important to note that, while poverty levels were closely related to the growth of unemployment and precariousness, it is also evident that work itself was not sufficient to provide for the satisfaction of basic needs. The transformation in the daily reality most Argentines faced shows that employers were increasingly able to saddle workers with the costs of restructuring. The fact that reforms were carried out by a Peronist administration weighed heavily in organized labour’s response to the crisis. Two sets of policies are critical in accounting for the institutional change in labour relations. The first of these was labour policy reform. The second was social programs through which the government attempted to address some of the main dislocations generated by the transformation of labour markets. Labour Policy Reform: Workers and the New Contours of Power Historically, labour policy in Argentina has been closely connected to the power of unions and, importantly, to their key role as political actors. Their power derives in no small measure from labour’s strong connection to Peronism, the force that gave both unity and a strong political identity to the working class and the unions that represented it. In fact, the power that unions had acquired as major players within the Peronist movement allowed them to contest access to state power effectively.4

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Until the return to democracy in 1983, it was the capacity of Peronism to represent the demands and interests of the working class that provided meaning and direction to the party’s actions. Increasingly in the 1980s, however, and much more manifestly since the return of Peronism to power in the 1990s, the labour leadership was displaced from the central position it had once occupied (Gutierrez 2001). Menem’s labour reform initiatives are the most obvious manifestation of the diminishing political capabilities of the Peronist labour leadership. Partly in recognition of this new reality, the CGT leadership eventually supported most changes introduced to key areas of legislation protecting workers. It did so, however, only after ensuring that the core of the legal framework protecting its own corporatist power was not modified. Moreover, several union executives became partners in the business opportunities created by the reformist strategy, becoming part of the consortia that operate several privatized public utilities and some of the private pension funds. As we suggest below, however, some sectors within the CGT offered stiff resistance to Menem’s reforms. That the labour organization has been able to carve a new political space for itself since 2003 is in no small measure a direct consequence of the distance some of its segments took from the Peronist administration in the previous decade. Reforms to labour laws were a central aspect of Menem’s ambitious program of structural reforms. The main policy target of the reforms in this area was to reduce the rigidities in the labour market that, according to prevailing views at the time, limited the impact of economic growth on the generation of employment. Between 1991 and 1998, the direction of reforms was unambiguously towards creating more flexible labour conditions in the country (Marshall 2004, 12). Labour policy reform was important in three key areas. One body of reforms aimed at reducing the contractual obligations of employers, thereby facilitating the creation of a more flexible labour force by reducing the costs of hiring and firing workers and by facilitating the use of temporary and part-time workers. These reforms also curtailed the right to strike, a restriction that, together with the already existing limitations set by the convertibility plan on wage increases, meant the practical disappearance of wage bargaining during the decade.5 Second, the Menem government attempted to undermine the monopoly that unions had exercised over the provision of health and welfare services by allowing private competition in these areas. While the reform was not approved, some of the changes introduced – for example, the option for beneficiaries to choose coverage from a plan other than the one

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corresponding to their union – resulted in the substantial weakening of the control unions had exercised over the health care sector. Third, the Menem government introduced legislation to change the regulation on collective agreements in order to permit negotiations at the plant level. While the change eventually was reverted through new legislation introduced in 1998, in practice unions agreed to negotiate at the plant level, in many cases accepting reductions in wages or the deterioration of working conditions in general (Salvia et al. n.d., 135). On several occasions legislation was blocked in Congress or modified to address union opposition (Etchemendy 1995). After 1996 this opposition was expressed through general strikes, particularly when the CGT became concerned that the reforms threatened areas it considered fundamental – the administration of health care services, for example – or when it wanted to secure its place in the negotiation of labour reforms. Aware of his weakening political position, Menem tried to avoid a final rupture with the CGT. Thus, the last set of labour laws passed by Congress in 1998 – after the Menem government’s setback in the mid-term congressional election in 1997 and before the presidential election of 1999 – reversed some reforms that had affected the privileges of the traditional labour leadership, a move that in our opinion represents a rather insignificant rollback considering its effects on workers at large. Moreover, labour flexibilization was not only the product of labour policy reform, but also the de facto result of economic restructuring and the condition of precariousness and uncertainty it generated for all workers. Changes in the PJ and the course of labour policy in the 1990s implied, nonetheless, major political setbacks for the CGT and, in a scenario of losses and uncertainty for workers, generated growing internal conflicts that led eventually to its division. On the one hand, some sectors remained closer to the government inasmuch as their leaders had benefited in significant ways from the various perks associated with the relationship. On the other hand, an important faction of the CGT representing unions in sectors less affected during the 1990s – in particular, services and transportation – was openly opposed to reforms. The leader of this faction, Hugo Moyano, became a vocal critic of Menem’s reforms, particularly as the crisis worsened and social conflict increased by the end of the 1990s. Moyano did not break from the PJ, but by 1999 – when the Peronist party had been displaced from power with the election of a social-democratic alliance of parties led by Fernando de la Rúa (1999–2001) – differences between the two factions had become serious enough to split the CGT. In 2004 Moyano became the leader of a

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reunified CGT and once again a key interlocutor of the state under the Kirchner administration. Since then growing levels of employment and an official commitment to reducing poverty have greatly facilitated the increasing weight of the CGT both organizationally and politically. Yet Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, president since 2007, has placed some unequivocal limits on the influence the CGT has sought to exercise within the government. Importantly also, despite its new strength, the CGT has not been able to represent effectively all workers’ struggles or the plight of precarious workers. The lack of a more decisive response on the part of the CGT during the 1990s is not to suggest that workers did not organize to oppose Menem’s reforms. As early as 1992, a number of unions, mostly in the public sector, split from the CGT to form what was to become a few years later the Central de Trabajadores de la Argentina (CTA, Argentine Workers’ Central). Novel because of its strategy to organize the increasingly heterogeneous working class, the CTA grew to acquire a significant presence by the end of the decade. An important factor in its success was the incorporation of the Federación de Tierra, Vivienda y Hábitat (FTV, Federation of Land, Housing, and Habitat), one of the many organizations of the unemployed that emerged during the 1990s. The piquetero movement, as it became known, was heterogeneous, representing groups with diverse political backgrounds and organizational strategies (Svampa and Pereyra 2003). A key change after 2003 was the much more open attitude of the government towards the demands raised by these sectors. Equally important, because of the political significance of representing them, organizations within the piquetero movement found within the spheres of the state viable channels to influence policy-making. This was not simply an issue of co-optation or clientelism, but rather an alternative way to institutionalize the demands of these organizations at a time when increasing the basis of support was critical for the government. Thus, the trajectory of alternative workers’ organizations, as we will see with the case of the piquetero movement in the next section, illustrates the extent to which labour policy served the political goal of controlling potential opposition to the government. Dealing with the Social Effects of Reforms: Employment Programs and Clientelism The devastating impact of restructuring and labour flexibilization in the 1990s was accentuated by the lack of some form of safety net – for

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example, an effective unemployment insurance policy providing broad coverage to a significant number of workers.6 Equally important, several of the assistance programs the government did implement to provide some relief to those most affected by the crisis tended to recreate the conditions of precariousness prevalent in labour markets. Among these programs, workfare provided compensation that was considerably below the minimum required to satisfy a family’s basic needs, offered coverage only for short periods of time, and did not provide social security protection. During the early 1990s, when it appeared that neoliberal reforms had finally provided a solution to instability and economic decline, unemployment and poverty became viewed as temporary problems despite their magnitude and worsening signs. In a somewhat contradictory sense, while economic growth was considered key to their resolution, unemployment and poverty were also explained as consequences of individual failure and socio-cultural characteristics that prevented the poor from participating in the expanding opportunities a more open and less regulated economy had to offer (Lo Vuolo et al. 1999, 293–4). Following trends characteristic of the period, social policy (and employment policy was no exception) became less universal in conception and approach and, alternatively, targeted at specifically vulnerable groups. Starting in the mid-1990s, when the negative effects of the economic transformations became apparent, targeted social policies developed at the same pace as social turmoil. While geared to controlling social conflict, another key variable was also at play in the development of these programs: they served as a central component in the extension of clientelistic networks through which the PJ attempted to rebuild its links with those the labour market was leaving behind (Levitsky 2005). As workers lost their jobs and their access to both a living wage and a number of services to which they were entitled through their union membership, they became increasingly dependent on the relief they could secure through their connection to a local PJ leader with access to public resources. Thus, precarious lives and the poverty and exclusion they brought about transformed people’s connection to the very party that, for many, had represented their demands for inclusion and social justice.7 Although clientelism was far from a new phenomenon in Argentina, it was the deleterious social conditions engendered through restructuring and labour flexibilization that created the environment for its extension and consolidation during the 1990s. Clientelism, therefore, was an expression of the increasingly unequal distribution of

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wealth and political power, as well as citizens’ narrowing possibilities for exercising their rights. The state, and through it the Peronist party, had a number of programs at its disposal to sustain clientelistic networks, but here we focus on those explicitly developed to address the demands of the unemployed. These programs became important during the second half of the 1990s as the employment crisis reached unprecedented levels and also as piquetero organizations became serious contenders in the urban areas most affected by unemployment and poverty. Among the main employment programs were Reinserción Laboral (Labour Reintegration), Empleo Joven (youth employment), and Plan Trabajar (Work Program). These were all targeted programs, however, that reached only a small portion of the population. For example, the most important of these programs, Plan Trabajar, reached 110,000 beneficiaries in 1996 and 350,000 between May 1997 and May 1998 (CELS 2003, 32), while the total number of unemployed in 1996 was approximately 2 million and, in 1997 it was 1.9 million (INDEC). Accordingly the distribution of these programs often prompted organizations of the unemployed to stage collective action to demand an official response. Moreover, since Plan Trabajar, like previous employment programs, provided relief only for three to six months, unemployed workers felt the need to re-stage protests – in the form of the roadblocks that became increasingly commonplace in urban centres in the second half of the 1990s – on a periodic basis to secure ongoing access to the program. As well, Plan Trabajar was designed to provide a monetary transfer to those unemployed who were ready to work in a community project designed by provincial or municipal governments – spheres that were central in the clientelistic networks of the Peronist party – other public agents, community associations, or non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The institution in charge of a given project also assumed the responsibility for distributing and assigning the work plans among the participants. Organizations of the unemployed that were stronger and better established in their communities were also better situated to receive a large number of plans, thus taking them away from other political operators in the area. This was the case in particular with the FTV, whose strength allowed it to exercise an important degree of autonomy vis-à-vis PJ punteros (local powerbrokers) and manzaneras (female block delegates led by the provincial government). The reality was quite different for less established piquetero organizations, however. In their case, a successful roadblock would usually lead to an agreement with

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municipal or provincial governments over the allocation of work plans, but a portion of them was generally lost to local Peronist power brokers, who would then use them to advance their own political agenda in the area (Svampa and Pereyra 2003, 90).8 Finally, and connected to the previous point, the distribution of work plans through intermediary associations – for example, NGOs – resulted in the emergence of a number of new associations created for the purpose of participating in project proposals and thus in the distribution of work plans. Many organizations of the unemployed made use of this strategy to strengthen their positions within their communities and to facilitate their outreach and growth. After the 1999 elections, in an attempt to reduce the means at the disposal of municipal governments, most of which were still controlled by the PJ, the de la Rúa government made civil society organizations key institutions for the allocation of work plans. According to Svampa and Pereyra (2003, 94), the ‘undesired’ result of the change in policy was the strengthening of piquetero organizations. Regardless of policy change, it was the continuous staging of roadblocks that remained the almost exclusive manner of securing access to work plans. The social uprising of December 2001 provided new incentives in government quarters to find reliable mechanisms to contain protest among the poor and unemployed. It is therefore easy to understand the sense of urgency experienced by administrations after 2002 to implement relief programs with a much larger reach. By mid-2002, the administration of President Eduardo Duhalde (2002–3) created a program that, while replicating many of the objectives of Plan Trabajar, was much broader. The new program, Programa Jefas y Jefes de Hogares Desocupados (PJJHD, Program for Unemployed Heads of Family), a version of which is still in effect to date, ostensibly was targeted at all unemployed and most poor Argentines with children under age eighteen, and by the end of 2002 had reached two million people.9 As with other employment programs implemented since the 1990s, PJJHD benefits – the equivalent of about US$50 per month – did not go far in terms of meeting a family’s basic needs, and access to the program did not imply health care or social security coverage. The shift from the Plan Trabajar to the PJJHD involved changes in administration and assistance delivery. In particular, organizations representing employers, unions, the church, the FTV, and the Corriente Clasista y Combativa (CCC, Classist and Combative Current) were called to participate in a National Advisory Board and in local Consultative Councils.

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As we have mentioned, sometimes the allocation of employment programs was undertaken through organizations of the unemployed themselves. Two points are particularly relevant in connection with the role of these piquetero organizations in the distribution of work plans. First, the number of plans under their control was very small – just 5 per cent of existing plans, reaching some 100,000 beneficiaries in 2003. Despite this small percentage, however, the role of piquetero organizations as agents in the implementation of social policy affected in important ways their own dynamics as political organizations and, in some cases, gave their leadership a new element of power over the rank-and-file. In other cases, though, it offered these organizations an alternative way of providing the basis for community projects and other initiatives that became part and parcel of the consolidation of new political experiences. Second, and more important, the government was able to use its power to allocate work plans through piquetero organizations as a way to discriminate among them. In practice, this meant that there was an added premium to an organization’s capacity to maintain dialogue with the government. A key example in this respect was the participation of the FTV and the CCC, the two piquetero organizations more inclined towards negotiations with the government, both of which were selected by Duhalde in 2002 to integrate the national body that advises the government on the implementation and performance of the PJJHD program (Epstein 2003, 26). Proximity to the government also meant that the FTV and the CCC were able to capture a proportionally large number of work plans. While the opportunities for clientelistic practices have endured, the broader coverage of the PJJHD has restricted the scope for arbitrariness in the selection of beneficiaries (Alonso 2007). Nevertheless, the program shows the limitations of workfare programs. It has helped to boost consumption among the poorest of the population and to reduce social conflict, but it has been unable to reducee the difficulties these individuals face when trying to re-enter the formal labour market. Crisis, Recovery, and Labour Markets: Argentina since 2003 In 2001 the International Monetary Fund cancelled its assistance program to Argentina and pushed for the restructuring of the national debt and for further fiscal adjustment. The withdrawal of the Fund’s support represented, for all practical purposes, a ‘kiss of death’ given the government’s absolute reliance on external resources. Not surprisingly

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it resulted in the acceleration of capital outflows. In an attempt to address the problem, the government imposed restrictions on access to bank accounts (the infamous corralito), but the sudden lack of liquidity aggravated the recession and fuelled social anger. Turmoil spread throughout the country and led to the resignation of President de la Rúa in December 2001, to be succeeded by Eduardo Duhalde – the losing Peronist candidate in the presidential elections of 1999. There followed a relatively brief but intense interlude of political turmoil, during which Argentina defaulted on its public debt. Then, early in January 2002, the country depreciated its currency. The default and devaluation altered the framework that, for a decade, had structured the economy, which contracted in that year alone by almost 11 per cent. By the end of the year there were some signs of recovery, but they were not enough to prevent the mounting political crisis, and Duhalde was forced to call a presidential election for May 2003, six months ahead of schedule. Néstor Kirchner, then-governor of the southern province of Santa Cruz, won with only 22 per cent of the valid votes, the lowest percentage ever gained by the winner of an Argentine presidential election. Kirchner’s immediate plans were based on an active role for the state and the rejection of constraints imposed by finance and the economic actors who had been the main beneficiaries of neoliberal reforms to date (Kirchner 2003). After a dismal performance between 1998 and 2002, the economy responded by growing at a rate of 8.8 per cent in 2003, and similar growth rates were sustained until 2007, encouraged by a competitive exchange rate in a favourable international context of high prices for Argentine commodities and low interest rates that stimulated productive investment. This new economic dynamism resulted in a remarkable reduction of unemployment, underemployment, poverty, and indigence. For the country as a whole, unemployment fell by 57 per cent between 2002 and 2008 (Panigo and Neffa 2009, 9). As well, this period was characterized by an improvement in the quality of new jobs: during the 1990s, only 6 per cent of new jobs were of the registered kind, but between 2003 and 2008, 85 per cent of new jobs were registered (ibid., 14). Underemployment also fell, to 9.7 per cent by 2007. Global recessionary trends then reduced rates of economic growth in 2008 and 2009 to 6.8 per cent and 0.9 per cent, respectively. During the downturn, the government sought to protect levels of employment by, for example, requiring employers to apply for authorization to lay off workers (Bermúdez 2008), partly subsidizing the labour costs of firms affected by the downturn in exchange for their not firing employees

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(Cufré 2009), and offering subsidies for up to two years to cover part of the wages of new jobs created in the private sector (Ceriotto 2008). Despite these measures, unemployment rose in 2009 to 8.8 per cent and underemployment to 10.6 per cent. In 2010, the economy grew at a robust 9.2 per cent, but this revitalization so far has not translated into the same dynamism in the creation of employment. As far as real wages are concerned, after a colossal 24 per cent decline in 2002, the tendency has been towards slow improvement. In 2003, the average real wage reached a low of 54.8 per cent relative to the base year of 1970, gradually rising to 69 per cent in 2006, still well below the highest level of the mid-1990s (88.6 per cent in 1994) (Graña and Kennedy 2008). The share of wages in Argentina’s GDP has followed a similar path. A clear expression of workers’ losses is the fact that, in 2006, unemployment dropped to a level similar to that in 1993, but the number of households below the poverty line was 50 per cent higher (Graña, Kennedy, and Valdez 2008). The gap between economic growth and the evolution of real wages and other social indicators is partly explained by the re-emergence of inflation. Indeed, inflation was a central preoccupation for the Néstor Kirchner government and remains so for the current government led by Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Following devaluation, the consumer price index increased by 25.9 per cent in 2002 and 13.4 per cent in 2003. In 2004 it dropped to 4.4 per cent, but economic recovery and rising consumption sparked its acceleration once again in 2005 and 2006, to 9.6 per cent and 10.9 per cent, respectively (INDEC n.d.b). In response, the government negotiated with price makers to soften the impact of price increases, especially for food, and sought to negotiate with the CGT a moderation of wage demands. At the same time, there have been suspicions that, from 2007 on, the government has manipulated inflation figures to reduce the costs of sovereign debt servicing on bonds, thus transforming the evolution of prices into a highly sensitive political issue and casting doubt on the actual purchasing power of wages, as well as the levels of poverty and indigence. It also has made collective bargaining difficult, as the basis for wage negotiation has lost its legitimacy. The deceleration of economic activity during the global financial crisis resulted in lower inflation rates in 2008 and 2009 (7.2 per cent and 7.7 per cent, respectively), but with the recovery of economic activity inflation rose in 2010 to 10.9 per cent. The fall of unemployment and the partial recovery of the purchasing power of wages have been significant outcomes of economic recovery

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since 2003. However, the incidence of precarious work has remained an enduring challenge: in 2008, workers with precarious jobs still represented 36.5 per cent of the workforce (Orovitz Sanmartino 2010) compared with 30 per cent in 1991 and just 19 per cent in 1980 (Chitarroni and Cimillo 2007). Although the creation of better-quality employment continues, the reduction in the incidence of precariousness declined by only 0.5 per cent in 2009 and 2010, a trend that speaks to the profound transformation of labour markets over the past two decades, and to the particular linkages between formal and informal activities in Argentina. The Policies of the New Government: A Pink Tide? In 2003 Carlos Tomada, President Kirchner’s labour minister, summarized the priorities of the new government regarding labour relations as the creation of jobs through economic growth, greater public investment, and the recovery of the domestic market with the active participation of the state (Vales and Dellatorre 2003). The crisis in employment, the alarming levels of poverty, and the demands of organizations of the unemployed all meant that policy-making in the area of labour relations had particular significance for the government. First, addressing poverty – by all measures the most pressing problem facing the government – implied devising strategies not only to reduce unemployment but also to improve wages. Part of the initial policies in this area involved presidential decrees establishing lump-sum wage raises for all workers. These across-the-board increases partially offset the effects of inflation, improved the wages of formal workers, and effected a relative reduction of the income gap among wage earners. Wage inequality, however, has persisted: by the second half of 2006, the average income of the fifth quintile of employed workers was twelve times the average income of the first quintile (Maurizio 2009, 27). In 2009 the government implemented the Asignación Universal por Hijo (Universal Allowance for Children), a child subsidy for families of the unemployed, informally employed, or self-employed with salaries below the minimum wage, which has raised family income substantially. Reversing the trend of previous years, since 2004 collective bargaining between workers and employers with the mediation of the state has gained momentum. In most cases, however, collective agreements have included wage increases while maintaining the flexiblization clauses imposed during the 1990s. As part of the government’s call for the reestablishment of the central role of unions in labour relations, the CGT,

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under the leadership of Hugo Moyano, has repositioned itself effectively in the negotiation of wage increases, a fact that has given it a new opportunity to strengthen its position as the hegemonic labour representative in the country. As such, the CGT has been pivotal in moderating demands in collective bargaining. Moreover, buttressing the role of the CGT in the negotiation of collective agreements has functioned as a mechanism to control the wave of labour conflicts that, after 2003, sprang up at the local level, often in defiance of union directives and the CGT’s control. The new political significance of the CGT has come to some extent at the cost of the role many predicted for the CTA in a government assumed to have a more progressive agenda. Regardless of the political opportunity the Kirchner government opened to some CTA leaders, the pendulum has swung definitively away from the CTA and from the likelihood of any challenge to the privileged position of the CGT as the exclusive representative of workers in the negotiation of collective agreements. The result has been a deep political crisis for the CTA, not least because of disagreements over the most effective political response in the face of a government that positions itself as progressive but that has supported the rebuilding of the central role of traditional unionism. Second, while in 2003 the government announced it would seek to repeal the 2000 law deepening labour flexibilization, the initiative lost momentum as the support of employers became critical to procuring agreement over the prices of key commodities. To fight informality, the government concentrated its efforts on the simplification of procedures to register workers, the implementation of a tax moratorium for employers that registered their workers, and the intensification of audits. These policies have been effective among unregistered workers in formal firms,10 but many other workers in the informal sector remain vulnerable and form part of the growing number of very small companies, family firms, and self-employed workers linked to larger firms in the formal sector through the outsourcing of activities (Giosa Zuazúa 2007, 332–4). Apparel workers, telemarketers, and rural workers are among those most affected by precariousness (Gago 2006). Moreover, it was only during 2006 that salaries of unprotected workers increased at a rate similar to salaries of those with a formal job (20.6 per cent versus 19.4 per cent, respectively); the average salary of an informal worker remains just half of that of a formal worker. Informal workers are also limited in their ability to protect their incomes against inflation. Argentina’s experience confirms that the number of precarious jobs, within both the informal and formal sectors of the economy, might

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increase in economic downturns but does not necessarily decrease during periods of economic growth (Biles 2009, 224). Therefore, economic growth alone cannot provide the solution to income inequality among the working classes. Moreover, the experience of Argentina illustrates how difficult it is to address the problem of precariousness, and the vulnerability that in most cases is associated with it, without a concomitant questioning and transformation of the parameters that delineate the economic structure of the country. Third, the two Peronist administrations since 2003 have continued to respond to some of the most urgent demands of the unemployed through targeted programs. Upon taking power, Kirchner distanced himself from previous administrations by announcing that his government would not ‘criminalize’ social protest while also warning that collective actions demanding additional workfare subsidies would not succeed. Moreover, the national state ‘decentralized’ the responsibility for responding to these demands as a way to reduce its exposure to conflicts (Gómez 2006). Clearly the decline in unemployment set a new context for the formulation of assistance programs. An estimated 500,000 beneficiaries of the PJJHF entered the labour market (Weisburd Halperin et al. 2007). No new beneficiaries were accepted, since the deadline for registration set by the Duhalde government in 2002 was not modified. Those beneficiaries considered employable, 76,000 by 2007, had been transferred to programs – in particular, Seguro de Capacitación y Empleo (Employment and Training Insurance) – administered by the Ministry of Labour. With the stated purpose of assisting the reintegration of other workers into the labour market, in 2009 the ministry of social development implemented a program entitled Ingreso Social con Trabajo ‘Argentina Trabaja’ (Social Income with Work ‘Argentina Works’). Through it the government has fostered the creation of work cooperatives of up to seventy members who are granted a monthly stipend to carry out public works in poor cities, towns, or neighbourhoods. Even though workers are organized in cooperatives, the program maintains the logic of social assistance programs in that it is the state that brings them together, sets their goals, and finances their work. Differently, the amount of workers’ stipends is considerably higher than that of other assistance programs, and workers have health insurance and social security benefits (Logiudice 2010). By 2010 150,000 workers organized in 1,600 cooperatives had joined the program (Guimenez and Hopp 2011). At the same time, other groups of beneficiaries defined as structurally disadvantaged were transferred to programs offered by

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the ministry of social development, the most important of which is the Programa Familias por la Inclusión Social (Families for Social Inclusion Program), to which approximately 300,000 former beneficiaries of the PJJHD had been transferred by the end of 2007 (Casanova 2008). The aim of this and similar social programs is to address the results of unemployment (poverty and social exclusion) rather than to tackle the issue of unemployment directly. These programs, however, have funnelled resources that are often used for clientelistic purposes, particularly those implemented at the local level. In the case of the Programa Nacional de Seguridad Alimentaria (National Program for Food Security), for example, which reached a million families in 2004, local politicians have enjoyed a high degree of power in the drafting of beneficiaries lists, creating enormous potential for political manipulation (Weitz-Shapiro 2007, 14–15). It is also important to mention that the direction of employment and social policy indicates both the need to reconstitute the purchasing power of wages to sustain economic growth and the fact that a large segment of the population likely will remain marginalized. Changes in social policy since 2003 have also involved an important transformation in the relationship of the government with the piquetero movement, a point we consider crucial to our argument. Indeed, the significance of this relationship was expressed in the 2005 mid-term election, when several leaders of organizations of the unemployed joined Kirchner’s coalition, the Frente para la Victoria (FPV, Front for Victory) (Gómez 2006). The key political gain for Kirchner was the opportunity to include important sectors of the piquetero movement in the coalition at a moment when it was critical for him to enlarge his rather weak basis of support and gain some autonomy from the party apparatus. The strategy worked in two ways: it both strengthened organizations close to the government and isolated those that opposed it. Over time, however, the piquetero movement has lost political legitimacy and the capacity to mobilize important sectors of the population, partly because of the growth in employment, but also because government social policies have tended to take on and institutionalize the very activities that previously lent political significance to organizations of the unemployed (Dinerstein 2008, 20). Conclusion Since the 1990s significant changes have occurred in the direction and content of labour policy in Argentina. There has been, however, one

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fundamental element of continuity: the major transformation experienced in labour markets resulting from the consolidation of a pattern of accumulation that had been in gestation since the mid-1970s. The transformation implied the emergence of precarious work and unemployment as the reality for most workers in Argentina, and with these dire conditions the exponential growth of poverty and inequality. Since 2003, economic growth and certain employment policies have relieved unemployment to some extent, but advances in the area of precarious work remain tentative. This is a trend deeply entrenched in the demands of economic accumulation, which means that decent wages and protected and stable work are unlikely to be realized fully under these conditions. Changes in labour markets have also been the expression of an equally momentous political transformation within the Peronist party itself, between the PJ and the Peronist-oriented CGT, and among the workers upon whom economic restructuring inflicted its heaviest cost. The declining relevance of the CGT during the 1990s has been offset at least partially since 2003 by a labour policy that has given new strength to the role of unions in the management of conflict. While this opportunity for unions might breathe new life into the political potential of the CGT, it has not produced a significant reversal of the losses incurred since the 1990s. This negative outcome in turn calls our attention to the limitations of the CGT in its role as the organization allegedly representing the interests of workers vis-à-vis its own organizational goals and those of its leadership. The perpetuation of precariousness and uncertainty for the large majority of Argentine workers subordinates them to the actual and potential arbitrariness of employers and makes many workers dependent on programs that can function only as palliatives, not cures, to their exclusion. In some cases, these programs also have served as channels for clientelism. Underlying the transformation of employment and social policy in Argentina have been the struggles inherent in the constitution and re-constitution of political identities – in all their contradictory and conflictive heterogeneity – within the working class. Understanding the fundamental implications of these struggles for democracy is a  critical first step towards the construction of options out of the political, economic, and social predicament in which Argentina remains imprisoned.

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NOTES 1 ‘Corporatism’ refers to the relationship that developed between the state and the labour movement and through which the former gained an important degree of control over the latter. While much more than a simple relationship of material exchange, a fundamental part of the relationship is based on the resources the state can offer union leaders in order to secure their support and allegiance. 2 The Convertibility Plan was conceived as an anti-inflationary program and became law in April 1991. It established a fixed exchange rate of one US dollar for one Argentine peso. At that rate, the central bank was required to sell all the US dollars demanded by the market and to take out of circulation the domestic currency received in the transactions. The reserves of the central bank guaranteed parity between the two currencies, and the total amount of circulating currency had to be equal to the amount of those reserves. 3 The inflation rate fell from 1,344 per cent in 1990 to 84 per cent in 1991 and continued to decline during the decade to reach 0.1 per cent in 1996. 4 Even under dictatorial regimes, the powerful CGT managed to secure the protection and, in many cases, even the extension of its corporatist prerogatives. With the exception of the military dictatorship of 1976 to 1983, since the ousting of Juan Perón in 1955 the CGT retained its central role in politics under three military dictatorships (1955–8, 1962–4, and 1966–73) and the three civilian governments (1958–62, 1964–6, 1973–6) that ruled Argentina in the intervening years. 5 As part of the anti-inflationary program set in motion through the convertibility law, wage increases were to be allowed only when they were matched by improvements in productivity. 6 The National Employment Law of 1991, the first and big push towards labour flexibilization, created the first and very limited unemployment insurance in the country, but by 1999 only 7 per cent of unemployed workers qualified to receive the very low benefits offered through this program (CELS 2003, 16). 7 While based on domination, the PJ’s nature is not always revealed in this way because of the intervention of a third agent, the intermediary, to whom ‘clients’ usually owe their loyalty, who knows the difficulties of their lives, and who, like them, identifies with the goals of the political party they all support (Torres 2002, 50). 8 The political use of work plans has been documented extensively; for a description of this use and information about its scope, see, for example, Auyero (2000, 2007); CELS (2003); and Calvo and Murillo (2005).

98 Comparative Public Policy in Latin America 9 Beneficiaries of this program were and still are considered ‘employed’ for the purpose of official statistics. They were included as non-registered workers. 10 In 2005, workers in formal firms represented 30 per cent of the universe of informal workers; the rest were self-employed workers (26 per cent), household workers (18 per cent), workers of informal units (17 per cent), and others (9 per cent). See Argentina (2007). REFERENCES Alonso, Guillermo. 2007. ‘Acerca del clientelismo y la política social: reflexiones en torno al caso argentino.’ Revista del CLAD. Reforma y Democracia 37 (February): 1–10. http://www.clad.org/portal/publicaciones-del-clad/ revista-clad-reforma-democracia/articulos/037-febrero-2007. Argentina. 2007. Ministerio de Trabajo, Empleo y Seguridad Social. La informalidad laboral en el Gran Buenos Aires: una nueva Mirada, resultados del módulo de informalidad de la EPH. Buenos Aires. http://www.trabajo. gov.ar/left/estadisticas/descargas/bol/ La_Informalidad_Laboral_ Documento.pdf. Auyero Javier. 2000. Poor People’s Politics: Peronist Survival Networks and the Legacy of Evita. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. – 2007. Routine Politics and Violence in Argentina: The Grey Zone of State Power. New York: Cambridge University Press. Bermúdez, Ismael. 2008. ‘Se aplicarán mecanismos para trabar despidos y suspensiones.’ Clarín, 27 October. http://www.clarin.com/diario/2008/10/27/elpais/p-01789729.htm. Biles, James, 2009. ‘Informal Work in Latin America: Competing Perspectives and Recent Debates.’ Geography Compass 3, no. 1: 214–36. Calvo Ernesto, and Victoria Murillo. 2005. ‘The New Iron Law of Argentine Politics? Partisanship, Clientelism, and Governability in Contemporary Argentina.’ In Argentine Democracy: The Politics of Institutional Weakness, ed. Steven Levitsky and Victoria Murillo. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Casanova, Luis. 2008. Informe sobre los programas de empleo provinciales 2007. Buenos Aires: Ministerio de Economía y Producción, Secretaría de Programación Económica, Dirección de Análisis de Gasto Público y Programas Sociales. http://www.mecon.gov.ar/ peconomica/basehome/ programas_empleo2007.pdf. CELS (Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales). 2003. El Estado frente a la protesta social: 1996–2002. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI Editores.

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100 Comparative Public Policy in Latin America the Segunda Jornada de Economía Política, Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento, Los Polvorines, Argentina, 10–11 November. http:// www.econ.uba.ar/www/institutos/economia/Ceped/ publicaciones/ 2008/Grana_Kennedy_Valdez_EconomiaPolitica.pdf. Guimenez, Sandra, and Malena Hopp. 2011. ‘Programa Ingreso Social con Trabajo “Argentina Trabaja”: una mirada reflexiva desde el corazón de su implementación.’ Paper presented at the 4th Encuentro Internacional Trabajo Social de la Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, 12–13 May. Gutierrez, Ricardo. 2001. ‘La desindicalización del Peronismo.’ Política y gestión 2: 93–112. INDEC (Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas y Censos). n.d.a. Encuesta Permanente de Hogares. Buenos Aires. – n.d.b. ‘Índice de precios al consumidor (IPC) GBA desde 1943 en adelante (empalme de las series 1943, 1960, 1974 y 1988 con la serie base 1999 = 100): variaciones porcentuales respecto del mes anterior, diciembre del año anterior, mismo mes del año anterior.’ Buenos Aires. Kirchner, Néstor. 2003. Discurso ante la Honorable Asamblea Legislativa. Buenos Aires: Presidencia de la Nación. http://www.presidencia.gov.ar/Discurso. aspx?cdArticulo=904. Leiva, Fernando. 2008. Latin American Neostructuralism: The Contradictions of Post-Neoliberal Development. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Levitsky, Steve. 2005. ‘Crisis and Renovation: Institutional Weakness and the Transformation of Argentine Peronism, 1983–2003.’ In Argentine Democracy: The Politics of Institutional Weakness, ed. Steven Levitsky and Victoria Murillo. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Logiudice, Ana. 2010. ‘De crisis a crisis: la política social asistencial en la Argentina posneoliberal?’ Paper presented at the 2010 Latin American Studies Association Congress, Toronto, 6–9 October. Lo Vuolo, Rubén, Alberto Barbeito, Laura Pautassi, and Corina Rodríguez. 1999. La pobreza … de la política contra la pobreza. Buenos Aires; Madrid: Miño y Dávila Editores. Mancebo, Marta. 1998. ‘El nuevo bloque de poder y el nuevo modelo de dominación (1976–1996).’ In La economía argentina a fin de siglo: fragmentación presente y desarrollo ausente, ed. Hugo Notcheff. Buenos Aires: Eudeba. Marshall, Adriana. 2004. ‘Labour Market Policies and Regulations in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico: Programmes and Impacts.’ Geneva: International Labour Office. http://www.ilo.org/public/english/ employment/strat/download/esp13.pdf. Maurizio, Roxana. 2009. ‘Macroeconomic Regime, Trade Openness, Unemployment and Inequality: The Argentine Experience.’ IDEAs Working

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Paper Series 03/2009. New Delhi: International Development Economics Associates. http://www.networkideas.org/ working/apr2009/ wp23_03_2009.htm. Monza, Alfredo. 1995. ‘Situación actual y perspectivas del mercado de trabajo en la Argentina.’ In Libro Blanco sobre el empleo en la Argentina, ed. Adolfo Canitrot et al. Buenos Aires: Ministerio de Trabajo, Empleo y Seguridad Social. Orovitz Sanmartino, Jorge. 2010. ‘Crisis, acumulación y forma de estado en la Argentina post-neoliberal.’ Cuestiones de Sociología 5–6. Palumbo, Denis, and Donald Calista. 1990. ‘Opening Up the Black Box: Implementation and the Policy Process.’ In Implementation and the Policy Process: Opening Up the Black Box, ed. Denis Palumbo and Donald Calista. New York: Greenwood Press. Panigo, Demian, and Julio César Neffa. 2009. ‘El mercado de trabajo argentino en el nuevo modelo de desarrollo.’ Working paper. Buenos Aires: Ministerio de Economía, Dirección Nacional de Programación Macroeconómica Dirección de Modelos y Proyecciones. Salvia, Agustín, et al. n.d. ‘Reformas laborales y precarización del trabajo asalariado (Argentina 1990–2000).’ Buenos Aires: Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas, Centro de Estudios sobre Población y Desarrollo. http://www.econ.uba.ar/www/institutos/economia/Ceped/ publicaciones/cuadernosceped/Cuad%204/6%20Equipo.pdf. Svampa, Maristella, and Sebastián Pereyra. 2003. Entre la ruta y el barrio: la experiencia de las organizaciones piqueteras. Buenos Aires: Biblos. Vales, Laura, and Raúl Dellatorre. 2003. ‘Buscaban que todos trabajaran en negro.’ Página 12, 7 June. http://www.pagina12.com.ar/imprimir/diario/ elpais/1-21139-2003-06-07.html. Weisburd Halperin, Leopoldo, et al. 2007. ‘Políticas Sociales en la Argentina. Entre la ciudadanía plena y el asistencialismo focalizado en la contención del pauperismo.’ Buenos Aires: Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas, Centro de Estudios sobre Población y Desarrollo. http://www.econ.uba.ar/www/ institutos/economia/Ceped/publicaciones/ cuadernosceped/Cuaderno10_CEPED.pdf. Weitz-Shapiro, Rebecca. 2007. ‘Political Competition, Poverty, and Incentives for Good Government and Clientelism in Argentina.’ Paper presented at the meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, 12–15 April.

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PART II Advocacy and Policy Change

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5 Public Policy by Other Means: Playing the Judicial Arena Catalina Smulovitz

Two novel phenomena are affecting the dynamics of political interactions and public policy processes in Latin America: the increased political role of courts and the use of law- and rights-framed discourses as political tools. These phenomena are transforming the judicial scenario into an additional arena for addressing political conflicts, and they are converting legal claims into new tools for advancing the interests of actors. Moreover, they are influencing the public policy process by introducing new instruments and arguments into the formulation of policy, modifying the nature and number of actors that can participate in the process, and enabling the introduction of new topics into the public agenda. While courts redefine public policies decided by representative authorities, citizens and organized social actors use the courts and the law to address private and social demands as well as to redefine, resist, and oversee certain public policies. Studies disagree on the impact of judicialization on public policy and on its normative consequences. Discussions about impact involve debates about scope and measurement. Disputes about the normative consequences include perspectives that highlight the non-democratic impact of courts and judges on decisions taken by elected officials (Minc 1995), positions that emphasize their democratic implications as a petitioning tool, and others that note their deleterious consequences on interpersonal and everyday relationships (Glendon 1991). These outcomes are not mutually exclusive. Recent empirical research shows that judicialization can produce social disorder, maintenance of the status quo, and expanded social integration (Gauri and Brinks 2008). Studies have also shown, however, that the specific outcomes of judicialization depend on the way laws and courts interact with social and political

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conditions such as the level of political competition, the social and organizational capacities of the actors, or the decision structure of the judiciary. As a result, even though the relevance of judicialization in the region cannot be disregarded, assessments of its effects on public policy require analysis of the specific social and institutional context in which laws and courts operate. This chapter contends that, in Latin America, the judicialization of politics in general, and of the policy process in particular, has provided actors with an efficient instrument to advance and protect particularistic demands as well as to bypass obstacles that hinder coordination of political action among other collective actors. It shows that court decisions have had an effect on specific public policies by changing the distribution of goods and forcing the consideration of new topics, such as health, gender, and the environment. The chapter also shows that, even though judicialization has led to the expansion of citizenship rights and to changes in the distribution of burdens, it has also given way to persistent and strong challenges to the decisions of representative authorities and to their ability to implement and enforce public policies. In other words, regardless of its ambiguous normative impact, judicialization has become a tool for making policy through other means. As some contributions to this volume show, a debate exists about the role of political institutions in Latin American politics and policy processes. This chapter contributes to the discussion by showing that formal political institutions, such as courts, have begun to have a real effect on policy processes in the region. Even though the normative consequences of the judicialization process are uncertain, the increasing use of legal procedures and of the language of rights indicates that, as Martha Minow (1987) has noted, significant sectors of the population are willing to take part in the community and to play by the rules of the game recognized by those in charge. The chapter is divided into three main sections. The first outlines the factors that have led to various types of judicialization of public policy in Latin America, and advances a preliminary evaluation of their political and social consequences for the policy-making process. The second section analyses and describes the main forms of judicialization that are taking place in the region. The concluding section address three questions: why are actors using the courts? what type of results are they achieving? and what are the consequences of judicialization for governability and the enforcement of public policy in Latin America?

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The Judicialization of Politics in Latin America The judicialization of politics that has been taking place in Latin America involves three different developments: an increase in the number of institutions that are able to undertake constitutional reviews of political decisions; an increase in the use of ordinary judicial procedures available to intervene in social and political conflicts; and an increase in the use of rights-framed discourses in order to expand new rights. Judicialization, understood as the increased participation of constitutional courts in policy-making, is related to several recent constitutional reforms in the region. Some countries have changed the procedures for constitutional review, while others have expanded the scope of rights that are legally protected, and still others have broadened the identity of the actors that are authorized to make claims. Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Mexico, for example, have expanded their bills of rights and introduced provisions that make it easier for individuals or collectively organized actors to access constitutional courts and demand both concrete and abstract protection of certain rights. As a result of these constitutional changes, the scope and number of topics that are presented to the courts has expanded the jurisdiction of judicial review, thereby increasing the political relevance of court decisions. The other two types of judicialization – the increased use of ordinary procedures and of rights-framed discourses – are largely the result of transformations in the social and legal opportunity structure, and the presence of dense support structures for claims-making. These developments have allowed actors to use the ‘majesty of the law’ to call attention to their private or social claims, as well as to achieve political and social leverage, symbolic legitimation, and institutional acknowledgment (McCann 1991). For individuals and social movements, in particular, the use of the courts and legal procedures has become a valuable tool to force official answers and to enforce policy outcomes. Table 5.1 summarizes some of the institutional changes that have increased these capacities and created opportunities that have fostered their use in some Latin American countries. These constitutional reforms have increased the role that high and constitutional courts play in policy processes, which is now significant in many Latin American countries. In Colombia, for example, after the 1991 constitutional reform, no fewer than 9,442 decisions were adopted by the country’s Constitutional Court between 1992 and 2002, including 2,987 abstract review decisions and 6,455 tutela decisions (Cepeda

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2005, 77). (Tutelas, a judicial remedy available in most Latin American legal systems, give citizens prompt and effective protection of their constitutional rights. While the scope of rights varies from one country to another, recent constitutional interpretations show a tendency to enlarge their number and type.) These decisions introduced limits on the use of the exceptional power of the executive, expanded the protection of minority groups and of individual autonomy, increased the protection of stigmatized populations, and have influenced the management of economic policy due to the judicial protection of social rights (Rodríguez, Uprimny Yepes, and García Villegas 2003). The Court has also advanced decisions prompted by citizens’ tutela actions involving, for example, the conditions of prisoners in the country’s jails and the protection of populations internally displaced by civil war. Tutela actions have also prompted decisions involving the protection of the right to health due to increases in health care costs. In 1995, for example, there were approximately three thousand such right-to-health suits, representing roughly 10 per cent of all tutelas filed at the Court; in 1999, the number of such cases had increased to nearly twenty thousand, or about 30 per cent of the total (Uprimny Yepes 2007, 58-9). Another important policy area that the Colombian Constitutional Court has addressed involves decisions regarding the regulation of banking credit and the adoption of a new credit system known as Unidad de Poder Adquisitivo Constante (Constant Unit of Purchasing Power). The establishment of this system was the result of numerous legal claims advanced by middle-class Colombians who had undertaken mortgages that they could no longer service as a result of the 1997 economic crisis and who demanded financial protection. This development forced the Court to order Congress to pass a bill to regulate the housing credit market (Uprimny Yepes 2007, 60). The law, approved in 1999, established US1.2 million in relief for mortgage owners. The legal strategy pursued by the claimants ultimately influenced political and legislatives debates and, more important, final policy decisions. High court interventions have also become increasingly salient in Mexico, Costa Rica, and Brazil, as shown in Figures 5.1, 5.2, and 5.3. In Mexico, the 1994 constitutional reform increased judicial independence through changes in the appointment system for the Supreme Court and reinforced the Court’s review powers (Domingo 2005). A 1996 judicial reform extended those review powers and authorized the Court to intervene in some electoral disputes. Between 1996 and 2000, 11,906 disputes were brought before the electoral tribunal (Domingo 2005, 32),

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Table 5.1 Recent Constitutional Changes that Affect Policy-making Judicialization by High Courts, Selected Latin American Countries Constitutional Change 

Colombia

Costa Rica

Brazil

Argentina

Date of constitutional reform

1991

1989

1988

1994

Expansion of Bill of Rights?

yes

yes

yes

yes

Expansion of actors entitled to advance public interest claims?

yes

yes

yes

yes

Constitutionalization of international human rights treaties?

yes

yes

no

yes

Citizens able to present tutelas in constitutional courts?

yes

yes

no

no

Citizens able to present tutelas in lower courts?

yes

no

yes

yes

and the Supreme Court decided on the constitutionality of 13 of those claims (Finkel 2003). These numbers show not only a significant increase in legal activism in an area where Mexican courts had a longstanding tradition of non-intervention, but they also reshaped the democratic electoral landscape. In Costa Rica, a 1989 constitutional amendment created a new chamber of the Supreme Court, the Sala Constitucional (Constitutional Chamber), frequently called the Sala IV, which has brought about a veritable judicial revolution. According to article 10, paragraph 1, of the constitution, the Sala IV can ‘declare, by the absolute majority vote of its members, the unconstitutionality of provisions of any nature and acts subject to Public Law’ (cited in Helmke and Rios-Figueroa 2011, 59). Under these new operating rules, anyone in Costa Rica (without regard for age, gender, or nationality) can file a case at the chamber at any time without the need for legal representation or fees. Claimants do not even need to know the point of law upon which they are appealing and can handwrite or type the case on anything and in any language (including Braille). These powers, together with new operating rules, have created a significant new legal opportunity structure that can be used by political parties, individuals, groups from virtually every sector of the society, from the weakest and most marginalized individuals, such as prisoners or AIDS patients, to the most powerful, such as businesses and presidents (Wilson and Rodríguez Cordero 2006). Before

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this reform took place, Costa Rica’s Supreme Court was like many other Latin American courts: ‘minor, if not irrelevant’ (Correa Sutil 1999, 259). The growth in the number of cases filed at the Sala IV – from 2,300 in 1990 to more than 13, 400 in 2002 (Wilson 2005, 51) – demonstrates the scope of the changes that have been taking place. Cases addressed to this chamber include those advanced by the labour unions of the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (Costa Rican Electricity Institute) against the opening of the telecommunications market to private companies, those presented by people living with the AIDS virus demanding the free provision of drugs by the state, claims advanced by gays and lesbians seeking protection from police violence and the enforcement of their civil rights, and claims advanced by trade unions questioning the constitutionality of the Labour Code, which limited public workers’ right to strike. According to Bruce Wilson, the use of the courts for these issues has accorded marginalized groups significant success in the protection of their rights (2005, 59). Recent analyses demonstrate, for example, that court decisions that compelled the Costa Rican public health system to make AIDS treatments publicly available have resulted in an 80 per cent reduction in AIDS mortality in that country (Wilson and Rodríguez Cordero 2006; Gauri and Brinks 2008). In Brazil the 1988 constitutional reform introduced important changes that have favoured the use of judicial procedures and channelled disputes into the judicial arena. These changes included an extension of the rights charter of the constitution (Dos Direitos e Garantias Fundamentais); the delegation of the protection of individual collective and social rights to the judiciary and to the attorney general’s office; and the expansion of the number of agents authorized to advance cases before the federal Supreme Court. As a result of the creation of an extremely decentralized and accessible system of judicial review, the judiciary has become an important institution in Brazilian political life, while the expansion of legally acknowledged social rights has led to an increasingly active and protective role for the judicial system vis-à-vis civil society (Arantes 2005, 232). Finally, the 1988 constitutional reform also increased the number of agents authorized to advance ação directa de inconstitucionalidade (direct unconstitutionality actions) before the federal Supreme Court. Article 103 of the new constitution establishes that, in addition to the attorney general and several other state authorities, political parties represented in the National Congress, trade unions, and professional associations are authorized to file this type of action. Between 1988 and 2003, 3,014 such actions were brought against federal

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and state laws and administrative acts, 26.4 per cent of which were presented by state governors and another 25.5 per cent by trade unions. These developments have led several analysts to emphasize that these actions are an important oppositional resource for unsatisfied actors (Arantes 2005, 238). Judicialization in Lower-level Courts Judicialization has also taken place through lower-level courts. Actors have begun to use ordinary judicial procedures to address conflicts between settled rights and practices violating those rights, and they have used rights-framed discourses to develop new rights. Over the past few years, several Latin American countries have witnessed an increase in the use of ordinary proceedings to resist the imposition of certain policies and to readdress the content of others. Experiences from Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina illustrate these other forms of judicialization and legal mobilization. In Mexico the Barzón case best exemplifies the judicialization of public policy that country has experienced. In the early 1990s agricultural producers, unable to pay credits they undertook before the opening up of the Mexican economy (which brought about significant changes to the credit and banking systems), faced eviction from their land as they could no longer service their debt obligations. In 1993 they created a movement known as El Barzón. Initially barzonista debtors organized actions such as the occupation of central squares, marches to different cities, and road blockades to protest the government’s economic and agricultural policies. After the 1994 federal elections, however, their strategy of mobilization underwent a dramatic change as barzonista leaders decided to advance legal claims to achieve their objectives. As one leader declared at the time, ‘we have realized that El Barzón has to pursue both the legal route, to defend our patrimony, and the civil disobedience route, to force the judicial powers to respect the law’ (Wheat 1996). Hubert Grammont provides some numbers that illustrate the scope of their juridical battle. By the end of 1996, El Barzón had presented 6,500 cases claiming the nullification of the rule that allowed the charging of a higher interest rate than the one established in the original contract in those cases in which the debtor did not pay on time (anatocismo). Barzonistas framed this legal demand as part of their war against ‘usury.’ And, by the end of July 1995, barzonistas had introduced 400,000 cases questioning mortgage claims originated in the banking system. Several

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Figure 5.1 Constitutional Reviews and Tutelas of the Colombian Constitutional Court 1 1500

1000

500

0 2

9 19

3

9 19

4

9 19

5

9 19

6

9 19

7

9 19

Tutela

8

9 19

9

9 19

00

20

01

20

02

20

03

20

4

-0

n Ju

Consitutional Reviews

Source: Corte Constitucional de Colombia (http://www.corteconstitucional.gov.co).

Figure 5.2 Claims Introduced in the Sala Constitucional, Costa Rica, 1989–2008 20000 17972 16951 16574 15958

18000 Introduced Claims

16000 14000 12000 10000 8000 5355

6000 4000 2000

13431 13302 12752 13420 10808 9741 8916 8885 7421 6373 6768

4683 3350 2296 365

0 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 Year Source: Sala Constitucional, Suprema Corte de Justicia, Costa Rica (http://www. poderjudicial.go.cr/salaconstitucional/).

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Figure 5.3 Cases litigated at Supremo Tribunal Federal in Brazil 140000

Litigated Cases

120000 100000 80000 60000 40000 20000 0

90

19

92

19

94

19

96

19

98 19 Year

00

20

02

20

04

20

06

20

Source: Supremo Tribunal Federal (http://www.stf.jus.br).

banks (Banamex, Bancomer, and Serfin), for their part, had initiated 1,145,000 suits against debtors (Grammont 2001, 157). Legal actions included demands that aimed to prevent changes in the laws that legally protected debtors and that would have allowed their evictions; to prevent the federal government from modifying the decree that established the privatization of the banking system; to declare the anatocismo clause unconstitutional; and to prevent the nationalization of the banking system’s private debts (Grammont 2001, 158). Although by 1996 only 10 per cent of the cases filed by barzonistas had led to favourable decisions, the legal mobilization strategy had some extrajudicial results: it allowed barzonistas to transform their identity from debtors accused of not honouring their debts to plaintiffs against the banks for charging unjust interest. In addition, the visibility of the movement and the massive number of suits filed overcrowded the judicial system, preventing it from ruling against either the banking system or the wellorganized debtors, thereby forcing the federal government to mediate the conflict. Thus, even though from the barzonistas’ perspective the actual legal results were uncertain and insufficient, the use of the legal strategy allowed them to halt actions that jeopardized their interests.

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In Brazil and Argentina, too, social actors have used lower courts to address specific social and political conflicts that they were unable to solve in the political arena. Varun Gauri and Daniel Brinks (2008), for example, show that social movements and individuals in Brazil have been filing claims in lower courts demanding the enforcement and expansion of social and economic rights. Their comparative study on the use of courts for petitioning health and education rights shows that, ‘on a per capita basis, Brazil compiles nearly 125 cases per million of population – indeed, the state of Rio Grande do Sul registers a remarkable 893 cases per million’ (307); in comparison, in South Africa they found just over three cases per ten million inhabitants and in India two cases for every ten million inhabitants. Brazilian litigants of health rights have demanded that the government provide particular health care benefits, appropriate educational facilities for disabled children, and state compliance with constitutional minimum spending requirements. Gauri and Brinks also show, however, that, since Brazilian courts solve cases on an individual basis, their ability to transform the provision of health services has been less relevant than in other countries (such as South Africa) where collective decisions can compel governments to introduce legislative transformations. Nevertheless, even though, due to procedural reasons, the achievements of litigants in Brazil have been less impressive than in other countries, the significant number of filed cases still indicates the strength that the legal mobilization strategy, as a social and political petition tool, is having in Brazil. In Argentina, on the other hand, legal mobilization and judicialization processes have addressed a wide variety of issues (see Smulovitz 2002, 2005, 2006). Two recent and highly visible conflicts illustrate how social actors are using the courts as well as the impact of the arena on public policy: the pension fund dispute and the conflict regarding the government-mandated freeze of savings deposits (popularly known as the corralito case). The pension fund conflict began in the early 1960s, when deficits in the pension system determined the reduction of the amount paid to beneficiaries. Recent information about this conflict shows that the claim is still being contested in the judicial arena. Recipients have filed suits regarding the criteria used to calculate benefits, the ceilings set for the benefits, the proportionality between salaries and benefits, the distortions that escalating inflation rates produced in the benefits, and delays in the update of benefits. There have also been lawsuits demanding the execution of court sentences and others questioning the payment of debts with public bonds.

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Since the beginning of this seemingly unending conflict, measures the government has taken indicate the fiscal and social magnitude of the phenomenon: it has twice sanctioned a decree establishing a halt to the legal proceedings, it has offered schedules to pay debts over a ten-year period, it has declared the system to be an economic emergency, it has suspended the execution of court decisions, and it has offered adjustments in benefits to beneficiaries willing to give up their right to initiate legal proceedings. In 2001, when the system had 3,200,000 beneficiaries, approximately 20,000 lawsuits were being filed each year, 100,000 lawsuits were in process, and nearly 120,000 benefits payments had been granted (Argentina 2001). In 2006 a Supreme Court ruling ordered the Argentine Congress to establish a criterion to determine the mobility and actualization of pension benefits. Congress complied and eventually passed a law in October 2008, but the pension fund administration’s compliance with the law and the Supreme Court decision continues to be slow. One consequence of this behaviour is the emergence of a new wave of pension fund claims. According a recent report, between February and March 2009, 18,928 new claims were presented demanding the updating of benefits, and at least 165,913 claims are pending in the social security courts of Buenos Aires (Stang 2009). Even though the results of the pension funds conflict have been diverse and, from the claimants’ perspective, not always satisfactory, the persistent use of the strategy and the different governmental reactions it has brought about indicate that judicialization provides beneficiaries with a useful and powerful resistance and political tool. Another Argentine case that illustrates the use of lower courts to influence public policy relates to the judicialization of the dispute regarding the freeze of savings deposits (the Corralito case). The dispute began at the end of 2001 when the ministry of economy established restrictions on cash withdrawals from private and company bank accounts. Savers responded by initiating legal claims against banks and against the constitutionality of the governmental measure. By the end of 2002, 337,952 such claims had been made, according to the Statistical Bulletin of the National Judiciary (Argentina 2002), and from April 2002 to June 2004, 264,557 claims had received a favourable response (Banco Central de la República Argentina 2004). Similar to its actions in other cases, the government responded to these judicial threats with measures that led, in turn, to ‘second-order’ legal demands, so that, after a while, the government was dealing not only with political and social contenders but also with an array of legal ones less likely to be satisfied with political negotiation of the results. At the end of 2006, after a long and complex

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judicial dispute mixed with intense political conflict, a Supreme Court decision ratified the constitutionality of ‘pesification’ – the compulsory conversion of US-dollar-denominated bank deposits into Argentine pesos at an official exchange rate. The Court ordered banks to reimburse customers’ deposits in pesos under terms that allowed savers who chose the legal strategy eventually to recover nearly all of the value of their US dollar deposits (Herrero 2005; see also Smulovitz 2006; and Spector 2009). These examples show the relevance that legal mobilization and the use of the courts have achieved as a political strategy. In particular, they show how citizens and social actors are using direct access to high courts to question the constitutionality of certain rights and to address political disputes, and how they are using lower-level courts and legal procedures as alternative tools to engage in politics, to advance social claims, and to redefine the content of political and social conflicts. The Origins and Consequences of Judicialization This section considers three questions surrounding the emergence of courts and legal disputes as new tools for policy-making in Latin America. First, why are actors using legal strategies and the courts to address and intervene in policy-making? Second, what results have they achieved? And, third, what are the consequences of judicialization and legal mobilization for the performance of political systems? Why Are Actors Using the Courts? The political and social context of contemporary Latin America is characterized by increasing social heterogeneity, an increased relevance of identity politics, and, as Jordi Díez shows in his chapter in this volume, a generally weak capacity of legislatures to influence public policy. Within this context, social and individual actors have found judicialization to be an efficient tool to advance particular demands insofar as it allows them to bypass the difficulties often associated with the need to coordinate collective actions with other actors. Judicial strategies allow minority actors to achieve political and social leverage, symbolic legitimation, and institutional acknowledgment of their claims. Legal strategies also allow claimants to publicize their demands, to have their claims be accorded official status, and to enter into public negotiations with the state or with other private actors involved in disputes. Although results

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have surely been diverse, the use of legal mobilization has granted actors alternative channels to influence policy-making. This process has led to changes in legislation, enabled social actors to veto policy results, allowed weak actors to add new topics to the social and political agenda, and given actors an alternative mechanism to oversee compliance and enforcement of public policies. In other words, legal claiming has become a tool for making politics through other means. Even though litigants have not achieved their goals in all cases, some real accomplishments have occurred. Actors also have other incentives to use this strategy. Some of them are related to specific aspects of juridical conflicts. For example, the juridical framing of disputes has forced governments to give official and public responses to claims, which, in turn, has restricted their ability to impose imperative political decisions. Thus, from the claimants’ point of view, the legal strategy appears as an effective defensive strategy to reduce initial losses even if they do not achieve all their goals. Legal strategies also allow the intervention of unorganized and fragmented actors in the policy debate. Although claimants end up establishing links and bridges among themselves, at the outset of the process they do not need to coordinate their actions or be formally organized; rather, their individual right to demand protection enables them to introduce a claim. This specific feature of judicial disputation allows these actors to overcome the difficulties they usually face in taking collection action. Legal mobilization appears, then, as an attractive political strategy for minority groups. The conversion of petitions into rights claims also gives actors strategic benefits: it makes their claims respectable, it grants legitimacy to their voice, and it allows them to be heard even if they are not a majority. It should be noted, however, that legal mobilization can also lead to the multiplication of fragmented and unattended legal aspirations, which can feed malaise with the political system and, in turn, reinforce the ‘noise’ of discontent. What Results Have Been Achieved and What Has Been Their Impact? The literature evaluating the impact of law on public policy shows a continuous and unfinished discussion – indeed, the evaluation of impact is a complicated matter. While certain authors assert that the effects of law are irrelevant, others suggest that results have been significant. In a wellknown study, Gerald Rosenberg (1991) dismissed the relevance of litigation as an instrument for social reform, arguing that, in the United States,

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ten years after Brown vs. Board of Education – the famous 1954 case in which the US Supreme Court declared that state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students denied black children equal educational opportunities – the percentage of black schoolchildren attending mixed schools did not show significant and measurable change. Mark Galanter (1983), on the other hand, warned that evaluations of the effects of laws and courts should consider not only their narrow and direct effects but also their broader consequences – that is, the way their initial impact diffuses into other issues and arenas that might alter the resources available for negotiating other conflicts. Galanter contends that the study of such effects should include an assessment of direct gains as well as of the changes laws and courts produce in the opportunity structure for claims-making, in the diffusion of results into other types of issues, and in the patterns of judicial responses. Research has also shown that users of legal strategies ultimately can achieve their intended results even after losing initially. In Latin America, for example, plaintiffs who have lost human rights cases in domestic courts have been able to take their cases to international courts, where more favourable outcomes have been achieved. For example, when in 2000 the Argentine Supreme Court prevented lower tribunals from hearing cases related to the kidnapping of children and attempted to transfer them to military tribunals, local human rights organizations advanced claims in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (ICHR). They questioned the Supreme Court resolution, and the ICHR advanced a decision forbidding Argentina to deal with these cases in military jurisdictions and specifying that civil tribunals should be involved (CELS 2001). Thus, losing in the short run can become a powerful strategic tool to activating the involvement of other actors in a second round. Recent empirical research on the impact of law and judicialization also shows that outcomes are contingent on specific interrelations between the law and judicial, political, and social conditions – that impact depends on the way the law and the courts relate with, and are constrained by, the conditions in which they operate. With these caveats in mind, it can be shown that, although results have not been magnificent across the board, they have not been irrelevant either. In particular, and regarding the effects of the law and the use of courts on public policymaking, research shows that courts decisions can • affect public policies and avert ‘tens of thousands of deaths’ (Gauri and Brinks 2008, 303);

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• induce executive agencies to advance public policies because new matters are placed ‘under the judicial radar’ (Hoffmann and Bentes 2008, 135); • alter the negotiating resources available to parties; • give actors involved in the disputes additional legitimating arguments; • allow actors to resist the implementation of certain policies; • veto certain other policies; and • oversee and adjust the way certain policies are implemented. As we have seen, all of these results have taken place in the Latin American context. In Costa Rica, decisions of the Sala IV regarding the free distribution of drugs for AIDS treatments resulted in a significant decrease in patient mortality. In Mexico, the legal strategy of the barzonistas transformed their stand vis-à-vis other economic actors and legitimated their claims in the debt conflict. And in Argentina, secondorder legal claims in the pension fund conflict have been used to ensure that executive agencies comply with previous judicial decisions. In addition to material benefits, legal strategies can achieve symbolic and political gains. Actors can capitalize on the perceptions of entitlement associated with (legal) rights (McCann 2006, 25) and can name and challenge existing social wrongs or injustices (Felstiner, Abel, and Sarat 1980). When social actors transform their petitions into socially accepted entitlements, legal strategies nurture social mobilization, create new identities, become a rallying point for collective action, and ultimately might transform public policies. These productive consequences of legal strategies can occur even when rights have not yet become positive rights. Rights-based claims not only signal group and individual aspirations; they also force debates regarding the distribution of social burdens – for example, what treatment do disadvantaged populations deserve? what is government’s responsibility regarding populations affected by market crises? Thus, legal disputes can have transformative consequences on public policies because they compel debates about and decisions on the persistence or change of the existing order. In the debtors’ cases of Colombia and Argentina, for example, conflicts gave place to debates about the ways in which the burdens of capitalist market shocks should be distributed, while in other cases legal claims were used to demand the fulfilment of democratic promises or to transform specific health claims into human right demands (Costa Rica).

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Finally, it should be noted that the use of judicial strategies is not associated with the ideological orientation of claimants. In Chile, for example, a group of conservative legislators petitioned the country’s Constitutional Court to deem unconstitutional an executive decree authorizing the free distribution of emergency contraception. In May 2008 the Court did just that, ruling that President Bachelet’s 2006 decree ordering the free distribution of emergency contraception in public clinics and hospitals to anyone over the age of fourteen violated the constitution. Although there are no systematic studies about conservatives’ use of litigation and the courts in Latin America (but, for the US case, see Southworth 2008), legal conflicts about reproductive rights, contraception, and abortion, as well as claims advanced by corporations regarding the adjudication of export taxes, indicate that judicialization is a tool that both progressive and conservative actors can use. An additional consequence of legal strategies as a public policy tool relates to their use as a mechanism to oversee and ensure compliance with policy decisions, which implies the incorporation in the disputes of unexpected institutional allies such as judges and lawyers, who become, by default, custodians of the demands. In this way, legally framed conflicts transform petitions into ‘rights,’ ‘rights’ into official promises, and judges into ‘guardians of past promises.’ Thus, judges and tribunals inadvertently become legitimate and authorized parties to the conflicts (Garapon 1997). In addition, collective and individual actors are using legal demands as a tool to ensure policy compliance. The persistent dispute over the pension funds benefits in Argentina illustrates this particular use of judicialization. After the courts decided in favour of plaintiffs and established updated benefits, administrative agencies that did not initially comply with the courts’ resolutions were forced to do so because plaintiffs advanced new claims demanding compliance with those decisions. This second round of claims can be interpreted as an illustration of the use of the judiciary as an instrument to ensure enforcement of public policies. It can also be seen, however, as a mechanism to procrastinate or to avoid compliance with court decisions by executive agencies, since the initiation of an additional claim that demands the execution of a court decision involves additional resources, and since it increases the costs of achieving goals. Indeed, given the reluctance of executive agencies to comply with this type of court decision, the advancement of demands requiring compliance has de facto become part of the administrative process. Finally, it should be mentioned that, as the relevance of judicial decisions increases, the structure and composition of the judiciary itself has

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become politicized. What judges do, who they are, and how their decisions can be influenced turn out to be a new area of concern for political authorities and advocacy groups. As Pilar Domingo (2004) has noted, the flip side of this process, then, is the politicization of the judiciary. Indeed, the prolific literature on the independence of Latin American judiciaries is not unrelated to the newly discovered political role that judiciaries are playing in the region (see Domingo 2000; Helmke 2002; Iaryczower, Spiller, and Tommasi 2002; Ríos-Figueroa 2006; Bill Chávez 2007; and Dargent 2009). One can conclude therefore that judicialization is having a direct impact on public policy in Latin America because it affects not only how public goods are adjudicated, but also how public policy is made and enforced. It forces decisions and the intervention of public authorities on matters they would have preferred to avoid, brings new topics into the public agenda, modifies the negotiating resources of the parties involved (providing them with legal arguments), gives actors instruments to promote or resist particular policies, introduces new actors, such as judges, into the conflicts, and can result in the creation of policy oversight and enforcing mechanisms. What Are the Consequences of Judicialization for Governability and Public Policy Enforcement? Although some of the consequences of judicialization are desirable, the use of legal strategies can also have troubling effects. When law becomes the new language of politics and procedures its grammar, legal precedents, reasonable arguments, and pre-established rules have to be considered in decision-making. The incorporation of these features, however, imposes new constraints on the possible outcomes of policy disputes. Public policy decisions cannot be justified only as the result of political negotiations; they must also contemplate legal and public arguments. These requirements restrain the number of possible solutions and favour decisions in which the ethic of conviction prevails over the ethics of responsibility. As mentioned, the use of legal strategies can displace the political debate from the legislative and executive arena into the judiciary, and in doing so bypass majoritarian criteria in the definition of policy decisions. While, in the electoral environment, actors need to maximize the extension of their claims to activate a legal strategy, they also need to show that, regardless of the extension of the support, the invoked

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claims are protected rights or can become rights. Legal mobilization uncouples the legitimacy of a claim from its extension or from representative relationships. Thus, when actors resort to legal strategies or to the rights-framing of disputes they place themselves beyond the obligations involved in the representative linkage. By converting their petitions into demands for rights, they transform their claims into ‘trumps’ that can take precedence over other public decisions (Dworkin 1984). In the Latin American context, where the legitimacy of democratic institutions and elected officials is being questioned severely, an unexpected effect of the use of legal strategies is to deepen the lack of trust in representatives and their decisions. It follows, then, that legal mobilization could feed malaise with representative linkages and worsen the difficulties political authorities have in implementing public policies. This development highlights the complex relationship between legal mobilization and democracy. While legal mobilization can lead to the expansion of citizens’ rights and to changes in the distribution of burdens, it can also give place to persistent and strong challenges to the decisions of representative authorities and to their ability to enforce public policies. It is, of course, impossible to determine fully the consequences of the politics of judicialization, and normative assessments of the phenomenon are simply not warranted. Social disorder, maintenance of the status quo, or expanded social integration are all possible outcomes of increased judicialization. However, and independently of its uncertain normative effects, recent Latin American experience shows that the process cannot be ignored. Its expansion indicates, on the one hand, the availability of an additional tool and arena for policy-making. On the other, it can be interpreted as an indicator of social integration, revealing that significant sectors of the population are willing to submit the status of their claims to the decisions of public authorities. REFERENCES Arantes, Rogerio. 2005. ‘Constitutionalism, the Expansion of Justice, and Judicialization of Politics in Brazil.’ In The Judicialization of Politics in Latin America, ed. Rachel Seider, Line Schjolden, and Alan Angell. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Argentina. 2001. Administración Nacional de la Seguridad Social. Final Report (2/2), préstamo BID 925 OC-AR, March. Buenos Aires. – 2002. Poder Ejecutivo Nacional. Boletin Estadistico del Poder Judicial Nacional. Buenos Aires.

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Banco Central de la República Argentina. 2004. ‘Medidas Cautelares,’ Informe no. 56, 25 June. Buenos Aires. Bill Chávez, Rebecca. 2007. ‘The Appointment and Removal Process for Judges in Argentina: The Role of Judicial Councils and Impeachment Juries in Promoting Judicial Independence.’ Latin American Politics & Society 49, no. 2: 33–58. CELS (Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales). 2001. Informe sobre la situación de los derechos humanos en Argentina, Enero-Diciembre 2000. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI. Cepeda, Manuel. 2005. ‘The Judicialization of Politics in Colombia: The Old and the New.’ In The Judicialization of Politics in Latin America, ed. Rachel Seider, Line Schjolden, and Alan Angell. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Correa Sutil, Jorge. 1999. ‘Judicial Reform in Latin America: Good News for the Underprivileged?’ In The (Un)Rule of Law and the Underprivileged in Latin America, ed. Juan E. Méndez, Guillermo A. O’Donnell, and Paulo S. Pinheiro. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Dargent, Eduardo. 2009. ‘Determinants of Judicial Independence: Lessons from Three “Cases” of Constitutional Courts in Peru (1982–2007).’ Journal of Latin American Studies 41, no. 2: 251–78. Domingo, Pilar. 2000. ‘Judicial Independence: The Politics of the Supreme Court in Mexico.’ Journal of Latin American Studies 32, no. 3: 705–35. – 2004. ‘Judicialization of Politics or Politicization of the Judiciary? Recent Trends in Latin America.’ Democratization 11, no. 1: 104–26. – 2005. ‘Judicialization of Politics: The Changing Political Role of the Judiciary in Mexico.’ In The Judicialization of Politics in Latin America, ed. Rachel Seider, Line Schjolden, and Alan Angell. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Dworkin, Ronald. 1984. ‘Rights as Trumps.’ In Theories of Rights, ed. J. Waldron. New York: Oxford University Press. Finkel, Jodi. 2003. ‘Supreme Court Decisions on Electoral Rules after Mexico’s 1994 Judicial Reform: An Empowered Court.’ Journal of Latin American Studies 35, no. 4: 777–99. Felstiner, William, Richard Abel, and Austin Sarat. 1980. ‘The Emergence and Transformation of Disputes: Naming, Blaming, Claiming….’ Law and Society Review 15, nos. 3–4: 631–53. Galanter, Marc. 1983. ‘The Radiating Effects of Courts.’ In Empirical Theories about Courts, ed. Keith O. Boyum and Lynn M. Mather. New York: Longman. Garapon, Antoine. 1997. Juez y Democracia, Madrid: Flor del Viento Ediciones. Gauri, Varun, and Daniel M. Brinks, eds. 2008. Courting Social Justice: Judicial Enforcement of Social and Economic Rights in the Developing World. New York: Cambridge University Press.

124 Comparative Public Policy in Latin America Glendon, Mary Ann. 1991. Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse. New York: Free Press. Grammont, Hubert. 2001. ‘El barzón, un movimiento social inserto en la transición hacia la democracia política en México.’ In Una nueva ruralidad en América Latina, ed. Norma Giarracca. Buenos Aires: CLACSO. Helmke, Gretchen. 2002. ‘The Logic of Strategic Defection: Court-Executive Relations in Argentina under Dictatorship and Democracy.’ American Political Science Review 96, no. 2: 291–303. Helmke, Gretchen, and Julio Ríos-Figueroa, eds. 2011. Courts in Latin America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Herrero, Alvaro. 2005. ‘Court-Executive Relations in Unstable Democracies: Strategic Judicial Behaviour in Post-Authoritarian Argentina (1983–2005).’ PhD diss., Oxford University. Hoffmann, Florian, and Fernando Bentes. 2008. ‘Accountability for Social and Economic Rights in Brazil.’ In Courting Social Justice: Judicial Enforcement of Social and Economic Rights in the Developing World, ed. Varun Gauri and Daniel M. Brinks. New York: Cambridge University Press. Iaryczower, Matías, Pablo Spiller, and Mariano Tommasi. 2002. ‘Judicial Independence in Unstable Environments, Argentina 1935–1998.’ American Journal of Political Science 46, no. 4: 699–716. McCann, Michael. 1991. ‘Legal Mobilization and Social Reform Movements: Notes on Theory and Its Application.’ Studies in Law, Politics, and Society 11: 225–54. – 2006. ‘Law and Social Movements: Contemporary Perspectives.’ Annual Review of Law and Social Science 2: 17–38. Minc, Alain 1995. La borrachera democrática: el nuevo poder de la opinión pública. Madrid: Ediciones Temas de Hoy. Minow, Martha, 1987. ‘Interpreting Rights: An Essay for Robert Cover.’ Yale Law Journal 96, no. 8: 1860–915. Rodríguez, César, Rodrigo Uprimny, and Mauricio García Villegas. 2003. ‘Entre el protagonismo y la rutina: analisis sociojurídico de la justicia en Colombia.’ In Culturas jurídicas latinas de Europa y América en tiempos de globalización, ed. Héctor Fix Fierro et al. México City: UNAM. Ríos-Figueroa, Julio. 2006. ‘Judicial Independence: Definition, Measurement, and Its Effects on Corruption, an Analysis of Latin America.’ PhD diss., New York University. Rosenberg, Gerald N. 1991. The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring about Social Change? Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sieder, Rachel, Line Schjolden, and Alan Angell, eds. 2005. The Judicialization of Politics in Latin America. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Smulovitz, Catalina 2002. ‘The Discovery of the Law: Political Consequences in the Argentine Experience.’ In Global Prescriptions: The Production, Exportation, and Importation of a New Legal Orthodoxy, ed. Garth Brian and Yves Dezalay. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. – 2005. ‘Petitioning and Creating Rights: Judicialization in Argentina.’ In The Judicialization of Politics in Latin America, ed. Rachel Seider, Line Schjolden, and Alan Angell. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. – 2006. ‘Protest by Other Means: Legal Mobilization in the Argentinian Crisis.’ In Enforcing the Rule of Law: Citizens and the Media in Latin America, ed. Enrique Peruzzotti and Catalina Smulovitz. Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press. Southworth, Ann. 2008. Lawyers of the Right: Professionalizing the Conservative Coalition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Spector, Horacio. 2009. ‘Don’t Cry for Me Argentina: Economic Crises and the Restructuring of Financial Property.’ Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law 14, no. 4: 771–823. Stang, Silvia. 2009. ‘Crecieron un 72% los juicios de jubilados contra la Anses.’ La Nación (Buenos Aires), 9 April. Uprimny, Rodrigo. 2007. ‘La judicialización de la política en Colombia: casos, potencialidades y riesgos.’ Sur: Revista Internacional de Derecho Humanos 4, no. 6: 52–69. Wheat, Andrew. 1996. ‘The Mexican Debtors’ Revolt.’ Multinational Monitor 17, no. 6: 22–5. Wilson, Bruce. 2005. ‘Changing Dynamics: The Political Impact of Costa Rica’s Constitutional Court.’ In The Judicialization of Politics in Latin America, ed. Rachel Seider, Line Schjolden, and Alan Angell. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Wilson, Bruce, and Juan Carlos Rodríguez Cordero. 2006. ‘Legal Opportunity Structures and Social Movements: The Effects of Institutional Change on Costa Rican Politics.’ Comparative Political Studies 39, no. 3: 325–51.

6 Federalism, Advocacy Networks, and Sexual Diversity Politics in Brazil Juan Marsiaj

The move towards greater decentralization in governance in Latin America in the past couple of decades has brought growing academic attention to subnational politics (see Abers 2000; García-Guadilla 2002; Baiocchi 2005; Wampler 2007). This wave of interest is also reflected in studies of the impact of federalism on democratization and public policy-making (see, for example, Montero 2000; Gibson 2004). While some of these studies do explore important aspects of the relationship between the state and social actors (Tendler 1997), greater attention is often given to formal institutions and their effects, made evident by the focus on issues such as electoral rules, legislative politics, and executive-legislative relations (Samuels 2003; Gibson 2004). In general, students of federalism in Latin America have overlooked its effects on the activity of actors such as social movements and non-governmental organizations. Similarly, the rich literature on popular protest and social movements in Latin America rarely engages directly with the question of how federal states affect the activities, strategies, and impact of organized groups in civil society.1 Most studies focus on one locality and / or the national level; analyses of subnational variation are much less common. This chapter addresses some of those gaps by exploring the factors that shape variation in the degree of openness to change in policy in Brazil’s federal system. It focuses on the politics of sexual diversity policies, exploring the activity of the gay, lesbian, and travesti (GLT) movement in the states of Rio de Janeiro and Bahia and its struggle for the passage of pro-lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) policies, from the mid-1990s until 2006.2 These two states exhibit a great degree of variation in the level of access to decision-making arenas that social movement activists are able to attain and in their ability – together with

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that of their allies – to bring sexual diversity issues to the policy agenda, to create pro-LGBT policies, and to implement them. I argue that the socio-economic structure – which, in turn, shapes the dominant informal institutions3 in a state – and the ideological / partisan environment strongly affect the degree of openness of subnational policy venues in the Brazilian federation. These factors help define the alliance structure that GLT activists face, moulding the kind of advocacy network that is likely to emerge. As we shall see, in states such as Rio de Janeiro, where more programmatic parties, particularly leftist ones, dominate the political arena, more opportunities arise for the creation of pro-GLT advocacy networks that are able to push for policy change. Where right-wing, more clientelistic elites retain a firmer grip on power, as is the case in Bahia, opportunities for change at the state level are significantly more restricted. Interestingly, these factors trump formal institutions – such as executive-legislative relations – in their explanatory power. The formal institutional framework might play, at best, a secondary, complementary role. In Rio de Janeiro, where legislators allied to the GLT movement tend to be more active and effective, they make use of institutional tools that allow them to magnify their impact on policy change. In Bahia, in contrast, despite a general similarity to the formal institutional framework in Rio de Janeiro, these institutions have not been very relevant. Since other factors in Bahia – such as the dominant informal institutions – are not conducive to the creation of pro-LGBT policies, legislators are basically powerless to effect change, despite the formal powers of the state assembly. While the literature on public policy-making in Northern countries provides us with some useful tools to understand how federalism shapes the functioning of advocacy networks,4 several questions remain understudied. For example, why would a social movement find space in one state and a closed door in another? And how do those differences shape the emergence, strength, and impact of advocacy networks, and, in turn, policy-making? The literature on public policy has stressed the significance of federalism to the ability of policy entrepreneurs to promote policy change. Federal arrangements facilitate venue shopping by policy entrepreneurs and political actors such as social movements and advocacy groups (Baumgartner and Jones 1993). The separation of power into different levels of government and different branches of government opens up multiple arenas or venues that might be exploited to promote policy change (Salokar 2001; Pralle 2003), a point also stressed by some

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social movement scholars (Tarrow 1998, 209; della Porta and Diani 2006, 203–11). At the same time, this multiplicity of venues also means there often is tremendous variability in regard to the degree of openness of different venues to pressure for change (Baumgartner and Jones 1993, 217). However, a more precise understanding of when and why the characteristics of different subnational units facilitate or hamper advancements by advocacy groups needs further study. The comparison of the two cases examined here sheds light on this question. In addition this literature tends to concentrate on formal institutions and how these shape the relationship between state and non-state actors. The focus of this chapter is the socio-economic structure and informal institutions, bringing attention to overlooked factors in the analysis of the role that advocacy networks play in the policy process. As I show below, while formal institutions are not irrelevant, their role in the cases under study here is secondary. Moreover, studies that examine the relationships among social movements, public policy, and federalism focus heavily on North American and western European cases. By shifting the attention to Latin America, this analysis stresses the limitations of theoretical insights that are rooted in a Northern reality, and explores a context in which factors other than the formal institutional framework are relatively more important in shaping the role of advocacy networks in policy-making. Many studies examining the impact of LGBT movements on public policy in the global North highlight the importance of some of the factors discussed here. For example, socio-economic and demographic characteristics such as urbanization, high levels of education, and diversity have been linked to the higher likelihood of the passage of antidiscrimination legislation at the local level in the United States (Button, Rienzo, and Wald 1997, 2000; Dorris 1999), and political parties and the ideological / partisan environment play a significant role in explaining the opportunities that LGBT activists encounter in the United States, Canada, and Britain (Rayside 1998, 2008). And while public opinion and religion provide important contextual factors in the analysis of the passage of pro-LGBT policy, a number of studies stress the centrality of the institutional framework – for example, federalism, courts, legislatures, electoral systems, and executive bodies – for a fuller understanding of the impact of the LGBT movement on public policy creation and implementation (Brewer, Kaith, and O’Connor 2000; Button, Rienzo, and Wald 2000; Campbell and Davidson 2000; Haider-Markel 2000; Salokar 2001; Mucciaroni 2008; Rayside 2008; Smith 2008). In regard to

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federalism, in particular, some authors highlight how the institutional characteristics of the US federal system help explain the patchwork of advancement, stagnation, and curtailment of LGBT rights at the subnational level, especially in relation to the recognition of same-sex relationships; or how, given the obstacles to the passage of pro-LGBT legislation at the federal level, activists have found more openings at the state and local levels (Button, Rienzo, and Wald 2000; HaiderMarkel 2000; Mucciaroni 2008; Rayside 2008; Smith 2008). As was the case with the broader literature on public policy, however, the role of informal institutions has been largely neglected. Finally, studies that, to varying degree, deal with the impact of the LGBT movement on public policy in Latin America are few in number (for examples, see de la Dehesa 2010; Díez 2010, 2011, forthcoming; Lozano 2010; Piatti-Crocker 2010; Schulenberg 2010; Torres-Ruiz 2011). While cognizant of the more specific institutional framework, and of the social and economic characteristics of the different Latin American countries they examine, these authors do not explicitly address the role of informal institutions and pay limited attention to how federalism affects sexual diversity politics. After a brief discussion of jurisdictional issues in Brazilian federalism that affect the activity of the pro-LGBT advocacy network, I analyse the main factors that shape the vulnerability of state-level venues to policy change – namely, first, the socio-economic structure and the dominant informal institutions, and, second, the partisan and ideological environment. I then examine the limited role played by formal institutions in explaining the variation between these two cases. The last part of the chapter delves more deeply into stories of successful and failed attempts at policy change in Rio de Janeiro and Bahia to illustrate the points made in the previous sections. Jurisdictional Issues in Brazilian Federalism Brazilian federalism has deep historical roots, and throughout the past two centuries the federalism pendulum has oscillated between centralization at the federal level and decentralization to state and municipal levels of government. In the last major swing of the pendulum, the constitution of 1988, decentralization received a great push, with significant power being transferred to states and municipalities (Montero 2000). Consequently, Brazil now has one of the strongest and most decentralized federal systems in Latin America. Indeed, its characteristics

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are often associated with obstacles to efficient governance (Samuels and Mainwaring 2004; Stepan 2004), and, as we will see below, help to account for the reason policy-making can proceed significantly faster in one state and move at a glacial pace, remain stagnant, or regress in another (see also Baumgartner and Jones 1993, chap. 11). Such high levels of decentralization also make state governments important targets of social movement activity. The division of responsibilities and jurisdictions that accompany a federal arrangement generates nodes of decision-making power at different levels of government, strongly shaping the focus of an advocacy network’s activity (Mucciaroni 2008; Rayside 2008, 29–32; Smith 2008). The 1988 constitution established significant constitutionally allocated policy-making powers to subunits of the federation (Stepan 2004). The assignment of control over police forces to state governments, for example, makes them central actors and venues in the politics around public security. Since police forces are also frequently involved in the violation of human rights of marginalized groups, including sexual minorities (Human Rights Watch / Americas 1997; Pinheiro 2000), struggles over policy to address homophobic violence take place primarily at the state level. While the power to establish the definition of marriage resides with the federal government, subnational governments have jurisdiction over other issues related to the recognition of same-sex relationships. Decisions about eligibility for pensions of state-level public employees, for example, fall in the hands of state governments, and in cases such as Rio de Janeiro, that assignment of jurisdiction to the state has made it an alternative battleground in the multidimensional struggle for the recognition of same-sex couples. Regional Socio-economic Structure and Informal Institutions This high degree of decentralization in the Brazilian federation is coupled with strong regional variation in a variety of arenas – socio-economic, cultural, ideological, and institutional. States in the Northeastern region, for example, exhibit significantly lower levels of development than those in the more developed Southeastern and Southern regions, as shown in Table 6.1. Northeastern states tend to have among the lowest levels of income, education, and formal employment, as well as very high socio-economic inequality (Campos et al. 2003). These structural differences in level of development are closely associated with differences in the political realm. As shown by Scott

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Table 6.1 Human Development Index, Selected States / Regions, Brazil, 1991 and 2000 State / Region

1991

2000

Rio Grande do Sul / South

0.753

0.814

São Paulo / Southeast

0.778

0.820

Rio de Janeiro / Southeast

0.753

0.807

Goiás / Centre-West

0.700

0.776

Amazonas / North

0.664

0.713

Bahia / Northeast

0.590

0.688

Maranhão / Northeast

0.543

0.636

Brazil

0.696

0.766

Note: The Human Development Index (HDI) provides a composite measure of three dimensions of human development: living a long and healthy life (measured by life expectancy), being educated (measured by adult literacy and enrolment at the primary, secondary, and tertiary level), and having a decent standard of living (measured by income). It ranges from 0 (the lowest level of HDI) to 1 (the highest level). Source: UNDP n.d.

Desposato (2006a), in poorer Northeastern states, electoral markets tend to be characterized by a much higher degree of clientelism, while in states such as São Paulo, the situation comes closer to a more programmatic electoral market. In the former, high levels of poverty and the pressures created by those social conditions raise the importance of individual demands rooted in more pressing material needs among the electorate; this predominance of private goods in the electoral market creates fertile ground for the growth of clientelistic and strongly hierarchical styles of politics (Desposato 2006b). In richer, more urbanized states such as Rio de Janeiro or São Paulo, demand for broader public goods – those that would benefit larger sectors of society or the state population in general rather than individuals or very limited groups – tends to be stronger among the electorate (Desposato 2006b). The behaviour of political elites also differs across states. In poorer states, elected officials tend to see the demands of the electorate as concerning primarily individual material needs or very local public goods, and they respond accordingly by seeking to gain access to resources to establish patron-client relationships and thus to guarantee their electoral success. Under these conditions, parties tend to be significantly

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less disciplined and cohesive, as elected officials side with the government of the day to ensure access to patronage. Legislatures tend to be less professionalized and more submissive to a dominant executive in these states (Desposato 2006a,b). In contrast, in the states in the South and Southeast, to a much greater extent than in the Northeast, politicians tend to focus on policy agendas around broader public goods. In such a context, parties become relatively more cohesive, since public position-taking on ideological and programmatic grounds is important for electoral success. Furthermore, in these states, especially if the governor’s party has only a minority of deputies in the state legislature, conflict between the executive and a more assertive and autonomous legislature is more likely (Desposato 2006a). Given these differences, it would seem that the demands of the GLT movement would have a better chance of being addressed in richer states. The struggle for rights that gay and lesbian activists and their allies wage can be effectively addressed only as public goods, through a normatively guided agenda of public policy change. The socio-economic factors, the related characteristics of the local political culture, and the prevalence of certain informal institutions discussed above would indicate that LGBT rights have a better chance of advancing in Rio de Janeiro than in the poorer state of Bahia. Whether successful pro-GLT advocacy coalitions emerge and succeed in changing public policy, however, depends on other factors as well. Parties and the Ideological Environment The alliance structure that gay and lesbian organizations face in Brazil is strongly shaped by the ideological environment, which, in turn, is significantly affected by the partisan distribution of power. The Brazilian political party system is often characterized as weakly institutionalized, inchoate, and clientelistic (Mainwaring 1999; Ames 2001), even though some dissenting voices have pointed to cohesive party behaviour in Congress, as well as to the increasing solidification and institutionalization of fewer and more disciplined parties (Figueiredo and Limongi 2001; Rodrigues 2002). Despite the intense debate among these scholars, most agree that leftist parties – particularly the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT, Workers’ Party) – do not fit the negative portrait of weak, inchoate, and clientelistic. Party cohesion, however, does not tell us anything about support for LGBT rights. How, then, is support for such rights distributed among

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parties in Brazil? Leftist parties are significantly more supportive of LGBT rights than are other parties; opposition to the acceptance of sexual diversity is more concentrated among right-wing parties, with centrist ones falling somewhere in-between (Htun and Power 2006; Marsiaj 2006). As a result, while we might not be able to ‘claim unequivocally that “parties matter” when it comes to elite attitudes on gender and gay rights issues, … we can say confidently that “leftist parties matter”’ (Htun and Power 2006, 98). Among leftist parties, the PT has had the closest relationship with the GLT movement, dating back to the democratic transition of the late 1970s and early 1980s (Marsiaj 2006, 176–8). Nonetheless, support for LGBT issues among leftist parties is not automatic, and should not be taken for granted (Green 2000; Marsiaj 2006, 178–80). Within the PT, for example, the historical and strong presence of the Catholic left among its ranks has been a source of tension around issues of sexual diversity and reproductive rights. Homophobia persists within the ranks of the party, and to some PT activists and politicians, gay and lesbian rights are still seen as unimportant and secondary to the class struggle. Similar problems can be found in other leftist parties. Opposition to LGBT rights in right-wing parties is primarily rooted in religious conservatism. Especially forceful and vocal in their opposition to gays, lesbians, and travestis have been legislators and politicians linked to Pentecostal churches, which have grown tremendously in size and political influence since the mid-1980s (Freston 1994, 2004; Oro 2003). Just as the left is not perfectly supportive of LGBT rights, though, rightwing parties are not completely impervious to advances made by GLT activists. Most frequently, however, such support and openness is rooted in electoral and clientelistic dynamics typical of the right (Marsiaj 2006). The distribution of partisan support for LGBT rights, then, exhibits a clear and strong bias towards the left, but also shows ‘cracks’ across the ideological spectrum. This highlights the fact that personalism is also important in establishing alliances between gay and lesbian activists and elected officials and bureaucrats. In other words, while activists are much more likely to find support among leftist politicians, not just any leftist politician is likely to reciprocate, and alliances are often concentrated in the hands of specific individuals. Likewise, while right-wing parties are overwhelmingly opposed to granting greater rights to sexual minorities, personal networks, often based on hierarchical and clientelistic relations, can open opportunities for individual gay and lesbian activists. This means that the pro-GLT advocacy networks likely to emerge under these conditions present a mix of programmatic / ideological

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elements – mostly leftist – as well as personalistic connections. This adds an important element of instability to these networks, since the loss of a specific ally – due to changes in government, electoral defeat, resignation, or dismissal – can have a significant impact on their ability to bring about pro-LGBT policy change. What has been the ideological and partisan make-up of governments in Rio de Janeiro and Bahia since the mid-1980s? In Rio de Janeiro, the left has maintained a substantial level of electoral support, and the high level of electoral competitiveness has contributed to pushing the centre of gravity to the centre-left of the ideological spectrum. In Bahia, in stark contrast, politics has been dominated by the right, personified in the late Antônio Carlos Magalhães and his family, who controlled Bahia politics for decades. Since the 1940s Rio de Janeiro politics has been dominated by parties that were primarily based in urban centres, escaping the more hierarchical politics associated with the poorer rural sector (Schmitt 1997, 140). More recently, the partisan colours of governors elected since the mid-1980s underline the persistent centre-left ideological centre of gravity at the state level. This does not mean, of course, that Rio de Janeiro politics has been free of populist or clientelistic politicians and leaders or that support for gay and lesbian rights has always been high. In the mid-1980s, for example, with the end of the military-authoritarian regime, populist and clientelistic practices towards the popular sector were revived, especially in poorer regions in the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro (Mainwaring 1989). As we will see, the very strong linkages of the governors Garotinho – Anthony (1999–2002) and Rosinha (2003–6) – to evangelical churches were often translated into opposition to pro-LGBT policies. Nevertheless, despite these caveats and limitations, the ideological make-up and structural characteristics of Rio de Janeiro have made it easier for issues of recognition of sexual minorities to reach the political agenda, relative to states where more conservative forces dominate the political arena. The partisan composition of the Rio de Janeiro state assembly also contributes to an ideological environment more conducive to the building of alliances between GLT activists and state deputies. A similar ideological centre of gravity is also evident here, with leftist parties showing an oscillating but strong presence since the mid-1980s, and the right winning about one-third of seats in elections during the 1986–2006 period (Table 6.2). The Rio de Janeiro electoral field is also among the most competitive in the country (Schmitt 1997). In such a context, marginal gains in votes

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Table 6.2 Distribution of Seats in the Rio de Janeiro State Assembly, by Party Cluster, 1986–2006 Party Cluster

1986

1990

1994 1998 (percentage)

2002

2006

Left

35.7

44.3

34.2

22.8

41.3

30.0

Centre

32.8

21.5

35.8

40.1

28.5

38.6

Right

31.5

34.2

30.0

37.1

30.2

31.4

Source: Nicolau n.d., 1998.

are important to give candidates a winning edge over their competitors. Therefore, candidates are more likely to be attuned to societal – that is, electoral – pressures and demands, and leaders of social movements find more opportunities to build alliances, if only electoral ones, that make it easier to bring sexual diversity issues to the public agenda. In some cases, candidates might find electoral ‘niches’ by defending specific causes and building strong links to groups pushing for policy change in specific areas, such as promoting pro-GLT policies, as has arguably been the case with Carlos Minc, a PT state deputy and long-time defender of GLT rights in the state assembly. The relative strength of the left in this context of fierce electoral competition thus tends to pull other centrist candidates to the left, helping shift the ideological centre of gravity to the centre-left of the political spectrum. Bahia politics, in contrast, has been dominated by conservative oligarchies for most of the state’s history. Powerful landowning elites concentrated political and economic power, establishing a strong coronelista rule in the nineteenth century, characterized by autocratic control maintained by a mix of coercion, clientelism, and patrimonialism (Mainwaring 1999, 179). Since the 1960s, coronelista rule has remained dominant, even as the power of the old landed elites dimmed with the economic changes that took place over the 1930–60 period (Dantas Neto 2006). Active in the state’s politics since the 1950s, when he was elected a state deputy, Antônio Carlos Magalhães took a prominent role in Bahia’s conservative capitalist modernization, and has come to dominate politics in the state since the 1970s. Following the demise of the military-authoritarian regime in the 1980s, Magalhães maintained tight control of his state’s politics, while at the same time projecting his political influence at the federal level. His political machine has been closely related to the Partido da

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Frente Liberal (PFL, Liberal Front Party), one of the heirs of Arena, the party that supported the military regime. The domination of Magalhães and his protégés is clear in the succession of governors of Bahia since the mid-1980s. After a brief and temporary alternation in power away from the right in 1986 with the victory of Waldir Pires, the PFL held the governor’s seat from 1990 until 2006. Only recently has power moved away from the hands of Magalhães’s group, with Jaques Wagner of the PT beating Paulo Souto in the 2006 race for the governorship, a reversal due in part to the gradual weakening of Magalhães’s and the PFL’s grip on power. Another important factor was Wagner’s ability to ride the wave of support for the PT government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva at the federal level, which has injected significant resources in targeted social policy through the Bolsa Família (Family Grant) program in Northeastern states; Bahia has been one of the main beneficiaries of the program (Hunter and Power 2007, 20). The domination of the right in Bahia extends to the legislature, made evident by the persistently strong showing of the right, particularly since 1990 (Table 6.3). Despite a parallel growth of support for leftist parties, these are still in the minority. In this context, allies of the GLT movement are few and most often have very little power to generate policy change on issues related to sexual diversity. Perhaps even more than in Rio de Janeiro, their bonds to GLT activists are highly personalistic. In addition, traditional machista and homophobic notions of gender and sexuality permeate the right and the ruling elites in Bahia, posing enormous obstacles to the passage of pro-LGBT legislation. The Role of Formal Institutions Unlike in most of the analyses of policy-making in the North, in the cases under study here the formal institutional framework does not play a key role in explaining variation across states, even if at times it may play a facilitating role or pose additional challenges to the impact that advocacy networks are able to have on public policy around sexual diversity issues. In many Latin American countries, informal institutions compete with and, at times, substitute for formal institutions (Helmke and Levitsky 2006). Nevertheless, while informal institutions often take precedence over formal ones, the latter should not be dismissed altogether as irrelevant. These formal rules, norms and organizations can at times provide the potential or opportunities for change. In general the formal institutional framework of state-level executive-legislative relations in

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Table 6.3 Distribution of Seats in the Bahia State Assembly, by Party Cluster, 1986–2006 Party Cluster

1986

1990

1994 1998 (percentage)

2002

2006

Left Centre Right

6.4 58.8 34.8

14.4 36.5 49.1

19.0 31.7 49.3

28.7 12.7 58.6

28.6 15.9 55.5

20.6 23.2 57.2

Source: Nicolau n.d., 1998.

Brazil tends to exhibit a strong bias towards a more assertive executive (Abrucio 1998; Desposato 2006a). That said, legislatures – at both the state and federal levels – still play an important role in balancing the power of the executive, albeit often a more ‘reactive’ one (Santos 2001b; Morgenstern 2002). Compared to the federal Congress, the Rio de Janeiro state assembly has more autonomy to control its own legislative agenda. Since the internal structure of the assembly produces a greater degree of decentralization of power, individual legislators have more opportunities to influence and produce legislation than do federal deputies (Santos 2001a, 173–5). In theory, this dispersion of power might facilitate the ability of advocacy networks to affect public policy. In practice, however, it seems that the other factors shaping the alliance structure discussed so far determine whether or not this potential for facilitating policy change is activated. Despite a generally similar institutional framework in the state assemblies of Bahia and Rio de Janeiro, oligarchical politics have made the Bahia legislature highly subservient to the executive: virtually no legislation initiated within the state assembly is approved, and its agenda is almost completely dominated by the executive. As a result, despite the formal institutional framework of executive-legislative relations in Bahia, dominant informal institutions have rendered formal institutions virtually powerless to assist in the struggles of the pro-LGBT advocacy network. Rio de Janeiro The Garotinho Years and the Soares Project In the late 1990s important opportunities for the pro-LGBT advocacy network to promote policy change arose in Rio de Janeiro. As part of a

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broader coalition strategy across the country, the PT entered into an alliance with the leftist Partido Democrático Trabalhista (PDT, Democratic Labour Party) for the gubernatorial election in Rio de Janeiro in 1998. Anthony Garotinho, from the PDT, who had Pentecostal and other Protestant churches among his main bases of support (Freston 2001, 49–50), ran for governor and was joined by Benedita da Silva, from the PT, as his running mate.5 Once Garotinho began his administration in 1999, he named Luiz Eduardo Soares – a renowned social scientist with links to the PT – subsecretary in the public security secretariat and gave him what seemed at first a considerable amount of autonomy and power to implement important reforms. Soares and his team had conceived a progressive policy program for public security that emphasized greater efficiency of police forces, greater participation of the community, and a sustained effort to change the militarized police culture, making police forces more respectful of diversity and human rights (Soares 2000, 51). Once in power, his team started slowly putting in place projects intended to change gradually the public security apparatus and promote the development of a culture of respect for human rights. His plan included the creation of Centros de Referência, or agencies that would bring together civil society (representatives from minority groups) and state actors (officials responsible for public security policies) to evaluate the needs of various marginalized communities and propose specific actions to address those issues. These openings generated opportunities for GLT activists to build stronger alliances with public officials, bring their demands to the table, and have an impact on public policy. In the late 1990s, as GLT groups brought increasing attention to issues of homophobic violence, discussions were initiated among key members of the pro-GLT advocacy network – activists from local GLT organizations, allied state deputies, and civil servants (Larvie 2001, 26). Out of these discussions emerged a more concrete plan for the creation of a Centro de Referência against the discrimination of sexual minorities, which was formally created in February 1999 (Soares 2000, 163) within the structure of the public security secretariat. In the year following its creation, the Centro de Referência coordinated activities and projects such as the incorporation of lectures on sexual diversity – given by gay and lesbian activists – into the training of police officers and the setting up of the Disque Defesa Homossexual (DDH), a telephone service for victims of homophobic violence and discrimination to report abuses and receive legal and psychological counselling

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(Soares 2000, 172–3; Larvie 2001). While some emblematic, albeit isolated, success stories emerged out of the functioning of the DDH and the Centro de Referência (Ramos 2001, 64), the lack of continued commitment from Garotinho’s government, the paucity of resources available to implement policies effectively, and the magnitude of the problem of police violence towards marginalized groups seriously hampered the implementation of these pro-LGBT policy initiatives. In March 2000, after growing tension between Soares and his team of reformers on one side, and the top officials in the public security secretariat who defended the status quo in the police forces on the other, Garotinho sided with the latter and fired Soares. Once fired, Soares’s whole team of reformers followed suit, thus cutting the linkages between the GLT movement and the public security apparatus in the state government (Soares 2000), effectively dismantling that part of the pro-LGBT network. These developments highlight the personalistic nature of the bonds that tied together the various members of this advocacy network. Even though the Rio de Janeiro political arena provided the opportunities for this kind of progressive policy initiative to emerge, access to the state depended upon specific individuals. The dismissal of Soares also underlines some of the ‘fault lines’ of leftist support for LGBT rights: even though this was nominally a leftist government, with many ideologically committed allies in its ranks, support for pro-LGBT policies was neither widespread nor firm. Following Soares’s departure, tremendous efforts by GLT activists ensured the survival of the Centro de Referência (Larvie 2001), but only under even more constrained conditions. With difficulty, some piecemeal gains continued to be made under Rosinha Garotinho’s government (2003–6).6 The service’s effectiveness in changing the practices of the police forces, however, was seriously compromised after the DDH was transferred from the public security secretariat to the justice and citizenship rights secretariat in mid-2003. The Rio de Janeiro State Assembly: Strong Allies in a More Progressive Legislature The gay and lesbian movement in Rio de Janeiro has also relied on allied deputies in the state assembly to defend its interests and push its demands forward. Since the early 1980s, the movement has managed to build alliances with certain state deputies, some of whom, such as Carlos Minc from the PT, have maintained a close personal relationship with leaders of the GLT movement.

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The combination of stronger ideological positioning by state deputies, the greater presence of the left in the state assembly, and the actions of GLT leaders and allies in pushing for change has led to some concrete results – namely, the approval of important pro-LGBT legislation. Even though broader support from other deputies is needed for the approval of bills, the main force behind them remains in the hands of a few individual allies, such as Minc. In 1999, he presented an antidiscrimination bill to institute penalties for establishments that discriminated against individuals based on their sexual orientation. The bill encountered significant resistance from deputies linked to various churches, but, after intense negotiations with other deputies and a visible mobilization by key GLT organizations in Rio de Janeiro, the bill was passed into law in May 2000. The organization and mobilization of allies of the GLT movement in the state assembly was again put to the test in the struggle around a bill recognizing the right of same-sex partners of public employees to a pension. In a move intended to attract undecided deputies, Minc sought the support of the president of the state assembly, Sérgio Cabral, from a centrist party, who co-authored the bill with him in early 2001. Despite the usual opposition of religious deputies, the bill was approved in November 2001. Challenges to the law did not stop in the legislature, however; direct interference from the executive and legal action also posed threats to its survival. After being sent for gubernatorial approval, Anthony Garotinho vetoed the law. In March 2002, in an impressive effort, the state assembly overrode the governor’s veto (‘Cai veto a pensão para homossexuais,’ Folha de S. Paulo, 21 March 2002). Within weeks, however, a deputy linked to the Catholic Church filed a lawsuit arguing for the unconstitutionality of the new law. An initial decision in favour of that deputy made the law ineffective for almost a year, but a later decision by the Justice Court of the state of Rio de Janeiro overturned the previous lower-level decision in early 2003 (‘Servidor homossexual’ 2003). In late 2003, arguing for the need to make the Rio de Janeiro pension system more compatible with federal regulations, Governor Rosinha Garotinho sought to render the same-sex pension law ineffective. She presented a new bill reforming the state pension system, omitting the article that recognized same-sex partners of state public employees. When the bill was being discussed in the state assembly, deputies Carlos Minc and Gilberto Palmares from the PT presented amendments reintroducing the same-sex provision, which were approved by the

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assembly. The amended law, however, was not fully accepted by the governor, who line-vetoed the measures aimed at recognizing same-sex partners. Once again, the assembly overrode the gubernatorial veto in November 2004 and the law was maintained.7 Bahia The Challenge of Protecting Human Rights of GLTs in Bahia The struggle to guarantee the human rights of sexual minorities in Bahia has been rather difficult. Especially when compared to Rio de Janeiro and the opportunities that emerged there in the late 1990s, attempts to find strong and effective allies in the state apparatus in Bahia have been futile. The socio-economic and political contexts in that state discussed earlier have contributed to the nearly complete absence of state response to persistent homophobic violence and discrimination. Even though organizations such as the Grupo Gay da Bahia have continuously contacted and pressured government officials since the early 1980s, not much concrete change has been achieved. Activists have engaged in a number of strategies – demonstrations, letter writing, meetings with bureaucrats – but the response from public officials has been inconsequential. Very few and episodic advancements have been achieved, largely due to personal linkages to specific allies, the high degree of visibility of Luiz Mott – ex-president of the Grupo Gay da Bahia – and strategic mobilization by the GLT movement; these gains, however, have been quite limited. In 1998 a case of police violence against travestis gained a significant degree of public attention. A group of police officers rounded up two travestis in Salvador and, after torturing them, took them to Pituba beach and forced them to swim into the sea. Not knowing how to swim, one of them drowned. Reaction from the GLT movement was swift and strong. While at first the officers were arrested and thrown out of the police force, within a year they were reinstated to their positions and impunity was the final result (ATRAS 1999; Grupo Gay da Bahia 1999). A generally difficult situation was made worse during the César Borges government (1999–2002). Under the mandate of the new public security secretary, Kátia Alves, the level of animosity between the GLT movement and the secretariat increased significantly, closing the possibility for cooperation. The few initiatives and contacts that existed in previous years were nearly all stopped, and the secretariat took a

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repressive stance towards sexual minorities, especially travestis. Prior to the visit of the Danish queen in 1999, the military police in Salvador arrested a group of travestis in an attempt to ‘clean up’ the city for the event. Despite pressure from the GLT movement and its allies, the travestis were held by police for a few days before being released. That incident set the tone of the relationship between the movement and the secretariat under Alves. No clear improvement was achieved under the new government of Paulo Souto, which took office in 2003, as officials from the secretariat indicated no willingness to work towards addressing the concerns of GLTs. In addition, other government agencies that might have worked with the movement to build mechanisms for the protection of GLTs’ human rights, such as the human rights secretariat, also have proved ineffective. Thus, despite significant levels of mobilization by the GLT movement, especially by the Grupo Gay da Bahia, that state’s political context has blocked advancement in regard to the fight against homophobia. Limited Visibility, Few Allies, and a Weak Legislature As noted earlier, the Bahia state assembly traditionally has been subservient to the governor. In addition, given the strength of the political right in that state, representatives and allies of marginalized groups tend to be limited to a small number of opposition deputies whose activity fails to produce concrete results. As in other states, in Bahia most of the deputies sympathetic to the GLT cause are from leftist parties, especially the PT. These allied deputies have presented a number of pro-LGBT bills to the assembly since the 1980s, including one to grant the Grupo Gay da Bahia ‘public utility’ status, an antidiscrimination bill, and an amendment to the state constitution to include an explicit prohibition of discrimination based on sexual orientation. All of these attempts, however, have failed to bring about legislative change, even if they did help to bring some visibility to the issue of sexual diversity. Another locus of engagement has been the human rights committee of the state assembly. The committee has received denunciations of rights violations from organizations in the GLT movement, and has tried to publicize a few emblematic cases, thus helping diffuse information about these violations; ultimately, however, its impact has been very limited. The committee does not have strong agencies in the executive with which it can work, and it faces serious constraints to its functioning. Moreover, reflective of the heavily personalistic context of

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Bahia politics, the effectiveness of the committee is strongly influenced by the person presiding over it. Consequently, its role as a space for the inclusion and participation of GLTs is unstable, and its ability to generate policy change is quite restricted. Conclusion Having found the doors to decision-making spaces closed at the more local level, the Grupo Gay da Bahia has, since the 1980s, been very active at the federal level and in other states, working in conjunction with other GLT groups in different regions of the country; federalism thus provides other possible venues for policy entrepreneurs. Nevertheless, some issues involve primarily state-level jurisdictions and responsibilities (for example, police forces and public security), and given the high degree of decentralization in the Brazilian federation, subnational politics are often very important for advocacy networks fighting for the rights of marginalized groups. While the fact that federalism theoretically opens up a multiplicity of venues for policy entrepreneurs to explore, the actual patterns and structure of opportunities available to actors in advocacy networks need to be better explained. While in some regions federalism provides opportunities for policy change – which potentially can produce positive feedback for more systemic change – in others it only means an obstacle to advancement closer to home. The examples of the Brazilian GLT movement highlight, first, the importance of pressure from below for policy change, particularly in relation to politically marginal issues such as sexual diversity. Second, the dominant socio-economic structure and informal institutions, as well as the partisan / ideological environment, go a long way towards explaining, in the case of sexual diversity politics at least, where and why effective pro-LGBT advocacy networks are likely to emerge. And while they can at times represent additional obstacles or facilitating tools for policy change, formal institutions – such as the structure of executive-legislative relations – do not account for the degree of variation between the two cases analysed here. While the focus of the discussion in this chapter has been the steps leading up to policy creation, the stories told, particularly those from Rio de Janeiro, highlight the tremendous challenges advocacy networks face in trying to get policies implemented. The persistence of the weakness of the rule of law and the low capacity of state institutions to implement public policies raise questions regarding the conditions necessary for

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progressive policy change to bring about concrete change to the lives of marginalized groups in Brazil and the rest of Latin America.

NOTES 1 Exceptions do, of course, exist. Some studies of environmental politics in Brazil, for example, have highlighted the variation of the impact of the environmental movement across states and the importance of federalism for understanding the development and activity of the movement (Ames and Keck 1997–8; Hochstetler and Keck 2007, 13–16). 2 This study uses the acronym ‘GLT’ – gays, lesbians, and travestis – in reference to the social movement fighting for LGBT rights and behind pro-LGBT advocacy networks, since its struggle reflects attempts to gain greater acceptance of sexual diversity, which affects not only gays, lesbians, and travestis, but also bisexuals and other transgendered individuals. This chapter draws largely from approximately fifty in-depth interviews and numerous informal conversations with movement activists in Rio de Janeiro and Bahia in 2003. 3 I borrow the definition of informal institutions outlined in Helmke and Levitsky (2006, 5): ‘socially shared rules, usually unwritten, that are created, communicated, and enforced outside officially sanctioned channels.’ 4 Advocacy networks are ‘organized to promote causes, principled ideas, and norms, and they often involve individuals advocating policy changes that cannot be easily linked to a rationalist understanding of their “interests”’ (Keck and Sikkink 1998, 8–9). 5 Unlike most legislators linked to evangelical churches, in 1988 da Silva was an open supporter of the inclusion of ‘sexual orientation’ in the federal constitution. 6 In 2006, for example, as part of an initiative from the federal special human rights secretariat, a Centro de Referência for GLBT human rights in Rio de Janeiro was created to provide legal and psychological support to victims of homophobic discrimination and violence (Llistó 2006). 7 Following the victory in the state assembly, the government agency in charge of awarding pensions to same-sex partners of state public employees refused to grant them, arguing the law was unconstitutional. In 2007, when Sérgio Cabral, one of the original co-authors of the pension bill, came to power as governor, he introduced a new law reinstating the right to a pension for same-sex partners of public employees. In this new government, unlike the previous one, there was political will to ensure the law was in fact implemented.

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Haider-Markel, Donald. 2000. ‘Lesbian and Gay Politics in the States: Interest Groups, Electoral Politics, and Policy.’ In The Politics of Gay Rights, ed. C. Rimmerman, K. Wald, and C. Wilcox. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Helmke, Gretchen, and Steven Levitsky. 2006. ‘Introduction.’ In Informal Institutions and Democracy: Lessons from Latin America, ed. G. Helmke and S. Levitsky. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Hochstetler, Kathryn, and Margaret Keck. 2007. Greening Brazil: Environmental Activism in State and Society. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Htun, Mala, and Timothy Power. 2006. ‘Gender, Parties, and Support for Equal Rights in the Brazilian Congress.’ Latin American Politics and Society 48, no. 4: 83–104. Human Rights Watch / Americas. 1997. Police Brutality in Urban Brazil. New York: Human Rights Watch. Hunter, Wendy, and Timothy Power. 2007. ‘Rewarding Lula: Executive Power, Social Policy, and the Brazilian Elections of 2006.’ Latin American Politics and Society 49, no. 1: 1–30. Keck, Margaret, and Kathryn Sikkink, eds. 1998. Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Larvie, Sean Patrick. 2001. ‘Violência contra homossexuais e organizações comunitárias.’ In Violência e minorias sexuais, ed. A. d. A. Rinaldi and S.P. Larvie. Rio de Janeiro: ISER. Llistó, Paco. 2006. ‘Rio de Janeiro ganha novo Centro de Referência em direitos humanos.’ Mix Brasil, 8 January. http://mixbrasil.uol.com.br/pride/ pride2005/centro_rio/centro_rio.shtm (accessed 8 January 2006). Lozano, Genaro. 2010. ‘Same-Sex Relationship Equality in Mexico.’ In SameSex Marriage in the Americas: Policy Innovation for Same-Sex Relationships, ed. J. Pierceson, A. Piatti-Crocker, and S. Schulenberg. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Mainwaring, Scott. 1989. ‘Grassroots Popular Movements and the Struggle for Democracy: Nova Iguaçu.’ In Democratizing Brazil: Problems of Transition and Consolidation, ed. A. Stepan. New York: Oxford University Press. – 1999. Rethinking Party Systems in the Third Wave of Democratization: The Case of Brazil. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Marsiaj, Juan. 2006. ‘Social Movements and Political Parties: Gays, Lesbians, and Travestis and the Struggle for Inclusion in Brazil.’ Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 31, no. 62: 167–96. Montero, Alfred. 2000. ‘Devolving Democracy? Political Decentralization and the New Brazilian Federalism.’ In Democratic Brazil: Actors, Institutions and Processes, ed. P. Kingstone and T. Power. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

148 Comparative Public Policy in Latin America Morgenstern, Scott. 2002. ‘Explaining Legislative Politics in Latin America.’ In Legislative Politics in Latin America, ed. S. Morgenstern and B. Nacif. New York: Cambridge University Press. Mucciaroni, Gary. 2008. Same Sex, Different Politics: Success and Failure in the Struggles Over Gay Rights. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Nicolau, Jairo Marconi. n.d. Dados Eleitorais do Brasil, edição eletrônica. Rio de Janeiro: IUPERJ-UCAM. http://jaironicolau.iuperj.br/banco2004.html (accessed 20 April 2009). – ed. 1998. Dados Eleitorais do Brasil (1982–1996). Rio de Janeiro: IUPERJUCAM / Editora Revan. Oro, Ari Pedro. 2003. ‘A política da Igreja Universal e seus reflexos nos campos religioso e político brasileiros.’ Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais 18, no. 53: 53–69. Piatti-Crocker, Adriana. 2010. ‘Constructing Policy Innovation in Argentina: From Gender Quotas to Same-Sex Marriage.’ In Same-Sex Marriage in the Americas: Policy Innovation for Same-Sex Relationships, ed. J. Pierceson, A. Piatti-Crocker, and S. Schulenberg. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Pinheiro, Paulo Sérgio. 2000. ‘Democratic Governance, Violence, and the (Un) Rule of Law.’ Daedalus 129, no. 2: 119–44. Pralle, Sarah. 2003. ‘Venue Shopping, Political Strategy, and Policy Change: The Internationalization of Canadian Forest Advocacy.’ Journal of Public Policy 23, no. 3: 233–60. Ramos, Sílvia. 2001. ‘Disque Defesa Homossexual: narrativas da violência na primeira pessoa.’ In Violência e minorias sexuais, ed. A. d. A. Rinaldi and S.P. Larvie. Rio de Janeiro: ISER. Rayside, David. 1998. On the Fringe: Gays and Lesbians in Politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. – 2008. Queer Inclusions, Continental Divisions: Public Recognition of Sexual Diversity in Canada and the United States. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Rodrigues, Leôncio Martins. 2002. Partidos, ideologia e composição social: um estudo das bancadas partidárias na Câmara dos Deputados. São Paulo: EDUSP. Salokar, Rebecca Mae. 2001. ‘Beyond Gay Rights Litigation: Using a Systemic Strategy to Effect Political Change in the United States.’ In Sexual Identities, Queer Politics, ed. M. Blasius. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Samuels, David. 2003. Ambition, Federalism and Legislative Politics in Brazil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Samuels, David, and Scott Mainwaring. 2004. ‘Strong Federalism, Constraints on the Central Government, and Economic Reform in Brazil.’ In Federalism and Democracy in Latin America, ed. E.L. Gibson. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

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Santos, Fabiano. 2001a. ‘A dinâmica legislativa no Estado do Rio de Janeiro: análise de uma legislatura.’ In O poder legislativo nos estados: diversidade e convergência, ed. F. Santos. Rio de Janeiro: Editora FGV. – 2001b. ‘Introdução.’ In O poder legislativo nos estados: diversidade e convergência, ed. F. Santos. Rio de Janeiro: Editora FGV. Schmitt, Rogério Augusto. 1997. ‘Rio de Janeiro: multipartidarismo, competitividade e realinhamento eleitoral.’ In O sistema partidário brasileiro: diversidade e tendências, 1982–94, ed. O.B. d. Lima Júnior. Rio de Janeiro: Editora FGV. Schulenberg, Shawn. 2010. ‘Policy Stability without Policy: The Battle for Same-Sex Partnership Recognition in Brazil.’ In Same-Sex Marriage in the Americas: Policy Innovation for Same-Sex Relationships, ed. J. Pierceson, A. Piatti-Crocker, and S. Schulenberg. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. ‘Servidor homossexual poderá deixar pensão.’ 2003. Homo Sapiens: Jornal do Grupo Gay da Bahia, July / August, 4. Smith, Miriam. 2008. Political Institutions and Lesbian and Gay Rights in the United States and Canada. New York: Routledge. Soares, Luiz Eduardo. 2000. Meu casaco de general: quinhentos dias no front da Segurança Pública do Rio de Janeiro. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. Stepan, Alfred. 2004. ‘Toward a New Comparative Politics of Federalism, Multinationalism, and Democracy: Beyond Rikerian Federalism.’ In Federalism and Democracy in Latin America, ed. E.L. Gibson. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Tarrow, Sidney. 1998. Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics, 2nd ed. New York: Cambridge University Press. Tendler, Judith. 1997. Good Government in the Tropics. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Torres-Ruiz, Antonio. 2011. ‘HIV / AIDS and Sexual Minorities in Mexico: A Globalized Struggle for the Protection of Human Rights.’ Latin American Research Review 46, no. 1: 30–54. UNDP (United Nations Development Programme). n.d. Atlas do desenvolvimento humano no Brasil, http://www.pnud.org.br/atlas/ (accessed 14 April 2009). Wampler, Brian. 2007. Participatory Budgeting in Brazil: Contestation, Cooperation, and Accountability. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.

7 Agenda through Dispute: The Zoilamérica Narváez–Daniel Ortega Controversy Delphine Lacombe Translated by Phyllis Aronoff and Howard Scott

Under what conditions and in what contexts do social conditions become public problems? Why are certain decisions made – or not made – by governments? Why do topics that are ‘burning issues’ at a particular time simply die down (Garraud 2004)? The field of public policy analysis has made these questions crucial. In considering the placing of public problems on the agenda as the introductory stage of a cycle of public policies, classical theories have developed analytical models that make it possible, for example, to distinguish between the systemic agenda and the institutional agenda, or to differentiate outside and inside initiative models according to whether political decisions first arise in response to civil society demands or internal government formulations (Cobb and Elder 1972). John Kingdon, defining agenda-setting as ‘the list of subjects and problems to which government officials, and people outside of government closely associated with those officials, are paying some serious attention at any given time’ (1984, 3), constructed a model of a ‘political window of opportunity’ opening according to how three streams – the problem stream, the policy stream, and the political stream – come together. According to Kingdon, major changes in public policies result from the convergence of these streams at a particular time; the streams correspond respectively to the problematization of ‘social conditions,’ proposals for policies – or ‘solutions’ – to respond to the public problems, and the evolution of the political community, its institutions, or public opinion (1984, 175). As a result, given that the process of agenda-setting sits at the intersection of political and social processes involving large numbers of actors and spaces, as well as various material and symbolic resources, its understanding requires, I argue, the mobilization of various sociological

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approaches. Similarly, because agenda-setting, whether or not it leads to a concrete plan for public action, always reflects a change in the perception of social conditions, researchers are forced to include in their analyses the cognitive, social, and political environments of a given problem. In short, the explanatory power of any analysis of this stage of public action must include a diversity of variables and factors it potentially encompasses. In this chapter, I engage these complexities of agenda-setting through a case study of the public problematization of violence against women in Nicaragua. The study presented here lies at the intersection of gender studies and the analysis of public action in a fragile democratic context, and it is influenced by two broader discussions that this volume addresses. The first concerns the transfer of analytical and conceptual tools for the analysis of public policy in Latin America. This transfer, as has been argued, requires special consideration of the specificities and temporality of a country’s democratic experience, as well as of the types of institutional regulation and sociability that might influence the logic of actors (Cabrero Mendoza 2000). It is thus necessary to understand how the evolution of the public problem of ‘the struggle against violence against women’ fits into a more general analysis of the changes Nicaragua has experienced since the end of the Somoza dictatorship (1979), during the Sandinista regime (1979–90), and then the establishment of liberal democracy (1990). The second relates to the use of canonical theories of agenda-setting in political science in general and feminist studies in particular. Based on classical theories of agendasetting, certain approaches that straddle political sociology and the study of public policy argue for broadening the scope of exploration by making the central variable of the analysis the emergence and the evolution of public problems (see, for example, Boussaguet and Jacquot 2009). These researchers criticize canonical theories for analysing agenda-setting according to the decision-making that follows it or for sometimes focusing too much on modes of interaction and negotiation in parliamentary or government spheres (Kenney 2003). In this chapter I address these discussions and argue that it is indispensable to broaden the focus of analysis of agenda-setting to include the notions of ‘spaces of visibility’ and ‘registers of discourse’ – for example, political and judicial institutions, civil society organizations, and the media as vehicles for the construction of individual narratives, subjectivity, and emotion – of the formulation of the public problem being studied. It is also necessary to include the perspective of historical time,

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stressing the reciprocal effects between formulations of new public problems in a context of recent democracy and the collective memory of the authoritarian period that preceded it. The sociology of public controversies (Boltanski 1990; Boltanski and Claverie 2007) will be my fulcrum for extending the scope of the analysis of agenda-setting and for relating and analysing a major controversy in Nicaragua between Zoilamérica Narváez and Daniel Ortega for its effects on the history of the struggle against violence against women.1 This controversy was tantamount to a political crisis because of the individuals concerned: Daniel Ortega, former president of the republic (1984–90) and the leader of the opposition at the time of the scandal, and his adopted daughter. It was an adversarial process that revealed power relations, institutional positions, clientelistic practices in the exercise of power, and previously concealed personal histories. By ‘dramatizing’ them, it ‘made more apparent the divisions that work underground to shape’ the social order (Lemieux 2007, 191). And it made visible the male complicities that work underground to shape the political order. It also brought about, although temporarily, ‘reversals of what had been established beliefs’ on both rape and gender politics during the Sandinista decade (196). In this chapter I demonstrate how this scandal played a major role in agenda-setting and public action in ‘struggles against gender violence,’ what it revealed about those struggles, and how it informed the exercise of decision-making and political power in Nicaragua. In short, I show how the scandal was both the catalyst of a policy process and the revealing agent of an existing political order. My analysis unfolds in three phases. First, I review the definitions of the concepts used. I then retrace the history of the Zoilamérica Narváez– Daniel Ortega case, showing that Narváez’s denunciation was part of a public policy change aimed at preventing and punishing violence against women. Finally, I analyse the implications and meanings of this study for the analysis of agenda-setting in the Nicaraguan and Latin American context. Agenda-Setting Agenda-setting can be defined as ‘all processes that result in social phenomena acquiring the status of “public problem,” belonging no longer to inevitability (natural or social) or the private sphere, and becoming the subject of debates and controversies in the media and politics’ (Garraud 2004, 52). Such a definition belongs to more recent, and critical, models

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of agenda-setting that are more useful for two reasons. First, they do not see agenda-setting solely as the initial stage of a cycle of sequenced public action according to the classic approach developed by Charles Jones (1970). Rather, they prefer to see it as an analytical distinction that makes it possible to isolate a moment of the public policy process, which is envisaged as a multidimensional process involving interactions among actors and various strategic and cognitive processes (Garraud 2004, 56). Second, these recent models have highlighted some shortcomings inherent in classical definitions. Discussing Kingdon and the work of Frank Baumgartner and Bryan Jones (1993) from a feminist perspective, Sally Kenney draws researchers’ attention to the lack of in-depth exploration of the conditions that lead to the emergence of public topics (2003). Kenney urges that we not reduce the question to ‘[h]ow Mr. Bill becomes Mr. Law’; rather, we should reconstruct the ‘puzzle’ of collective or individual actors and ideas governing the publicization and legitimization of a problem. Kenney states, with a nod to Kingdon, that ‘women are not an interest group in the same way as the trucking industry’ (183). Indeed, feminist movements are not just interest groups calling for specific programs of public action or changes to laws. They are also part of the multiform networks motivated by ‘non-material’ aims that call for profound changes to the social order. We know that second-wave feminists have contributed to a change in the perception of the private sphere that they have summed up in the slogan ‘the personal is political.’ These words were intended to reveal the social – and not natural – character of the relationship between women and men, to show that it is based on socializations more or less implicitly inscribed in public action and the political order. They were also meant to promote a broader meaning of the political, beyond the sphere of formal representation and decision-making. Thus, the public action projects resulting from these cognitive changes cannot be divided into sectors as readily as can industrial policies or even health policies, because the modes of dissemination of these changes are part of the policy process: neither the placing of issues on the agenda nor even their outcomes can be understood without them. Similarly, while collective action has ‘practical’ aims oriented around a theme of action or demands, these combined objectives are also based on systemic ‘strategic’ aims with regard to the social order (Molyneux 1985b). Thus, broadening the field of analysis permits us not only to know why a project was supported and a decision made, but also how a change in norms was disseminated and at a certain time was considered legitimate – or illegitimate.

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Beyond the formidable analytical tool of understanding the strategic discourse of collective action and the modes of framing of public problems, it is important to be attentive to discrete events and to the work of making problems visible through individual narratives that express emotions in the media. Life stories describing anger, shame, and humiliation help to catalyze both movements and public opinion. Paying special attention to these cognitive resources is yet another way to broaden the scope of agenda setting (Kenney 2003, 192). As well, beyond the crucial role played by government and parliamentary spheres, the importance of the courts and, more generally, the law in the policy process should be stressed. The courts are also the arena where crucial debates are crystallized, where major strategies of argument and discourse are at stake (Kenney 2003, 199). Gender violence as a theme of public actions lends itself very well to this broadening of the analysis. It includes all forms of psychological, physical, and sexual violence underlying male domination and control of women, both individually and as a group, in all spheres of social life, whether private or public. In taking a materialist feminist perspective, male violence against girls and women is a ‘total social fact’ (Mauss 1968); it is exercised as the fact of a system in which ‘all the constituent parts of the social tend toward a single meaning’ (Lefort in Karsenti 1994): the preservation or reinforcement of a sexual order. These ‘constituent parts’ are all the ideological, economic, political, legal, media, and other supports, which vary historically and culturally (Sagot 2006). On the basis of this definition, I employ the terms ‘gender violence’ and ‘violence against women,’ which are those most often used in Nicaragua by feminist activists. I adopt gender as a category of analysis through which gender-based power is expressed, exercised, or articulated (Scott 1986). A distinction exists between the agenda of the policy process and the agenda of the disputing process. Whereas the former is based on the classic analysis of the opening of a political window in favour of a convergence of policy, political, and problem streams, the latter focuses the analysis on a conflictual process initiated by a public denunciation, which is another way of interrogating social life by considering it as the arena of a trial (Boltanski and Claverie 2007, 395–452). The Narváez-Ortega Case The Zoilamérica Narváez–Daniel Ortega case began with a public denunciation. The scandal was then intensified by the publication of a detailed

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account. On 2 March 1998, Zoilamérica Narváez2 publicly accused Daniel Ortega of repeated sexual aggression against her for many years, beginning when she was eleven. The brief letter she published in the press was especially scandalous since the man being denounced was considered a civilizing hero. He had been commandant of the Sandinista revolution, which overthrew the last dictator of the Somoza dynasty in July 1979. He was president during the years of the war between the Sandinista people’s army and the counterrevolutionary forces, and at the time of the denunciation he was a deputy and the main leader of the opposition, the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN, Sandinista National Liberation Front). Arnoldo Alemán, leader of the Partido Liberal Constitucionalista (PLC, Constitutionalist Liberal Party), which, with the FSLN held the majority of the seats in the National Assembly, had just been elected president for a mandate of five years (1997–2001). The controversy led immediately to the emergence of three general types of public discourse. One presented Daniel Ortega as a sexual pervert, thereby making him illegitimate politically. A second, in the minority, was built around a defence of Narváez and adopted mostly by feminists independent of the FSLN; it equated Narváez with all the women, girls, and boys who were victims of rape and incest, and some of its proponents also wanted to lift taboos with regard to the revolutionary period. A third was built clearly in support of Ortega or scepticism toward his accuser; it criticized Narváez for sullying the memory of the Sandinista movement and its undisputed leader, and made accusations of a counterrevolutionary plot. Faced with discredit and insults from her parents and one of her brothers, Zoilamérica Narváez decided to support her initial denunciation with the publication on 22 May 1998 of a long account in the main national newspapers. In it, she described in detail the sexual and psychological violence of her aggressor, the manipulation, blackmail, and humiliation, but also rapes committed by men close to Ortega in his presence. She told of the law of silence imposed by her parents and certain FSLN, leaders and stated that, according to Ortega, she was his source of emotional stability and thus she ‘protected the revolution.’3 In addition, Narváez’s statement was based on criminal law and was part of a new cognitive and institutional environment. The legal terms she used (law 150) had been adopted – abusos deshonestos, acoso sexual – or reformed – violación – only a few years before. They reflected the inscription of the struggle against gender violence in law and as a right, a process I summarize below.

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The Background to the Denunciation: Agenda as a Policy Process The policy process that gradually made violence against women a public problem in Nicaragua goes back to the Sandinista decade. The first public problematization of the question occurred in the cabildos constitucionales (constitutional discussions) of 1985 and 1986. Women activists participated in the debates in preparation for the enactment of a new constitution and attempted to have their demands included. The question of the constitutional protection of citizens’ physical integrity was seized upon to make visible the reality of conjugal violence or, in the language of the time, el maltrato a la mujer (the mistreatment of women), particularly by women who were beginning to promote an autonomous feminism. They put forward the ‘horizontal,’ not just the ‘vertical,’ dimension of citizens’ rights: as opposed to the Somoza dictatorship and the common practice of torture, they believed respect for physical integrity was a duty originating in the state. The feminists in the cabildos formulated it as a duty of citizens to each other, and especially of men towards women in conjugal relationships (Morgan 1990). Despite these demands, no law was passed and no public action taken on this particular question,4 except for legal and psychological aid provided by the Oficina Legal de la Mujer (Women’s Legal Office) to women getting divorces or denouncing violence by their husbands or partners (Oficina legal de la mujer 1986). The reasons for this persistence of the status quo have been analysed and are well known: class struggle and the emancipation of peoples were the priority, while the emancipation of women was seen as complementary to, and not in conflict with, that of men (Molyneux 1985a). In this context, the feminism that denounced male domination practised in private and public was considered a retreat to petit-bourgeois reflexes and a divisive factor in the revolution. Expressions of civil society had legitimacy only if they were subordinated to the party-state; hence the difficulty of openly practising a critical and autonomous feminism (Murguialday 1990). At the beginning of the 1990s, however, the political configuration was completely different. Elected by a broad majority of Nicaraguans on 25 February 1990, Violeta Chamorro, the representative of the Unión Nacional Opositora (UNO, National Opposition Union), represented the mother bringing families and Nicaraguan society back together. The maternal symbolism, the appeal to the heritage of her deceased husband, Pedro Joaquín Chamorro (who had been murdered by the dictatorship), and the rhetoric of ‘the devoted wife’ were very bad

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omens in the view of those feminists who were determined to bring the issue of women’s rights gradually into the public space (Kampwirth 1996; Isbester 2000). In retrospect, however, some political actors today look back on the Chamorro period as the ‘least bad interlude,’ since it was possible, through exposure in the media and the involvement of certain institutions, to carry out reforms to advance women’s rights. To use Kingdon’s terms, the convergence of institutional and political changes (the political stream), the dissemination of new frames for the struggle against gender violence (the problem stream), and the transnationalization of new resources for public and legal action (the policy stream) opened a ‘political window of opportunity.’ The main political decisions taken after the Chamorro administration included the passage of legislation against sexual and intra-familial violence and the establishment in 1993 of the first Comisaría de la Mujer y la Niñez (Women’s and Children’s Police Station) – based in part on a Brazilian experiment begun in 1985 (Santos 2005) – in coordination with the Instituto Nicaragüense de la Mujer (INIM, Nicaraguan Women’s Institute), a project funded through international cooperation (Jubb 2006). The Political Stream The establishment of liberal democracy under the presidency of Violeta Chamorro and the gradual return of peace to Nicaraguan society corresponded both to the promotion of new codes of political action and to a period of major uncertainty and social and territorial fragmentation (Pérez-Baltodano 2003). At the same time, this political change catalyzed, albeit in a fragile context with profound class inequalities, disruptions that had begun in the Sandinista period or at the end of the war. With the coming of peace, armed violence ceased to be part of the repertoire of collective action. With change taking place through the ballot box for the first time, the concept of pluralism was gradually winning respect (Bataillon 1998). In this new environment, a part of women’s collective action, which was already becoming increasingly autonomous during the 1980s, officially declared its independence from the FSLN, in particular during the ‘Unity in Diversity’ conference in 1992. At this conference, where the activists organized themselves in networks, a national social movement was born that gradually became dominant in the panorama of women’s collective action: the Red de Mujeres contra la Violencia (RMCV, Women’s Network against Violence).

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This movement, which today includes more than a hundred nongovernmental organizations and individuals, played a crucial role in bringing into the parliamentary arena the bill that became Law 230, which criminalized intra-familial violence (Ellsberg 1997; Delgado 2003). It would later take part in the public defence of Zoilamérica Narváez. The Problem Stream Continuing the demands of the cabildos constitucionales, the women’s organizations and their institutional allies (for example, the women deputies of the FSLN and the UNO coalition) made demands in the name of citizens’ and human rights, focusing on qualifying sexual violence and intra-familial violence as criminal. Law 150,5 which reformed the penal code with regard to sex crimes and was passed in 1992, was the first time a problem initially seen in terms of the growing number of complaints to local police stations was dealt with. Drafted by a non-governmental organization (the Centre for Constitutional Rights), the proposed law underwent a certain number of changes unfavourable to victims during the debates in plenary session of the National Assembly; it also extended the criminalization of homosexuality to its ‘public promotion.’ Four years later, the RMCV came onto the scene with a national petition and an ad hoc statistical survey showing the urgent need for public action, and demanded the criminalization of conjugal violence (Ellsberg 1997). Although determined to look at the causes of this violence from the perspective of sexual inequality, as patriarchal violence against women, girls, and boys, the activists of the RMCV, willingly or unwillingly, adopted a familialist framework, and gender violence was in a sense diluted in the law on the criminalization of intra-familial violence so as to make it possible to carry out the reform more quickly.6 The Policy Stream The weight of the international context in the formulation of public issues – which was in the background of the public decisions and mobilization of the Chamorro years – is a crucial dimension for understanding the cognitive, legal, and financial nature of the increasing prominence of the problem of intra-familial and sexual violence in the Nicaraguan public space. The insertion of this issue in the international context was certainly a vehicle of strategy and identity for Latin American women’s collective action and contributed to legitimizing local demands. United

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Nations’ conferences in Vienna and Beijing coincided with a more powerful transnationalization of women’s movements, and the fight against gender violence was officially prioritized through the recognition of women’s rights as an integral part of human rights (Keck and Sikkink 1998). Similarly, the term ‘violence against women’ was used officially for the first time by the Organization of American States, which promoted the Interamerican Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence Against Women, which Nicaragua signed in Belem Do Para, Brazil, in 1994. Finally, one of the solutions for better access to justice for victims of gender violence already existed in embryonic form in the 1980s: the Comisarías de la Mujer y la Niñez. In short, the terrain on which the scandal of Narváez’s accusation suddenly occurred in 1998 had already seen attempts to legitimize the struggle against violence against women. Not only did Narváez, assisted by lawyers, use the language of an individual right to reparation under criminal law; she also situated herself fully in a context that validated such an undertaking. Her denunciation substantially influenced the evolution of the public problem by lifting the taboo on the massive reality of incestuous rape; by making audible, credible, and legitimate the words of victims who spoke up; and by reinscribing the concealment of sexual violence in the political context of the Sandinista period. The Narváez-Ortega Controversy: Agenda through a Disputing Process The Narváez-Ortega controversy can be analysed through the ‘sociology of disputes’: after a process of public accusation in order to obtain personal reparation, which may involve lodging a complaint and initiating a judicial process, ‘incompatible discourses’ take shape to defend the accuser or accused and attempt to influence public opinion. The case can therefore be analysed as an ‘actantial’ system made up of a victim, an informant or accuser, a persecutor, and a judge (Boltanski 1990). If it becomes a collective cause, if it initiates debates that are perceived as ‘concerning everyone,’ it becomes a powerful way of revealing how certain social conditions become political issues. It therefore potentially reveals, through the representative quality of individual statements and the publicization of emotions, what has made a problem a ‘burning issue’ and what has constructed a public agenda. It is a metaphor, on a larger scale, for a real trial, in which everyone is a judge (Boltanski and Claverie 2007, 395).

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Incompatible Discourses: Collective Cause versus ‘Private Problem’ Following the scandal initiated by Narváez, there was a feeling of uncertainty about its meanings. What really caused the scandal? Was it the fact that the accused was a man of power, a leader of the ‘left’? Was it the fact that a young woman had dared to lift the taboos on the situation of rape victims – the humiliation, the shame, the world of terror in which sexual aggression against women, girls, and boys took place? Was it the fact that the ‘private life’ of the revolutionary family was thrust onto the public scene? Was it the forced break with a world of beliefs about the revolution, the family, and sexuality? If the Narváez-Ortega controversy, which seemed unique, became so emblematic, it was because it raised all these questions. And the conflictual process opposing Narváez’s defenders and detractors in the media turned out to be a true process of socialization, not only on gender violence – rape, in particular – but also on the practice of intellectual criticism of political institutions (the FSLN, for example) and social institutions (the sexual order). The event was a test, first for the FSLN and more generally for the Sandinistas on the periphery of the party or in women’s collective action. A split quickly developed between those who swore allegiance to the FSLN and those who, although they called themselves Sandinistas, asked for the legal system to clarify the case. Among FSLN activists, the well-known practices and discourse of the political organization quickly determined the outcome of the scandal: it was to be resolved privately and within the family, or possibly within the party. On 6 March 1998, the national leadership of the FSLN published a brief news release expressing ‘unconditional support’ for Daniel Ortega. While Ortega himself did not say a word, Rosario Murillo – his partner and the mother of Narváez – did not categorically contradict her daughter, although she suggested on a number of occasions that she was ‘deranged,’ and urged the public not to take sides in ‘a family problem.’ Among critical Sandinistas – feminist intellectuals, in particular – the few voices that gave their support to Narváez expressed an embarrassing memory of the revolutionary period. Margaret Randall’s public letter is exemplary in this respect. She was the only one to allude (publicly) to a state secret protected by men and women close to power: ‘We knew it, we kept silent out of fear and because we supported the Sandinista revolution. We also felt that this story was Zoilamérica’s and that it should be told – or not told – by her; I am ashamed of our silence, but perhaps the time and place allowed no other alternative.’7

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There were also open letters from Michele Najlis to Daniel Ortega that, while expressing her ‘old affection,’ asked him to face up to the serious accusations and ‘not to scorn the accusations of those who are weakest, women’ by claiming to resolve the denunciation internally (in the family or the FSLN). ‘How many times [during the revolution] did we alert the leaders ... of serious anomalies and instances of corruption we observed in the FSLN? And what were the results? The accused were protected, while those who denounced them were silenced.’ She added, ‘Don’t you realize that the lack of ethical transparency was one of the fundamental reasons why the FSLN lost its credibility?’ (1998). Vilma Nuñez de Escorcia’s exclamation, ‘It’s worse than when the Front lost!’8 and other writings by Sofía Montenegro (1998), Mónica Zalaquett (1998), Gioconda Belli (1998), and Sylvia Torres (1998) also concurred in the observation of a painful moral confusion and the betrayal of revolutionary ideals, while emphasizing the urgent need to raise public awareness of the massive reality of incest in Nicaragua, which was presented as a veritable ‘epidemic’ (López Vigil 2000). Already actors or allies in an autonomous feminism within the FSLN, many of these women intellectuals, who came out of the Sandinista movement and who had played a significant political role in the 1980s, associated the controversy with the impossibility of formulating any critical discourse within the FSLN during the revolutionary decade. They also began to denounce and interpret certain abuses of power, including harassment or rape by Sandinista activists and leaders, connecting them with the political forms in effect throughout the 1980s. The moment that was most revealing of this new climate was a second denunciation: a German woman, Cornelia Marshall, accused one of the founders of the FSLN, former minister of the interior Tomás Borge, of sexual harassment, adding that she had survived a rape by a Sandinista soldier in the early 1980s (1998). The virtual impossibility of having her rights recognized twice, and her condemnation to silence lent support to the thesis of a revolution that, to say the least, was limited by the continuation of the authoritarian, macho exercise of power. After receiving threats, Marshall had to leave Nicaragua following her declarations.9 No other woman publicly testified to similar acts within the FSLN, although Narváez asserted that she was ‘not the only one.’ In private, many women confirmed that such practices were widespread and were impossible to denounce within the ranks of the Sandinista organization. This shows the total disconnect between public and private discourse.10

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For the RMCV to come to a public position was not easy. The arbitration in favour of Narváez, made public on 4 March 1998, was politically painful for many Sandinistas in the network, given the sympathy some women activists felt for the FSLN and its leader – indeed, some did not necessarily believe Narváez’s claims. While political sympathies had until then been divorced from feminist activism and more or less relegated to the private sphere or considered part of a ‘double activism,’ the women in the network suddenly found it necessary to speak out publicly and resolve the dilemma of these double allegiances. They either had to refuse to support Narváez, and indirectly serve Ortega’s purpose by denying the ethos of the movement, or to believe her and support her quest for justice and reparation. The latter position involved not only breaking publicly with the Sandinista leader and the FSLN, but also recognizing earlier violations of the rights of women during a revolution in which they had participated. Faced with these issues, they finally chose to believe Narváez. A standing commission to support Narváez was set up. Taking this position was especially difficult because the women activists had hardly discussed the complex issue of rape. It was through deconstruction and the responses to the violence of the attempts to discredit Narváez that a collective cause was brought to the public stage. Scepticism towards Narváez was most often formulated in terms of the question, ‘why did she wait so long to speak up?’ She and her supporters attempted to explain to public opinion all the obstacles to victims’ speaking out, obstacles that also guaranteed impunity for the rapists. By equating Narváez with all victims and, implicitly, Ortega with all aggressors, they highlighted the individual or collective strategies used to conceal sexual violence and to discredit those who denounced it. At the risk of transgressing comfortable beliefs, they explained, for example, that the family was not necessarily a protective place for children and women, but rather a site of power and control. They proved that most rapes were committed in this high-risk context, and cited statistical surveys on gender violence showing that one Nicaraguan woman out of two had been a victim of violence within the family (Ellsberg et al. 2000). They showed that, given such deeply rooted beliefs, people preferred to deny incestuous rape rather than denounce it. And they pointed out that, when it was impossible to evade reality, people preferred to change its meaning by using euphemisms (‘it was seduction’), by blaming the victim (‘she provoked the sexual act’; ‘her denunciation is destroying an entire family and a political party’; ‘her keeping silent

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is an act of masochism’), or by diluting the responsibility (‘her mother did not come to her rescue’) (Romito 2006, 156). The risk of being discredited, and hence fear and silence, also arose from the pathologization of both the victims and the rapists. In short, what the spokespersons for the RMCV tried to make heard on the public stage, beyond the specific political aspects of Narváez’s denunciation, was a gendered sociological analysis of rape: rape and incest are first of all the result of a sexual order that imposes silence and guarantees impunity for aggressors; they constitute an attack on public order requiring a social and political solution, not an attack on morality requiring a private solution. Despite the 1992 law on sexual crimes, such a formulation had never before been placed on the public agenda or received so much attention from the press and television. The Narváez-Ortega case (disputing process) thus catalyzed the evolution of the public problem ‘male violence against women’ (policy process) by provoking an unprecedented discussion of rape. The Judicial and Political Consequences: Impunity through a Political Pact While the Narváez-Ortega affair prepared the ground for public denunciation and indignation with regard to rape, the political and judicial institutions showed little inclination to pay attention to those demands. Obstacles appeared as soon as Zoilamérica Narváez filed, on 27 May 1998, a complaint about sexual abuse, rape, and sexual harassment before Judge Martha Quezada. Daniel Ortega’s lawyers responded that, with the exception of sexual harassment, the time limit for prosecuting the offences had passed. The leader of the FSLN, who was then a deputy in the National Assembly, appeared before the judge to claim parliamentary immunity. In accordance with the procedure, Judge Quezada placed the affair before the National Assembly so that a commission of deputies could prepare the discussion and vote, in plenary session, on whether to strip Ortega of his immunity. But no procedure was ever begun to examine the case of the accused parliamentarian. In fact, the National Assembly and the justice system proved to be the best guarantors of the interests of two men: Daniel Ortega and Arnoldo Alemán. Ortega negotiated with Alemán to maintain his parliamentary immunity and, in exchange, Alemán got the opposition to do nothing regarding corruption involving him. This agreement between leaders of rival parties, which institutionally and judicially blocked Narváez’s denounciation, must be placed within the context of

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political changes during Alemán’s administration. Alemán, mayor of Managua at the beginning of the 1990s, had as his primary objective the strengthening of the PLC. The party belonged to the UNO, an antiSandinista coalition that held a majority of seats in the National Assembly. Because of the role he played in the consolidation of the party, Alemán became the presidential candidate of the ‘Liberal Alliance’ in the 1996 elections, and was elected president with 51.03 per cent of the vote; his alliance captured forty-two seats in the National Assembly. The elections were an important defeat for Ortega, who obtained only 37.75 per cent of the vote and whose party earned only thirty-six seats. (The elections were characterized by a significant number of political parties: twenty-one, which collectively obtained 11.22 per cent of votes cast.) Soon after his investiture as president, Alemán was investigated by the Contraloría de la República (Office of the Comptroller General) for misappropriation of public funds. It was in this context, at the time of a possible meeting of the parliamentary commission on the withdrawal of Ortega’s immunity, that rape and theft became pressure tactics and bargaining chips in a negotiation that began in 1997 between the head of the executive and the leader of the opposition gradually to inscribe their sharing of power in the constitution. What is commonly referred to as a pacto de caballeros (gentlemen’s pact) had four objectives: to continue to divide up spheres of economic influence; to restrict electoral competition to the rival PLC and FSLN parties by gradually changing the electoral law (with the logic of reducing the number of smaller political parties to allow for political majorities); to divide up power over the main institutions of control in the country (the Supreme Court, the Supreme Electoral Council, the comptroller general); and to guarantee impunity for the caudillos by favouring their re-election as deputies – the condition of immunity.11 Faced with this impasse, Narváez and Vilma Nuñez de Escorcia, president of El Centro Nicaragüense de Derechos Humanos (CENIDH, Nicaraguan Human Rights Centre), filed a complaint of the denial of justice against the Nicaraguan government with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). On 8 November 1999, the IACHR accepted the complaint. At its request, the ministry of foreign affairs presented three reports, exceeding the accorded deadlines and dragging the affair out until the middle of 2001. The reports, however, contained arguments that contradicted both the facts of the case and the penal code, stating that the crimes involved were private and that Narváez was no longer appearing regularly before the first secretary of

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the National Assembly – when, in fact, the secretary had stopped agreeing to see her. Nonetheless, on 17 October 2001, the IACHR officially declared the case – number 12,230 – admissible. By this time, the impossible procedure of Narváez versus Ortega had become Narváez versus the Nicaraguan government. On 12 December 2001, a few days after the presidential and legislative elections, in which he was defeated by Enrique Bolaños, Ortega chose to give up his immunity and appear before Judge Juana Méndez, whose ‘loyalty’ to the FSLN was common knowledge. In record time, without even summoning the lawyers of the opposing party or asking for a new investigation, Méndez established that the time prescribed for prosecuting all the infractions had expired and, on 16 December, declared the criminal action invalid. Zoilamérica Narvéz decided to appeal immediately – in vain. She then filed a motion of cassation in the Supreme Court. On 25 April 2003, this body, control of which was shared by the PLC and the FSLN, rejected the motion and completely cleared Ortega of all criminal charges. Meanwhile, on 4 March 2002 the IACHR ordered the Nicaraguan government to conclude the affair with a ‘friendly agreement.’ The Bolaños government (2001–6), on one hand, and Zoilamérica Narváez, Vilma Nuñez de Escorcia, and the CENIDH, supported by the various prosecutors of the republic, on the other hand, agreed to negotiate the terms of the agreement. The plaintiff presented six demands, among which were a public statement, compensation, and a commitment to fight impunity for crimes of violence against women. Although President Bolaños and the prosecutors seemed ready to sign a public statement officially committing the Nicaraguan state on all these points, no statement was ever signed. Did Narváez turn it down at a meeting at the end of February 2003? No precise explanation was given either by the plaintiff, by people close to her, or by the CENIDH. In fact, shortly before the prospective signing, Narváez had chosen to distance herself from the CENIDH and to handle this stage alone. Bolaños, when questioned by the press, implied that she preferred the extrajudicial solution of accepting compensation from Ortega to compensation by the state, but Narváez has always denied these insinuations. Regardless of this abortive attempt at a solution and its causes, recourse to the IACHR would not have been necessary if the Nicaraguan justice system had properly fulfilled its role. The way the National Assembly dealt with this case showed how easily Alemán and Ortega were able to preserve their impunity. The decision by Judge Méndez was clear evidence of the extent of Ortega’s power over the justice

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system and of the primacy of political clientelism over the rule of law. It also exposed the androcentric organization of these procedures and seriously weakened the legitimization of the struggle against violence against women that had been brought about by the scandal. An emblematic example of the extension of ‘serial pacts’ among men into the political sphere (Amorós 1990), the Alemán-Ortega agreement embodied the most tangible opposition to the feminist slogan ‘the personal is political,’ which may be summed up by reversing it: the political is personal. And it is also through this reversal that sexual violence becomes political violence. Implications for Public Policy Analysis Today, we know the outcome of the Narváez-Ortega case: Narváez dropped her judicial action before the IACHR a few months after Ortega was elected president on 6 November 2006, and Ortega used the agreement with Alemán to create the conditions for his return to power. Despite the exposure of these political machinations, Daniel Ortega paid no electoral price as a result of his public denunciation by Zoilamérica Narváez. This puts into perspective the effect the discussion of rape had on public opinion, but it did not sound the death knell for this public problem. Although it is receiving less attention than at the time of the legal reforms in the 1990s, the problem of male violence against women in Nicaragua still gives rise to semi-public action, in which the main actors are the Comisarías de la Mujer y la Niñez, which receive complaints, and the whole network of grassroots activists associated with the RMCV, who support victims in their quest for a life without violence. Several lessons may be learned from this case for the study of agendasetting in Latin America. First, the public denunciation by Zoilamérica Narváez must be placed at the centre of the analysis of agenda-setting. The analysis of a public denunciation is very useful in explaining the construction of what constitutes a public problem. In this case, the problematization of rape – in particular, incestuous rape – developed on the public stage. As we have seen, the denunciation catalyzed a policy process: after bringing forward the problem of the maltrato a la mujer and of ‘intra-familial and sexual violence,’ women’s collective action took up the question of sexual abuse on the basis of the polemic generated by the accusation against Daniel Ortega. This made it possible to broaden and, more precisely, to define the concept of ‘male violence

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against women,’ and to understand better the law of silence surrounding it. The obstruction of the legal process, in turn, catalyzed the demand for the rule of law as an indispensable condition for the prevention and eradication of gender violence. With regard to the second aspect, two characteristics of the controversy are of particular importance. First, not only was a critical review undertaken of the Sandinista revolution from the perspective of the gender politics of the FSLN, but, for the first time, this questioning was communicated through personal accounts in the press. Second, the controversy made explicit the absence of judicial independence in Nicaragua and showed how reciprocal protection between political adversaries guaranteed impunity. Beyond the fact that the protagonists in this controversy were well known, the course of this emblematic affair is representative of the difficulty of denouncing situations of male violence. An expansion of analysis that takes into account the emergence of discourse, beyond institutions, using the work of Kenney (2003), makes it possible to understand very concretely the strategies of concealment of male violence in all the spaces of social life and their effects on policy outcomes. For example, the results of a comparative investigation of access to justice for women in Ecuador, Nicaragua, Peru, and Brazil (Jubb et al. 2008) show that budgets, institutional effectiveness, and laws are not the only factors that create obstacles to a life without violence or to the judicial process. According to data from the Comisarías de la Mujer y la Niñez, in 2007, out of 91,536 complaints submitted, only 8 per cent were referred to the judicial system (if an offence) and 7.7 per cent to the attorney general’s office (if a crime). This might be due to the fact that the victims wanted to stop the aggressors without necessarily going through the judicial system. But the personal views that officials of the police or the justice system might have about sexual or conjugal violence are also most important. Refusing to help or file a complaint because the accusation is felt to be implausible, blaming the victim, using euphemisms for violence, absolving the aggressor on grounds of ‘aggressive or sexual pathology,’ and putting the priority on the preservation of the family are all discourses of concealment of the reality of violence against women, and they were so designated by a few well-known feminists during the Narváez controversy. They show that the gender of politics is also constructed through the politics of the discourses that reflect frameworks of thought that are formidably effective when applied directly to victims. Hence the importance of not reducing the analysis of agendas to the decisions that follow them, but, rather, reconstructing the whole

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discursive and political cluster that gives rise to the evolution of a public problem. The analysis of an emblematic controversy is particularly significant because it is merely the dramatized and amplified form of a great many anonymous everyday affairs in the courts, where communities, families, and co-workers are pitted against ‘denouncers’ and ‘persecutors,’ to use Boltanski’s (1990) terms. Its capacity to explain policy processes and policy outcomes is thus quite tangible. Another lesson regards the importance of analysing the dispute process within the policy process, which reveals the conditions required for public action to be carried out in Nicaragua. To use the most common terminology, it is said that there is a gap between ‘the legal country’ and ‘the real country,’ expressions frequently used to emphasize the contrast between the promotion of new democratic political codes and the weight of practices of power based on personal and clientelist arrangements in Latin America (O’Donnell 2004). Such a contrast between ‘legal country’ and ‘real country’ not only results in weak policy implementation in the region; it also reflects a sort of dualism of a social order that has room for contradictory principles of political regulation (Touraine 1988), as well as weak state autonomy in relation to political elites (Pérez-Baltodano 2003). Taking account of such dualism in this case study, one sees the coexistence of two divergent and contradictory dynamics without which the analysis of the evolution of ‘male violence against women’ as a public problem would be partial. On the one hand, there exists a great effort to fight gender violence, an effort essentially articulated around civil society and police and judicial institutions, all of which are highly dependent on, and financed by, international cooperation. Through this overview of the policy process, one could provide some evidence that state institutions, within a context of strong international pressure to publicize gender violence, were responsive, however weakly, to its legitimization. On the other hand, however, the deepening of clientelistic practices within decision-making spheres (for example, the presidency and parliament) and oversight institutions (the Supreme Court) are both the cause and the symptom of an inverse phenomenon that implicitly consists of delegitimizing the struggle against gender and intrafamilial violence, thereby favouring the impunity of the perpetrators. In this sense, the Narváez-Ortega case, settled in favour of the former through an intra-parliamentary and intra-party agreement, is but an exceptional representation of the formidable daily and institutional challenges to the recognition of the rights of those who report the crimes.

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A relatively new and tangible effort, if noteworthy, to tend to the victims of crime coexists, then, with active efforts to hide and hinder the demands and strategies of those who seek justice. It is not simply about the dichotomy that exists between the rule of law and obstacles to implementation due to weak institutions, but, rather, about how a state policy that aims to hide male violence and hinder struggles against it, as a response strategy to such violence, is part of public action and the policy process itself. The political consequences of the Narváez-Ortega case also reveal the gender character of these institutions: the pact of immunity for protection against an accusation of rape in parliament is flagrant evidence that institutions were sites of the representation and construction of relationships of gender power (Molyneux 2000). That pact reflects both ordinary serial pacts between men and common practices of corruption in the courts. But it also reset the terms of thinking about the privatepublic dichotomy that is so central to the feminist critique. The pact attests to a double obstacle to the denunciation of sexual violence: the difficulty of providing a political and social reading of its causes (‘the personal is political’), powerfully reinforced by the instrumentalization of certain institutions in favour of masculine and political interests (‘the political is personal’12), and it reinforced the impunity of men of power (Lacombe, Marteu, and Frotiée 2008; Jarry-Omarova 2010). This instrumentalization has a direct relation to the forms of moral regulation – and of gender – by these decision-making spheres, because ‘making a division between two spheres with [supposedly] opposite characteristics (the apolitical natural private, or personal, sphere and the public sphere of men and power) is one of the main roles of the state’ (Jubb 2002). The fabrication of impunity through clientelism within the spheres of power is a way of relegating to the private – and, therefore, to the non-political – sphere the question of sexual violence, thus strengthening and legitimizing the sexual order through the state and making it appear ‘natural.’ Finally, dispute and policy processes make it possible to highlight the reciprocal effects between the formulation of new public problems in the context of a new democracy and the political memory of the regime and social context that preceded it. Indeed, a certain memory of the revolutionary period re-emerged publicly with the Narváez-Ortega affair, particularly among post-Sandinista feminists independent of the FSLN. Narváez’s denunciation accelerated the definitive break of a certain number of feminists with the FSLN, not only organizationally but

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also ideologically. A certain number of criticisms of the gender politics of the FSLN were expressed in personal testimony relating experiences of violence such as sexual harassment in the ranks of the political organization. The concealment of this violence was connected to characteristics of the political regime that confused the party and the state. This historical dimension does not emerge merely from reading the policy process of the 1990s. It is, however, important for the analysis of agendasetting, for the study of the evolution of the public problem, its phases of exposure and invisibility, and for understanding the historical experience of feminist activism. Conclusion The difficulty of understanding public action in Nicaragua has a direct relationship to the characteristics of the country’s relatively recent democratic experience, which is deeply marked by the coexistence of contradictory principles of the exercise of power, some based on traditional forms of authority, others on new codes that have taken armed violence out of the repertoire of political action and promoted equality between male and female citizens. It is by the standard of these contradictory principles that we need to understand the particular emergence of the public problem of ‘male violence against women’  and its evolution. The understanding of its increasing prominence in public debate and of the obstacles to this legitimization is an avenue for the exploration of the profound political and social changes Nicaragua has experienced over the past thirty years. This constructivist perspective on the analysis of the agenda-setting process is useful in analyses of public policy in Latin America, and it allows us, through that analysis, to interrogate ‘the way in which societies think about themselves’ (Muller 2000). Fifteen years after the emergence of the Narváez-Ortega scandal, and as Ortega’s term comes to an end, it is possible to reflect upon the durability and the effects of socio-political controversies. In this case, we have seen how the denunciation was turned against the denouncer as well as against all women who, fearful of uttering a word against rape, witnessed the wheels of state impunity and the consequences of their march: the reelection to the highest positions of power of the presumed perpetrator, which resulted in the adoption of a clear anti-feminist governmental policy13 as well as a backlash against activists who had supported Zoilamérica Narváez.14 Within this context, the durability of the ‘voicing’ effect that the controversy ignited for the survivors of domestic violence was sadly

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compromised. Narváez’s support for the current administration contributes to the perception of the scandal as a moment in Nicaraguan social and political history that is certainly important but, above all, punctual, incidental, and inexorably anchored in the context and political power structures of the time. Ultimately, the controversy highlights the obvious reversibility of agenda-setting and women’s rights.

NOTES 1 On 2 March 1998, Zoilamérica Narváez denounced her adoptive father, Daniel Ortega, for subjecting her to rape and sexual harassment from the time she was eleven until she was thirty. After the scandal broke, Ortega avoided prosecution by making an agreement with his political adversaries and thanks to the ‘loyalty’ of a judge who declared the criminal allegations invalid. 2 Narváez was born on 13 November 1967 in Managua. She is the daughter of the late Jorge Narváez Parajón and Rosario Murillo Zambrano. Under Nicaraguan law, her name is Zoilamérica Ortega Murillo, Daniel Ortega having adopted her in 1986. She studied sociology at the Universidad Centroamericana in Managua, was active in the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (Sandinista National Liberation Front), and was executive director of the Center for International Studies. She currently runs the Sobrevivientes foundation, which was created in 2002 to assist victims of sexual abuse. 3 For Narváez’s story, see http://www.sandino.org/zoila.htm. The account, dated 22 May 1998, was published in its entirety in the press (La Prensa, El Nuevo Diario) in the days that followed, as well as in a booklet distributed mostly in women’s activist organizations. 4 On the other hand, there were substantial changes to the laws on the social relationship between the sexes – for example, equal pay for men and women (Estatuto sobre derechos y garantías de los Nicaragüenses, 1979); reform of laws governing parental authority (Ley reguladora de las relaciones entre madre padre e hijos, 1982); recognition of matrimonial bonds outside marriage (1987); and equality under the divorce law (Ley para la disolución del matrimonio por voluntad de una de las partes, 1988). 5 The standards in effect at the time of the Narváez-Ortega scandal systematically assumed the absence of sexual consent before the age of fourteen. They spoke of abusos deshonestos if there was touching without penetration (art. 200, with a penalty of up to twelve years’ imprisonment in the case of a family connection between the aggressor and the victim), violación (art. 195,

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6

7

8 9

10

11

12 13

14

with a penalty of fifteen to twenty years in prison, and with aggravating circumstances if the aggressor was in a position of authority over the victim or there was a family connection between them), and acoso o chantaje con propósitos sexuales (art. 197, with a penalty of one to two years in prison). Law 230 introduced the recognition of psychological violence and provided protection for victims of violence in the penal code, with a penalty of up to six years in prison. The open letter to ‘the FSLN, the people of Nicaragua and people concerned about the affair’ is dated 11 April 1998; see http://www.sandino. org/randal.htm. La Tribuna, 5 March 1998. See also ‘Cornelia confirma denuncia pública,’ El Nuevo Diario, 17 March 1998; and ‘Tomás Borge guarda silencio sobre acusación de acoso sexual,’ La Tribuna, 16 March 1998. It should be noted that, in contrast to Nicaragua, where no exhaustive investigation was made of gender violence in politico-military organizations (in either the Contras or the FSLN), this issue was made public in El Salvador; see Vásquez, Ibáñez, and Murguialday (1996). This became possible as a result of a 2000 constitutional reform that automatically granted former presidents and vice-presidents a parliamentary seat after their terms in office as well as to presidential and vice-presidential candidates who finish second. I would like to thank Anna Jarry-Omarova for suggesting the reversal of the terms of the feminist slogan. On 26 October 2006, two weeks after the presidential and legislative elections, deputies (six from the FSLN, six from the Alianza Liberal, and eighteen from the PLC) voted in favour of the deletion of article 165 of the penal code, in force since 1974. Additional reforms to the penal code annulled provisions allowing women access to therapeutic abortions (which date back to 1873) in cases in which the mother’s life is engendered, the fetus is not viable, or pregnancies that are the result of rape. Ortega’s and Murillo’s anti-feminism is directly related to the support that feminists afforded Narváez during the controversy. Many among them, who were members of the Movimiento Autónomo de Mujeres (MAM, or Autonomous Women’s Movement) denounced Ortega’s abuse of power, arguing that a FSLN victory in the 2006 elections would represent the worst of scenarios. MAM and other organizations have since been the target of government harassment and intimidation – for example, MAM’s offices have been raided by government forces because of allegations of illegal pro-choice campaigns and activities.

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REFERENCES Amorós, Celia. 1990. ‘Violencia contra las mujeres y pactos patriarcales.’ In Violencia y Sociedad patriarcal, ed. Virginia Maquieira and Cristina Sánchez. Madrid: Editorial Pablo Iglesias. Bataillon, Gilles. 1998. ‘Nicaragua: la présidence Chamorro, l’instauration d’un régime démocratique désenchanté.’ Problèmes d’Amérique Latine 30, no. 3: 71–92. Baumgartner, Frank R., and Bryan D. Jones. 1993. Agendas and Instability in American Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Belli, Gioconda. 1998. ‘El dolor por el hombre símbolo.’ El Nuevo Diario, 11 March. Boltanski, Luc. 1990. L’amour et la justice comme compétences : trois essais de sociologie de l’action. Paris: Métailié. Boltanski, Luc, and Claverie, Elisabeth. 2007. ’Du monde social en tant que scène d’un process.’ In Affaires, scandales et grandes causes: de Socrate à Pinochet, ed. Luc Boltanski et al. Paris: Stock. Boussaguet, Laurie, and Sophie Jacquot. 2009. ‘Mobilisations féministes et mise à l’agenda de nouveaux problèmes publics.’ Revue française de science politique 59, no. 2: 173–81. Cabrero Mendoza, Enrique. 2000. ‘Usos y costumbres en la hechura de las políticas públicas en México: límites de la policy science en contextos cultural y políticamente diferentes.’ Gestión y política pública 9, no. 2: 189–229. Cobb, Roger W., and Charles D. Elder. 1972. Participation in American Politics: The Dynamics of Agenda-Building. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Delgado, Violeta. 2003. ‘La Red de mujeres contra la violencia pasó ya varias pruebas de fuego.’ Envío 253 (April). Ellsberg, Mary. 1997. ‘The Nicaraguan Network of Women against Violence: Using Research and Action for Change.’ Reproductive Health Matters 10 (November): 82–92.  – et al. 2000. Confites en el infierno: prevalencia y características de la violencia conyugal hacia las mujeres en Nicaragua, 3rd ed. Managua, Nicaragua: UNAN-León. Garraud, Philippe. 2004. ‘Agenda/Emergence.’ In Dictionnaire des politiques publiques, ed. Laurie Boussaguet, Sophie Jacquot, and Pauline Ravinet. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po. Isbester, Katherine. 2000. Still Fighting: The Nicaraguan Women’s Movement, 1977–2000. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Jarry-Omarova, Anna. 2010. ‘Genre du pouvoir et démocratie libérale en Mongolie: analyse de l’échec du mouvement associatif des femmes, entre

174 Comparative Public Policy in Latin America espace politique, nomadisme et ONG internationales.’ PhD diss., École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. Jones, Charles O. 1970. An Introduction to the Study of Public Policy. Belmont, CA: Duxbury Press. Jubb, Nadine. 2002. ‘Caso Zoilamérica: un secreto de estado.’ El Nuevo Diario, 14 January. – 2006. ‘Gender, Funding, and the Social Order: Contradictions among the State, the Women’s Movement, and Donors regarding the Nicaragua Women’s and Children’s Police Stations.’ Paper delivered at the 2006 Congress of the Canadian Political Science Association, Toronto, 1–3 June. – et al. 2008. Proyecto acceso a la justicia para mujeres en situación de violencia: estudio comparativo de las comisarías de la mujer en América Latina. Quito, Ecuador: Centro de Planificación y Estudios Sociales. http://www.ceplaes. org.ec/AccesoJusticia. Kampwirth, Karen, 1996. ‘The Mother of the Nicaraguans: Doña Violeta and the UNO’s Gender Agenda.’ Latin American Perspectives 23, no. 1: 67–88. Karsenti, Bruno. 1994. Marcel Mauss: le fait social total. Paris: PUF. Keck, Margaret, and Kathryn Sikkink, eds. 1998. Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Kenney, Sally J. 2003. ‘Where Is Gender in Agenda Setting?’ Women & Politics 25, nos. 1–2: 179–207. Kingdon, John, W. 1984. Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies. Boston: Little Brown. Lacombe, Delphine, Elisabeth Marteu, and Brigitte Frotiée. 2008. ‘Genre et expérience démocratique: la dichotomie privé-public en questions.’ In Genre et action publique: la frontière public-privé en questions, ed. Pierre Muller and Réjane Sénac-Slawinski. Paris: L’Harmattan. Lemieux, Cyril. 2007. ‘A quoi sert l’analyse des controverses?’ Mil neuf cent 25, no. 1: 191–212. López Vigil, María. 2000. Romper el silencio: abuso sexual, incesto – pistas para pensar, hablar y actuar. Managua, Nicaragua: Revista Envío. Marshall, Cornelia. 1998. ‘Carta pública a Tomás Borge sobre asunto de Zoilamérica.’ El Nuevo Diario, 13 March. Mauss, Marcel. 1968. Sociologie et anthropologie, 4th ed. Paris: PUF. Molyneux, Maxine. 1985a. ‘Family Reform in Socialist States: The Hidden Agendas.’ Feminist Review 21 (Winter): 47–66. – 1985b. ‘Mobilization without Emancipation? Women’s Interests, the State and Revolution in Nicaragua.’ Feminist Studies 11, no. 2: 227–53. – 2000. ‘Twentieth-century State Formations in Latin America.’ in Hidden Histories of Gender and the State in Latin America, ed. Elizabeth Dore and Maxine Molyneux. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

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Montenegro, Sofía. 1998. ‘Zoilamérica: un asunto de familia?’ El Nuevo Diario, 11 March. Morgan, Martha I. 1990. ‘Founding Mothers: Women’s Voices and Stories in the 1987 Nicaraguan Constitution.’ Boston University Law Review 70, no. 1: 1–110. Muller, Pierre. 2000. ‘L’analyse cognitive des politiques publiques: vers une sociologie politique de l’action publique.’ Revue française de science politique 50, no. 2: 189–207. Murguialday, Clara. 1990. Nicaragua: revolución feminismo (1977–1990). Madrid: Editorial Revolución. Najlis, Michele. 1998. ‘Carta a Daniel Ortega de Michele Najlis,’ El Nuevo Diario, 9 March. O’Donnell, Guillermo. 2004. ‘Why the Rule of Law Matters.’ Journal of Democracy 15, no. 4: 32–46. Oficina Legal de la Mujer. 1986. ‘Aportes al análisis del maltrato a la mujer.’ Unpublished. Pérez-Baltodano, Andrés. 2003. Entre el estado conquistador y el estado nación: providencialismo, pensamiento político y estructuras de poder en el desarrollo histórico de Nicaragua. Managua, Nicaragua: IHNCA / UCA. Romito, Patrizia. 2006. Un silence de mortes: la violence masculine occultée. Paris: Éditions Syllepse. Sagot, Montserrat. 2006. ‘La Paz comienza en la casa: las luchas de las mujeres contra la violencia y acción estatal en Costa Rica.’ In De lo privado a lo público: 30 años de lucha ciudadana de las mujeres en América Latina, ed. Nathalie Lebon and Elizabeth Maier. Mexico City: Siglo XXI-UNIFEM-LASA. Santos, Cecilia MacDowell. 2005. Women’s Police Stations: Gender, Violence, and Justice in São Paulo, Brazil. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Scott, Joan W. 1986. ‘Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis.’ American Historical Review 91, no. 5: 1053–75. Torres, Sylvia. 1998. ‘Todas las víctimas de abuso están en juego.’ El Nuevo Diario, 10 March. Touraine, Alain. 1988. La parole et le sang: politique et société en Amérique Latine. Paris: Éditions Odile Jacob. Vásquez, Norma, Cristina Ibáñez, and Clara Murguialday. 1996. MujeresMontaña, vivencias de guerrilleras y colaboradoras del FMLN. Managua, Nicaragua: horas y HORAS. Zalaquett, Mónica. 1998. ‘De vergüenza personal a vergüenza nacional.’ El Nuevo Diario, 25 March.

8 Transnational Policy Networks and Public Security Policy in Argentina and Chile Mary Rose Kubal

[T]he imitation of innovative practices developed by higher-status countries may be driven less by a careful effort to improve policy programs than by a desire to demonstrate ‘modernity’ and attract favorable attention from international public opinion. Decision makers may adopt the rhetoric of reform and make superficial changes, yet without revamping actual policy practices. [Some of these gestures] may be subjectively sincere, yet objectively misguided attempts to ‘keep up with the Joneses.’ In this perspective, ... [p]olicymaking is a performance more than a goal-oriented activity. – Kurt Weyland (2004, 24–5) The idea of setting up a community police force, which [Chilean mayor and presidential candidate Joaquín] Lavín put into practice at the end of 1998 with the red ‘bugs’ driving around his former city, was borrowed from Bratton and the MI [Manhattan Institute]. In addition, Lavín was given books by MI experts who have influenced Giuliani’s policies – policies based on the ideas of MI, according to the New York Times. – Victor Herrero (2000)

In the above passage Kurt Weyland draws attention to two important issues in the transnational diffusion of policy models from the global North to Latin American countries. The first is the extent to which policy-makers might adopt policies in an attempt to satisfy perceived international norms (and related concerns about whether policy adoption is voluntary or coerced). The second is the expressive or symbolic dimension of policy diffusion. While Weyland concludes that, in social policy diffusion (particularly in the areas of pension and health reform),

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‘utilitarian goals’ normally trump ‘symbolic and normative considerations,’ public security reform (which unlike social security reform is not a ‘typical ‘redistributive’ issue area’) appears to be more subject to expressive politics (2004, 30; 2006, 8–10). The Keystone Kop antics of former New York City police chief Bernard Kerik during his brief stint as senior police advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq represent surreal extremes in both areas: misguided, externally imposed police policies and Wild West drama.1 Less surreal, but no less significant, are the attempts of the international community to (re)constitute police forces in post-conflict or failed states such as Bosnia, Guatemala, and Haiti. By way of contrast this chapter considers public security reform in Argentina and Chile where domestic policy networks are stronger and the influence of transnational actors less direct. While the arrival of former New York City police chief William Bratton to give a public lecture in Santiago or Buenos Aires is political theatre in its own right, the impact in terms of actual policy change is difficult to measure, though surely as important as Victor Herrero’s account of the Manhattan Institute’s impact on Joaquín Lavín’s program indicates. The international consulting ventures of Bratton and others (at the invitation of local business people and politicians) point to one of the main themes raised in this volume: the potential for undue influence of powerful domestic and transnational social groups in weak states, often to the detriment of the poor and marginalized sectors of society. Huggins posits that, historically, US government police assistance to Latin American countries ‘contributed to a devolution, commodification, and privatization of internal security, with policing and internal security becoming customer-defined products’ (1998, 24). The ‘customer-defined products’ purveyed by vendors such as security ‘gurus’ Rudy Giuliani and William Bratton, private contractors such as DynCorp, and research institutes and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) will certainly have an impact on Latin America’s weaker social groups. State actors are still very much involved in public security assistance, both bilaterally and through multilateral organs such as the United Nations, but how much influence do external actors have on public security policy in Latin America and how do they exercise this influence? Conversely, if external public security solutions are, in fact, ‘customer-defined’ what domestic factors shape the solutions governments ultimately buy (or at least buy into)? To answer these questions this chapter examines public security policy in Argentina and Chile and, more specifically, government initiatives in public security stemming at least in part from external influence. The

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police constitute only one part of the institutional system of public security that includes ‘the governance of security, the system of social prevention of violence and crime, the police system, the criminal justice system, community participation, and the private security system’ (Sain 2008, 71). In the first section I present a framework for evaluating the impact of different types of transnational networks on security policy and set out four hypotheses. In the second section I consider emerging norms and policy solutions ‘floating around’ within transnational networks. In the third section I present the cases of public security reform in post-transition Argentina and Chile, and in the conclusion I consider how well the four hypotheses are supported by the case studies. Transnational Policy Diffusion: Networks, Ideas, and Domestic Structures To evaluate the influence of external actors and ideas on public security policy in Latin America, I draw on the international relations literature on transnational policy communities and the public policy literature on policy diffusion. Constructivist approaches to policy communities in international relations theory (Adler and Barnett 1998; Adler 2005) emphasize the importance of the social construction of knowledge and the role of transnational epistemic communities in forming international norms of behaviour – for example, in arms control or environmental regulation. In their work on transnational advocacy networks, Keck and Sikkink take a similar approach, positing that actors engage in strategic activity ‘in an intersubjectively structured political universe’ (1998, 5). Recent work in the fields of criminology and law and society points to the evolution of a transnational policy community in the area of public security reform (Newburn and Sparks 2004; Goldsmith and Sheptycki 2007). Andreas and Nadelmann (2006, 12) observe that global prohibition regimes emerging around drug and human trafficking and terrorism reflect the normative and symbolic dimensions of policing practices; however, ‘the models, methods, and priorities of international crime control are substantially determined and exported by the most powerful states’ (10). This is consistent with Krasner’s twofold conceptualization of the role of state power in shaping transnational interactions: powerful states set rules and define the international environment, but states are also actors with different interests and varying capabilities (1995, 258–9). The first hypothesis focuses on the international environment:

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H1: Weaker states adopt policy models, principles, and priorities as a result of international standards or norms determined by powerful states. According to this hypothesis, transnational actors and norms should have a high degree of policy impact and result in the adoption of similar policies (policy isomorphism) across Latin American countries. Drawing on rational learning and cognitive-psychological frameworks Weyland (2006, 34) proposes a competing hypothesis: H2: ‘[S]tates enact reforms not because of novel international standards or norms, but because new problems jeopardize old interests or because new opportunities for improvement arise.’ This utilitarian perspective sees transnational policy influence less as imposition and more as the rational decision-making process of domestic actors searching for policy solutions. As policy-makers engage in problem-solving behaviour, cognitive heuristics such as availability (‘allowing dramatic incidents to shape judgments’) and representativeness (‘putting undue weight on short term successes or failures’) are likely to affect policy choices (Weyland 2006, 48). International organizations rarely have the capacity to impose their preferred solutions (diffusion by external pressure), but they may advocate certain policies or principles resulting in ‘availability enhancement’ (53) – as in, for example, the efforts of the InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB) and international NGOs to promote a citizen security agenda in Latin America. According to this hypothesis, transnational actors and ideas should have a moderate policy impact (depending on domestic needs) and result in a moderate degree of policy isomorphism. Similar policy models will be made available or stand out as representative – for example, New York City’s anti-crime policies. While Weyland (2004, 2006) focuses on policy needs and interests of domestic actors, Risse-Kappan (1995a,b) posits that transnational policy impact is mediated by domestic (state and societal) structures. Structures that facilitate the access of transnational actors, such as fragmented political systems and strong societies, may mediate against policy impact, as in Argentina’s ‘society-dominated’ system, whereas, in ‘state-dominated’ systems (with weak societies and centralized political institutions) such as Chile, transnational access may be difficult but the policy impact is likely to be greater, if state officials can be brought on board (Risse-Kappan 1995a, table 1.2). This provides the rationale for the third hypothesis:

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H3: Transnational actor access to domestic structures is inversely related to policy impact. According to this hypothesis, we can expect a higher degree of access but low policy impact in society-dominated systems and a low degree of access with a high level of policy impact in state-dominated systems. This points to lower levels of policy isomorphism, as policy adoption will vary with the relative strength of state and societal actors across countries. In sorting out the relative influence of ideas, network actors, and domestic structures, Kingdon’s policy streams approach to agenda-setting, developed from in-depth studies of federal health and transportation policy in the United States, is useful. The policy context is obviously different from that of Latin America, but starting from the proposition that ‘agendas are set by problems or politics, and alternatives are generated in the [less visible] policy stream’ (1995, 20), one can evaluate the relative influence of transnational and domestic actors in each stream. Weyland observes that, ‘[n]ot all successful policies become models’; rather, ‘models embody general worldviews and derive from them specific proposals for addressing concrete problems’ and are most likely adopted when they create ‘synergy’ by contributing to ‘broader goals’ (2004, 7, 8). This provides the rationale for the final hypothesis, which focuses on the policy process rather than domestic structures. Unlike H2, which also focuses on the policy process, this hypothesis emphasizes the importance of larger political forces, such as the national mood or turnover of elected officials (Kingdon 1995, 20): H4: Transnational policy impact is greatest when transnational actors or ideas help to join solutions to problems and link both to favourable political forces. Academics studying policy diffusion (such as Langer 2007) and actors in transnational networks hoping to influence public security policy in Latin America (Ayers 1998, 20; Phillips et al. 2003, 20; Buvinic, Alda, and Lamas 2005, 12) are aware of the opportunities created by ‘policy windows’ that emerge when the three streams converge. Policy impact is expected to be high where transnational actors facilitate convergence or transnational ideas and norms appeal to decision-makers and low where convergence is not possible (perhaps due to state fragmentation or lack of consensus among societal actors). Less policy isomorphism is expected as outcomes depend on the coupling of the three streams, and

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likely will reflect differing policy and political preferences across countries. For example, Jones and Newburn (2004, 141) argue that ‘zero tolerance’ travelled from the United States to the United Kingdom precisely because the concept, despite being linked to specific policies in the United States, was flexible enough to satisfy the political goals of Conservative and Labour governments in the United Kingdom without the adoption of zero-tolerance policing measures. As illustrated in Figure 8.1, this framework draws a functional distinction between activist (or advocacy) networks, epistemic (or expert) communities, and ideological, partisan, political networks. Different types of networks are likely to have policy entrepreneurs with different skills, resources, and knowledge, making them better or less able to take advantage of policy windows. Activist networks, given their ‘outsider’ status, may operate more successfully in society-dominated systems because they are less likely to gain access in a state-dominated context. Transnational advocacy networks often generate political pressure in ‘high-status’ countries, hoping their governments, in turn, will pressure the target states to change their practices, a dynamic Keck and Sikkink (1998) identify as a ‘boomerang pattern.’ Even when activists are successful in getting problems such as police abuse on the agenda, they are less likely to influence the design of policy solutions than are experts working in the policy stream or politicians sold on particular policy models or principles such as community policing. Either way, transnational actors ‘must generate and / or contribute to “winning” policy coalitions in order to change decisions in the desired direction’ (Risse-Kappan 1995a, 25). Public Security Networks: Problem Definition and Policy Solutions The ‘soft’ nature of the normative framework emerging around public security facilitates its ‘diffusion ... across national borders’ through interpersonal networks, rather than ‘particular texts or doctrines’ or ‘hard’ international legal standards (Goldsmith, Llorente, and Rivas 2007, 78). Alberto Binder, one of the key actors in penal justice reform in Latin America (see Langer 2007) observed that the regional criminal justice agenda is clearer and regional networks much stronger than is public security. It may simply be a matter of time before networks in public security consolidate – indeed, the Organization of American States (OAS) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) are already working on a model public security law (Ley marco de

182 Comparative Public Policy in Latin America Figure 8.1 Transnational Networks, Policy Streams, and Policy Impact Network Type

Stream

Policy Impact Statedominated

Societydominated

Advocacy

Problems (Agenda setting) High (if access) Low, higher if “convergence”

Expert/Policy

Policy (Solutions)

High (if access) Low, higher if “convergence”

Expert/Political

Politics

High (if access) Low, higher if “convergence”

seguridad pública) for the region. Still, Binder has noted that the IDB and the World Bank have failed to consolidate a public security agenda and that, unlike the case of criminal justice reform, ‘the Northern agenda is not our agenda,’ referring to the fact that the United States and European countries are narrowly self-interested in combatting drug trafficking and terrorism.2 This challenges H1’s assumption that weaker states tend to adopt international standards and norms set by powerful states. Despite the looseness of the networks, policy entrepreneurs have made some public security models, or at least principles, more available than others. Which policies ultimately are adopted depends on which interests prevail in the domestic political and policy streams, as illustrated in the Argentine and Chilean case studies. ‘Zero tolerance’ – the label given to anti-crime policies implemented by New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani (1994–2001) and police chief William Bratton in the mid-1990s – was successfully marketed in many Latin American countries. The policies were inspired by the ‘broken windows’ theory of James Q. Wilson and George Kelling (1982), which focuses on situational causes of crime: seemingly minor violations in urban communities, such as broken windows, public urination, and most famously, informal vendors and windshield washers (‘squeegee men’). Police Commissioner Bratton also made administrative changes, decentralizing decision-making authority and resources to the precinct level and

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holding commanders publicly accountable for taking proactive steps to reduce ‘crime, disorder, and fear’ (Bowling 1999, 543).3 Bratton and Giuliani are not considered to be in the mainstream of the transnational policy community that has formed around global police reform. Rather, they have been referred to by members of that community as ‘zealous missionaries and moral entrepreneurs,’ but the same experts observe that ‘[i]t is difficult to overstate the hegemony of these [zero-tolerance] ideas about urban policing practice’ in Latin America in the mid-1990s (Goldsmith, Llorente, and Rivas 2007, 77, 98).4 As the appropriateness of the New York model is increasingly called into question, ‘[z]ero-tolerance policing has been reincarnated as a strategy that engages with local community concerns about crime, disorder, and anti-social behaviour, while providing a decisive and swift response on the part of the police’ (Ellison 2007, 208). In the United States and Europe, despite the trend towards ‘punitive segregation and expressive justice,’ during the 1980s and 1990s there was a parallel move towards ‘preventative partnerships’ and community-oriented policing (Garland 2001, 17; Waller 2008, 73). It is most likely not a coincidence that, in Latin America, ‘[e]verywhere ‘community participation’ is the buzzword of reform. With most countries in the region practicing broader forms of democracy, citizen involvement in police affairs is taking hold’ (LaFranchi 1998). This ‘buzz’ was magnified by international financial institutions, such as the IDB and World Bank, concerned about the economic impact of crime and violence in the region – paradoxically supporting both H1 and H2 (Ayers 1998; Buvinic, Alda, and Lamas 2005). Their view was that ‘[t]he poor performance of the police is at the core of the citizen security problem in Latin America and the Caribbean,’ thus the focus of project lending was generally on professional police training, preventive and community policing, and improved information systems (Buvinic, Alda, and Lamas 2005, 12). While crime and violence were still perceived as the problem, the focus of potential policy solutions was broadened to include addressing police abuse, increasing citizen involvement, and mitigating the social causes of crime — in contrast with the zero-tolerance focus on reducing situational opportunities. The first generation of loans to support public security programming in the region was ultimately considered to be ‘low impact,’ in good part because efforts to reduce the social causes of crime had long-term payoffs that were difficult to measure. By the mid-2000s, however, the focus had shifted to situational prevention (Buvinic, Alda, and Lamas

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2005, 23–4). Private foundations and NGOs also struggled to figure out how best to support public security efforts in the region (Phillips et al. 2003). Donor support helped to open policy windows, but, as the Argentine and Chilean cases illustrate, these openings are tenuous and often close abruptly with changes in the political stream. Transnational Influence on Public Security Policy in Argentina and Chile I chose the cases of Argentina and Chile because these two countries share important contextual factors while differing on potential explanatory variables – particularly levels of state fragmentation and societal mobilization. They also vary on policy outcomes – with more limited, sustained reforms in Chile and more radical, but unsustained, reforms in Argentina. One important similarity is the lack of overt external control or influence over domestic public security policy. Case studies of post-conflict or ‘failed’ states such as El Salvador or Haiti overemphasize external pressures and downplay the importance of domestic structures. In contrast, both Argentina and Chile have a recent history of military dictatorship, making the issue of public security reform particularly sensitive in relation to human rights legacies and democratic consolidation, and both have experienced rising levels of crime – and, even more so, rising levels of citizens’ fear of crime. The two countries differ, however, on a potentially important institutional variable. Argentina is a federal state with independent provincial police forces, while Chile is a unitary state with only two centralized national police forces. Eaton (2008, 26) identifies the dynamics of federalism in Argentina as a major obstacle to police reform in that country, but notes that intergovernmental dynamics in Chile and other non-federal countries deserve more attention. According to H3, Argentina’s fragmented, society-dominated political system should be less conducive to foreign influence and sustained policy reform than is Chile’s centralized, state-dominated system. The case studies trace the interaction of transnational network actors with the domestic policy process in the problem, political, and policy streams, as illustrated in Tables 8.1 and 8.2. In Argentina at the federal level, inter- and intra-party disputes have caused institutional and policy fragmentation. In 1997–8 divisions within the Peronist party resulted in the ministries of foreign affairs

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Table 8.1 Public Security Networks, Policy Streams, and Policy Impact in Chile’s State-Dominated System, 1990–2010 Network Type / Composition

Network Policy Stream and Policy Position(s)

Advocacy

Problems (agenda-setting)

Access to Domestic Institutions

Policy Impact

local government / easy

moderate (local security initiatives)

Weak social organizations Media, public opinion, mayors

rising crime as source of insecurity, zero tolerance

Epistemic / Policy

Policy (solutions)

Inter-American Development Bank, Woodrow Wilson Internatioanl Center for Scholars, OSI, United Nations, International Centre for the Prevention of Crime, Foro Europeo, Centro de Estudios en Seguridad Ciudadana, Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, Alberto Hurtado University, interior ministry

various versions of community-oriented policing, broader social and situational crime prevention

national executive (interior ministry) / variable

moderate, (Safe Cities, National Strategy for Public Security)

Center for Problem-Oriented Policing, Carabineros, Policía de Investigaciones

problem-oriented policing

national executive / police bureaucracy (defence ministry) / selective

moderate (Quadrant Plan)

Paz Ciudadana

crime indicators

national executive (interior and defence ministries) / variable

moderate (ad hoc influence on central government initiatives)

Expert / Political

Politics

New York City ‘gurus,’ rightist mayors

zero tolerance, decentralization

local government / easy

moderate (local security initiatives)

186 Comparative Public Policy in Latin America Table 8.2 Public Security Networks, Policy Streams, and Policy Impact in Argentina’s SocietyDominated System, 1983–2010 Network Type / Composition

Network Policy Stream and Policy Position(s)

Access to Domestic Institutions

Policy Impact

Advocacy

Problems (agenda-setting)

OSI, Vera Institute of Justice, Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales, Coordinadora contra la Represión Policial e Institucional

police violence, lack of accountability as source of insecurity

national executive (Secretaría de Seguridad Interior, Dirección Nacional de Política Criminal) / easy

limited (Plan Nacional de Prevención del Delito, City of Buenos Aires code for urban public behaviour)

Bloomberg Foundation, Manhattan Institute

rising crime as source of insecurity, zero tolerance

provincial governments / variable

strong, but not sustained (rollback of police reform in Buenos Aires province)

Epistemic / Policy

Policy (solutions) national executive (Secretaría de Seguridad Interior, Dirección Nacional de Política Criminal) / easy

limited (Plan Nacional de Prevención del Delito, Programa de Seguridad Ciudadana)

National executive (interior ministry under Menem) / variable

Strong, but not sustained (rollback of police reform in Buenos Aires province, new police force City of Buenos Aires)

Inter-American Various versions of Development Bank, community-oriented Woodrow Wilson policing, broader social International Center and situational crime for Scholars, OSI, prevention, security United Nations, Instituto governance Latinoamericano de Seguridad y Democracia, Ser en 2000, Secretaría de Seguridad Interior, Dirección Nacional de Política Criminal Expert / Political

Politics

New York City ‘gurus,’ rightist mayors, governors, foundations

zero tolerance

provincial governments / variable autonomous City of Buenos Aires / variable

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and justice taking a pro-civil rights position while the ministry of the interior and the presidency were pro-order (Fuentes 2005, 110). The Secretaría de Seguridad Interior (Internal Security Secretariat), which controls the federal police, has bounced around the bureaucracy, largely due to political decisions. It was moved from the interior ministry to the presidency under the Peronist administration of Carlos Menem (1989–99). During the administration of Néstor Kirchner (2003–7) – Menem’s Peronist rival – it was moved to the justice ministry, then back to the interior ministry, and, since about 2005, it has been in the justice ministry once again. According to a former interior ministry official, there is a conceptual difference between the two ministries, with justice (through the Dirección Nacional de Política Criminal, National Directorate of Criminal Policy) focused on the United Nations crime prevention approach, and interior following a public security strategy based on the 1992 Internal Security Law – this parallels a larger split in the policy community discussed below.5 The absence of federal jurisdiction over provincial police and security policy is an additional source of fragmentation. Keeping track of, let alone influencing, police policy in Argentina’s twenty-three provinces is a challenge for the federal government, which, through the Consejo de Seguridad Interior (Internal Security Council) and the assistance of the UNDP, commissioned a series of studies in 2006 on provincial practices. Beyond the personnel payroll, in many provinces there are no records of spending on police programs.6 Keeping track of the programs is another challenge. In the city of Buenos Aires alone, Hinton (2006, 59–60) encountered fourteen separate plans related to citizen security and police policy (some never fully implemented), many based on community policing initiatives in high-status countries such as the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. In contrast, Chile is a unitary state with centralized state administration. From 1990 to 2010, the country was governed by a relatively disciplined coalition of centre-left parties, the Concertación, resulting in a great deal of policy continuity (Borzutzky and Weeks 2010). Article 24 of the constitution gives the central government exclusive authority over ‘the preservation of public order.’ ‘Forces of order and public security’ are constituted exclusively by the Carabineros (the uniformed national police) and Policía de Investigaciones (PDI, Investigative Police), which fall under the jurisdiction of the defence ministry (art. 90). In 1994 responsibility for police operational measures and public security policy was transferred to the interior ministry. This has been a source of policy fragmentation, resulting in two hallmark public security strategies, and the

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government has begun the process of transferring the two police forces entirely to the interior ministry. The role of Chile’s local governments (discussed in the context of the political stream below) has also contributed to policy fragmentation. A 1999 change in the constitutional municipal law gave mayors a somewhat ambiguous mandate to develop public security initiatives: article IV, which lists municipalities’ shared functions, now allows municipalities to perform functions related to ‘the support and promotion of preventive measures related to citizen security and collaboration in their implementation.’ The Problem Stream: Rights versus Order In Argentina there has been significant popular mobilization around both pro-rights and pro-order positions, and organizations on both sides of the debate have ties to transnational actors. On the pro-rights side, the Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS, Centre for Legal and Social Studies) in particular has ties to donors such as the Ford Foundation and Vera Institute of Justice (Phillips et al. 2003). CELS and other domestic NGOs, such as the Coordinadora contra la Represión Policial e Institucional (CORREPI, Coordinating Committee against Political and Institutional Repression), ‘have been able to influence problem definition and political debate, but they have been unable to influence the implementation of crucial reforms’ (Fuentes 2005, 107). On the pro-order side a network of right-leaning foundations with ties to transnational actors, including the Manhattan Institute, has lobbied for zero-tolerance policies and financed speaking tours by William Bratton, among others. Most famously Juan Carlos Blumberg, whose son Axel was murdered in 2004, led a series of marches demanding tough-on-crime policies, gathering up to 100,000 participants before the movement fizzled (as did his budding political career when it was revealed in 2007 that he did not have an engineering degree as he had claimed) (Veiras 2007). In Chile there has been little popular mobilization around either pro-order or pro-rights positions. While both human rights and victims’ rights groups exist, there are no cognates to CELS and the Axel Blumberg Foundation, with the ability to mobilize large segments of society around citizen security issues. The conservative media and right-wing mayors generally have been successful in putting pro-order positions on the political agenda, and ‘human rights advocacy groups have exerted some influence in agenda setting, but low influence in the political debate and policy implementation’ (Fuentes 2005, 52). The

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most influential non-governmental actor in the public security arena is the Fundación Paz Ciudadana (Citizen Peace Foundation), founded in 1992 by conservative media magnate Augustín Edwards following the kidnapping of his son. Paz Ciudadana influences the government’s public security agenda through its research – most notably its pioneering victimization surveys – and has distanced itself from partisan debates. In Argentina the sustained debate between the pro-rights and proorder coalitions resulted in conflicting policy proposals at both the national and provincial levels – a ‘dual game’ of repressing crime while implementing preventive strategies (Smulovitz 2003, 131; González 2005, 61–2; Sozzo 2005). In Chile the political dynamic has been different. Although the right’s zero-tolerance rhetoric dominated the media, the right did not control the central government and thus did not control public security policy. As one Concertación mayor put it, ‘Was it the right who put the theme [of citizen security] on the agenda? No. The theme was there. Was the right the first to take advantage of the theme? Yes. From where? From the mayors.’7 Subnational governments provided an entry point for transnational political entrepreneurs in both Chile and Argentina. The Political Stream: A Tale of Two Mayors Changes in government can create or close policy windows. This is particularly clear in the Argentine case where, in Buenos Aires province since 1996, major police and public security reforms have been twice implemented and rolled back by successive governors – despite all hailing from the same Peronist party (González 2005; Sozzo 2005; Eaton 2008). In Chile political continuity at the central government level has led to relative policy stability, yet changes in administration did produce subtle but significant changes in public security policy (as discussed in the following section). Additionally, public security policy lends itself to symbolic and performative politics – Joaquín Lavín’s red Volkswagen Beetles used as patrol cars in the wealthy Santiago suburb of Las Condes, and Buenos Aires mayor Mauricio Macri’s 2007 campaign slogan, borrowed from Juan Carlos Blumberg: ‘You might be the next victim.’ Particularly in Argentina, ‘[u]rban insecurity is progressively transformed into an object of political exchange ... for the production of political and electoral consensus’ (Sozzo 2005, 40). The administrations of mayors and presidential hopefuls Lavín in Chile and Macri in Argentina illustrate this dynamic. Both had ties to

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the same transnational actors (the Manhattan Institute consultants). Both used public security as a campaign issue and followed through with major policy initiatives. Macri’s creation of a municipal police force in Buenos Aires and the ensuing controversy and confusion contrast with the limits to Lavín’s strategy of creating a de facto municipal police force in the Chilean case – highlighting the role of domestic structures in mediating the influence of imported ideas. The city of Buenos Aires is an interesting case because, unlike the provinces, historically it has not had its own police force, but instead has depended on the federal police. In 1996 a constitutional reform resulted in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires achieving formal legal status, and political leaders attempted to assert control over security policy with the 1998 Código de Convivencia Urbana (Code of Urban Public Behaviour), which took a pro-rights stance and, among other measures, controversially legalized vagrancy and prostitution and limited the ability of the federal police to carry out detentions (Smulovitz 2003, 130; Hinton 2006, 55). Subsequently, federal and city officials have clashed over the latter’s attempts to limit federal police discretion, and federal police officials and bureaucrats have resisted attempts to transfer control over the police to the city (Eaton 2008, 19). In the 2007 Buenos Aires mayoral election, businessman and congressional deputy Mauricio Macri, co-founder of the right-wing opposition party Propuesta Republicana (PRO), soundly defeated the Peronist candidate supported by then-President Néstor Kirchner. Macri ran on a zero-tolerance platform, and upon assuming office petitioned for city control over the federal police’s metropolitan security superintendency. When this failed, he successfully pushed for a law creating a new metropolitan police force under control of the mayor (Clarín 2009). The controversy over this new force began before the first metropolitan police officer set foot on patrol in November 2009. Macri made a significant political miscalculation in appointing former federal police chief (and friend and collaborator) Jorge Palacios as the first chief of the new force (Kellmer 2009). Not only did Palacios have a reputation for using strong-arm tactics in repressing social protest, he was under indictment for his alleged involvement in a federal police cover-up of violations in the investigation of the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires. After less than two months on the job, Palacios resigned, but the controversy continued. Pro-rights activists denounced the announced role of the new police in controlling social protest, referring to them as ‘shock troops’ (Clarín

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2009). In October 2009 a bizarre scandal erupted involving a former federal police officer, Ciro James, supposedly working in the city’s education department but revealed to have ties to the new metropolitan police force. When James was accused of stealing the cellular phone of a leader of families of the victims of the Jewish community centre bombing, federal and city officials immediately accused each other of espionage (La Nación 2009). Argentine politicians’ use of police forces for their own partisan political purposes – in particular, the suppression of social protest, or ‘political policing’ (Huggins 1998; Eaton 2008, 9–10) – is not itself inherently part of imported zero-tolerance policies, but the political utility of zero-tolerance rhetoric in generating ‘electoral consensus’ has facilitated this outcome. Argentine opponents of the pro-order politicians, particularly within public security policy networks, emphasize that, for the most part, all that has been imported is the rhetoric – a political performance for voters, rather than a sincere attempt to invest in policy reforms: when the consultants leave, it will be back to business as usual.8 Academic and police reformer Marcelo Sain is quick to point out that, in New York, zero tolerance applied first and foremost to corruption within the police force, something that has generally not happened in Argentina.9 Zero-tolerance rhetoric has been similarly useful to Chilean politicians. Joaquín Lavín, mayor of Chile’s wealthiest municipality, Las Condes (1993–9), consulted with the purveyors of zero-tolerance policies to help launch his national political career. During a 1997 visit to New York City, Lavín met with Manhattan Institute officials, who put him in touch with former police chief-turned-consultant Bratton. It was from this contact that the idea for a municipal police force emerged. The Manhattan Institute’s Latin America director was quoted in the Chilean press as saying ‘[o]ur crime control strategies, the transparency idea and administrative decentralization, as well as new solutions to education, are all ideas that Joaquín Lavín found here [at the institute]’ (Santiago Times 2000). It was the creation of a volunteer civil defence patrol that first brought Lavín into conflict with the Carabineros in 1995. In response to the volunteers’ black-vested, moped-riding patrols, a Carabineros general told the press he had doubts about the constitutionality of the new force (El Mercurio 1995). Lavín’s initiatives were indeed likely unconstitutional (this was prior to the 1999 reform of the municipal law), but as long as they remained politically popular the government looked the other way.10 In 1998, during the run-up to his first presidential campaign, Lavín

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took the even bolder step of creating a de facto municipal police force, with the idea that the municipal officers would assume routine duties such as directing traffic, thus freeing up Carabineros officers for more pressing crime-fighting tasks (Santiago Times 1998c). The government eventually allowed the municipal force to operate unchallenged, while the mayor’s office downplayed the conflict, signalling that the inspectors were not authorized to use weapons and that their objective was to collaborate with the Carabineros (Santiago Times 1998a; Sandoval 2001, 76). The 1999 municipal law reform simply recognized the municipal role in public security provision. Early in the decade, affluent municipalities competed to develop innovative security measures, and by the late 1990s even poor municipalities were replicating these initiatives. These included gifts of supplies and equipment, such as gasoline and computers to the local police; measures facilitating direct citizen communication with the police, such as radio equipment for community centres and house alarms; administrative support; and the ubiquitous municipal vehicle patrols (Sandoval 2001, 79; Oviedo 2002, 330; Dammert 2005, 132). A Concertación congressional deputy complained that funding from sources including municipal governments and the private sector ‘leads to a disparity in the quality of service in different regions and urban areas’ (Santiago Times 1998b; see also Dammert 2005, 132 n.6). While zero-tolerance policies facilitated political policing in Argentina and disparities in levels of public security provision in Chile, by the late 2000s public officials and experts in public security policy networks considered zero tolerance to be discredited and irrelevant.11 Zerotolerance gurus were keeping a lower media profile than they had in the past, and alternative approaches emerged in the policy stream in both countries. The Policy Stream: Solutions Looking for Problems or Bureaucrats Looking for Solutions? There is a sense in some circles that ‘the supply-driven nature’ of public security assistance ‘amounts to a solution looking for a problem’ (Ellison 2007, 225; see also González 2005, 61). However, the problems of rising crime and citizen insecurity were quite real in both Argentina and Chile, although perhaps exaggerated by sensationalistic media coverage. Transnational political networks made the zero-tolerance option available to ‘pro-order’ politicians who were looking to gain political advantage. Other politicians, such as Eduardo Duhalde, the Peronist

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governor of Buenos Aires province (1991–9), saw electoral advantages in alternative approaches, and turned to experts in the policy community to develop them. In Argentina, there are three main currents in the security policy community. The first focuses on ‘control over security’ and is associated with human rights organizations such as CELS, concerned with controlling police abuse. The second current, associated with ‘community security,’ is tied to the UN crime-prevention approach and community policing strategies. The third group is concerned with ‘governance of security,’ and consists of individuals associated with the Buenos Aires provincial reforms and NGOs such as Ser en 2000 and the Instituto Latinoamericano de Seguridad y Democracia (ILSED, Latin American Institute of Security and Democracy).12 The lack of consensus in the context of institutional fragmentation, however, has inhibited the successful implementation of innovative public security strategies such as the Plan Nacional de Prevención del Delito (PNPD, National Crime Prevention Plan) and the Programa de Seguridad Ciudadana (Citizen Security Program). When it was first conceived in 2000 the PNPD was a joint effort of the justice and interior ministries, although a cabinet change in March 2001 led the latter to withdraw from the plan’s implementation (Sozzo 2005, 49). In its inception, the PNPD reflected elements of the UNDP’s conception of ‘security sector reform,’ involving two ministries and multiple levels of government, privileging social prevention over situational prevention (though including elements of both), and emphasizing citizen participation (Sozzo 2005; Ciafardini 2006, appendix). While the plan was intended to be national in scope, most provincial governments failed to sign on and it was implemented mainly in the city of Buenos Aires. According to Sozzo (2005), although the plan was innovative and avoided ‘nostalgic’ tough-on-crime thinking, in practice it degenerated into a clientelistic, demand-making (rather than problem-diagnosing) forum that ended up privileging situational prevention measures. Meanwhile, the IDB provided funds for a 1998 seminar and feasibility study for pilot projects – the Programa de Seguridad Ciudadana, which more closely followed a US community-oriented policing model – to be implemented in six provinces. The pilot projects were to be organized around five areas: systems information, citizen participation, security administration (including police reform), domestic violence, and violence against women. During the financial crisis of late 2001, the loan negotiation shifted from the interior ministry to the finance ministry, and the amount discussed was reduced from US$200 million to US$50 million. Additionally,

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the justice ministry vied for control over the program. According to the interior ministry coordinator, the competition between ministries proved fatal for the program: because it illustrated a lack of consensus within the government, the IDB refused to approve it.13 By the late 2000s, Chile, with its state-dominated political system, appeared to have more centralized and coherent public security initiatives than its society-dominated neighbour. A closer look reveals, however, some fragmentation and less policy continuity than one might expect. Under the first civilian president of the post-Pinochet era, Christian Democrat Patricio Aylwin (1990–4), efforts focused on institutional reform – most notably, a complete restructuring of the criminal justice system – and low-profile technical solutions. Under Aylwin’s successor, Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei (1994–2000), there were some public security initiatives, including the first National Citizen Security Plan in 1994, but these were often not well coordinated or sustained (Oviedo 2002, 323–4; Dammert 2005). Then, to counter the rightist parties’ focus on zero tolerance, the Socialist administration of Ricardo Lagos (2000–6) publicly emphasized social prevention strategies dealing with the root causes of crime (Burgos 2000, 19–20). The government began to consolidate its efforts through the Carabineros’ Plan Cuadrante (Quadrant Plan) and the interior ministry’s Comuna Segura (Safe Cities) initiative. The latter became the Plan Comunal de Seguridad Ciudadana (Community Plan for Citizen Security) under Michelle Bachelet’s administration (2006–10) as part of its Estrategia Nacional de Seguridad Pública (National Strategy for Public Security). The Quadrant Plan is a good example of an autonomous – ‘corporate,’ in Fuentes’s (2005) term – police force dictating the terms of its own modernization, using imported ideas to legitimize its move away from the community-oriented policing pushed by donors and the Lagos administration. The plan began in 1995 and by 2008 covered 84 of approximately 350 municipalities, and was considered to be the Carabineros’ ‘principal operating strategy’ (Carabineros de Chile 2008, 6). Many elements of the Quadrant Plan bear a strong similarity to the New York City reforms. Each quadrant, or police patrol area, is profiled based upon quantitative and qualitative variables such as crime rates, population density, commercial activity, and urban infrastructure, and assigned police resources based on calculated risk levels (Frühling 2003, 37). The officer in charge of each sector must give a public accounting for police performance and the progress towards target goals, such as reducing crime rates by a specified amount. The Carabineros

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have rejected the ‘community policing’ label, referring instead to policía de proximidad, (proximity policing), implying that, while they are committed to improving community relations, the community itself should not be involved in public security provision.14 Both the Carabineros and the PDI have moved towards the ‘problem-oriented policing model,’ and the Carabineros have ties with the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing, an organization of US law enforcement professionals that focuses on situational prevention. While fragmentation may have killed the Argentine Citizen Security Program, the Chilean Safe Cities initiative appears to be a victim of its own success. The program was announced by the Lagos administration in 2000 as an initiative to ‘strengthen the role of the municipality in alliance with the community’ and to address the root causes of crime at the community level (Burgos and Tudela 2002, 491). In its inception, it covered twelve municipalities, mostly in the Santiago Metropolitan Region, and was funded by government revenues. The original idea, formulated by interior ministry officials in conjunction with Paz Ciudadana, was to conduct a comprehensive diagnosis of the public security needs of each municipality, design a plan with a participatory component tailored to the needs of the municipality, and to rotate out municipalities as their needs were addressed. Instead, it became a ‘massive thing,’ which program designer and former interior subsecretary Jorge Burgos considered to be a ‘grave error.’15 Paz Ciudadana has also disassociated itself from the program.16 There was a political logic to the program’s expansion as the government felt pushed to respond to public demand for more security initiatives and mayors wanted their municipalities included. The expansion increased the cost of the program significantly, however, and by the 2002 / 3 fiscal year it was receiving funding from the IDB.17 In 2006 the Safe Cities program was integrated into the Bachelet administration’s multisectoral public security strategy as the Plan Comunal de Seguridad Ciudadana with the participation of eighty municipalities, and the emphasis shifted from social to situational prevention.18 Bachelet’s first interior subsecretary, Felipe Harboe, changed the name of the ministry’s citizen security division to the public security division and reduced the influence of an important sector of the policy network associated with the IDB’s ‘citizen security’ approach – based mainly in the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (Latin American Social Sciences Faculty) at the University of Chile. He had his team renegotiate the terms of an IDB loan to eliminate programs that did not fit into the new National Strategy for Public Security.19

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Conclusion Powerful states shape policy solutions made available by transnational actors, particularly in terms of community-oriented policing. However, the divergence in policies adopted in Chile and Argentina – in particular, the lack of police reform overseen by civilians in Chile and the radical but unsustained police reform initiatives at the provincial level in Argentina – shows the high degree of policy isomorphism predicted by H1 is not present in these two cases. The limits of donor influence on public security policy in weaker states is illustrated by the cancellation of the IDB public security loan in Argentina and the Chilean government’s renegotiation of the terms of an IDB loan after interior ministry priorities shifted. External actors, including the Manhattan Institute, the IDB, and the UN, influenced public security policy in Argentina and Chile mainly by making policy models or principles available to policy-makers who were looking for solutions to political as well as policy problems. This supports H2, but it appears that political, often normative, considerations are likely to trump best policy practices in decision-makers’ calculations regarding public security. Conservative politicians in both countries found zero-tolerance rhetoric and the policy prescriptions of foreign consultants – such as the creation of local police forces – to be politically useful, which supports H4. In both cases, Manhattan Institute consultants helped connect popular and media-driven demand for tough-on-crime policies from the problem stream with ‘broken windows’ crime-prevention measures, opening policy windows as their candidates won office. As predicted by H3, domestic structures did play a role in the different policy effects in the two cases. Chile’s state-dominated system inhibited the adoption of imported ideas because rightist parties did not control the central government and the centralized Carabineros balked at the creation of municipal police forces. Yet the Chilean case shows that policy entrepreneurs may emerge in unexpected places – in this case, at the municipal level, which forced the central government to recognize a role for municipalities in public security provision. Indeed, the role of subnational politicians in both countries suggests that a fruitful area of research for scholars interested in both policy diffusion and transnational relations is the role of subnational actors in transnational policy and political networks. Subnational actors are likely to become more relevant as globalization processes expand transnational

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influences beyond traditional ‘high’ politics of, for example, defence and human rights, to areas such as public security and environmental protection, where local governments often play an integral role in the domestic policy arena. These dynamics underscore the need to work at the borders between the comparative politics and international relations subfields in order to analyse the politics of public security in Latin America.20 In considering the question, ‘states and transnational actors: who wins?’ Risse-Kappan (1995b, 293–6) concludes that, all else being equal, transnational relations increase the influence of societal actors over the state. The question then becomes, which societal actors? Business interests or poor citizens living in unsafe neighbourhoods? Imported public security policies such as community policing were designed by powerful states to increase control over rebellious societies (Sklansky 2008). State actors working quietly in the policy stream may selectively import ideas – such as community-oriented policing and problem-oriented policing – without much fanfare but with a great potential to increase governmental control over less powerful and unorganized actors: the poor, immigrants, and youth. Researchers concerned with questions of state power and the normative implications of the impact of transnational policy on public security in Latin America should be more concerned with how transnational influences shape state-society relations than whether they threaten state autonomy.

NOTES 1 Kerik’s tenure as top police advisor to the CPA is described in detail by Rajiv Chandrasekaran (2007). 2 Author’s interview with Alberto Binder, vice-president, Instituto Latinoamericano de Seguridad y Democracia, Buenos Aires, 6 August 2009. 3 The merits of the New York City police reforms have been discussed at length by both their supporters (Kelling and Coles 1996; Kelling and Bratton 1998) and critics (Bowling 1999; Harcourt 2001; McArdle and Erzen 2001). Researchers have questioned the extent to which zero tolerance was actually applied in the New York case, and the intellectual authors of the New York strategy, including George Kelling, have distanced themselves from the term. A detailed evaluation of the Giuliani-Bratton policies is beyond the scope of this chapter. 4 Mayor Giuliani’s high-profile visits to Mexico City in 2001 and 2003 and his US$4.3 million consulting fee (paid by wealthy businessman Carlos

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5 6 7 8 9 10 11

12 13 14

15 16 17 18 19 20

Slim) were widely publicized (Pius Llopart 2003; Weiner 2003). In 2001, Honduran president Ricardo Maduro, after meeting with police officials in New York City, returned home to implement a zero-tolerance strategy of his own, including the same type of aggressive stop-and-frisk policy used in New York to target young gang members (Gonzales 2002). Author’s interview with Eduardo Estevez, Fundación de Estudios Económicos y Políticas Públicas, Buenos Aires, 18 June 2009. Author’s interview with Marcela Donadio, Ser en 2000, Buenos Aires, 10 July 2008. Author’s interview with Claudio Orrego, mayor of Peñalolen, Peñalolen (Santiago), 15 July 2009. Author’s interview with Héctor Masquelet, federal secretary of security, Buenos Aires, 15 July 2008. Author’s interview with Marcelo Sain, auditor, airport security police, Ezeiza (Buenos Aires), 28 July 2009. Author’s interview with Ximena Lazo, Centro de Estudios y Asistencia Legislativa, Valparaíso, Chile, 5 June 1997. Author’s interviews with Luis Tibiletti, former federal security secretary, Buenos Aires, 11 July 2008; Héctor Masquelet, federal secretary of security, Buenos Aires, 15 July 2008; and Jorge Burgos, congressional deputy and former interior ministry subsecretary, Valparaíso, Chile, 14 July 2009. Author’s interview with Alberto Binder. Author’s interview with Eduardo Estevez. Author’s interviews with Patricio Tudela, Centro de Investigación y Desarollo Policial, Santiago, 2 July 2009; and Hugo Frühling, Centro de Estudios en Seguridad Ciudadana (CESC), University of Chile, Santiago, 26 June 2009. Author’s interview with Jorge Burgos. Author’s interview with Francisca Werth, director, Paz Ciudadana, Santiago, 8 July 2009. Author’s interview with Jorge Burgos. Author’s interview with Ximena Tocornal, CESC, University of Chile, Santiago, 23 July 2008. Author’s interview with Felipe Harboe, congressional deputy and former interior subsecretary, Valparaíso, Chile, 14 July 2009. The author thanks Eduardo Moncada for this observation.

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Keck, Margaret E., and Kathryn Sikkink. 1998. Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Kelling, George L., and William J. Bratton. 1998. ‘Declining Crime Rates: Insiders’ View of the New York City Story.’ Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology 88, no. 4: 1217–31. Kelling, George L., and Catherine M. Coles. 1996. Fixing Broken Windows: Restoring Order and Reducing Crime in Our Communities. New York: Free Press. Kellmer, Guillermo Kellmer. 2009. ‘Un apoyo que se pagó caro.’ Clarín (Buenos Aires), 2 October. Kingdon, John W. 1995. Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies, 2nd ed. New York: Longman. Krasner, Stephen D. ‘Power Politics, Institutions, and Transnational Relations.’ In Bringing Transnational Relations Back In: Non-State Actors, Domestic Structures and International Institutions, ed. Thomas Risse-Kappen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. LaFranchi, Howard. 1998. ‘Latin police can be reformed.’ Christian Science Monitor, 28 September. La Nación (Buenos Aires). 2009. ‘Macri: “Sería bueno que Aníbal Fernández diga por qué un empleado suyo se puso a pinchar teléfonos.”’ 21 October. Langer, Maximo. 2007. ‘Revolution in Latin American Criminal Procedure: Diffusion of Legal Ideas from the Periphery.’ American Journal of Comparative Law 55 (Fall): 617–76. McArdle, Andrea, and Tanya Erzen, eds. 2001. Zero Tolerance: Quality of Life and the New Police Brutality in New York City. New York: New York University Press. Newburn, Tim, and Richard Sparks, eds. 2004. Criminal Justice and Political Cultures: National and International Dimensions of Crime Control. Portland, OR: Willan Publishing. Oviedo, Enrique. 2002. ‘Democracia y seguridad ciudadana en Chile.’ In Violencia sociedad y justicia en América Latina, ed. Roberto Briceño-León. Buenos Aires: CLACSO. Phillips, Emma, Todd Foglesong, Cecilia Ales, and Gustavo Palmieri. 2003. ‘Common Ground and Crosscutting Themes on Funding Public Security Initiatives in Latin America.’ Buenos Aires: Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS) and Vera Institute of Justice. Pius Llopart, Jordi. 2003. ‘Robocop in Mexico City.’ NACLA Report on the Americas 37, no. 2: 22–3. Risse-Kappen, Thomas. 1995a. ‘Bringing Transnational Relations Back In: Introduction.’ In Bringing Transnational Relations Back In: Non-State Actors,

202 Comparative Public Policy in Latin America Domestic Structures and International Institutions, ed. Thomas Risse-Kappen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. – 1995b. ‘Structures of Governance and Transnational Relations: What Have We Learned?’ In Bringing Transnational Relations Back In: Non-State Actors, Domestic Structures and International Institutions, ed. Thomas Risse-Kappen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sain, Marcelo. 2008. El leviatán azul: policía y política en la Argentina. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI editores. Sandoval, Luis. 2001. ‘Prevención local de la delincuencia en Santiago de Chile.’ In Policía, sociedad y estado: modernización y reforma policial en América del Sur, ed. Hugo Frühling and Azun Candina. Santiago: CED. Santiago Times. 1998a. ‘Las Condes municipal police start rounds.’ 2 September. – 1998b. ‘Lavin says stick to your guns.’ 26 August. – 1998c. ‘Lavin to create armed municipal police.’ 10 August. – 2000. ‘Lavin counts on neoconservative American support.’ 2 February. Sklansky, David Alan. 2008. Democracy and the Police. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Smulovitz, Catalina. 2003. ‘Citizen Insecurity and Fear: Public and Private Responses in Argentina.’ In Crime and Violence in Latin America: Citizen Security, Democracy, and the State, ed. Hugo Frühling and Joseph Tulchin. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press. Sozzo, Máximo. 2005. ‘Metamorfosis de los discursos y las prácticas sobre seguridad urbana en la Argentina.’ In Seguridad y reforma policial en las Américas: experiencias y desafíos, ed. Lucía Dammert and John Bailey. Mexico City: Siglo XXI editores. Veiras, Nora. 2007. ‘El dilemma de Blumberg es ser o no ser.’ Página 12, 15 June. Waller, Irvin. Less Law, More Order: The Truth about Reducing Crime. Ancaster, ON: Manor House. Weiner, Tim. 2003. ‘Enter consultant Giuliani, his fee preceding him.’ New York Times, 16 January. Weyland, Kurt. 2004. ‘Learning from Foreign Models in Latin American Policy Reform: An Introduction.’ In Learning from Foreign Models in Latin American Policy Reform, ed. Kurt Weyland. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press. – 2006. Bounded Rationality and Policy Diffusion: Social Sector Reform in Latin America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Wilson, James Q., and George L. Kelling. 1982. ‘The Police and Neighborhood Safety.’ Atlantic (March): 29–38.

PART III Old and New Directions in Social Policy

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9 The Limits of Anti-Poverty Policy: Citizenship, Accountability, and Semi-clientelism in Mexico’s Oportunidades Program Lucy Luccisano and Laura Macdonald 1

Despite years of economic reform Latin America continues to suffer high levels of poverty and inequality. The impact of the recent global economic crisis means that policies to reduce poverty will remain at the top of the political agenda for most Latin American governments for years to come (Ballve 2009).2 Perhaps the most innovative and influential anti-poverty program in the region has been the Mexican program Oportunidades (previously titled Progresa). The program carefully targets families living in extreme poverty, and delivers cash transfers to mothers in these families, conditional on their ensuring school attendance, health care visits, and preventative measures. Additionally, the program provides seniors with cash transfers and an energy subsidy. Oportunidades, in fact, was among the first programs to use conditional cash transfers as a way to reduce poverty, an approach that has now become widespread throughout the hemisphere and beyond (Valencia Lomelí 2008).3 While Oportunidades is usually viewed as an anti-poverty program, its design was deeply political, shaped by attempts by successive Mexican administrations to distance themselves from the legacy of clientelism and corporatism that plagued earlier generations of social policy and in the context of widespread criticism of this legacy by reformist politicians and civil society organizations as Mexico undertook a belated and gradual process of democratization after more than seventy years of one-party rule. In this chapter, we do not evaluate the success of Oportunidades in achieving its substantive policy objectives; that task has been undertaken extensively elsewhere (see, for example, Skoufias and McClafferty 2000; Skoufias 2001; Skoufias and Parker 2001; Coady and Harris 2004; Gertler 2004; and Behrman, Parker, and

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Todd 2009). Instead, we address the program’s political impact and the persistence of clientelism and power asymmetries in the delivery of Mexican social policy. In recent years, the Mexican government has adopted new formal regulations and institutions aimed at improving the program’s accountability and transparency. The weakness of these measures, however, and the persistence of asymmetrical power relations in many parts of Mexico interfere with the achievement of good governance. Traditional ways of doing business in Mexico continue to operate below the surface at the local level to block the achievement of the accountability, efficiency, and transparency that founders of the program espoused as objectives. We argue, therefore, that these practices reinforce existing trends towards the emergence of ‘semi-clientelism’ (Fox 1994). That is, as a result of the dynamics of path dependency, while the substantial reforms that have been undertaken by various Mexican states have eliminated some elements of traditional clientelism, they have not eliminated the informal dynamics and social disparities that foster clientelist relations. Accordingly we have seen the emergence of new forms of political manipulation of benefit recipients. This semi-clientelism represents less coercive, less pervasive forms of political manipulation than under previous authoritarian regimes, involving multiple political parties instead of a single party, but it still involves a degree of coercion and the linking of receipt of benefits to support for a specific party. At the end of the day, citizens have not been empowered to demand their rights and influence government policy, and have failed to achieve full democratic citizenship (Fox 1994, 2007). In this chapter we adopt a neo-institutionalist perspective that emphasizes the ways in which institutions established earlier constrain the options available to contemporary policy-makers. We emphasize, however, the role played by both structural economic factors and informal institutions in producing apparently unintended consequences in social policy design. We also focus on the role played by decentralization and the weakness of state machinery, particularly at the local level. We begin with a discussion of theoretical approaches to understanding the role of informal institutions in policy development in Latin America, and of the nature and role of clientelism as an informal institution. Next, we outline the historical evolution of Mexican social policy and its role in reinforcing clientelist and corporatist power relations. We then describe the reforms undertaken during the Vicente Fox administration to improve accountability, as well as the current persistence of

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semi-clientelistic forms. Attempts to make social policy transparent in Mexico have resulted in a ‘politics of accountability,’ whereby informal dynamics and social disparities continue to reconstitute themselves, particularly because the ‘politics of transparency’ has been equated with removing intermediary associations from any role in program delivery. Social rights have morphed into social responsibilities, with citizens (rather than institutions) becoming accountable to the state in ways that ultimately are disempowering. Neo-institutionalism and Its Limits Neo-institutionalist approaches have become prominent in the study of public policy, competing for dominance of the field with rational choice approaches. Particularly in its historical institutionalist form, neo-institutionalism focuses on the historical trajectory of institutional design in order to understand patterns of political change and policymaking (see Thelen and Steinmo 1992; Hall 1993; Hall and Taylor 1996; Pierson 1996). As Hall and Taylor (1996) state, in contrast to other neoinstitutionalist approaches, historical institutionalism emphasizes the role of asymmetries of power, path dependence, and unintended consequences, and places importance on the role played by ideas. As we discuss below, all of these factors are important in the analysis of the evolution of anti-poverty programs in Mexico. Pontusson (1995) notes that, despite its intellectual debt to historical materialism, neo-institutionalism often underestimates the importance of structural factors. Like his, our analysis similarly emphasizes the role played by evolving structures of material power at the national and international levels, as well as the role of neoliberal approaches to poverty policy. Neo-institutionalism is thus of increased importance in the study of Latin American public policy. As this volume emphasizes, however, dominant neo-institutionalist approaches, originally developed to study Western industrialized countries, underestimate the importance of informal institutions, which are ‘critical to understanding the incentives that enable and constrain political behaviour’ (Helmke and Levitsky 2004, 726). Unlike traditional institutionalism, neo-institutionalism permits examination of the role of these informal institutions, but their pervasiveness in countries such as Mexico means that their role deserves greater attention. Similarly, Guillermo O’Donnell criticizes common approaches to democratization in Latin America in which ‘a fixation on highly formalized and complex organizations prevents us

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from seeing an extremely influential, informal, and sometimes concealed institution: clientelism and, more generally, particularism.’ According to O’Donnell, ‘[p]articularism – like its counterparts, neopatrimonial and delegative conceptions and practices of rule – is antagonistic to one of the main aspects of the full institutional package of polyarchy: the behavioral, legal, and normative distinction between a public and private sphere’ (1997, 46). As a result, state hypocrisy with respect to these rituals and discourses ‘breeds cynicism about the institutions of polyarchy, their incumbents, and ‘politicians’ in general’ (47). We thus argue that, despite its apparently technocratic mode of governance, Oportunidades continues to perpetuate particularistic forms of governance through its intensification of state intrusion into the private sphere and its dismantling of intermediary associations between the state and the individual (see also Hevia de la Jara 2008). Helmke and Levitsky also emphasize that informal institutions should not be seen as ‘historical givens’ or as part of a ‘static cultural landscape.’ Instead, we should look at the degree to which ‘informal institutions are modified, adapted, or even reinvented over time’ (2004, 730). This component of their methodology is important for this case study, since we do not argue that Mexican clientelism has persisted unchanged; rather, we examine how it has morphed over time through the path-shifting transition to democracy and the adoption of neoliberalism. Therefore, in line with historical institutionalism, we emphasize asymmetries of power and resources, institutions (both formal and informal) that channel processes of political change (that is, path dependence and unintended consequences), and the role of political decentralization in creating tensions between different levels of governance that contribute to the persistence of clientelism. We also emphasize the importance of ideas about combatting poverty, like the role of technocrats such as the founder of Progresa, Santiago Levy, and ideas of international institutions such as the World Bank. We also look at how neoliberalism might contribute to the persistence of clientelism by exacerbating the gap between rich and poor that is the basis of the ongoing power of clientelistic relationships. Finally, we note the importance of civil society actors who initially contributed to the evolution of anti-poverty programs (Fox 1994; Takahashi 2009). The institutional design of Progresa / Oportunidades intentionally bypassed intermediary associations that apparently were viewed as retaining clientelistic and corporatist remnants of the authoritarian past. According to Fox (2007) and Hevia de la Jara (2008), however, this measure has weakened the

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capacity of civil society organizations to respond collectively to the weaknesses of the program. In this respect, an unintended consequence of the program has been to strengthen state power vis-à-vis individual citizens, particularly the poor. Before discussing the case study, however, it is important to clarify our approach to clientelism and semi-clientelism. Jonathan Fox discusses various forms of domination that ‘can be broadly understood in terms of clientelism,’ a relationship based on political subordination in exchange for material rewards’ (1994, 153). Writing well before Mexico made a formal transition to democracy in 2000, Fox usefully distinguishes between authoritarian clientelism, ‘where imbalanced bargaining relations require the enduring political subordination of clients and are reinforced by the threat of coercion’ (53), and semi-clientelism, which became more widespread as the authoritarian system broke down. Semi-clientelist power relations exist in the gray zone between authoritarian relations and ‘pluralist tolerance,’ are enforced more through the ‘threat of the withdrawal of carrots than by the use of sticks’ (157), and are based on unenforceable deals. As a result, they are much more difficult to monitor and observe. María Pilar Garcia-Guadilla and Carlos Perez further explore this dilemma of the identification of power relations in transitional societies. They note that the erosion of authoritarian, centralized relations does not automatically produce a new conception of citizenship; rather, this transition requires change in other areas: the transformation of the political culture, the proliferation of autonomous social organizations, and the ability of these groups to reflect the diversity of social interests (2002, 91). Similarly Miguel Sobrado Chaves, in line with Helmke and Levitsky, notes that many development projects ignore informal power relations and focus instead on formal institutional relations. Like Fox, Sobrado Chaves advocates the development of strategies to democratize informal power relations, ‘empowering communities and groups with the organizational capacity to mitigate the negative effects of clientelism and gradually undermine its foundations’ (2002, 8). As we will see in the case of Progresa / Oportunidades, in the absence of such strategies, we may see the emergence of semi-clientelism, which includes new, less blatant and coercive forms of subordination, persuasion, and unequal power relations. In the context of continued and even exacerbated inequality, semi-clientelism may continue to permeate the delivery of social benefits, despite formal mechanisms designed to improve transparency and technocratic program delivery.

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Path Dependency and Formal and Informal Institutions in Mexican Anti-poverty Policy In Mexico’s post-revolutionary period powerful new formal institutions of corporatism were bolstered by the informal institutions of caciquismo (literally, ‘bossism’) and clientelism, institutions that survived from the pre-revolutionary period but were adapted to the post-revolutionary context by the powerful new political machine, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI, Institutional Revolutionary Party). Social policy was a powerful tool in welding together these disparate elements of political control. As in many Latin American states, social insurance programs formed part of Mexico’s import substitution industrialization development model, and became a key source of patronage within the clientelistic system controlled by the president and the dominant party. The main institutions for delivery of social protection programs to organized workers were the Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social (IMSS, Mexican Social Security Institute) for private sector workers, established in 1943, and the Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores del Estado (ISSSTE, Government Workers’ Social Security and Services Institute) for public sector workers, founded in 1959. Members of these organizations, which covered almost half of the Mexican population, received substantial social insurance benefits, including pensions, health insurance, and workers’ compensation, in exchange for their political support for the governing party. Another program, IMSS-COPLAMAR (an acronym for Coordinación General del Plan Nacional de Zonas Deprimidas y Grupos Marginados, National Program for Depressed Areas and Marginal Groups), created in 1973, funded largely by IMSS pension reserves, provided benefits to some members of the rural poor. Many of the poorest members of society were excluded, however, including workers in the informal sector and small peasants (Dion 2008, 434–6). In rural communities, local power brokers (caciques) negotiated the delivery of social benefits in return for political support. In these communities, the leaders of organizations linked to the PRI engaged in extensive mobilization and monitoring of members to produce political compliance and loyalty through clientelistic practices of personal indebtedness (Holzner 2004, 8). These traditional authoritarian methods of clientelism persisted until quite recently. As a result of rapid economic growth in the post-war era, the Mexican welfare state grew in size and scope, particularly after the traumatic

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events of 1968, when the massacre of student protesters at Tlatelolco by state security forces led to a shift to the left in state policy. Levels of extreme poverty declined from the 1960s to 1981 and moderate poverty increased, although at decreasing rates (Trejo and Jones 1998, 70). During this period, policies were couched in a developmentalist agenda, influenced both by the ideals of the revolution and the Keynesian theories promoted by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America. Intervention by the federal government in many spheres of the economy was aimed at altering the basic conditions that created poverty – particularly through agrarian reform, credit, health services, social security, and education. The government also reduced poverty by influencing the prices of goods and services purchased by the poor, and by providing price guarantees and subsidies for basic goods such as tortillas, as well as by intervening in increasing minimum and public real wages (Boltvinik 2003, 387–8). Social programs, especially education, were largely universalistic in character and free, although workers in the public sector received a much higher level of provision than others. When the economic crisis broke out with the onset of the debt crisis in 1981, the limits of this model for social cooptation and legitimacy became apparent. Mexico’s adoption of adjustment policies under the tutelage of the International Monetary Fund led to a reconstitution of poverty policy linked to neoliberal goals and a related transformation of state-society relations and traditional forms of clientelism. As a result of austerity measures adopted under President Miguel de la Madrid (1982–8), social spending declined tremendously, as did the image of the presidency and the PRI. In the 1988 elections, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, the candidate from the new centre-left party, the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD, Party of the Democratic Revolution) presented a strong challenge to the regime, and it is widely believed that the PRI candidate, Carlos Salinas, won the election only through blatant fraud. In 1988, in response to this legitimacy crisis, Salinas introduced the Programa Nacional de Solidaridad (PRONASOL, National Solidarity Program), a well-funded anti-poverty program that promoted improved health, education, nutrition, housing, employment, infrastructure, and other productive programs to a targeted population living in extreme poverty. PRONASOL was structured on a demand-driven model of development, making it distinct from previous poverty-reduction programs. PRONASOL was part of Salinas’s efforts to modernize and reform the state – to usher in policies that would increase accountability,

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political transparency, political pluralism, and democracy while opening up possibilities for privatization. The program was successful in increasing support for the PRI, and may have contributed significantly to the party’s re-election in 1994 under candidate Ernesto Zedillo. PRONASOL was heavily discredited, however, by research showing its links with new forms of clientelism and the creation of corporatist structures, which were strengthening the role of the state in civil society (Otero 1995). Indeed, numerous authors (see, for example, Dresser 1994; Fox 1994; and Ward 1994) have argued that the aims of PRONASOL were clearly clientelistic, designed to channel money on the basis of electoral politics rather than need. Fearing the possible electoral defeat of the PRI in both congressional (1991) and presidential elections (1994), Salinas intended PRONASOL to be both a distributive program and an electoral program. Salinas visited all the completed projects, and ceremonies were held for the infrastructure-related projects. Furthermore, ‘solidarity committees’ served to increase the PRI’s power base: completed projects were stamped with the logo of PRONASOL, the colours of which were similar to those of the PRI. Moreover, PRONASOL’s antipoverty measures and target areas were disproportionately allocated in the strongholds of the PRD. For example, the state of Michoacán, a key base for the PRD, received 12 per cent of PRONASOL’s entire budget for 1992 (Fox 1994, 166). According to Dresser, ‘PRONASOL claimed in early 1991 to be operating in 171 out of 173 municipalities controlled by the opposition’ (1991, 9). Progresa / Oportunidades In response to the ways in which PRONASOL was politically manipulated, the government of Ernesto Zedillo (1994–2000), a technocratic advocate of reform, decided to distance itself from that legacy by implementing a conditional cash transfer (CCT) program, Progresa, to address poverty alleviation in a manner that was both apolitical and technocratic. The new program was intended to break intergenerational cycles of poverty by investing in human capital development through cash transfers for improved nutrition and scholarships for children. To avoid political manipulation, program eligibility was based on targeting extremely poor households using both geographical targeting and proxy means tests. President Fox (2000–6) continued and expanded the program, renaming it the Programa de Desarrollo Humano Oportunidades, commonly known as Oportunidades. The government of Felipe Calderón (in office

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from 2006 to 2012) also maintained and expanded the program. The 2010 budget for Oportunidades was almost US$5 billion, representing a 23.3 per cent increase from 2009 (Enciso 2010, 14). As a neoliberal market-based program Progresa / Oportunidades introduced a major shift in social policy in Mexico. In contrast to social funds such as PRONASOL, which were designed to protect citizens from the fluctuations of the market and promote social capital, the CCT model is a social investment type of policy where the emphasis is on helping to integrate individuals into the market. In particular the CCT social investment model is designed to change the behaviour of beneficiaries to allow them to manage their own risks. This is to be accomplished through cash incentives for nutrition and education, seen as fundamental to the project of investment in the human capital development of children. Conditionality is also a key feature of the CCT entitlements, in which compulsory duties are tied to benefits and unfulfilled obligations result in removal from the program, as explained in the Oportunidades ‘Rules of Operation.’ What is equally important about this shift in social policy are its implications for citizenship and accountability. With the adoption of social investment programs, the ‘rights and entitlements’ of social citizenship have morphed into ‘social responsibilities’ (Luccisano 2006). Similar to the politics of the ‘Third Way’ in the United Kingdom, there are ‘no rights without responsibilities’ (Luccisano 2006, 65). Citizens are now responsible and accountable to the state for ensuring their own protection. Ideas clearly play an important role in the program’s design. The ‘Washington Consensus’ (economic policy prescriptions promoted by Washington-based institutions such as the International Monetary Fund in debtor states) set the broad outline for social program design in the neoliberal era, but the details of how policy was to be implemented were clearly worked out by Mexican actors, responding in part to the accusations of clientelism attached to earlier policies.4 Evaluations and the ‘Politics of Accountability’ Is Oportunidades another example of a politically manipulated social program, reflecting some degree of path dependency despite the extensive reforms based on neoliberal ideals? In this section, we address this question by discussing some of the formal mechanisms of accountability and control built into the program during the presidential terms of both Ernesto Zedillo and Vicente Fox. We then outline some of the ongoing areas of clientelistic manipulation and integrity of the system. We

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also identify how citizen participation mechanisms are generally weak and unable to hold the various institutions associated with the program accountable. We look specifically at the program evaluations – the CCT program monitoring and compliance – the role of community promotion committees and citizen oversight, and the federal elections of 2000 and 2006. We argue that, despite various legal and institutional measures established during the past ten years to guard against political manipulation, mechanisms and practices persist that continue to permit the manipulation of the program, making it difficult to achieve accountability and political transparency. As part of his mandate to create transparency and accountability, Zedillo implemented a number of political reforms to modernize and reform the state – in particular, a project of decentralization that came to be known as ‘New Federalism.’ In an effort to depoliticize social policies, Zedillo’s government decreed that programs receiving direct subsidies or transfers were to make public their rules of program operation. In 2000 the operation rules for 135 programs were published in the official government gazette (Pérez Yarahuán 2007, 9). Extensive evaluations of the Progresa program were also carried out by the Mexican government in collaboration with the International Food and Policy Research Institute in Washington, DC. After the elections of 2000, which displaced the PRI after eight decades in power, the Partido de Acción Nacional (PAN, National Action Party) government of Vicente Fox came into office with a strong interest in reducing the traditional forms of clientelism and corporatism that had assured PRI rule. His government put in place a number of important laws for increased accountability that had an important impact on Oportunidades and accountability. To help create transparency and eradicate corruption in public administration, on 4 December 2000 Fox signed an accord creating the Comisión Intersecreterial para la Transparencia y Combate a la Corrupción en la Administración Pública Federal (Interministerial Commission for Transparency and the Fight against Corruption in Federal Public Administration). Fox’s government also created the Ley federal de transparencia y acceso a la información pública gubernamental (LFTAIPG, Federal Law for Transparency and Access to Information), which took effect on 12 June 2003, making it possible for citizens to request documents or information on public programs. Another key effort at political transparency was the creation of Blindaje Electoral, an electoral shielding program to coordinate efforts to ensure political transparency in public institutions for the federal and mid-term elections.

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The Fox government also intensified and formalized systems of evaluation of social policy programs. On January 2004, the Ley general de desarrollo social (LGDS, General Law for Social Development) was published, establishing a Sistema Nacional de Desarrollo Social (National Social Development System) to design, monitor, and evaluate social policy programs, which were to be coordinated across all levels of government (federal, state, and municipal) and civil society organizations. An important outcome has been the formalization of the external evaluation system of the Secretaría de Desarrollo Social (SEDESOL, Social Development Secretariat), which, in 2006, became part of the Consejo Nacional de Evaluación de la Política de Desarrollo Social (CONEVAL, National Council for the Evaluation for Social Policy) (Pérez Yarahuán 2007, 9). On average, between eighty and one hundred evaluations are undertaken each year (Fox and Haight 2007, 247) by hired academics and analysts from the private sector. Unlike the administrations of Salinas and Zedillo, ‘the Fox administration saw a significant advance of self-restraining reform’ (Takahashi 2009, 31). During Fox’s presidency, elections became competitive and civil society was able to exert pressures on the government. According to Takahashi, ‘the passage of LGDS and LFTAIPG enhanced enforceability of oversight mechanisms by providing a legal framework for social policy operation and for citizens’ participating in monitoring (2009, 31). This was mainly evident at the federal level, remaining uneven at the subnational levels. The government’s extensive attention to evaluation attests to the importance of technocratic ideals and to concerns about the political manipulation of social programs. Evaluations of programs can provide an important tool for increasing transparency and political accountability. As discussed above, however, excessive focus on formal institutions and regulations could hide problems with program implementation that undermine these goals. For example, Jonathan Fox and Libby Haight summarize some of the problems associated with the evaluation process: In Mexico … in practice, these new external evaluations are not so external, insofar as they are commissioned and paid for by the agencies themselves, out of their own budgets. Additionally, program staff are often directly involved in the development of the indicators that will be used to evaluate the program, which tend to omit important aspects of program operations that may be most important to beneficiaries. According to interviews with evaluators, agencies will not only directly influence the

216 Comparative Public Policy in Latin America ‘terms of reference’ on which the evaluation will be based, but they also have gone so far as to pre-determine which communities evaluators must visit for field interviews. (2007, 249–50)

In a similar vein a former Oportunidades bureaucrat explained in an interview that the Oportunidades national office decides who is to be awarded the evaluation contracts, and no public information exists to explain the process.5 According to the bureaucrat, ‘most of the evaluations are awarded to academics by way of ‘direct designation’ (designación directa), which means that there is no public call to compete for the evaluation contract.’ He added that ‘almost all the evaluations of Oportunidades highlight the positive program outcomes and few provide a critical view of how to reinforce the program design.’ Moreover, program changes to the Oportunidades program were the result of political, not technical, decisions; for example, he explained that the energy subsidy component of the program was the result of a campaign promise made by Calderón.6 At a conference held in Mexico City on 15 April 2009, Gerardo Esquivel, an academic at the Colegio de México, argued that evaluations do not work because the results of the evaluations and their policy recommendations do not produce reforms of the social program under analysis. Another conference participant, John Scott, of the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, agreed, arguing that the problem with evaluations is that there is no strategy in place to reinforce the results of the assessments. Nonetheless the program evaluations have been used to justify continued funding for the Oportunidades program, which, on 9 April 2009, received a loan of US$1.5 billion from the World Bank. This loan, like others before it, was granted due to the ‘rigorous external evaluations which have measured tangible results in education and health outcomes among children participating in the Oportunidades program’ (World Bank 2009) – indeed, the evaluations are cited in World Bank and IDB documents as being ‘objective and technocratic’ instruments, and operate to reinforce the image of the Mexican CCT program as successful, efficient, and technocratic. This is not to suggest that all the impact evaluations are problematic, but rather to point out that there are problems with what has become an ‘industry of evaluation,’ and its results are creating a particular ‘truth’ about the effectiveness of the program in achieving poverty reduction, as well as its apolitical character. According to Jonathan Fox, ‘evaluations were exercises in “upward transparency,” targeted exclusively to policymakers, rather than “downward” to the

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beneficiaries themselves’ (2007, 271). In fact the weaknesses of the evaluation process create space for the penetration of semi-clientelistic relations, despite the apparent effort at transparency. Monitoring and Oversight Programs under the Fox Administration Unlike PRI presidents who often came to office with their own antipoverty flagship programs, Fox’s government continued to implement the CCT program while also pursuing a number of changes to it, including changing the name from Progresa to Oportunidades, hiring a new director and staff, adding a number of new subprograms, and incorporating more families into the program. Most important for our analysis, the Fox government created a new role for civil society by adding new social actors to manage the program, a group that Felipe Hevia de la Jara has coined the ‘civic stream’ because of its association with non-partisan civil society activities (2008: 69); for example, Rogelio Gómez Hermosillo, former leader of Alianza Cívica (Civic Alliance), a non-governmental electoral watchdog, was named director of Oportunidades. Under the new program directorship, a number of important changes took place to address problems associated with Progresa and to create channels for citizen oversight to improve the quality of service delivery (Fox 2007, 270). Two programs, the Comités de Promoción Comunitaria (CPCs, Community Promotion Committees) and the Sistema de Atención Ciudadana (Citizen Complaints System) were designed primarily to address problems of political manipulation and the culture of political clientelism at the local level. These programs are discussed below. Under the Zedillo government, communities that qualified to receive Progresa funds were required to elect a program beneficiary to the position of communitarian promoter, a non-remunerated position. The promoter communicated information received from the enlace municipal (municipal liaison) about the program to his or her community. The enlace municipal was a paid city employee who informed Progresa beneficiaries of payment dates and worked closely with program officers on the payment date, organizing the event and providing security (Hevia de la Jara 2008, 67). Despite attempts to thwart the politicization of the program, the community promoter and the enlace municipal were often seen to be engaging in authoritarian and corrupt practices such as ‘imposing unpaid work tasks, asking for money and using the program for political campaigning’ (Fox 2007, 274).

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The Oportunidades program addressed this problem by replacing the individual promoter with a committee of representatives, the CPCs. From 2002 to 2008, the CPCs included an elected group of beneficiaries called vocales (assistants) to act as liaisons between the beneficiaries and the enlace municipal. Now CPCs consist of four elected members – education, health, food, and control vocales – who share power and responsibility for the program at the local level. The CPCs oversee effective implementation of the program, including communicating information about the program and assisting mothers with program queries. By 2006 five million families were taking part in Oportunidades, and the program involved 67,513 CPCs and 291,058 vocales (Fox 2007, 275). Other changes were also put in place to guard against the vocales using their roles to manipulate the program politically (see Fox 2007; Hevia de la Jara 2008). Yet Hevia de la Jara’s research found that the CPCs did little to solve the problem of clientelism operating at the local level. For example, ‘CPC members also kept the same practices that the [Progresa / Oportunidades] had so eagerly intended to avoid, such as solicitation of benefit shares, political proselytism, improper behaviour towards opposition, etc. In fact, most of the complaints concerning “proselytism” involved CPC members and municipal liaisons / authorities, reinforcing the association of the collective action with political clientelism’ (Hevia de la Jara 2008, 68). Accordingly the social auditing – ‘citizen participation to promote public accountability’ (Hevia de la Jara 2007, 252) – that the CPCs had hoped to achieve did not result in increasing political transparency. According to Jonathan Fox, the Progresa promoters and Oportunidades CPCs ‘served to represent the program to the participants rather than vice versa’ (2007, 276). The term ‘perverse accountability’ is useful in describing how program beneficiaries are made accountable to the CCT program. Conditioning money to ensure a particular type of behaviour is a key feature of the Mexican program and has become an important control instrument. As previously mentioned, cash transfers are given to mothers on the condition that certain educational and medical requirements are fulfilled. These include ensuring that children go to school, that family medical appointments are honoured, and that mothers attend health workshops. CPCs play a role in monitoring compliance. For example, the health vocal encourages mothers to become involved in ‘volunteer’ cleaning activities, but although these activities are voluntary, lists are kept to ensure compliance. Unwillingness to abide by the program conditions is viewed as co-responsibility for failure (Escobar Latapí 2005),

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and could be accompanied by the suspension of economic support for the corresponding month. However, this punitive measure, which is central to the operation of the program, does not take into account that coresponsibility failures could be the result of teachers’ or doctors’ indifference to the program and to their improperly recording children’s school attendance or medical visits. Even though Oportunidades officials recognize the indifference of many teachers and medical staff, it is the mothers who are told to pressure the professionals to do their jobs and hold them accountable. Program beneficiaries are thus being monitored and made accountable to the CCT program in a context of institutional indifference and inefficiency on the part of teachers and medical staff and the persistence of local forms of clientelism. In particular, Hevia de la Jara argues, ‘state actors (especially those from public healthcare) and institutional intermediaries can take great advantage of this control instrument, for it allows every sort of abusive power practice, with a low possibility of punishment (2008, 68). Similarly, in his assessment of sixteen CCT programs in Latin America, Enrique Valencia Lomelí finds that local intermediaries pose a problem for political transparency. Drawing on other case studies, he argues that part of the problem is that ‘social workers …, municipal contacts, persons certifying responsibilities … and promoters … may be interested as much in accumulating power as in administering programs and alleviating poverty, yielding discretionary choices at various stages of program implication rather than transparency’ (2008, 489). These new mechanisms for monitoring were thus insufficient to eliminate clientelistic practices. Fox’s Sistema de Atención Ciudadana was implemented as a measure to increase public accountability and counter political corruption. The national office of Sistema Atención Ciudadana is located in Mexico City and there is an office in each of Mexico’s thirty-one states. The offices essentially operate as call centres and are equipped with their own toll-free telephone number; they also accept faxes, e-mail, and letters. A key objective of these offices was to be a check against both institutional corruption and fraudulent practices. In terms of institutional corruption, the concern was to ensure that the program was not tied to clientelism. It was also designed to prevent previous forms of reported institutional corruption practised by teachers, doctors, and municipal-level functionaries. The Sistema Atención Ciudadana offers a place where citizens can ‘make demands’ by calling to get information on the program and launching a complaint against program functionaries and beneficiaries.

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Commonly, calls concern institutional denunciations (of teachers and doctors) and inquiries about delivery of support payments (or the lack thereof). The Sistema Atención Ciudadana has been able to address problems relating to information, but the challenge of problems related to abuse has gone beyond its institutional capacity. In particular, it has been unable to address problems relating to education or health – key service delivery programs tied to the Oportunidades program. As such, Jonathan Fox argues that ‘these modest channels for expressing voice had very limited potential for addressing the cross-institutional disincentive problem built into the structure of the CCT program (2007, 281). Oportunidades, Elections, and Clientelism Despite Zedillo’s attempts to distance his poverty policies from the PRI’s legacy of clientelism, including a budget decree prohibiting the inclusion of new beneficiaries into the CCT program in the first six months of election years and a public campaign to differentiate the program from the PRI party, the Progresa program was not immune from electoral manipulation (Levy 2006, 108). In part because of the parallel process of decentralization, problems were increasingly located at the state or municipal levels rather than at the federal level. Yuriko Takahashi (2007) examines the distribution of Progresa at the municipal level in 2000 and Alina Rocha Menocal (2001) statistically examines the political manipulation of the Progresa program. Both studies find evidence of electoral geographic targeting. For example, while the program was targeted to areas where the poverty level was high, there were also important political reasons for targeting in those areas. Both studies demonstrate that the PRI was spending more or including more households in areas where it had stronger support. Similarly Rocha Menocal finds that, ‘in states where the PRI received a greater amount of votes than the opposition in 1997 and where gubernatorial elections were scheduled for the year 2000, a greater proportion of households became Progresa beneficiaries in 1999’ (2001, 532). During both the Zedillo and Fox administrations, social programs continued to be linked to electoral politics, although the nature of these linkages might have varied from earlier patterns. A culture of political manipulation of social programs continues to exist that blurs the lines between governing parties in office and social programs. There are also continued practices of vote buying and coercion. In the 2000 elections, results from various opinion polls and surveys revealed interesting

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findings about the impact of the Progresa program on electoral politics. For example, a national public opinion poll sponsored by the Dallas Morning News and various non-governmental organizations, including Alianza Cívica, found that • 40 per cent of the population believed Progresa and social programs belonged to the PRI; • 11 per cent felt that to receive support from government social programs, a vote must be cast for a particular party or candidate; • 24 per cent of the marginalized population did not know if their ballot was free and anonymous – that is, they thought it was possible to know for whom they voted; and • 4 per cent had received visits from functionaries and promoters of government programs who told them that they would have to give their vote to a particular party to receive the benefits of those programs – in the grand majority of cases, an action would benefit the PRI (Alianza Cívica 2000, 1).7 As mentioned earlier, Fox’s government created an ‘electoral shielding’ program to protect social programs such as Oportunidades from political manipulation during election periods. This program made public the names of Oportunidades beneficiaries. In 2006, no new beneficiaries were added to the program before the presidential and mid-term elections of that year. Also, public media were used to communicate to Mexicans that public programs, particularly social programs, could not be used for political-electoral ends (Díaz García de León and Dussauge Laguna 2006, 19–20). In particular, all Oportunidades program pamphlets that were made available to beneficiary families explained that the program was funded by public money and could not be used for political ends. Additionally, one year before the elections, SEDESOL authorized an investigation of social programs and public funds, and hired a civil group, Fundar (Centre for Analysis and Research), to conduct a study in four states – México, Nayarit, Tlaxcala, and Veracruz – and surveys of 4,650 program beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries; the results of the study were made public in February 2006. As a later study notes, the Fundar research study pointed to potential vote buying and coercion and identified ‘patterns of clientelist activities and rigged distribution of resources associated with social programs’ (Athié 2009). Accordingly, an Oportunidades press release announced that the program would adopt Fundar’s recommendations to enforce ‘electoral

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shielding’ before the 2006 elections (Oportunidades 2006). The outcome, however, was mixed. Hevia de la Jara (2006) writes that great efforts were made by the national Oportunidades office to inform program beneficiaries that their vote was free and secret and not tied to political programs, but the program was still being manipulated for electoral purposes at the local level by enlace municipal and program vocales. Another study carried out closer to the 2006 election by Alianza Cívica, working with the Comité Cuidadano de Seguimiento del Proceso Electoral (Citizens’ Electoral Process Monitoring Committee) – a group of a dozen prominent intellectuals identified with pro-democracy work – confirmed similar findings of continued practices of ‘vote buying and coercion’ (Garrett 2006). The results of a study called Monitoreo de Programas Sociales suggested that poorer voters still understood that their social programs were tied to their vote (Alianza Cívica 2006). It found that, while eight out of ten people interviewed indicated that they knew the rights and responsibilities of social programs, seven out of ten did not know how or where to lodge a complaint about program irregularities. An Alianza Cívica press release summarized the findings of the study as follows: • five out of every one hundred people interviewed declared they had received offers to buy their vote; • seven out of one hundred declared that they had been threatened with expulsion from the program if they did not vote for a party; • municipal authorities played the main role in efforts at vote buying and coercion; • despite the change in the federal government and the interest, at least in the case of Oportunidades, to reduce the program’s use for partisan goals, it was still the PRI that was most responsible for vote coercion; • the beneficiaries of the program nevertheless had improved their knowledge of their rights; and • there were concerns that aid delivered in zones affected by Hurricane Stan had been kept for electoral uses on the part of the three main political parties, taking advantage of the situation of anguish and desperation of the people in these zones (Alianza Cívica 2006, 7; authors’ translation). According to Silvia Alonso Félix, Alianza Cívica’s executive secretary, this culture of voting buying and coercion ‘could make the difference in

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the results of a tight election’ (El Universal 2006). Indeed, the 2006 election was extremely close and hotly contested and, after two months of legal appeals, PAN candidate Felipe Calderón was finally declared the winner with about a half a percentage point lead over his PRD rival, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Thus, even though linkages between social programs and voting behaviour were less pervasive than in the past and the mechanisms used less direct and coercive, semi-clientelistic practices may have been more than sufficient to ensure the PAN victory. Conclusion This discussion of the historical evolution of Mexico’s anti-poverty Progresa / Oportunidades program under successive administrations carries with it several lessons for students of public policy in Latin America. The effectiveness of this program in meeting its stated objectives of reducing poverty and increasing human capital has been widely questioned. Moreover, despite the attempts of successive administrations, starting with Zedillo’s, to distance themselves from the clientelistic manipulation of social programs that was so prevalent in Mexico’s authoritarian past, significant clientelistic elements remain. These do not take the same form as in the heyday of PRI hegemony, and clientelism is less obvious and pernicious, but it nonetheless continues to shape the relationship between beneficiaries and the state in a way that undermines the development of social citizenship. The emergence of semi-clientelism reveals in part the strength of path dependency and informal institutions, but also the ways in which traditional habits have been reformed according to the logics of neoliberalism, decentralization, and democratization. Clientelism persists both because of long-standing habits and political culture and because these anti-poverty initiatives have failed to  reduce poverty levels fundamentally or the power asymmetries in Mexican society (see Teichman 2007). As well, the concerted attempt to eliminate the role of intermediary associations that are seen as carriers of  clientelism has not succeeded in eliminating informal associations, but has closed potential political space for collective action by the poor.

NOTES 1 The authors would like to thank Esteban Nicholls and Fernando Cortez Vazquez for their research assistance, and comments from the editors of

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2

3

4

5 6 7

the book as well as participants in the workshop and a subsequent presentation at Carleton University. We also thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for its financial assistance. On the announcement in April 2009 of a loan of US$1.5 billion to the Mexican government to expand the Oportunidades program, the World Bank’s director for Mexico and Colombia stated that the loan was aimed at relieving ‘the social impact that the country is facing as a consequence of the economic slowdown’ (World Bank 2009). Progresa was first introduced under the Zedillo administration in 1997. The similar Brazilian Bolsa Familia program was not introduced until 2003, but Brazil also had a much smaller CCT program, introduced in 1996, entitled Programa de erradicaçao de trabalho infantil (Valencia Lomelí 2008). Subsequently, numerous other states in Latin America and elsewhere have adopted modified versions of the original Mexican CCT program, in a clear case of ‘social learning’ (see Hall 1993). Authors’ interview, Mexico City, 27 April 2009. Correspondence with the authors, 18 April 2009. The opinion poll had a 95 per cent level of statistical confidence and a 1.3 per cent margin of error (Alianza Cívica 2000, 1).

REFERENCES Alianza Cívica. 2000. ‘En defensa del voto libre.’ Boletín de Prensa. Mexico City, 28 May. – 2006. Boletín de Prensa. Mexico City, 20 June. Athié, Alicia. 2009. ‘FUNDAR: New Models to Confront New Challenges to Democracy.’ Mexico City: Center for International Policy, Americas Program. http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6269. Ballve, Marcelo. 2009. ‘Latin America’s economic fiesta ends, wealth gap returns.’ New America Media, 12 April. Behrman, Jere R., Susan W. Parker, and Petra E. Todd. 2009. ‘Schooling Impacts of Conditional Cash Transfers on Young Children: Evidence from Mexico.’ Economic Development and Cultural Change 57, no. 3: 439–77. Boltvinik, Julio. 2003. ‘Welfare, Inequality and Poverty in Mexico 1970-2000.’ In Confronting Development: Assessing Mexico’s Economic and Social Policy Challenges, ed. Kevin J. Middlebrook and Eduardo Zepeda. Stanford, CA; San Diego: Stanford University Press, and the University of California, Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies. Coady, David P., and Rebecca Lee Harris. 2004. ‘Evaluating Targeted Cash Transfer Programs: A General Equilibrium Framework with an Application

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to Mexico.’ Research Report 137. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. http://www.ifpri.org/publication/ evaluating-targeted-cash-transfer-programs. Díaz García de León, Octavio, and Mauricio I. Dussauge Laguna. 2006. ‘Transparencia y combate a la corrupción en tiempos electorales: la experiencia del Blindaje Electoral en el gobierno federal.’ FEPADE Difunde 10: 16–27. Dion, Michelle. 2008. ‘Retrenchment, Expansion and the Transformation of Mexican Social Protection Policies.’ Social Policy & Administration 42, no. 4: 434–50. Dresser, Denise. 1991. ‘Neopopulist Solutions to Neoliberal Problems: Mexico’s National Solidarity Program.’ Current Issues Brief 3. San Diego: University of California, Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies. – 1994. ‘Bringing the Poor Back In: National Solidarity as a Strategy of Regime Legitimation.’ In Transforming State-Society Relations in Mexico. The National Solidarity Strategy, ed. Wayne Cornelius, Ann Craig, and Jonathan Fox. San Diego: University of California, Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies. El Universal (Mexico City). 2006. ‘Fear of underhand tricks still haunt coming elections.’ 21 June. Enciso, Angélica. 2010. ‘Sedeso anuncia programa de blindaje electoral.’ La Jornada, 22 April. Escobar Latapí, Agustín. 2005. ‘Progresa–Oportunidades: Where Do We Go from Here?’ Paper presented at the conference, Poverty and Poverty Reduction Strategies: Mexican and International Experiences, Monterrey, Mexico, January. http://www.itesm.mx/egap/cp/papers/09paper.pdf Fox, Jonathan. 1994. ‘The Difficult Transition from Clientelism to Citizenship: Lessons from Mexico.’ World Politics 46, no. 2: 151–84. – 2007. Accountability Politics Power and Voice in Rural Mexico. New York: Oxford University Press. Fox, Jonathan, and Libby Haight. 2007. ‘Public Access to Mexico’s External Evaluations of Government Programs.’ In Mexico’s Right-To-Know Reforms, ed. Jonathan Fox, Libby Haight, Helena Hofbauer, and Tania Sánchez-Andrade. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Garcia-Guadilla, María Pilar, and Carlos Perez. 2002. ‘Democracy, Decentralization, and Clientelism: New Relationships and Old Practices.’ Latin American Perspectives 29, no. 5: 90–109. Garret, Kelly Arthur. 2006. ‘Coercion of voters still a real concern.’ El Universal (Mexico City), 22 June. Gertler, P. 2004. ‘Do Conditional Transfers Improve Child Health? Evidence from PROGRESA’s Control Randomized Experiment.’ American Economic Review 94, no. 2: 336–41.

226 Comparative Public Policy in Latin America Hall, Peter. 1993. ‘Policy Paradigms, Social Learning and the State.’ Comparative Politics 25, no. 3: 275–96. Hall, Peter, and Rosemary Taylor. 1996. ‘Political Science and the Three New Institutionalisms.’ Political Studies 44, no. 5: 936–57. Helmke, Gretchen, and Steven Levitsky. 2004. ‘Informal Institutions and Comparative Politics: A Research Agenda.’ Perspectives on Politics 2, no. 4: 725–40. Hevia de la Jara, Felipe. 2006. ‘Uso político del programa Oportunidades en las elecciones de 2006: análisis y reflexión.’ Version 7 (July), unpublished. – 2007. ‘Social Audit Mechanisms in Mexico.’ In Mexico’s Right-To-Know Reforms, ed. Jonathan Fox, Libby Haight, Helena Hofbauer, and Tania SánchezAndrade. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. – 2008. ‘Between Individual and Collective Action: Citizen Participation and Public Oversight in Mexico’s Oportunidades Programme.’ IDS Bulletin 38, no. 6: 64–72. Holzner, Claudio A. 2004. ‘The End of Clientelism? Strong and Weak Networks in a Mexican Squatter Movement.’ Mobilization 9, no. 3: 223–40. Levy, Santiago, 2006, Progress against Poverty: Sustaining Mexico’s ProgresaOportunidades Program. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Luccisano, Lucy. 2006. ‘The Mexican Oportunidades Program: Questioning the Linking of Security to Conditional Social Investments for Mothers and Children.’ Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 31, no. 62: 53–85. O’Donnell, Guillermo. 1997. ‘Illusions about Consolidation.’ In Consolidating the Third Wave Democracies: Themes and Perspectives, ed. Larry Diamond, Marc F. Plattner, Hung-mao Tien, and Yun-han Chu. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Oportunidades. 2006. ‘Oportunidades asume las recomendaciones para reforzar su Blindaje Electoral.’ Press release, 27 April. Otero, Gerardo. 1995. ‘Mexico’s Political Future(s) in a Globalizing World Economy.’ Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 32, no. 3: 315–41. Pérez Yarahuán, Gabriela. 2007. ‘Social Development Policy, Expenditures and Electoral Incentives in Mexico.’ Primavera 3, no. 2: 1–15. Pierson, Paul, 1996. ‘The New Politics of the Welfare State.’ World Politics 48, no. 2: 143–79. Pontusson, Jonas. 1995. ‘From Comparative Public Policy to Political Economy: Putting Political Institutions in Their Place, and Taking Interests Seriously.’ Comparative Political Studies 28, no. 1: 117–48. Rocha Menocal, Alina. 2001. ‘Do Old Habits Die Hard? A Statistical Exploration of the Politicisation of Progresa, Mexico’s Latest Federal

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Poverty-Alleviation Programme, under the Zedillo Administration.’ Journal of Latin American Studies 33, no. 3: 513–38. Skoufias, Emmanuel. 2001. ‘Targeting the Poor in Mexico: An Evaluation of the Selection of Households into PROGRESA.’ World Development 29, no. 10: 1769–84. Skoufias, Emmanuel, and Bonnie McClafferty. 2000. ‘Is Progresa Working? Summary of the Results of an Evaluation by IFPRI.’ Discussion Paper Brief 118. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute, Food Consumption and Nutrition Division. Skoufias, Emmanuel, and S.W. Parker. 2001. ‘Conditional Cash Transfers and Their Impact on Child Work and Schooling: Evidence from the PROGRESA Program in Mexico.’ Economia 2, no. 1: 45–96. Sobrado Chaves, Miguel. 2002. ‘Organizational Empowerment versus Clientelism.’ Latin American Perspectives 29, no. 5: 7–19. Takahashi, Yuriko. 2007. ‘The Political Economy of Poverty Alleviation: The Case of PROGRESA in Mexico.’ Journal of International Cooperation Studies 14, no. 3: 109–37. – 2009. ‘Does Democracy Dampen Clientelism? The Politics of Social Spending and Oversight in Mexico.’ Paper presented at the 67th National Conference of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, 2–5 April. Teichman, Judith. 2007. ‘Redistributive Conflict and Social Policy in Latin America.’ World Development 36, no. 3: 446–60. Thelen, Kathleen, and Sven Steinmo. 1992. ‘Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics.’ In Structuring Politics, ed. Sven Steinmo, Kathleen Thelen, and Frank Longstreth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Trejo, Guillermo, and Claudio Jones. 1998. ‘Political Dilemmas of Welfare Reform: Poverty and Inequality in Mexico.’ In Mexico under Zedillo, ed. Susan Kaufman Purcell and Luis Rubio. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Valencia Lomelí, Enrique. 2008. ‘Conditional Cash Transfers as Social Policy in Latin America: An Assessment of Their Contributions and Limitations.’ Annual Review of Sociology 34: 475–99. Ward, Peter. 1994. ‘Social Welfare Policy and Political Opening in Mexico.’ In Transforming State-Society Relations in Mexico: The National Solidarity Strategy, ed. Wayne Cornelius, Ann Craig, and Jonathan Fox. San Diego: University of California, Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies. World Bank. 2009. ‘World Bank Supports Oportunidades Program.’ Press release 2009 / 300 / LCR. Washington, DC.

10 Gendering Welfare State Regimes in Latin America: Argentina in Comparative Perspective Débora Lopreite

Despite the extensive academic literature on social policies in Latin America, few studies have tried to locate specific national cases in the rich comparative literature on welfare regimes, which has focused mainly on North America and western Europe. More recently, some scholars have addressed the development of welfare regimes in Latin America (Huber 1996; Segura-Ubiergo 2007; Haggard and Kaufman 2008). These studies, however, ignore an important aspect of welfare policies – namely, their gendered bases. Some studies have focused more extensively on the role of families in welfare provision, since the neoliberal policies implemented in Latin America have given greater responsibility to families for their own survival and reproduction (see, for example, Barrientos 2004), but these studies also have not addressed specifically the gendered impact of welfare state interventions. This chapter fills that gap. Drawing on the welfare / gender regime literature, I position the Argentine case in terms of the types of social rights and welfare state stratification and the arrangements among state, market, and the family. In doing so I look at how gender inequalities structure welfare development and reform and also how social policies reproduce gender inequality. These aspects have been not been sufficiently studied among scholars of Latin America. Argentina’s welfare state regime started to develop as early as the 1920s, and acquired its definitive features during the 1950s. It has been characterized as predominantly Bismarckian conservative. Three general features of the Argentine welfare regime are common in Latin American and southern European conservative welfare states more generally: a) fragmented welfare systems and limited social citizenship; b) a high degree of familialism, in which the family is the primary

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social unit and responsible for the well-being of its members; and c) a dual social security system combining a contributory social security system for the breadwinner (formally gender neutral but in practice the male breadwinner) and, since 2002, a wide system of social assistance that targets women and the poor (for example, new conditional cash transfers for poor female heads of households). These characteristics define the Argentine welfare regime as a hybrid system, a hybridism that deepened with the process of economic liberalization and welfare retrenchment conducted during the presidency of Carlos Menem in the 1990s. In this chapter I argue that the strong male breadwinner form typical of the Argentine welfare regime has weakened as a result of the combined effect of changes in families, neoliberal policies that have drawn more women into the labour market, and changes in family support policies in place since the 1990s. Indeed, government responses to new challenges have involved market solutions to child care and neofamilial policies in which traditional gender roles are still in place. The weakening of the male breadwinner family form has altered relations among paid work, unpaid work, and welfare protection for women. Once women assume responsibilities outside the family, they must find someone else to provide care services in their households, given that gender relations in the home have not substantially changed. Analysing this situation requires the use of theories and concepts developed by gender scholars studying North America and Europe, since the policy literature in Latin America has not paid sufficient attention to the gendered bases of welfare and social policy restructuring. The chapter has two sections. The first outlines Gøsta EspingAndersen’s welfare regime typology and the main criticisms developed by feminist scholars, particularly those surrounding the nexus of paid work, unpaid work, and welfare. The second section applies a gendered welfare regime analysis to the Argentine case, analysing its main features and the changes related to the welfare restructuring carried out during the 1990s. In order to account for the changes and their gendered effects, I look at reforms to family policies, including family allowances and the organization of care. The goals of the welfare regime have changed: from income maintenance, a main characteristic of the Bismarckian welfare regime, to poverty alleviation – that is, the creation of safety nets for those outside formal employment and thus without social security.

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Varieties of Welfare Capitalism Gøsta Esping-Andersen created a typology that addresses how different regimes provide welfare benefits based on the scope and content of social citizenship. Because Esping-Andersen was concerned with ‘how state activities are interlocked with the market’s and the family’s role in social provision’ (1990, 31), his typology of welfare regimes (1999) is based on the interactions among the three pillars of welfare protection: state, markets, and families. The allocation of welfare responsibilities to any given pillar results in a different form of welfare state, with different consequences in terms of the extent of social security provision and equity standards. More specifically, variations in welfare regime types are based upon the extent to which social needs are satisfied by state intervention through social programs rather than by private insurance via the market. As Esping-Andersen points out, ‘[n]eo-liberals advocate the primacy of markets (and usually ignore the family), while conservatives favour more family and local community social responsibility. And social democracy’s long-standing preference for collective solutions is anchored in its fear that both the family and the market alternative offer insufficient security while fostering inegalitarian results’ (2002, 13). Indeed, conservative welfare regimes in southern Europe have been criticized for relying too much on the family – namely, on women’s unpaid work – to provide welfare. Esping-Andersen defines three basic types of welfare regime. The first is common in the social democratic countries of Scandinavia and emphasizes the allocation of welfare responsibilities by the state, allowing complete decommodification – that is, the degree to which individuals are entitled to social benefits regardless of their position in the labour market. This type of welfare regime is characterized by greater gender equality, favouring women’s labour market insertion facilitated by extensive public child care support (defamilialization). The wide development of public welfare protection is supported by an extensive tax basis for developing social programs. The second type of welfare system, the continental European welfare regime, has its origins in the Bismarckian model of social security. Here, a high degree of decommodification is achieved through a set of social insurance schemes, but in southern Europe there is also greater focus on the welfare responsibilities of the traditional family. Based on social contributions and earnings-related benefits, this model has a hard time dealing with the new risks of post-industrial economies, particularly

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the greater flexibility of labour markets. It is also prone to incurring large fiscal deficits due to a narrow tax base and high expenditures for extensive pension systems. Finally, it entrenches and reinforces existing inequalities, as ‘it offers inadequate security for those with a tenuous connection with the labor market, such as women and workers with irregular careers’ (Esping-Andersen 2002, 16). The third type of welfare regime, the liberal model identified with the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada, designates the market as the main welfare provider. This model encourages privatization and consumer choice while maintaining a residual public role to deliver modest benefits to those falling below a minimal level. This model is the most commodified. Although less familialist than the conservative welfare regime, families are expected to find non-parental child care and other domestic support via the market, causing inequalities in access to services (Esping-Andersen 2002, 15–16). Esping-Andersen’s categorization of welfare regimes generated two sorts of critiques from scholars of the advanced industrial states. One critique is exemplified by Maurizio Ferrera, who emphasizes the need to focus on the political dynamics of welfare regimes in southern Mediterranean Europe. There, he argues, institutional instability combined with bureaucratic weakness – the lack of a modern civil service in the Weberian sense – and democratic deficits inherited from the authoritarian past have limited the scope of benefits and social security for the whole population (1996, 30). This has resulted in highly fragmented and stratified welfare regimes. This line of criticism is relevant for scholars studying welfare policy in Latin America, and particularly in Argentina, where similar dynamics of institutional weakness, regime instability, and legacies of authoritarianism have shaped welfare regime development and reform (Isuani 1992). A second line of criticism has been developed by feminist scholars focusing on the implications of different welfare regimes for gender inequality (see, for example, O’Connor, Orloff, and Shaver 1999). EspingAndersen acknowledges that families play a role in welfare provision, yet his typology of welfare regimes fails to discuss power relations within the family. According to Ann Orloff, Esping-Andersen ‘sees women as choosing between “work and the household,” with work possible for most women only if state services are widely available’ (1993, 313). For Esping-Andersen, the crucial relationship is between paid work and welfare, from which he derives the concept of decommodification. Yet, this concept is problematic for feminist scholars since

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it hides the fact that women are the main welfare providers within the family and do the bulk of unpaid work. Thus, women’s decommodification is not the result of their being liberated from the market but, rather, of their economic dependency on male breadwinners. Although Esping-Andersen includes households in his analysis, he is not interested in critically probing gender relations within welfare regimes. Rather, using the concept of defamilialization, he is content to ‘examine the degree to which families absorb social risks’ (1999, 51). Moreover, as Orloff points out, ‘[a]lthough Esping-Andersen is right to recognize the effects of services on women’s abilities to enter the paid labor force, his classification scheme does not reflect differences in how care is provided’ (1993, 312). Orloff considers central the stratifying effect of welfare state interventions on gender relations, emphasizing two important conditions that might affect stratification: the difference between full-time paid workers versus workers who do unpaid work or who combine part-time paid work with domestic labour; and the sexual division of labour in which women do the bulk of the unpaid work (1993, 314). For feminist scholars, the crucial relations are among paid work, unpaid work, and welfare. Jane Lewis suggests that this set of relations is gendered because, although more women have entered the labour market, thereby diminishing gendered divisions in paid work, ‘all the evidence suggests that the division of unpaid work remains substantially the same’ (1992, 160). The relationship between women’s paid and unpaid work is central in Lewis’s gendered analysis of welfare regimes, which measures the extent to which a male breadwinner model is promoted based on the organization of social care (particularly child care) and married women’s position in the labour market. In its pure type,1 a strong male breadwinner form would ‘find married women excluded from the labor market, firmly subordinated to their husbands for the purposes of social security entitlements and tax, and expected to undertake the work of caring (for children and other dependants) at home without public support’ (1992, 162). Lewis’s framework, focusing also on the gender ideology that supports policy and the organization of care, is useful for comparing countries as to whether their welfare policies promote a strong, moderate, or weak male breadwinner form of social care, and can provide a starting point for a gendered analysis of the Argentine welfare regime. A gendered analysis of welfare regimes should begin by exploring the type of social benefits and the conditions under which women become recipients of social protection. In some countries, such as those in Scandinavia, the fact that women are recipients of welfare based on

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their status as citizens contributes to the independence they enjoy. The treatment of paid and unpaid workers is another important aspect of gender relations, since it is women who tend to occupy part-time jobs that rarely provide social insurance in countries with liberal or corporatist regimes. Further, women’s access to paid work is related to the public and / or private provision of care services, which liberate women from care responsibilities within the family (Orloff 2001, 11). New global pressures – in particular, changes in family structures and women’s rising employment – affect government responses to child care in both industrialized states and developing countries. Rianne Mahon (2005) identifies four lines of response to the new challenges. The neoliberal response, based on market solutions – for example, private child care via low wages – and associated with the United States, comes at the price of greater class inequality. The other three are more likely to be found in European countries, and all imply some sort of public involvement in the implementation of child care policy. The neofamilial solution is more likely in conservative welfare regimes where gender differences remain almost untouchable. Neofamilialism emphasizes women’s ‘right’ to choose between a temporary housewife-mother role and labour force participation, although it is biased towards encouraging women’s traditional maternalist role (Mahon 2005, 4). Public child care is available, although limited, but the goal of maternal care is understood to be in the best interest of the child. In contrast, under the egalitarian model, identified with the Scandinavian countries, public forms of child care are provided on a universal basis, as is the promotion of parental (gender-neutral) leave. Finally the ‘third way’ develops an alternative solution for the provision of care services, based upon part-time jobs for mothers combined with short-term parental leave and public support for child care. Mahon’s analysis of different government responses to new common pressures is important for the analysis of changes in family support policies – in particular, child care – in Argentina and other Latin American countries. With the implementation of neoliberal reforms in the 1990s, women have occupied new jobs, increasing the pressure for non-parental child care. The next section analyses policy responses to this situation in Argentina. Argentina’s Hybrid Welfare Regime: Policy Legacies and Structural Reforms Argentina’s social security system was shaped by the political economy of the import substitution industrialization model, in which the state

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played a central role. This model was forged in the context of a particular type of state-society relationship, marked by the predominance of corporatist partisan representation. The populist basis of the Argentine welfare state was supported by a sui generis Keynesian compromise between workers and fractions of the national industrial business class against the agrarian sector. This model was constructed on the Bismarckian model of social security, in which (some) decommodification is achieved through a set of social insurance schemes. Yet, in contrast with other countries of the region, Argentina achieved a greater degree of social cohesion based on an extensive middle class, a working class with strong labour attachment, and high social mobility. In 2000, even after welfare state retrenchment, Argentina’s social expenditure was 21.6 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), almost double the Latin American average of 13.8 per cent and just below the average of 22.7 per cent for all member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (Pearson 2005, 399). In the Latin American context Argentina is part of a group of regional pioneers, along with Uruguay, Chile, Brazil, and Cuba, that developed social insurance schemes as early as the late 1910s and 1920s (Pearson 2005). Welfare programs in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay before the 1970s absorbed 10 per cent of GNP, ‘which was double that of the whole region, equal to Japan, and only surpassed by the western democracies’ (Schamis 1991, 214). Although social coverage was very uneven, excluding vast sectors of the population, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Costa Rica were considered the only welfare state regimes of Latin America (Huber 1996; Segura-Ubiergo 2007). The Argentine welfare state was thus a hybrid that combined corporatist social insurance schemes (social security provision, social health insurance, and family allowances) and social-democratic elements (a broad public education system and public health) to which access was free and universal (Lo Vuolo 1997). Entitlement to social insurance was conditional upon a contribution record; most benefits were earnings related, with financing provided mainly by employer and employee contributions. The main goal of social policy was income maintenance – for male breadwinners. Limited Social Citizenship and the Imbalance of the Welfare System Argentina’s welfare state contains some characteristics also found in the Mediterranean version of the conservative welfare state. Limits to

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the extension of social benefits on the basis of national citizenship created a very fragmented welfare regime. Evelyne Huber notes that linking social insurance benefits to participation in the formal labour market left out large segments of the population – namely, the rural and urban poor. She notes, however, that ‘Argentina performed among the top of the Latin American welfare regimes with more than 70% of its population covered by 1970 when the crisis of the welfare state had already started and more than 60% by 1980’ (1996, 142). Due to economic restructuring and the retrenchment of welfare policies, the Argentine welfare regime has been evolving towards a model more closely aligned with the liberal variant of welfare regimes. Because of the expansion of the informal economy, in which workers lack social insurance, the scope of social services has been limited; this reality has been reinforced by the original limits of full citizenship in Argentina. Familialism The Argentine welfare regime was built on the idea of the family as the primary social unit. As an ideal, Argentine familialism emerged during the formation of the national state around 1880. According to Mead, ‘the home as a theoretical locus of Argentine patriotism offered special advantages in this country where a short and tempestuous political history provided little material for unifying national myths’ (2000, 134). Familialism was also important to integrate a society that, at the end of the nineteenth century, had a larger foreign-born than native-born population, thus further weakening social cohesion.2 As in southern Europe, in Argentina the traditional family performs important welfare responsibilities. However, familialism did not automatically lead to policies that supported or directly strengthened the male head of household. Family allowances were paid to the head of household regardless of sex, and mothers were protected regardless of their civil status (single or married). This was not because of any state concern with gender equality, but because of the state’s goal of reducing child mortality and increasing the population.3 A strong gendered division of labour and women’s unpaid work in the household thus supported a solid reliance on the family, consolidating the predominance of the male breadwinner family form. Women, however, were incorporated into the labour market at a very early stage as a consequence of industrialization, urbanization, and the expansion of welfare services, though they were not openly encouraged to seek

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paid employment, which was ‘acceptable’ only among those in need – namely, poor women and single mothers (Nari 2004). This situation started to change by the 1960s with the incorporation of middle-class women into the labour force due to the modernization of gender relations and higher education rates among women. However, labour force participation rates among women remain low, and since women do not occupy the same positions as men in the labour market due to the gender segregation of the labour market and women’s lower wages, they generally receive different kinds of social benefits –another indication of imbalance and weakness in Argentina’s social security model. Gender Dualism Hybridism and familialism have important consequences for women’s access to social benefits. Women receive social services on the basis of their roles as citizen mothers and working mothers. Early protective maternal legislation emerged during Argentina’s economic modernization, in particular due to demographic pressures to combat depopulation and infant mortality around the turn of the twentieth century. The first such law was passed in 1934, but subsequent legislation was adopted to follow International Labour Organization conventions to protect the rights of working mothers and reconcile work and family life. The development of social assistance programs was linked to maternal protection and involved maternal leave, child care (restricted to workplaces and only partially implemented), and the strengthening of social security benefits paid to male breadwinners. Thus the dualist nature of Argentina’s welfare regime is reflected by the social security system for paid workers (usually men) and social assistance (residual policies) for women – principally lone mothers, widows, and the poor – who cannot rely on a male breadwinner for their financial security. Currently Argentina faces demographic pressures that are common to industrialized countries – that is, low fertility, especially in large metropolitan and urban areas – but, as a result of increasing inequality, it shares with other developing countries a concern with high mortality rates and extended family size among the poor. The Argentine social situation is thus shaped by economic inequality and social polarization, features explained further later in this chapter. Persistent pro-natalist and maternalist protective legislation also produced a maternalist discourse that shaped both social policies and political discourse (Nari 2004). In this regard, maternity leave and child

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care were not developed to promote women’s inclusion in the labour market generally but, rather, as a partial response to the need for women’s work in the public sector and in industries such as textiles. In addition, from social policies developed in the early years of Peronism up until today, child care has been seen as a means to alleviate poverty by facilitating women’s ability to work outside the home. Structural Adjustment Policies and Their Effect on Households and Women With the crisis of the old welfare state and the adoption of neoliberal reforms in the 1990s, government policy priorities shifted. Along with the retrenchment of family benefits during Menem’s government (1990–9), the goals of the welfare regime shifted from workers’ income maintenance to poverty alleviation, a reform that split the health system between the private provision and universal public provision of health care, and labour market deregulation. These reforms consolidated the hybridism of the welfare regime and intensified the gender dualism of social provision. In Latin America, neoliberal policies put families under extra pressure due to cutbacks in social spending. As Barrientos points out, in contrast to conservative regimes in developed countries, in Latin America ‘workers in informal employment relied instead on the household and the labour market as sources of insurance against social risks’ (2004, 167). The social situation in Argentina, as in other countries of Latin America, is characterized by an aging population, the feminization of poverty, high unemployment rates for both men and women, and women’s growing presence in the informal job market. As neoliberal policies were introduced, it became evident that the provision of social services relied too much on families, and the decline of the male breadwinner further undermined the ability of families to absorb social risks. In addition, women were particularly affected, since they were pushed into the labour market to compensate for falling wages and job losses of males. Between 1991 and 1995 the female labour force participation rate increased from 38.1 per cent to 45.8 per cent – by 2006 the rate in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires was over 50 per cent.4 According to Cerrutti (2003), the main effect of structural adjustment policies on women’s work is the intermittent character of employment among poorer women. Middle-class women, in contrast, who are more educated and career oriented, are more able to find better and more

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stable jobs. In addition, due to the availability of women’s domestic labour – by 2004, 17 per cent of women’s employment was concentrated in the domestic sector (Cortés 2004) – and private child care, middleclass families are in a better position to afford child care (Cerrutti 2003). Not only are poorer women more likely to enter precarious and unstable jobs in the informal sector, they also face difficulties in finding affordable child care. Moreover, poorer women have limited access to contraception services and reproductive rights, which is evident in the deep class and regional differences in the fertility rate of Argentine women. In 2001, for example, 39 per cent of women of non-poor households had no children, while 84 per cent of women who were mothers in this same socioeconomic class had between one and three children, and only 16 per cent had four or more children. In contrast, 29 per cent of poor women had no children and 41 per cent had four or more children. And while women in Buenos Aires had a fertility rate of 1.3, women in Formosa, a poor province located in the northeast had a rate of 2.8 (Gogna 2004, 29). The predominant male breadwinner family form has been destabilized by changes in family composition due to the modernization of social relations as marriage rates have fallen and cohabitation rates have risen. For example, in Buenos Aires, the cohabitation rate rose from 1.5 per cent in 1960 to 13.6 per cent in 1991 and to 21 per cent in 2001 (Jelin and Diaz Muñoz, 2003). A relatively recent phenomenon is the growth of female-headed households, which is associated with the feminization of poverty. In 1990, 21 per cent of households were headed by women, but by 2009 the rate was 32.5 per cent, an increase of 55 per cent (Tabush 2009). Many social assistance programs have targeted these groups as part of Argentina’s poverty reduction strategies. The male breadwinner family form has also been eroded by structural adjustment policies, which have altered the relationships among paid work, unpaid work, and welfare protection for women. Changes in family composition and the crisis of old forms of social provision have driven social policy transformation, but the policy responses have been contradictory, involving a dual system of welfare provision: the old incomemaintenance model, guided by a gender-sameness view, and a new liberal residual component based on means-tested programs. As more and more women have entered the labour force, the demand for child care services has increased, but policy responses have oscillated between neoliberal and neofamilial solutions (Mahon 2005). During the 1990s Menem’s government followed the neoliberal path of defamilialization via the private provision of child care services, mainly as a result of the

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trend towards privatization of the education system. It also involved the explicit adoption of policies related to the ‘reconciliation of work and family life agenda.’ However, the limits of formal child care have their counterpart in the development of informal arrangements – indeed, for those without sufficient resources to access market services, child care is mainly dependent upon interfamilial arrangements. The Family Allowances Program and the Restructuring of Family Benefits In 1968, during the bureaucratic-authoritarian regime, President Juan Carlos Onganía created the Cajas de Asignaciones Familiares (family allowances program) to replace the former Cajas de Maternidad (maternity insurance funds), created in 1934. Both men and women have access to family allowance benefits, but while the unit of entitlement is the family, the recipient is the head of household (the one whose income is higher within the household), effectively meaning that most recipients are men due to their better position in the job market. By the 1990s, however, the family allowances program was coming under increasing stress because of two factors. First, retired workers came to form a larger share of beneficiaries while the number of contributors did not increase accordingly. Second, there was a constant transfer of resources to fund other social policies. Consequently, the level of benefits had deteriorated in real terms – for instance, in 1988 the amount of social benefits for a family of four equalled just 20 per cent of that provided in 1970 (Torrado 2004). As well, because the program covers only formal registered workers, the growth of the informal economy has meant that increasing numbers of workers – usually the poorest with the greatest family responsibilities – are ineligible for benefits. In 1980, 70 per cent of waged work was in the formal sector, while in 2000 it was just 53 per cent (Lo Vuolo 1995). Currently, almost half of workers are excluded from the social security system (see Patroni and Feldman, this volume). By the same token, the government’s restructuring of family benefits has contributed to the decline of the male breadwinner form.5 As a result of the financial crisis of 2001–2, extreme poverty and inequality escalated. Both unemployment and informal work also rose to unprecedented levels. Impoverishment peaked in 2002 when 57.2 per cent of the population was living in poverty and 27.5 per cent in extreme poverty. Unemployment also reached its highest level in May 2002, at 21.5 per cent (Tabbush 2009). The dramatic social situation

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forced the governments of Eduardo Duhalde (2002–3) and Néstor Kirchner (2003–7) to reformulate family policies with the support of international institutions such as the Inter-American Development Bank. While these governments maintained the family allowance program for formal registered workers, the persistent informality of the labour market and increasing poverty led them to create two new programs to transfer cash payments to needy families: the Programa Jefes y Jefas de Hogar (Male and Female-Headed Households Plan) and the Plan Familias (Families Plan). The Programa Jefes y Jefas de Hogar, introduced in 2003, is essentially a workfare program targeting unemployed heads of household regardless of sex, responsible for a child below the age of eighteen or caring for a disabled or pregnant spouse. Despite the program’s genderneutral design, 71 per cent of beneficiaries are women – due to high female unemployment levels – with low educational levels (elementary) and in their reproductive years (ages twenty to forty). Beneficiaries also come from the poorest sectors of the population, tend to live in large households (with an average of around five members), have low levels of economic activity, and experience high unemployment rates (Tabbush 2009). Although the program’s ultimate goal is to enable unemployed women to rejoin the labour market, most of the jobs available to women are precarious in nature and concentrated particularly in domestic service.6 The program has not had a major impact on reducing poverty, though it did help to reduce indigence by 3 per cent in the year it was introduced. It has, however, come under considerable criticism, predominantly from the Catholic Church, the political opposition, and diverse social groups, largely because the discretionary manner in which benefits are distributed has enabled clientelism and ‘for not encouraging a culture of work’ (Tabbush 2009, 308). The Plan Familias, adopted in 2004, is based on the social investment strategy in human capital that international organizations have promoted, and was partially inspired by conditional cash transfer programs such as Mexico’s Oportunidades and Brazil’s Bolsa Familia (see Luccisano and Macdonald, in this volume). The Plan Familias pays cash benefits to mothers, targeting highly vulnerable (unemployable) mothers responsible for children under the age of eighteen. Transfers are provided according to family size, and are conditional on school attendance and health checks of children between five and nineteen years of age. Both of these new programs, however, have exacerbated gender inequality. The Programa Jefes y Jefas de Hogar has stimulated the growth of

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insecure paid jobs for men and provides only minimal resources for women in the form of an allowance, instead of an income. Because stable and well-paid employment often is not available, women tend to remain in the program, providing a great incentive for the government to move them into the Plan Familias, which does not have the explicit goal of reintroducing women into the labour market; rather, by paying cash transfers to poor women based on conditionality, it reinforces their traditional gender roles as mothers and discourages them from seeking paid employment outside the home (Tabbush 2009). Moreover, while eliminating poverty is vital to achieving gender equality, antipoverty programs that target, isolate, and stigmatize poor female-headed families fail to respect the essential normative principles of gender equality (Fraser 1994). Women’s Employment Support Policies: The Organization of Care A final element of family support is the non-parental child care system. As Mahon (2005) points out, conservative welfare regimes have not provided public solutions to non-parental child care. Instead, increasing inequality via market provision and neofamilial solutions are the norm. In Argentina an important aspect of the gendered welfare regime is the preschool system, since it works as one of the main sources of child care for working parents. Public kindergarten is free for children ages three to five and funded through general revenues from taxes. The expansion of the preschool system is a responsibility of the ministry of education, but this has been understood mainly as being in the best interest of the child, not aimed at supporting the mother’s employment as has been the case in other conservative welfare regimes like that of France, where women are encouraged to work and the public child care system has been progressively expanded to a full-time basis (Morgan 2003). In Argentina, in contrast, public preschools cover only half-days, though there are more options in the private sector. Thus, the system responds only partially to the child care needs of working parents. By 2005, 96 per cent of fiveyear-olds were enrolled in private and public kindergartens, along with 60  per cent of four-year-olds and 30 per cent of three-year-olds. Although the government has made efforts to expand early childhood education, the majority of three- and four-year-olds are enrolled in private kindergartens (Argentina 2007). Poverty and inequality also affect school attendance. Among five-year-olds from lower-income households, only 88 per cent attend school, compared with 97 per cent of children from the

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highest-income households; among three-year-olds, the figures are 25 per cent and 47 per cent, respectively. In addition, the employability of the head of households has an impact on school attendance: children from families with an unemployed head of household are less likely to be in school than children from families where the head of household is employed (Argentina 2007). A second aspect of child care in Argentina is the system of municipal daycare centres, which covers children from three months to two years old. This system is fragmented, however, among private, public, and community-based centres. Although data are unavailable, some information I collected through interviews in Buenos Aires helps to reveal the system’s main challenges.7 In 2005 the city had thirteen fulltime daycare centres regulated by the municipal government, originally created to supply the demand of public sector workers in the federal and municipal governments. Along with these formally regulated centres, there were seventy community-based daycare centres, subsidized by the municipal government of Buenos Aires to attend to needy families and working women. These centres, however, are not subjected to the same regulations and monitoring as the public and private preschool system, but emerged in an emergency context to respond to working women and to provide supplementary meals for poor children. Some concerns have been raised about the inequality of the child care system. In Buenos Aires, for example, demand for child care services is higher in the poorer southern part of the city, with 70 per cent of waiting lists in that area, but the response of the municipal government to expand the system has been slow or non-existent (Savoia 2009). Moreover, the increasing participation of women in the labour market has placed more pressure on existing public services and contributed to expanding private services, which are not subject to government regulation in terms of quality and safety. The private sector also shows a high degree of variation, with some private services covering the needs of middle-class families and charging affordable fees while others offering expensive full services, including, for example, bilingual education from the age of two.8 Finally, one of the main sources of child care is domestic workers – women working in private households – and intra family informal arrangements, both of which are important for low- and low-to-middle-income families and which help to determine the intermittent character of so many women’s paid labour (Cerrutti 2003).

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Conclusion In Argentina the pattern of a family with a strong male breadwinner has been weakened as a result of the combined effect of modernization, structural adjustment policies during the 1990s, and the dismantling of family benefits that focused on the traditional nuclear family. New family support policies reveal the emergence of new social goals of the Argentine welfare state – formerly income maintenance, now poverty alleviation – and new social tools to deal with poverty through targeted programs. These changes have had important consequences for gender inequality. The relationship among paid work, unpaid work, and welfare for Argentine women denotes a set of inequalities, due to women’s weaker position in the labour market and limited family support and child care services. While Argentine governments have adopted no explicit policies to balance family responsibilities and work, their efforts to raise women’s employment and reduce poverty have encouraged the growth of private services, particularly child care, and neofamilial solutions in the form of compensation for the work of poor mothers through conditional cash transfers. Moreover, the coexistence of various forms of social regimes has reinforced the hybrid character of the Argentine welfare state, an aspect that is common to other Latin American countries and rooted in the tradition of Mediterranean welfare states.

NOTES 1 A ‘pure type’ is a theoretical construction. Strong male breadwinner forms allow a certain minimum level of women’s paid work, particularly for poor women, but government policies are insufficient to support women’s paid labour in the form of child care and so on. 2 In 1887, for example, in Buenos Aires city among people fifteen years of age and older, there were 38,207 Argentine-born and 135,792 foreign-born men, and 51,703 Argentine-born and 69,080 immigrant women (Mead 2000). 3 In the Southern Cone, both Argentina and Uruguay have been gender neutral in paying family allowances, while Chile has implemented a discriminatory system towards women. For an analysis of these cases, see Pribble (2006). 4 Higher women’s employment rates are the result of workfare programs such as the Programa Jefes y Jefas de Hogar, which are counted as jobs in government statistics.

244 Comparative Public Policy in Latin America 5 As part of a broader move towards labour market flexibilization, in 1996 the Peronist government decided to change the nature of the program limiting the scope of benefits for families, eliminating the benefit per spouse and establishing a floor income that excluded higher earners. 6 A policy to formalize domestic workers was implemented during Néstor Kirchner’s presidency. 7 The author conducted several non-attributed interviews in 2005 with government officials of the Buenos Aires city government, in the social assistance secretariat, responsible for child care services, the Council of Children’s Rights and other dependencies. 8 For information on the distribution of public and private childcare centers along the Argentina’s territory, see www.mapaeducativo.edu.ar/inicial REFERENCES Argentina. 2007. Ministerio de Educación. ‘El nivel inicial en la ultima década: desafíos para su universalización.’ Buenos Aires: Ministerio de Educación, Dirección Nacional de Información y Evaluación de la Calidad Educativa. Barrientos, Armando. 2004. ‘Latin America: Towards a Liberal-Informal Welfare Regime.’ In Insecurity and Welfare Regimes in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, ed. Ian Gough. New York: Cambridge University Press. Cerrutti, Marcela. 2003. ‘Determinantes de la participación intermitente de las mujeres en el mercado de trabajo del Area Metropolitana de Buenos Aires.’ Desarrollo Económico 39, no. 156. Cortés, Rosalía. 2004. ‘Salarios y marco regulatorio del trabajo en el servicio doméstico.’ Buenos Aires: OIT / MTEyS. Esping-Andersen, Gøsta. 1990. The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press. – 1999. Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. – 2002. Why We Need a New Welfare State. Oxford: Oxford University Press Ferrera, Maurizio. 1996. ‘The “Southern Model” of Welfare in Social Europe.’ Journal of European Social Policy 6, no. 1: 17–37. Fraser, Nancy. 1994. ‘After the Family Wage: Gender Equity and the Welfare State.’ Political Theory 22, no. 4: 591–618. Gogna, Mónica, coord. 2004. Las reformas del sector salud en Argentina y Chile: oportunidades y obstáculos para la promoción sexual reproductiva. Buenos Aires: CEDES / BID. Haggard, Stephen, and Robert Kaufman. 2008. Development, Democracy, and Welfare States: Latin America, East Asia, and Eastern Europe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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Huber, Evelyne. 1996. ‘Options for Social Policy in Latin America: Neoliberal versus Social Democratic Models.’ In Welfare States in Transition: National Adaptations in Global Economies, ed. Gøsta Esping-Andersen. London: Sage. Isuani, Aldo. 1992. ‘Política social y dinámica política en América Latina: nuevas respuestas para viejos problemas?’ Desarrollo Económico 32, no. 125: 107–18. Jelin, Elizabeth, and A.R. Díaz-Muñoz. 2003. ‘Major Trends Affecting Families: South America in Perspective.’ New York: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Lewis, Jane. 1992. ‘Gender and the Development of Welfare Regimes.’ Journal of European Social Policy 2, no. 3: 159–73. Lo Vuolo, Rubén M. 1995. ‘Structural Reforms and Labour Markets in Argentina.’ Scandinavian Journal of Social Welfare 4: 131–9. – 1997. ‘The Retrenchment of the Welfare State in Latin America: The Case of Argentina.’ Social Policy and Administration 31, no. 4: 390–409. Mahon, Rianne. 2005. ‘The OECD and the Reconciliation Agenda: Competing Blueprints.’ Paper presented at the conference ‘Challenges and Opportunities Faced by European Welfare States: The Changing Context for Child Welfare,’ St Anne’s College, Oxford University, 7–8 January. Mead, Karen. 2000. ‘Beneficent Maternalism: Argentine Motherhood in Comparative Perspective, 1880–1920.’ Journal of Women’s History 12, no. 3: 120–45. Morgan, Kimberly. 2003. ‘The Politics of Mothers’ Employment: France in Comparative Perspective.’ World Politics 55, no. 2: 259–89. Nari, Marcela. 2004. Políticas de maternidad y maternalismo político. Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblos. O’Connor, Julia, Ann Orloff, and Sheila Shaver. 1999. States, Markets, Families: Gender, Liberalism and Social Policy in Australia, Canada, Great Britain and the United States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Orloff, Ann Shola. 1993. ‘Gender and Social Rights of Citizenship.’ American Sociological Review 58, no. 3: 303–28. – 2001. ‘Gender Equality, Women’s Employment: Cross-National Patterns of Policy and Politics.’ Keynote lecture at the workshop on ‘Old and New Social Inequalities: What Challenges for the Welfare State?’ Research Committee on Poverty, Social Welfare and Social Poverty, International Sociological Association, University of Oviedo, Spain. Pearson, Chris. 2005. ‘Late Industrialization and the Development of Welfare Regimes.’ Acta Politica 40, no. 4: 395–418. Pribble, Jennifer. 2006. ‘Women and Welfare: The Politics of Coping with New Social Risks in Chile and Uruguay.’ Latin American Research Review 41, no. 2: 84–111.

246 Comparative Public Policy in Latin America Savoia, Claudio. 2009. ‘Desde 2002 aumentó la desigualdad educativa en la ciudad.’ Clarín (Buenos Aires), 14 June. http://www.clarin.com/ diario/2009/06/14/um/m-01939011.htm. Schamis, Héctor. 1991. ‘Reconceptualizing Latin American Authoritarianism in the 1970s: From Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism to Neoconservatism.’ Comparative Politics 23, no. 2: 201–20. Segura-Ubiergo, Alex. 2007. The Political Economy of the Welfare State in Latin America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tabbush, Constanza. 2009. ‘Gender, Citizenship and New Approaches in Poverty Relief: Conditional Cash Transfer Programmes in Argentina.’ In The Gendered Impacts of Liberalization: Towards ‘Embedded Liberalism’? ed. Shahra Razavi. New York: Routledge. Torrado, Susana. 2004. La herencia del ajuste: cambios en la sociedad y la familia. Buenos Aires: Capital Intelectual.

11 Social Policy Reform and Continuity under the Bachelet Administration1 Rossana Castiglioni

In March 2006 Michelle Bachelet became the first woman to take office as president of Chile. The candidate of the Concertación coalition of centreleft parties, she had campaigned under the slogan of promoting change in a political system stubbornly committed to the perpetuation of the status quo. During her presidential campaign, and subsequent presidency, Bachelet made it clear that social protection was a key component of the agenda of her government, stressing the need to reform the pension system by introducing solidarity into a hitherto purely market-based scheme, expanding the health care system, developing the pre-elementary school system for low-income families, and establishing new mechanisms to improve social programs dealing with poverty reduction. Bachelet’s policy decisions and political discourse have led many scholars and policy-makers to consider her administration to have been the most committed to social protection since 1990. Others, in contrast, strongly dispute this view. Towards the end of her term, for example, former opposition presidential candidate Joaquín Lavín complained that Bachelet was attempting to monopolize social protection.2 The question of whether the Bachelet administration promoted a marked change in the realm of social policy or maintained the status quo therefore warrants analysis. In this chapter I analyse patterns of continuity and change in social policy in Chile. In so doing I examine the evolution of pensions, education, and health care under the Bachelet administration. I argue that, despite the strong pro-change discourse of that period, a combination of institutional, societal, and ideological factors has maintained the principal features of the Chilean social policy system. The presence of formal and informal institutions that promote the dispersion of governmental

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authority, the relative weakness (and atomization) of key non-state actors, and the ideological positions of policy-makers have impeded the adoption of social policy change to alter the status quo significantly. While Chilean presidents have strong constitutional powers, formal and informal institutions and features of the country’s party system significantly disperse governmental authority, restraining the president’s capacity to advance significant policy reform. Several features dilute presidential power: laws that require qualified majorities; the presence of an electoral system that underrepresents smaller (left-wing) political forces; the balance of power within the Concertación according to partisan affiliation (cuoteo); the existence of a democratic pact that incorporates policy objectives from the right-wing opposition (democracia de los acuerdos); and the autonomy of the institutions in charge of economic policymaking. In addition, non-state actors organized around social policy have no access to formal institutional arrangements to influence social policies. The labour movement is still relatively demobilized and interest groups remain atomized. In contrast, the Chilean business sector and private companies that provide social goods and services have remained strong. A long period of radical market-oriented reforms under military rule left pro-social policy groups extremely weakened and thus unable to counter new, powerful actors effectively. As a result, non-state actors which do not belong to such powerful business groups have limited capacity to push for or veto reform initiatives. This limited veto capacity helps us understand the continuity of Chile’s social policy system. Finally, since its transition to democracy, Chilean politics has been characterized by moderation and technocratization, and the presence of two ideologically distinct blocs, the depoliticization of redistributive issues, and the broad cross-coalition compromise to uphold market-oriented economic policy have also helped to maintain the status quo in terms of social policy. The chapter is organized as follows. First, I present a brief overview of the literature on social policy reform. I then analyse the main measures introduced in the areas of pensions, health, and education during the Bachelet administration, and examine the way in which formal and informal institutions disperse governmental authority. Finally, I offer a summary of the main findings. Understanding Social Policy Reform and Continuity Concertación governments in general, and the Bachelet administration in particular, introduced some innovations in the realm of social policy.

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Yet the key elements of the model inherited from military rule, such as targeting, means testing, privatization, and decentralization, among others, were maintained. The existing literature has identified three factors that explain patterns of change and continuity in social policy. The Distribution of Governmental Authority The distribution of governmental authority is key to explaining social policy variation. Whenever power is concentrated in a single or a few decision-making units, radical social policy change is much more likely to occur than when power is distributed among several units (Castiglioni 2005). As Huber, Ragin, and Stephens show, ‘aspects of constitutional structure that disperse political power and offer multiple points of influence on the making and implementation of policy are inimical to welfare state expansion’ (1993, 722). Moreover, dispersing political power also may ‘retard rollbacks in periods of welfare state retrenchment’ (Huber 1997, 6). At the same time, presidents enjoying strong constitutional and partisan powers concentrate governmental authority and thus have greater chances to advance their policy preferences. Following Scott Mainwaring and Mathew Shugart, Latin American presidents have two main ways to influence policy: ‘one is to have constitutional powers inherent in the office of the presidency that allow incumbents to have their preferences taken into consideration in the passage of legislation. Another is to have control over their own party and for that party to be in control of a majority of seats’ (1997, 40). The interaction between constitutional and partisan powers explains the level of presidential influence on policy outcomes. Other characteristics of the party system, such as fractionalization, fragmentation, and party discipline,3 are also important in explaining the degree to which governmental authority is concentrated or dispersed. In this regard Sarah Brooks suggests that executives facing highly fragmented party systems are ‘more likely to shy away from structural reform altogether, or to significantly reduce their reform agenda, to win support for a contentious reform such as pensions’ (2002, 503). Finally, others have also stressed the connection between executive-legislative relations and policy change in the area of pensions (Brooks 2002; Madrid 1999, 2002). In this vein Madrid shows that the adoption of pension reforms in Latin America has been chiefly related to, among other factors, the executive’s degree of control of the legislature (1999, 34).

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The Strength of Non-state Actors Non-state actors, particularly those able to push for or obstruct policy change, are crucial. The role of such actors becomes particularly relevant when policy decisions threaten the status quo (Castiglioni 2005). Stephen Kay has argued that ‘any explanation of the variation in policy reform in the region must incorporate not only an analysis of prominent interest group actors, but the degree to which political institutions enabled them to act as veto players’ (1998, 267–8). The ability of interest groups to challenge policy proposals, in turn, depends on their control of political resources (Madrid 2002). The study of social policy change also requires an analysis of policy feedback – that is, ‘the ways in which previous policy choices influence present political processes’ (Pierson 1994, 39). As social policies create interests, loyalties, resources, and incentives, introduce benefits and strengthen particular non-state actors, they may be also hard to transform. Whenever the process of welfare retrenchment is complemented by a strategy to break up traditional networks of organized support for welfare programs, these networks often end up losing their ability to promote a policy rollback (Pierson 1994, 1996). In other words, retrenchment policies might also bring with them ‘the weakening of the interest groups that might have lobbied for a reversal of the government’s policies’ (Pierson 1994, 158). The degree to which non-state actors can veto reform initiatives largely depends, in turn, on institutions. In other words, some institutional arrangements – such as direct democracy devices or the existence of policy-making prerogatives for non-state players – allow them to block or introduce legislation. Although institutional arrangements are by far the most important factor enabling non-state actors to advance or obstruct policy change, they are not the only relevant aspect. The ability of these actors to undermine reform initiatives also depends on the level of access they have to legislators, who can introduce or block a given policy proposal when it reaches the floor. As Ellen Immergut asserts, ‘the ability of interest groups to influence such legislative outcomes depends upon their ability to threaten the passage of the law, and hence, to convince those representatives holding critical votes to block the legislation’ (1992, 63). Finally, the degree to which non-state actors can influence policy also depends on their level of cohesion and their organizational capabilities. Highly organized, cohesive actors are much more likely to mobilize effectively than loosely organized, divided actors.

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Ideas and Social Policy The concentration of power and the organization of non-state actors explain the ability of governments to advance their agendas, but they cannot account for the content of policies and the direction of policy change (Castiglioni 2005). For this reason, it is necessary to examine the ideological positions of policy-makers. Several authors have stressed the connection between ideas and social policy choices (see, for example, Orloff 1992, 161–3; Müller and Wright 1994, 2–3; Huber 1997, 2). As Ann Orloff has argued, ‘it is useful to consider social policies as the institutionalization of given ideologies, though of course they are shaped by a range of other factors as well. Ideologies embody visions of the moral order, and state social provision is a critical way in which the moral order is expressed’ (1992, 161). John Kingdon defines ideas as ‘either goals or motivations other than self-interested pursuits, or theories that individuals hold about how the world works (for example, about cause-and-effect relationships) that can be used to further self-interest as well as other goals’ (1994, 221). This chapter follows his definition, but uses the term ‘ideology’ to emphasize that the ideas of relevant actors are gathered into a more or less internally consistent and comprehensive set of beliefs that influences and shapes their policy decisions. The ideological positions of key political actors and the technical teams in charge of economic and social policies are crucial in shaping policy change. When these actors and teams identify the market as the more efficient provider of goods and services and the best resource allocator, neoliberal policies are more likely to be formulated than when the state is identified as the key supplier. Of course, ideologies and ideas should be seen as existing on a continuum, rather than as dichotomous categories. However, determining the degree to which market or stateoriented ideas prevail within a policy-making community helps to predict the contents of policy proposals and the direction of policy change. At the same time, since these teams do not operate in a vacuum, it is necessary to analyse the ideological distribution of the political system in which they adopt and implement their policy decisions. As Carles Boix argues, ‘whereas right-wing parties are more likely to defend the market as the most legitimate and efficient institutional structure to deliver and distribute growth, left-wing parties lean towards the use of state intervention to counter market failures, ensure growth and redistribute income’ (1997, 479). As a result the ideas of the key policy-makers have to be addressed in the context of the party system.

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In this context a case study of social policy under the Bachelet administration shows that the intersection of ideas, governmental authority, and non-state actors is crucial to explaining social policy outcomes. The ideological positions of the core policy-makers determined the direction and content of proposals for social policy reform, but could not account for the ability of the Bachelet government to achieve its policy goals. This ability, in turn, depended on the distribution of governmental authority and on the degree to which non-state actors influenced social policy. While these explanations are spelled out separately from each other, their relevance depends on their combined effect. Social Policy Change under the Bachelet Administration The administration of Michelle Bachelet proclaimed, from the very beginning, that ‘social protection’ would become an important component of the government agenda. As Patricio Navia asserts, ‘after sixteen years of successful economic policies that brought about growth and strong poverty reduction, Bachelet shifted the focus to building an adequate network to help those who fall behind and to provide opportunities to those who, having left poverty, fear falling back when they lose their jobs, become ill or grow old … more than any other proposal, Bachelet’s best known social sector promises were a profound reform to the private pension system and the expansion of pre-school education to low income families’ (2008, 145). In this context, pension reform was a key priority. Right after taking office, Bachelet put together an advisory council (Consejo Asesor Presidencial para la Reforma Previsional) with the goal of elaborating a diagnosis of the pension system and a reform proposal. This council had a ‘technical’ nature, but it was open to receiving input from different individuals and institutions. The government subsequently introduced a law reforming the pension system, which was implemented in March 2008. The most important change to the system of individual capitalization since its establishment in 1981, the law introduced a so-called pilar básico solidario (basic solidarity pillar) through which the poorest 40 per cent of the population, who had never contributed to the system, would be entitled to receive an old age pension (for individuals aged sixty-five and older) or a disability pension (for disabled individuals older than eighteen and younger than sixty-five) of 60,000 Chilean pesos (in March 2009 approximately US$101) a month. This amount was raised to 75,000 pesos in July 2009 and coverage was to

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increase gradually to the poorest 60 per cent of the population by 2012. Individuals who receive an old age pension below 70,000 pesos (increasing gradually to 255,000 pesos in 2012) or a disability pension below 75,000 pesos are entitled to an aporte previsional solidario (solidarity pension contribution), except for those affiliated with the pension system of the military or police (Chile 2008b, 10–13). Additionally, under the new system, all women older than age sixtyfive and retiring after 1 July 2009 are entitled to receive, for each son or daughter born alive, a state bond representing 10 per cent of eighteen monthly minimum wages (the current monthly minimum wage is 181.500 Chilean pesos, the equivalent of about US$360) (ibid., 14–15). Other modifications include the affiliation of individuals who are not gainfully employed with the Administradoras de Fondos de Pensiones (AFPs, the administrator of pension funds), the possibility of dividing the savings of a pension fund in case of divorce, new incentives for voluntary individual and collective savings, and other minor changes. The policy area that perhaps changed the least was health care, as the framework and main characteristics of the system were largely maintained. That the Bachelet government did not introduce significant changes to the status quo in health care was quite unexpected, considering that Bachelet gained political visibility as health care minister under the Ricardo Lagos administration (2000–6) and that during her presidential campaign she stressed that she was a physician. In fact, the majority of the population remains covered by the Fondo Nacional de Salud (FONASA, the public health care system), and only upper- and upper-middle class individuals are able to bear the costs of private health care. In 2008 only 16.4 per cent of the population was covered by Instituciones de Salud Previsional (ISAPREs, private health care insurance companies), although, in the same year, the private system collected nearly half of all mandatory health care-related contributions. Instead the Bachelet administration basically focused on expanding the system of Garantías Explícitas de Salud (GES, explicit health guarantees), introduced by the Lagos government, which grants access to medical attention, within a clear timetable, to all patients who meet certain criteria for established pathologies (González 2003, 546). The list of pathologies and associated benefits for individuals insured under both the public and the private systems is established by the ministry of health using the ‘technical’ criteria of sanitary impact, effectiveness of the treatment, and the cost of each pathology (Chile 2004, 27). A pilot plan, which covered three pathologies, was launched in August 2002. The number of

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pathologies included under the GES plan was expanded in 2006 to fifty-six and in 2010 to sixty-nine. In her 21 May 2008 presidential address, Bachelet also announced a significant expansion of infrastructure and human resources. Perhaps the most salient new measures were a number of initiatives for which the Colegio Médico (College of Physicians) had pushed for some time, including salary increases, the enactment of new benefits and the improvement of working conditions of health care professionals, the incorporation of incentives for the retirement of physicians, and the obligation for all Chilean and foreign physicians to take a national medical exam in order to work in the public health care system (Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional 2008). For Bachelet it was education, more than any other social policy area, that created presidential headaches. The expansion of preschool education for the poorest families was an important goal from the outset (Navia 2008, 145), even though education was not considered a top priority. An additional measure was the implementation of the Ley de subvención escolar preferencial (Preferential School Subvention Law) that President Lagos presented to Congress in late 2005. This law created a system of differentiated subsidies according to the socio-economic level of students and introduced a series of new requirements for recipient schools, in exchange for these subsidies (Elacqua, Mosqueira, and Santos 2009). After only a few weeks in office, however, Bachelet had to redefine her priorities as her government was forced to deal with the so-called Revolución pingüina (Penguin Revolution),4 a significant mass mobilization of high school students that grew to unprecedented proportions. The government reacted by committing itself to the introduction of reforms to the education system. Among the most relevant announcements were the creation of a superintendence of education for the surveillance of the system, the formation of a Consejo Asesor Presidencial para la Calidad de la Educación) (Presidential Advisory Council for the Quality of Education), more investment in infrastructure, a commitment that the state would serve as a guarantor of educational quality in private and public schools, scholarships for students of polytechnic education taking internships, free school transportation and the lifting of fees to take the main entrance examination for university for students from low-income families, and the revocation of the existing Ley orgánica constitucional de enseñanza (LOCE, Organic Constitutional Law on Teaching). Debates regarding the LOCE, which Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990) introduced the day before leaving office, have been particularly bitter.

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The law established some key aspects of the Chilean education system, such as minimum curricular requirements for elementary and high schools and the definition of the role of the state and the executive, among other measures. A new education bill, the Ley general de educación (LGE, Law on Education), which emerged from the Presidential Advisory Council to replace the LOCE, was finally approved in March 2009. The LGE aims to secure the quality of the education system by creating a quality agency and entrusting the control and regulation of fiscal resources to the superintendent of education, and emphasizes the rights and duties of all actors involved in the education process (Chile 2008a). Yet, as Mary Rose Kubal has stated, the LGE ‘is strikingly similar to its predecessor and does not alter in any fundamental way the functioning of the school choice system’ (2009, 13).5 Evidently there was a certain degree of variance across policy areas during Bachelet’s administration. In education the government maintained the system’s structure of subsidies, decentralization, and targeting, while seeking to reinforce pedagogical and educational quality issues. Health care remained mostly untouched, as the main goal was to incorporate new pathologies to be covered by the GES plan and to expand human resources and medical facilities. In pensions, in turn, the government introduced important modifications intended to strengthen the role of the state and to correct some of the most conspicuous inequalities of the system of individual capitalization. Power and Authority in Chile’s Policy-making Process While Chilean presidents have strong constitutional powers, a series of formal and informal institutions and partisan features greatly dilutes governmental authority, constraining the president’s ability to promote a pattern of radical policy change to the status quo. Due to the formal and informal institutional framework, the strength of the opposition, the dynamics of the transition to democracy, and the country’s political history, Chilean politics has been characterized by the presence of cohesive pre-electoral and governing coalitions. In the redemocratization period, Chilean politics has been structured around two main political blocs. The Concertación is a centre-left coalition formed by the Christian Democrats, the Socialists, the Party for Democracy, the Radical Party, and other smaller political parties. The Alianza por Chile is a right-of-centre coalition formed by National Renovation, the Independent Democratic Union, and other smaller parties. As former member of

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Congress and foreign affairs minister Ignacio Walker explains, as the government, the Concertación negotiated at two different levels: one is related to the government program, which is an agreement among the parties … The second key aspect is the supra-party agreement. This is to understand that at any given period of government, there is no shared government [cogobierno] of the parties, rather the decision belongs to the President of the Republic. So the parties submit proposals, they offer opinions, they are consulted, but they do not have any decision power the decision belongs to the president. For that reason, the political and economics ministers are very important, inasmuch as they are the articulators of the relationships between the president and the parties and between the government and Congress.6

Additionally the literature on Latin American institutions has generally pointed to the Chilean case as one of extreme presidentialism, as Chilean presidents historically have enjoyed remarkably strong constitutional powers (Shugart and Carey 1992; Siavelis 2002). The 1980 constitutional reform introduced by the Pinochet dictatorship exacerbated the strength of the chief executive, as it ‘call[ed] for extreme concentration of power in the president’s hand, such [that] the legislature is marginalized from policy making’ (Mainwaring and Shugart 1997, 9). Among the constitutional prerogatives of Chilean presidents are strong veto and decree powers, the use of executive urgency when introducing legislative proposals, the appointment of ministers without congressional approval, and the exclusive introduction of certain bills (Mainwaring and Shugart 1997, 49, 51, 446; Siavelis 1997, 327–31).7 Despite such power, however, multiple institutional and partisan features constrain presidents’ capacity to advance their legislative agendas. Since the end of the Pinochet era, Chilean presidents have enjoyed a moderately high level of control over the lower chamber of Congress (the Chamber of Deputies) (see Coppedge 2001, 12-13), but given that right-wing parties have had the majority of seats in the Senate, the degree to which Concertación presidents could control legislators in the upper chamber was considerably more limited. Bachelet started her administration controlling 52.6 per cent of the upper chamber, a favourable context due to a constitutional reform during the Lagos administration that succeeded in eliminating ‘designated’ senators who had previously advantaged the right-wing parties. However, since key

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structural reforms in Chile usually need super majorities to be enacted into law, leyes orgánicas consitucionales (organic constitutional laws) such as the LOCE mean that any significant change to the status quo requires the support of the opposition in both chambers (Couso and Coddou 2009). As a result, even though Bachelet was in a better position than were her predecessors in controlling a majority of Senate seats, she still had to negotiate with the opposition. Furthermore the electoral system introduced by the military government (the sistema binominal) sought to overrepresent the right and to undermine the salience of small political groups, particularly the Communist Party.8 As John Carey explains, ‘parties can win representation in Congress only if they are part of one of the two largest lists in a given district. Those parties on the radical left that have been unwilling or unwelcome to enter the center-left Concertación coalition have been virtually disenfranchised … A second important effect of the system is that, given the distribution of electoral support in Chile, elections systematically over-represent the coalition of the right’ (1997, 93–4). As a result of the overrepresentation of the right, special majority laws and, until recently, the presence of ‘designated’ senators, the ability of Concertación presidents to advance policies to alter significantly the status quo – or to get approval for bills that challenge the policy preferences of the right-wing opposition – was rather limited. Moreover some key informal institutions also inhibit the concentration of presidential power. As Peter Siavelis has shown convincingly, the cuoteo9 and the democracia de los acuerdos (democracy by agreement) are important informal institutions that shape Chilean democracy. Cuoteo is crucial to maintaining the balance of power within the Concertación. In turn, ‘by systematically engaging in a game of democracia de los acuerdos, presidents [have] assured business elites and parties of the right that their fundamental interests [are] taken into account’ (Siavelis 2006, 50). In this way ‘the model of democracia de los acuerdos [has] allowed presidents to advance their legislative agendas while consistently assuaging the fears of a potentially reactionary right’ (48). As a result policy change tends to be rather moderate. Two additional legacies of the previous military regime have also diluted presidential powers. On the one hand, the 1980 constitution expanded ‘the prerogatives and autonomy of several state agencies (most importantly, the Constitutional Tribunal, the Central Bank, the Comptroller General, the National Security Council, and the Armed Forces)’ (Barrett

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1999, 19). By securing the autonomy and the insulation of the institutions in charge of economic policy making, most notably the central bank,10 the military constrained the ability of elected officials to modify the main features of the existing macroeconomic model and secured the continuity of economic policies (Boylan 1998). On the other hand, the main principles of the military government’s economic policy, to which social policy is still subordinated, gained constitutional rank. Thus, the constitution greatly binds the scope of the state’s intervention in the economic and social realms. In short, as Siavelis has demonstrated, more often than not Chilean presidents have ‘avoided presenting major legislative and constitutional reform initiatives that were unlikely to pass’ (2002, 88). In this way, the institutional and partisan characteristics of the Chilean political arena are inimical to radical social policy change. The remarkable constitutional powers of Chilean presidents are countered by institutional and partisan factors that result in the maintenance of the social policy model, while the need to negotiate policy change with a right-wing opposition and the restrictions imposed by the 1980 constitution have resulted in a rather moderate pattern of policy change that has not fundamentally altered the status quo. The moderately stronger partisan powers of President Bachelet probably favoured the introduction of some policy innovations, such as the recent pension reform. Yet, as we have seen, the main traits of the system of social protection were maintained. Non-state Actors in the Policy Process The redemocratization period has been characterized by a rather imbalanced relationship between organized labour and the business sector. A long period of social policy retrenchment under military rule left prosocial policy groups extremely weakened and unable to counter new, powerful actors effectively. As the new private providers of social services and the business organizations that resulted from a long period of exportoriented policies had strong ties to the right-wing opposition and closely collaborated with Concertación governments, they have had considerable veto power over policy change. While organized groups are almost nonexistent in the area of pensions, they are still relatively active in health care and, increasingly, in education. However, they do not possess the necessary institutional resources to become effective veto players. The Pinochet dictatorship sought to neutralize unions and interest groups organized around social policy. Accordingly, during the redemoc-

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ratization period, ‘the organized social constituencies and competitive political dynamics that historically propelled welfare policy have declined substantially’ (Kurtz 2002, 301). The creation of new powerful private agents related to the production and administration of public services, such as AFPs and ISAPREs, and the sustained expansion of export-oriented sectors, combined with a long period of demobilization and repression of labour, are some of the most prominent legacies of the military regime (Nef and Galleguillos 1995, 120; Barrett 1999, 17). In this context, during the transition to democracy, political groups linked to the military government stressed that a new right-wing government would secure the continuation of the ‘outstanding’ macroeconomic performance of the country and would favour the export-oriented pattern of development already in place. This forced the Concertación not only to construct a close system of collaboration with the business sector – to minimize fears of harmful statist policies as well as to reduce the risk of declining investment – but also to promise that the development strategy of the previous government would be maintained (Silva 1996, 231). According to Eduardo Silva, gaining the confidence of business meant that the scope of social policy options available to the Concertación was rather limited inasmuch as the type of policies the government could adopt had to be compatible with the maintenance of the existing development model (1996). Additionally, because the business sector is closely connected to the right-wing majority in the Senate, it has considerable veto power over legislation. This, in turn, makes any attempt to challenge orthodox policies ‘difficult and politically risky’ (Weyland 1999, 68). As a result, ‘increased spending for means-tested programs targeted for the extremely poor, along with a social investment fund, were an expedient and relatively uncontroversial means for delivering on the promise of economic growth with equity’ (Silva 1996, 232). Non-state actors organized around social sectors have displayed different strategies and levels of success in achieving their goals. In the area of pensions, in contrast to other policy areas, Chile lacks a major national organization of pensioners.11 In other words, in this policy area, ‘labour resistance does not exist around a public apparatus; it is not organized around productive activities and does not generate large labor unions opposing change. And this is a fundamental difference with health care, where corporate interests are important, as they also are in education.’12 Reform under the Bachelet administration suggests the realization (by both the government and the opposition) that a

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significant segment of the labour force was not going to reach the amount of savings required to retire and that the state would have to transfer new resources, thereby pushing the pension system increasingly into deficit. The situation with respect to pensions contrasts sharply with that of health care, where interest groups, particularly the Colegio Médico (CP), remain relatively active. During military rule, the CP lost most of the regulatory, policy formulation, and wage-setting prerogatives it had gained before the democratic breakdown. During redemocratization, however, it has regained its key position as an influential lobby for health care policy, if not all of its previous prerogatives, and the approval of the new health law in April 2008 was seen as a response to at least some of the CP’s historical demands (others, such as the mandatory affiliation of all physicians with the college, were not incorporated). The CP remains critical of the market-based health care system, which it blamed for the disintegration of the public system, unequal health care access and treatment, the weakening of primary services, the lack of resources for public hospitals, a low response to chronic pathologies, and the excessive costs and lack of transparency of ISAPREs (Colegio Médico de Chile 1998). Since the CP sees itself as a central actor in the area of health care policies, rather than as a corporate association for the protection of physician’s interests, it has pushed for a comprehensive agenda for the transformation of the health care system as a whole (Espinoza 2000, 12). Thus, the CP has pushed not only for mandatory affiliation, additional resources, and a significant strengthening of public health care, but also for a far-reaching set of policies for the transformation of the system. According to Dr. René Merino, a former vice-president of the CP and now owner of an ISAPRE, because Concertación governments were unwilling to challenge the college or the Confederación Nacional de Trabajadores de la Salud (National Confederation of Health Workers), this policy area experienced only minor changes. In sum, while the Colegio Médico cooperated and negotiated in matters of health care policy with Concertación governments, it also effectively mobilized to block initiatives that would have further curtailed its privileges. The Colegio de Profesores (CP, College of Schoolteachers) was perhaps the interest group that suffered the most during military rule because it was considered an instrument of the Socialist and Communist parties (Gaury 1998, 37). However, because education was, from the beginning, a central social policy priority for successive Concertación governments, the CP gained a prominent presence in the debates on educational policy. While the Concertación decided to maintain the decentralization of

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education and the system of subsidies, it incorporated pedagogical and quality-related aspects that had been neglected by the Pinochet administration. The CP collaborated with Concertación governments in their efforts to improve the quality and equality of the educational system, particularly during the Patricio Aylwin administration (1990–4). Yet, since 1995, when the Concertación wing lost the CP’s elections to the Communist wing, the relationship between the CP and the Concertación has deteriorated. Despite its participation in matters of educational policy and its outspoken concern for the mechanisms of evaluating teacher performance, the CP has mobilized around the recuperation of wage levels, which deteriorated dramatically during military rule. Under the Bachelet administration, the CP increasingly mobilized to force the government to pay so-called deuda histórica (historical debt) – that is, financial compensation that was granted under military rule – although most schoolteachers claim they never received this payment. The mobilization of students, leading to a reform bill replacing the Pinochet LOCE law, also played a key role. In sum, while the presence of non-state actors is almost non-existent in the area of pensions, in education and health care they have played an important role. Yet, the CM and the CP have mobilized around very different issues as ‘the Medical Association saw itself as an interlocutor with the government on a variety of issues related to the reform of the health care system [but] the Teachers’ Association, on the other hand, focused on labor union action, primarily improving the salaries of affiliated teachers’ (Espinoza 2000, 4). Due to their distinctive strategies, both associations have had different levels of success. Since the CM has pushed for a comprehensive agenda for the transformation of the health care system, rather than for a single or a few policy issues, it has failed to be an effective proactive player in setting and designing the health care policy agenda. At the same time, however, the CM has been able to block policies that challenge its corporate interests. Conversely, although the CP has remained critical of the educational system, at times it has collaborated with the government in pedagogical and quality-of-education issues. Moreover, it has focused on mobilizing almost entirely for wage-related issues. Despite the relative salience of these non-state actors, however, they have no access to formal institutional arrangements to influence social policies. Market-oriented Ideas and Social Policy Reform The presence of two ideologically distinct coalitional blocs, the moderation and technocratization of Chilean politics, the depoliticization

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of redistributive issues, and the intra and intercoalition commitment to maintain the economic model have resulted in continuities in Chilean social policy. To demonstrate the ideological placement of the major parties with representation in the Chamber of Deputies, the leftright scale of Table 11.1 ranges from 1 (extreme left) to 10 (extreme right). Within the Concertación, all parties are clustered towards the left and centre-left of the political spectrum; conversely, within the two major opposition groups, parties cluster towards the right of the ideological spectrum. The presence of two ideologically distinct coalitions has had a great impact on the content of Chilean social policy. In order to build and sustain a governing coalition formed by partners of varying ideological stripes, Concertación presidents needed to moderate their policy proposals. At the same time, keeping their coalition partners’ allegiance meant they often used government positions to reward and / or punish coalition members. As a result, Concertación presidents ‘denied important policy making positions to those who [were] critical of the prevailing economic model’ (Barrett 1999, 15). Additionally the presence of a right-wing opposition – with which the Concertación needed to negotiate to pass legislation – limited the scope of policy options available to the government. In this context, changes to social policy tended to occur within the limits of the market-oriented model. Despite their noticeable ideological differences, one should be extremely cautious in analysing Chilean political parties. While party labels and identities continue to be of utmost importance, post-transitional politics were markedly moderate, largely due to a conscious effort of Concertación (and perhaps some opposition) leaders to avoid both reviving the extreme polarization of politics that contributed to democratic breakdown and the more crisis-prone experiences of some of Chile’s neighbours. Thus the Concertación ‘deliberately depoliticized class and redistributive issues … Compared to the transitions to democracy in Argentina and Brazil, the Chilean transition was marked by a discourse in which themes of social justice, class, and redistributive issues were muted’ (Mainwaring and Torcal 2000, 30–1). This non-confrontational approach to politics affected the social policy arena. In education, for instance, Concertación policy-makers purposely avoided engaging in ‘value-oriented’ debates. As a senior education advisor to the government explains, ‘from the beginning we did not get involved in value issues. Everything that happened in education was non-contentious. There was a conflict involving values in 1992, with the presentation of a first

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Table 11.1 Ideological Placement of Major Parties in Chile, 1994–2006 Party

1994 1998 2002 1 = extreme left; 10 = extreme right

2006

Partido Socialista

2.93

2.50

2.56

2.73

Partido Por la Democracia

4.36

4.00

3.85

3.31

Partido Demócrata Cristiano

4.40

4.83

5.28

4.63

Renovación Nacional

6.36

6.76

6.80

6.36

Unión Demócrata Independiente

6.80

8.18

7.08

7.13

Source: Alcántara 2004.

draft for the curricular reform – that I deem as premature and inadequate – that resulted in an explosion of criticisms; even the Church criticized the document … And for us this was a great lesson, in the sense that we could not touch value-oriented issues without a major political operation.’13 Because Concertación governments also sought to mitigate business fears that a centre-left government could jeopardize economic stability, they promised to preserve the existing development model. In this context, it is not surprising that the two coalitions were able to compromise on economic policy. As Claudio Fuentes has argued, one of the areas of fundamental consensus between the Concertación and the Alianza is a commitment to market-oriented policies and respect for private property rights (1999).14 There is also partial consensus on issues of state intervention, redistribution, and policies for combatting poverty. While there is no disagreement on the content of these policies, there are some discrepancies on the speed with which these policies should be implemented (Fuentes 1999, 198). According to Patrick Barrett, this consensus has resulted in ‘the consolidation of a neo-liberal elite pact, which rather than reconciling accumulation and inclusion / redistribution, has privileged the former over the latter’ (1999, 11). The depoliticization of redistributive issues and the consensus regarding the maintenance of the export-oriented development model has coexisted with a marked a technocratization of policy-making. While the ‘Chicago boys’ do not currently hold governmental positions and are now working in conservative think tanks, at the beginning of the Bachelet administration the members of the think tank Expansiva (founded by Bachelet’s finance minister, Andrés Velasco) dominated the democratic policy-making arena. The reliance of a vast

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network of professionals ‘whose personal identities were subordinated to the preservation of policy cohesion and stability’ came to be known as the ‘transversal party’ (Montecinos 1998, 135). This group of técnicos has been highly cohesive and relatively insulated from party pressure since redemocratization. While the ‘transversal party’ had a great deal of freedom to negotiate policy proposals informally with key actors (such as the tax bill negotiations with the business sector), its activities were coordinated and its decisions highly controlled by the presidency at a time when presidential leadership was strong. During the administration of Eduardo Frei (1994–2000), the reliance on técnicos was maintained, but it proved to be problematic, partially due to a weaker presidential leadership, resulting in less policy-making cohesion (Fuentes 1999, 204–8). The administrations of Lagos and Bachelet maintained this emphasis, although Bachelet proved to be more prone to relying on ad hoc advisory councils to adopt policy decisions. Social policy during this period was designed in accordance with the economic development model at large and subordinated to macroeconomic performance. During the transition to democracy, ‘the coalition leaders emphasized that they would rely on rapid growth to improve everyone’s standard of living. They argued that the greatest priority needed to be growth and that a successful growth strategy precluded dramatic economic changes intended to suddenly redress class inequalities’ (Mainwaring and Torcal 2000, 31). This emphasis was epitomized by the Concertación’s goal of promoting ‘growth with equity.’ In this way, the government privileged a model of social policy provision that relied heavily on development. Aside from relying on the private sector for the provision of social services, the Concertación also endorsed decentralization, means testing, and targeting. Decentralization was considered key to facilitating access to public services, and means testing and targeting were deemed crucial for reducing poverty and inequality. This period was marked by the Concertación’s overall acceptance of the basic ideological framework behind the social policy system. As a result, all new social policy programs and measures were introduced from within the existing market-oriented model. In pensions, Concertación governments endorsed the existing individual capitalization model, based on the belief that ‘the state is a bad administrator, because the funds managed by the state end up being captured by interest groups.’15 During most of this period no major initiative was introduced to transform or to reverse the system inherited from military rule in any fundamental way. As former labour minister, René Cortázar

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explains, ‘within the [Concertación] coalition nobody … suggested to replace the existing model with a pay-as-you-go system … This does not mean that the idea [was] not to introduce some adjustments to the system, but [adjustments were introduced] within the individual capitalization system. From the government’s point of view, the [pension] scheme [had] to retain individual capitalization; this [would] not be reformed.’16 The endorsement of individual capitalization was not questioned during the debates about pension reform. The acceptance of market-oriented policies also touched education. While Concertación governments believed in maintaining the basic pillars of the educational model, they also felt that previously neglected goals relating to the contents and outputs of the educational system ought to be addressed. The development of new curricula and the increasing concern with pedagogical matters were complemented by a series of targeted programs aimed at diminishing inequalities in the system. The need to address quality issues was increasingly emphasized, particularly in the context of the Revolución pungüina. However, the main traits of the system inherited from military rule – such as decentralization, targeting, the reliance on competitive mechanisms, subsidies to the demand, and privatization of the educational system – were expanded and improved. Conversely the Concertación did not reach an agreement regarding health care, an area marked by contrasting positions: some coalition members favoured a model in which the state has a central role in the provision of services, while others believed the state should leave such activities to private providers. Additionally, with the exception of the Lagos administration, health care was not a priority of Concertación governments. The reform of health care promoted during military rule in Chile was less sweeping than that of education and pensions. While the military allowed private health care providers to compete with the state, the state continues to be the key player in this policy area, and the coexistence of the private sector and the more traditional state-run system of health care, together with the absence of a presidential pronouncement on goals for this policy area, made it difficult to produce a basic or cohesive agreement about the future of this sector. The lack of an agreement within the Concertación regarding what type of health care policies should be adopted and the presence of a physicians’ interest group that capitalized on these internal divisions resulted in the near-absolute continuity of the health care model inherited from military rule.

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Conclusion Since the end of the Pinochet dictatorship in 1990, the main features of Chile’s social policy system – namely, reliance on the private sector for the provision of social services, decentralization, means testing, and targeting policies for the poor – have been maintained. New measures and programs have been aimed at expanding and improving, rather than reversing, the system inherited from military rule. This is surprising, considering the strong discourse of change that surrounded the Bachelet administration and her emphasis on social protection. The strong constitutional powers of Chilean presidents are constrained by institutional and partisan features – for example, the rightwing Alianza coalition’s majority in the Senate and the super majorities usually required to legislate structural reforms – that considerably lessen their chances to advance policy change. Moreover the 1980 constitution secured the autonomy and insulation of the institutions in charge of economic policy-making and greatly limited the scope of the state’s intervention in the economic and social realms. As a result presidents are forced to impose strict discipline within their coalition and to negotiate with at least a segment of the opposition to secure the passage of even moderate changes. In addition the policies of the Pinochet government led to the emergence of powerful private agents related to the production and administration of public services – such as the Administradoras de Fondos de Pensiones and Instituciones de Salud Previsional – and the expansion of the business sector in general, as well as the weakening of labour and other interest groups. To gain the confidence of the business sector, the Concertación coalition of centre-left parties that governed Chile between 1990 and 2010 constructed a system of close collaboration with business and pledged to maintain the existing development strategy. At the same time organized non-state actors associated with the old system of universal protection lacked formal institutional channels for reversing or altering the market-oriented social policy model. As a result they had little capacity to act as veto players and could not significantly transform the existing social protection system. The moderation and technocratization of Chilean politics, the presence of two ideologically distinct coalitions, the depoliticization of redistributive issues, and the intra- and intercoalition compromise on economic policy continuity accordingly resulted in the maintenance of the status quo in Chilean social policy.

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The case of social policy in Chile illustrates that an account of policy change must look at a variety of factors. The specificities of the postdemocratization political model, one characterized by consensual politics and the relative dispersion of power, have resulted in only incremental policy change. However, these characteristics are not enough to explain policy change: both formal and informal institutions play key roles. While formal institutions clearly do not account for policy continuity in and of themselves, they have contributed to policy continuity since the return of democracy in Chile. Moreover, even in Chile, a country that is one of the most consolidated democracies in Latin America and that has strong formal institutions, informal institutions play a fundamental role in policy-making. Finally, one must also take into account the role that non-state actors play in the policy process; as this chapter has shown, in Chile, the ability of non-state actors, particularly within the health sector, to mobilize and influence policy has been an important element in policy-making.

NOTES 1 An earlier version of the theoretical framework for this work can be found in Castiglioni (2005). I am grateful to Susan Franceschet, Jordi Díez, and Pablo Policzer for their insightful comments. 2 In 2009 Lavín declared, ‘we cannot allow Bachelet to rob us of social protection, because ours is much better than hers … we believe very strongly in people’ (El Mercurio 2009). 3 In this context fragmentation refers to the number of political parties in the party system and fractionalization refers to the degree to which parties are internally divided (Altman 2000, 279). 4 High school students are nicknamed pingüinos (penguins) in Chile largely because of the school uniforms they wear. 5 Another project, intended to strengthen the public system of education, was introduced in Congress at the end of 2008 (Kubal 2009). 6 Author’s interview with Ignacio Walker, former deputy and minister, Concertación coalition, Notre Dame, IN, 12 May 2002. 7 Exclusive introduction includes, to name a few, bills related to some aspects of taxation, the political or administrative division of the country, salaries and allowances, the creation of public services, state sector employment, collective bargaining procedures, social security, and the budgetary process (Mainwaring and Shugart 1997, 446; Siavelis 1997, 327–8).

268 Comparative Public Policy in Latin America 8 The electoral system introduced by the Pinochet administration ‘create[d] 60 legislative districts with a magnitude of two. However, in order for a party or coalition to win both of the seats in a district it must double the votes of the second highest polling party’ (Siavelis 1997, 344). 9 The concept of cuoteo refers to two things: ‘the distribution of executiveappointed positions based on partisan colours, and the quota of parliamentary candidacies allotted to each individual party within the Concertación’ (Siavelis 2006, 40). 10 The central bank gained further autonomy after a 1989 reform that became effective four days before presidential elections were held (Boylan 1998). 11 Chile has a very small organization of pensioners, the Central Unitaria de Jubilados, Pensionados y Montepiadas de Chile. 12 Author’s interview with César Oyarzo, former director of FONASA and superintendent of ISAPREs, Santiago, 4 June 1999. 13 Author’s interview with Cristián Cox, senior education advisor and coordinator of the Programa de Mejoramiento de la Calidad y Equidad de la Educación, Santiago, 17 July 1999. 14 The areas of fundamental disagreement between these two coalitions have to do with the role of the armed forces, the presence of designated senators, electoral legislation, value judgment issues, and labour rights (Fuentes 1999, 199–202). 15 Author’s interview with Ignacio Walker. 16 Author’s interview with René Cortázar, former labour minister, Notre Dame, IN, 15 November 2001; emphasis added. REFERENCES Alcántara, Manuel. 2004. Instituciones o máquinas ideológicas? origen, programa y organización de los partidos latinoamericanos. Barcelona: ICPS. Altman, David. 2000. ‘The Politics of Coalition Formation and Survival in Multiparty Presidential Democracies: The Case of Uruguay 1989–1999.’ Party Politics 6, no. 3: 259–83. Barrett, Patrick. 1999. ‘The Limits of Democracy: Socio-Political Compromise and Regime Change in Post-Pinochet Chile.’ Studies in Comparative International Development 34, no. 3: 3–36. Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional de Chile. 2008. Historia de la Ley No. 20.261: Crea examen único nacional de Conocimientos de Medicina, incorpora cargos que indica al sistema de alta dirección pública y modifica la ley No. 19.644. Santiago. http://www.bcn.cl/histley/lfs/hdl-20261/HL20261.pdf.

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Boix, Carles. 1997. ‘Privatizing the Public Business Sector in the Eighties: Economic Performance, Partisan Responses, and Divided Governments.’ British Journal of Political Science 27, no. 4: 473–96. Boylan, Delia. 1998. ‘Pre-Emptive Strike: Central Bank Reform in Chile’s Transition from Authoritarian Rule.’ Comparative Politics 30, no. 4: 443–62. Brooks, Sarah. 2002. ‘Social Protection and Economic Integration: The Politics of Pension Reform in an Era of Capital Mobility.’ Comparative Political Studies 35, no. 5: 491–523. Carey, John. 1997. ‘Chile: Latin American Proportionality or Majoritarianism?’ In The International Idea Handbook of Electoral System Design, ed. A. Reynolds and B. Reilly. Stockholm: IDEA. Castiglioni, Rossana. 2005. The Politics of Social Policy Change in Chile and Uruguay: Retrenchment versus Maintenance, 1973–1998. New York; London: Routledge. Chile. 2004. Ministerio de Salud. Reforma de la salud en Chile. Santiago. – 2008a. Ministerio de Educación. Ejes claves del proyecto de Ley general de educación. Santiago. http://www.mineduc.cl/biblio/resumen/ 200806021703380.EJES%20CLAVES%20LGE.pdf. – 2008b. Ministerio de Trabajo y Previsión Social. Manual informativo: síntesis de los conceptos fundamentales. Santiago. http://www.subprevisionsocial.cl/ index.php?option=com_rubberdoc&view=doc&id=162&format=raw. Colegio Médico de Chile. 1998. ‘Políticas de salud para Chile: nuestra visión.’ Santiago: Colegio Médico de Chile. Mimeo. Coppedge, Michael. 2001. ‘Party Systems, Governability, and the Quality of Democracy in Latin America.’ Paper prepared for the conference ‘Representation and Democratic Politics in Latin America,’ Universidad de San Andrés, Buenos Aires, 7–8 June. Couso, Javier, and Alberto Coddou. 2009. ‘Las asignaturas pendientes de la reforma constitucional chilena.’ Paper prepared for delivery at the workshop ‘Constitución, reforma política y ciudadanía,’ ICSO-UDP, Santiago, 5 June. Elacqua, Gregory, Ursula Mosqueira, and Humberto Santos. 2009. ‘La toma de decisiones de un sostenedor: análisis a partir de la Ley SEP.’ Serie en Foco 1. Santiago: Expansiva UDP-CPCE. El Mercurio (Santiago). 2009. ‘Ministra del Mideplan desestima idea de ministerio social propuesta por Lavín.’ 19 May. http://www.emol.com/noticias/ nacional/2009/05/19/358820/ministra-del-mideplan-desestima-idea-deministerio-social-propuesta-por-lavin.html. Espinoza, Vicente. 2000. ‘The Medical Association and the Teachers Association.’ Santiago: Universidad de Santiago de Chile. Mimeo.

270 Comparative Public Policy in Latin America Fuentes, Claudio. 1999. ‘Partidos y coaliciones en el Chile de los 90: entre pactos y proyectos.’ In El modelo chileno: democracia y desarrollo en los noventa, ed. P. Drake and I. Jaksic. Santiago: LOM. Gaury, Varun. 1998. School Choice in Chile: Two Decades of Educational Reform. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. González F., Fernando. 2003. ‘Implementación del plan AUGE en pacientes con IRC.’ Revista Médica de Chile 131, no. 5: 545–51. Huber, Evelyne. 1997. ‘Welfare Reform in Latin America: Comparative Perspective.’ Paper prepared for the conference ‘Social Policies for the Urban Poor in Latin America. Welfare Reform in a Democratic Context,’ University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, 12–14 September. Huber, Evelyne, Charles Ragin, and John Stephens. 1993. ‘Social Democracy, Christian Democracy, Constitutional Structure, and the Welfare State.’ American Journal of Sociology 99, no. 3: 711–49. Immergut, Ellen M. 1992. Health Policies: Interests and Institutions in Western Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kay, Stephen. 1998. ‘Politics and Social Security Reform in the Southern Cone and Brazil.’ PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles. Kingdon, John. 1994. ‘Agendas, Ideas, and Policy Change.’ In New Perspectives on American Politics, ed. L. Dodd and C. Jillson. Washington, DC: CQ Press. Kurtz, Marcus J. 2002. ‘Understanding the Third World Welfare State after Neoliberalism: The Politics of Social Provision in Chile and Mexico.’ Comparative Politics 34, no. 3: 293–313. Kubal, Mary Rose. 2009. ‘Education Reform under Bachelet: A Failure to Rethink Inequalities.’ Paper prepared for delivery at the congress of the Latin American Studies Association, Rio de Janeiro, 11–14 June. Madrid, Raul. 1999. ‘The New Logic of Social Security Reform: Politics and Pension Privatization in Latin America.’ PhD diss., Stanford University. – 2002. ‘The Politics and Economics of Pension Privatization in Latin America.’ Latin American Research Review 37, no. 2: 159–82. Mainwaring, Scott, and Matthew Shugart. 1997. ‘Presidentialism and Democracy in Latin America: Rethinking the Terms of the Debate.’ In Presidentialism and Democracy in Latin America, ed. S. Mainwaring and M. Shugart. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mainwaring, Scott, and Mariano Torcal. 2000. ‘The Political Re-crafting of Social Bases of Party Competition: Chile in the 1990s.’ Working Paper 278. Notre Dame, IN: Kellogg Institute. Montecinos, Verónica. 1998. ‘Economists in Party Politics: Chilean Democracy in the Era of the Markets.’ In The Politics of Expertise in Latin America, ed. M. Centeno and P. Silva. London: Macmillan.

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Müller, Wolfgang G., and Vincent Wright. 1994. ‘Reshaping the State in Western Europe: The Limits to Retreat.’ West European Politics 17, no. 3: 1–11. Navia, Patricio. 2008. ‘The Successful Chilean Left: Neo-Liberal and Socialist.’ In Leftovers: Tales of the Latin American Left, ed. Jorge Castañeda and Marco Morales. New York; London: Routledge. Nef, Jorge, and Nibaldo Galleguillos. 1995. ‘Legislatures and Democratic Transitions in Latin America: The Chilean Case.’ In Legislatures and the New Democracies in Latin America, ed. D. Close. Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner. Orloff, Ann S. 1992. The Politics of Pensions: A Comparative Analysis of Britain, Canada and the United States, 1880–1940. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Pierson, Paul. 1994. Dismantling the Welfare State? Reagan, Thatcher and the Politics of Retrenchment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. – 1996. ‘New Politics of the Welfare State.’ World Politics 48, no. 2: 143–79. Shugart, Matthew, and John Carey. 1992. Presidents and Assemblies: Constitutional Design and Electoral Dynamics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Siavelis, Peter. 1997. ‘Executive-Legislative Relations in Post-Pinochet Chile: A Preliminary Assessment.’ In Presidentialism and Democracy in Latin America, ed. S. Mainwaring and M. Shugart. New York: Cambridge University Press. – 2002. ‘Exaggerated Presidentialism and Moderate Presidents: ExecutiveLegislative Relations in Chile.’ In Legislative Politics in Latin America, ed. S. Morgenstern and B. Nacif. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. – 2006. ‘Accommodating Informal Institutions and Chilean Democracy.’ In Informal Institutions and Democracy: Lessons from Latin America, ed. G. Helmke and S. Levitsky. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Silva, Eduardo. 1996. The State and Capital in Chile: Business Elites, Technocrats, and Market Economics. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Weyland, Kurt. 1999. ‘La política económica de la nueva democracia chilena.’ In El modelo chileno: democracia y desarrollo en los noventa, ed. P. Drake and I. Jacksic. Santiago: LOM.

12 Public Policy in Latin America: Towards a New Research Agenda Jordi Díez and Susan Franceschet

This book has explored the question of how to study public policy in Latin America in a systematic way, engaging the larger debates taking place in comparative politics while also being attentive to the social and historical processes that shape Latin American politics. The chapters have examined the actors, institutions, and broader political dynamics that influence policy across several distinct areas in a number of Latin American countries. In Chapter 1, we set out a conceptual framework consisting of three general aspects of Latin American politics relevant for understanding policy processes in the region: weak state autonomy and capacity; the prevalence of informal institutions; and inequality. We argued that scholars of public policy in Latin America can rely on a variety of conceptual tools developed by comparative politics and public policy scholars, but that they should also pay attention to the more specific contextual features of Latin American politics. In this concluding chapter we draw on the contributing chapters to reflect further on how these themes play out in policy processes in different countries and also on how the findings in the individual chapters contribute to the construction of a comparative research agenda. We also highlight several additional trends revealed in the chapters that bear further study. These include aspects of continuity in policy-making, the resilience of clientelism, and the importance of ideas. We discuss the significance of each of these, and conclude with a brief sketch of how these factors, taken together, can contribute to a new research agenda on comparative public policy in Latin America. Weak States State capacity and state autonomy are critical factors shaping policy formulation and policy implementation in Latin America. Where state

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institutions are excessively penetrated by societal interests public policies tend to serve particular sectors of society rather than the common or public good; and where state capacity is weak the effects of wellconceived public policies are undermined by poor implementation (Franceschet 2010). Scholarship on Latin America shows that particular processes of state formation and the dependent capitalist position of much of the region within the international system have contributed to state weakness. Several contributions to this volume underline the role state capacity plays in policy-making and show how state weakness accounts for trends in post-transition Latin America. Catalina Smulovitz’s chapter on the judicialization of public policy primarily links this development to the constitutional reforms in many countries that have expanded the authority of high courts and given them an augmented role in the policy process. But she also links the trend to state weakness: She shows that social movements and individuals have begun using courts to compel public authorities to implement existing laws and policies when other state actors have been unable to do so. Courts have become the ‘custodians of policy’ when bureaucracies or other state actors are unable and, in certain cases, unwilling to implement policies adopted by legislatures. Paradoxically, however, Smulovitz also notes that the use of legal strategies may exacerbate problems of state weakness by deepening citizens’ distrust of representative institutions (such as legislatures). Lucy Luccisano and Laura Macdonald demonstrate that weak state capacity accounts for the continued poor implementation of social policy in Mexico. Despite the institutional innovations that Mexico’s technocratic policy-makers have introduced to the country’s signature antipoverty program to improve policy implementation, weak institutional capacity at the local level has prevented policy-makers from overcoming deeply entrenched personalistic practices at the implementation stage. Weak state capacity, combined with lack of access for some sectors of society, has also rendered it difficult to draw attention to serious social problems, including the problem of gender-based violence. Delphine Lacombe’s chapter on Nicaragua shows that the Narváez-Ortega case is but an exceptional representation of formidable daily and institutional challenges to the recognition of the rights of women who report gender-based violence. Lacombe demonstrates that poor policy implementation in the case of gender violence programs, despite their formal articulation by state institutions, is partly caused by the duality that exists between the establishment of formal democratic codes and state institutions and personal and social practices. Specifically, Lacombe

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argues that the weakness of oversight institutions in Nicaragua, such as courts and the legislature, contributes to policy implementation that has the reverse effect of formal policy objectives: the delegitimization of violence against woman. For Lacombe, poor policy implementation is partly the result of the dichotomy that exists between the rule of law and obstacles to implementation due to weak institutions. We have argued that state autonomy is particularly relevant to analyses of democratic politics in Latin America because weak states allow policy-making processes to be permeated by powerful socio-political actors pursuing their own interests, often to the detriment of other majority social groups. In principle the new democratic regimes should have opened more spaces for contestation and theoretically improved the ability of various sectors of society to have their interests reflected in public policy. The ability of less powerful social groups to access and influence the policy process has thus become central to the study of state-society relations in Latin America. Several chapters in the book support the argument that state autonomy matters when analysing policy processes in Latin America. Jordi Díez, for example, shows that, in post-corporatist Mexico, powerful actors continue to have privileged access to the policy process. In terms of education policy, for example, the leader of the country’s powerful teachers union has enjoyed direct and significant influence over the making of education policy. This influence is expressed through the personal and informal relations she has established with both cabinet ministers and members of Congress. In terms of environmental policy, Díez also shows that access to the policy process by powerful industrialist groups led to the reversal of environmental policy goals adopted by Congress. Juan Marsiaj also points to inequality in terms of access to the policy process. His research on sexual diversity policy demonstrates that access to the state and the policy process in the Brazilian states of Bahia and Rio de Janeiro is predominantly determined by socio-economic disparities: in societies with greater disparities, access by marginalized groups tends to be lower. Power asymmetries in society seem to determine which social actors have more access to, and thus influence over, public policy. Several contributions suggest that questions regarding state autonomy continue to be relevant and that the return of democracy has not significantly altered patterns of policy-making wherein business interests enjoy greater influence than other social sectors. Of the countries covered in the book, only Chile ranks relatively high in terms of state capacity and autonomy. Yet, even in this case, as Rossana Castiglioni

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reveals, since the transition to democracy the Concertación coalition has collaborated closely with business groups that favour the continuity of the existing social policy model, a model that emphasizes targeting, means testing, and privatization. In this case, then, state autonomy from specific social sectors (namely, the poor) explains policy continuity and constrained the impact of a leftist president. President Michelle Bachelet’s election in 2006 responded to growing concerns that previous Concertación governments had failed to tackle inequality and the social concerns of the poor. Castiglioni shows why Bachelet’s social policies nonetheless demonstrated more continuity than change. Judith Teichman’s analysis of industrial policy in Chile likewise reveals that, even after the return of democracy, state institutions remain insulated from the demands of labour and civil society while allowing privileged access to business interests. Yet she also shows that industrial policy under the Concertación was not straightforwardly or merely probusiness: instead of concentrating solely on promoting exports and pursuing export markets, economic policy also sought to generate employment. That is because the Concertación’s electoral base – the poor and working class – expected the government to address the social debt of the Pinochet dictatorship. Thus, even when social groups lack formal access to governments, electoral and partisan dynamics might lead governments to design policy that considers their interests nonetheless. The possibility for changes in state-society relations is explored in the chapter by Catalina Smulovitz. The judicialization of politics in Latin America increases the possibility that weaker actors might influence policy and, therefore, serve as a corrective to the inordinate influence that more powerful groups historically have enjoyed. As courts become active policy-makers and access to the judiciary expands, previously marginalized and voiceless sectors of society can enter the policy process; in several cases, they have achieved their policy objectives. As social disputes shift to the judicial arena, it will become increasingly important for policy scholars to analyse whether and how the judicialization of politics in the region provides new opportunities and barriers to different groups to access policy. Indeed, research on the role of courts in the region has begun to expand (see Angell, Schjolden, and Seider 2005; Couso, Huneeus, and Seider 2010). While access to policy-making has increased through the courts, the ability of various societal actors and groups to achieve their policy objectives undoubtedly will depend upon the resources on which they can count, primarily legal counsel.

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The contributions to this volume confirm the importance of thinking about questions of state autonomy and capacity when studying policymaking in Latin America. Yet the research also points to changes in the nature of state autonomy and state-society relations as the influence of international actors and ideas increases, democratic politics becomes more entrenched, and political actors make policy decisions based on multiple political considerations. Informality and Institutions Institutions structure politics and, by extension, the policy-making process (see Thelen and Steinmo 1992). Many of this book’s contributors underline the importance of formal institutions – from federalism to presidentialism – in shaping policy processes. Yet a common theme across the chapters is that a focus on formal institutions alone would yield an incomplete and even misguided view of why policies are adopted, how they are implemented, and why we see particular patterns of change and continuity. Castiglioni lends further support to existing scholarship on Chile by showing that, despite the overwhelming constitutional powers granted to presidents, the Chilean political process has not been characterized by the presidentialist tendencies identified by Díez. Instead, informal political rules, especially the cuoteo and consensus seeking, curtail executive powers. This helps us understand why social policy reforms were minimal even after the election of a socialist president who campaigned on a theme of addressing inequality. The need to generate consensus within the parties of the governing coalition and between the governing and opposition coalitions tends to reinforce the status quo and inhibit far-reaching policy reform. Even where formal institutions play important roles, informal norms and traditions are vital in understanding policy-making. Díez, for example, demonstrates that, despite the limited policy-making prerogatives constitutionally granted to the Mexican presidency, the president derives significant policy-making powers from informal rather than formal sources. While the Mexican Congress possesses important legislative prerogatives, the president is able to derive important powers from his ability to fill numerous senior posts both in cabinet and, importantly, in the administration. This ability, Díez argues, allows the president to select members who will support his policy initiatives without his having to negotiate with opposition legislators. In the Mexican case, the appointments of numerous senior-level administrative positions do not

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require congressional consent and, given the importance of ties of loyalty and trust in Mexican politics, the president tends to appoint individuals who are loyal to him, thereby minimizing dissent and maximizing the likelihood of achieving his policy objectives. Informal relations are therefore critical in understanding policymaking in Latin America. Perhaps nothing captures this reality better than the role played by clientelism, which a number of the contributors highlight – indeed, clientelism, conceived as a classic example of the power of informal institutions, emerges as a central feature of Latin American politics and policy-making. Viviana Patroni and Ruth Felder, in analysing labour market and social policy in Argentina, demonstrate that, while Carlos Menem’s labour reforms threatened the bond between Peronism and the working class, social policies were then deployed to mend those links. Training programs, food assistance, and income-support programs were created and access to benefits was controlled by local Peronist powerbrokers. These programs became a means through which the Peronist party could rebuild its traditional support among the poor and the working classes. Clientelism also figures prominently in explaining policy outcomes in Marsiaj’s chapter on sexual diversity policies in two Brazilian states. In the state of Rio de Janeiro the political arena is dominated by programmatic leftist parties, creating greater opportunities for gay, lesbian, and transgendered (GLT) advocacy groups to find allies and press for progressive sexual diversity policies. In Bahia, in contrast a much poorer state, clientelistic parties dominate the political landscape. In this context parties are less cohesive, and informal sources of power – particularly personalistic relations – become more important. These differences account for the pattern of GLT successes and failures in the two states. Marsiaj’s study is useful because it shows so clearly the limitations of explanations that focus on formal institutions alone: despite the similarity of the formal institutional framework in Rio de Janeiro and Bahia, policy-making on sexual diversity policies differs enormously. The influence of clientelism on policy-making is also at the core of the chapter on Mexico by Luccisano and Macdonald. They show that, despite the adoption of new formal regulations by successive administrations aimed at improving the transparency and accountability in the delivery of the country’s cash-transfer payment, clientelism continues to permeate policy implementation. They argue that these changes have failed to eliminate the informal dynamics and social disparities that fostered clientelist relations in the first place and, as a result, Mexico

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has seen the rise of a new form of political manipulation of benefit recipients – namely, ‘semi-clientelism.’ Similar to questions regarding state autonomy, the contributors to this volume support the claim made in the introduction that analyses of policy-making in Latin America ought to pay close attention to the influence of informal institutions in the policy process. Yet this does not meant that formal institutions can be ignored. Many of the contributors show that formal institutions are playing central role in the policy processes of post-transition Latin America. This is undoubtedly the case of the courts (as Smulovitz shows) and legislatures (as Díez shows). Yet, while formal institutions matter, other contributors make a strong case that informal ones do, too. Inequality While many students of public policy view inequality as a dependent variable, and seek to discover the impact of various public policy initiatives on measurements of poverty and inequality, we argued in Chapter 1 that inequality is also a critical independent variable that shapes the policy process in myriad ways. This claim is born out by many of the book’s contributors. The chapters on Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina all identify socio-economic inequality as a key variable that, in conjunction with other factors, directly affects how policies are formulated and implemented. For example, Marsiaj draws a clear connection between levels of socio-economic inequality in Brazilian states and patterns of partisan competition (programmatic versus clientelistic parties) and the professionalism of legislative branches. Indeed, inequality provides a fertile ground for clientelism. This has a dramatic effect on policy-making because policies that are more broadly based and sensitive to public concerns become difficult to achieve in a political arena dominated by personalistic, rather than programmatic or ideological, networks. In their chapter on antipoverty policy in Mexico, Luccisano and Macdonald make clear that inequality contributes to the entrenchment of certain social practices and relations that, in turn, provide the context for making and implementing public policy. Traditional ways of doing business in Mexico, they argue, continue to operate below the surface at the local level to block the achievement of program objectives. As in Brazil, informality and patron-client relations emerge out of, and are reinforced by, high levels of socio-economic inequality.

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Three of the book’s contributors highlight dimensions of inequality that are frequently overlooked: inequality based on gender and sexual orientation. Débora Lopreite underscores the gendered nature of social policy using Argentina as a case study. She shows the evolution of Argentina’s welfare state from a primarily ‘familialist’ model that reinforced women’s (unpaid) responsibilities in the home and their dependence on social benefits received through their relationships to male breadwinners to a more liberal welfare state that emphasizes targeted income support mainly to poor female heads of households. In both of these models, existing inequalities – namely, ideas about women’s appropriate roles in the family – have generated social policies that reproduce these very same gender and class hierarchies. The absence of policies designed to help balance work and family responsibilities mean that working women in Argentina must either perform unpaid care work or hire domestic servants who themselves are poorly paid and often lack formal contracts. Lacombe shows very clearly that, in Nicaragua, gender inequality stifles attention to women’s policy concerns. During the Sandinista years class struggle was given priority and the problem of gender inequality was declared a feature of bourgeois capitalism that inevitably would crumble through the construction of a socialist society. Feminism was thus cast as divisive and inappropriate, complicating women’s efforts to put gender-based violence (and the abuses sometimes committed by powerful Sandinista leaders) on the public agenda. In sum, the contributions to this volume show that the three themes we set out in our conceptual framework in Chapter 1 – state autonomy and capacity, informal practices and institutions, and inequality – do indeed play central roles in Latin American policy-making. Based on the research presented by the volume’s contributors, however, we believe that an additional theme should be incorporated into our conceptual framework: ideas. Ideas Ideas matter for politics and policy-making in myriad ways. Deborah Stone, for example, argues that ideas are more powerful than money, votes, or guns (1988, 7). All aspects of the policy-making process, from defining problems as ‘public’ to debating, formulating, and implementing policy solutions, are filtered through existing values, beliefs, and ideas. Yet beyond the relative consensus that ideas matter, empirical work that investigates how and when ideas matter was, until recently,

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relatively scarce in political science. Paradoxically, the ‘institutionalist turn’ in political science sparked a revival of interest in the role of ideas in politics (Hall 1993; Blyth 2003; Finlayson 2004; Béland 2005; Schmidt 2008; Béland and Cox 2011). For policy scholars, this has been a fruitful avenue of inquiry. Research into the ideational foundations of policymaking has revealed the role of ideas in welfare state continuity and change, gender policy, environmental policy, and the tactics and strategies used by interest groups and social movements to achieve their policy objectives. Until very recently the role of ideas was undertheorized and ideas themselves were poorly specified. Few distinctions were made among ideas, norms, discourses, policy paradigms, and culture more broadly (Finlayson 2004). What is more, the precise mechanisms that connected ideas (or culture) to political outcomes were not clearly identified. More recent work has addressed precisely these types of questions. For historical institutionalists, ideas are embedded and embodied in the institutions that structure political processes (Steinmo 2008). The checks and balances built into the US political system, for instance, reflect the Founders’ normative concerns about the dangers of concentrating power. More important, the content of specific ideas is both legitimated and reproduced when ideas are embedded in institutions (Béland and Cox 2011). This insight, although new to many comparative politics scholars, was long ago recognized by feminist scholars who documented how ideas about women’s and men’s different capacities and appropriate roles formed the basis of legal codes, political institutions, and social policies around the world (Okin 1989; Orloff 1996). In this way, ideas not only produce but also reinforce social inequalities. Yet at the same time as ideas account for continuity in unequal power relationships, they also create space for challenging those relationships. Precisely because ideas are intangible, ambiguous, and subject to contested or competing meanings, differently located social and political actors may begin to challenge commonly accepted beliefs or reinterpret the content of ideas. Even slight shifts in the emphasis of certain ideals over others – for example, substantive versus procedural equality – can have far-reaching policy consequences. The chapters in this book demonstrate the importance of ideas, particularly for the earliest stages of the policy process. The power of ideas is demonstrated in Lacombe’s treatment of agenda setting, showing how deeply entrenched ideas about the ‘private’ nature of gender violence shaped political responses to the controversy over charges of

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sexual violence made by the stepdaughter of Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega. Ideas, and ideas about gender in particular, are also critical to Lopreite’s analysis of social policy in Argentina. In particular, dominant ideas about whether social risks should be resolved by the family, the market, or the state are reflected in social policy, with differential effects on men and women occupying various class positions. Lopreite also demonstrates that policy responses to broader economic changes, such as the need for women’s labour outside the home, are themselves filtered through the lens of existing ideas about women’s caring roles and the appropriateness of state responsibility for helping women combine work and family responsibilities. But ideas about other collective identities matter, too. Patroni and Felder demonstrate that the contours of labour policy during Menem’s years as Argentina’s president were motivated by the need to rebuild the ideational elements of Peronism, particularly the links between the working class and the Peronist party at a time when the overall policy thrust of the Peronist government was highly disadvantageous to workers. Castiglioni also demonstrates the power of ideas – in this case, ideas about both the process and the content of policy-making. In Chile, deeply entrenched norms of moderation and consensus seeking have served as an obstacle to far-reaching social policy reforms that would be unlikely to garner broad-based support within the governing coalition or between governing and opposition parties. But far-reaching reforms have also been inhibited by the widespread acceptance of market-oriented ideas within the political class. Thus, both procedural and substantive ideas are implicated in reproducing a status quo wherein social policies conform to a market-based rather than a fundamentally redistributivist logic. Finally, the role of ideas, values, and norms play a central role in Mary Rose Kubal’s chapter on public security policy in Argentina and Chile. While Kubal considers the importance of formal institutions and state structure in determining the diffusion of ideas about public security in each country, her work also highlights the important symbolic dimensions of competing discourses about public security – namely, zero tolerance versus community policing. She shows that a full understanding of security policy requires greater attention to the symbolic and expressive politics involved in shaping public perceptions of crime and citizen safety. Taking ideas seriously, as many of the book’s contributors prompt us to do, implies a broader conception of the ‘politics’ of policy-making.

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The politics that determine how public policies are formulated, adopted, and implemented are shaped not just by the distribution of powers entrenched in formal institutions or by the asymmetrical power resources conferred to social forces by the economic structures produced by capitalism or neoliberalism. They are also informed by struggles over defining and contesting a host of collective identities, including not just class, but also gender, sexual, racial, and partisan identities. Latin America’s Shift to the Left: Continuity or Change? In addition to the four themes outlined above, the research presented by the volume’s contributors underlines the importance of continuity in Latin American politics and policy-making. All of the contributors identify certain elements of policy processes in Latin America that are characterized by continuity rather than by change. This offers a crucial lesson to scholars of Latin America: we must be cautious in predicting the impact that political change will have on policy outcomes. The region’s recent political developments illustrate this well. Much attention has been paid in the past decade to Latin America’s ‘shift to the left,’ referring to the election and popularity of left-of-centre presidents in many countries of the region (see Cameron and Hershberg 2010; Weyland, Madrid, and Hunter 2010). This volume’s case studies of policy-making under leftist governments in Argentina, Chile, and Nicaragua reaffirm the findings in the emerging scholarship on this phenomenon – namely, that we must avoid generalizing about the impact leftist presidents have had on policy outcomes. In Chile, Michelle Bachelet hailed from the left of the Socialist Party, and made frequent references in her campaign to the Concertación’s unfinished job of addressing inequality and poverty. Her election partially owed to voters’ own concerns with social issues and the sense that she was better equipped to deal with pressing problems of poverty and inadequate health care and education. Yet Castiglioni shows how little social policy actually changed in Chile. Rather than becoming significantly more redistributivist or universal, social policies continued to be primarily targeted and means tested. Yet Bachelet’s enormous popularity upon leaving office in 2010 implies that perceptions about her concern for the poor outweighed her government’s actual accomplishments in this area. In Argentina Néstor Kirchner’s election in 2003 signalled a leftward shift that appeared to go somewhat further than Bachelet’s. Kirchner campaigned on a platform to reverse the neoliberal economic policies

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introduced during the 1990s, promising to establish a new socioeconomic model based on broad wealth redistribution. Labour policy reform was central to this model. As Patroni and Felder show, Kirchner did indeed initiate reforms that tried to tackle informality by facilitating the registration of workers and adopting new income assistance programs to address the problems of the chronically unemployed. Yet they also show that the structural transformation of the country’s economy made it increasingly difficult to expand labour rights in any meaningful sense and thereby reverse the flexibilization of the labour market. Some progress has been made, but it is significantly limited by the need to maintain the broad contours of the neoliberal economic model. Finally, Lacombe reminds us that the left in Latin America historically has had a complicated relationship with feminism. We cannot assume that political projects emphasizing class equality will find room for the political demands of other marginalized groups, including women. Indeed, the silence (and silencing) of women’s voices, particularly when they wanted to raise concerns about gender-based violence, was widespread within the Sandinista movement, and still has considerable force. Yet Marsiaj shows that the left may become an ally to other marginalized groups – in this case, sexual minorities; in Brazil, the GLT movement has found allies on the left, particularly in the Workers’ Party. The contrast between the two cases demonstrates that the likelihood of a leftist government’s assuming a progressive stance on issues of gender and sexuality cannot be assumed, but must be a subject for empirical investigation. Towards a New Research Agenda on Public Policy in Latin America We reaffirm the claim we made at the outset – namely, that context matters, and comparative policy scholars must always be cautious about how they deploy general concepts and theoretical frameworks. Unfortunately, playing close attention to context has not always been regarded as solid social science. As Paul Pierson argues, for some social scientists, ‘context’ is a bad word, a synonym for thick description and an obstacle to social-scientific analysis (2004, 167). Over the past decade, however, comparativists have returned to historical analysis, taking sequences of events seriously when studying politics and policy. According to Ira Katznelson, ‘scholars have taken to heart the idea that social science and history cannot be constituted meaningfully without each other’ (2009, 96). Pierson likewise argues that, in order to obtain a full and

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complete understanding of policy-making, one must systematically situate particular moments in a temporal sequence of events and processes stretching over extended periods. He argues that, ‘placing politics in time can greatly enrich our understanding of complex social dynamics’ (2004, 2). Yet acknowledging the importance of context and history is, on its own, not very helpful. We need to know what kinds of contextual features are likely to matter and how their effects are likely to be felt. The contributors to this volume reinforce the arguments we made in the introductory chapter – namely, that the most important elements of the broader context shaping policy-making include state capacity and autonomy, the extent of informality, and socio-economic inequality. To these three general features we now add a fourth: ideas. We believe that future research on policy-making in Latin America can be built on a framework that emphasizes these four features. But we also urge research to take a more explicitly comparative focus, with studies that are designed to explore similarities and differences within Latin America and cross-regionally. While the study of public policy in Latin America is not new, a systematic approach through a comparative lens has not yet been undertaken. This volume, we believe, represents the first step towards establishing the rigorous study of comparative public policy in Latin America. REFERENCES Angell, Alan, Line Schjolden, and Rachel Seider. 2005. The Judicialization of Politics in Latin America. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Béland, Daniel. 2005. ‘Ideas and Social Policy: An Institutionalist Perspective.’ Social Policy & Administration 39, no. 1: 1–18. Béland, Daniel, and Robert Henry Cox, eds. 2011. Ideas and Politics in Social Science Research. New York: Oxford University Press. Blyth, Mark. 2003. ‘Structures Do Not Come with an Instruction Sheet: Interests, Ideas, and Progress in Political Science.’ Perspectives on Politics 1, no. 4: 695–706. Cameron, Maxwell A., and Eric Hershberg, eds. 2010. Latin America’s Left Turns: Politics, Policies, and Trajectories of Change. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Couso, Javier, Carlos Huneeus, and Rachel Seider, eds. 2010. Cultures of Legality: Judicialization and Political Activism in Latin America. New York: Cambridge University Press.

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Finlayson, Alan. 2004. ‘Political Science, Political Ideas, and Rhetoric.’ Economy and Society 33, no. 4: 528–49. Franceschet, Susan. 2010. ‘Explaining Domestic Violence Policy Outcomes in Argentina and Chile.’ Latin American Politics and Society 52, no. 3: 1–29. Hall, Peter. 1993. ‘Policy Paradigms, Social Learning, and the State: The Case of Economic Policymaking in Britain.’ Comparative Politics 25, no. 3: 275–96. Katznelson, Ira. 2009. ‘Strong Theory, Complex History: Structure and Configuration in Comparative Politics Revisited.’ In Comparative Politics: Rationality, Culture and Structure, ed. Mark Irving Lichbach and Alan S. Zuckerman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Okin, Susan Moller. 1989. Gender, Justice, and the Family. New York: Basic Books. Orloff, Ann. 1996. ‘Gender in the Welfare State.’ Annual Review of Sociology 22: 51–78. Pierson, Paul. 2004. Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Schmidt, Vivien A. 2008. ‘Discursive Institutionalism: The Explanatory Power of Ideas and Discourse.’ Annual Review of Political Science 11: 303–26. Steinmo, Sven. 2008. ‘Historical Institutionalism.’ In Approaches and Methods in the Social Sciences, ed. D. Della Porta and M. Keating. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stone, Deborah. 1988. Policy Paradox and Political Reason. Glenview, IL: Scott Foresman. Thelen, Kathleen, and Sven Steinmo. 1992. ‘Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics.’ In Structuring Politics, ed. Sven Steinmo, Kathleen Thelen, and Frank Longstreth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weyland, Kurt, Raúl L. Madrid, and Wendy Hunter, eds. 2010. Leftist Governments in Latin America: Successes and Shortcomings. New York: Cambridge University Press.

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Contributors

Rossana Castiglioni received her PhD in Political Science from the University of Notre Dame and is currently Associate Professor and Director of the School of Political Science, Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago.  Her main area of research is the politics of social policy in Latin America. She has published numerous articles on politics, democracy, and social policies in Latin America, and is the author of The Politics of Social Policy Change in Chile and Uruguay: Retrenchment versus Maintenance (Routledge, 2005).  Jordi Díez is Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Guelph. He is the author/editor of several books, including (with O.P. Dwivedi) Global Environmental Challenges: Perspectives from the South (University of Toronto Press, 2008); Canadian and Mexican Security in the New North America: Challenges and Prospects (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006); and Political Change and Environmental Policymaking in Mexico (Routledge, 2006). His research has also appeared in several journals, including Comparative Political Studies and Latin American Research Review. Ruth Felder is a Lecturer at the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Buenos Aires and a PhD Candidate in Political Science at York University. Her work has focused on neoliberal reforms, crisis, and post-neoliberalism in Argentina. She has published several book chapters and journal articles on privatization, state restructuring, the role of international financial institutions, the financial crisis, and the economic recovery in Argentina. Susan Franceschet is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science, University of Calgary. She is the author of Women and Politics in

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Chile (Lynne Rienner, 2005) and co-editor (with Mona Lena Krook and Jennifer M. Piscopo) of The Impact of Gender Quotas (Oxford University Press, 2012). Her research on gender, politics, and public policy in Latin America has appeared in numerous journals, including Comparative Political Studies, Latin American Research Review, Latin American Politics and Society, and Politics & Gender. Mary Rose Kubal is Associate Professor and Chair of the Political Science Department, St Bonaventure University. She completed her PhD in Political Science at the University of North Carolina in 2001. Her subsequent publications have focused on education and health policy in Chile. Her current research project focuses on citizen security policy in Chile and Argentina. Delphine Lacombe is a doctoral candidate in Sociology at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris. She works on the historical sociology of the struggle to fight violence against women in Nicaragua (1979–2006), and has carried out research on the globalization of gender policy and the history of feminism in Latin America. She is co-editor (with A. Jarry-Omarova, E. Marteu, and B. Frotiée) of the special issue, ‘Le genre globalisé, cadres d’actions et mobilisations en débats,’ in the journal Revue Cultures et Conflits (2011) and (with J. Devineau) ‘Violences envers les femmes,’ in Problèmes d’Amérique Latine (2012). Débora Lopreite received her PhD in 2009 from Carleton University, and is currently an Adjunct Research Professor at Carleton and a postdoctoral research fellow (2011–12) at the Université du Quebéc à Montréal, where she works on comparative federalism and gender in Latin America. In addition, Dr. Lopreite is the holder of a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Standard Research Grant (2010–13), working on a collaborative project on welfare regimes and early childhood development in the Americas. Lucy Luccisano is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, Wilfrid Laurier University. She is also affiliated with the North American Studies Program. Her research focuses on the Mexican conditional cash transfer program and the ways in which poverty programs are experienced on the ground. Several of her publications examine the implication of these programs on social regulation, subjectivity, mothering, and citizenship. She has also written on welfare reform and security in

Contributors

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the North American context. Her current research articles examine Mexican poverty policy in the context of neoliberalism, decentralization, and the politics of clientelism. Laura Macdonald is a Professor in the Department of Political Science and the Institute of Political Economy, Carleton University. She is the author of Supporting Civil Society: The Political Impact of NGO Assistance to Central America (Macmillan/St Martin’s Press, 1997); co-author of Women, Democracy, and Globalization in North America: A Comparative Study (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); co-editor (with Arne Ruckert) of Post-Neoliberalism in the Americas (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009,); and co-editor (with Jeffrey Ayres) of Contentious Politics in North America (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Juan Marsiaj is an instructor at Ryerson University and a PhD candidate in Political Science at the University of Toronto. His doctoral dissertation examines the impact of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender movement on public policy and the democratization process in Brazil. His recent publications include articles in the Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies (republished in The Politics of Sexuality in Latin America: A Reader on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights, edited by Javier Corrales [University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010]), and in The Lesbian and Gay Movement and the State: Comparative Insights into a Transformed Relationship, edited by Manon Tremblay, David Paternotte, and Carol Johnson (Ashgate, 2011). Viviana Patroni is Associate Professor in the Department of Social Science, York University, and served as Director of the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean between 2000 and 2003 and again between 2004 and 2007. Her research focuses on development in Latin American, the changing nature of state-labour relations under neoliberalism, the emergence of new forms of workers’ organization in Argentina during the 1990s, and the post-2002 transformation of labour markets in that country. Her more recent work has looked at the impact of Canadian investment in the Latin American mining sector. Her research has appeared in Capital and Class, Research in Political Economy, LABOUR, and Capital and Society, and she is one of the co-editors of Community Rights and Corporate Responsibility: Canadian Mining and Oil Companies in Latin America (2006). Until 2010 she also co-directed a six-year Canadianfunded project of activities aimed at supporting the development of a Latin American network for human rights education and research.

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Contributors

Catalina Smulovitz holds a PhD in Political Science from The Pennsylvania State University. She is a Professor in the Department of Political Science, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires, and a researcher at the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET). She has written on human rights policy, uses, and access to legal systems, and accountability in Latin America. Her recent publications include ‘Law and Courts on Development and Democratization’ in Oxford Handbook of Empirical Legal Studies, ed. Hebert Kritzer et al. (Oxford University Press, 2011) and ‘Judicialization in Argentina: Legal Culture or Opportunities and Support Structures?’ in Legal Cultures and Political Activism in Latin America, ed. Alexandra Huneus et al. (Cambridge University Press, 2010). Judith Teichman is Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. She is the author of Social Forces and States: Poverty and Distributional Outcomes in South Korea, Chile and Mexico (Stanford University Press, 2012), and The Politics of Freeing Markets in Latin America: Chile, Argentina and Mexico (University of North Carolina Press, 2001). She is also co-author of Social Democracy in the Global Periphery, Origins, Challenges, Prospects (Cambridge University Press, 2007). She has written numerous articles on comparative development, policy-making, and Latin American politics published in scholarly journals and in edited volumes. She is a former editor of the Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies and served as a member of the Academic Advisory Council on International Trade, Government of Canada.

Index

abortion: and Chile, 120; high court interventions, 120; and Mexico, 49n17; and Nicaragua, 172n13; and study of public policy, 6, 7 access to information legislation, 214 accountability (politics of), 207, 211– 12, 213–17, 218–19 Adams, Gordon, 10 advocacy: advocacy network (defined), 144n4; and Argentina, 186; and Bahia, 141; and Brazil, 24, 277; and Chile, 185, 188; and federalism, 127, 130; and policy diffusion, 181–82; and Rio de Janeiro, 138–39, 277; use of law, 24. See also social movements agenda setting: analytical models for, 150, 152–53; defined, 150, 152– 53; and ideas, 280–81; and inequality, 21; policy streams, 150, 158–59, 180–81, 192–95; and political context, 24; political stream, 150, 157–58, 189–92; problem stream, 150, 158, 188–89; public denunciations, 154–55, 166–67, 170–71; registers of discourse, 151; and social context, 24; and spaces

of visibility, 151; as stage, 25n1; and study of public policy, 9; theories of, 151; and United States, 34–35. See also policy process; public problems agriculture: and Argentina, 234; and Chile, 61–62, 63, 65; and Mexico, 111, 113, 211 Alemán, Arnoldo, 66, 155, 163, 164, 165 Alianza por Chile, 255–56, 263, 266 Allende Gossens, Salvador, 58–59, 65, 74n15 Alliance for Change, 67–70 Alonso Felíx, Silvia, 222–23 Alves, Kátia, 141, 142 Amenta, Edwin, 11 anti-inflationary programs, 97nn2, 5 antipoverty policy. See poverty policy Argentina: and business interests, 83, 234; and class, 82–83, 85, 88– 89, 96, 234, 236, 281; and clientism, 24, 79, 86–88, 95, 97n7, 240, 277; and corporatism, 79, 97nn1, 4, 234; economic condition of, 79–83, 86–93, 94–96, 97nn2–3, 5, 98n10;

292

Index

and economic policy, 80–82, 89– 90, 97n2; and education policy, 241–42; and employment policy, 79, 86–89; and federalism, 184, 187; gender bias in social policy, 25, 279; and health care policy, 83– 84, 94, 238; and history, 79, 235; ideas and social policy, 281; and informal institutions, 19; and institutions, 78, 187; internal disputes, 184–85; and labour markets, 79, 80–82, 83, 86–93, 94, 95–96, 98n10, 235–38, 239–40, 243n4; and labour movement, 78, 79, 84, 92– 93, 96; and labour policy, 24, 78– 85, 90–94, 96, 97nn5, 6, 98n9, 277; leftward political shift, 282–83; and military rule, 80, 97n4, 184; and neoliberal economic model, 80–82, 86, 90, 229; and poverty, 82, 86, 92, 96, 239–40; and poverty policy, 92, 237; and presidentialism, 38; and public problems, 186, 188; and public security policy, 24, 184, 186–87, 188–91, 192–94, 196; and social forces, 79–80, 85, 87, 88, 93–94, 95, 188, 190–91; and social policy, 85–89, 92, 239; and socioeconomic inequality, 86–87, 96, 239–41; and study of public policy, 6; transformation of, 78; use of courts in, 114–16, 118, 119, 120; and welfare policy, 83–84, 228–29, 233–37, 243n3, 244n5. See also Buenos Aires Asignación Universal por Hijo (Universal Allowance for Children), 92 availability, 179 Aylwin, Patricio, 67, 194, 261

Bachelet, Michelle: and ad hoc advisory councils, 264; and Concertación, 67; court challenges to, 120; and education policy, 261; election of, 247; and ideology, 252; and leftward political shift, 282; and legislative branch, 256–57; and public security policy, 194, 195; and social policy, 25, 247, 267n2, 275; and social policy change, 248, 252–55, 258, 259–60, 266; variance across policy areas, 255. See also Chile Bachrach, Peter, 21 Bahia: and access to the policy process, 274; and clientism, 277; and GLT rights, 141–42; and legislative branch, 141–42, 142–43; and political ideology, 135–36; and sexual diversity politics, 126–27. See also Brazil Baratz, Morton S., 21 Barrett, Patrick, 263 Barrientos, Armando, 237 Barzón case, 111, 113, 119 Baumgartner, Frank, 153 Belli, Gioconda, 161 bias: gender bias, 156, 170, 183, 279; and policy agenda, 21; and study of welfare policy, 228 Binder, Alberto, 181, 182, 197n2 Blindaje Electoral, 214 Blofield, Merike, 6, 7, 21 Blumberg, Axel, 188 Blumberg, Juan Carlos, 188, 189 Boix, Carles, 251 Bolaños, Enrique, 165 Bolivia, 19, 48n3 Bolsa Família (Family Grant) program, 136, 224n3, 240

Index Boltanski, Luc, 168 Borges, César, 141 Borge, Tomás, 161, 172n9 Bratton, William, 177, 182–83, 188, 191 Brazil: access to policy process, 24, 126–27, 274; Brazilian federalism, 129–32; civil service appointments, 49n10; and clientism, 131, 277, 278; constitutional changes, 107, 110; and courts, 108–10, 113, 114; and environmental policy, 144n1; and ideology, 132–36; and institutions, 127, 130–32, 136–37; and sexual diversity politics, 126–27; and social policy, 136, 224n3, 234; and socio-economic inequality, 274, 278. See also Bahia; Rio de Janeiro Brinks, Daniel, 114 broken windows theory, 182 Brooks, Sarah, 249 Brown vs. Board of Education, 118 Buenos Aires: and child care, 242; demographics of, 243n2; family structure in, 240; female fertility rates in, 240; female labour participation, 236; and pension claim funds, 115; and public security policy, 177, 186, 187, 189–90, 193. See also Argentina Burgos, Jorge, 195 Bush, George W., 34, 48n1 business interests: and Argentina, 83, 234; and Chile, 59–65, 67, 69–70, 71, 73, 74n15, 75n17, 257, 258–61, 266; influence in policy making, 10 Cabral, Sérgio, 140, 144n7 caciquismo, 210

293

Cajas de Asignaciones Familiares, 239 Cajas de Maternidad, 239 Calderón, Felipe, 46, 50n20, 212–13, 216, 223 camarillismo, 41 Cameron, Maxwell, 38–39 Camp, Roderic, 35 Canada, 231 Carabineros, 187, 191–92, 194–96 Cárdenas, Cuauhtémoc, 211 Cardosa, Fernando Henrique, 13 Carey, John, 257 Casar, María Amparo, 43 Castiglioni, Rossana, 6, 25, 274–75, 276, 281, 282 caudillismo (personal power), 73n4 CCC (Corriente Clasista y Combativa, Classist and Combative Current), 88–89 CELS (Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales, Centre for Legal and Social Studies), 188, 193 censorship, and PRI, 42, 49n12 Central de Trabajadores de la Argentina (CTA, Argentine Workers’ Central), 85 Centros de Referência, 138, 144n6 Cerrutti, Marcela, 237 CGT (Confederación General del Trabajo, General Confederation of Labour), 78, 83–85, 93, 96, 97n4 Chamorro, Violeta, 156–57, 158 Chandrasekaran, Rajiv, 197n1 Chicago boys, 60, 64, 74n8, 263 child care. See welfare policy child care policy, 229, 230, 232–33, 236–37, 238, 241–43 Chile: and business interests, 59–65, 67, 69–70, 71, 73, 74n15, 75n17, 257, 258–61, 266; constitution of,

294

Index

60, 74n9, 187, 191, 249, 256; and democracy, 57–58, 67, 72, 73; and democratization, 248, 255, 258–61, 262; and economic policy, 58–60, 64–67, 70, 72, 73–74n6, 248, 252, 257–59, 275; and education policy, 25, 66, 247, 254–55, 260–61, 262–63, 265; and executive branch, 72, 248, 276; and family policy, 243n3; and government structure, 187–88, 257, 268n8; and health care policy, 25, 247, 253–54, 260–61, 265; and ideas in policy, 281; and ideology, 59, 248; and industrial policy, 23– 24, 61–65, 67–72, 74n12, 275; and informal institutions, 19–20, 40, 247–48, 257, 276; and institutions, 6, 54, 57–61, 57–63, 64–65, 71–72, 74n9, 75n16, 185, 247–48, 257–58; leftward political shift, 58–61, 282; and market reform, 60, 281; and military rule, 59, 60, 64–66, 69–72, 74n9, 184, 257–59, 264–65; and neoliberal economic model, 66, 67, 70, 71, 73–74n6; and new institutionalism, 6, 54, 56–57, 71; and pensions, 25, 247, 252–53, 259–60, 264–65; and policy change, 56–57; and policy diffusion, 179; and policy process, 23–24, 56–61, 257–58; and political appointments, 40, 70, 256, 262; and political transition, 58–61, 67; and power structures, 23–24, 58, 72, 187–88, 248, 249, 255–58; and presidentialism, 255, 256–58, 264, 266, 267n7; and public problems, 185, 188; and public security policy, 24, 184–85, 187–92, 194–96, 281; and social forces, 54, 56–61, 71–73, 188, 254; and social

policy, 25, 70, 234, 247–48, 274–75, 282; and socio-economic inequality, 57, 60, 70, 73–74n6, 252–53; and state weakness, 57, 62–63, 72– 73, 274–75; and trade, 61–63, 64– 72; use of courts in, 120. See also Bachelet, Michelle; social policy reform Christian Democrat party (Partido Demócrata Cristiano), 58, 74n9, 255 citizens and citizenship: citizen security approach, 195; and clientism, 21; Comité Cuidadano de Seguimiento de Proceso Electoral (Citizens’ Electoral Process Monitoring Committee), 222; construction of, 4; and democratization, 209; involvement in policing, 183, 193; and semi-clientism, 206; and social investment programs, 214; use of courts and the law, 24, 105; and welfare policy, 228, 233, 234–35 civil appointments, 39, 45, 49nn10, 18, 108, 190 Claro González, Juan, 75n17 class: and Argentina, 82–83, 85, 88– 89, 96, 234, 236, 281; and Chile, 58–60; and clientism, 277; and distribution of power resources, 9–10; and gender inequality, 156, 279; ideas on social risks, 281; and inequality, 21–23; and the labour movement, 82–83; and leftward political shift, 283; and social policy, 279; and state autonomy, 13; and study of public policy, 9–11; use of term ‘social class,’ 73n2 Cleaves, Peter S., 74n7 clientism: and Argentina, 24, 79, 86– 88, 95, 97n7, 240, 277; authoritarian

Index clientism, 209; and Bolivia, 19; and Brazil, 127, 131, 277, 278; and class, 277; defined, 209; and informal institutions, 206, 277–78; as institution, 18; and Latin America, 18–20, 136; and Mexico, 42, 49n19, 50n20, 206–7, 208, 210–11, 212, 214–15, 219–20, 276, 277–78; and Oportunidades, 25, 205–6, 209, 213, 218; and policy implementation, 127, 277; and Progresa, 217, 220–21, 223; and Rio de Janeiro, 134, 277; and semi-clientism, 78, 206–7, 209, 278; and sexual diversity policy, 277; and socio-economic inequality, 20–22, 25, 208, 277–78. See also informal institutions; partisan competition; power cognitive factors, 24, 179 Colegio de Profesores (CP, College of Schoolteachers), 260–61 Colegio Médico (CP), 260 collective identities, 280–81 Colombia, 107–8, 112, 119 Comisión Intersecreterial para la Transparencia y Combate a la Corrupción en la Administración Pública Federal (Interministerial Commission for Transparency and the Fight against Corruption in Federal Public Administration), 214 Comité Cuidadano de Seguimiento de Proceso Electoral (Citizens’ Electoral Process Monitoring Committee), 222 Comités de Promoción Comunitaria (CPCs, Community Promotion Committees), 217–18 commissions, 40

295

Communist Party, and Chile, 59 community policing, 191–92, 193, 195, 281 Comuna Segura (Safe Cities), 194–95 Concertación coalition: and Chilean politics, 255–57; and health care, 265; and ideology, 262–63; and industrial policy, 67–71, 275; negotiation process of, 256; and policy continuity, 187; and political appointments, 40; and political campaigns, 282; political parties involved, 74n9, 255, 257, 262–63; and political transition in Chile, 60–61, 259; and public security policy, 192; and social policy, 248– 49, 260, 274–75 conditional cash transfers (CCT), 25, 205, 212–13, 218–19, 240–41, 277–78 CONEVAL (Consejo Nacional de Evaluación de la Política de Desarrollo Social, National Council for the Evaluation of Social Policy), 215 Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT, General Confederation of Labour), 78, 83–85, 93, 96, 97n4 conflict, 8 Consejo Asesor Presidencial para la Calidad de la Educación (Presidential Advisory Committee for the Quality of Education), 254 Consejo de Seguridad Interior (Internal Security Council), 187 Consejo Nacional de Evaluación de la Política de Desarrollo Social (CONEVAL, National Council for the Evaluation of Social Policy), 215 consensus seeking, 281

296

Index

constitutions and constitutional reform: of Brazil, 107, 110; and Chile, 60, 74n9, 187, 191, 249, 256, 257, 258; of Colombia, 107–8, 112; constitutional reform and policy change, 273; constitutional review by courts, 107; constitutional rights, 107–8, 110; of Costa Rica, 107, 109, 112; leyes orgánicas constitucionales (organic constitutional laws), 257; and Mexico, 42–43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 49n17, 107, 108; of Nicaragua, 156, 164, 172n11. See also courts (political role of) context: and Argentina, 79; and Chile, 57, 66; and historical institutionalism (HI), 56; importance of, 5–7, 8, 283–84; and judicialization, 118; resonance of ideas, 73n3; social forces, 54–55; and socio-economic inequality, 21, 278 context (types): historical context, 10–11, 79; institutional context, 10–11, 17–18; international context, 158–59; political context, 21– 22, 23–24, 54, 180–81, 277; social context, 23–24. See also public policy process (study of) Convertability Plan, 80, 97n2, 97nn2, 5 Cook, María Lorena, 7 CORFO, 61–63, 65–66, 68–69, 72 Corporación de Fomento de la Producción de Chile (CORFO), crucial role of, 3 corporatism: and Argentina, 79, 97nn1, 4, 234; and CGT, 97n4; defined, 97n1; and labour movement, 97n1; and Mexico, 42,

205–6, 210, 212, 214; and presidentialism (presidencialismo), 37, 46, 48. See also institutions; statesociety relations corralito case, 115–16 Corriente Clasista y Combativa (CCC, Classist and Combative Current), 88–89 Cortázar, René, 264–65 Cossío, José Ramón, 44 Costa Rica: constitutional changes, 107, 109; high court interventions in, 108–10, 112, 119; and welfare system, 234 courts (political role of), and advocacy, 24 courts (political role of) (by country): and Argentina, 114–15, 118, 119, 120; and Brazil, 107, 108–10, 113, 114, 140; and Chile, 120; and Colombia, 107–8, 119; and Costa Rica, 107, 108–10, 119; and Mexico, 43, 49n17, 107, 108–9, 119 courts (political role of): consequences of judicialization, 116, 121–22; and constitutional change, 107, 273; and gender violence, 154–55; high court interventions, 108–11, 120; and ideology, 120; impact and results of, 105, 106, 117–21; the judicialization of politics, 107–16; law-framed discourses, 105; and lower-level courts, 111–16; origins of judicialization, 116–17; and policy change, 24, 273; and politics, 105, 117, 120–21; and public problems, 154, 154–55; and sexual diversity policy, 140; and statesociety relations, 105–6, 275; Zoilamérica Naváz-Daniel Ortega

Index case, 154–55, 159–66, 171nn1, 5, 172n14. See also constitutions and constitutional reform; institutions CP (Colegio de Profesores, College of Schoolteachers), 260–61 CP (Colegio Médico), 260 CPCs (Comités de Promoción Comunitaria, Community Promotion Committees), 217–18 criminal justice reform, 181–82 Crisp, Brian, 40 CTA (Central de Trvajadores de la Argentina, Argentine Workers’ Central), 85 Cuba, 234 culture: culture of fear, 60; and informal institutions, 19–20, 208; and presidentialism, 38–39; social practices, 273–74, 278. See also political culture cuoteo, 40, 257, 268n9 da Silva, Benedita, 138, 144n5 decentralization, 126, 129–30, 214 decision-making, 25n1 decree powers: and presidentialism, 38, 40, 48n8, 256; and use of courts, 120 de la Madrid, Miguel, 211 de la Rúa, Fernando, 84, 88, 90 delegative democracy, 38 democracia de los acuerdos (democracy of agreements), 257 democracy: and Chile, 57–58, 67, 72, 73; and the courts, 105, 121–22; delegative democracy, 38; and Mexico, 211–12 democratization: assessing of, 3, 15; and Chile, 248, 255, 258–61, 262; and citizens and citizenship, 209;

297

and clientism, 208; and economic liberalization, 14; and federalism, 126; implementation of democratic codes, 168, 273; and inequality, 22–23; and informal institutions, 208; and Mexico, 43–48, 205–6, 208, 210; and Nicaragua, 157, 168, 170, 273; and public problems, 152 dependency theory, 13 Desposato, Scott, 130–31 Díez, Jordi, 23, 116, 274, 276, 278 divorce, 6, 7, 253 Domingo, Pilar, 121 Dresser, Denise, 212 Duhalde, Eduardo: and elections, 90; and employment policy, 88, 94; and family policy, 240; and policy networks, 192–93 Eaton, Kent, 184 ECLA (United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean), 61, 74n12 economic insecurity: and inequality, 23; and presidentialism, 37–38 economic policy: and Argentina, 80–82, 89–90, 97n2, 114–16; and Chile, 58–60, 64–67, 70, 72, 73– 74n6, 248, 252, 257–59, 264–65, 275; and Colombia, 108; constitutional interpretations of, 108; Convertability Plan, 97n2; and court cases, 110, 111, 113, 114–16, 119; and gender ideology, 281; and leftward political shift, 282–83; and Mexico, 42–43, 44–45, 49n16, 111, 113, 119, 211; and state autonomy, 13–14, 275; and study of public policy, 14. See also market reform; trade

298

Index

economic sanctions, 59 education policy: and Argentina, 241–42; and Chile, 25, 66, 247, 254–55, 260–61, 262–63, 265; and leftward political shift, 282; and Mexico, 48, 49nn18–19, 50n20, 211, 213, 274; and socio-economic inequality, 254; and United States, 117–18; use of courts, 114, 117–18 Edwards, Augustín, 189 emergency powers, 37–38 Empleo Joven (youth employment), 87 employment. See labour market employment policy. See labour policy energy policy, 49n18 environmental policy: and Brazil, 144n1; and Mexico, 47; role of ideas in, 280; and state autonomy, 274. See also natural resource policy Esping-Andersen, Gøsta, 10, 229, 230, 231, 232 Esquivel, Gerardo, 216 Estrategia Nacional de Seguridad Pública (National Strategy for Public Security), 194 executive branch: and Brazil, 137, 140; and Chile, 72, 248, 276; constitutional limits on, 108; gentleman’s pacts, 164, 169; and informal political rules, 276; and Mexico, 23, 276; neopopulism, 36; role in public policy, 34–35; theoretical power of, 37; and United States, 34–35, 48n1. See also government structure; institutions; legislative branch; presidentialism (presidencialismo) Expansiva, 263–64

Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (Latin American Social Sciences Faculty), 195 failed states, 184 Faletto, Enzo, 13 family: family policy, 171n4, 229; family responsibilities, 279, 281; and gender violence, 167; as political image, 157–58; and social risks, 281; structure of, 238, 239; and study of welfare policy, 228, 230–31; and welfare policy, 228– 29, 230–31. See also welfare policy; women federalism: and advocacy networks, 127, 143; and Argentina, 184, 187; Brazilian federalism, 129–30; and democratization, 126; and LGBT movement, 128–29; and Mexico, 43–44, 214; New Federalism, 214; and power distribution, 34; variance in openness of venues to change, 128. See also government structure Federción de Tierra, Vivienda y Hábitat (FTV, Federation of Land, Housing, and Habitat), 85, 87, 88, 89 Felder, Ruth, 24, 78, 277, 281, 283 feminism: and gender violence, 154, 169; ideas and gender, 280; and leftward political shift, 283; and Nicaragua, 156–59; and public problems, 153, 156; and women, 279; and Zoilamérica NavázDaniel Ortega case, 160, 169–70, 172n14. See also women Fernández de Kirchner, Cristina, 85, 91 Ferrera, Maurizio, 231

Index Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Tecnológico y Productivo (FONTEC), 68 Fondo Nacional de Salud (FONASA), 253 forestry policy, 47 formal institutions. See institutions Fox, Jonathan: on clientism, 22; and evaluation process, 215–17; on expressing voice, 220; on program promotion, 218; and state power, 208–9 Fox, Vicente: and executive power, 36, 43, 44, 45, 47; and government reform, 206, 213–15; and Oportunidades, 212, 213–14, 217; Sistema de Atención Ciudadana, 219–20; and social programs, 220–21 FPV (Frente para la Victoria, Front for Victory), 95 France, 49n9, 241 Frei Montalva, Eduardo (1964–1970), 58, 59, 63 Frei Ruiz-Tagle, Eduardo (1994– 2000), 67, 194, 264 Frente para la Victoria (FPV, Front for Victory), 95 Frente Popular (Popular Front), 61, 62, 74n11 FTV (Federción de Tierra, Vivienda y Hábitat, Federation of Land, Housing, and Habitat), 85, 87, 88, 89 Fuentes, Claudio, 194, 263 Fundación Chile, 65, 75n16 Fundación Paz Ciundadana (Citizen Peace Foundation), 189, 195 Fundar (Centre for Analysis and Research), 221–22 Galanter, Mark, 118

299

Garantías Explícitas de Salud (GES, explicit health guarantees), 253–54 Garcia-Guadilla, María Pilar, 209 Garotinho, Anthony, 134, 138–40 Garotinho, Rosinha, 134, 139, 140 Gauri, Varun, 114 gay, lesbian, and travestis (GLT) movement: and Bahia, 141, 142, 143; and Brazil, 126–27, 132–36; and clientism, 277; and global North, 128; and legislatures, 139– 41; and Soares project, 138–39; use of acronym ‘GLT,’ 144n2; and Workers’ Party, 283 gender: and gender bias, 156, 170, 183, 279; gender dualism, 236–37; gender hierarchies, 279; gender policy, 25, 171n4, 280; gender theory, 229; and ideology, 232, 280, 281; and study of welfare policy, 228, 240–41 gender violence: context of issue, 158–59; and feminism, 154; ideas about, 167–68, 280–81; and institutions, 168–69; investigations of, 172n10; and leftward political shift, 283; legal changes, 171– 72nn4–6; and Nicaragua, 156–59, 279; and public denunciations, 166–67, 170–71; and public problems, 151–52, 154, 158; and public security policy, 193; and social policy, 25, 279; and state capacity, 273– 74; statistics on, 167; Zoilamérica Naváz-Daniel Ortega case, 24, 154–55, 159–66, 171nn1–5, 172n14. See also Nicaragua; women General Confederation of Labour (Confederación General del Trabajo, CGT), 78, 83–85, 93, 96, 97n4

300

Index

GES (Garantías Explícitas de Salud, explicit health guarantees), 253–54 Giuliani, Rudy, 177, 182, 183, 197– 98n4 Gordillo, Elba Esther, 46, 49n19 government structure: and Argentinian labour policy, 24; and Bolivia, 48n3; and Chile, 187– 88, 257, 268n8; and decentralization, 126, 129–30, 214; of Latin American countries, 37; and neoinstitutionalism, 207; and openness of subnational policy venues, 24; and policy change, 127–28; and policy diffusion, 179–80, 196; and power distribution, 37; and public security policy, 184, 281; state formation, 274. See also executive branch; federalism; legislative branch; the state Grammont, Hubert, 111 Grupo Gay de Bahia, 141, 142, 143 Haggard, Stephan, 12 Haight, Libby, 215–16 Hall, Peter, 207 Harboe, Felipe, 195 harzardous waste policy, 47 health care policy: and Argentina, 83–84, 94, 238; and Chile, 25, 247, 253–54, 260–61, 265; and Colombia, 108; and Costa Rica, 119; and court decisions, 108, 110, 114, 119, 120; and leftward political shift, 282; and Mexico, 210–11; study of, 180; study of health reform, 6 Helmke, Gretchen, 7, 18, 19, 144n3, 208, 209 Herrero, Victor, 176, 177

Hevia de la Jara, Felipe, 208–9, 217, 218, 219, 222 Hinton, Mercedes, 187 historical institutionalism (HI): and clientism, 208; defined, 19, 207; and new institutionalism, 55, 56, 207 history: and Argentina, 79, 235; Brazilian federalism, 129–30; and Chile, 66; historical context, 10–11; and informal institutions, 208; and institutions, 17; of Mexican social policy, 206–7; and public problems, 151–52; and sociological institutionalism, 55; and state capacity, 16–17; and study of public policy, 7, 8, 10–11, 283–84 Horowitz, Donald, 5 housing policy, 108 Htun, Mala, 6 Huber, Evelyne, 235, 249 Huggins, Martha K., 177 human rights cases, 118 hyperpresidentialism, 36, 48 ICHR (Inter-American Court of Human Rights), 118 IDB (Inter-American Development Bank), 182, 183, 193–94, 195, 196, 216 identity: and collective identity, 281; gender identity, 280–81; political identity, 24, 96, 281 ideology: and Brazil, 132–36; and Chile, 59, 248; and Concertación coalition, 262–63; and gender, 232, 280, 281; and historical institutionalism, 207; ideas (defined), 18; importance of, 279–81; and institutions, 17; and judicialization, 120; and

Index neoliberal policies, 251; and party system, 251–52; and policy diffusion, 180, 181, 182; and policy process, 24, 279–82; and politics, 279–82; resonance of ideas, 73n3; and study of public policy, 8, 280; and welfare policy, 232 Immergut, Ellen, 250 imperial prerogatives, 39 implementation: and Argentina, 186, 187, 277; and Chile, 185; and clientism, 22, 277; and gap between legal country and real country, 168; of gender violence programs, 24, 273–74; and judicialization, 120; policy adoption, 25n1; and policy diffusion, 179–80; policy evaluation, 25n1, 215–16; policy feedback, 11, 250; and PRI, 42; and public security programs, 187; and stage heuristic model, 25n1; as stage in process, 9; and state weakness, 16–17, 273, 274; and study of public policy, 9. See also policy process IMSS (Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social, Mexican Social Security Institute), 210 IMSS-COPLAMAR (Coordinación General del Plan Nacional de Zonas Deprimidas y Grupos Marginados, National Programs for Depressed Areas and Marginal Groups), 210 India, 114 industrialization: and Chile, 61–63, 74n14; and Mexico, 210; and study of public policy, 14. See also industrial policy industrial policy: and Chile, 23–24, 61–65, 67–72, 74n12, 275; logic of

301

industrialism, 10, 11; role of Corporación de Fomento de la Producción de Chile (CORFO), 3. See also industrialization inequality. See socio-economic inequality inflation, 80, 91, 97nn2–3, 5, 114–15 informal institutions, about, 18–20 informal institutions (by country): and Argentina, 19; and Brazil, 130–32; and Chile, 19–20, 40, 247– 48, 257, 276; and Mexico, 23, 207, 276; and Peru, 19; and United States, 35; and Venezuela, 40 informal institutions: caciquismo, 210; constraints on policy design, 206; and culture, 19–20, 208; defined, 18–19, 144n3; and democratization, 208; and development projects, 209; and executive branch, 40, 276; gentleman’s pacts, 164, 169; and history, 208; informal political rules, 18–19, 35, 276; and Latin America, 18–20, 136; and new institutionalism, 207–8; and policy process, 18–19; and presidentialism, 23, 40; and sociological institutionalism, 55. See also clientism; institutions; new institutionalism Ingreso Social con Trabajo ‘Argentina Trabaja’ (Social Income with Work ‘Argentina Works’), 94 instability and insecurity: economic insecurity, 23, 37–38; and presidentialism, 37–38; and public policy, 5–6. See also public security policy Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). See Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI)

302

Index

institutions (by country): and Argentina, 78, 187; and Brazil, 127, 136–37; and Chile, 57–61, 64– 65, 71–72, 74n9, 75n16, 185, 247– 48, 257–58; and Mexico, 45, 273 institutions: and constraints on policy, 206, 250; design of, 6–7, 17, 207; distrust of, 273; and federalism, 126; and gender violence, 168–69; horizontal accountability of, 18; and industrial policy, 275; institutional agendas, 150; institutional capacity, 79, 273–74; institutional context, 10–11, 17–18; and judicialization, 120; and LGBT movement, 128–29; and policy implementation, 273–74; and politics and policy formation, 106; and presidentialism, 38; and public security policy, 187–88, 190–96, 281; social institutionalism (SI), 19, 20; and societal interests, 274; and study of public policy, 7–8, 11, 17–20, 79; and welfare policy, 231. See also corporatism; courts (political role of); executive branch; informal institutions; names of specific institutions; new institutionalism Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Travajadores del Estado (ISSSTE, Government Workers’ Social Security and Services Institute), 210 Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social (IMSS, Mexican Social Security Institute), 210 Inter-American Court of Human Rights (ICHR), 118 interest groups. See social groups

international factors: and Argentina, 89–90, 188; and Chile, 62; influence of international actors, 24; international as context, 158–59; and Mexican clientism, 208; and state weakness, 13, 274; transnational policy networks, 24, 178–81, 192, 196–97; Washington Consensus, 213. See also policy diffusion interorganizational theory, 9 Iraq, 177 Irarrézabal, Bruno Phillipi, 69 iron cage, 16 ISSSTE (Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Travajadores del Estado, Government Workers’ Social Security and Services Institute), 210 James, Ciro, 191 Jarry-Omarova, Anna, 172n12 Jones, Bryan, 153 Jones, Charles, 153 Jones, Trevor, 181 judicialization. See courts (political role of) judiciary. See courts (political role of) Justicialist Party. See PJ (Partido Justicialista, Justicialist Party) Karl, Terry Lynn, 22 Katznelson, Ira, 283 Kaufman, Robert, 12 Kay, Stephen, 250 Keck, Margaret, 178, 181 Kelling, George, 182, 197n3 Kenney, Sally, 153, 167 Kerik, Bernard, 177, 197n1 Kingdon, John: on agenda setting, 150, 153; on ideas, 251; and policy

Index streams, 180; and public topics, 153; on US Congress, 48n2; and windows of opportunity, 157 Kirchner, Cristina, 85, 91 Kirchner, Néstor: and economic policy, 90–92; and elections, 190; and family policy, 240; and institutions, 78–79, 187; and labour policy, 92–93, 94, 244n6; and leftward political shift, 282–83; and political coalitions, 95; and rule by decree, 38, 48n8; on social protest, 94 Kitschelt, Herbert, 22 knowledge (social construction of), 178 Korpi, Walter, 9–10 Krasner, Stephen D., 178 Kubal, Mary Rose, 24, 255, 281 labour markets: and Argentina, 79, 80–82, 83, 86–93, 94, 95–96, 98n10; and clientism, 79; and employment policy, 79; and study of public policy, 7; and welfare policy in Argentina, 231, 235–38, 239–40, 243n4, 244n5 labour movement: and Argentina, 79, 84, 92–93, 96; and Chile, 258– 61; and corporatism, 97n1; and Costa Rica, 110; and Mexico, 210; and Peronist party, 82–83; use of courts, 110–11 labour policy: and Argentina, 24, 78– 85, 86–89, 90–94, 96, 97nn5, 6, 98n9, 277; and Chile, 62, 70, 71; and clientism, 277; and collective identity, 281; and corporatism, 37; and leftward political shift, 283; National Employment Law of

303

1991 (Argentina), 97n6; work plans, 97n8. See also welfare policy Lacombe, Delphine, 24, 273–74, 279, 280–81, 283 Lagos, Ricardo: and Bachelet, 253; and Concertación, 67; and constitutional reform, 256; and education policy, 254; and health care policy, 265; and policy think tanks, 264; and public security policy, 194, 195; and trade policy, 69 land policy: and Chile, 58–59, 66–67; and Mexico, 111, 113 Lavín, Joaquín, 176–77, 189–90, 191– 92, 247, 267n2 law. See courts (political role of) leftist parties: and Brazil, 132–33; and LGBT rights, 139; and Rio de Janerio, 127, 134–35, 277 leftward political shift: and Argentina, 282–83; and Chile, 58–61, 74–75n6, 282; and feminism, 283; study of, 282. See also Marxist theories of development; politics legislative branch: and Bahia, 141–42, 142–43; and Brazil, 132, 139–41, 144n7; and Chile, 60, 259; and corporatism, 37; distrust of, 122, 273; and executive power, 18, 23, 35, 277–78; and GLT movement, 139– 41; lack of policy implementation, 273; and Mexico, 42–43, 45, 47–48; and policy implementation, 274; and political appointments, 39, 49n9; and presidentialism, 38, 39; and PRI, 41; and socio-economic inequality, 278; and United States, 34–35, 48n2; weakness of, 18, 23, 37, 48n7, 116, 273, 274. See also executive branch; government structure

304

Index

Leiva, Fernando, 81 lesbian advocacy groups. See gay, lesbian, and travestis (GLT) movement Levitsky, Steven, 7, 18, 19, 144n3, 208, 209 Levy, Santiago, 208 Lewis, Jane, 232 Ley de subvención escolar preferencial (Preferential School Subversion Law), 254 leyes orgánicas constitucionales (organic constitutional laws), 257 Ley federal de transparencia y acceso a la información pública gubernamental (LFTAIPG, Federal Law for Transparency and Access to Information), 214 Ley general de desarrollo social (LGDS, General Law for Social Development), 215 Ley general de educación (LGE, Law on Education), 255 Ley orgánica constitucional de enseñanza (LOCE, Organic Constitutional Law on Teaching), 254–55, 257, 261 LGDS (Ley general de desarrollo social, General Law for Social Development), 215 LGE (Ley general de educación, Law on Education), 255 LOCE (Ley orgánica constitucional de enseñanza, Organic Constitutional Law on Teaching), 254–55, 257, 261 Lomelí, Enrique Valencia, 219 López Obrador, Andrés Manuel, 223 Lopreite, Débora, 25, 279, 281 Luccisano, Lucy, 25, 273, 277, 278 Lula da Silva, Luiz Inácio, 136

Macdonald, Laura, 25, 273, 277, 278 Macri, Mauricio, 189–90 Maduro, Ricardo, 197–98n4 Magalhães, Antônio Carlos, 134, 135–36 Mahon, Rianne, 233, 241 Mainwaring, Scott, 249 MAM (Movimiento Autónomo de Mujeres, Autonomous Women’s Movement), 172n14 Manhattan Institute (MI), 176, 177, 188, 191, 196 marginalization. See socio-economic inequality market reform: and Chile, 60, 281; and inequality, 23; and state autonomy, 13–15. See also economic policy Marshall, Cornelia, 161 Marsiaj, Juan, 24, 274, 277, 278, 283 Marxist theories of development: about, 13; and gender inequality, 279; and state autonomy, 25n2. See also leftward political shift Mead, Karen, 235 Méndez, Juana, 165 Menem, Carlos: and family policy, 237, 238–39; and institutions, 187; and labour policy, 78, 83–85, 277, 281; and rule by decree, 38, 48n8; and welfare policy, 229, 237 Merino, René, 260 Mesa-Lago, Carmelo, 7 Mexico: the Barzón case, 111, 113, 119; civil appointments, 45, 49nn10, 18, 108; and clientism, 42, 49n19, 50n20, 206–7, 208, 210–11, 212, 214–20, 276, 277–78; constitution of, 42–43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 49n17, 107, 108; and corporatism, 210,

Index 212, 214; and democratization, 43– 48, 205–6, 208; and economic policy, 42–43, 44–45, 49n16, 111, 113, 119, 211; and education policy, 48, 49nn18–19, 50n20, 274; and environmental policy, 274; high court interventions in, 108–9; and industrialization, 210; and informal institutions, 23, 207, 276; and labour movement, 210; and national security, 45–46; and neoliberal economic model, 208, 211; New Federalism, 214; and political appointments, 41, 45, 276–77; political appointments in, 276–77; political transitions, 40–41, 43–44; and poverty policy, 211–13, 220; and presidentialism, 35–36, 44–48, 49n14; and role of executive, 23, 276–77; and semi-clientism, 206–7, 278; and social forces, 111, 113; and social policy, 25, 206–7, 210–11, 214, 273; and socio-economic inequality, 278; and state-society relations, 211; and state weakness, 15, 209, 274. See also Oportunidades; Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) Migdal, Joel, 9, 16 military procurement, 10 military rule: and Argentina, 80, 97n4, 184; and Brazil, 135; and Chile, 59, 60, 64–66, 69–72, 74n9, 184, 257–59, 264–65 Minc, Carlos, 135, 139, 140 Minow, Martha, 106 moderation, 281 modernization, and study of public policy, 10, 11 Moncada, Eduardo, 198n20

305

Monday Club, 74n15 Montenegro, Sofía, 161 moral policy-making, 6, 251 Morgenstern, Scott, 42, 48n7, 49n14 Mott, Luiz, 141 Movimiento Autónomo de Mujeres (MAM, Autonomous Women’s Movement), 172n14 Moyano, Hugo, 84–85, 93 Müller, Katharina, 7 Murillo, Rosario, 160, 172n14 Najlis, Michele, 161 Narváez, Zoilamérica, 24, 150, 152, 154–55, 158–71, 171–72nn1–3, 5, 273 National Council of Innovation for Competitiveness, 69 National Employment Law of 1991 (Argentina), 97n6 nationalization: and Chile, 58–59, 65; and Mexico, 113 national security, 45–46 natural resource policy, 69. See also environmental policy Navia, Patricio, 252 neo-institutionalism. See new institutionalism neoliberal models and policies: and Argentina, 23, 80–82, 86, 90, 229, 236–38, 282–83; and Chile, 66, 67, 70, 71, 73–74n6, 263; and ideology, 251; and Mexico, 208, 211; and welfare policy, 228, 229, 230, 233, 238–39 neopopulism, 36 Newburn, Tim, 181 New Federalism, 214 new institutionalism: assumptions of, 57; and Chile, 54, 56–57, 71; and contexts, 54–55; defining of

306

Index

‘institutions,’ 54; and historical institutionalism (HI), 55, 56, 207; and informal institutions, 207–8; institutional design, 6–7, 17, 207; limits of, 207–9; neo-institutionalism, 206–9, 207–9; and rational choice approaches, 54, 55, 207; rise of, 54, 206–9, 280; and sociological institutionalism, 55; and state weakness, 206; streams of, 55–57; and study of public policy, 6–7, 19. See also informal institutions; institutions; political science Nicaragua: and abortion, 172n13; constitution of, 156, 164, 172n11; and feminism, 156–59; and gender inequality, 279; and gender violence, 156–59; and implementation of programs, 274; and public problems, 152, 156–59. See also gender violence non-governmental organizations: and federalism, 126; and policy diffusion, 179; and public security policy, 183–84 norms: and Chile, 281; defined, 18; and Mexico, 276–77; and public problems, 153; and public security policy, 281 Nuñez de Escorcia, Vilma, 161, 164 O’Donnell, Guillermo, 13, 16, 18, 38, 207–8 oligarchy, 58, 72 Onganía, Juan Carlos, 239 Oportunidades: benefits provided, 205, 212–13; change of name to, 212; and clientism, 25, 205–6, 209, 213, 218; and corporatism, 205–6; design of, 205, 208, 216; and

evaluation, 216; implementation in Mexico, 25; influence on other programs, 240; and particularistic forms of governance, 208; and politics, 205–6; and socio-economic inequality, 278; use of conditional cash transfers (CCT), 25, 205, 212– 13, 218–19, 277–78; and World Bank, 224n2. See also Mexico; poverty policy; Progresa; social policy Orloff, Ann, 231, 232, 251 Ortega, Daniel, 150, 152, 154–55, 159–66, 168–70, 171–72nn1–2, 5, 14, 273, 281 Oxhorn, Philip, 23 Palacios, Jorge, 190 Palmares, Gilberto, 140 PAN (Partido de Acción Nacional, National Action Party), 214 paraconstitutional powers, 40 particularism, 18 Partido da Frente Liberal (PFL, Liberal Front Party), 136 Partido de Acción Nacional (PAN, National Action Party), 214 Partido Demócrata Cristiano (Christian Democrat Party), 58, 74n9, 255 Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT, Workers’ Party), 132–33, 138 Partido Justicialista. See PJ (Partido Justicialista, Justicialist Party) Partido Justicialista (PJ, Justicialist Party), 78, 79, 84, 97n7 Partido por la Demócracia (Party for Democracy), 74n10, 255 Partido Radical (Radical Party), 74n11, 255 Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI): and clientism, 214, 223; and

Index institutions, 210; and policy formation, 41–42, 49n11; and political appointments, 41; power of, 35– 36; and presidentialism, 41; and study of presidentialism, 35–36; support for, 211. See also Mexico; presidentialism (presidencialismo) Partido Socialista (Socialist Party), 74nn9, 11, 255, 282 partisan competition, 278. See also clientism; programmatic parties party system: and Chile, 267n3; and Chilean coalitions, 255–58; and government authority, 249–50; and ideology, 251–52 path dependency: and Chile, 56, 64; and historical institutionalism (HI), 56, 207; and Mexico, 206, 210–13; and study of public policy, 7, 11 patronage: and Brazil, 132; and presidentialism, 38, 39. See also political appointments patron-client relations. See clientism Patroni, Viviana, 24, 78, 277, 281, 283 PDI (Policía de Investigaciones, Investigative Police), 187 pensions: and Argentina, 114–15, 119, 120; and Brazil, 140, 144n7; and Chile, 25, 247, 252–53, 259–60, 264–65; and executive control of legislature, 249; and Mexico, 210; pension fund dispute, 114–15, 119, 120; pension reform, 6, 7; samesex pensions, 140–41, 144n7 Pereyra, Sebastián, 88 Perez, Carlos, 209 Peronist party. See PJ (Partido Justicialista, Justicialist Party) Perón, Juan, 97n4

307

personal power, 73n4 Peru, 19, 38 PFL (Partido da Frente Liberal, Liberal Front Party), 136 Pierson, Paul, 11, 17–18, 283–84 Piñera, Sebastían, 67, 69, 70, 71 Pinochet, Augusto: and constitutional reform, 256, 268n8; and education policy, 254–55, 261; and government structure, 266; and industrial policy, 64; and social debt, 275; and social forces, 258 piquentero movement, 85, 87, 89 Pires, Waldir, 136 PJ (Partido Justicialista, Justicialist Party): and class, 281; and clientism, 86–88, 97n7, 277; and collective identity, 281; and informal institutions, 19; internal disputes, 84, 184–85; and labour movement, 82–83, 86, 92–93; and labour policy, 24, 79; political transformation of, 96; support for, 78 PJJHD (Programa Jefas y Jefes de Hogars Desocupados, Program for Unemployed Heads of Family), 88, 98n9, 240–41, 243n4 Plan Comunal de Seguridad Ciudadana (Community Plan for Citizen Security), 194, 195 Plan Cuadrante (Quadrant Plan), 194–95 Plan Familias (Families Plan), 240–41 Plan Trabajar (Work Program), 87, 88 PNPD (Plan Nacional de Prevención de Delito, National Crime Prevention Plan), 193 police. See public security policy Policía de Investigaciones (PDI, Investigative Police), 187

308

Index

policy diffusion: and government structure, 179–80, 196; and ideas, 180; models of, 176–77; and policy stream approach, 180–81; and political context, 180–81; problem definition and solutions, 181–84; and public problems, 179, 196; and state weakness, 177, 178–82, 179, 196; and study of public policy, 6; and transnational policy networks, 24, 178–81, 192, 196–97. See also international factors; policy process policy implementation. See implementation policy process: and corporatism, 37; and government structure, 127– 28; and ideology, 279–82; informal rules, 18–19; and judicialization, 107; and new institutionalism, 55– 56; policy networks, 9; and PRI, 41–42, 49n11; role of judiciary, 24, 273; and socio-economic inequality, 20–23, 278–79; and stage heuristic model, 8–9, 25n1; and state autonomy, 12–15; and state capacity, 274; think tanks, 263–64. See also agenda setting; implementation; policy diffusion; public policy process (study of); social policy reform policy sciences. See public policy process (study of) political appointments: and Argentina, 190; and Chile, 40, 70, 256, 262; and Latin America, 39, 49n9; and Mexico, 41, 45, 276–77; and United States, 39, 49n9. See also patronage

political context: and Chile, 54; and policy diffusion, 180–81; political institutions, 12, 15; and study of public policy, 21–22, 23–24, 277 political culture: and agenda setting, 24; and Brazil, 110; and judicialization, 117; manipulation of social programs, 220–23; and openness of subnational policy venues, 24; political identity and Argentina, 24, 96, 281; and political transition, 209; politics of accountability, 207, 211–12, 213–19; politics of transparency, 207, 211, 216–17. See also culture; informal institutions political insecurity. See instability and insecurity political parties. See names of specific political parties; party system political science: and ideology, 279– 82; institutionalist turn, 280; political stream in agenda setting, 150; study of comparative politics, 5; and study of public policy, 5–6, 8, 10–11. See also new institutionalism politics: and ideology, 281–82; the judicialization of politics, 105, 107– 16, 117, 120–21; political policing, 191; and public policy, 3; role of judiciary, 24; sources of political influence, 7; symbolic and performative politics, 189; use of rightsframed discourses, 24; and welfare regimes, 231. See also leftward political shift Pontusson, Jonas, 207 post-conflict states, 184

Index poverty: and Argentina, 82, 86, 96, 239–41; and Brazil, 131; and inequality, 21; and leftward political shift, 282, 283; and Mexico, 211 poverty policy: and Argentina, 92, 237; and Chile, 70, 247, 263; and Mexico, 211–13, 220; and socioeconomic inequality, 278. See also Oportunidades power structures, and access to the policy process, 274 power structures (by country): and Argentina, 87–88; and Brazil, 127, 136–37; and Chile, 23–24, 58, 72, 248, 249; and Mexico, 23, 35–36, 44, 274 power structures: caudillismo (personal power), 73n4; and Chile, 23–24, 58, 72, 187–88, 248, 249, 255–58; and historical institutionalism, 207; and informal institutions, 209; and institutions, 17; and Oportunidades, 206; power resources, 9–10; and state autonomy, 15; and state capacity, 16–17; and study of public policy, 8, 9–10, 34. See also clientism presidentialism (presidencialismo): and Chile, 255, 256–58, 264, 266, 267n7; civil service appointments, 39, 45, 49nn10, 18; and corporatism, 37, 46; and culture, 38–39; defined, 35, 48, 48n4; and economic and political instability, 37–38; executive veto, 44–45; hyperpresidentialism, 36, 48; imperial prerogatives, 39; and informal institutions, 40; legal basis of, 37; and Mexico, 35–36, 44–48, 49n14; paraconstitutional powers, 40;

309

and regulatory powers, 39–40, 46; symbolic role of president, 38; ways a president can influence policy, 249. See also executive branch; Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) PRI. See Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) problem-framing stage, 21 problems. See public problems Proceso, 49n12 PROCHILE, 65–66, 68 procurement, 10 Programa de Seguridad Ciudadana, 193–94 Programa Familias por la Inclusión Social (Families for Social Inclusion Program), 95 Programa Jefas y Jefes de Hogars Desocupados (PJJHD, Program for Unemployed Heads of Family), 88, 98n9, 240–41, 243n4 Programa Nacional de Seguridad Alimentaria (National Program for Food Security), 95 Programa Nacional de Solidaridad (PRONASOL, National Solidarity Program), 211–13 programmatic parties: and policy change, 127; and socio-economic inequality, 278. See also partisan competition Progresa: and clientism, 217, 220–21, 223; establishment of, 212, 224n3; evalutions of, 214; founder of, 208. See also Oportunidades PRONASOL (Programa Nacional de Solidaridad, National Solidarity Program), 211–13

310

Index

Proyectos de Fomento (PROFOS), 68 PT (Partido dos Trabalhadores, Workers’ Party), 132–33, 138 public attention. See public problems public denunciations, 154–55, 166– 67, 170–71 public opinion: and Argentina, 78; and Brazil, 135; and inequality, 21; and leftward political shift, 282; and Mexico, 211; and PRI, 41–42, 49n12; and security, 281. See also public problems public policy: and citizens, 24; and the courts, 105, 106, 118–21; influence of business interests, 10; and LGBT movement, 128–29; policy impact, 179–80; regional differences, 5. See also names of specific policy areas public policy process (study of): comparative method of, 11; conceptual framework for, 7–12; and federalism, 127–28; history as tool, 283–84; history of study, 5–7, 8–11; important features for analysis, 12–20; and institutional capacity, 79; and institutions, 17–20; need to study, 3–4, 275–76; policy analysis, 8; policy networks, 9; policy stages approach, 8–9; and socio-economic inequality, 20–23; stages of process, 9; and state autonomy, 274; and state capacity, 15–17; study of, 8–9; and United States, 10, 11, 35. See also context; policy process public problems: and agenda setting, 150–51; and Argentina, 186, 188, 189–90; and Chile, 185, 188, 189– 90; and the courts, 154; and feminism, 153; and gender violence,

151–52, 154, 158; and history, 151– 52; incompatible discourses, 159– 63; and judicialization, 116–17; and the media, 154, 192; and policy diffusion, 179, 196; problemoriented policing, 195; public attention factors, 24, 150–51; and public security, 185–86, 188–90, 192; sociology of disputes, 159; and state reform, 179; and United States, 35; and zero tolerance rhetoric, 191; Zoilamérica NavázDaniel Ortega case, 154–55, 159–67. See also agenda setting; public opinion; social forces public security policy (by geographic area): and Argentina, 24, 184, 186–87, 188–91, 192–94, 196, 281; and Bahia, 141–42; and Chile, 24, 184–85, 187–92, 194–96, 281; and Mexico, 45–46; and Rio de Janeiro, 138–39; and United States, 171, 176, 181, 193, 194–95, 197–98nn3–4 public security policy: community policing, 281; and federalism, 130; and government structure, 184; and ideology, 281; implementation of programs, 187; and institutions, 187–88, 190–96, 281; municipal role in, 191–92; and policy diffusion, 176–77; policy stream, 192–95; political policing, 191; and presidentialism, 37–38; problem definition and policy solutions, 181–84; security sector reform, 193; and study of public policy, 24; transnational policy community, 178; zero tolerance policing, 181, 182–83, 185–86, 190,

Index 192, 196, 197–98nn3–4, 281. See also instability and insecurity Quadrant Plan, 194–95 Quezada, Martha, 163 race, 10 Ragin, Charles, 249 Randall, Margaret, 160 rational choice institutionalism: and new institutionalism, 54, 55, 207; and study of public policy, 6–7 Red de Mujeres contra la Violencia (RMCV, Women’s Network against Violence), 157–58, 163 registers of discourse, 151 regulatory powers, 39–40, 46 Reinserción Laboral (Labour Integration), 87 religious conservatism, 120, 133, 138, 140 representativeness, 179 Revolución pingüina (Penguin Revolution), 254 rights: constitutional rights, 107–8, 110; and federalism, 130; human rights cases, 118; and judicialization, 111, 114, 120, 121–22; and LGBT movement, 128–29, 141–43; and liberalism, 39; and public security policy, 190, 193; and Soares project, 138–39; social rights, 110; symbolic legal strategies, 119; use of rights-framed discourses, 24, 105, 107; women’s rights, 157–58 Rio de Janeiro: and access to the policy process, 274; and clientism, 134, 277; the Garotinho years and the Soares project, 137–39; and political ideology, 134–35; and

311

programmatic parties, 127; and public security policy, 138–39; and sexual diversity politics, 126–27; state assembly of, 137, 144n7; use of courts in, 114. See also Brazil Risse-Kappan, Thomas, 179, 197 RMCV (Red de Mujeres contra la Violencia, Women’s Network against Violence), 157–58, 163 Rocha Menocal, Alina, 220 Rogelio Gómez, Hermosillo, 217 Rosenberg, Gerald, 117 rules, 18 Saez, Ratil, 75n16 Sain, Marcelo, 191 Sala Constitucional (Constitutional Chamber), 109–10, 112, 119 Sala IV, 109–10, 112, 119 Salinas, Carlos, 211–12, 215 Sandinista movement: and gender bias, 155–56, 279, 283; sexual violence controversy, 155, 159–63, 169–70, 280–81 savings deposit case, 115–16 Schneider, Ben, 49n10 Scott, John, 216 Secretaría de Desarrollo Social (SEDESOL, Social Development Secretariat), 215, 221 Secretaría de Seguridad Interior (Internal Security Secretariat), 187 security policy. See public security policy SEDESOL (Secretaría de Desarrollo Social, Social Development Secretariat), 215, 221 Seguro de Capacitación y Empleo (Employment and Training Insurance), 94

312

Index

semi-clientism, 78, 206–7, 209, 278 SEP (System Administrator of Enterprises, Sistema de Empresas), 68 sexual diversity policy: and Brazil, 126–27; and clientism, 277; and legislatures, 139–41; level of access to decision-making areas, 24, 274; and Soares project, 138–39 Shugart, Mathew, 249 Siavelis, Peter, 40, 257, 258 Sikkink, Kathryn, 178, 181 Silva, Eduardo, 259 Simeon, Richard, 8 Sistema de Atención Ciudadana (Citizen Complaints System), 217, 219–20 Sistema de Empresas (System Administrator of Enterprises, SEP), 68 Skocpol, Theda, 10–11, 13, 17–18 Slim, Carlos, 197–98n4 Sloan, John, 5 Smith, Peter, 5–6 Smulovitz, Catalina, 24, 273, 275, 278 Soares, Luiz Eduardo, 138, 139 Sobrado Chaves, Miguel, 209 social class. See class social forces: and agenda setting, 24; and Argentina, 79–80, 85, 87, 88, 93–94, 95, 188, 190–91; and Bahia, 141–42; and caudillismo (personal power), 73n4; and Chile, 54, 56– 61, 71–73, 188, 254; defined, 54–55; demands of citizens, 24; and Mexico, 111, 113; social causes of crime, 182, 194; and study of public policy, 24. See also public problems social groups: and Brazil, 138–39; expectations of, 275; and federalism,

126; and political transition, 209; role of ideas in interest groups, 280; and state autonomy, 274; use of courts, 105, 109, 119. See also social movements social institutionalism (SI), 19, 20 Socialist Party (Partido Socialista), 74nn9, 11, 255, 282 social movements: and Argentina, 114–15; and Brazil, 114; and Chile, 258–59; and decentralization, 130; and federalism, 126, 127; and government structure, 128; and inequality, 21–22; level of access to decision-making areas, 24; piquentero movement, 85, 87, 89; role of ideas in, 280; use of courts to affect policy, 107, 114, 273. See also advocacy; social groups social policy: and Argentina, 85–89, 92, 239; and Argentinian labour policy, 24, 277; and Brazil, 136, 224n3, 234; and Chile, 25, 70, 234, 247–48, 274–75, 282; and class, 279; and construction of citizens, 4; and distribution of power resources, 9–10; and gender bias, 25; implementation of Oportunidades in Mexico, 25, 273; and Mexico, 206–7, 210–11, 214; and policy diffusion, 176–77; ideas on social risks, 281; social spending and inequality, 21; and study of public policy, 9–11; and use of courts, 119. See also Oportunidades; welfare policy social policy reform: and Bachelet Administration, 252–55, 258; and Concertación governments, 248–49; and distribution of governmental

Index authority, 249; factors influencing, 266–67; and ideology, 251–52; and market-oriented ideas, 261–65; and non-state actors, 250. See also Chile; public policy process social practices. See culture social relations: and Chile, 23–24; and poverty policy, 278; and public policy, 4; and study of public policy, 7, 17 social rights, 110 social science, 5 social solidarity, 21 socio-economic inequality: and access to the policy process, 274; and Argentina, 86–87, 96, 239–41; and Brazil, 274; and Chile, 57, 60, 70, 73–74n6, 252–53; and clientism, 20–22, 25, 208, 277–78; and constitutional reform, 108; and context, 21, 278; and education policy, 254; and ideas, 280; and institutions, 17–18; marginalization of target groups, 4; and Mexico, 278; and Oportunidades, 278; and the policy process, 20–23, 278–79; and poverty policy, 278; and public policy, 4, 7, 15, 25; and study of public policy, 5, 8, 11; and welfare policy, 231, 236–37; and welfare system, 231, 234. See also gender socio-economic structures: and Brazil, 130–32; and openness of subnational policy venues, 24, 127; social structures, 11; societal interests, 274 sociological institutionalism, 55 sociology of disputes, 159 South Africa, 114 Souto, Paulo, 136, 142

313

Sozzo, Máximo, 193 spaces of visibility, 151 Spiller, Pablo, 6 stage heuristic model, 8–9, 25n1 the state. See government structure; power structures state autonomy: and Chile, 274–75; defined, 12, 25n2; and domestic groups, 14; and environmental policy, 274; and international actors, 13–14; and Mexico, 15, 274; and study of public policy, 12–15, 274. See also state weakness state capacity: and Chile, 274–75; defined, 15–16; and gender-based violence, 273–74; implementation of social policy in Mexico, 273; and policy implementation, 274; and policy process, 274; role in policymaking, 274; and study of public policy, 15–17; and tax collection, 16–17. See also state weakness state-society relations: and courts, 105–6, 275; and executive power, 37; and Mexico, 211; possibility for changes in, 275; stage heuristic model, 8–9; and state capacity, 16–17; and study of public policy, 7–9, 12–17; and welfare system, 233–37. See also corporatism state weakness: and Chile, 57, 62–63, 72–73; classification of states as strong or weak, 16; and clientism, 22; contributing factors to, 274; dimensions of, 12; and market reform, 13–14; and Mexico, 209; and neo-institutionalism, 206; and policy diffusion, 177, 178–82, 179, 196; and social forces, 55; and state formation, 274; and study of

314

Index

public policy, 12, 274; and use of courts, 273. See also state autonomy; state capacity Stephens, John, 249 Stone, Deborah, 279 structure (government). See government structure structure (power structures). See power suplente system, 49n9 Svampa, Maristella, 88 System Administrator of Enterprises (Sistema de Empresas, SEP), 68 Takahashi, Yuriko, 215, 220 taxation: levels in Latin America, 26n3; and state capacity, 16; and welfare policy, 230 Taylor, Rosemary, 207 teachers union (Mexico), influence on policy of, 46, 274 Teichman, Judith, 7, 14, 23–24, 275 the Third Way, 213 Tilly, Charles, 16 Tomada, Carlos, 92 Tommasi, Mariano, 6 Torres-Espinosa, Eduardo, 15 Torres, Sylvia, 161 toxic waste policy, 47 trade: and Argentina, 80–81; and Chile, 61–63, 64–72; and judicialization, 120; and Mexico, 210. See also economic policy transgendered advocacy groups. See gay, lesbian, and travestis (GLT) movement transnational policy networks, 24, 178–81, 192, 196–97 transparency (politics of), 207, 212, 216–17

transportation policy, 180 the transversal party, 264 tutela decisions, 107–8, 112 unemployment. See labour market Unidad de Poder Adquisitivo Constante (Constant Unit of Purchasing Power), 108 Unidad Popular (UP, Popular Unity) coalition, 58–59 Unión Nacional Opistora (UNO, National Opposition Union), 156 United Kingdom, 181, 213, 231 United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLA), 61, 74n12 United States: and Chile, 59; civil service appointments, 39; as comparison point, 11, 35; and education policy, 117–18; as governmental model, 37; and legislative branch, 34–35, 48n2; and LGBT movement, 128–29; and military procurement, 10; and political appointments, 39, 49n9; and public security policy, 171, 176, 181, 193, 194–95, 197– 98nn3–4; and regulatory powers, 39; role of ideas in political system, 280; separation of power between executive and legislative branches, 34–35, 280; signing statements, 34, 48n1; and study of public policy, 10, 11, 180; use of courts to affect policy, 117–18; and welfare policy, 231 ‘Unity in Diversity’ conference, 157–58 Universal Allowance for Children (Asignación Universal por Hijo), 92 University of Chile, 195

Index UNO (Unión Nacional Opistora, National Opposition Union), 156 Uruguay, 6, 234, 243n3 Velasco, Andrés, 263 Venezuela, 40 violence against women. See gender violence Wagner, Jaques, 136 Walker, Ignacio, 256 Washington Consensus, international factors, 213 weak states. See state weakness Weber, Max, 16 Weir, Margaret, 11 welfare policy: and Argentina, 83–84, 228–29, 233–37, 243nn2–4, 244n5; characteristics of, 228–29; and child care, 229, 230, 232–33, 236–37, 238, 241–43; and Chile, 259; and classrelated distributive conflict, 9–10; decommodification, 230–32; dual social security system, 229, 238; familialism, 228–29, 235–36, 238–39, 279; family allowances program, 239–41; gender dualism, 236–37; goals of, 229; and ideology, 232; and institutions, 231; and Mexico, 210–11; neofamilialism, 233; paid work, 229; role of ideas, 280; social assistance, 236; social security system, 229, 232, 234, 236; and socioeconomic inequality, 231, 234, 236–37; structural adjustment

315

policies, 237–39; study of, 228; and United States, 11, 231; welfare regime typology, 229–32, 243n1; and welfare retrenchment, 250; and Western Europe, 11. See also family; labour policy; social policy Weyland, Kurt, 6, 176–77, 179, 180 Wilson, Bruce, 110 Wilson, James Q., 182 women: decommodification, 230–31; and familialist policy models, 279; feminism, 279; and Nicaragua, 157–58, 279; women’s rights, 157– 58; working women in Argentina, 235–36, 279. See also family; feminism; gender; gender violence Workers’ Party (PT, Partido dos Trabalhadores), 132–33, 138, 283 workfare, 86–89 work plans, 97n8 World Bank, 182, 183, 216, 224n2 Zalaquett, Mónica, 161 Zamora, Stephen, 44 Zedillo, Ernesto: and executive power, 43, 47; and government reform, 213–15, 223; and Progresa, 212, 213, 217, 224n3; and social programs, 220 zero tolerance policing, 181, 182–83, 185–86, 190, 191, 192, 196, 197– 98nn3–4, 281 Zoilamérica Naváz-Daniel Ortega case, 154–55, 159–66, 171nn1–5, 172n14

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Studies in Comparative Political Economy and Public Policy 1 The Search for Political Space: Globalization, Social Movements, and the Urban Political Experience / Warren Magnusson 2 Oil, the State, and Federalism: The Rise and Demise of Petro-Canada as a Statist Impulse / John Erik Fossum 3 Defying Conventional Wisdom: Political Movements and Popular Contention against North American Free Trade / Jeffrey M. Ayres 4 Community, State, and Market on the North Atlantic Rim: Challenges to Modernity in the Fisheries / Richard Apostle, Gene Barrett, Peter Holm, Svein Jentoft, Leigh Mazany, Bonnie McCay, Knut H. Mikalsen 5 More with Less: Work Reorganization in the Canadian Mining Industry / Bob Russell 6 Visions for Privacy: Policy Approaches for the Digital Age / Edited by Colin J. Bennett and Rebecca Grant 7 New Democracies: Economic and Social Reform in Brazil, Chile, and Mexico / Michel Duquette 8 Poverty, Social Assistance, and the Employability of Mothers: Restructuring Welfare States / Maureen Baker and David Tippin 9 The Left’s Dirty Job: The Politics of Industrial Restructuring in France and Spain / W. Rand Smith 10 Risky Business: Canada’s Changing Science-Based Policy and Regulatory Regime / Edited by G. Bruce Doern and Ted Reed 11 Temporary Work: The Gendered Rise of a Precarious Employment Relationship / Leah Vosko 12 Who Cares?: Women’s Work, Childcare, and Welfare State Redesign / Jane Jenson and Mariette Sineau with Franca Bimbi, Anne-Marie Daune-Richard, Vincent Della Sala, Rianne Mahon, Bérengèr Marques-Pereira, Olivier Paye, and George Ross 13 Canadian Forest Policy: Adapting to Change / Edited by Michael Howlett 14 Knowledge and Economic Conduct: The Social Foundations of the Modern Economy / Nico Stehr 15 Contingent Work, Disrupted Lives: Labour and Community in the New Rural Economy / Anthony Winson and Belinda Leach 16 The Economic Implications of Social Cohesion / Edited by Lars Osberg 17 Gendered States: Women, Unemployment Insurance, and the Political Economy of the Welfare State in Canada, 1945–1997 / Ann Porter 18 Educational Regimes and Anglo-American Democracy / Ronald Manzer

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