Nicaragua: Navigating the Politics of Democracy 9781626374737

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Nicaragua

Nicaragua Navigating the Politics of Democracy

David Close

b o u l d e r l o n d o n

Published in the United States of America in 2016 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301 www.rienner.com and in the United Kingdom by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU © 2016 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Close, David, 1945– author. Nicaragua : navigating the politics of democracy / by David Close. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 9781626374355 (hbk. : alk. paper) Nicaragua—Politics and government—1979–1990. | Nicaragua— Politics and government—1990– | Democracy—Nicaragua. 972.85—dc23 2015034426 British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992. 5

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Contents

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Acknowledgments 1 Nicaragua’s Political Transitions

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2 Thinking About Regimes

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3 Nicaragua in 1979

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4 Radical Sandinismo and the Vanguard Regime

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5 Electoral Democracy, 1984–2000

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6 Power-Sharing Duopoly, 2000–2011

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7 Dominant Power and Personalistic Rule, 2011–Present

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8 Putting Nicaragua in Perspective

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List of Acronyms Bibliography Index About the Book

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Even a book with a single author is not the work of one person. That is especially true of a book that addresses as complex a topic as this one does: why for more than thirty-five years Nicaragua has been unable to find a system of government that is broadly acceptable to most Nicaraguans, whether political elites or ordinary citizens. So I shall take a moment to signal my appreciation of some, but by no means all, of those who have contributed to this enterprise. Since this is a book about Nicaragua, that is where I will start. David Dye has long been a source of provocative ideas concerning all phases of Nicaraguan public life. As well, conversations with Mario Arana, Edmundo Jarquín, Antonio Lacayo, and Alejandro Martínez Cuenca all contributed to shaping my thinking about the challenges currently facing the nation. In Newfoundland, the Political Science Department at the Memorial University of Newfoundland has provided a congenial and stimulating environment for nearly four decades. I particularly want to recognize my colleagues Osvaldo Croci, Michael Wallack, and Steve Wolinetz, with whom I have had many fruitful discussions over the years. I will also include here my Spanish colleague and occasional collaborator from the Universidad de Salamanca, Salvador Martí i Puig, another Nicaragua specialist. Similarly, I want to thank former student Sherrill Pike for volunteering to read the manuscript. Finally, students in my classes on Latin American politics, the developing world, and authoritarian regimes have, with their incisive questions and observations, made me refine my thinking on topics related to Nicaragua. At Lynne Rienner Publishers, I want to recognize the exemplary work of all those with whom I dealt: Sandy Thatcher, Alejandra Wilcox, Lesli Brooks Athanasoulis, and of course Lynne Rienner herself. I have published

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with Lynne Rienner for over twenty years and can say that they have been invariably helpful and efficient. Finally, extra special thanks are due mi pareja, Rosa García-Orellán, who has tolerated the hours I spent glued to the computer and did much to clarify my thinking with perceptive queries and comments. —David Close

1 Nicaragua’s Political Transitions

President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua has been a central figure in his country’s government since 1979, when he was one of the key leaders of the Sandinista Revolution that overthrew the four-decadelong dictatorship of the Somoza family. From 1979 to 1984 he was a member of the nine-person Dirección Nacional (DN, National Directorate), the ruling Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN, Sandinista National Liberation Front) and the Junta de Gobierno de Reconstrucción Nacional (JGRN, Governing Council of National Reconstruction), the revolutionary government’s executive body. From 1984 to 1990, he was Nicaragua’s president. On losing the presidential election in 1990, Ortega became an opposition leader as head of the FSLN, then the country’s second largest party. For sixteen years, however, he remained an essential part of the government, trading the often much-needed support of his FSLN for benefits that kept him and the party close to the apex of power. In 2006, Daniel, as he is universally known in Nicaragua, made his political comeback, winning the presidency for a second time. In 2015 he remains the president, having secured reelection in 2011. Should he opt to run again in 2016, Ortega will win his third straight term. Besides his being popular (his approval ratings generally run over 60 percent), the FSLN controls the electoral system— everything from issuing the ID cards needed to vote and deciding if a party or candidate can run, to counting the votes and declaring the winner—and Daniel’s family and his personal friends own the vast majority of Nicaragua’s mass media. The power to rule is concentrated in his hands. This book is about how that came about. In his three-plus decades in Nicaraguan politics, Daniel Ortega has seen four political transitions that brought Nicaragua a new regime. These occurred in 1979, 1984, 2000, and 2011. The first two left Nicaragua more 1

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pluralistic and democratic; the last two moved away from democracy. These transitions did not just bring a new government, but rather installed radically different political systems built around a new logic, using a distinct set of institutions, employing restructured processes, and bringing in a fresh set of influentials. In fact, when considering political transitions, it is most often changes from one regime to another, say a dictatorship to a democracy, that interest us. An ordinary change of government (i.e., altering the personnel who control “the set of institutions that makes decisions and oversees their implementation on behalf of the state for a particular period of time”1) can produce dramatic changes if the new governing party has a program starkly different from its predecessor, but a new regime will almost certainly be a source of significant reforms. In Ortega’s case, the first transition occurred in 1979 and followed the Sandinistas’ seizure of power. The first Sandinista regime was a revolutionary vanguard system, one that reserved the right to rule to the group that led the revolution. Nicaragua’s version of this regime differed from the Soviet and Cuban models by retaining a level of political pluralism that was sufficient to accept that other anti-Somoza forces could also legitimately oppose the FSLN, provided they worked through official state institutions. Within three years the Sandinista leadership began moving toward an electoral democratic regime. This was largely the result of pressure from three sources. One was their domestic loyal opposition, those who accepted the need to preserve the revolutionary regime but opposed at least various policies of the FSLN government. Then there were Western European social democratic parties, who provided diplomatic support while pressuring the Sandinistas to move more decisively toward electoral democracy. Finally, there were the counterrevolutionary insurgents, who forced the administration to fight a counterinsurgent war and divert its economic and social reforms. Nicaragua’s first acceptably honest elections since 1932 took place in 1984. They saw Daniel Ortega elected president, the FSLN take nearly two-thirds of the legislative vote, and six other parties win seats and form the parliamentary opposition. That this regime worked as it should, and not necessarily as the FSLN hoped, was demonstrated when the next elections, held in 1990, saw Ortega and the revolutionaries swept from office. The system, however, lasted until 2000, when a power-sharing duopoly was constructed by Ortega and Arnoldo Alemán of the Partido Liberal Constitucionalista (PLC, Constitutionalist Liberal Party), who was then president of the republic. Under the new regime the president became less accountable, normally nonpartisan state institutions (courts, the electoral authority, and the national controller) came under the control of the duopolists, and a number of legal obstacles were erected to make it exceedingly difficult for other parties to challenge the power-sharing system.

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The latest stop on Nicaragua’s itinerary of regime transformations began in 2006 when Daniel Ortega staged a comeback after sixteen years out of office, winning a second term as president. This regime, best described as a dominant power system based on personal rule,2 has seen electoral manipulation, the reappearance of violence as a political tool, and ever more effectively unaccountable political power vested in the hands of the president and his family. That this should occur in Nicaragua today may surprise some. After all, when the FSLN came to power in 1979 many saw the Sandinistas as the good guys. However, time has not been kind to democracy in Nicaragua. Since 2000 the FSLN, along with numerous collaborators, has participated actively in moving the political system toward semidemocratic/semiautocratic. From 1979 to 1990, Nicaragua and the FSLN were big news and a hot topic for academic research. But when the FSLN lost power in the 1990 elections, Nicaragua’s second since those same Sandinistas brought the country electoral democracy in 1984, interest began to fade. This was understandable, as other stories were bigger, timelier, and more exciting. Yet Nicaragua did not stand still. Rather it continued changing, experimenting with new modes of governing and government, restructuring its political system twice more. In the process, a great deal of what once caused people to support the Sandinistas has changed, and perhaps the greatest changes are those that affected the FSLN and its leader Daniel Ortega. Nicaragua: Navigating the Politics of Democracy examines the political changes the country has experienced since the Sandinista revolution of 1979. The first twenty-one years of that period saw the quality of democracy improve in the country. After that, Nicaragua’s democracy began exhibiting more undemocratic characteristics. The country is still too pluralistic politically to be deemed autocratic, but it has strayed from the radical democratic path it laid out in 1970, as well as from the orthodox representative democratic course it embarked on in 1984.

The Book’s Background This book traces its lineage back to 2004 and a book titled Undoing Democracy: The Politics of Electoral Caudillismo, coedited by me and Kalowatie Deonandan. That book was about what Nicaraguans still call “the pact”: the deal between the then-president of Nicaragua, Arnoldo Alemán of the PLC, and the Sandinista ex-president (1984–1990), Daniel Ortega, that gave rise to the power-sharing duopolistic regime analyzed in Chapter 6. We called the book Undoing Democracy because until the new regime that was initiated in 2000, Nicaragua was becoming steadily more democratic. It had moved beyond the redistributive focus of a surprisingly

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pluralistic radical, revolutionary democracy to embrace electoral democracy in 1984. Eleven years later it took an important step toward constitutional democracy with a broad package of constitutional amendments, whose principal effect was to reduce presidential powers and make the chief executive more accountable. Those reforms unfortunately proved too much for the men heading the parties that got 89 percent of the presidential vote in 1996 (51 percent for the PLC, 38 percent for the FSLN). Freeing themselves and the successors of those restrictions changed Nicaragua’s political trajectory away from democracy. It has continued on that path to this day. In this book, I extend the examination of the country’s political transitions from 1979 to 2015, which encompassed four regime changes. Again, these were not just changes of governments, as they went far beyond simply reordering personnel and policies. They were full-scale makeovers of the political system: the entire logic, function, and purpose of the state. Four regime changes in three decades is an impressive record, and we would expect that a country that had overhauled its political system so frequently would be a textbook case of political instability. In Nicaragua, though, the government has functioned between adequately and well throughout this period. Further, just as government has remained stable, so too has the personnel of politics. The country’s current president, Daniel Ortega, was one of the nine Sandinista Comandantes de la Revolución (Commanders of the Revolution) who led both the first and second transformations, one of two actors responsible for the third, and the principal actor driving the fourth. Although not all of Nicaragua’s key political leaders have roots as deep as Ortega’s, a good number, perhaps even a majority, have been active since the mid-1990s. Both outcomes run counter to the expectations of most political analysts, but part of the explanation may be that the last three transitions were the work of sitting governments. There is a lot here to be described, discussed, analyzed, and explained. Some of it requires reviewing the political history of Nicaragua since 1979, with a focus on the struggle among its political elites to find an acceptable governing formula. The fact that they have failed in this quest has resulted in regimes imposed by those holding state power that are favorable to specific segments of that elite. In fact, analyzing this part of the problem requires presenting an overview of the country’s history as an independent state, thus since 1821, to determine what political legacies the past has bequeathed Nicaragua. Informal institutions, especially those that point to specific modes of governing that have shown themselves efficient tools for ruling Nicaragua, are significant here. This is not to argue that history determines the present, only that people read history to discover what has worked well or badly over time.

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More important than this background are the various regimes themselves. How did they come into being? How did they work once in operation? Did the changes yield new winners and losers; that is, did they leave a new set of influentials and outsiders? What did each do to either improve or damage the quality of democracy in Nicaragua? For those that no longer exist, how and why did they meet their end? Examining the life cycle of each regime will also provide insight into why those who built these regimes did so. This is particularly important with respect to the last two changes—the ones that moved the country further away from standard democratic practice. It will also shed light on why the changes were relatively easily achieved. Could leaders have chosen not to adapt to existing systems, or even shape those systems to better their needs, because building a made-to-order regime was a simpler task? There are issues that reach beyond Nicaragua, however. One issue is that there is so much regime instability when, above all, governments are stable. The most plausible hypothesis to explain this curious combination of stable governments and unstable regimes is that a state’s political elite is so divided that no consensus can be reached about a proper governing formula. But it does not explain why there is such a serious lack of consensus. In Nicaragua, the current division reaches back to the Sandinista revolutionary government, in both its vanguardist (1979–1984) and electoral (1984–1990) phases. That a revolution can polarize a society is unquestionable, but there are societies that are polarized even without the spark of a revolution, and Nicaragua historically is one of those. There are, that is, countries (and states, provinces, and municipalities) where political polarization is the way politics works. All politics is zero-sum, winner-take-all, and leave the loser in the dust. This goes beyond a spoils system, although it is part of the polarized system that makes accommodating an opponent unthinkable. In such systems, all political battles are waged with no quarter asked or given, because all outside your camp are enemies, not opponents. Deeply divided and divisive politics of this sort are often found in personalistic political systems: ones where the leader is the state. Whether they are called Big Men, caudillos, dictators, or just plain bosses, the individuals who head personalistic regimes are clearly alone at the top of the ladder; but that can be a very shaky perch. To stabilize conditions, personal rulers play supporters against one another and mobilize society against their opponents.3 All of this is done to allow the personal ruler to consolidate as much power as possible. Like too many other nations in the world, Nicaragua has more years of personal rule in its history than it does institutional government. Therefore, it is easy to imagine that an ambitious would-be ruler in such a place might aim to be a personal ruler in his or her own right, even if that meant being a dictator rather than the leader of a democratic party whose life will go on even with a different leader. If the received political

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wisdom of a polity points toward one-person rule it will seem the most natural road to long-term power. Linked to both polarization and personalism are a distrust of and consequently a disdain for nonpartisan, independent governmental machinery. This view is usually especially well developed when it comes to elections that incumbents can lose, but other state institutions are also candidates for partisan takeovers. Courts are usually included, as are any departments of government that can be turned against opponents. To take an example of the latter from the municipal level, health and safety inspections often serve this purpose. In Nicaragua, to protect themselves against the misuse of what should be nonpartisan government agencies, politicians have sought “quotas of power” in the form of representation in those agencies to better fight their corner. They do this rather than strengthen the independence of those same institutions. Another issue that contemporary Nicaraguan politics brings to light is the very broad one of political stability and political change. Probably the first man or woman who thought seriously about how we humans organized our collective affairs and how we were governed or governed ourselves was not at the task long before encountering the question of political stability and its counterpart, political change. Those issues continue to engage observers of politics to this day. They do so in no small part because each has equally important positive and negative sides. Political stability is essential because without it, settled, predictable patterns of governance do not emerge; the continuity of policies and institutional arrangements is limited, leading to much energy expended in reinventing the governmental wheel instead of governing. Yet political change is also necessary as it prevents institutional sclerosis and because political change accommodates new actors and issues, thereby contributing to a system’s strength and vitality. Today’s Nicaragua offers an unusual perspective on political stability and change, since it regularly alters regimes, yet, with the exception of 1979, does so not just peacefully but also legally. It is perhaps this combination that has let governments remain stable, even managed by the same personnel, while the basic structures and dynamics of the political system change. Further, I argue that Nicaragua’s regime changes are linked to transitions to, through, and from democracy. Transitions to democracy are familiar fare. They dominated political science in the 1980s and 1990s, and led to the creation of a new field of public policy in the form of democracy promotion. According to the views that were commonly held at the time, these new systems would soon become consolidated democracies, where all major players accepted that there could be no alternative to democratic politics. Democracy, therefore, was soon going to conquer most if not all of the world. That did not hap-

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pen, at least not to the extent that the more enthusiastic students and practitioners of transitional politics once believed it should have. There were many successes, and freely competitive elections did indeed become far more common as the only acceptable way to win the mandate to rule. However, some states remained above the democratic tide and others saw their evolution as democracies stall or go into reverse. The Arab Spring that occurred in the Middle East in 2010–2011 gave observers hope that another round of changes from authoritarian to democratic regimes was in the works, as massive antidictator movements arose in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and Bahrain. Unfortunately, by 2012 only Tunisia remained on the road to democracy. In the others, democracy never took hold. There were too many actors, individuals and groups alike, who were convinced that their political objectives could only be achieved through absolute control over the state. As a result, even where authoritarian rulers fell—Egypt, Libya, and Yemen—the end product was not democracy but either a new form of dictatorship or civil war. Shifting to a political system that is nondemocratic or antidemocratic, what today is usually called an authoritarian or autocratic regime, is another easily recognized phenomenon. Belarus, Egypt, and Russia are notable current examples. Another is Alberto Fujimori’s 1992 presidential coup in Peru. Less dramatic but still significant are the stalling and sometimes partial reversal of democratic consolidation in many countries over the past two decades. There can be movement away from democracy even when the resulting regime is not a dictatorship. In fact, Latin America, unlike the Middle East, has seen no return to anything like the dictatorships that existed before the wave of democratic transitions. What, though, can be said of transitioning through democracy? I have adopted this usage to distinguish cases where democratic government had some success over at least a few years, but still did not become a consolidated, institutionalized political system whose existence was unquestioned, from those instances where democracy worked badly and fell quickly. Thus the term applies to places where, even though democracy worked at least acceptably well over a reasonable length of time, it never became “the only game in town.” Even more to the point, those who preferred a less democratic game had the wherewithal to stop democracy’s development, even to undo democracy. Nicaragua had a functioning, though imperfect, democracy for sixteen years, during which time it also developed more of the traits of liberal, constitutional democracy. Further, it also held competitive elections that were broadly accepted as fair for another six years, thus a total of twenty-two years as an electoral democracy. The democratic regime drafted a constitution and then amended it in significant respects. Three different parties won the three general elections held in 1984, 1990, and 1996. Governments

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operating within this system both waged counterinsurgent war and negotiated peace with the insurgents. Most critically, they succeeded in keeping a deeply divided society from disintegrating. Democracy did not break down. It was discarded, amended first out of shape and now increasingly, but not totally, out of existence. Another issue that comes from the study of political transitions is that they would necessarily see the introduction of properly functioning democratic governmental institutions. The operational logic of these institutions would reward with political success those who followed the rules and worked in a fashion consistent with and supportive of democracy, and those whose behavior contravened those rules would be punished with political failure. In Nicaragua, as in many other countries, that did not happen. Good rules did not guide politicians onto democratic paths. Rather, politicians were able to turn those rules against the institutions and use democratic structures to secure nondemocratic ends. Individuals trumped institutions, in other words—exactly the opposite of what was supposed to happen. Was this because the institutions had weak and shallow roots? Or were the politicians who acted within those structures so clever and determined that they were unstoppable? To put Nicaragua’s record into perspective, three other contemporary cases of transitions through democracy are considered. They are Hungary under Viktor Orbán, Russia led by Vladimir Putin, and Venezuela during the presidency of Hugo Chávez. Each has or had a strong, personalistic ruler who has used democratic rules and processes to concentrate power in his own hands, thereby eventually putting himself above the law. Although all three of these nations are much richer than Nicaragua, and Venezuela has a longer democratic tradition, in them, as in Nicaragua, the leader controlled the state and democracy suffered. Not only is Nicaragua therefore not alone in failing to consolidate its earlier democratic gains, it also belongs to a class of states where politicians have found democratic government undesirable (or at least unhandy) and moved systematically away from it. They may or may not have constructed a frankly undemocratic order, but their political systems have grown less democratic.

Outline of the Book Nicaragua: Navigating the Politics of Democracy offers a perspective on the political changes that have taken place in Nicaragua since 1979. It is a work of contemporary political history that uses the concepts of political science to guide the research and structure its analysis. In writing it, I had two objectives: to present a fresh perspective on Nicaragua’s political evolution since 1979, and to build the investigation around concepts drawn

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from political science and use theoretical frameworks from that discipline to analyze the material under study. More specifically, I employ concepts developed in the study of democratic transitions in the 1980s, notably the idea of a sweeping political transition and how it might or might not become an embedded element of a political system. These are combined with theoretical categories that have emerged in analysis of nondemocratic political systems since the mid1990s. Among the most relevant of this group of concepts is the notion of a hybrid regime that manages to be both almost democratic and not quite authoritarian at the same time. Together, the two sets of analytical constructs provide a composite lens through which Nicaragua’s history can be viewed and that allows key attributes with long histories in that nation’s politics to stand out. Two of those attributes have been particularly significant: a propensity to produce regimes dominated by a single leader and a similarly strong tendency to practice polarized, “we are the embodiment of the good whereas they are evil personified” politics. The material presented in this study comes overwhelmingly from secondary sources. I have done this for two reasons. First, although in the course of my field research over the past thirty-plus years I have talked with many individuals active in Nicaraguan politics, both practitioners and analysts, during the past decade I have only infrequently employed formal interviews. Thus I have used those conversations solely as background material that fed later reflection. Second, because Nicaragua is, in 2015, familiar territory to far fewer of those interested in Latin American affairs than it was thirty years earlier, I emphasize material that others, above all students, nonacademic professionals (such as journalists and development workers), and anyone with an interest in Latin America or problems of democratization can easily consult. For that reason, wherever possible I have used English sources or both Spanish and English ones. There are obviously instances where only material in Spanish was available, but my objective here has been to make as much of my material readily available to as many readers as possible. That imposes certain limitations on the work, but they are minimal. Following this chapter, in Chapter 2, “Thinking About Regimes,” I introduce the concepts employed in the book, set out the analytical lines that I develop, and lay the foundation for appreciating Nicaragua’s transitions first to, then through, and now away from democracy since 1979. In Chapter 3, “Nicaragua in 1979,” I present an overview of Nicaraguan political history from independence in 1821 to the Sandinista revolution in 1979. I give special attention to two periods that were at least protodemocratic: the Conservative Republic (1858–1893), with a very limited franchise; and a series of three honest if still predemocratic elections (1924, 1928, and 1932), the 1932 election being organized and supervised

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by the United States. Either of these experiments could have been the foundation for democratic rule, but both were overthrown by dictators, who restored caudillo-style personal rule. The Sandinistas and their first regime are the featured actors in Chapter 4, “Radical Sandinismo and the Vanguard Regime,” which covers the period from 1979 to 1984. Although this was not a democratic system, because revolutionary vanguard parties exclude the possibility of losing power in the regimes they establish, it nevertheless made Nicaraguan politics more open and pluralistic than it had been under the Somozas. In Chapter 5, “Electoral Democracy, 1984–2000,” I focus on what until now has been the longest-lived of Nicaragua’s four post-1979 regimes. For more than sixteen years a recognizable, acceptably effective democratic political system confronted and overcame serious challenges—not least a foreign-financed insurgent war—introduced significant policy initiatives, and kept a deeply divided society from fracturing irreparably. What this regime accomplished, as well as who was dissatisfied with it and why, is detailed in the chapter. In Chapter 6, “Power-Sharing Duopoly, 2000–2011,” I turn to the political regime that marked the first step away from democratic government. At the heart of this system was a pact struck between President Arnoldo Alemán, a Liberal, and the Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega. The pact brought constitutional amendments that heightened presidential powers, while making the chief executive less accountable. It also converted such normally nonpartisan state institutions as courts and electoral commissions into partisan instruments, and it generally made the lot of parties outside the duopoly more difficult. Despite this power-sharing arrangement, however, the FSLN continued relentlessly to oppose the Liberal administration, and elections at all levels were straight fights between the two parties that dominated the political scene. How this regime worked and, rather more important, what caused it to stop working are considered here in some detail. The next and now most recent step away from political democracy is the subject of Chapter 7, “Dominant Power and Personalistic Rule, 2011– Present.” Like its two immediate predecessors, this regime came into being thanks to the efforts of the government of the day. In this case, it was the administration of Daniel Ortega, whose election in 2006 ended sixteen years in opposition for him and his party. During his first term back, Ortega set in place the framework for a new model of government. Some elements of the pacted system remained, notably the partisan control over courts, the electoral authority, and other usually independent institutions. However, the return of violence as a political instrument, strong indications of electoral fraud, and the vesting of ever more power in the president and his family all pointed to the formation of a new regime. The arrival of this new system was confirmed with the 2011 elections, which saw the collapse of the

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Alemán Liberals and the consequent emergence of the FSLN as a hegemonic force. In Chapter 8, “Putting Nicaragua in Perspective,” I compare Nicaragua with three other countries where political transitions have led to, through, and from democracy: Hungary, Russia, and Venezuela. In each of these three cases, as in Nicaragua, determined individuals showed themselves capable of concentrating power in their own hands, halting movement toward democracy, and redirecting the course of political change toward either a semidemocratic hybrid regime or an unmistakably authoritarian one. I also address the question of how to classify the political regime found in Nicaragua. Although it is unfortunate that Nicaragua is one of several countries that have moved away from a promising democratic political system toward a less open and accountable regime, examining how this has come about and why the shift has been successful affords valuable insights. One is that formal governmental institutions are not always able to channel the behavior of political actors in desired directions. That is because at least some of those actors will work very diligently to avoid the constraints the institutions were designed to impose and will have the resources to secure their objectives. Further, it suggests that the odds favor the actors who are dissatisfied with democracy where democratic institutions have shallow roots and clash with the received orthodoxy of how state power is to be gained and retained. Most troubling of all, even democratic systems that have worked efficiently and provided reasonably good government are not immune to failure.

Notes 1. Eric Mintz, David Close, and Osvaldo Croci, Politics, Power, and the Common Good: An Introduction to Political Science, 4th ed. (Toronto: Pearson Canada, 2014), p. 450. 2. Thomas Carothers, “End of the Transition Paradigm,” Journal of Democracy 13, no. 1 (January 2002): 5–21. 3. The following are useful introductions to the politics of personal rule: Michela Wrong, In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in the Congo (London: Fourth Estate, 2000); Natasha Ezrow and Erica Frantz, Dictators and Dictatorships: Understanding Authoritarian Regimes and Their Leaders (New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2011); Erica Frantz and Natasha Ezrow, The Politics of Dictatorship: Institutions and Outcomes in Authoritarian Regimes (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2011).

2 Thinking About Regimes

Understanding political change has always challenged analysts, journalists, and academics alike. This applies to political change at any level: a policy, a leader, a government, or even a regime—a complete political system. Obviously, the bigger the change the greater the interest, but also the greater the challenge to produce an explanation that is both thorough enough and straightforward enough to make what happened comprehensible. Since 1979, Nicaraguans have lived under five different regimes. Why have those nearly six million Central Americans and the politicians who administer their state changed their political regime—the foundations, structures, and functions of their political system—so often? The Sandinista revolution brought the first change of regime when it overthrew the dictatorship of the Somoza family on July 19, 1979. It was supposed to bring a new Nicaragua. Where its past had been marred by civil wars and dictatorships, its future would be democratic and peaceful. The country’s gravely inegalitarian society, present since the arrival of the Spanish in 1569, would be replaced by one making the marginalized majority the architects of their own liberation. Unfortunately, things did not work out that way. In fact, the Nicaragua of 2015 looks uncomfortably similar to the way it did before the revolution. Elections are opaque and arguably manipulated, thus one party (now the Sandinistas) is the sure winner. Power is increasingly vested in the president and his family. Corruption seems to be on the rise. What happened? By the next general elections in 2016 the Sandinistas, formally the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional or FSLN (Sandinista National Liberation Front), will have governed the country for twenty-one of the thirty-seven years since the 1979 revolution (1979–1990, 2007–2016). Nevertheless, the transformations they wanted to effect were either never secured or overturned by later governments. The FSLN’s failure was not, 13

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though, entirely its own doing. From 1981 to the defeat of the first Sandinista government in 1990, a counterrevolutionary insurgency, financed and abetted by the government of the United States, cost Nicaragua over 30,000 lives and $9 billion in damages and war-related expenditures,1 a sum nine times greater than Nicaragua’s 1990 GDP.2 Further, that decade’s warfare contributed substantially to a bout of hyperinflation that eventually reached 34,000 percent. Then, from 1990 to 2007 the FSLN was the largest opposition party, essentially the official opposition. Many hands contributed to bringing the country to where it is today, but the Frente Sandinistas have been there from the outset. One of the things those many hands have done is tinker endlessly with the basic outlines of the nation’s political system: its regime. On New Year’s Day 1979, Nicaragua was governed by the Somoza family’s dictatorship, which was then forty-three years old and led by the second generation of the dictatorial family. By that July 19, however, the dictatorship had fallen and been replaced by a revolutionary vanguard led by the Frente Sandinista. Then in 1984, the Sandinistas traded their vanguardist system for an electoral democracy. Nicaragua functioned as an electoral democracy for sixteen years until it was succeeded by a power-sharing duopoly. This change occurred following a deal between President Arnoldo Alemán, leader of the Partido Liberal Constitucionalista (PLC, Constitutionalist Liberal Party), and former president Daniel Ortega, head of the FSLN. In 2011,3 Nicaragua got its current political system, a hybrid regime called a dominant power regime. It sees the Sandinistas’ leader Daniel Ortega functioning as what can be called an elected caudillo, with his wife Rosario Murillo exercising nearly equal power. Each of these five regimes will be examined more thoroughly in later chapters. For the moment what matters are the following: that Nicaragua has been governed by five strikingly different political systems in less than forty years, that there have been four changes of regime in that time, and that three of those changes were initiated by a sitting government—the government did not change but the political system in which it functioned did. Normally, when a country has carried out four thorough overhauls of its basic political system in a relatively short time, political observers make a two-step analysis. First, they declare the country extremely unstable. That is a fitting label for a country that has failed to establish a durable formula for governing itself over a span of three-plus decades. They then advance hypotheses to explain how and why that happened. Curiously, in the Nicaraguan case, no one appears to have suggested that its, to now, fruitless search for a governing formula indicates political instability, so this succession of regimes remains unanalyzed. Were Nicaragua a newly created state, this search for a workable, stable regime—one that keeps the same institutions and model of state-soci-

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ety relations, sees a slowly changing set of influentials who use known means of influence, and employs fundamentally the same array of instruments to govern—could be seen as a sort of shakedown cruise. The new country’s equally new governors would be working out the kinks and making the changes necessary to run their nation effectively. However, Nicaragua has been an independent state since 1821, and although it has had its share of cataclysmic political transformations it would have been expected to settle on a general governing formula some time ago. Further, this is not a new problem, as even a casual glance at the country’s history shows that Nicaraguans, along with many other Latin Americans, have long had trouble finding a durable form of government. To date, the country’s longest-lived regime has been the Somoza family’s forty-three-year dynastic dictatorship. None of this makes Nicaragua an outlier among the nations of the world. On the contrary, it is countries whose basic political models have remained unchanged for a very long time that stand out from the rest. Most states have been forced to reinvent themselves at least once in the relatively recent past due to invasion, revolution, secession, or governmental collapse. Regime stability over the long run is not the norm. Why then look at Nicaragua? Nicaragua’s repeated reorganizations of its political regime merit attention for three reasons. The most obvious one is that as of 2015 the country has been governed by five quite different political systems in thirty-six years. That is attention-grabbing and cries out to be explained. Although this record may not be unusual historically in Latin America, it stands out among contemporary Latin American states. Moreover, the four changes of regime that occurred can be seen as being “made in Nicaragua.” That does not mean that no external influences were present, but rather that the government enacting the changes was able to tailor them to fit its needs and govern with them. Another reason is that each change of regime has affected the quality of the country’s democracy: an assessment of how well it measures up against current notions of democratic best practice. The first two of the four changes left the country more democratic or at least better placed to become more democratic; but the last two shifted Nicaragua away from democratic government. The third and final motive is to discover if any of the factors underlying this instability exist in other cases where regime changes have occurred, especially instances where democratic transitions have stalled or reversed. The present chapter begins by examining the central terms used in the study. There are four in all. Two of them, regime and quality of democracy, are reasonably widely used concepts in contemporary political science and each has its own literature. An overview of how both concepts are applied

16

Nicaragua

to the five regimes is an integral part of the analysis. The other two, polarization and personal rule, are similarly well-known, but need to be put into a context where both are informal political institutions and important components of Nicaraguan political culture. Then follows a discussion of the broader questions that the Nicaraguan case raises.

Regime Everyone who discusses politics regularly uses the term regime. Unfortunately, not everyone uses it in the same way. In political science, for example, the term can designate (1) an international regime, which covers the rules and procedures used among international actors in some specified field, such as the fishery; (2) a policy regime, which refers to the ideas, institutions, and actors involved in making public policy, for instance a welfare regime; or (3) another name for a political system. The last of these, the idea that regime is a synonym for political system, thus related to how state power is structured and exercised, is the most familiar.4 Given how the news media in the English-speaking world have employed the word since roughly 1990, many people might conclude that regime is reserved for political systems that are dictatorships. Thus we have the Saddam Hussein regime, the Gaddafi regime, and the North Korean regime. This is not incorrect, as personal dictatorships are a type of regime.5 But they are only a subclass of dictatorships, which are themselves a subclass of nondemocratic regimes. Like regime, regime change has also come to be applied too restrictively by the mass media. Especially since the invasion of Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein, the term suggests the forceful removal of a tyrant by foreign arms. This is one way to change a regime but it is not the only one. Most of the regime changes during the third wave of democracy (1974 to the late 1990s) did not include armed insurrection, but rather employed pacific, even democratic means. When discussing Nicaragua’s inability to find a stable regime, a central issue is what separates one form of regime, one class of political system, from another. From Aristotle onward, thinking about politics has involved comparing the operational codes of and results produced by different broad classes of states. Over the centuries, people have compared monarchies and republics, personalistic and constitutional systems, democracies and various forms of non- or antidemocratic states, presidential with parliamentary systems, and federal and unitary governments, to give the more familiar examples. Since the wave of democratic transitions from the 1970s to the 1990s, political science has been concerned with distinguishing between democratic and authoritarian systems, recently adding an intermediate class,

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17

often called hybrids. The four best-known reports on the status of democracy worldwide—the Bertelsmann Transformation Index, the Economist Intelligence Unit, Freedom House, and Polity IV—all use variants of this basic scheme (see Table 2.1).6 A regime thus refers to class of political systems and any regime will include a variety of governments. For example, some parliamentary systems, the Netherlands or Italy, regularly produce coalition governments, whereas others, Canada or Spain, usually have one-party governments, whether majority or minority. As a result, the criteria used to identify a regime and permit it to be distinguished from others must be broad enough to encompass a range of differences similar to those noted above, yet narrow enough to set one class of governments clearly apart from others. What would that entail? Perhaps the most basic definition comes from Chelabi and Linz, who view it as the allocation and use of power.7 Thus a regime is about the logic, operational code, and structure of rule of a political system. This gives a broad sense of what a regime is but it does little to distinguish between or among regimes or determine if a regime has changed. However, thinking about how power is allocated and used suggests that the following factors can serve to distinguish one regime from another: • How an individual or group gets the right to rule. It could be heredity, direct or indirect election, or simply by controlling the state. • The instruments that are used to rule. These can include coercion, persuasion, and democratic institutions, among others. • How and by whom the political class (those who govern and those who have the most influence over government) is constituted. • In whose interests the state operates. Among the options are a class, a race, a religion, a region, or, ideally, the common good. • The end toward which the state operates. The possibilities include

Table 2.1 Current Systems of Regime Classification Model

Democratic

Mixed

Nondemocratic

Democracies in consolidation/ defective democracies

Highly defective democracies/ moderate autocracies

Hard-line autocracies

Economist Intelligence Unit

Democracy/ flawed democracy

Hybrid

Authoritarian

Freedom House

Free: liberal democracy/ electoral democracy

Partly free

Unfree

Democracy

Anocracy

Autocracy

Bertelsmann Transformation Index

Polity IV

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Nicaragua

self-preservation, general good governance, social transformation, and sustaining a socioeconomic hierarchy. In other words, regimes can be distinguished by how state power is configured, who uses or influences the use of that power, how power is exercised, and the ends for which power is used. Siaroff brings in more detail, writing that “the concept of a political regime refers to the formal and informal structure and nature of political power in a country, including the method of determining office holders and the relations between the office holders and the society at large.”8 O’Donnell takes another step, seeing a regime as “a mediation between society and the state, as it links them by providing the channels for accessing the top positions of the latter, the government”; it naturally includes the “main, or more salient, institutions of the state,”9 thus a regime includes the essential machinery of government, how it is to work, and what ends it is to serve. Building on O’Donnell’s view, Chaguacedo defines a regime as “the array of institutions and processes—formal and informal—that mediate between state and citizen. These, in turn, determine access to public office and define the actors, resources, and strategies that are acceptable or unacceptable for gaining access, with a given framework of specific values, practices and rules.”10 Finally, a political regime also encompasses the bases of the state’s legitimacy: what gives the state the right to make and enforce laws.11 Because “political regime,” like other concepts in political science, carries multiple meanings, there are still more definitions. However, the above are sufficient for the task at hand. Putting them together yields a concrete connotative definition of a regime that tells us we can determine what sort of regime a state has by looking at the political institutions, formal and informal, governmental and extragovernmental; how governments use those institutions; the state-society relations, including who has influence over government; and what makes a government legitimate and how it keeps its legitimacy. These elements are stable enough to distinguish one political system from another and important enough to reveal the essential character of any political system. Changing Regimes

Why do political regimes change? How do they change? There are several possibilities. Frequently it is a coup, revolution, invasion, or military defeat that produces the complete overhaul of the machinery of government, changing both the ends to which that machinery is used and the people who influence its use. In these cases the new rulers install a system that suits their needs. An example of a regime change via a coup d’état would be Pinochet’s

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1973 overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile. A military coup usually takes place when a state’s armed forces decide that the civilian government is incapable of running the country well. What follows is a government of, by, and for the military. The civilian constitution is suspended, parties are generally outlawed, and the media have new rules to follow. Eventually, however, the military hands government back to civilian politicians and retires to its barracks.12 This is what occurred in Argentina (1983), Uruguay (1984), Brazil (1989), and Chile (1989), where exceptionally repressive military dictatorships ceded the state to civilian democracies. Although some revolutions just change the personnel of government, there are many instances of revolutions’ ushering in a new regime. Among them are the American, French, Mexican, Russian, Chinese, Cuban, Portuguese, Iranian, Nicaraguan, and most recently Tunisian. Not only does a regime-changing revolution dissolve the old system, but the revolutionaries make clear their intention to stay permanently and never hand back power to the old rulers. In both instances the following will occur: new institutions will be brought in; new rules will be laid down; the roster of influentials will change; state and society will interact in new ways; and the government will base its right to rule on novel grounds. That certainly describes what happened in Nicaragua after the FSLN defeated the troops of the Somoza government and sent its leaders and their closest supporters into exile. There are two other reasonably common instances where force is used to change a political regime. One is by invasion, as with the Nazi takeovers of Western European states in 1939 and 1940. These saw many democratic systems toppled and replaced by occupation authorities. And the military defeat of the Nazis, Fascists, and Japanese militarists by the Allies in World War II brought those dictatorships to an end. Sometimes, though, large-scale violence is not needed to produce a change of regime. In the Soviet bloc in the late twentieth century the old system just collapsed in the face of mass, peaceful opposition. Though not a perfect fit, something similar happened in the Tunisian Revolution of 2011, which saw the Ben Ali dictatorship ousted and replaced by a democracy. It can also happen that a government abandons the current system, replacing it with a regime it believes will provide better government and greater benefits to its citizens. This is a good description of the Spanish transition to democracy that began in 1975.13 This applies as well to the United States, which traded the confederal system that existed under the Articles of Confederation for its current federal constitution, and to the many third wave transitions to democracy that were negotiated. Another instance of a sitting government’s transforming its own regime is found in Mexico’s move from noncompetitive elections to electoral democracy, which was accomplished between 1988 and 2000. Although it

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Nicaragua

was a lengthy process, it was one carried out by the party that had governed since 1929, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI, Institutional Revolutionary Party), and that regained national power in 2012. That there was outside pressure on the PRI to undertake this transition does not alter the fact that the regime was changed from the inside and the insiders eventually benefited from the change. Similarly, as will be examined in detail in later chapters, in Nicaragua, the FSLN carried out two changes of regime while in power, and then participated in a third while it was the country’s largest opposition party. Even though Nicaragua, like Mexico, was subject to external pressure, it would be incorrect to conclude that the specific regime reform undertaken was forced on them from outside or even that reform was implemented solely to placate external forces, though those factors were present. National political systems always count foreign states among the forces that seek to influence their policies: not only is Mexico too far from God and too close to the United States, but the much wealthier Canada sleeps next to an elephant that lives in Washington. What matters is not that another country pressures a government to pursue some particular policy, for that is completely unexceptional. Rather the key point is whether the government can handle those pressures in ways that let it secure at least some of its central objectives; the most important is obviously retaining power.14 This last factor figures prominently in Nicaragua’s move from a vanguard regime to an electoral democratic one. The revolutionaries, who had just waged a successful insurgency, found themselves fighting a counterinsurgent war. There is a two-part strategy for a successful counterinsurgency: reform and repress. Implementing that strategy demands combining ameliorative political reforms with military action. In Nicaragua, this homegrown regime transformation can be seen as a way to keep the domestic loyal opposition, notably the six parties that ran in the 1984 election, onside, while also shoring up the diplomatic support of European social democrats.15 These questions are addressed further below. None of this necessarily implies that the Sandinistas enthusiastically embraced the move to electoral democracy, only that they were pragmatic enough to make the shift, stay in power a while longer, and remain a viable political option in Nicaragua. In cases like those immediately above, the question becomes why a government would restructure its own political system. The short answer, which will be expanded in Chapters 4–7, is that what spurs such extensive reforms is some combination of convenience and conviction. Convenience figures in because the government promoting the change believes that the new system will make it easier to secure its aims, perhaps by accommodating its opponents to some degree. Conviction plays a part, because a particular government believes that only its favored system will let it and the country flourish.

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What does political science say about regime change? While this is a topic as old as politics itself, regime transformation took center stage during the last quarter of the twentieth century with the third wave of transitions to democracy. Observers detected a model in which a democratic opening (a weakening of an authoritarian regime) was followed by a breakthrough (the fall of that regime), which then produced a transition to democracy.16 More importantly, this process involved top-level talks between prodemocracy reformers and representatives of the government who were seeking a negotiated settlement, rather than a potentially dangerous confrontation. Thus there was a search for common ground that would eventually lead to the government’s agreeing to hold and accept the results of free and fair elections. These so-called transitional elections would be the decisive step toward democracy, and democracy would soon prove its value and become the unchallenged regime of choice. Thomas Carothers called this model the “transition paradigm.”17 However, this paradigm did not fit all democratic transitions. Based mainly on early cases from Western Europe and Latin America, where negotiations between two sets of political elites were the norm, it gave too little weight to the role of protest and the bottom-up pressures for change evident in the Soviet bloc18 and Africa.19 This did not mean armed conflict was involved, only that democracy could be secured through demonstrations as well as negotiations. A second criticism of the transition paradigm came from Wolfgang Merkel.20 Merkel argued that the scholars who laid the groundwork for the democratic transitions literature both overestimated the capacity of wellintentioned political leaders to produce lasting regime transformation and correspondingly underestimated the power of structurally embedded obstacles to hamper, even derail, systemic reforms. There is no doubt that such structural factors as poverty, social inequality, and a long history of antidemocratic politics make building a constitutional democracy a daunting task. However, Chapters 6 and 7 present evidence underlining the ability of determined and highly skilled political leaders to engineer transitions away from democratic rule. Recent Nicaraguan Regimes

How can we know if the five models of government Nicaragua has had since 1979 are really different enough from one another to be deemed separate regimes? When dealing with regimes we tend to bifurcate and compare polar opposites. For example, whatever other factors unite or divide them, monarchies generally have hereditary rulers21 but republics do not; and democracies have rulers who are accountable to their citizens whereas authoritarian regimes do not. However, when placing regimes on a contin-

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Nicaragua

uum, the cutoff point between regimes is no longer so clear. Even when plotted along a continuum, however, each new Nicaraguan regime is easily distinguishable from its predecessor. A quick examination of the five systems provides the outlines of an answer that will be filled out in later chapters (see Table 2.2). Authoritarian Personalism, 1936–1979. In 1979, forty-three years of rule

by the Somoza family ended. The dynasty began with Anastasio (Tacho) Somoza García, who ruled Nicaragua from 1936, when he deposed the constitutionally elected president, to 1956, when he was assassinated. Even when he was not formally president, he was still Nicaragua’s de facto

Table 2.2 Nicaraguan Regimes, 1979–present Type of Regime

Year Regime Began

Leader of Regime Change

Traits of the Leader

Year Regime Ended

Who Ended Regime and How

Personal dictatorship

1936

Somoza García removed president; won controlled election

Personalist, dynastic, caudillismo; coercion, cooptation; dealt with elites

1979

FSLN, revolutionary overthrow

Vanguardist

1979

FSLN, revolution

Vanguard party; mass organizations; appointed representative body; relatively pluralistic

1984

FSLN government; shift to electoral democracy

Electoral democracy toward constitutional democracy

1984

FSLN government

Electoral democratic

2000

PLC-FSLN pact to make duopoly

Duopoly

2000

PLC government made pact with FSLN; constitutional amendments; amended ordinary laws

Power sharing; made nonpartisan institutions partisan; posts divided between pact partners

2011; some legal framework remains

FSLN government; PLC too weak for duopoly

Dominant power, personalisticfamilial

2011

FSLN government after electoral victory in 2006; electoral manipulation, 2008, 2011, 2012

Partisan control Continues; Continues solely by FSLN; may become hyperpresidential; hegemonic familism

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ruler.22 His sons Luis and Anastasio (Tachito) Somoza Debayle continued the line. Luis served from 1956 to 1963, while Tachito was president from 1967 to 1972 and 1974 to 1979. Theirs was a classical caudillo-style government in which the president was limited only by his perception of the possible. A combination of factors let the three Somozas do this. At the top of the list was the president’s control of the Guardia Nacional (National Guard), which served as both Nicaragua’s military (army, air force, and navy) and its national police.23 Then came the Somoza family’s political machine, the Partido Liberal Nacionalista (PLN, Nationalist Liberal Party), which distributed patronage and mobilized the regime’s supporters when necessary.24 Third in line was the family’s wealth: in 1979 it was estimated that one-fifth of the country’s arable land was held by the Somozas, their extended family, or close associates; and this does not consider their extensive commercial and industrial holdings. The list usually concludes by noting that the Somozas were good friends of the US government: President Franklin Roosevelt reportedly referred to Somoza García as “a son of a bitch, but our son of a bitch.” If the foregoing are traits one expects a dictatorship to have, the Somocista system also governed with tools not always associated with dictatorships. For example, although the media, print and electronic,25 were regularly censored and those especially opposed to the regime, such as La Prensa and Radio Corporación, often shut down, they were not completely banned.26 Similarly, although elections were rigged, there was a licensed opposition that got a share of state appointments, even though actually governing was precluded. Further, this regime would occasionally formalize its relations with its licensed opponents with an official pact. Along the same lines, although the Somozas became very wealthy, at least until 1972 the family limited its interference with Nicaragua’s economic elites, thus preserving a degree of pluralism. In short, the Somozas were obviously not democrats, but neither were they clones of Paraguay’s Francia, Argentina’s Rosas, or Cuba’s Castro. Limited pluralism and deal-making with opponents were tools this authoritarian regime used to rule. Revolutionary Vanguard, 1979–1984. The concept of the revolutionary vanguard regime is Marxist in origin. Because only the communists know the correct line of march, they alone can exercise power after the revolution. Only they can build socialism and lead society to communism. Called the dictatorship of the proletariat, this is a tutelary regime that, like all such systems, reserves the right to rule to a self-defined minority. Although the FSLN was unquestionably a military-political insurrectional movement and objectively the leading force of the revolution that overthrew the Somozas, its postrevolutionary vanguard regime was unorthodox. The Junta de Gobierno de Reconstrucción Nacional (JGRN, Governing Council of National

24

Nicaragua

Reconstruction), the revolution’s first government, was unelected, dominated by the Sandinistas, and dedicated to a rapid transition to socialism. Yet the JGRN was not a classic, Bolshevik-style vanguard regime. At the heart of what distinguished this vanguard was the FSLN’s acceptance that the revolutionary government should not be a purely Sandinista enterprise. This was shown in the structure of two institutions: the JGRN and the Consejo de Estado (CE, Council of State). Two of the original members of the five-person JGRN were supporters of the revolution with moderate political outlooks. This was actually less consequential than it appears, as real decisional power rested with the nine Sandinista Comandantes de la Revolución, the Commanders of the Revolution who formed the FSLN’s Dirección Nacional (DN, National Directorate), and because the JGRN had a majority of pro-Sandinista members. Still, including non-FSLN members in the JGRN reflected recognition of the utility of a broadly based government. A similar commitment to a modicum of pluralism appeared in the structure of the revolutionary government’s representative body, the CE. Among representative institutions the CE stood alone. An appointed chamber, based on functional representation, and without the power to initiate legislation, this body appeared to have two functions. One was to be a debating chamber, where alternatives to the DN’s proposals could be aired; the other was to allow the individuals who represented Sandinista organizations (a majority of that assembly) to develop political skills they would need as key players in the new regime. Despite this unpromising profile, the CE played a key role in perhaps the most important decision made by the revolutionary government, namely, its decision to abandon Leninist vanguardism and turn to electoral democracy. The 1982 Political Parties Law originally provided only for non-Sandinista parties to “participate in public administration,” not to govern. Under pressure from generally supportive West European donors, as well as the far less friendly Reagan administration,27 the FSLN opted to let whoever won govern, provided they did not advocate a return to Somocismo. The details of this bill were worked out in the CE, as was the 1984 electoral law, which defined not just the electoral system but also the posts to be elected. Although the first five years of Sandinista rule were far from constitutional democracy, the revolutionary government did make Nicaraguan government more democratic by making it more open and pluralistic. We usually think of the revolutionary regime’s success in promoting egalitarian reforms in education, health, income distribution, and social policy when assessing its democratic credentials; but its renunciation of a monopoly on state power was equally momentous. Electoral Democracy, 1984–2000. In great measure, electoral democracy

came to Nicaragua because the FSLN needed it to survive. Under military

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pressure from the Reagan administration and feeling the need to maintain the support received from the far friendlier European social democrats, the Sandinistas apparently realized that their vanguardist period had to come to an end. As well, the revolutionaries understood that an electoral democracy, using conventional electoral democratic political machinery (parties, elected legislature, and executive, etc.), offered the means to institutionalize their revolution. Thus changing Nicaragua’s political regime, the basic logic and structure of rule, from Leninist vanguardism to representative, electoral democracy was the method chosen to preserve the Sandinista government and leave open the possibility of continuing, though slower, economic, political, and social change. That the DN started work on this project in 2002 suggests both that the need for action was evident and that the nine Sandinista leaders believed that they could continue governing in a more open, competitive system. Nevertheless, the regime was a genuine electoral democracy. Not only was the right to rule conferred solely by electoral victory, but serious efforts were made to ensure the secrecy of the vote and to provide an efficient and politically neutral electoral administration. Further, political pluralism was broadened and deepened as more actors had more opportunities to express support for or opposition to government within the framework of democratic institutions. Each of the first three elections (1984, 1990, and 1996) returned administrations from different parties. In 1984, Daniel Ortega led the FSLN to a smashing victory, with 66 percent of the vote. But six years later, Ortega and his Sandinistas were swamped by the Unión Nacional Opositora (UNO, National Union of the Opposition), with Violeta Chamorro28 at the head of the ticket, which carried the presidential race by a 54 to 40 percent margin. Then in 1996, after the UNO dissolved, the Alianza Liberal (AL, Liberal Alliance), a coalition led by Arnoldo Alemán’s PLC, won 51 percent of the vote, and again defeated Daniel29 and the FSLN, who took 38 percent. Note, though, that both the UNO and the AL/PLC were anti-Sandinista parties, thus reflecting the Sandinista–anti-Sandinista polarization that has marked Nicaraguan politics since 1979. Further, the first two administrations were very active. In 1987, the FSLN majority in the Asamblea Nacional (National Assembly), the legislature created by the 1984 electoral law, produced not just a constitution but also an autonomy statute that devolved powers of self-government to the Atlantic coastal departments of Nicaragua, home to the majority of Nicaragua’s indigenous people and its Afro-descended population. The regime then proved robust enough after 1990 to weather the Sandinistas’ unexpected electoral loss, an attempted legislative coup by the UNO majority in the assembly, and significant constitutional amendments that the assembly approved, but that both President Chamorro and ex-president

26

Nicaragua

Ortega opposed because they increased presidential accountability and constrained executive powers. So the governmental machinery of this regime could be made to work, even to bring major changes to how government functioned. Unfortunately, President Alemán also chafed under the constraints of the new constitution. A product of the Somozas’ PLN, Arnoldo Alemán was a late twentieth-century adaptation of the caudillo—the strongman who ruled free from restraints imposed by institutions. In Daniel Ortega he found a kindred spirit with whom he could join forces to rid the presidency of unwanted encumbrances. However, it must be borne in mind that the two were sworn enemies until the moment they began negotiating a power-sharing pact. Duopolistic Power Sharing, 2000–2011. In economics, a duopoly is defined as a market dominated by two firms, for example, Visa and MasterCard. In politics, the term describes any situation where two parties dominate political life.30 One example of a political duopoly is the classic two-party system, in which the two largest parties share around 90 percent of the vote and there is some alternation in power; that is, the two are sufficiently similar in strength that one is not the perpetual runner-up. The clearest case of a long-standing two-party system is the United States, effectively for its entire existence, but Honduras (1918–present), Colombia (1849–2002), and Costa Rica (1906–2006) also qualify. There is, though, another form of political duopoly, namely, the powersharing pact. In this political system, two parties, usually the two strongest, strike a deal in which each gets control over certain government posts; in Nicaragua this is called a quota of power. These can take several forms. One that was used by the Somozas gave a licensed opposition an allotment of legislative seats, a third initially, in return for accepting that the Somozas’ PLN would win every election. Another model, used in Latin America in the late nineteenth century, saw a potentially rebellious party given legislative seats and government appointments as an inducement to keep them from turning to violence.31 A third variety is seen in countries where civil conflict has raged. In these cases outside mediators attempt to strike a bargain between the warring sides that gives each a number of key positions if they lay down arms and agree to joint administration of the state. The settlements of postelectoral violence in Kenya (2007) and Zimbabwe (2008) are examples. The 2000 pact between Alemán and his PLC, and Ortega and the FSLN, constitutes a fourth category. Their power-sharing arrangement had two effects. One simply confirmed the existing two-party system, antiSandinista (in 2000 the PLC) versus Sandinista. The two forces had combined to take some 90 percent of the vote in both 1990 and 1996, and there

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were no challengers on the horizon. Where the deal made a difference was in how it changed the legal framework of Nicaraguan government, and thus the basic rules of the political game. These began with changes to the electoral law, to ensure that the two parties’ predominance would continue, including the adoption of extremely restrictive standards for registration as an official party that would be able to contest elections. It then amended the constitution and turned the electoral authority, the Consejo Supremo Electoral (CSE, Supreme Electoral Council), the Corte Suprema de Justicia (Supreme Court), and the Controlador General de la República (Controller General’s Office) into partisan bodies (Art. 138). The pact gave the governing party 60 percent of the posts in these institutions, with the second-place partner getting the rest. What was outside the pact was equally interesting, as the parties still contested free elections and opposed each other openly, even fiercely, on all other issues. However, this formalized duopoly lasted only until 2011. Dominant Power, Personalist, 2011–Present. Although Nicaragua’s current

regime was not unmistakably in place until 2011, the first steps away from the duopoly began nine years earlier. Elections in 2001 returned the PLC to power, with Enrique Bolaños, Alemán’s vice president, becoming Nicaragua’s chief executive, taking 53.6 percent of the vote. A third straight loss for Ortega, even with his best showing (42.6 percent) since 1984, reaffirmed the FSLN’s runner-up status. Yet the pacted system started to unravel in 2002, when Bolaños decided to pursue Alemán for corruption. In less than twelve months, the former president had been stripped of his parliamentary immunity (the past president receives an Assembly seat in Nicaragua, as does the second-place finisher), charged with defrauding the state of some $100 million, and sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment. This gravely weakened Alemán and left Ortega’s Sandinistas by far the strongest party going into the 2006 elections. Although Ortega and the FSLN won those elections in less than resounding fashion (38 percent of the vote in both the presidential and legislative races), they benefited from a split in the Liberal vote, thus they were back in power. This current regime has been under construction since 2007 and though it can be deemed a consolidated system since 2011, it probably has not assumed its final form. Nevertheless, structurally it resembles what Carothers calls a dominant power regime. That is a system with limited but still real political space, some political contestation by opposition groups, and at least most of the basic institutional forms of democracy. Yet one political grouping, whether it is a movement, a party, an extended family, or a single leader, dominates the system in such a way that there appears to be little prospect of alternation of power in the foreseeable future.32

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In Nicaragua, the dominance Carothers mentions is lodged, first, in President Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo, who can be seen as the person who runs the day-to-day operations of government. At their call are the FSLN, by far the strongest and best-organized political party in the country, the Consejos del Poder Ciudadano (Councils of Citizens’ Power), and now the Gabinetes de la Familia, la Comunidad y la Vida (Cabinets of the Family, Community, and Life). The latter two are under Murillo’s control and, though ostensibly instruments for local citizen initiatives, are integrated into a Sandinista hierarchy that reaches to the presidency. They serve as both agencies to distribute clientelistic goods (for instance, zinc sheets for roofing or tanks of propane for cooking) and sites for mobilizing supporters. This newest regime is more sophisticated and deeply rooted than the average personally ruled polity, yet power is far more concentrated at the top and unaccountable than in a democracy. More important than the structures is how the current system governs, and there it shows hegemonic tendencies. Put differently, since returning to power, Ortega and the FSLN have signaled that they want to crowd out all serious competitors for power and assure themselves a long and troublefree reign. There have been credible claims of malfeasance in the municipal elections of 2008,33 the general elections of 2011,34 and the 2012 municipal elections.35 The Sandinistas’ control of the CSE has ensured that the disputed results stand. Further, in 2009 President Ortega won an injunction freeing him from the constitutional prohibition of immediate reelection (Art. 147a) from an irregularly constituted constitutional division of the Corte Suprema de Justicia.36 Thus the movement away from political pluralism that began with the Alemán-Ortega pact has gathered speed and is headed toward monism: a political system that discourages the existence of political actors not controlled by the state.37 This is not an overtly authoritarian regime, but neither is it self-evidently democratic. It is certainly less pluralistic than its electoral democratic forebearer and does not pay great heed to the rule of law. Whether it remains unchanged, retreats toward pluralist democracy, or pushes deeper into authoritarianism is an open question. In summary, the five political systems used to govern Nicaragua since 1979 are quite distinct from one another. They are not simple evolutionary modifications of an original model. Equally important, while some regimes have strengthened democracy in Nicaragua, others have undermined it.

Quality of Democracy Two regime changes, those of 1979 and 1984, made Nicaragua more democratic. Two others, those of 2000 and 2011, made it less so. The vanguard

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regime that began in 1979 gave no indication at first that the FSLN would not seek to hold power indefinitely. Nevertheless, it did increase the number and variety of actors who had some official role in the system, thereby opening room for legitimate opposition. At the same time it implemented redistributive policies in health, education, and housing that created conditions giving Nicaragua’s poor majority some of the tools needed to be effective participants in politics. Making the case that the inauguration of an electoral democratic system in 1984 heightened the quality of democracy is unproblematic. Free, competitive elections make government accountable, give citizens the opportunity to directly choose their governors, and put politicians in direct contact with their political masters: the electorate. Electoral democracy made Nicaragua’s political system identifiably democratic to the rest of the world. Explaining how the third and fourth regime transitions weakened democracy is similarly straightforward. Although power-sharing pacts sometimes advance democracy’s cause by ending violence and requiring conflicting groups to collaborate in order to govern their country, the Alemán-Ortega pact produced the opposite result. Making the electoral authority, courts, and the controller general subject to partisan control reduced governmental accountability. It also left government operations less transparent and limited citizens’ ability to choose their governors. With respect to the current dominant power system, the government’s willingness to bend constitutional rules and engage in direct electoral manipulation reflects a rejection of democratic norms. Thus the regime transformations of 2000 and 2011 have degraded the quality of Nicaragua’s democracy. Citizens of every democracy have always asked themselves how good their democracy is. Political analysts and commentators similarly have always questioned how well democracy worked, both at home and abroad. Currently this interest is shown via research into the quality of democracy, which centers on three fundamental questions. One is simply what a good democracy, one that does what citizens expect from a democracy, actually looks like. A second is how we define the quality of democracy, what the key indicators of a properly functioning democratic polity are, so that we know what to look for. These are old questions that have been asked in various ways. Their current iteration dates from the late 1990s and reflects concern over the inability of many new democracies, Nicaragua included, to become consolidated as fully democratic polities. This has given rise to a third question: How can these low-quality democracies move toward high-quality status?38 The democratization literature of the 1980s and 1990s provides only half of the background. Beginning in the 1970s, concern was being expressed about problems of democracy in long-established democratic states that brought analysts to speak of democratic deficits. That term was

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first used to question the democratic credentials of what is now the European Union and it remains a staple of analyses of democracy. Its central preoccupation is citizen dissatisfaction with actually existing democracy: how democracy falls short of its promise and leaves a deficit, which can turn citizens yet further away from democracy.39 Then in the 1990s, democratic audits began to appear, intent on discovering the strengths and weaknesses of a nation’s democracy. Democratic audits focus on assessments of the status of democracy in a country, how its machinery of democratic government works, and how its citizens assess their operation. These, too, have been most commonly applied in long-established democracies.40 What, though, do we assess when we evaluate the quality of a country’s democracy? The list begins with examining institutions and processes. These include elections that incumbents can lose, justice that is accessible and not politicized, horizontal accountability, and enforceable rights and freedoms, including participation rights. Some, like Levine and Molina,41 make this their centerpiece, and Barreda42 usefully stresses the importance of institutions and practices that “control the action of political power.” Others, such as Diamond and Morlino,43 set out a broader framework, adding government responsiveness and legal-political equality. Vargas Cuellell44 argues that citizens’ views of what a good democracy is should be the central focus, a position shared by Gómez Fortes and Palacios Brihuega.45 Mainwaring and Pérez Liñán speak of levels of democracy and ask what role historical patterns, their “regime legacies,” play in setting those levels.46 Outcomes, including socioeconomic policies, figure prominently in O’Donnell,47 although Mazzuca48 believes that outcomes reflect governmental capacity more than democracy and that openness of access should be the key. These themes are addressed in several ways: Diamond and Morlino examine the concept of democracy to derive measures of its quality;49 Levine and Molina take a regional perspective—Latin America is well studied;50 and Gómez Fortes and Palacios Brihuega focus on a single country.51 When applied to Nicaragua since 1979, however, the notion of the quality of democracy presents us with a conundrum. The vanguard regime was not democratic because there were no elections, thus citizens had no way to hold their governors accountable. On the other hand, the system was more inclusive and pluralistic than its Somocista predecessor and did approve a law permitting free and meaningful elections. It also adopted social and economic policies promoting greater equality. So while not democratic in form, the vanguard regime did produce democratizing results during its five-year existence. The remaining thirty years pose fewer problems. The years of electoral democracy bettered the quality of democracy in Nicaragua just as clearly as the duopolistic and the hegemonic-leaning dominant power systems weakened it. However, although using the quality of democracy to view recent Nicaraguan history demonstrates that the

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country’s political system has undergone substantial alterations that have affected, for good or ill, the nation’s democracy, it says nothing about why such changes occurred.

Polarization and Personal Rule Why did Nicaragua experience both transitions to and from democracy, as well as spend sixteen years as a functioning electoral democracy? We can hypothesize that the explanation will be found in a mix of idiosyncratic, conjunctural, and institutional factors. Idiosyncratic factors will be present because the changes of regime were the work of specific individuals and groups. Different people could have done different things. The role of the context or conjuncture must also be considered, because the context limited what actors would have seen as possible, as well as pointed out to them what needed to be done. Institutions matter because they are tools we use to achieve political goals. Some institutions are formal, with headquarters and tables of organization; others are informal, with less of a physical footprint, but still important and at times extremely influential. For example, a country’s political tradition makes permanent, hence institutionalizes, ideas about the best way to govern and who the governors should be; that is, it embodies received wisdom.52 In the present case, the factors would appear in the following forms. The idiosyncratic factor includes three key actors. Daniel Ortega, who has had a hand in all four regime changes, is the first. Arnoldo Alemán, who proposed the duopoly, also belongs, as does Enrique Bolaños, who inadvertently facilitated the arrival of the latest regime. Others have had supporting roles, notably the US government; Rosario Murillo, who is now a central figure; the Sandinista DN; President Violeta Chamorro; and Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo. To assess the contextual elements later chapters examine the circumstances surrounding each change. For instance, the pacted duopoly emerged after the adoption of a substantially amended constitution in 1995 that greatly curtailed presidential powers, the second straight Sandinista electoral defeat, and an apparent distrust of impersonal institutions shared by Alemán and Ortega. Finally, among the informal institutions, two of Nicaragua’s political traditions stand out. The first is political polarization, especially within the political elite. Especially strong since the Sandinista revolution, polarization has been a nearly constant factor in Nicaraguan political life since independence. The other is personal rule. Whether called caudillismo, boss politics, or strongman rule (to date, all of Nicaragua’s personal rulers have been men), Nicaraguan government has been directed for extended periods by a single, patrimonial leader who operates above the law. Indeed, stable, constitu-

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tional rule has existed for just over 50 of the country’s 194 years as an independent state. These two informal institutions merit an introduction here. Polarization

Politics are polarized when the most important actors in a political system share little or no common ground on policies, values, or conceivably even the ends of government. Obviously, all politics shows some degree of polarization; if it did not, there would never be debate and dissent. But when key actors find dealing with one another so difficult as to make governing nearly impossible, polarization begins to appear pathological. Yet promoting polarization can be a profitable political strategy, as movements as different as the Tea Party in the United States and the Venezuelan Chavistas can attest. In Nicaragua, polarized politics has existed since independence in 1821. At first, Conservatives and Liberals engaged in conflicts that bred years of civil war. This epoch ended with the country’s being seized in 1855 by the Tennessee-born filibuster William Walker. Following Walker’s defeat, the Conservative Republic (1858–1893) brought the country a spell of consensus politics that led to Nicaragua’s being styled “the Switzerland of Central America,” for its stable, law-abiding government.53 This system fell and was replaced by a personal dictatorship (1893–1909) under the Liberal caudillo José Santos Zelaya. His government in turn fell to a Conservative revolution in 1909 that marked the beginning of eighteen years of civil war and nearly twenty-five years of de facto occupation by the United States Marines. Although there was a twelve-year interim of honest elections (1924–1936), it gave way to forty-three years of dictatorship by the Somozas. There were several risings against the Somozas, the last of which, the Sandinistas’, brought that regime’s fall and ushered in a new era of polarization. Although the Sandinistas’ revolution was greeted with broad acclaim, the Somozas and their hangers-on having fled, the honeymoon could not last. As a revolutionary movement, the FSLN embraced a Marxist ideology that countenanced an anticapitalist politics and embraced the “logic of the majority,” thus displaying strong tilt in favor of Nicaragua’s dispossessed. Such a framework left little room for even conservative elites with strong anti-Somoza credentials. Division and polarized politics followed. Since 1979, Nicaragua has faced a situation in which part of the population wants one sort of political system, that proposed by the Sandinistas, and another wants the anti-Sandinista alternative. At one time this meant a redistributive socialism confronting free market capitalism. Then it implied supporting or opposing the Alemán-Ortega pact. Since the 2006 electoral comeback of Daniel Ortega and the FSLN, it has been about backing the

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Sandinista government unreservedly or opposing it equally unconditionally. Such circumstances make finding a governing model for Nicaragua that all sides can endorse a fruitless endeavor. Personal Rule

Personal rulers are not constrained by their nation’s laws or other parts of government, including the security forces or their own parties. They can quite literally be dictators, giving the law as it pleases them, or they can maintain a legislature, permit licensed political parties to function, and allow courts to operate free of political interference most of the time. Regimes built on personal rule are familiar to Nicaraguans, who have had personal rulers for roughly two-thirds of the nation’s 194-year history. Personalism has been similarly prevalent in the rest of Latin America as well as in postindependence Africa and the Arab world. This is obviously a solution to the challenges of governing that has found many takers. Despite its wide acceptance among rulers, personal rule brings with it two grave problems. The clearer of these is that it impedes building institutions, as every personal, boss-style ruler recasts government to fit specific personal aims. Thus a professional civil service is slow to develop, as are an independent judiciary and a wide array of government organizations and processes that people can believe will normally act in a disinterested manner. In short, good government simply does not develop. The other problem is that personal rule can itself become institutionalized, in the sense that it will be seen by politicians and ordinary citizens alike as an effective and legitimate way to govern a country. One of the projects of the FSLN was to end personal rule. The nine Sandinista comandantes functioned collegially, with all but Mexican-born Victor Tirado López holding top governmental posts before the party lost power in 1990.54 Although President Chamorro did not continue a collegial model of governance, she scrupulously avoided arrogating power to herself. All that changed after the 1996 elections, which returned Alemán as president, leaving Ortega still as de facto leader of the opposition. Carlos Fernando Chamorro, publisher of the weekly Confidencial, lamented that the result left 90 percent of the country’s votes controlled by two parties led by caudillos, here political bosses with nearly total control over their parties.55 The pact between the two bosses cemented the centrality of the personalistic leader. On taking office again in 2007, Daniel Ortega assumed the mantle of a uniquely powerful president whose government would follow the constitution where convenient and ignore it when it posed an impediment to the administration’s aims. That is, he would act not just as Alemán had while he was president, but as personalist leaders had always done. The fact that

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he had been freely elected in 2006 would give him democratic legitimacy but would not overly affect his behavior in office. His administrations would not copy the practices of the Somozas or Zelaya, Nicaragua’s twentieth-century dictators, however. There would be more freedom for opponents, who would nevertheless not exercise power. Nicaragua’s past has bequeathed it substantial experience with political polarization and one-person rule. As a result, these practices, which can prove toxic to democracy, might appear more normal and more realizable to an aspiring Nicaraguan politician than to her peers elsewhere. One should note, though, that even in Nicaragua’s sister Latin American republics, in 2015 only Venezuela and to a lesser extent Ecuador, Bolivia, and Argentina feature significant polarization and personalized rule in their governing models.

Comparisons After even a quick look at Nicaragua’s struggles to find a stable political regime since 1979, it would be evident that the country was an outlier. Four changes of regime, three brought about by sitting governments, in just over three decades is unusual, at least in the early twenty-first century. But how much of an outlier is Nicaragua? Although Chapter 8 considers that question in more detail, a quick comparative look at contemporary regime instability in Latin America will be useful. Since 1978, seventeen of the twenty countries of Latin America have changed regimes. Of the three that have not, Colombia and Costa Rica remain electoral democracies, while Cuba is still under a Leninist vanguard system. All of those that changed became electoral democracies, at least for a time. That is, free, fair elections became the only legitimate path to power. Nicaragua obviously did not stop at electoral democracy, but are there other cases? Haiti clearly is one: Since the 1986 ouster of Jean-Claude Duvalier, who succeeded his father François as dictator, the country has had two coups, one failed coup, one president fleeing after massive demonstrations, and four elected governments. That means either of two things. One is that Haiti has had five different regimes, perhaps six. Alternatively, Haiti can be seen as a political system without a dominant force or stable pattern of rule, something suggested by its government’s abysmal response to the 2010 earthquake. Whichever interpretation is chosen, Haiti has had even less success than Nicaragua in finding a stable governing model. More importantly, Haiti’s problems seem easier to detect than Nicaragua’s. Perhaps that is due to the persistence of Ortega and the FSLN as central political actors, or to having post-1979 Nicaraguan regimes last between five

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and sixteen years. A semblance of stability on some levels can mask instability on others. Venezuela is another plausible inclusion. Elections with fair vote counts still determine winners, as they have since 1958. However, the Bolivarian constitutional order, installed by Hugo Chávez after his election as president in 1998 and now headed by Nicolás Maduro, has become increasingly personalistic and the president less constrained. Still, that is but one change of regime. Russia might also be considered here. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 permitted Boris Yeltsin to install an elected regime with clear democratic traits. Yeltsin was succeeded in 1999 by Vladimir Putin, who has increasingly concentrated power in his own hands and used the courts to punish his political opponents. Elections are held and competition is permitted, making them better than elections held under Soviet rule, but they are widely regarded as tainted.56 These are major changes in the political system of an important country, but there have been only two of them. Nicaragua is indeed an outlier.

Conclusion Nicaragua has had a singular political journey since 1979. The country has been governed by a traditional personal dictatorship, a revolutionary vanguard, an electoral democracy, a power-sharing duopoly, and now another personalistic regime with hegemonic designs. There have been four changes of regime, beginning with the installation of the revolutionary vanguard. Three of these were initiated by the government of the day. They were not, that is, products of a change of government, either by election or nonconstitutional means. Rather, the party in power made substantial alterations to how the state was configured and power was exercised during the course of its mandate. The first two regime changes left the country more politically open and pluralistic. The first brought a revolutionary vanguard, which though neither democratically elected nor formally accountable to the citizenry, opened more space for its loyal opponents to act than Nicaragua had seen for over forty years. It was replaced by an electoral democracy that worked reasonably effectively for both radical and orthodox democrats, and that saw more participation by a wider array of political actors than ever before in the country’s history. Unfortunately, the two latest changes of regime did not continue along the path of pluralist democracy, but rather moved in less democratic directions. There are three main points to reflect on: first, the number of regime changes. Four changes, involving five distinct regimes, are a lot, especially when they occurred in a state that was ostensibly stable. This was

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not a reprise of archetypal nineteenth-century political instability, where endless rounds of coups and caudillos often left a country practically ungoverned from the center. The shortest-lived of the new regimes, the revolutionary vanguard, lasted five years and was terminated by its own government. Electoral democracy was Nicaragua’s political system for sixteen years, the power-sharing duopoly endured eleven years, and the current dominant power system shows every sign of having a long run. Presumably, any of the first three systems could plausibly have endured longer. The question, which the rest of this book takes up, is why none have so far. Why, that is, has Nicaragua spent thirty-five years searching for a governing model? Several answers suggest themselves and will be considered in the following chapters, but the strongest contenders are political polarization and a political elite that favors personal over institutional rule. What is really striking, though, is that three of the four new regimes came from governments in office. These initiatives had not been part of their electoral platforms. They were not, that is, like the reforms enacted by Hugo Chávez after being elected Venezuela’s president in 1998 or by his Bolivarian followers, Evo Morales in Bolivia in 2005 and Rafael Correa in Ecuador in 2006. When we think of regime change, it is fair to say that most of us expect the agent bringing the change to have just come to power and to have made changing the political system the heart of its program. This certainly did not happen in 1984 or in 2000; and though Daniel Ortega’s 2006 victory brought him a second term after a sixteen-year absence, there was nothing in his campaign to suggest he aimed to change the basic rules of the game. The frequency of endogenous regime change in modern Nicaragua points directly to the role of political leaders. In Nicaragua’s case this has meant the National Directorate of the FSLN and, later, two of the four individuals who have been the country’s president since 1979: Arnoldo Alemán and Daniel Ortega. Obviously, the contexts in which these agents operated mattered greatly, as did their nation’s political traditions, which provided much of the stock of political ideas on which they drew. Formal institutions, however, had a less central role. In fact, they featured mainly by being either reformed or abused (often both) in the process of restructuring the political system. Therefore, those structures did not do what they were supposed to do: they did not bend individual wills to the rules and force all to work within the institutions’ framework. Weak institutions allowed governors to change the regime in which they worked. Do strong governors, who here are also personalistic leaders, keep institutions weak so they can manipulate them? The evidence laid out in the following chapters points to strong, boss-style rulers preferring instruments that they control to institutions that control them.

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Notes 1. Paul Oquist, “Sociopolitical Dynamics of the 1990 Nicaraguan Elections,” in The 1990 Elections in Nicaragua and Their Aftermath, ed. Vanesa Castro and Gary Prevost, pp. 1–40 (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1992). 2. World Bank, “GDP per Capita (Current US$),” Data (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2014). 3. The current regime was in formation since 2007, but its installation was certain after the 2011 elections. See Chapter 7 for details. 4. The terms regime and political system are used interchangeably throughout the book. 5. Jennifer Gandhi, Political Institutions Under Dictatorship (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Erica Frantz and Natasha Ezrow, The Politics of Dictatorship: Institutions and Outcomes in Authoritarian Regimes (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2011). 6. Bertelsmann Stiftung, Transformationsindex BTI 2014 (Gütersloh, Germany: Bertelsmann Stiftung, 2014), www.bti-project.de; The Economist Intelligence Unit, Democracy Index 2013 (London: Economist Intelligence Unit, 2014); Freedom House, Country Status and Rating, 1992–2014 (Washington, DC: Freedom House, 2014); and Polity IV, Polity IV Project: Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800–2012 (Vienna, VA: Center for Systemic Peace, 2014). 7. H. E. Chelabi and Juan Linz, “A Theory of Sultanism 1,” in Sultanistic Regimes, ed. H. E. Chelabi and Juan Linz, pp. 3–25 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998). 8. Alan Siaroff, “Regime (Comparative Politics),” in International Encyclopedia of Political Science, ed. Bertrand Badie, Dirk Berg-Schlosser, and Leonardo Morlino, pp. 2234–2239 (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2011); see also Alan Siaroff, Comparing Political Regimes (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2005). 9. Guillermo O’Donnell, Democracy, Agency, and the State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). 10. Armando Chaguacedo, “Régimen político y el estado de la democracia en Nicaragua: Procesos en desarrollo y conflictos recientes,” Nueva Sociedad 240 (July–August 2012): 163–164. 11. David Close, Nicaragua: The Chamorro Years (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1999), p. 37. 12. Not all military coups yield military governments. The 2009 Honduran coup that overthrew Manuel Zelaya is the best-known example. 13. José María Maravall, The Transition to Democracy in Spain (London: Croom Helm, 1982); Javier Tussell, La transición a la democracia: España, 1975– 1982 (Madrid: Editorial Espasa Calpe, 2007). 14. Open defiance and absolute submission were not the only options the Sandinistas had. A modern-day Thucydides might say that although the weak indeed do what they must, they need not do exactly what the strong want them to do. Further, realist international relations theory holds that the survival of the state is the prime objective of a government’s foreign policy. Thus the Sandinista state came to be a state run by the Sandinistas. The regime governing that state (revolutionary vanguard or electoral democracy) was of secondary importance. 15. The Sandinistas faced an extra challenge, because the insurgency enjoyed the strong support of the US government, whose objective was, in President Reagan’s words, “to make the Sandinistas cry uncle.” So political reforms by the

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FSLN could only buy time, not successfully undermine the counterrevolutionaries’ activity. 16. For example, Guillermo O’Donnell, Philippe Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead, eds., Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Latin America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986). 17. Thomas Carothers, “End of the Transition Paradigm,” Journal of Democracy 13, no. 1 (January 2002): 5–21. 18. Valerie Bunce, “Comparative Democratization: Big and Bounded Generalizations,” Comparative Political Studies 33, nos. 6–7 (September 2000): 706–734. 19. Michael Bratton and Nicolas Van de Walle, Democratic Experiments in Africa: Regime Transitions in Comparative Perspective (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 20. Wolfgang Merkel, “Are Dictatorships Returning? Revisiting the ‘Democratic Rollback’ Hypothesis,” Contemporary Politics 16, no. 1 (March 2010): 17–31. 21. The obvious exceptions are the Holy Roman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. 22. In 1947 Somoza García stood aside to let Leonardo Argüello serve as his placeholder. Argüello, however, showed signs of independence, so he was deposed within a month of taking office. His replacement, Benjamín Sacasa, the uncle of Somoza’s wife, was not recognized by the US government. Thus a constituent assembly was called that named Somoza’s uncle, Victor Manuel Román y Reyes, president. Somoza García officially resumed the presidency in 1950. 23. Richard Millett, Guardians of the Dynasty (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1977). 24. Bernard Diederich, Somoza and the Legacy of U.S. Involvement in Central America (New York: Dutton, 1981). 25. This did not include television, as the few stations Nicaragua had were controlled by Somocista stalwarts. See Tania Rostrán and Rodrigo Rodríguez Borge, “La televisión en Nicaragua: Génesis, desarrollo y actualidad,” Mundo Nómada, March 14, 2009, http://roirobo.wordpress.com/2009/03/14/la-television-en-nicara gua-genesis-desarrollo-y-actualidad/. 26. Cynthia Chávez Metoyer, Women and the State in Post-Sandinista Nicaragua (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000), p. 42; Rick Rockwell and Noreene Janus, Media Power in Central America (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2003), p. 88. 27. Mary Vanderlaan, Revolution and Foreign Policy in Nicaragua (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1986), pp. 252–257; Jeff Shantz, “Socialist International,” in Encyclopedia of the Cold War, ed. Ruud Van Dijk, pp. 805–807 (New York: Routledge, 2008). 28. Formally, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, but commonly called Violeta Chamorro. 29. In Nicaragua, as elsewhere in Latin America, presidents are routinely known by their first names, in some cases adding the honorific “don” (Don Enrique Bolaños) or “doña” (Doña Violeta Chamorro). 30. This can also be styled a condominium but duopoly causes less confusion. 31. Kent Eaton, Politics Beyond the Capital: The Design of Subnational Institutions in South America (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), pp. 100–102. 32. Carothers, “End of the Transition Paradigm,” pp. 11–12. 33. Salvador Martí i Puig and David Close, “The Nicaraguan Exception?” in The Sandinistas and Nicaragua Since 1979, ed. David Close, Salvador Martí i Puig, and Shelley A. McConnell, pp. 287–307 (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2011).

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34. Carter Center, The 2011 Elections in Nicaragua: Study Mission Report (Atlanta: Carter Center, 2011), www.cartercenter.org/resources/pdfs/peace/Ameri cas/Nicaragua_2011_report_post.pdf; see also Envio, “How Did They Commit the Fraud?” Revista Envio 366 (January 2012), www.envio.org.ni/articulo/4418. 35. Tim Rogers, “Election Protests Continue on Four Battle Grounds,” Nicaragua Dispatch, November 16, 2012, http://nicaraguadispatch.com/201611 /election-protests-continue-on-4-battlerounds; Mauricio Zúñiga, “How We Got to These Low Intensity Elections,” Revista Envio 376 (November 2012), www.envio .org.ni/articulo/4620. 36. Elena Martínez Barahona, “A Politicized Judiciary,” in The Sandinistas and Nicaragua Since 1979, ed. David Close, Salvador Martí i Puig, and Shelley A. McConnell, pp. 91–120 (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2011); Shelley Ann McConnell, “The Uncertain Evolution of the Electoral System,” in The Sandinistas and Nicaragua Since 1979, ed. David Close, Salvador Martí i Puig, and Shelley A. McConnell, pp. 121–159 (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2011). 37. Glen Dealy, “The Tradition of Monistic Democracy in Latin America,” Journal of the History of Ideas 35, no. 4 (October–December 1974): 625–646. 38. Curiously, this interest in analyzing democracies with the objective of making them stronger arose alongside a focus on semidemocratic regimes. For semidemocratic hybrid regimes see the following: Larry Diamond, “Thinking About Hybrid Regimes,” Journal of Democracy 13, no. 2 (February 2002): 21–35; Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, Competitive Authoritarianism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Javier Corrales and Michael Penfold, Dragon in the Tropics: Hugo Chávez and the Political Economy of Revolution in Venezuela (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2011). For nondemocratic regimes see Beatriz Magaloni, Voting for Autocracy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Gandhi, Political Institutions Under Dictatorship; Jason Brownlee, Authoritarians in an Age of Democratization (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Dan Slater, Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Frantz and Ezrow, Politics of Dictatorship. 39. Patti Tamara Lenard and Richard Simeon, Imperfect Democracies: Comparing the Democratic Deficit in Canada and the United States (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2012). 40. Stuart Weir and David Beetham, Political Power and Democratic Control in Britain: The Democratic Audit of the United Kingdom (London: Routledge, 1999); Programa Estado de la Nación, Auditoría Ciudadana de la Calidad de la Democracia (San José, CR: Programa Estado de la Nación, 2001). 41. Daniel Levine and José Enrique Molina, The Quality of Democracy in Latin America (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2011). 42. Mikel Barreda, “La calidad de la democracia: Un análisis comparado de América Latina,” Gobernanza 33 (May 2014): 15, www.aigob.org. 43. Larry Diamond and Leonardo Morlino, “An Overview,” Journal of Democracy 15, no. 4 (April 2004): 20–31. 44. Jorge Vargas Cullell, “Democracy and the Quality of Democracy: Empirical Findings and Methodological and Theoretical Issues Drawn from the Citizen of the Quality of Democracy in Costa Rica,” in The Quality of Democracy: Theory and Applications, ed. Guillermo O’Donnell, Jorge Vargas Cullell, and Osvaldo Miguel Iazzetta, pp. 93–162 (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004). 45. Braulio Gómez Fortes and Irene Palacios Brihuega, “Testing the Quality of Democracy: The Case of Spain,” European Political Science 11, no. 4 (December 2012): 492–508.

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46. Scott Mainwaring and Aníbal Pérez Liñán, “Regime Legacies and Democratization: Explaining Variance in the Level of Democracy in Latin America, 1978– 2004,” Working Paper no. 254, Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies, University of Notre Dame, 2008. 47. Guillermo O’Donnell, “Delegative Democracy,” Journal of Democracy 5, no. 1 (January 1994): 55–69. 48. Sebastian Mazzuca, “Access to Power Versus Exercise of Power: Reconceptualizing the Quality of Democracy in Latin America,” Studies in Comparative International Development 45, no. 3 (September 2010): 334–357. 49. Larry Diamond and Leonardo Morlino, eds., Assessing the Quality of Democracy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005). 50. Levine and Molina, Quality of Democracy in Latin America. 51. Gómez Fortes and Palacios Brihuega, “Testing the Quality of Democracy.” 52. These appear similar to what Mainwaring and Pérez Liñán label “regime legacies.” 53. Arturo Cruz Sequeira, Nicaragua’s Conservative Republic, 1858–1993 (London: Palgrave, in association with St. Antony’s, Oxford, 2002). 54. David Close, Nicaragua: Politics, Economics and Society (London: Frances Pinter, 1988), p. 114. 55. Carlos Fernando Chamorro, “La elección del 20 de octubre y el nuevo escenario político,” Revista pensamiento propio, no. 2 (September–December 1996): 39–50. 56. Stephen White and Valentina Feklyunina, “Russia’s Authoritarian Elections: The View from Below,” Europe Asia Studies 63, no. 4 (2011): 579–602.

3 Nicaragua in 1979

As 1979 began, Nicaragua was governed by a dictatorship. In that it was like all but four of the twenty republics of Latin America. Two of those, Costa Rica and Venezuela, had been electoral democracies for some time, thirty and twenty-one years, respectively. Of the other two, Colombia had reentered the democratic ranks in 1974 and the Dominican Republic joined the list in 1978. What distinguished Nicaragua’s dictatorship were two factors. One, it was the oldest in the region, dating from 1936,1 and further, it was at the time the only multigenerational dictatorship in the Americas. In just over six and a half months, though, the Somoza family’s twogeneration dictatorship fell to the FSLN. As regime changes go, this was a classic, as it saw a politico-military revolutionary movement defeat a longstanding personal dictatorship by force of arms. With the state in its hands, and with the key elements of the old regime headed into exile, the FSLN could begin to build an entirely new political order. But what was the overthrown regime like? Calling it personalist and authoritarian gives it a place in the roster of the world’s political regimes but says little about how it actually worked. It tells us even less about where it stood among the various regimes that Nicaraguans had experimented with since independence in 1821 (see Table 3.1). Seen in the context of Central America or even Latin America more broadly, Nicaragua’s history to 1979 does not look out of place. This is not to say it does not have its peculiarities. Most notable among these is being the only nation in the hemisphere to have been seized and ruled by a mercenary: Tennessee-born William Walker, who held Nicaragua as his own from 1855 to 1857. Otherwise, its mix of dictatorships, revolutions, and general political instability is not exceptional.2

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Table 3.1 Nicaraguan Political Regimes, 1821–1979 Dates

Regime

1821–1858

Unsettled, caudillo

1858–1893 1893–1909 1909–1936

Conservative republic Personal dictatorship US tutelage, electoral democracy Somocismo

1936–1979

Traits Polarized, personalist, violent Civic oligarchy Personalist, polarized Polarized; sovereignty compromised Personal dictatorship, pacts

However, the specific pattern of political development that occurred in Nicaragua is unique, because it presents an unusually dispiriting picture of missed opportunities. In 1858, the country was the first in Central America to have a system of government that, although not democratic due to severe restrictions on the right to vote, succeeded in removing violence as an acceptable means to take power, overcame tendencies to personal rule, and developed institutions accepted by at least the greater part of the political elite. That regime endured for thirty-five years before being replaced by a personal dictatorship. Later, from 1924 until 1936, Nicaragua possessed at least an inchoate electoral democracy. However, it also failed, perhaps because the system was associated with the United States, which maintained a military presence in Nicaragua from 1912 to 1925, and again from 1926 to 1933.3 The proximate cause of its demise, however, was a coup led by the first Somoza to rule Nicaragua, Anastasio Somoza García.

Nicaraguan Politics, 1821–1893 Nicaragua became independent in 1821. Two years later it joined Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras in creating the United Provinces of Central America, remaining in the federal union until 1838. In 1824, the country was shaken by armed conflict between monarchists and republicans, but the next year it elected its first head of state. Then in 1827, Nicaragua had its first civil war.4 This was hardly an inspiring start to a state’s national life. However, within Central America only Costa Rica, much smaller, poorer, and farther from the federation’s capital in Guatemala, fared any better.5 Unfortunately, things got worse in Nicaragua, as the period from 1838 to 1857 was one of nearly constant armed conflict and instability. It ended only when the mercenary filibuster William Walker declared himself Nicaragua’s president and began his unsuccessful efforts to have the country join the United States as a slave state. As in the rest of Central America, in fact throughout Spanish America, the sources of Nicaragua’s ceaseless bouts of political violence and instabil-

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ity are easy to find. They begin with the deep division within the nation’s elite over what political system was best suited to govern the new state. Even more importantly, there was no agreement about who would command that system and in whose interest it would operate. On one side were Conservatives who wished to preserve as much of the colonial order as possible. This group wanted a strong central government, ideally something not far from an absolute monarchy. Further, the existing social order should be preserved, the privileged role of the Roman Catholic Church maintained, and the economy ought to remain controlled by the established elite through well-known and long-established means. On the other side were Liberals who sought a clean break with the past. Their vision included representative democracy, thus a republic, the abolition of old social ranks and distinctions, religious tolerance, and the free market. With so little common ground between the two parties, political polarization was the predictable outcome. And in a society with almost no experience in self-government, hence in accommodation and deal-making, political conflicts often were settled by force. To this mix Nicaragua added an element of regional conflict. The Conservatives had their center in Granada, on Lake Nicaragua, and the Liberals had their seat in León, some 120 kilometers (75 miles) to the northwest, so each party had a geographic base from which to draw human and material resources to use in combating its enemy. And these two were enemies and not opponents, for they fought a succession of civil wars from 1842 to 1855. It was the last of those wars, pitting conservative Legitimists against liberal Democrats, that brought what the Nicaraguan historian Frances Kinloch Tijerino called the “anarchic period” to a close.6 Unfortunately, what should have been good news was not, as the war ended with the victory of William Walker and his Phalanx of Immortals. These were freebooting mercenaries (then called filibusters) from the United States. Brought in by the Democrats, they turned against their bosses and took over Nicaragua in 1855. By 1857, however, the Allied Armies of Central America had expelled Walker and given Nicaragua a chance for a fresh start. To make good on this opportunity and build a new regime, Nicaraguan political leaders had to overcome a set of three interconnected problems. The first and most serious of these was political polarization, which left half of the political spectrum not just dissatisfied with policies but without a voice in government. In the Nicaragua of 1858 this required overcoming the localism that had bedeviled the country since independence. Dealing with localism would allow the new regime to confront simultaneously a second grave problem, namely, the ubiquity of violence as an opposition’s most effective political instrument. Finally, there was the matter of rule by caudillos. In their original, nineteenth-century form,7 these were personalistic leaders with a regional base who used violence to take power. They held

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that power until overthrown by another caudillo. Some may have been able governors, but as with other types of personal rulers, caudillos could not foster institutional stability. Somewhat surprisingly, Nicaragua devised a regime, the Conservative Republic, that addressed those issues so successfully for over thirty years that the country became known as the Switzerland of Central America.8 The Conservative Republic

The Conservative Republic belongs to a class of political regimes that emerged in many Latin American nations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Called either civic oligarchies or oligarchic republics, these political systems paralleled those arising in much of Western Europe during the same period. These were indeed oligarchic systems; the Conservative Republic’s constitution was even referred to as the Pacto Oligárquico: the Oligarchic Pact.9 Few citizens had the right to vote. During the Conservative Republic, Nicaragua had a property franchise of 100 pesos fuertes (1 peso fuerte = US$1), which certainly excluded most peasants and unskilled laborers.10 But these civic oligarchies were very different from their more plainly authoritarian contemporaries. That was because these civic regimes deemphasized the role of violence, preferring negotiation and cooptation within the ranks of the elite to resolve conflicts.11 What made it possible to establish Nicaragua’s oligarchic republic and then let it govern effectively for over three decades was a combination of three factors: • There was an environment favorable to broadly based political reorganization. • It was possible to develop an institutional framework that permitted necessary changes to be made. • There were leaders, not just one but a succession of them, with a real commitment to building the new regime and seeing it succeed. We shall now look at the part each of these factors played in bringing about and sustaining Nicaragua’s first stable civic regime. First is the context: the environment surrounding the fall of the old regime—which was localist, violence prone, and unstable—and the change to the new. What Central Americans call the National War of 1856–1857 defeated Walker and his filibusters, leaving disgraced any who had supported the Americans, from the Liberals who brought them in to those of all political stripes who cast their lot with the mercenaries. The victorious Granada-based Conservatives thus had a clear field. They could have imposed a Carthaginian peace on the vanquished, continuing the old model

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of exclusionary localism without fear of opposition for a prolonged period. Eventually, however, the losers would reorganize, find allies from abroad, and start another round of revolutionary instability. The alternative was to seek a means to build a national political system that overcame regional divisions. The Conservative elites took the latter option. Obviously, over thirty-five years the context in which this regime worked changed and eventually contributed to the system’s collapse, but that point will be addressed below. The second element that defined the Conservative Republic was a set of institutions designed to overcome the weaknesses that had plagued Nicaraguan politics for thirty-seven years. As rivalry between Granada and León had caused so much instability and bloodshed, addressing that issue was the top priority. Confidence-building steps were plainly required, and Article 21 of the 1858 constitution addressed that need. This article provided that each member of the electoral college that chose the president had to vote for two candidates, one of which could not be from the elector’s district. The final element is the commitment of the political elite, which was manifested in a number of ways. Although cabinets in this system were small, only four members, one post went to a Conservative from León. Attempts to include historically Liberal Nicaraguan regions also included policy choices. Thus when railroad construction began in the late 1870s the first track was laid in Nicaragua’s northwest, to the benefit of León. Even though Granada held the presidency until 1883, when the post passed to a resident of Rivas, a town closely linked to Granada, a number of steps had been taken by then to overcome the country’s historically destructive regionalism and unite at least the Conservative elite behind a national project. Moreover, the first seven administrations under this regime governed effectively, making it appear that sound government had become a fixed trait of Nicaraguan politics. Regrettably, these institutions, formal and informal alike, failed, and by 1893 the Conservative Republic was no more. If the Granadan elites’ reading of the historical conjuncture in 1858 and the structures they set in place to govern the country over thirty years were geared to building interregional trust and the system had provided good government, why did the regime fall? The proximate cause was the rise to power of Roberto Sacasa, a Conservative from León, who succeeded to the presidency on the death of Evaristo Carazo. Sacasa had not been vice president, as that position did not exist under the 1858 constitution, nor did he know that he was next in line to become president. The succession mechanism of the Conservative Republic consisted in having the Senate select five of its members to be presidential designates. Each name was placed in a plain envelope and a child selected two of those at random. Those two envelopes were destroyed without being opened. The remaining three went

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into an urn, were drawn at random, and numbered one, two, and three, thereby establishing a line of succession. Senator Sacasa’s name was in envelope number one. Although Sacasa was very well regarded and the fact that he was from León was warmly welcomed, the new president soon would destroy the system that made him. Sacasa wrecked the Conservative Republic by turning a constitutional regime into a system of one-man rule. He rewarded his supporters, harassed his opponents, and abandoned the work of building confidence within the nation’s political elite. In 1893, Granada rose against the Sacasa government and civil war soon followed. The winner of that conflict was José Santos Zelaya, a well-off coffee grower from Managua and a highly partisan Liberal. Although he promised sweeping democratic reforms, Zelaya instead set Nicaragua on the road to a then-unprecedented sixteen years of personal dictatorship. Granada’s El Diarito assessed the situation in this way in 1893: “For more than three years Nicaragua has endured a government that would have seemed impossible to establish in this country that we have been pleased to call the Switzerland of Central America.”12 By that time it had become clear that even ostensibly strong institutions and the commitment of a substantial part of the political elite to those institutions could not keep a determined individual from overthrowing more than three decades’ work and returning Nicaragua to one-person rule. Perhaps that occurred because, confidencebuilding measures aside, Conservatives held power through the entire period and Granada or an ally occupied the presidency until 1889. To those on the outside this must have seemed a never-ending monopoly. The institutions might have been solid, but to some significant section of Nicaragua’s political spectrum they were a solid wall separating the ins from the outs. So it is easy to imagine that Liberals and those of any political color living outside Granada’s orbit would accept a strongman who could end their exclusion. Hindsight makes it clear that the Conservative Republic could never be the only game in town for those parts of Nicaragua’s political class located in Managua and León. The fall of the Conservative Republic was Nicaragua’s first experience with what John Peeler calls deconsolidation: the breakdown of an apparently well-established regime, whose legitimacy appeared to be unquestioned among a political system’s key political actors.13 Whether the Conservative Republic could have evolved into a more inclusive civic oligarchy or even potentially become an electoral democracy is unknowable. What is certain is that it fell to a challenger representing an old but still-viable governing model. And those with the greatest stake in the system, the Conservative elites centered in and around Granada, were unable to protect their regime.

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Personal Dictatorship, Instability, and US “Supervision,” 1893–1936 Nicaragua’s failed experiment with civic oligarchy opened the way to an array of new regimes. José Santos Zelaya brought the country sixteen years (1893–1909) of personal dictatorship, albeit retaining such trappings of constitutional government as a national legislature. This system fell to a US-backed revolution, which was to usher in a period of civil war and instability sufficiently intense to move the US government to station marines in Nicaragua from 1912 to 1925, and again from 1926 to the start of 1933. However, this period also saw Nicaragua’s first experience with something approximating electoral democracy. It began with an honest vote in 1924 and continued with a US-brokered end to civil strife and elections in 1928 and 1932, which were organized by the occupiers. This period of regime instability came to a close in 1936 when Anastasio Somoza García overthrew the duly elected president and made Nicaragua his family’s business for the next forty-three years. Personal Dictatorship, 1893–1909

José Santos Zelaya was a political strongman from the old school, an archetypal caudillo.14 What the latter connoted in this case was power concentrated in the president’s hands to use as the president wished, untroubled by legal restrictions. And a caudillo-style president almost invariably used that power to reward his loyalists, for without them he would stand alone and unprotected, thus soon be out of power. Further, all parts of the state— including the bureaucracy, the security apparatus, and the courts— responded to the president’s wishes, acting as partisan instruments whenever the call to do so was issued. But whereas in the chaotic years after independence those instruments were weak enough that another caudillo could easily arise to challenge the incumbent, by the end of the nineteenth century the Nicaraguan state was substantially stronger. Not only did Zelaya retain power for sixteen years, had the government of the United States not decided to back a revolt against him in 1909, he could well have extended his reign. Zelaya’s seizure of power marked the start of a new regime. His was a political system with new structures and rules that allotted influence to different individuals and sectors, and manipulated the levers of government in new ways, for new ends. The previous system was relatively pluralistic, being based on an interregional pact among Conservative elites. It limited executive power by prohibiting the immediate reelection of a president and was broadly constitutional, in that governments in fact obeyed the law.

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Finally, it was electoral though not democratic, since only victory in the system’s indirect elections gave access to office. The new system was a personal dictatorship under Zelaya’s command, thus power was concentrated, not dispersed, and the rule of law was weak. Further, although elections were held they did not decide who would govern, as the dictator was not, in practice, accountable to Nicaraguan voters. Knowing that Zelaya’s regime was a personal dictatorship, however, says little about how he ruled. First, he was Nicaragua’s contribution to the wave of liberal dictators who dominated Central America from the 1870s to the first decade of the twentieth century.15 These were neither European laissez-faire liberals nor Anglo-American democratic reformist liberals, but rather of the “order and progress” variety. They used the state to promote development, principally by building infrastructure, facilitating access to credit, and promoting education. However, they were dictators: unaccountable to the public and more prone to use coercion to secure their ends than most democratically elected officials would be. Zelaya harassed his Conservative opponents and alienated numerous Liberals by surrounding himself with dishonest cronies and abandoning liberal principles. He was especially given to meddling in the affairs of his neighbors, invading Honduras in 1894 to install a Liberal president, and then in 1906 provoking war with Honduras (a revolution in 1903 had ousted Zelaya’s ally), and attempting to start a revolution in El Salvador. It was his swashbuckling foreign policy that contributed most to Zelaya’s overthrow in 1909, as he became a real irritant to the government of the United States. Not only did Zelaya’s interference in the domestic affairs of neighboring states destabilize Central American politics, thus posing a threat to US investment in the region, he also attempted to undermine the interoceanic canal the United States opted to build in Panama instead of Nicaragua. This he did by seeking investors from Britain, Germany, and Japan. That his efforts went unrewarded did not lessen Washington’s vexation. Thus when a revolutionary movement against Zelaya arose in 1909, the United States moved quickly to back it, even providing military support. Zelaya was forced to stand down and his regime soon collapsed. The system that replaced it, however, did not bring peace and prosperity to Nicaragua. Instability, Civil War, and American Intervention, 1909–1928

Nicaragua entered another period of chronic instability and partisan civil war in the aftermath of Zelaya’s ouster. These conditions quickly brought direct intervention by the United States, and Nicaragua became a de facto US protectorate. That such an outcome was possible showed four things.

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The first is that Nicaraguan politics was still highly polarized and accommodation between the opposing sides was impossible. Second and equally obvious, violence remained a useful political tool, too effective to be renounced in the struggle to control the state. Third, state institutions were again too weak to contain the energies of the country’s elite political actors; indeed the machinery of government was just another arrow in their quivers. Fourth and finally, the government of the United States had made itself a central part of Nicaraguan domestic politics. These factors defined the sources of political power and shaped how that power was used, thus defining Nicaragua’s political regime in the second and third decades of the last century. The man most directly responsible for the overthrow of the Zelaya regime was Juan José Estrada, a dissident Liberal16 and military man, who became interim president for two years after the fall of the Liberal dictatorship. His vice president was the Conservative Adolfo Díaz, an official with a US mining company operating in Nicaragua. This potentially promising bipartisan arrangement did not last, however. In 1911, Díaz was elected president, starting a sixteen-year run of Conservative presidents, all but the last of them closely linked to US interests. Indeed, the arrival of Díaz sparked a civil war that continued until 1927. One crucial reason for this failure to consolidate a pluralistic political system was the Dawson Pact. This was an accord between the governments of Nicaragua and the United States, named after Thomas C. Dawson, who had overseen the US intervention in the Dominican Republic. Dawson’s central task was persuading the Nicaraguan government to agree to four key provisions that let the US government shape Nicaraguan politics to conform to Washington’s preferences.17 The four provisions demanded that Nicaragua do the following: • Adopt a new, democratic constitution to replace the authoritarian charter imposed by Zelaya. • Establish a Mixed Claims Commission to consider claims for compensation made against the Zelaya government. • Negotiate a loan from US lenders that would be secured with Nicaragua’s customs receipts, the country’s main source of revenue. • Hold fresh elections and prohibit the presence of any Zelayista in the resulting administration. The Nicaraguan government acceded to these terms, which provoked a strong nationalist backlash.18 It was under these conditions that the rigged election of Adolfo Díaz in 1911, which was approved by the United States,19 caused disgruntled Liberals and Conservatives to revolt against

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Díaz. This in turn spawned a bloody civil war and led to 2,300 US Marines arriving in Nicaragua in 1912, at the request of Díaz, to restore order. Although the foreign troops soon defeated the rebels, Nicaragua effectively became a US protectorate for the next fifteen years. Despite Liberals’ accusations that rigged elections resulted in pro-US, Conservative administrations again in 1916 and 1920, things eventually became calm enough to reduce the marines’ presence to a 100-man legation guard. In fact, they were withdrawn from Nicaragua in 1925, after the election in 1924, which was acknowledged as fair, was won by a coalition ticket composed of Carlos Solórzano, a Conservative Republican—not the official, Washingtonbacked Conservatives, at the top and the Liberal Juan Bautista Sacasa as his running mate. In 1926, though, the marines landed again, as a revolt by former Conservative president Emiliano Chamorro (1917–1921) toppled Solórzano. That set off another civil war, which was brought to an end in 1927 with the mediation of Henry Stimson, the personal envoy of President Calvin Coolidge, when Conservative and Liberal leaders agreed to the Pact of Espino Negro. One aspect of that settlement called for the United States to organize a nonpartisan constabulary, the National Guard, in order to reduce the utility of violence as a political instrument. A second proviso declared that the US government would supervise presidential elections to be held in 1928. Those elections, and the round that followed in 1932, were technically free and fair, and were intended to make Nicaragua an electoral democracy.20 “Supervise” was the key word here. Although the Conservative Republic was an electoral oligarchy, the system was homegrown. From the Dawson Pact to the Pact of Espino Negro, representatives of the US government took a direct hand in shaping Nicaragua’s political system. Their purpose was to at least stabilize Nicaraguan political life and at best democratize it, but their efforts produced mixed results. Unfortunately, the National Guard fell under the personal control of its first commander, the Liberal Anastasio Somoza García, who used it to overthrow President Juan Bautista Sacasa, the uncle of Somoza’s wife, who won a free and fair election in 1932. Any possibility that the two reasonably positive legacies of a quarter century of US tutelage over Nicaragua would become embedded parts of the nation’s political system was thus lost. Holding honest elections in 1924, 1928, and 1932 did not serve as the foundation for democratic elections in a democratic regime. That they were predemocratic was patent, especially given the extent of US control over Nicaragua’s government, but they could have been the precursors of a constitutional democratic polity. The succeeding regime was instead another personal dictatorship, one whose forty-three-year existence makes it Nicaragua’s longest-lived political system.

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Somocismo, 1936–1979 In one of those peculiar historical coincidences, two of the names that would shape so much of the history of Nicaragua in the last two-thirds of the twentieth century made their initial appearance in the civil war ended by the Pact of Espino Negro in 1927: Augusto César Sandino and Anastasio (Tacho) Somoza García. Sandino was one of the more successful self-made generals who carried the Liberal banner against the combined forces of the Nicaraguan state and the US Marines. When all the other Liberal generals, including their overall commander José María Moncada, accepted the peace deal, Sandino fought on, not stopping until the last US troops left the country in January 1933. Sandino’s fervent nationalism led him to reject US supervision of the 1928 elections. As a result, he became an effective guerrilla chieftain, harassing the marines and the newly formed Nicaraguan National Guard for five years. It was only natural that the guerrilla insurgency that began in 1961 and eventually toppled the Somozas’ dictatorship would take his name and become the Sandinista National Liberation Front. While Sandino was making his name fighting the Yanks, Somoza was establishing his reputation by working for them. He must have impressed them, because when it came time to name the first Nicaraguan commander of the National Guard the United States insisted that Tacho get the job once the marines withdrew on January 2, 1933. That a declared Liberal and selfappointed Liberal general during the last civil war could be named to head a nonpartisan, professional constabulary is difficult to imagine, but it happened, and soon produced significant consequences. In May 1936 Somoza parlayed the command of the National Guard into command of the country by overthrowing the Liberal president Sacasa. Tacho Somoza, 1936–1956

Although Tacho and his two boys Luis and Tacho Jr., better known as Tachito, who followed him in the presidency, had the PLN as their electoral-cum-patronage machine, the Somoza family had Conservative roots: Tacho’s father was a Conservative senator from the department of Carazo.21 Thus the first Somoza to govern was not the first Somoza actively involved in national politics, and he was in no way a political outsider. Although Tacho’s immediate family was not wealthy, the extended family had the resources to send a nineteen-year-old Tacho to Philadelphia to keep him from getting into more trouble after he made the family’s maid pregnant. This move to the United States proved to be the young man’s big break. Not only did he meet his future wife Salvadora Debayle, the daughter of a very well-connected Liberal family from León, there, he also learned to speak fluent and colloquial English.

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Nevertheless, on returning to Nicaragua Somoza did not find immediate success. That came to him only on his appointment as Henry Stimson’s translator in 1927. Tacho’s command of English, as well as his intelligence and ingratiating manner, let him become a key figure in Stimson’s entourage and thereby establish his bona fides with the US mission in Nicaragua. As already noted, that mission had so much confidence in Somoza that he was named commander of the National Guard, a force that would evolve into what Richard Millett called “the guardians of the dynasty.”22 Washington established a national guard in Nicaragua because it was part of a framework that had been used in the more comprehensive US occupations of Haiti (1915–1934) and the Dominican Republic (1916– 1924). In all three instances, chronic armed conflict was sustained by partisan militaries. One part of the solution to conflict-bred instability was thus to take the security forces outside the political realm. Beyond that, as the name national guard implied, these were to be different from the nations’ previous armies, functioning more as militias and also operating as national police forces. In none of the three countries did the guards operate as envisioned. Indeed, these forces quickly adopted the ways of their predecessors, once the US officers who originally commanded them were withdrawn. The first to fall was the Dominican Republic in 1930, six years after the marines left. Nicaragua followed suit three years later. In Nicaragua, the execution of Sandino by the National Guard, apparently on Somoza’s orders,23 signaled the end of the nation’s experiment with a nonpartisan, law-abiding military until 1990. Once US troops left Nicaragua, Sandino stopped fighting and turned to negotiating with the newly elected president Sacasa. The former’s principal demand was for land in Nicaragua’s north where he and his soldiers could live autonomously, organized into cooperatives, policing themselves and providing for their own defense. In February 1934, Sandino went to Managua to meet with President Sacasa to finalize the arrangement. However, on the way to a farewell dinner, hosted by the president to celebrate the negotiations’ conclusion, Sandino’s party was stopped by guardsmen and he and two of his generals were taken to an airfield and shot. Even if Somoza had no part in the affair, the Guard’s ability to act in opposition to the president showed the weakness of the civil authorities. It is therefore not surprising that slightly more than two years after Sandino’s death President Sacasa was forced from office and Tacho Somoza was on his way to becoming president. The Nicaraguan National Guard remained the cornerstone of the Somozas’ power for the duration of their regime. Even when the family relinquished the presidency, as it did from 1947 to 1950 and again from 1963 to 1967, it always retained command of that military force—the

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National Guard was always an instrument of the state and had limited autonomy. It is perhaps for this reason the Guard did not seek to intervene in politics, unlike the militaries of El Salvador, Guatemala, or Honduras. Further, unlike earlier dictators, in the Guard the Somozas had a fighting force far superior to what any challenging caudillo could organize. Nonetheless, the National Guard could not defeat Sandino in the field and in the 1970s the FSLN would again show the Guard’s deficiencies as a counterinsurgent force. Although the Somozas made control of Nicaragua’s security apparatus the centerpiece of their regime, they possessed resources besides coercion. Controlled elections, where the ones who count win, always figured in their toolbox, as did the practice of continuismo: amending the constitution to let the president remain legally in office for as long as he wanted. It is interesting to note, though, that no Somoza declared himself president for life, but rather chose to keep running in the rigged elections he was sure to win. Even more striking, in 1950 Tacho concluded a pact with the Conservatives that gave the latter a third of the congressional seats and a seat on the Supreme Court. He gave them, that is, “quotas of power” that let the Conservatives survive politically, albeit with a tarnished reputation for having collaborated with the dictatorship. With respect to the first Somoza’s policies, Knut Walter observes that his economic programs were broadly favorable to Nicaragua’s agro-export elite, as was the regime’s US-aligned foreign policy.24 Moreover, simply by putting an end to nearly a quarter century of civil strife, the dictatorship facilitated economic growth. Walter argues that it was the policy interests shared by Somoza and the Conservative oligarchs that made it possible to conclude the pact of 1950 and sustain, even enrich, that deal until the FSLN’s triumph. When Somoza García laid the foundations for a family dictatorship he also sowed the seeds of its downfall. The regime was not just personalistic and nondemocratic, but also patrimonial, even “sultanistic.”25 That is, not just Tacho but his two sons, as well, used their political power to enrich themselves, essentially treating Nicaragua as their personal property. In the 1970s this would alienate large sections of the elite and contribute to the overthrow of Anastasio Somoza Debayle, Tacho Jr., who would go down in history as “the last Somoza.” The Next Generation, 1956–1979

On September 21, 1956, shortly after having again received the PLN’s presidential nomination, Tacho Somoza was shot in León by Rigoberto López Pérez, and died a week later. Somocismo, however, continued, as Tacho’s two sons, Luis and his younger brother Tacho Jr., immediately took

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up the reins. Luis became acting president (he would be elected to a full term in 1957) and Tacho Jr. succeeded his father as commander of the National Guard. This is how Nicaragua got a two-generation personal dictatorship, one that would see both members of the second generation serve as president before the regime was deposed. Luis, although a colonel in the National Guard, was the better suited of the two sons to be a politician. Whereas Tacho Jr. had gone to West Point, Luis held a degree in agriculture from Louisiana State. Moreover, the older brother, who was president26 of the Nicaraguan congress when his father died, seemed to have old Tacho’s talent as a politician. Tacho Jr., on the other hand, appeared temperamentally better suited to a military career. Perhaps this explains why Luis sought to extract the family from active politics, having the Somozas concentrate on expanding their business empire, and influencing political life indirectly through the PLN and, presumably, the National Guard. Unfortunately, Luis died in 1967, at the age of fortyfour, leaving his brother to take up the reins. Under the new Tacho, who first assumed the presidency in 1967, the dynasty began to lose its grip on Nicaragua. This was not because Tacho Jr. abandoned the model developed by his father. He maintained the practice of permitting a licensed opposition, the Conservative Party, to function. Indeed he sweetened the pact to give them 40 percent not just of congressional seats, but also posts on a number of government bodies from the Supreme Court to the Managua Water Company, and a member of every diplomatic mission.27 Tacho also maintained the family’s practice of censoring and harassing opposition media, print and electronic, but never creating a state-controlled communications monopoly.28 And the last Somoza followed the path of predecessors by cultivating close ties with the US government. It was his handling of the aftermath of the 1972 Managua earthquake that set the irreversible decline in motion.29 How a government responds to a disaster, natural or anthropogenic, says a lot about its capacity and its priorities. For example, the Haitian quake of 2010 showed the Haitian state to be just a façade, incapable of effective, independent action. After the December 23, 1972, Managua earthquake two things happened that revealed the nature of the last installment of Somocismo. One was that the National Guard disappeared: essentially the entire force went AWOL to look after their families. The other, which proved worse in the long run, was how Tacho handled disaster relief. In a personalistic system the leader can take personal control of whatever he or she wants; there are no unbreachable institutional walls and the ruler’s wish substitutes for the rule of law. Tacho Somoza used the disaster to rebuild the capital city in a way that benefited him, his family, and his cronies.

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Besides slowing rebuilding, this brought the Somoza regime into direct conflict with the Nicaraguan economic elite, the class the dynasty’s first two rulers had sought to keep as their ally.30 This lack of any sense of responsibility, of any commitment to seek the common good and defend the public interest shown by the dictator and his patently private army in 1972, lay at the root of Somocismo’s demise in 1979. Over the next six and a half years, Somoza saw his onetime allies on the right and center turn against him. In 1978, the entire country came to despise him after the murder of newspaper publisher and longtime Somoza foe Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, presumably on Tacho’s orders. Even worse, the Sandinistas, whom Somoza repeatedly declared dead and buried, inflicted a military defeat on the National Guard that put an end to his regime. In great part, this occurred because Tacho came to rely increasingly on violence to preserve his rule, a choice he was probably forced to make. The dictator had alienated so many among the elite who had once tolerated his father and brother that he was left standing alone. With Tacho’s fall, it was widely assumed that Nicaragua had seen the end of a very long era of the caudillo rule.31 To summarize this longest-lived of Nicaraguan political systems, Somocismo was a two-generation caudillo regime. The right to rule—what we generally label legitimacy—grew empirically from control over the state, making coercion and clientelism the operational bases of governance. There was licensed opposition and an often-censored independent press that existed alongside an official one. Fraudulent elections were part of the governing model, as were blatant continuismo and a military force loyal to the dictator. Appearances mattered, thus there was a full array of the usual machinery of democratic government, but power remained concentrated in the hands of the Somoza of the day. It was a classic personalistic dictatorship and it was far stronger than any caudillo-style dictatorship that had preceded it, even Zelaya’s. Only the Conservative Republic had similar staying power, and that constitutional regime proved that Nicaragua could be governed under the rule of law, something the Somozas never attempted. In its time, the Somoza regime was seen as just another dictatorship, albeit a successful one spanning two generations. At most, it would have been classed with Salazar and Franco among the authoritarians and not with Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot among the totalitarians. However, research on dictatorships and other forms of authoritarian and non- and antidemocratic government since the turn of the twenty-first century helps clarify how the Somozas held on to power as long as they did. One reason is that personal dictatorships tend to persist longer than institutional dictatorships built around a party or the military.32 This is

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because, in a personal dictatorship, there is no one to whom the leader is accountable. This does not mean that an internal cabal or external insurrection cannot oust a personalistic ruler, but only that such a ruler is beyond the reach of both vertical and horizontal accountability. As well, this recent work on authoritarians also examines the use of normally democratic instruments, such as elections and legislatures, by dictators and suggests that they are not just window dressing.33 These institutions serve the authoritarian state by, inter alia, giving it greater legitimacy, easing the process of gaining compliance and cooperation, and providing information about the true state of public opinion. Thus the Somozas’ licensing of the opposition and then co-opting those opponents via pacts, as well as tolerating limited media freedom, likely helped the regime gain a certain level of acquiescence from at least its elite opponents. Although the Castros, who have followed a model closer to the totalitarian norm, have outlasted the Somozas by thirteen years now, the Somoza regime demonstrates that limited political pluralism is compatible with durable dictatorial rule. The Somozas’ dictatorship was not just the longest-lived regime in Nicaraguan history but also the last regime before the Sandinista revolution. Therefore, it stands to reason that it had considerable impact on the behavior of the country’s elites and the thinking of the next generation of politicians. The next chapter will address these points in greater depth, but it should be remembered that the Somozas were neither the first nor the only dictators to govern Nicaragua. From 1889, when Roberto Sacasa began turning the Conservative Republic into a personalistic, patrimonial system, to the fall of the Somozas in 1979, Nicaragua had only ten years of stable, plausibly constitutional government that might someday have become democratic.34 Somocismo was perhaps the apotheosis of the governing model of those nine decades.

Nicaragua and the Rest of Central America Politically, at the start of 1979, Central America had one democracy, Costa Rica; two personal dictatorships, Nicaragua and Panama; and three military dictatorships, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Table 3.2 presents some basic political, economic, and social data. These indicate that Nicaragua was far more like its three northern neighbors (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras) than its southern ones (Costa Rica and Panama) on measures of social well-being. This is clear from the Human Development Index (HDI) scores of the region’s countries. As the name implies, the HDI is a composite index of human development. It is used by the United Nations Development Programme and includes measures of income, life expectancy, and education. The mean HDI score for Latin America and the

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Table 3.2 Central America in January 1979 Income per Capita (1980 US$)

Human Development Index Score (1980)

Country

Government

Significant Guerrilla Activity

Costa Rica

Democracy

No

$1,767

.621

El Salvador

Military

Yes

$756

.471

Guatemala

Military

Yes

$1,010

.432

Honduras

Military

No

$639

.456

Nicaragua

Personal dictatorship to revolutionary vanguard

Yes

$496

.461

Personal dictatorship

No

$1,451

.634

Panama

Sources: World Bank, “Poverty and Equity,” Poverty Data (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2014), http://povertydata.worldbank.org/poverty/region/LAC; United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Index Trends, 1980–2012 (New York: United Nations Development Programme, 2014), http://data.un.org/DocumentData.aspx?q=human+development+index &id=327.

Caribbean in 1980 was .574, indicating that Nicaragua was underdeveloped by regional standards.35 Economically, its citizens were the poorest in Central America in per capita terms. However, entering the 1980s, Central America was a poor region within Latin America, with only Costa Rica being above the mean per capita income, $1,750, for all of Latin America and the Caribbean.36 Economic and social conditions do not especially distinguish Nicaragua from its neighbors. Neither did its political system stand out from the majority of its Central American peers as 1979 began. Similarly, Nicaragua was not alone in hosting an active guerrilla front, as several groups had been operating in Guatemala since 1960 and guerrillas were active in El Salvador from the early 1970s. There were, though, two factors that did set Nicaragua apart from its neighbors early in 1979. One was that the Somoza dictatorship was becoming steadily more violent and exploitative in its fight to retain power. The other significant distinguishing field mark was that in late 1978 the FSLN had begun a new offensive, based on a new strategy. We now know that together those two factors produced a context that would lead to a successful insurrection. Nevertheless, on New Year’s Day, 1979, even though the Sandinistas had mounted and sustained a potent military-political operation for several months, few observers would have predicted that the Somozas would be out of power in just over half a year.

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What History Suggests All countries have interesting political histories, but Nicaragua’s first 158 years as an independent country are particularly striking. As was true of most of Latin America, Nicaragua’s first decades were marked by political instability and nearly constant civil war, as Conservative and Liberal caudillos fought each other to impose their favored governing model. As we saw, this fratricidal violence ended only when the country was seized by mercenaries from the United States, whose rule was ended by the first and only pan–Central American military operation. Despite these unpromising beginnings, Nicaragua was the first Central American state to develop a civic or republican oligarchy. Thus it became the first in the region to establish a government with stable institutions that generally governed according to a constitution. But later, with the Somozas, it also had not just the most resilient personal dictatorship in Central America but the only dynastic one as well. Further, it joined the majority of Central American states in displaying a general distaste for electoral democracy until well into the second half of the twentieth century. So the question becomes, What political inheritance did Nicaragua’s first 158 years as a nation leave to the FSLN and the country as a whole? It could have been one of accommodating at least selected interests, even if only within the elite, but the legacy could as well have centered on what was required to build a successful dictatorship. Overall, the clearest lesson for future rulers proved to be that power is to be concentrated and not dispersed. This applies especially to the power vested in the country’s chief executive. Further, power is not to be turned over peacefully to opponents; ideally, it should not be turned over at all. And opponents should be treated as enemies, if not actually demonized, thus producing a polarized politics that denies the existence of shared ground among competitors. Nevertheless, and despite the foregoing, the experience of both the Conservative Republic and the Somoza regime demonstrates that deals can be struck among like-minded individuals and that these deals can serve as the foundation for stable governance. A country’s political history indicates preferred ways of doing things and suggests what works and what does not. What proved most successful in ruling Nicaragua from 1821 to 1979 was a blend of political polarization, personalistic administration, and government that was not accountable to its citizens. Simply put, undemocratic rule was seen to work. The positive experience of limited government during the first thirty years of the Conservative Republic appears to have had limited impact on how succeeding regimes ruled. In fact, those successors seem to have decided that the quasidemocratic constitutionalism of a civic oligarchy was a model to be avoided. This experience is not unique in Latin America. However, even

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though Nicaragua’s post-1979 failure to establish a stable regime that is accepted as legitimate by the entire political community is consistent with its past, it must be noted that other states with similar backgrounds have not fallen into this pattern. The past is not always prologue.

Notes 1. Anastasio Somoza García assumed de jure power in 1936. De facto power was his as much as two years earlier. 2. Thomas Walker, Nicaragua: The Land of Sandino (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1986); Thomas Walker and Christine Wade, Nicaragua: Living in the Shadow of the Eagle, 5th ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2011); and Frances Kinloch Tijerino, Historia de Nicaragua, 4th ed. (Managua: IHNCA, 2012), have authored fine surveys of Nicaraguan history. Andrés Pérez Baltodano, Entre el estado conquistador y el estado nación (Managua: IHNCA/UCA y la Fundación Frederich Ebert en Nicaragua, 2003), is an excellent political history. Useful thematic monographs include E. Bradford Burns, Patriarch and Folk: The Emergence of Nicaragua, 1798–1858 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991); Stephen Dando-Collins, Tycoon’s War: How Cornelius Vanderbilt Invaded a Country to Overthrow America’s Most Famous Military Adventurer (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2008); Arturo Cruz Sequeira, Nicaragua’s Conservative Republic, 1858–1893 (London: Palgrave, in association with St. Antony’s, Oxford, 2002); Michel Gobat, Confronting the American Dream (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005); Neil Macaulay, The Sandino Affair (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1985); and Donald C. Hodges, Intellectual Foundations of the Nicaraguan Revolution (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986). 3. The first free and fair elections were held in 1924 and were administered by the Nicaraguan government; however, the resulting government fell to a coup in 1926. Those of 1928 and 1932 were administered by the US military, thereby reducing their democratic credentials. 4. Kinloch Tijerino, Historia, pp. 125–138. 5. Ralph Lee Woodward, Central America: A Nation Divided, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985). 6. Kinloch Tijerino, Historia, pp. 134–142. 7. Chapters 6 and 7 examine twenty-first-century, elected caudillos. Their rule is still personalized but governing is carried out through different instruments. 8. This section on the Conservative Republic relies on Cruz Sequeira, Nicaragua’s Conservative Republic; and Pérez Baltodano, Entre el estado conquistador, pp. 243–321. 9. Pérez Baltodano, Entre el estado conquistador, p. 247. 10. Cruz Sequeira, Nicaragua’s Conservative Republic, p. 50. 11. Paul Drake, Between Tyranny and Anarchy: A History of Democracy in Latin America, 1800–2006 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), pp. 126–162. 12. Quoted in Pérez Baltodano, Entre el estado conquistador, p. 306. 13. John Peeler, Building Democracy in Latin America, 3rd ed. (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2009). 14. This section draws on Howard Teplitz, “The Political and Economic Foundations of Modernization in Nicaragua: The Administration of José Santos Zelaya,”

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PhD diss., Howard University, 1973; Charles Stansifer, “José Santos Zelaya: A New Look at Nicaragua’s ‘Liberal’ Dictator,” Revista Interamericana 7 (Fall 1977): 468– 485; and Pérez Baltodano, Entre el estado conquistador, pp. 321–366. 15. Woodward, Central America, pp. 149–202; and Lynn Foster, A Brief History of Central America (New York: Checkmark Books, 2007), pp. 170–201. 16. There is dispute over Estrada’s partisan identity. Thomas Dodd, Managing Democracy in Central America (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1992), calls him a Conservative. Kinloch Tijerino and Pérez Baltodano list him as a Liberal. I lean toward the latter view, because Estrada had been a departmental governor under Zelaya, suggesting that the former had Liberal connections. 17. Kinloch Tijerino, Historia, p. 226. 18. On this period, see Gobat, Confronting the American Dream. 19. Lars Schoultz, Beneath the United States (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), p. 261. 20. On this see Dodd, Managing Democracy. 21. Bernard Diederich, Somoza and the Legacy of U.S. Involvement in Central America (New York: Dutton, 1981), pp. 6–7. 22. Richard Millett, Guardians of the Dynasty (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1977). 23. Ibid., pp. 160–161. 24. Knut Walter, The Regime of Anastasio Somoza, 1936–1956 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993). 25. John Booth, “The Somoza Regime in Nicaragua,” in Sultanistic Regimes, ed. H. E. Chelabi and Juan Linz, pp. 132–152 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998). 26. The position is equivalent to that of the speaker in the US and in Britishmodel legislatures. 27. Eduardo Crawley, Dictators Never Die: A Portrait of Nicaragua and the Somoza Dynasty (London: C. Hurst and Company), p. 145. 28. Walter, The Regime, pp. 139–144, 226–230. 29. Paul Dosal, “The 1972 Destruction of Managua and the Somoza Dynasty,” in Aftershocks: Earthquakes and Popular Politics in Latin America, ed. Jurgen Buchenau and Lyman Johnson, pp. 129–155 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009). 30. George Black, The Triumph of the People (London: Zed Press, 1981), pp. 57–74; Pérez Baltodano, Entre el estado conquistador, pp. 543–547. 31. The Sandinista insurgency and the fall of the Somoza dictatorship are treated in Chapter 4. 32. On personal dictatorships see Erica Frantz and Natasha Ezrow, The Politics of Dictatorship: Institutions and Outcomes in Authoritarian Regimes (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2011). 33. See Andreas Schedler, ed., Electoral Authoritarianism (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2006); Jennifer Gandhi, Political Institutions Under Dictatorship (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, Competitive Authoritarianism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 34. There were honest, fair elections in 1924, 1928, and 1932. However, the Solórzano-Sacasa ticket, which won free elections in 1924, was overthrown after two years in office for a total of ten years: 1924–1926 and 1928–1936. This means that from 1889 to 1979, Nicaragua spent roughly 11 percent of the time under freely elected governments.

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35. United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Index Trends, 1980–2012 (New York: United Nations, 2014), http://data.un.org/Docu mentData.aspx?q=human+development+index&id=327. 36. World Bank, World Development Report, 1985 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1985).

4 Radical Sandinismo and the Vanguard Regime

Prior to 1979 Nicaragua had experienced every form of authoritarian regime known to Latin America except an institutional military dictatorship (it never had a military that was an autonomous professional institution) and a Marxist proletarian dictatorship (as both Marxists and an urban proletariat were historically thin on the ground). In both the popular imagination and the calculations of the political elite, these authoritarian options seemed to outweigh the experiments with oligarchic constitutionalism (1858–1893) and honest electoral politics (1924–1926, 1928– 1936). It would take a significant shake-up of Nicaraguan political society to break that pattern.

The FSLN on the Road to Power The political history of contemporary Nicaragua begins in 1979 with the fall of the Somozas’ dynastic regime to the Sandinista National Liberation Front.1 As the FSLN was a politico-military front, whose ideology blended Marxism with a lesser dose of the radical Catholic social thought found in liberation theology, it would obviously take Nicaragua down a new road. On gaining power, the FSLN assumed the role of vanguard of the revolution, but not in quite the same way its more fully Marxist predecessors had. Before the revolutionary regime took shape, though, the Sandinistas spent eighteen years as an insurgent guerrilla force, waging politico-military war against the Nicaraguan state. Other than the insurgency led by Fidel Castro in Cuba, the Sandinistas are the sole guerrilla force to take power by force of arms in Latin America in the twentieth century, and their path to seizing control of the state was quite different from that of their Cuban counterparts. There are two factors in play here: the vanguard state itself and the 63

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transition of an armed insurgent force into a party of government. We start with the latter.2 Insurgent Guerrillas and Revolutionary Vanguards

Since the Spanish waged their guerrilla (little war) against Napoleon’s occupying army two centuries ago, but especially since the days of Mao Zedong and Augusto César Sandino in the 1920s, irregular warfare has had both a military and a political side. That is, guerrillas have not only fought an enemy militarily, they have also worked to build political support among the people. However, to actually take power, a guerrilla insurgent must inflict a military defeat on a government. Therefore, it has to be organized first and foremost as a military force. This will demand a hierarchical command structure; violence will be the principal currency of political exchange; and the foe will be an enemy to be conquered. Once this would have fit most political systems well, but it is not appropriate for democracy. The above applies to any military organization, from guerrillas to a professional army. However, the most important of the guerrilla forces that were active in the twentieth century were not established just to wage irregular warfare. They had a political program that, unlike the designs of nineteenth-century caudillos, went beyond seizing the state. The most famous of these—Mao, Castro, Ho Chi Minh, and the Sandinistas—were if not totally committed Marxists at least convinced anticapitalists who sought to liberate their nations from foreign domination. They were true believers, fully dedicated to their cause and not disposed to accept outcomes short of victory. The revolutionary cry “¡Patria libre o morir! ¡Patria o muerte! ¡Venceremos!”3 was not just a slogan. It summed up belief in a program built on essential principles and in always pressing for total victory to ensure those values were fully translated into practice. If once attaining power the guerrilla force meant to govern without permitting opposition, as was the case with, among others, the Maoists and Fidelistas, the structures used to defeat the previous state could be put to use with minimal adjustments. This would apply especially well where, as in China, the guerrillas had overseen liberated areas during their struggle, as the instruments of civil administration would already have been developed. Obviously, a victorious guerrilla insurgency with pluralistic aims, one that wants to open the political system in important ways, will have to learn new skills. First, it has to deemphasize its military structure and move toward a less top-down configuration that facilitates dialogue and negotiation. Second, the weight allotted specialists in violence must be reduced and a greater role given to men and women skilled in the arts of noncoercive persuasion. Third, militaries need to keep tight control over the information they possess to maintain their advantage over the enemy. Although

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governments, too, need a measure of secrecy to function well, political pluralism demands far more openness, as active citizenship requires easy access to a wide variety of information. Fourth, militaries seek total victory, although they often must settle for a negotiated peace. Politics can also be strongly maximalist (the “I want everything and won’t take less” syndrome), but maximalism and pluralism cannot long coexist, so governing in a pluralistic system necessitates both more modest goals and some level of accommodation of others’ views. Hence the us-versus-them polarization of war also has to go. Put briefly, a guerrilla insurgency that envisions building a pluralistic, even democratic, state has to engage in what Bernard Crick calls “the political method of rule.”4 By this he means a politics built around reconciling differences and negotiating settlements, to the extent that this is possible. Such a politics cannot be monistic, with but one center of power and source of authority. Neither can it rely on coercion as one of its principal instruments of rule. So a victorious insurgent group will need to relegate to the archives many of the methods and outlooks that brought it to victory, unless it aims to monopolize state power. Because they seek to overthrow the existing regime and install one that they designed and dominate, guerrilla insurgents are revolutionaries. And like all revolutionaries throughout history, the ones who take power after fighting a successful guerrilla war want to move quickly to consolidate their hold on power and install their regime: the logic, structures, and processes of rule they need to build the system they envision. Some of these new governors will plan on an indefinite term of office and not a few of them will style themselves the vanguard of the revolution, as did the Sandinistas. A revolutionary vanguard bases its claim to rule without term not just on the fact that it won. More importantly, in Marxist politics only the vanguard knows what must be done to build socialism. It cannot, therefore, cede the right to rule to anyone else, making political pluralism impossible. Add this to the traits of guerrilla insurgents already described and the chances were slight that the regime change of 1979 would bring Nicaragua anything but a new form of dictatorship, albeit one that would redistribute some significant part of the nation’s wealth to the poor. Yet after only three years the new Nicaraguan revolutionary government committed itself to electoral democracy, and after two more years put the right to govern at stake in elections that qualified as free and fair. The FSLN’s Eighteen Years as a Guerrilla Front

The Sandinista National Liberation Front traces its origins to 1961.5 One of several insurgent groups formed in the aftermath of the Cuban revolution,6

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it is the only one that took power. For much of its existence, however, power seemed a remote dream. The FSLN had to suffer many defeats, see many of its members lose their lives, and go through a wrenching, threeway schism before ousting the Somoza regime. Like many of its contemporaries in the early 1960s, the FSLN adopted the foco model of politico-military insurgency, developed by Che Guevara in Cuba. Foquismo argued that a rural insurrection undertaken by a small armed band, concentrating its efforts on remote rural regions (the focos), would create the conditions necessary for a successful revolution. To make this work the guerrillas had to be mobile and equally adept at political and military tasks, thus able to build the institutional foundations of socialism.7 This approach worked splendidly in Cuba but did not produce the same results in Nicaragua, perhaps because the Sandinistas were operating from Honduras at first and perhaps because the Somozas and their National Guard were better practitioners of counterinsurgency than Batista and the Cuban military. In any event, the FSLN soon turned to a more conventional guerrilla strategy that combined permanent rural bases with a solid support network in the cities. Although this, too, failed to bring the rebels a quick victory, it did let them survive serious setbacks. Ideologically, the FSLN blended nationalism and radical reformism, but generally made no references to Marx or Lenin, or even socialism or communism. Rather, it targeted “Yankee imperialism, the latifundistas, and the Somoza dictatorship; not the bourgeoisie as a class.”8 This was seen particularly clearly in the 1977 General Political-Military Platform,9 a document that called for the formation of a broad anti-Somoza front to take the struggle to the state. However, the document also indicated that this broadly inclusive alliance was a tactical necessity if the Sandinistas were to triumph. Thus the Sandinistas were plainly revolutionary, evidently sought to rule, and obviously belonged to the political left. Yet in this document it is chiefly an open opposition to “Yankee imperialism” that reflects the movement’s Marxist politics, and even that can be read as being as much nationalist as socialist. Whether this was an attempt to disguise a damaging ideological linkage, as the right would argue, or marked a strategic adjustment in its then-sixteen-year struggle against the Somozas, which seems more plausible, is now irrelevant. The Sandinistas’ first breakthrough came with a grand coup de théâtre in 1974: a daring raid on the home of one of Somoza’s ministers who was hosting a post-Christmas party for many of the regime’s elites, who became hostages of the raiders.10 To secure their freedom, the Somoza government had to publish a Sandinista declaration in all of the nation’s media—print and electronic—release all Sandinistas held in custody, and pay a $1 million ransom. It was important for the FSLN to act when it did, because the bourgeois (i.e., non-Marxist or non–social revolutionary) opponents of

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Somocismo had formed a new alliance, the UDEL (Unión Democrática de Liberación [Democratic Union of Liberation]) to confront the dictator. Had the insurgents not acted they risked the leadership of the anti-Somoza forces going to the UDEL by default. Moreover, undertaking urban action marked a shift in the Sandinistas’ strategy: the guerrillas began to reach out to the middle classes concentrated in the country’s cities, and even to the elite. This, too, was crucial as it was to prove the key to victory. However, moving beyond the patient accumulation of forces in the countryside to include other forms of struggle caused the movement to split into three tendencies or factions.11 The Guerra Popular Prolongada (Prolonged People’s War) was the direct descendant of the original foquista strategy, thus it remained centered on rural areas. A second group, the Tendencia Proletaria (Proletarian Tendency), had a more urban focus that emphasized work in the poorest neighborhoods of Nicaragua’s cities and towns. This group was expelled from the FSLN in 1975, charged with dogmatism and reluctance to engage in combat. Two years later, the Terceristas (the Third Tendency), the insurrectional faction, emerged. It argued for forming the largest bloc possible of opponents of Somocismo to produce a massive rising that would overwhelm the regime. Its views were incompatible with those of the two other tendencies, thus it added a third side to the split, each faction pursuing its own objectives. If this were not enough, in 1976 the FSLN also saw Carlos Fonseca, one of its founders, killed in combat, while Tomás Borge, another founder, was jailed, creating a leadership vacuum.12 In just three years, however, the FSLN governed Nicaragua. To understand how this happened requires considering a unique array of conjunctural factors, the first of which had two parts and reflected Tercerista thinking. One of those was the emergence in 1977 of Los Doce (the Twelve): a dozen prominent leaders from various walks of life who acknowledged the necessity of violence to oust Somoza, while insisting that the FSLN be included in any post-Somoza political settlement. Their appearance indicated a commitment to cross-class alliance building by at least one of the guerrilla tendencies. At approximately the same time that Los Doce emerged, the Terceristas mounted two significant operations; and a year later, twenty-three Terceristas staged a daring raid on the Nicaraguan Congress that took 1,000 hostages and led to the release of many Sandinista prisoners.13 The correlation of forces was shifting in the FSLN’s favor, aided by the increasing violence used by the state to confront the insurgency. Beyond the emergence of a new guerrilla strategy, there were several unrelated but very significant occurrences. The first was the assassination of Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, the UDEL leader and publisher of the main anti-Somocista paper, La Prensa, in January 1978; the public laid the blame

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on Somoza. Then in 1979, the FSLN reunited and established a collective leadership, the Dirección Nacional, composed of three members of each tendency. Next, Bill Stewart, a TV journalist for the US network ABC, was executed by the National Guard; the act was captured on film by Stewart’s cameraman. Sympathy for the Somoza regime in the United States nearly evaporated. Further, the US government, which sought to keep the FSLN out of any post-Somocista regime, asked the Organization of American States (OAS) to send peacekeepers to maintain security while a new government acceptable to Washington was established. The OAS refused the request, handing the US administration its first significant defeat in the regional body. Finally, Francisco Urcuyo, the president of the Nicaraguan Congress, whom Tacho Somoza had named to succeed him, declared that he would fight on, opening the way for a complete military victory by the Sandinistas. None of these events could have been planned for. However, all presented opportunities that a flexible organization with an adaptable, pragmatic leadership turned to its advantage. It is important to remember, however, that slightly different decisions by the FSLN’s commanders could have made the Sandinistas another case on the list of failed revolutionary risings.

Revolutionary Vanguards Robert Dix observed that all successful revolutions are multiclass movements.14 That certainly applies to the Sandinista revolution. The multiclass character of the insurrection carried over to at least some extent into the revolutionary government, and was seen most clearly in the FSLN’s commitment to govern according to the “logic of the majority.” That phrase and the image of an economically, ideologically, and socially diverse public that it evokes would be more at home in the cooperative commonwealth sought by nineteenth-century North American15 populist, agrarian radicals than in a Marxist-Leninist proletarian dictatorship. Still, the Sandinistas had deep Marxist roots and more importantly had a revolution to carry out. The shape and style of their political regime would be determined over time, thus practice would trump theory. Government by Revolutionaries

Whatever else they may do, revolutions change governments: personnel, policies, structures, processes, and who has privileged access to decisionmakers. Palace coups, such as where a prince kills his father to succeed to the throne, make the fewest changes. Social revolutions, which aim to

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change not just government but society as well, obviously make the most. In both cases, and all those that fall in between the extremes, the changes are carried out quickly, the old rulers are marginalized if not literally eliminated, and the old rules are set aside and ignored. As a result, it is a rare revolutionary government that attempts to maintain much of the old order or even to govern with self-restraint once it has seized control of the state. In the second half of the twentieth century in Latin America, revolutionaries of the left (the Cuban Fidelistas) and the right (the Chilean Pinochetistas)16 both resorted to deadly force to secure their new regimes and relied heavily on coercion to sustain their political systems. Such behavior is logical for revolutionaries, as they are certain that their new order will produce such a dramatic improvement over the old regime that tarrying in bringing it about would be irresponsible. Where the new regime is avowedly communist or even displays Marxist influences, as did the FSLN, memories of past communist police states arise. Gulags and show trials in the Soviet Union, the Great Leap Forward and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in the People’s Republic of China, and the various maneuverings of three generations of Kims in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea all merge into a tableau of terror and repression. These were all developed in states where a single-party revolutionary vanguard directed a proletarian dictatorship that was more dictatorial than proletarian. For many, then, a socialist revolution and the state it will erect are to be dreaded and not welcomed. Seen in this light, it is intriguing that the FSLN chose to refer to itself as the vanguard of the revolution against the Somoza state and, in addition, dismissed calls for early elections by declaring that the people had voted on July 19, 1979. Taken together, those statements pointed to the Sandinistas moving quickly to impose an absolute monopoly over the nation’s political life. Yet not only did they begin their vanguard regime’s life by acknowledging a large and disparate array of admittedly second-level political actors, but by 1984 the FSLN had abandoned the Leninist model of perpetual rule by the vanguard party. The remainder of this chapter considers how and why this came about by examining the components of the regime of revolutionary Sandinismo.

The First Sandinista Regime The first regime change in the period being examined saw a personal dictatorship replaced by a radical revolutionary vanguard. To establish the foundation for its legitimacy, its right to rule, the FSLN employed four elements: (1) de facto possession of power, (2) displacement of a regime widely viewed as illegitimate, (3) its revolutionary program, and (4) being

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the vanguard party. The first of these was the key to securing international recognition. However, it is also true that a de facto regime can, over time, come to be accepted as the rightful ruler by a significant portion of the population; this happened with the Somozas, at least until the 1972 earthquake. And although people can consider a movement to be a legitimate political actor, a movement cannot become the foundation for a regime unless it controls the state. A second claim to legitimacy can come from replacing a regime broadly viewed as illegitimate. Other than being overthrown by force of arms, there was no way the increasingly violent regime of Tacho Somoza was leaving power. The nonviolent, bourgeois opposition had tried for decades to send the Somozas to the sidelines with no success. Indeed, earlier attempts to oust the dynasty by violence had also failed. Thus by overthrowing the last Somoza, the Sandinistas opened the way for Nicaragua to finally have government that was honest, attentive to more than a handful of its citizens, and moderate in the use of its coercive capacity. However, this grant of legitimacy was conditional on the new revolutionary government’s future behavior; that is, the legitimacy that came from ridding the country of a bad ruler should be thought of as giving the new governors a probationary appointment. Third on the list was the program of changes the FSLN promised. There were thirteen found in the 1969 Historic Program of the FSLN:17 1. A revolutionary government that would permit the full participation of all the people and guarantee the full exercise of individual rights and freedoms. 2. An agrarian revolution that would “expropriate and liquidate the capitalist and feudal latifundia.” 3. A revolution in culture and education that would start with a literacy campaign. 4. Labor rights and social security. 5. Honest administration. 6. Bring the Atlantic Coast communities back into the nation’s mainstream. 7. Abolish discrimination against women. 8. Respect for all religious beliefs. 9. An independent foreign policy. 10. Work toward Central American union. 11. Put into practice a “militant solidarity” with all peoples fighting for national liberation. 12. Create a patriotic people’s army and abolish the National Guard. 13. Honor those who fell in combat, the revolution’s martyrs.

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Obviously, the revolutionary government would have to fulfill these promises, which any Latin American revolutionaries in the 1970s could have endorsed; but the essential message was one of fixing what had gone wrong under the Somozas. Ten years later, on New Year’s Day 1979, still six and a half months before taking power, the FSLN issued a document entitled “Bases programáticas del FSLN para la democracia y la reconstrucción de Nicaragua” (Programmatic Bases of the FSLN for Democracy and the Reconstruction of Nicaragua).18 This called for a government of national unity “in which all the political and social forces in our country will have real and effective participation,” so essentially repeating the Historic Program. But it also spoke of expropriating the properties of the Somozas, instead of “an agrarian revolution,” and of a nonaligned foreign policy rather than simply an independent one, which could have implied joining the Soviet bloc, as Cuba had. So there was movement toward pluralism. Further, and also in 1979, the JGRN published an Estatuto Fundamental de Derechos y Garantias (Fundamental Statute of Rights and Guarantees) that set out three principles that would guide the revolutionary government: political pluralism, a mixed economy, and a nonaligned foreign policy. Of the three points, only the last recalled the FSLN’s Historic Program, and the second was a significant departure from the organization’s earlier positions. In the 1980s, some analysts19 viewed this move toward pluralist politics as a ruse: once in power the FSLN would show its true communist colors. Probably they were right, at least at the level of intentions. But events got in the way and the Sandinistas had to maintain a degree of political and economic pluralism that might not have been to their liking. This would have applied with special force in 1990 when pluralism and electoral democracy meant losing the presidency and moving to the minority side of the aisle in the National Assembly. So, even if it was against the movement’s collective better judgment, the first Sandinista government would practice some form of pluralist politics. The fourth and final factor figuring into the new regime’s claim for the legitimate right to rule was being the vanguard of the revolution. In a way, this summarizes the first three hallmarks of the new system, because it recognizes who actually governs, what they accomplished on the way to seizing the state, and what they would use the state to do. Moreover, by using the label vanguard, the FSLN ratified its commitment to radical economic, political, and social change;20 and that would be both the defining characteristic of the new regime and its main source of legitimacy. To understand how this short-lived regime—five years at most and one could argue as few as three, as the revolutionary government accepted competitive elections as the only road to power in 1982—worked, the remain-

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der of this chapter examines a selection of its structures and operational practices.

Machinery of Government and Those Who Ran It All analyses of political regimes give great weight to the machinery of government: the formal, institutional apparatus of the state. Included in the machinery of government are, among other elements, the constitution, the judiciary, and the executive—including the public service, the legislature, security forces, the electoral system, auditors and controllers, and the foreign affairs establishment. This is not, however, necessarily coextensive with the machinery of governing, because the latter often includes elements outside the state—for example, political parties, pressure groups, movements, civil society organizations (CSOs), and the media. As well, the questions of who operates this machinery, in what manner, and for what ends must be taken into account. Examining the structure and operation of a state’s governmental machinery gives a good initial impression of what kind of regime it is. To use an obvious example, if political parties, other than an official ruling party, are outlawed or exist only because the state licenses them, the regime is not a democracy. As most regimes differ substantially from the ideal type, a careful analysis of how governmental machinery operates makes these systems easier to understand and thus classify. This is particularly important with a heterodox vanguard system, like the Sandinistas’. Because vanguards blur the line, if not totally eliminating it, between party and state, this analysis begins by looking at areas where this party-state identification is most evident. The first and most notable of these is national security. Even if the National Guard had not disintegrated, there was no way most Nicaraguans, let alone the revolutionary government, would tolerate its continued existence. Further, the Sandinistas were heirs to a national political legacy in which military forces were not professionally apolitical. Thus the emergence of the Ejercito Popular Sandinista (Sandinista People’s Army) and the Policía Sandinista (Sandinista Police) came as no surprise. And given that in 1979, technically professional, nonpartisan militaries were running exceptionally repressive dictatorships in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay, the FSLN would have had a ready defense for its actions. Another area in which Sandinization occurred was in staffing the civil service. As in much of Latin America, Nicaragua had not developed a particularly strong civil service. Nevertheless, the men and women who staffed the government departments in 1979 were the only ones who knew how to keep the state running. Within a year, however, the senior civil service was very heavily Sandinista.21 This looks like spoils-system politics, but it could

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also be that the revolutionary state needed civil servants dedicated to its principles to work effectively. Seymour Martin Lipset analyzed the first democratic socialist administration to govern above the municipal level in North America—the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) government elected in 1944 in the province of Saskatchewan—and found that bureaucrats unsympathetic to its aims slowed or blocked its programs.22 The only solution was to remove civil service protections from the top administrative jobs in a department and fill the vacancies with new public servants ready to apply the government’s policies as intended. The problem thus is not limited to revolutionary regimes, but can confront any government seeking far-reaching policy changes. Before moving to consider the executive, legislative, and judicial structures of revolutionary Sandinismo, one further observation is necessary. Critics of the FSLN saw the new government’s plans as disguising a Marxist agenda. Had they not been operating in a Cold War environment, they might have noticed that what they saw as Soviet-style politics also fit comfortably into the pathways of traditional Nicaraguan hegemonic politics. The only difference was that the revolutionaries’ collegial rule made it impossible to practice the personalistic politics common in Nicaragua’s past. In Chapters 7 and 8 we will see these informal institutional patterns return to the country’s governance. Executive, Legislature, and Judiciary

Most Latin American states have four branches of government, adding an electoral branch (el poder electoral) to the usual three. Revolutionary Nicaragua, however, did not add an electoral branch until 1984, when it set up machinery to run elections that year. Therefore, this section will concentrate on the executive, legislature, and courts, starting with the executive. In his 1867 book, The English Constitution,23 Walter Bagehot argued that the British political system had two coordinate yet independent parts: the dignified, the crown, the formal executive, which embodied legitimacy and was the official, ceremonial face of politics; and the efficient, the cabinet, the political executive, which actually ran things. Nicaragua’s revolutionary vanguard replicated this division of functions, almost certainly unconsciously, in the organization of the executive. The formal executive was the JGRN, the official executive branch. The political executive was the DN of the FSLN, the nine comandantes de la revolución. Clearly, there would be overlaps, but it is useful to think of the distinct roles of the two bodies in this possibly overstated manner to better appreciate the centrality of the revolutionary party in the administration of the state. The JGRN was constituted before the FSLN took power. It was thus able to move rapidly to assume legal control of the state when the Somoza

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regime fell. In its original configuration, the Junta had five members: Daniel Ortega from the FSLN; Moïses Hassan of the MUR (Movimiento de Unidad Revolucionaria [Movement of Revolutionary Unity]), a leftist party; Sergio Ramírez, representing Los Doce; Alfonso Robelo from the MDN (Movimiento Democrático Nicaragüense [Nicaraguan Democratic Movement]), a centrist party; and Violeta Chamorro, the widow of Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, as a representative of the more conservative antiSomocistas. It thus appeared that there were two orthodox democrats (Robelo and Chamorro), two revolutionary democrats (Ortega and Hassan), and a social democratic swing vote (Ramírez). Appearances were deceiving, however, as Ramírez was secretly a Sandinista who joined Ortega and Hassan to give the radicals a majority in the Junta. This was not what Robelo and Chamorro expected, and both soon resigned from the JGRN. In the next iteration Arturo Cruz Porras, an official with the InterAmerican Development Bank and a member of Los Doce, and Rafael Córdova Rivas, a Conservative politician and lawyer who had defended the FSLN’s Tomás Borge, joined the Junta. Cruz left in 1981 to become Nicaragua’s ambassador to the United States, Hassan resigned, and Daniel Ortega was named the coordinator of the JGRN, formally recognizing his importance. The resulting three-person JGRN of Ramírez, Ortega, and Córdova Rivas remained in place until an elected president, Daniel Ortega, and vice president, Sergio Ramírez, took office. Pluralism of a sort was maintained but it did not meet the expectations of the more conservative antiSomocistas. Regarding the DN, the political executive and efficient part of government, eight of the nine comandantes held key positions in the new administration; only Victor Tirado López, who was from Mexico, did not.24 Leaders of the governing political party, which the FSLN became once military victory was gained, are expected to assume significant governmental roles; only rarely is a senior appointment made from outside the ranks of the ruling party or coalition of parties. By itself, this says nothing about the Sandinistas’ position on political pluralism. The limited role given to representatives of the unarmed and more conservative opponents of the Somozas is more telling in this regard. However, the pro forma inclusion of that sector shows that the FSLN’s leaders had some sensitivity to the importance of offering the conservative opponents of Somoza at least a symbolic role. Perhaps it is best to say that they were chary of being too exclusionary and monopolistic. A more complicated scenario emerged around the revolutionary regime’s representative body, the Consejo de Estado (CE, Council of State). This was a most unusual assembly. First, although this usually would be described as the legislative branch of government, it was formally styled a

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colegislative body. In principle, this means that legislation could be brought forth by both the JGRN and the CE, and has to be adopted by both to become law. In practice, the executive predominated. A second and more striking feature was that representation in the CE was based on function, not geography. Originally there were thirty-three members, but this was raised first to forty-seven and then to fifty-one (see Table 4.1). Expanding the CE provoked substantial opposition, as the original quota of thirty-three had been agreed to before the Sandinistas’ final victory, when a negotiated surrender by the old regime still appeared likely. Thus the more conservative anti-Somocistas had a large enough representation to conceivably block FSLN-backed legislation under some circumstances.25 Most of the eighteen additions were Sandinista-linked or at least sympathetic to the revolutionary government. The argument for their inclusion was that many of these organizations, for example the Comités de Defensa Sandinista (CDS, Sandinista Defense Committees), did not exist prior to the triumph but were essential parts of the new regime. Unsurprisingly, the FSLN’s opposition did not accept this, asserting that the pretriumph deal had to be honored; when it was not, important actors, such as the big private sector organizations, withdrew from the chamber. It was probably not coincidental that they took that action after Ronald Reagan became president of the United States. It is, however, puzzling that an institution that was never likely to have much influence became the source of so much conflict. One possible reason is that the conservative anti-Somoza forces really saw the representative assembly as the theater in which they could have the greatest influence. At least they would have a forum where they could ventilate their critiques of the executive and lay out the lines of an eventual electoral program. Alternatively, they may have seen the CE as a handy club to beat the Sandinista government with in foreign venues. They could argue that the revolutionaries had broken their word and were packing the chamber with their highly disciplined followers, so their claims to be democratic were fraudulent. From the FSLN’s perspective, the CE was their representative body, one without precedent in Nicaragua, both for what and who were represented, and for the opportunity it offered the revolutionaries to give the formerly excluded a chance to learn the skills needed to succeed in formal politics. Moreover, as will be seen below, in practice the FSLN did allow its opponents some freedom to criticize and even to stop government initiatives, something a majority government in a Westminster-style parliament would be unlikely to do. Nicaragua’s judiciary under the revolutionary regime must be divided into two parts: the regular courts and the Tribunales Populares AntiSomozistas (TPAS, Popular Anti-Somocista Tribunals). A 1985 study by the Lawyers’ Committee for International Human Rights, a US organiza-

Table 4.1 Council of State Membership, 1979–1984 Pre-1979: Original 33 Seats Never Distributed FSLN National Patriotic Front (Frente Patriótico Nacional) MPU (United People’s Movement) PLI (Independent Liberal Party) Los Doce PPSC (Popular Social Christian Party) CTN (Nicaraguan Workers’ Center) Frente Obrero Union of Radio Journalists Broad Opposition Front (Frente Amplio de Oposicion) PCD (Democratic Conservative Party) PSC (Social Christian Party) MDN (Nicaraguan Democratic Movement) MLC (Constitutional Liberal Movement) PSN (Socialist Party of Nicaragua) CGT-I (Independent General Workers’ Confederation) CUS (Council of Trade Union Unity)

COSEP (Superior Council of Private Enterprise) INDE CADIN (Chamber of Industry) CCC (Chambers of Commerce) CNC (Chamber of Construction) CONAPRO (Professionals) UPANIC (Agriculture) UNAN (National Autonomous University of Nicaragua) ANCLEN (National Association of Clergy)

Post-1979: 51 Seats Allotted FSLN (6)+

PLI (1) PPSC (1)+

PCD (1) PSC (1) MDN (1) MLC (1) PSN (1)+ CGT-I (2)

All parties 13

CUS (1) CDS (Sandinista Defense Committees) (9)+ JS-19 (Sandinista Youth) (1)+ AMNLAE (Nicaraguan Women’s Association) (1)+ All mass organizations 11 CST (Sandinista Workers’ Central) (3)+ ATC (Association of Rural Workers) (2)+ CTN (1) CAUS (Center for Trade Union Action and Unity) (2)+ FETSALUD (Health Care Workers) (1)+ All unions 12 Armed Forces (1)+ ANCLEN (Clergy) (1) CNES (Universities) (1)+ ANDEN (Teachers) (1)+ UPN (Journalists) (1)+ MISURASATA (Miskitos, Sumas, Ramas, Sandinistas) (1) CONAPRO (1)+ UNAG (Farmers and Ranchers) (2)+ EJE ECUMENICO (Ecumenical Axis) (1) All professional organizations 10 INDE (1) CADIN (1) CCC (1)

UPANIC (1) CDC (1) All private sector 5

Sources: Adapted from George Black, The Triumph of the People (London: Zed, 1981), pp. 244– 245; and John Booth, The End and the Beginning: The Nicaraguan Revolution, 2nd ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1985), p. 193. Note: + = Generally voted with FSLN.

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tion without governmental links, concluded that ordinary courts, from the Corte Suprema de Justicia (Supreme Court) down to courts of first instance, were independent and functioned well.26 However, they expressed concern about the TPAS. First, the committee concluded that they were established specifically to take charges against officials of the old regime out of the normal judicial process. Doing so, the committee observed, compromised procedural due process and produced evident politicization and “a bias to convict.”27 The declaration of a state of emergency in 1982, in response to an increasingly threatening counterrevolutionary insurgency, saw the TPAS’s jurisdiction extended to cover the Contras, the counterrevolutionary fighters, as well as former Somocista officials. The TPAS were about quick, retributive justice. Whether an electoral democratic regime in Nicaragua would have established a similar parallel judicial process for those implicated with a now fallen, abusive political system is impossible to determine. Overall, the governmental machinery of the revolutionary vanguard was quite different from what an electoral democracy would have employed. It was heavily executive-centered and it allowed the Sandinistas to pursue their goals with few procedural obstacles. Yet the revolutionary government showed itself alert to the need to provide a modicum of space for those outside its tent, most notably its civic opponents. This bow in the direction of pluralism went beyond what the Somozas had offered with their licensed political parties, or even the regional accommodation built into the Conservative Republic of the nineteenth century. Pluralism in more than a notional form thus appears to have been recognized as a normal and necessary feature of Nicaraguan politics.

Policies and Politics The policies of the revolutionary government can be divided into three main groups: social, economic, and foreign and defense. However, the vanguard regime’s programmatic reach extended to relations with nonSandinista and even anti-Sandinista actors, which inevitably affected the nature and operation of the political system. Of particular importance was the growing polarization of pro- and anti-FSLN forces during the five years of vanguard politics. Some of the regime’s policies would have come from any reformist government. Its social policies—especially in education, literacy, and health—had been part of a progressive political agenda in Latin America since the days of Batlle y Ordóñez in early twentieth-century Uruguay and had arrived in Central America under the Calderón Guardia administration in Costa Rica in 1940. Such changes had thus been achieved without resort

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to one-party rule. It is no doubt the case, however, that the revolutionary state pushed the redistributive aspects of those policies further than the more conservative side of the anti-Somoza alliance would have. The Sandinistas’ economic policy operated in a different sphere, as it aimed to build a mixed economy in which the state dominated.28 Adopting this policy brought two long-lived consequences.29 One was that the revolutionary government had to accept the existence of the economic elite as a political force for Nicaragua’s economy to function acceptably. As a result, some sectors of that elite and the FSLN were able to establish working relationships such that, by the twenty-first century, the Sandinistas were often an ally of big business. The other outcome, of course, concerns the parts of Nicaragua’s bourgeoisie with whom the revolutionary state could not reach an accommodation, thereby laying the foundations for future political polarization. Did managing the FSLN’s economic policy from 1979 to 1984 demand a vanguard regime? It certainly needed a government with sufficient resources and popular support to cause the nation’s big capitalists to accept that they would need to deal with the administration as an equal, however distasteful that might be. The government also needed to be single-minded in its approach to capital and not give the economic elite a chance to develop supporters among the state’s managers. The fact that the relationship between the state and those who controlled capital continued under the democratically elected Sandinista government suggests that although vanguardist institutions were probably useful, they might not have been necessary. Straddling the line between social and economic policy is the question of agrarian reform, which here really signifies the redistribution of land, on the one hand, and a movement away from capitalist agriculture, on the other.30 Land reform has been a staple of leftist political agendas in Latin America for a very long time, due to the extremely high concentration of landownership in a few hands in most of the region. It is usually a highly contentious policy, because land must first be taken from its present owners before it can be parceled out to smallholders or cooperatives. In Nicaragua, however, the Somozas and their closest allies held an estimated 20 percent of the country’s arable land, which was abandoned when they fled in the face of the revolution. Thus the new government did not have to expropriate the land needed to begin its reform project. When an agrarian reform law, JGRN Decree 782, was adopted in 1981, it made the inefficient use of land, not the overall extent of the land held, the criterion for future expropriations. In particular, this allowed the government to target land that was idle, rented (to cover absentee landlords), unproductively utilized, or abandoned. Compensation was to be paid on all but abandoned land. More closely related to the Sandinistas’ social policy objectives was the decision not to have a “land to the tiller” agrarian reform that gave title

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to small plots to individual farmers. Rather, the FSLN believed that such a policy would lead to the “re-peasantization” of what they believed was an increasingly proletarianized rural workforce. Thus peasants receiving land were obliged to enter one of two types of cooperative. The less favored form was the Credit and Service Cooperative, which resembled rural cooperatives in Canada and the United States. These co-ops were generally formed by existing smallholders, who got access to credit and other services but not more land. The preferred model was the Sandinista Agricultural Cooperative, which was production co-ops, where both resources and proceeds from sales were shared. Neither model was well received by the rural poor, and by 1986, after the inauguration of electoral democracy, individual titling was instituted. Whether the initial model of land reform could have been carried out by a democratically elected regime is impossible to know. A strong, determined government with a weak, divided opposition certainly could have passed a law almost as easily as the JGRN issued a decree. What is more interesting is the fact that individual peasant farmers got individual title to a parcel of land only after the shift to electoral democracy. This might have happened anyway, as a means to quiet discontent in the rural areas where the counterrevolution was strong, but potential votes in the next election must have figured into the government’s calculations. In any case, even in the years before 1984, the vanguard regime was tolerant of a plural landholding system, one that even accepted the existence of the latifundia the FSLN’s original program pledged to abolish. As important as social and economic policy were to the new regime, foreign and defense policy came to dominate the agenda of the revolutionary government, once Ronald Reagan became president of the United States in January 1981. The FSLN had promised a nonaligned foreign policy. Whatever the more conservative opponents of Tacho Somoza might have thought, to any Latin American leftist, even a moderate social democrat, it had to mean establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba, deepening ties with the world’s various communist regimes, and distancing Nicaragua from Washington’s orbit. This did not imply enmity toward the United States, nor would it exclude cooperating with Washington or even supporting its positions when those corresponded to Nicaragua’s national interest.31 In other words, nonalignment signaled having an independent foreign policy, to the extent that such a thing is possible for a small, poor country, squarely within the sphere of influence of a great power. Unfortunately, the Sandinistas spent most of their first period in power (1979–1990) fighting a counterinsurgent war against an enemy financed by the government of the United States. Even if the revolutionary government had not wanted to, it came to depend on the Soviet bloc for military assistance. Closer ties with the communist states of course heightened domestic

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tensions, as conservative opponents moved from opposition to specific policies to opposing the regime itself.32 As the counterrevolutionary warfare continued after Nicaragua abandoned its vanguardist regime in 1984, there is no reason to believe that an earlier turn to electoral politics by the Sandinistas would have avoided a US-supported insurgency and the consequences that had for Nicaraguan domestic politics. In foreign policy, Cold War politics mattered more than the regime in which they played out.33 Reflection on the governmental machinery employed in Nicaragua from 1979 to 1984, the policies that machinery produced, and the politics that drove both leaves no doubt that the FSLN sought to dominate the political process. Further, it designed that process to facilitate securing the dominance it sought; in its first five years it left little room for political democracy. However, even as a vanguard regime the Sandinistas did not create a political monopoly for themselves. Rather, they built a curious kind of political pluralism that gave a wide swath of political actors a formal place in the system, even while limiting the ability of actors outside the FSLN’s orbit to influence the affairs of state.

State-Society Relations How a government interacts with nongovernmental institutions, on the one hand, and individuals, on the other, reveals much about the character of the political system. No one expects a vanguard regime, or any other form of dictatorship, to permit organizations it does not control to function freely. In fact, a dictatorship that firmly controls the state and society it rules could easily decide to prohibit all organizations not run by the regime. The Sandinistas’ experience during its five years as a vanguard regime demonstrates the tensions that arise when official single-party rule confronts independent organizations that assume political roles. The state’s relations with the Catholic Church, the media not under the regime’s direction, and organized big business offer the clearest examples. As the Church, especially the archbishop of Managua Miguel Obando y Bravo, had tilted against the Somoza regime since at least 1974,34 it might have been expected to back the revolutionary state. Although things began positively, the honeymoon lasted only a year before the Church hierarchy, the nation’s bishops, made a 180-degree turn and became one of the leaders of the opposition.35 Two principal reasons explain the change. First, the bishops alleged that the government was interfering in internal Catholic Church matters, especially by backing what was known as the “popular church,” Catholics who were strongly influenced by liberation theology, against the hierarchy. This was a legitimate case of church-state conflict. The other source of discord was the increasingly open identification of the Church with the counterrevolution, which began in 1983. As a result, the

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Roman Catholic hierarchy can be seen as not breaking with the revolutionary government until it was evident that the FSLN was not going to give the conservative anti-Somocistas, including the Church itself, the quota of power they desired.36 Relations between the revolutionary regime and big business, represented by its apex organization Consejo Superior de la Empresa Privada (COSEP, Superior Council of Private Enterprise) followed a like path.37 We saw that the first representatives of the bourgeoisie left the JGRN early on and that business groups within COSEP soon abandoned the CE. It did not take Nicaraguan capital long to decide that the FSLN was not its party. Similarly complicated were the revolutionary regime’s relations with the opposition media, most notably the newspaper La Prensa and Radio Corporación. La Prensa, once the bitterest foe of the Somozas, was shut down five times between 1979 and 1982;38 and Radio Corporación, which was occasionally closed by the Somozas, met the same fate several times under the Sandinistas.39 Television was a state, hence FSLN, monopoly. The state justified censorship on the grounds of fighting a counterinsurgent war against the counterrevolutionaries, a reasonable claim. Nevertheless, there were reports of censorship extending beyond military issues to prohibit publication of anything that the government found embarrassing.40 The polarization evident in the revolutionary state’s relations with the Catholic Church and big business also existed in the ties between media and government. To complete this short survey it is necessary to give some attention to the mass organizations (MOs) created by the FSLN.41 These were mainly sectoral groups, that is, they grouped together individuals based on some shared characteristic. Thus there were MOs for children, youth, and women. There were also occupationally based groups—unions representing public sector workers, rural workers, teachers, health care workers, and cultural workers—as well as an organization bringing together farmers and ranchers. And there was an MO for which the basis of affinity was residence, the Sandinista Defense Committees. As with any MO, all of these were controlled by the government party. They could be used to mobilize vast numbers to show support for the regime and socialize their members into the new political ways brought by the revolution. But they also offered the many poor Nicaraguans, who had never belonged to a civic organization besides their parish church, a chance to learn new skills and appreciate the value of collective action.

Toward Electoral Democracy Central American revolutionaries of the 1940s in Guatemala and Costa Rica wanted democracies that provided greater social and economic equality for their citizens at the same time that they guaranteed the rule of law, personal

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freedoms, and free and fair elections. The Cuban revolution, with an assist from the many anticolonial movements in the 1950s and 1960s, brought revolutionaries new goals that pushed conventional political democracy off the stage. In its place came an emphasis on the democracy of results, one that produced substantially more economic and social equality in the shortest time possible. This was often called real democracy and was contrasted with procedural democracy. The instrument for achieving real democracy, which could not wait for competition for the right to rule and a government that had to obey the laws like everyone else, was the revolutionary vanguard. The Sandinistas started in this latter school. How did they move to the former? The mechanics of the shift are clear. In 1981 the JGRN sent a draft political parties’ law to the CE. The initial bill did several things. First, it laid out the conditions a group had to meet to be recognized as a party under the law; such laws are common in liberal democracies. However, the draft also specified that only the FSLN could govern, although others could “participate in public administration”; that term’s meaning was never made clear. This was therefore a bill to create a properly Leninist vanguard regime, which the other nine parties then in existence roundly condemned. The government responded by holding a three-day seminar on political parties in January 1983 that produced a consensus on allowing free competition for the right to govern; the only parties excluded were those advocating returning to Somocismo. A revised draft was submitted to the CE, where it was debated for over thirty hours. The FSLN did not whip its allies to vote with it, losing votes on some amendments on the way to the measure’s final passage as a result. What the Sandinistas did regarding the Parties Law was remarkable: a vanguard party accepted changing the principle of a bill in a way that would end its vanguard status, and hence the vanguard regime. But why would the FSLN opt to put power on the line in elections? Three possibilities, not mutually exclusive, suggest themselves. One is that the Sandinistas saw themselves as unbeatable, and therefore as working in a permanent one-party dominant polity. They could thus allow free, fair, and competitive elections, because they were just too strong to lose. Certainly there were signs of this in the 1990 election when one would often hear Sandinista campaign workers confidently claim that the people would never vote against their vanguard. A second possibility is that the revolutionary government was looking to shore up its international support by adopting electoral democracy. The US government was doing all it could to undermine the Sandinistas, and even former Latin American friends, such as Costa Rica, had turned against Managua. Certainly adopting a Leninist view of elections would not

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strengthen Managua’s international standing. However, the decision can also be seen as part of the FSLN’s strategy to institutionalize the revolution42 by giving it a foundation that could be long maintained, offer the prospect of adding to the party’s domestic support, and reduce criticism of its governing model by the international community. Precisely what the nine comandantes were thinking is unknown—none of them has published his memoirs—but the three factors noted above certainly suggest that a revolutionary regime could reasonably discard a vanguardist political system in an effort to save both the revolutionary party and the revolution itself.

The Regime in Retrospect From July 1979 to November 1984, Nicaragua was governed by a revolutionary vanguard regime, albeit an uncommonly pluralistic one. The system had a de facto dual executive, formal and political, that could function without restraint when that was deemed necessary. This is what the revolutionary state did by unilaterally changing the composition of the CE and then introducing the TPAS. This regime had an official party of government, the FSLN, but it allowed other parties without historic links to Somocismo to participate freely in state institutions, although in a rather limited way. As well, the revolutionary regime’s economic policy recognized a role for the private sector, which included not just big business but also the small-scale entrepreneurs who play such an important role in poor countries. Although the vanguard phase of Sandinista government was relatively pluralistic, it was not democratic. It did not offer citizens the opportunity to pass formal judgment on its performance. Vanguards cannot do that, for vanguard regimes are tutelary regimes, and only the vanguard itself can determine when the people no longer need its tutelage. Yet the Sandinistas opted to give political interests outside the FSLN, even those who opposed the revolutionary government, space in which they could defend their positions and present alternatives to the government’s. They opted, that is, for a measure of pluralism that a vanguard should not logically concede. That this stance may have reflected the Sandinista leaders’ reading of the correlation of forces they encountered, thus of the options realistically available to them, is of no consequence. What does matter is that having set in place structures and procedures that gave some voice to those outside the vanguard probably made an early shift to electoral democracy possible. We should recall here that the Somoza regime, a personal dictatorship, was also more pluralistic than it probably needed to be; it was certainly more pluralistic than many other systems ruled by one man. Admittedly, the Somozas’ pluralism did not extend far beyond a licensed Conservative party

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opposition, and they even set up their own Conservative party when the historic one decided to boycott the regime’s rigged elections. Yet there was recognition that legitimacy demanded organized opposition, and as long as that opposition could not threaten the leader’s hold on power, it could exist. The same calculation doubtless affected what the revolutionaries did. What divides the two nondemocracies is not just the greater degree of pluralism evident in the formal structures of the Sandinista vanguard regime, but also the latter’s commitment to strengthen the economic and social bases of democracy in Nicaragua. The effects of extending educational opportunities, access to health care, and other social programs would not have been felt politically for perhaps a generation, even had they been continued after the FSLN lost the 1990 elections. However, taking steps to permit the poor to participate in the political process on a more equal footing made Nicaragua’s political system more pluralistic and inclusive, and created the possibility of a more democratic future. So even though the Sandinista revolutionary vanguard regime could never be fully democratic politically, since by definition it could not lose power, it can still be seen as contributing to improving the quality of Nicaraguan democracy.

Notes 1. For analyses of the FSLN’s rise to power and its first government, see George Black, The Triumph of the People (London: Zed Press, 1981); Thomas Walker, ed., Nicaragua in Revolution (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1982); Thomas Walker, ed., Nicaragua: The First Five Years (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985); John Booth, The End and the Beginning: The Nicaraguan Revolution, 2nd ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985); Dennis Gilbert, The Sandinistas: The Party and the Revolution (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988). 2. This section draws on David Close and Gary Prevost, “Transitioning from Revolutionary Movements to Political Parties and Making the Revolution ‘Stick,’” in From Revolutionary Movements to Political Parties: Cases from Latin America and Africa, ed. Kalowatie Deonandan, David Close, and Gary Prevost, pp. 1–16 (New York: Palgrave, 2007). 3. A reasonable translation is, “A free country or death! Our country or death! We shall win!” 4. Bernard Crick, In Defence of Politics, 4th ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 5. At its founding it was simply the FLN (Frente de Liberación Nacional [National Liberation Front]). The adjective Sandinista was added a year later. 6. Donald C. Hodges and Robert Shanab, NLF: National Liberation Fronts (New York: Morrow, 1972); and Richard Gott, Rural Guerrillas in Latin America (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1973), are basic sources. There were other important movements in Bolivia, Peru, and Venezuela. 7. Regis Debray, Revolution in the Revolution (New York: Grove Press, 1967). 8. David Close, Nicaragua: Politics, Economics and Society (London: Frances Pinter, 1988), p. 111.

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9. FSLN, “General Political-Military Platform,” in Conflict in Nicaragua, ed. Jiri Valenta and Esperanza Duran, pp. 285–318 (Winchester, MA: Allen and Unwin, 1987). 10. Bernard Diederich, Somoza, and the Legacy of U.S. Involvement in Central America (New York: Dutton, 1981), pp. 106–121. 11. Salvador Martí i Puig, Tiranías, rebeliones y democracia: Itinerarios políticos comparados en Centroamérica (Barcelona: Edicions Bellaterra, 2004), pp. 134– 138. 12. The third founding member, Silvio Mayorga, had fallen in combat in 1967. 13. Matilda Zimmerman, Sandinista: Carlos Fonseca and the Nicaraguan Revolution (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000). 14. Robert Dix, “Why Revolutions Succeed and Fail,” Polity 16, no. 3 (Spring 1984): 423–446. 15. Here “North American” refers to both Canada and the United States, as each produced indigenous agrarian radical populist movements. 16. If overthrowing a government by force in order to completely restructure the state, reorganize the economy, and demote large swaths of society (such as the organized working class) well down the hierarchy of power and prestige makes a regime revolutionary, Pinochet’s military regime qualifies. 17. FSLN, “Historic Program of the FSLN,” in Conflict in Nicaragua, ed. Jiri Valenta and Esperanza Duran, pp. 319–330 (Winchester, MA: Allen and Unwin, 1987). 18. FSLN, “Bases programáticas del FSLN para la democracia y la reconstrucción de Nicaragua: Comunicado del 1 de Enero de 1979” (Valencia, Spain: Centro de Documentación de los Movimientos Armados), www.cedema.org/ver.php?id=3817. 19. David Nolan, The Ideology of the Sandinistas and the Nicaraguan Revolution (Miami: University of Miami Press, 1984); and Alexander H. McIntire Jr., Political and Electoral Confrontation in Revolutionary Nicaragua (Miami: Institute of Interamerican Studies, University of Miami, 1985), are representative of the literature critical of the first FSLN regime. 20. What is more interesting than this predictable claim is the Sandinistas continuing to call themselves the people’s vanguard after they had renounced the vanguard’s right to govern in perpetuity. Somewhere along the line the definition of vanguard became “the usual party of government,” rather than “the only party allowed to govern.” 21. Stephen Gorman, “Power and Consolidation in the Nicaraguan Revolution,” Journal of Latin American Studies 13, no. 1 (May 1981): 133–149. 22. Seymour Martin Lipset, Agrarian Socialism, 2nd ed. (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1968), pp. 307–331. 23. Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution (London: Collins, 1963 [1867]). 24. Close, Nicaragua: Politics, p. 114. 25. Shirley Christian, Nicaragua: Revolution in the Family (New York: Random House, 1985), pp. 147–160. 26. Lawyers’ Committee for International Human Rights, Nicaragua: Revolutionary Justice (New York: Lawyers’ Committee for International Human Rights, 1985). 27. Quoted in Close, Nicaragua: Politics, p. 124. 28. On the economy see Phil Ryan, The Fall and Rise of the Market in Sandinista Nicaragua (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995); Rose J. Spalding, ed., The Political Economy of Revolutionary Nicaragua (Winchester, MA: Allen and Unwin, 1987); and John Weeks, “The Mixed Economy in Nicaragua: The

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Economic Battlefield,” in The Political Economy of Revolutionary Nicaragua, ed. Rose J. Spalding, pp. 43–60 (Winchester, MA: Allen and Unwin, 1987). 29. Rose J. Spalding, Capitalists and Revolution in Nicaragua: Opposition and Accommodation, 1979–1993 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994). 30. The section on agrarian reform relies on Close, Nicaragua: Politics, pp. 86–99. 31. Mary Vanderlaan, Revolution and Foreign Policy in Nicaragua (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1986). 32. David Close, “The Politics of Opposition,” in The Sandinistas and Nicaragua Since 1979, ed. David Close, Salvador Martí i Puig, and Shelley A. McConnell, pp. 45–64 (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2011). 33. There is an extensive literature on the counterrevolution. The following works are excellent sources that are relatively easily encountered. E. Bradford Burns, At War with Nicaragua: The Reagan Doctrine and the Politics of Nostalgia (New York: Harper and Row, 1987); Sam Dillon, Commandos: The CIA and Nicaragua’s Contra Rebels (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1991); Holly Sklar, Washington’s War on Nicaragua (Toronto: Between the Lines Press, 1988); William Robinson and Kent Norsworthy, David Versus Goliath: The U.S. War Against Nicaragua (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1987); Thomas W. Walker, ed., Reagan Versus the Sandinistas: The Undeclared War on Nicaragua (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987); Christopher Dickey, With the Contras: A Reporter in the Wilds of Nicaragua (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985). 34. Obando y Bravo negotiated the release of hostages after the FSLN’s Christmas party raid in 1974 and again in its seizure of Congress in 1978, obtaining outcomes far more favorable to the Sandinistas than to the government. 35. On the religious question see Michael Dodson and Tommie Sue Montgomery, “The Churches in the Nicaraguan Revolution,” in Nicaragua in Revolution, ed. Thomas Walker, pp. 161–180 (New York: Praeger, 1982); Phillip Berryman, The Religious Roots of Rebellion: Christians in Central American Revolutions (London: SCM, 1984); and Michael Dodson and Laura Nuzzi O’Shaughnessy, “Religion and Politics,” in Nicaragua: The First Five Years, ed. Thomas Walker, pp. 119–144 (New York: Praeger, 1985). 36. Regarding Nicaragua’s Protestant minority, some, such as CEPAD (Consejo de Iglesias Evangélicas Pro-Ayuda al Desarrollo [Council of Evangelical Churches for the Promotion of Development]), got on well with the state. However, the Moravian Church, with a strong presence on the Atlantic Coast, was often in conflict with the government, taking the part of its congregants in their struggle against the Sandinistas. 37. Spalding, Political Economy; Spalding, Capitalists and Revolution; Ryan, Fall and Rise. 38. Cynthia Chávez Metoyer, Women and the State in Post-Sandinista Nicaragua (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000), p. 42. 39. Rick Rockwell and Noreene Janus, Media Power in Central America (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2003), p. 88. 40. Stephen Kinzer, “In Nicaragua, the Cynicism of Censorship,” New York Times, April 20, 1987. 41. For an introduction to the FSLN’s mass organizations, see Gary Ruchwager, People in Power: Forging a Grassroots Democracy (South Hadley, MA: Bergin and Garvey Publishers, 1987). 42. Katherine Hoyt, The Many Faces of Sandinista Democracy (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1997), covers this point.

5 Electoral Democracy, 1984–2000

During democracy’s third wave, which lasted from 1974 to the end of the twentieth century, it was an article of faith that clean, competitive elections heralded the advent of stable democratic politics. We now know that this was too optimistic. Nevertheless, the logic underlying that belief was unassailable. Whatever else free and fair elections might or might not do, they unquestionably give a country’s citizens the ability to change who governs them at regular intervals and by peaceful means. In other words, they make governments and governors accountable.

Electoral Democracy as a Regime Throughout the third wave, conventional usage divided regimes into two classes, democracies and authoritarian regimes, as had been done in the 1950s when regimes were either democracies or dictatorships. In both cases, dichotomizing regimes proved unsatisfactory, so intermediate categories were added. The earlier revision brought just one new class, namely, the still-undemocratic but less repressive authoritarian systems.1 The more recent rethinking of regime types not only maintains a basic tripartite democratic-mixed-undemocratic breakdown, but increasingly distinguishes two democratic subtypes (see Table 2.2). The states in which democracy goes beyond elections to embrace the rule of law and the protection of personal rights and freedoms are called liberal democracies by Freedom House and full democracies by the Economist Intelligence Unit.2 The other states that qualify as democracies are labeled electoral democracies by Freedom House and flawed democracies by the Economist Intelligence Unit. In this second group elections are free, fair, and the only legitimate road to power; however, rights and freedoms may be restricted, political participation 87

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impeded, the rule of law uncertain, or some combination of the three. What follows demonstrates that even though there was observable movement toward a full-fledged democracy in Nicaragua, the regime in place from 1984 to 2000 is better seen as the less demanding electoral democracy. Nicaragua’s political history from independence in 1821 to 1979, which was sketched in Chapter 3, suggests that installing an electoral democracy was no mean achievement. It is true that the Conservative Republic held regular, clean elections, but the franchise was quite limited and in any event, that regime failed. As well, there were the free, fair elections held in 1924, 1928, and 1932, but that experiment also failed. So, even though Nicaragua had prior experience with honest elections, it had been limited and by 1979 would have been nothing but a historical datum to all but a very few Nicaraguans. As a result, any electoral democratic regime in Nicaragua had to be built from scratch and the builders would be the FSLN, whose original aim was to head a revolutionary vanguard regime. Although no one knew it then, within five to eight years, ex-communist politicians throughout the old Soviet bloc would be doing the same thing. Some, like the Poles, Czechs, and the three Baltic states, did a fine job, better than the Sandinistas. Others, most notably the Russians and Byelorussians but perhaps now the Hungarians as well, matched or outdid the Nicaraguans in weakening democracy. The FSLN does not stand alone as an architect of a new electoral democracy or as an agent undermining that same system. The 1984 Elections

The elections of 1984 are the place to begin examining Nicaragua’s electoral democratic regime. This election was unusual for three reasons. First, it was designed and held by a revolutionary vanguard regime. The era of democratic transitions had barely begun in 1984 and none of the few cases that had occurred to that date involved a Marxist-inclined revolutionary government. Second, the election preceded the drafting of a constitution for an electoral democracy. The 1984 electoral law defined not just the election’s framework and procedures but also the positions to be elected; a new constitution followed in 1987 and was produced by the National Assembly elected under the 1984 law. Third, during the two years preceding the elections, Nicaragua was under a state of emergency, with limitations placed on freedom of expression and association. Given that no political party in the country had any practical experience with electoral democratic politics, the playing field was tilted to the governing party’s advantage, as the FSLN comandantes could continue publicizing the policies of the departments they led. Finally, the FSLN’s most determined and conservative opponents roundly criticized the revolu-

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tionaries for postponing elections until their sixth year in office.3 Yet when the elections came, the most important of those opponents did not participate. This was a rational strategy to discredit the Sandinistas’ electoral process, but it suggests that those who abstained had a limited commitment to electoral democracy. In fact, the anti-Somoza right had a number of quarrels with the FSLN government. The first was over the revolutionaries’ decision not to hold early elections for municipal offices4 and then convene a constituent assembly.5 Rather the FSLN announced in 1980 that elections were deferred until 1985. Doing so understandably deepened the divide between the onetime allies, producing the government-opposition polarization so often seen in Nicaragua’s past. This polarization was reflected in a 1983 statement by the Coordinadora Democrática Nicaragüense (Nicaraguan Democratic Coordinator), an organization composed of COSEP, five political parties, and two unions, regarding the conditions it demanded be met before its parties could run.6 Some were perfectly apposite and appropriate, for example, lifting the state of emergency restrictions on freedom of expression and association. Others, such as beginning talks with the armed counterrevolutionaries, were logically unrelated to the electoral system and seem to have been included to ensure the government would not accept, thereby strengthening the case for nonparticipation. Nevertheless, the Coordinadora did not entirely abandon the electoral arena, but rather considered the possibility of participating until nearly the last minute. It chose as its presidential candidate Arturo Cruz Porras, a former member of the JGRN and once the revolutionary state’s ambassador in Washington. Though it never registered to run, the protoparty held rallies that were attacked by Sandinista toughs, the turbas divinas (divine mobs). Yet due to the FSLN’s desire to keep this well-funded organization with good links to the Reagan White House in the race, the government negotiated changes to the electoral process that made it more transparent and democratic. In the end, the talks broke down when the Sandinista government refused a Coordinadora request for additional time to consult its members, giving the Conservative alliance the result it may have hoped for.7 In the end, the elections went ahead and produced a Sandinista landslide (see Table 5.1). Most observers, all invited by the government, declared the elections acceptably free and fair; certainly, given the weakness of the FSLN’s opponents and the government’s ability to deliver benefits to Nicaragua’s poor majority, the results do not seem unrealistic. Thus on November 4, 1984, Nicaragua rejoined the ranks of electoral democracies after a forty-eight-year absence and winning fair, competitive elections once again became the only legitimate road to power. These initial elections not only gave the FSLN the executive branch, but also returned a splintered opposition bench, composed of six parties

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Table 5.1 1984 Nicaraguan General Election Results Party/Presidential Candidate

Votes for Presidential Candidate (%)

National Assembly Votes for Party (%)/ Number of Seats Won

67.0 14.0 9.6 5.6 1.5 1.0 1.0 99.7

66.8/61 14.0/14 9.7/9 5.6/6 1.5/2 1.4/2 1.0/2 100/96

FSLN/Ortega PCD/Guido PLI/Godoy PPSC/ Díaz PCN/Zambrana PSN/Sánchez MAP/Téllez Totalsa

Source: Adapted from David Close, Nicaragua: Politics, Economics and Society (London: Frances Pinter, 1988), p. 136. Note: a. Total does not equal 100 percent due to rounding.

representing a political spectrum that ranged from the far left to the centerright: MAP-ML (Movimiento de Acción Popular–Marxista Leninista [Marxist-Leninist Popular Action Movement]), PCN (Partido Comunista Nicaragüense [Nicaraguan Communist Party]), PSN (Partido Socialista Nicaragüense [Nicaraguan Socialist Party]), PPSC (Partido Popular Social Cristiano [Popular Social Christian Party]), PCD (Partido Conservador Democrático [Democratic Conservative Party]), PLI (Partido Liberal Independiente [Independent Liberal Party]).8 All, of course, were anti-Somocistas, the PLI and PSN having been so since the late 1940s. Therefore, a range of opinions would be ventilated in the newly created National Assembly, and the FSLN could back those it liked and steamroll those it did not, just as any party with an assured legislative majority would. Although the revolutionaries remained in power, they would now exercise that power through nonrevolutionary mechanisms. The Emerging Political System

Although the new regime operated until 1988 under a state of emergency, it managed to fight a counterinsurgent war,9 pass complex legislation, and push forward a peace process. Significantly, it did so while facing fierce opposition from the US government. The FSLN also was able to continue pursuing its transformational aims, showing the adaptability of electoral democracy. Other than the election itself, the clearest indication that a new regime had arrived was the reformed governmental machinery. With an elected president and vice president heading the executive branch and the National Assembly being elected from geographic constituencies, Nicaragua looked like a conventional political system. To see how that system worked, four cases are examined: the 1987 constitution, the contro-

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versy around the La Verona decision of the Corte Suprema de Justicia (CSJ, Supreme Court), the Autonomy Statute for the Atlantic Coast, and the Central American Peace Process. Along with the elections, the 1987 constitution—Nicaragua’s fourteenth—was a key element of the institutionalization of the Sandinista revolution. With the days of revolutionary vanguardism left behind, the FSLN needed a system that would let it continue its project of building socialism within an electoral democratic framework. Both the process by which the constitution was drafted and its content were unusual for the time in Latin America. Regarding the former, the government deviated from the norm in two ways. First, it charged the National Assembly with drafting the constitution, thereby acting as a constituent assembly, at the same time that it did its usual legislative work. Yet the Nicaraguan experiment succeeded, even seeing opposition parties’ amendments adopted by the assembly.10 The other way the Ortega administration’s constitution-making struck off in a new direction was by including the mass public in the process, as some 100,000 Nicaraguans attended seventy-three cabildos abiertos (open meetings), with 2,500 giving oral presentations and 1,800 submitting written briefs. And to ensure that these meetings were fruitful and meaningful for the participants, workshops were held nationwide to explain the process to citizens.11 Although the cabildos may have been as much about mobilizing support as soliciting opinion, they were an interesting exercise in civic education that unfortunately has not been repeated. Described as having both radical and liberal democratic components,12 the constitution’s content was also atypical of the late 1980s. This was especially evident in Articles 89–115, which dealt with the economy, agrarian reform, and public finance. However, the section dealing with the executive also stood out. Not only was there no limit on presidential reelection, something that was then unusual but is now more common, two of the enumerated powers of the president are eye-catching. The first is Article 150.4, which gives the president decree powers in fiscal matters (taxing and spending) as well as administrative affairs; the other is Article 150.13, which empowers the president to “direct the country’s economy (and) determine its economic and social policy and program.” These two articles give the president a potential level of control over economy and society that suggests the FSLN’s aim was to concentrate extreme power in the presidency. That this facilitates personal rule may or may not have occurred to the constitution’s drafters, or was not considered consequential, even if it had. Having a constitution with significant liberal democratic traits did not, however, guarantee that the centerpiece of constitutional government, the rule of law, would be observed. A 1987 decision by the CSJ upheld a ruling by an agrarian reform tribunal that the expropriation of a midsized farm

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called La Verona was illegal. The response of the minister responsible for agrarian reform was to declare that he would not obey the court’s decision. This led the three non-FSLN appointees to the seven-member court to resign and raised questions about whether the CSJ could actually operate freely or was in fact subject to an executive veto.13 In a sense, both the Autonomy Statute for the Atlantic Coast and the Central American peace process can be viewed as peace-making activities. The 1987 statute was part of a search for a solution to an insurrection that had arisen in Nicaragua’s Caribbean coastal region in 1981. The Atlantic Coast is the home to most of both Nicaragua’s indigenous and Afrodescended populations, the former having rebelled against FSLN policies that undermined traditional values and modes of living. It was the fruit of lengthy negotiations between the government and the peoples of the Coast and set up two autonomous regions on Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast: the RAAN (Región Autónoma del Atlántico Norte [North Atlantic Autonomous Region]) and the RAAS (Región Autónoma del Atlántico Sur [South Atlantic Autonomous Region]).14 Some powers of self-government were devolved to these regions.15 Insurrectional civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala, as well as Nicaragua, spurred Central America’s six nations to seek a region-wide solution.16 Their first step was participating in the Contadora process (1983–1985). Then came a second round, the Esquipulas process (1986– 1987), which produced a regional plan, the Esquipulas II Accords, for resolving those civil wars. The accords called for a cease-fire prohibiting foreign troops from using national territory to mount actions against other governments, elections with international observers, and an amnesty. President Ortega was an active participant in both sets of talks and his administration was able to implement the accords’ provisions. Another point to consider in assessing the political system of the late 1980s concerns the relations between government and opposition. The issue is important not just because of the regime’s political pluralism, but in this specific case also due to the multiplicity of opponents with which the FSLN government had to deal. In the 1980s, both the vanguardist and electoral versions of Sandinismo fought counterrevolutionary insurgents, an armed opposition dedicated to destroying the FSLN and its state. There was also a nonviolent, civic opposition that was similarly disloyal to the regime. Until 1985 it was led by the Coordinadora but, after that, leadership passed to the media (led by La Prensa, Radio Corporación, and Radio Católica) and the Catholic Church hierarchy. The anti-Sandinista parties, those that boycotted the elections of 1984, also took a significant role, as did the US government, the disloyal opposition’s principal foreign backer. An opposition loyal to the electoral democratic regime also existed. Its principal constituents were the six political parties with seats in the

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National Assembly. However, some media (such as the daily El Nuevo Diario), most of the country’s Protestant churches, and a number of foreign governments (for example, Sweden) also stood behind the government and the political system it directed. Despite an array of forces that favored the disloyal opposition, the Ortega government was able to use electoral democracy to preserve the regime and lay the foundations for peace. This first version of electoral Sandinismo demonstrated that the former revolutionaries could run Nicaragua reasonably well under an electoral democratic regime. Obviously the government had its failures, most notably posting wretched economic results—per capita income in 1989 was $251, just over a third of the prerevolutionary high of $750 in 1977,17 but this was attributable as much to nine years of counterinsurgent warfare as to the revolutionaries’ economic policies. Overall, a year before the Sandinistas’ second election there was no reason to believe that Nicaragua would not consolidate an electoral democratic regime.

Orthodox Electoral Democracy, 1990–2000 Because the governments returned in both 1990 and 1996 had no revolutionary pretensions, but rather sought to make Nicaragua a conventional electoral democracy that pursued conservative economic and social policies, the period from 1990 to 2000 featured a recognizably orthodox electoral democratic system.18 This led to labeling the 1990 elections as Nicaragua’s transition to democracy, ignoring the fact that the regime that produced the change of government had been put in place six years before by the FSLN. The political regime stayed the same, but a new elite would run it and use different policies to secure different aims.19 That is what elections in democracies are supposed to do. Indeed, it is what administrations as different as Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Margaret Thatcher’s neoliberalism did. So at that level, electoral democracy worked in Nicaragua. For the administration of Violeta Chamorro (1990–1997) to have moved the country toward a new, more conventionally democratic regime, clear and irreversible progress toward an estado de derecho, a regime based on the rule of law, was required. That did not happen. Nevertheless, the Chamorro administration proved that an electoral democracy could deal competently with serious challenges and govern a fractious Nicaragua without suspending constitutional guarantees. Her successor, Arnoldo Alemán, governed reasonably effectively within the electorally democratic framework for three years, before striking a pact with Daniel Ortega to establish a duopoly. The inauguration of that regime, which is the subject of the next chapter, halted the deepening and broadening of democracy in the country.

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The 1990 Elections

Table 5.2 presents the results from the 1990 general elections. These elections produced a change of government, something the FSLN had not foreseen. Rather, the Sandinistas convinced themselves that the people would not desert them. Yet an apparently endless counterinsurgent war that claimed many casualties, an economy broken by a witches’ brew of warinduced inflation (over 34,000 percent in 1988), the Reagan administration’s successful efforts to isolate the Nicaraguan economy, and the Ortega government’s increasingly ineffective attempts to repair that economy brought a new government to power. There are a few points about these elections that deserve mention. First, the winning coalition, the UNO (Unión Nacional Opositora [National Union of the Opposition]), was really an electoral alliance whose fourteen members shared only opposition to the FSLN; it could not be counted on to retain its coherence, not least because many of those fourteen were tiny and little more than vehicles for the personal aspirations of their leaders. Second, the UNO’s presidential candidate Violeta Barrios de Chamorro—universally known as Violeta Chamorro or simply Doña Violeta—ran without links to any of the fourteen parties; the consequences of this would become clear once postelection politicking began. Third, many of the polls published during the campaign showed the FSLN with a comfortable lead, a result attributed to polling bias or less than frank respondents, both reflections of a tense environment.20 In short, the elections of 1990 revealed a great deal about the political conditions then prevailing in Nicaragua, at the same time that they presaged the challenges the country and its new government would face in the next six years. Among the ten competitors in 1990 (the UNO, the FSLN, and eight others), only the FSLN could be seen as having a well-organized, sophisticated electoral machine. In part, this reflected the organizational skills

Table 5.2 1990 Nicaraguan General Election Results Party/Presidential Candidate UNO/Chamorro FSLN/Ortega Other Totalsb

Votes for Presidential Candidate (%)

National Assembly Votes for Party (%)/ Number of Seats Won

54.7 40.8 4.2 99.7

53.9/51 40.8/39 5.3/2a 100/92

Municipal Councils Won by Party 98 32 0

Source: Adapted from David Close, Nicaragua: The Chamorro Years (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1999), p. 29; and Envio, “Election Data,” Revista Envio 104 (March 1990), www.envio.org.ni/articulo/2587. Notes: a. MUR (Movement of Revolutionary Unity) and PSC, one each, voted with UNO. b. Totals may not equal 100 percent due to rounding.

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acquired as a clandestine movement and then further developed in the 1984 campaign. However, having been the governing party and enjoying access to state resources since 1979 helped, too. Yet their 1990 campaign seemed wrong-footed. The party’s slogan, “¡Todo será mejor!” (Everything will be better!), was an odd choice for a governing party whose ticket was topped by the incumbent president and vice president. A don’t-change-horses-inmidstream approach might not have worked better, but it would have been more appropriate. Moreover, it would have acknowledged that the country was worn down by war and economic hardship, as well as becoming increasingly polarized. Neither did the FSLN offer much in the way of new policies. The UNO placed great emphasis on Doña Violeta as the symbol of reconciliation. Its program focused primarily on bringing peace, mending fences with the United States, and tending to the economy.21 It was essentially a “We aren’t the Sandinistas” message. If the FSLN offered more of the same, for a voter who wanted a change the UNO was the evident choice. Some might say that these elections marked the apogee of the electoral democratic regime, even despite the above. The elections themselves were praised for their efficient and honest administration.22 They also saw a selfproclaimed vanguard accept electoral defeat and transform itself into a normal opposition party. And those elections returned the nation’s first woman president. What then followed were six and a half years of intense political strife as the administration clashed with unions, students, armed irregulars, international financial institutions, the Sandinistas, the UNO, supposedly its own political party, and the government of the United States. At the root of many of these conflicts was the Chamorro government’s decision to accommodate, to some degree, the FSLN and not seek to disarticulate it completely. This view had guided it in transition talks with the outgoing Ortega administration and reflected an acceptance of the fact that a party with 40 percent of the presidential vote, the largest single-party caucus in the legislature, and a strong presence in the military and police could not be ignored. The UNO, the former armed counterrevolutionaries, and the US government disagreed. Despite the foregoing, I believe that electoral democracy continued to function properly throughout the six years of the Chamorro administration, even with the many conflicts that arose in that period. In fact, the ability of the political system, the electoral democratic regime, to persist despite a weak government and a high level of contention speaks to its resilience and adaptability. So as in the late 1980s, electoral democracy again showed itself capable of managing Nicaragua’s difficult public affairs under challenging conditions. Among those conditions were high levels of polarization that still included armed conflict and had added hostage taking, stand-

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offs between the legislature and the executive, a nearly chronic governability crisis, and above all a government that often found itself with little sure support. The next two sections examine these matters. Politics from 1990 to 1996

One part of the Sandinista version of electoral democracy that was certain to suffer during the Chamorro presidency was the welfare state. The new president, her cabinet and advisers, and the vast majority of the UNO caucus accepted both the need for and the conditions set by the structural adjustment programs (SAPs) proposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Both institutions tied access to soft, low-interest loans to implementing fiscal restraint policies (notably cuts to social programs), reducing trade barriers, and privatizing state-owned enterprises. Although radically leftist governments, such as Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, and social democratic ones, like Liberación Nacional in Costa Rica and Acción Democrática in Venezuela, implemented SAPs, conservative and centrist administrations were the usual agents applying these programs. Beyond that coincidence of interest, however, Chamorro faced a National Assembly where she had few sure supporters. In fact, the polarization that had characterized the era of Sandinista government continued nearly unabated. So when the new administration did not seek to remove all traces of the FSLN from the Nicaraguan government, a substantial segment of the UNO caucus moved against the president. Chamorro faced repeated challenges throughout her administration. These began within two weeks of her April 25, 1990, inauguration with a public sector strike, followed by another one just two months later.23 The second strike provided two surprises. The first was that it was settled only with the intervention of Daniel Ortega, beginning a pattern of last-minute rescues by the ex-president that would last throughout his sixteen years in opposition. The second was more troubling, as it saw the executive of the UNO, Chamorro’s party, declare the president incapable of handling the crisis and form a Committee of National Salvation.24 Obviously not everyone in the UNO was totally committed to the principles of democracy, as was shown by the November and December 1990 protests mounted by former insurgents from the region where the counterrevolution was strongest, Boaco and Chontales.25 The protests had a legitimate cause, as the demobilized fighters wanted the resources that had been promised them in return for surrendering their weapons. When the protests, which took the form of barricading roads, produced few results, the most conservative sector of the UNO took up their cause. In doing so, they backed the ex-counterrevolutionaries’ most drastic demands, notably radically reducing the military’s budget and sacking its chief of staff, General

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Humberto Ortega. One can understand the former insurgents being maximalists who felt it was impossible to deal with their old enemies, but for professional politicians who sought to lead the nation to do so was troubling. However, it accurately reflected the level of polarization then found in Nicaragua. A final example of the electoral democratic regime in operation comes from the conflict that arose between the president and the National Assembly in 1992 over the thorny property issue. Starting with the expropriation of the properties (land, buildings, and businesses) of the Somozas and those linked to them, and then later seizing properties that had been abandoned when their owners left Nicaragua, FSLN governments accumulated a substantial stock of holdings to redistribute to cooperatives and individuals. On losing the 1990 elections, the Sandinistas used a lame-duck session of the National Assembly to regularize the titles held by those to whom property had been redistributed. This covered some four million acres of agricultural land, 100,000 lots, and 11,000 houses.26 On taking office, President Chamorro moved to expedite the return of holdings, excluding those taken from the Somozas, to the original owners and to financially compensate those whose property could not be returned. This did not satisfy the confiscados (those who had lost property), so in 1991 the UNO majority in the National Assembly, led by its president Alfredo César, who had been both a Sandinista and a supporter of Chamorro, repealed the Sandinistas’ legislation. That led the FSLN deputies to walk out and boycott sittings of the legislature for a time. The president vetoed the repeal legislation, believing it would lead to widespread confrontation. All fifty-two UNO deputies had supported the bill, while all thirty-nine Sandinistas opposed it, so César believed he had the absolute majority of the house needed to overturn a veto. However, between the veto and the vote to sustain or overturn it, eight UNO members left the alliance and formed a Center Group that would support the executive. Adding their votes to the FSLN’s sustained Chamorro’s veto and set the stage for the 1992 showdown. Another walkout in 1992 gave César the opportunity he had been seeking to resurrect his old bill. He convened a rump parliament composed of the forty-four UNO deputies, plus the alternates of the eight Center Group legislators,27 which gave him both a quorum and a veto-proof majority. Although the courts quickly ruled that César did not have the authority to appoint those alternates to fill the seats of the boycotting deputies, he nevertheless moved ahead, passing legislation, including the property law that had been vetoed. President Chamorro declared the rump sessions illegal, a position upheld by the Supreme Court two months later. It would be another three years before even a temporary settlement to the property issue was reached.28

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What the three cases just reviewed indicate is that Nicaragua was far from being a consolidated democracy. Especially for the UNO, elections were how you came to power, but once there you did whatever was necessary to enact your program. To explain why this occurred we need to consider three factors: the country’s lack of democratic experience, the extremely high level of polarization carried over from the Sandinista years, and a strong predisposition among political leaders to seek maximalist, allor-nothing, outcomes. These traits still shape Nicaraguan politics today. Constitutional Amendments, 1995

The 1987 constitution vested enormous power in the presidency, creating a hyperpresidential system.29 This arrangement pleased President Chamorro, just as it had Daniel Ortega. Yet the system was so executive-centered that it proved impossible to implement the system of checks and balances a presidential constitution needs to work properly in a democracy. Steps to correct that imbalance began halfway through Chamorro’s administration when a multiparty coalition in the National Assembly proposed a package of constitutional amendments that would redistribute power from the presidency to the other branches of government. However, it is not only the content of the 1995 amendments that is important, since many have been amended significantly since being approved, but their tortuous path to ratification, for what it reveals about how Nicaragua’s politics worked. In late 1993, a coalition in the National Assembly, led by the FSLN and the Center Group, began laying out a long list of constitutional amendments. Some of them were symbolic, such as stripping the adjective “Sandinista” from the army and police force and generally removing much of the 1987 document’s revolutionary tone. But at the core of the amendments were two objectives: reducing executive predominance and strengthening the legislature. In particular, the economic role of the assembly would be reinforced and it was given the authority to approve international treaties, leaving it with powers appropriate to a legislature in a democracy. More controversial were the constraints on the executive that were proposed. These not only stripped the presidency of much of its previously vast armory of economic powers (such as being able to issue fiscal decrees) but prohibited immediate presidential reelection, limited an individual to two terms as president in her or his lifetime, and had a consanguinity clause that prohibited a president’s close relatives from seeking the presidency as his or her immediate successor. This last provision struck directly at the Chamorro administration as Antonio Lacayo, the president’s son-in-law and minister of the presidency, would be ineligible to run in 1996. Chamorro and her team obviously opposed the amendments from the start but Daniel Ortega initially supported them. By September 1994, how-

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ever, when the completed package reached the National Assembly, Ortega had not just aligned himself with Chamorro but also split completely from Sergio Ramírez and the Sandinistas in the legislature who backed the reforms.30 The break was so thorough that those who backed the reforms eventually left the FSLN to found their own party, the Movimiento Renovador Sandinista (Sandinista Renewal Movement). As the 1987 constitution required, the assembly passed the package at the end of the 1994 session and then again at the start of the 1995 legislature. Then things got difficult, as President Chamorro would not order the bill gazetted. This prompted National Assembly president Luis Humberto Guzmán, a centrist Popular Social Christian, to publish the amendments in the daily press, including the Chamorro family’s La Prensa, in February 1995. From that point until June 1995, Nicaragua had two constitutions: the 1987 document, which the executive recognized, and the amended 1995 version, accepted by the legislature. The Supreme Court was of no help, mainly because it lacked a quorum due to the expiration of the terms of office of several of its members, but also because the new constitution substantially changed the court’s structure. By late May, a way out of the impasse began to emerge. It took the shape of mediation by a Grupo de Apoyo,31 with Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo serving as moderator. By June 15, the executive agreed to let the amendments be published in the La Gaceta (Official Gazette), and in return the National Assembly would pass a framework law that spelled out when the amendments would come into force. Of particular importance was deferring the entry into law of the consanguinity provision until January 1997, which permitted Lacayo to run in the 1996 elections. This was a clever exercise in political engineering, which found a way around a constitutional deadlock without straying outside constitutional boundaries. Unfortunately, Nicaragua was not able to build on this hard-won foundation. In December 1995, the National Assembly would amend the electoral law to replace CSE officials, civil servants, with partisan nominees on the nation’s seventeen Departmental Electoral Councils and nearly 9,000 Juntas Receptoras de Votos (JRVs, polling stations). This opened the way to an increasingly party-controlled electoral system and marked a significant step away from a constitutional democratic political system. In fact, although it may have seemed like a minor deviation, perhaps a device to give party loyalists some recognition and a little cash, it was the first clear effort to weaken democratic institutions. Worse, it enjoyed multiparty backing, suggesting that there was broad support in Nicaragua’s political class for heightening partisan influence over the electoral process. Consequently, the publishing of the 1995 amendments and the subsequent adoption of the Framework Law should be seen as the high point to date of electoral democracy in Nicaragua.

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The 1996 Elections

These were the most administratively difficult and politically contentious elections held under the electoral democratic regime. Their results, however, were not especially different from 1990’s, suggesting that the FSLN was headed for a long stay as Nicaragua’s second-place party. What had changed from 1990 was that the newly elected president, Arnoldo Alemán of the PLC, the strongest party in the winning Liberal Alliance, was a hardline anti-Sandinista who commanded a party the equal of the FSLN in terms of organization and better financed (Table 5.3). At the outset of his term in 1997, Alemán and the Liberals looked forward to a bright future, while the FSLN and Daniel Ortega faced more somber prospects. Although the 1990 elections were applauded for their efficiency and fairness, those of 1996 encountered numerous problems. These began with the new electoral law, which, as already noted, moved much of the control over departmental and poll-level administration from the CSE to the parties. However, there was also a new and more complicated ballot and even in Nicaragua’s third national vote in twelve years there was neither a permanent voters’ list nor a national ID card (the cédula) to identify a voter. Capping the list of problems was a rough campaign that saw the cardinal archbishop of Managua, Miguel Obando y Bravo, ostentatiously taking the side of Alemán as polling day drew near. At the beginning of the campaign, the Liberals had a clear edge, but the Sandinistas were effective in painting Alemán as a threat to stability and themselves as embodying moderation by rebranding Daniel Ortega,32 and so closed the gap. This prompted the anti-FSLN hard right to put an ad on Table 5.3 1996 Nicaraguan General Election Results Party/Presidential Candidate AL/Alemán FSLN/Ortega CCN/Osornoa PNC/Vidaurreb Pronal/Lanzasc Other Totalsd

Votes for Presidential Candidate (%)

National Assembly Votes for Party (%)/ Number of Seats Won

51 37.8 4.1 2.3 0.5 4.4 100.1

46/42 36.5/37 3.7/4 2.1/3 2.4/2 9.2/6 with 1 seat each 99.9/94

Municipal Mayors Elected by Party 91 52 0 0 0 2 145

Sources: Compiled from Envio, “How Nicaraguans Voted,” Revista Envio 185 (December 1996), http://envio.org.ni/articulo/1990; and Instituto para el Desarrollo y la Democracia (IPADE), Catálogo estadístico de elecciones en Nicaragua 1990–2011 (Managua: IPADE, 2012), www.ipade.org.ni. Notes: a. Camino Cristiano Nicaraguense (Nicaraguan Christian Way), Guillermo Osorno. b. Partido Nacional Conservador (National Conservative Party), Noel Vidaurre. c. Proyecto Nacional (National Project), Benjamín Ramón Lanzas. d. Total may not equal 100 percent due to rounding.

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TV that featured shots of the Sandinistas when they were young and very revolutionary. This brought back unpleasant memories for many people. More dramatic was the response of the Catholic Church. At a thanksgiving mass on October 17, three days before the election, at Managua’s cathedral and with Alemán present, Cardinal Obando endorsed the PLC leader in this way: The cardinal was wearing red vestments, the Liberals’ color, even though the liturgical calendar called for green. During his sermon, moreover, Cardinal Obando invented a biblical passage to warn the public against the wickedness and snares of “vipers”; Alemán coincidently had called Ortega a “snake” during the campaign. Then, to make sure that the church’s message got through, on election day the anti-Sandinista dailies, La Prensa and La Tribuna, published a color photo of Cardinal Obando literally giving his blessing to Arnoldo Alemán and his vice-presidential candidate, Enrique Bolaños.33

As serious as the cardinal’s excursion into negative campaigning was, what happened on election day was worse.34 Results from 511 JRVs, 5.6 percent of the total in the presidential race, were simply not reported or the votes were lost or discarded before they could be counted.35 Although there were multiple problems with polls opening late and official poll watchers (fiscales) not being present, the gravest issues arose at departmental counting centers where the JRV results were to be verified and totaled. Bags of ballots were abandoned, lost, or left without anyone filing documents identifying their provenance. Further, there was a delay of nearly five weeks before final results were announced. Given the accumulation of mistakes, whether innocent or not, the Sandinistas called for a second round of voting for president, a runoff between Alemán and Ortega. However, they were unable to produce evidence of widespread malfeasance or even misfeasance sufficient to justify another vote. In the end, Daniel Ortega accepted Arnoldo Alemán as being legally but not legitimately elected president. The third presidential administration under Nicaragua’s liberal democratic regime was off to a rocky start. Politics from 1997 to 2000

Although this second straight loss at the polls left the Sandinistas far from power when Alemán was inaugurated in January 1997, within three years Ortega and Alemán negotiated the power-sharing deal that Nicaraguans call el pacto, the pact. This was not just an ad hoc alliance, but rather an arrangement that was enshrined in both statute and constitutional law. Both Arnoldo Alemán and Daniel Ortega were obviously more disposed to deal-making with their once bitterest enemies than anyone would have imagined.

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Arnoldo Alemán will probably be the last active Somocista to be president of Nicaragua. The son of an official in the Somoza government, Alemán had close ties with Somocistas who fled to Miami (he stayed in Nicaragua), and he was connected with Jorge Mas Canosa, then the leader of anti-Castro Cubans in the United States.36 Moreover, Alemán demonstrated two long-established traits of Nicaraguan political leaders by concentrating power in his own hands and using the state to advance the material interests of his party and himself. Yet even though he did all he could to let former Somocistas regain the properties and positions they abandoned after the Sandinista triumph, the Liberal chief recognized that a return to dictatorial rule was impossible. Alemán did, though, discover that coexisting with Daniel Ortega’s FSLN would require greater accommodation than normal political deal-making could provide. Seeking the appropriate mechanism would put Nicaragua on the road to a power-sharing duopoly. Alemán began his term facing better conditions than Violeta Chamorro did in 1990 or the FSLN in 1979. There was peace, or at least no significant armed conflict, an improving economy, and a recently concluded settlement of the property question. However, there were also some serious problems awaiting the new government. One was the structural adjustment program the country had with the IMF and World Bank, which demanded austerity and transparency, neither of which was easily compatible with the clientelistic politics Alemán practiced. Then came the reopening of the property issue as ex-Somocistas rejected the deal struck in 1995, hoping that one of their own would deliver the settlements they wanted. Finally, the Sandinistas were still there, distrustful of Alemán and with more than sufficient resources to ruin his plans. Of course, like any politician, the new president would create his own difficulties, too. In his case, it was excessive partisanship and high levels of corruption that would eventually lead to his downfall. A few examples will show how politics worked in Alemán’s first years as president. A striking but easily overlooked aspect of his administration’s politics is how the Sandinistas undertook to insinuate themselves as integral parts of the normal political process: how politics gets done and power is exercised on a day-to-day basis. Of course this is what they did with the Chamorro government, where Daniel Ortega and Antonio Lacayo, minister of the presidency and the president’s son-in-law, developed a close working relationship. However, Alemán was very different from Chamorro, being both more adamantly anti-Sandinista and able to count on majority support in the legislature. Yet as early as February 1997, within two months of Alemán’s inauguration, the FSLN had joined the government in a dialogue on the property issue.37 To account for this, one must recall that on losing the 1990 election Daniel Ortega announced that his party would govern from below. This did

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not mean taking up arms again but rather using the FSLN’s mobilizational prowess to mount an effective extraparliamentary opposition to complement the party’s action in the National Assembly. Possessing this capacity for action on two fronts would make a powerful case for including the Sandinista leadership in formal discussions with the Alemán administration. The alternative, having the administration always use its majority to outvote the FSLN, would leave the Sandinistas no choice but to use direct, confrontational action. This could prove risky for the Liberals, as they did not control Nicaragua’s newly professionalized security forces. The first serious challenge for President Alemán came in April 1997 and grew out of the property question that had seemed settled. UNAG (Unión Nacional de Agricultores y Ganaderos [National Farmers’ and Ranchers’ Union]), the organization for farmers and ranchers started by the Sandinistas in the 1980s, called on small- and mid-scale farmers, peasants, and members of agricultural co-ops to protest the new administration’s threats to properties these groups received in the 1980s and 1990s.38 One of their demands was for Alemán to meet with Ortega and reach an agreement that recognized the validity of the titles they held. Once the protesters had set up roadblocks to tie up traffic, Ortega called for a dialogue with the president. After some mutual recrimination, four days of talks led to a settlement. By reaching a deal, Alemán showed himself to be as pragmatic as any nineteenth-century US city boss and Ortega demonstrated that he and the FSLN were necessary parts of the recipe for political stability. Two later episodes, however, revealed a different, more authoritarian side of Alemán’s character.39 The first came in the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch in October 1998.40 Mitch was a major disaster that left 3,000 people dead and caused over $1 billion in damages. Not only was the president slow to respond and declare a national emergency (it took him four days), he also sought to levy import duties on shipments of aid and to channel aid money through the PLC.41 Only when Alemán transferred the distribution of aid to the Catholic Church did resources begin to reach those living in towns without PLC mayors. Further, the administration took measures to ensure that NGOs operating on the ground in affected regions were excluded from participating in official relief operations as far as possible.42 This politicization of relief assistance was consistent with the president’s highly partisan approach to governing, a trait he shared with his chief nemesis Daniel Ortega. The second incident occurred a year later and involved the arrest of the controller general of the republic, Agustín Jarquín. Jarquín was an established political figure, a leader of the Partido Social Cristiano (PSC, Social Christian Party), which opposed both Somocismo and Sandinismo. He had been an opponent of Alemán since 1990, when the Liberal defeated him to become mayor of Managua.43 By 1999 Jarquín had become controller gen-

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eral, a post whose functions included monitoring the national treasury. Jarquín was mounting a serious examination of the finances of the Alemán government, but broke the law himself by using an assumed name to contract a reporter to investigate specific issues.44 As a result he was jailed. To ensure there would be no repetition of such intrusive investigations, the 2000 PLC-FSLN pact created a collegial controller with five members, three named by the larger partner and two by the smaller. It would be that power-sharing arrangement that marked Nicaragua’s first steps away from the ranks of electoral democracies.

The Balance Sheet of Electoral Democracy, 1984–2000 Drawing up a balance sheet for Nicaragua’s sixteen years as an electoral democracy requires looking at two separate but related themes. One is the quality of democracy and the other is democracy’s capacity to deliver governability. We begin with the quality of democracy. In the discussion of the concept of quality of democracy in Chapter 2, it was pointed out that, although the greatest weight is usually given to institutions and processes, policies are also taken into account. By that standard, the first Ortega administration, the first government within the electoral democratic regime, did the most to enhance the quality of Nicaraguan democracy. It put the standard institutions of electoral democracy in place, drafted a pluralistic constitution, devolved powers of selfgovernment to the Atlantic Coast, and left office after losing the 1990 election. At the same time that the FSLN was carrying out those reforms, it also tried to continue its policies promoting social equality. Unfortunately, those policies suffered from the constraints imposed on Ortega’s government by having to fight a counterrevolutionary insurgency, an enterprise as costly in lives and wealth as it was necessary. Even though the country was under a state of emergency from 1984 to 1988 and the 1987 constitution was excessively executive-centered, overall the first elected Sandinista government left Nicaragua’s democracy in better condition than it found it. In the case of Violeta Chamorro’s administration, there was still a positive balance, but there were also some reverses. The most evident of these were the cuts to social programs that came with the SAP Nicaragua agreed to. However, it is probable that even had the FSLN retained power in 1990 they, too, would have been obliged to make cuts; indeed the revolutionaries had already done so in the late 1980s. On the institutional side of the ledger, President Chamorro’s most important achievement was her ability to address and resolve serious problems without suspending constitutional rights and freedoms. Further, even though conflict between the legislature

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and the executive came close to bringing the state to a standstill, government did not shut down and the issues were eventually resolved politically, within the framework of the law. Finally, as one would expect of a president from a family in the newspaper business, freedom of expression attained new heights during Chamorro’s administration. The quality of democracy continued to improve throughout most of this government’s tenure. It was only at the very end, with the disputes arising over the 1996 election, that signs of a less democratic future emerged. Those troubling signs multiplied during the first three years of Arnoldo Alemán’s government. Charges of corruption, evidence of authoritarian tendencies, and a dramatic reconcentration of power in the president’s hands presaged the beginning of a turn away from pluralism and a weakening of Nicaraguan democracy. What is striking here is how easily one leader could halt twelve years of slow but steady institutionalization of an electoral democratic regime. The active agent, Alemán, proved able to master the structures within which he was supposed to work. Turning to the question of governability, electoral democracy produced neither polarizing stasis nor endemic violence, even though it had to cope with the polarization inherent in Nicaraguan politics and society at the end of the twentieth century. Similarly, it proved quite resilient, adapting to the demands of a still strongly transformational radical democracy, a conservative, orthodox democracy with weak leadership, and an “electoral caudillo”45 with hegemonic pretensions. This is not to say that electoral democracy functioned perfectly between 1984 and 2000. During the Chamorro administration the government frequently found itself with little support in the National Assembly, making governing difficult. Further, and perhaps due to its lack of support in the legislature, the government resisted the National Assembly’s attempts to move toward meaningful checks and balances. Rather, the administration preferred sticking with the extreme executive-centeredness that had always characterized Nicaraguan government. Moreover, the social and economic fabric of society frayed under the neoliberal policies of the Chamorro and Alemán administrations, producing new problems. Yet the regime saw a constitution drafted and significantly amended, a counterinsurgent war first wound down and then ended, freedom of expression and assembly restored, and the economy reordered. Those are not mean achievements, so what could drive a shift away from electoral democracy? Its downfall began with the reform of the electoral law in 1995 that took administrative control of elections at the departmental and local levels from the CSE and gave it to the parties. The two big parties, the FSLN and PLC, which would take roughly nine-tenths of the presidential vote in the elections of 1996 and 2001, were the biggest winners here; but as both were headed by strongman leaders with limited patience for transparency and

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accountability, it should have been clear that democracy could be in for a rough ride. The first years of the Alemán government gave a taste of what was to come. Practicing a politics that was both highly confrontational and very clientelistic, the administration of the Liberal Alliance (of which the PLC was the only really functional member) moved steadily away from the norms of democratic pluralism. It was thus Arnoldo Alemán who broke the momentum Nicaragua had built toward institutionalizing electoral democracy. Daniel Ortega then made sure that momentum toward a less democratic alternative kept building by striking a power-sharing pact with the president. Therefore, despite its achievements, democracy was progressively weakened after 1995. If asked why this happened most political analysts would immediately point to weak institutions: the basic machinery of democratic government was neither deeply enough entrenched nor widely enough accepted. That is essentially self-evident, and leaves unanswered the bigger question of what kept that machinery weak. One interpretation is that the policies of leaders like Alemán and, later, Ortega consciously undermined democratic structures. An alternative view, and one compatible with the foregoing, is that there were other institutions in Nicaraguan politics, albeit informal ones, that countervailed the formal structures of the democratic state. These included the conviction that it was better to concentrate political power than disperse it, an inclination to believe that the law should not necessarily apply to the government and those who ran it, and the polarization that maximalist tendencies like these always engender. For whatever reasons, the institutions that supported democracy proved weaker than the ones that impaired it. Although the content and operation of the pact between Arnoldo Alemán and Daniel Ortega that established a PLC-FSLN duopoly is the topic of the next chapter, this is an appropriate time to point out that their deal did not dispense with free elections. What it did, though, was make the body that ran those elections, the CSE, a partisan organization whose members were all PLC or FSLN loyalists. Under that framework, the pact partners, the duopolists, could ensure that the rules governing elections worked to the detriment of all other parties. As the duopolists were safe, holding elections where the incumbent could lose probably was not what led the two leaders to reject the electoral democratic regime. Rather, a more plausible hypothesis is that the electoral democratic regime’s potential to become increasingly like a fully constitutional democracy, a government of laws and not of men, was a more pressing preoccupation. Democracy, even in some minimalist electoral version, makes life difficult for governments. They have to tolerate criticism, maintain a minimum level of transparency that must often seem terribly intrusive, face

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being sent out of power to the minority side of the aisle or even back to private life, and, worst of all, obey the very laws they make, just like everybody else. Authoritarian governments, even the mildest of them, can avoid such inconveniences. In Nicaragua at the turn of the twenty-first century, however, forthright authoritarian rule was not an option. In 1996, the winning PLC took 51 percent of the presidential vote and 46 percent of the legislative vote, whereas the FSLN won 38 and 36.5 percent of the vote, respectively, in the two races. Whatever else that may imply, it clearly showed that the FSLN was too big a player to simply exclude, something the UNO had learned ten years earlier. When the long-standing links between the Sandinistas and Nicaragua’s military and police were added to the equation, it meant that there was little or no chance that the Liberals could use force to repress the Sandinistas: they had to be accommodated to more than a minimal extent. The question for President Alemán was how to incorporate Daniel Ortega and the FSLN into a new political regime without putting his Liberals’ control of the state at risk. The answer was to strike a pact between the two parties. That pact produced a duopoly made up of the two most powerful forces in Nicaragua’s political market, the only political parties with even an imaginable chance of governing. This deal distributed access to a number of state offices between the stronger PLC (which assumed it would always be the senior partner) and the weaker FSLN on a sixty-forty basis. This gave the Sandinistas a quota of power they could use to defend their interests, as well as a material stake in the new system. There were, of course, other reasons for moving toward power-sharing, most notably the need to diminish the polarization and continuous conflict between the two big powers that were keeping government from addressing the nation’s pressing social and economic problems. But we should not forget that the two leaders and the parties they commanded seemed to have reservations about electoral democracy and the demands it placed on them.

Notes 1. Juan Linz, “An Authoritarian Regime: The Case of Spain,” in Cleavages, Ideologies and Party Systems: Contributions to Comparative Political Sociology, Transactions of the Westermark Society, vol. 10, ed. Erik Allardt and Yrjö Littunen, pp. 291–341 (Helsinki: The Academic Bookstore, 1964). 2. For details see Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2014 (Washington, DC: Freedom House, 2014), http://freedomhouse.org; and Economist Intelligence Unit, Democracy Index 2013 (London: Economist Intelligence Unit, 2014), www.eiu.com. 3. None of the four Southern Cone military dictatorships ruling in 1979 (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay) held competitive elections before their sev-

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enth year in power. Argentina was first, but only after losing the Falklands War. The others delayed holding fully free elections for eleven years (Uruguay), sixteen years (Chile), and twenty-one years (Brazil). 4. Holding local elections before any other contest would have benefited the tiny, historic anti-Somocista parties by forcing them to build at least modest municipal electoral machines, which would give their activists direct experience in organizing campaigns that could then be applied to national races. 5. Alexander H. McIntire Jr., Political and Electoral Confrontation in Revolutionary Nicaragua (Miami: Institute of Interamerican Studies, University of Miami, 1985). 6. Latin American Studies Association, “Report of the Latin American Studies Association Delegation to Observe the Nicaraguan General Election of November 4, 1984,” Latin American Forum 15, no. 4 (Winter 1985): 18; McIntire, Political and Electoral, p. 43. 7. Two other parties either sought to withdraw or considered withdrawing. See Latin American Studies Association, “Report,” pp. 20–21; and Robert Leiken, “The Nicaraguan Tangle,” New York Review of Books, December 5, 1985. The PCD, the runners-up, held a meeting late in the campaign to consider dropping out, but the party’s presidential candidate simply declared the meeting closed and kept on running. The PLI’s presidential candidate withdrew, but the vice presidential candidate and many of the legislative candidates continued campaigning and the party finished third. In both cases it appears that a majority of the candidates opted to keep their parties functioning within the emerging electoral democracy, hoping to keep themselves alive as ideological alternatives to the revolutionaries. 8. The MAP-ML was the far left wing; the PCD and PLI were center-right parties; the PPSC was centrist; the PSN was aligned with Moscow; and the PCN was a radical splinter from the PSN. 9. David Close, “Counterinsurgency in Nicaragua,” New Political Science 9, nos. 1–2 (1990): 5–19. 10. David Close, Nicaragua: Politics, Economics and Society (London: Frances Pinter, 1988), p. 143. 11. Asamblea Nacional de Nicaragua, Constitución Política de Nicaragua, Anexo 2: Cabildos Abiertos Constitucionales (Managua: Asamblea Nacional de Nicaragua, 1987), pp. 7–8, www.asamblea.gob.ni/opciones/digesto/6.1/1/3.Cabil dos%20Abiertos%20Constitucionales.pdf. 12. Andrew Reding, “Nicaragua’s New Constitution: A Close Reading,” World Policy Journal 4, no. 2 (Spring 1987): 257–294, www.worldpolicy.org/sites/default /files/uploaded/image/WPJ-1987-Nicaragua’s%20New%20Constitution.pdf. The document itself, the Constitución Política, 1987, can be found online at http://pdba .georgetown.edu/Constitutions/Nica/nica.html. 13. Elena Martínez Barahona, “A Politicized Judiciary,” in The Sandinistas and Nicaragua Since 1979, ed. David Close, Salvador Martí i Puig, and Shelley A. McConnell, p. 93, n115 (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2011). 14. These regions were renamed in the 2014 constitutional amendments. They are now the RACCN (Región Autónoma de la Costa Caribe Norte [North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region]) and the RACCS (Región Autónoma de la Costa Caribe Sur [South Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region]). 15. For a thorough introduction to the politics of Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast, see Miguel González and Dolores Figueroa, “Regional Autonomy on the Atlantic Coast,” in The Sandinistas and Nicaragua Since 1979, ed. David Close, Salvador Martí i Puig, and Shelley A. McConnell, pp. 161–184 (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2011).

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16. Rose J. Spalding, “From Low-Intensity War to Low-Intensity Peace: The Nicaraguan Peace Process,” in Comparative Peace Processes in Latin America, ed. Cynthia J. Arnson, pp. 31–64, Stanford Woodrow Wilson Center Press Series (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999). 17. United Nations, Per Capita GDP at Current Prices—US Dollars: Nicaragua (New York: United Nations, 2014), http://data.un.org. 18. In addition to material cited in this chapter, the following works should be consulted for information about this period: Leslie E. Anderson and Lawrence C. Dodd, Learning Democracy: Citizen Engagement and Electoral Choice in Nicaragua, 1990–2001 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); Vanessa Castro and Gary Prevost, eds., The 1990 Elections in Nicaragua and Their Aftermath (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1992); Gary Prevost and Harry E. Vanden, The Undermining of the Sandinista Revolution (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997); William Robinson, A Faustian Bargain: U.S. Intervention in the Nicaraguan Elections and American Foreign Policy in the Post–Cold War Era (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992); Harry E. Vanden and Gary Prevost, Democracy and Socialism in Sandinista Nicaragua (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1993). 19. In Nicaragua: The Chamorro Years (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1999), I entitled the second chapter “Changing Governments, Changing Regimes” for two reasons. First, I emphasized a regime’s policy outputs more than its structure, something I now believe was incorrect. Second, I argued that the FSLN retained enough of its vanguardist past in 1990 that it could have shifted away from electoral democracy. Although that is precisely what Comandante Ortega and the Sandinistas did in 2000, moving yet further away in 2011, I am no longer persuaded that such was the case in 1990. Had electoral democracy continued working for the FSLN, ideally by making them a dominant party for a generation, the Sandinistas would have had no reason to abandon that system. And in any event, when the Sandinistas did shift away from electoral democracy they did not return to vanguardism. 20. Peter V. Miller, “Which Side Are You On? The 1990 Nicaraguan Poll Debacle,” Public Opinion Quarterly 55, no. 2 (Summer 1991): 281–302; William Barnes, “Rereading the Nicaraguan Pre-Election Polls,” in The 1990 Elections in Nicaragua, ed. Castro and Prevost, pp. 41–128. 21. Guillermo Cortés, La lucha por el poder (Managua: Editorial Vanguardia, 1990). 22. Carter Center, Observing Nicaragua’s Elections, 1989–1990 (Atlanta: Carter Center, 1990), www.cartercenter.org/news/publications/election_reports.html#nicaragua. 23. Antonio Lacayo Oyanguren, La difícil transición nicaragüense: En el gobierno de doña Violeta (Managua: Colección Cultural de Centro América, 2006), pp. 180–182, 191–194. 24. Philip Williams, “Elections and Democratization in Nicaragua: The 1990 Elections in Perspective,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 32, no. 4 (Winter 1990): 26–27. 25. Envio, “Nicaragua: Rebellion in the Ranks: Challenge from the Right,” Revista Envio 114 (January 1991), www.envio.org.ni/articulo/2947; Envio, “Nicaragua: Insurrection from the Right,” Revista Envio 116 (March 1991), www .envio.org.ni/articulo/2937. 26. David Close, “Nicaragua: The Legislature as Seedbed of Conflict,” in Legislatures and the New Democracies in Latin America, ed. David Close (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1995), pp. 62–63. 27. Nicaraguan legislators are all elected with an alternate, who can replace them in cases of long-term or permanent absence. Thus there is no need for byelections or to have the executive name a replacement.

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28. Envio, “Agrarian Property and Stability,” Revista Envio 173 (December 1995), www.envio.org.ni/articulo/1913. 29. This section relies on Close, Nicaragua: The Chamorro Years, pp. 147–161. 30. Article 133 of the 1987 constitution gave a National Assembly seat to the runner-up in the presidential race, with the vice presidential candidate being the alternate. Ortega at first opted not to take the seat, which then went to Ramírez, who functioned as the party’s house leader. 31. In English it was called the Group of Friends. 32. The rebranding included dropping much of the candidate’s formerly radical rhetoric, dressing him in his now trademark white collarless shirt, downplaying Sandinista symbols like the red and black flag, and choosing as his running mate a little-known rancher who once supported the counterrevolution. 33. Andrés Pérez Baltodano, “Political Culture,” in The Sandinistas and Nicaragua Since 1979, ed. David Close, Salvador Martí i Puig, and Shelley A. McConnell, pp. 72–73 (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2011). 34. Envio, “How Nicaraguans Voted,” Revista Envio 185 (December 1996), http://envio.org.ni/articulo/1990; Carter Center, The Observation of the 1996 Nicaraguan Elections (Atlanta: Carter Center, 1997), www.cartercenter.org/news /publications/election_reports.html#nicaragua; Henry Patterson, “The 1996 Elections and Nicaragua’s Fragile Transition,” Government and Opposition 32, no. 3 (July 1997): 380–398. 35. Carter Center, Observation of the 1996 Nicaraguan Elections, p. 34. 36. Mark Caster, “The Return of Somocismo? The Rise of Arnoldo Aléman,” NACLA Report on the Americas 30, no. 2 (September–October 1996): 6–9. 37. Envio, “All Threads Lead to the Property Tangle,” Revista Envio 189 (April 1997), http://envio.org.ni/articulo/2004. 38. Envio, “The Crisis of the Barricades,” Revista Envio 191 (June 1997), http://envio.org.ni/articulo/2018. 39. Carlos Fernando Chamorro, “The Style of an Authoritarian Caudillo,” Revista Envio 191 (June 1997), http://envio.org.ni/articulo/2017. 40. Alejandro Bendaña, “Nicaragua’s Structural Hurricane,” NACLA Report on the Americas 33, no. 2 (September–October 1999): 16–19. 41. Nicaragua Network, “Hurricane Mitch Alert, No. 1,” Nicaragua News Bulletin, November 2, 1998, www.nicanet.org. 42. Karen Kampwirth, Feminism and the Legacy of Revolution: Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chiapas (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004), pp. 70–71. 43. In 1990 the city councillors elected the mayor from among their number. Since 1996, mayors have been directly elected. 44. Envio, “Nicaragua: Crossroads at the Century’s End,” Revista Envio 221 (December 1999), www.envio.org.ni/articulo/2285. 45. David Close and Kalowatie Deonandan, eds., Undoing Democracy: The Politics of Electoral Caudillismo (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004).

6 Power-Sharing Duopoly, 2000–2011

In economics, duopoly refers to a market dominated by two firms. Familiar examples of business duopolies are MasterCard and Visa or Coke and Pepsi. The firms can compete in some areas, even over prices. As well, there are usually other firms competing in the same markets but these lack the resources to challenge the duopolists’ predominance. Maintaining a duopoly, though, sometimes requires active cooperation between the two firms, which can lead to such illegal activity as price fixing, market rigging, or suborning public officials. Politics, too, has duopolies. Some of them arise naturally. Two-party systems, in which the two parties take the lion’s share of the vote (85 to 90 percent) and where there is some alternation in power between them, are the best example. They exist at the national or subnational level, in rich countries and poor, presidential and parliamentary systems, and under proportional representation and first-past-the-post electoral systems. Currently, the list of countries includes the United States, Honduras, Spain, Uruguay, and Chile, among others. The resilience of these systems is demonstrated by the fact that even if the parties comprising the duopoly change, as has happened in the United States (Whigs yielding to Republicans) and Uruguay (Colorados giving way to the Frente Amplio), two-party dominance continues. Such duopolies may be supported by an electoral system or party finance laws, often enacted by the beneficiaries of those institutions. However, the straightfight competition between two political dreadnoughts generally has deep roots that would take either significant political engineering or a dramatic change in voters’ preferences to alter. In natural duopolies other parties exist and often have at least some success; but they cannot muster the strength to break the duopoly.

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However, even classic two-party duopolies can and do fall. Throughout the twentieth century Costa Rica was dominated by two parties, even if the identities of those two changed over time. Since the 2002 elections, though, that system appears increasingly shaky. Only one presidential race (2010) produced a majority for the winner and two (2002 and 2014) required a runoff election to elect a president, and in the four legislative elections since 2002 the largest party has failed to top 38 percent of the vote.1 Canada has witnessed a similar change. Between 1867 and 1911, its first twelve elections, the two dominant parties never shared less than 94 percent of the vote; but after 1917 they broke the 90 percent barrier only in 1926. In the latest national elections (2011), the two leading parties between them received 70 percent of the vote.2 As with the Costa Rican presidency until 2014, in Canada a duopoly still exists when it comes to actually forming a government, but nine of the last nineteen general elections (1957 to 2011) have returned minority governments, meaning the government needs the support of another party to retain power. Nicaragua also was a natural duopoly throughout its time as an electoral democracy. Political life there was polarized between pro- and antiSandinista factions. Of course this polarization was nothing new in Nicaragua; historically, when political competition existed it saw Liberals squaring off against Conservatives. So the pact struck between Alemán’s Liberals and Ortega’s Sandinistas did not create political dualism, as that was already present in the political system and well rooted in Nicaraguan political culture.3 Rather it involved allotting each of the duopolists a quota of power in the form of government positions under the party’s control, on a sixty-forty, government-opposition basis. This afforded the minority a chance to defend its interests, creating what could become veto points, as well as giving it important positions to distribute to its members. The result was a power-sharing system, something else with precedents in Nicaraguan history. Political power-sharing can take several forms. At its simplest, it is the opposite of power concentration4 and therefore signifies increased pluralism and more democracy. In this school one finds Arend Lijphart’s concept of consociationalism, or consociational democracy,5 with its emphasis on broad-based interelite accommodation and substantial autonomy for the groups those elites represent. This alternative to majoritarianism has become widely recommended as perhaps the ideal model for governing deeply divided societies. Further and understandably, power-sharing has come to connote the participation in decision-making by nongovernmental actors from civil society. Another instance of power-sharing is one that is both like the Nicaraguan example and has been found elsewhere in Latin America. It sees a minority party guaranteed a specific quota of seats or other govern-

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ment posts, sometimes done to keep a faction from rebelling. Drake lists several examples, drawn from Uruguay, Argentina, and Colombia.6 In the first two cases the objective was to ensure representation for the minority party by allotting it one-third of the legislative seats, something an electoral system too often managed by the ruling party had not achieved in either. In Colombia a similar distribution was initiated after the Thousand Days’ War (1899–1902), a civil war between Liberals and Conservatives that killed approximately 2.5 percent of Colombia’s population.7 Unfortunately, in less than fifty years political civil war would again rage in Colombia, this time as La Violencia (1946–1953).8 This war too was followed by another experiment in power-sharing: the National Front (1958–1978). Colombia’s National Front represents the apotheosis of the power-sharing pact.9 Established in 1958, the National Front was the fruit of a pact between the Liberals and Conservatives, which, like earlier efforts, sought to dampen the exaggerated animosity that had reigned between the two parties for over a century. The framework of the National Front ensured that for sixteen years the Liberals and Conservatives would alternate in the presidency, each having two four-year terms.10 Regardless of which party held the presidency, each got one half of all public positions, appointed and elected, from the municipal to the national level. As a result, being out of power did not weaken a party’s ability to defend its interests within government. Put in Nicaraguan terms, the Conservatives and Liberals had equal quotas of power. Power-sharing, plus good leadership and reasonable luck, ended the series of civil wars that had long plagued Colombia. More recently, the implementation of power-sharing systems after civil wars and exceptionally violent internal conflicts has become a common prescription for peace-building and reconciliation.11 In South Sudan, for example, the 2004 Comprehensive Peace Agreement included power-sharing provisions.12 Similarly, part of the solution to ending the violence that followed disputed electoral outcomes in Zimbabwe (2008) and Kenya (2007) involved the formation of power-sharing pacts in both countries.13 In these cases, as in Colombia’s National Front, power-sharing was the chosen instrument for ending violence because it gave all important parties a share of power, hence a stake in the system. Moreover, it provided the new system with initial legitimacy and offered participants incentives to adopt moderate, accommodating positions toward one another. In Nicaragua, the practice of power-sharing goes back over 150 years, long antedating the Liberal-Sandinista pact. The first and still most successful example was the Conservative Republic of the late nineteenth century. It brought conflicting regional interests together, albeit only if they belonged to the Conservative party. Although this system ultimately failed, it gave the country a three-decade respite from civil war and provided sound administration. The other historic example of power-sharing was instituted

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by the Somoza regime after 1950. This was different from the Conservative model in that power did not need to be shared to guarantee governability. Rather, the government, which controlled all parts of the state, distributed positions within the state as a form of patronage to ensure that its licensed opposition was large enough to provide a patina of legitimacy as well as to divide the main opposition party. The logic behind any form of power-sharing is to give each partner a stake in the system and thereby avoid disruptive, even violent, opposition. It does this by ensuring that defeat at the polls does not lead to total exclusion from both a voice in policy matters and access to state largesse. As a result, those within the power-sharing system have an assured quota of power they can use to defend their interests and look after their supporters. Given those conditions it should be possible to maintain free electoral competition between the parties, something the Somozas never attempted but that Alemán and Ortega accepted. For these Nicaraguan power-sharing systems to work, either of two conditions must be met. In the Somocista version, the assent of the dictator is required. In the model represented by the Liberal-Sandinista pact, it should be possible to accommodate a change in the party in power, as long as the general operating environment stays essentially stable and it remains possible for the incumbent to lose. In practice, however, it proved possible to preserve the power-sharing arrangements only as long as there were no major shifts in the balance of power between the parties. As we shall see in detail in this chapter, a shift in the balance of power between the pacting parties, large enough to alter the environment in which they operated, brought about the fall of the latest Nicaraguan exercise in power-sharing.

Can a Power-Sharing Duopoly Be a Regime? When thinking of a political duopoly what comes to mind most readily is the classic two-party system found in the United States and perhaps the electoral system (single-member constituency-plurality, better known as first-past-the-post) that sustains it. Similarly, talk of power-sharing, especially a power-sharing pact, is most likely to call up images of a settlement arrived at after a civil war or some other particularly vicious episode of political violence. These reactions mirror the most common current uses of the two concepts. However, it is both possible and useful to treat some instances of duopoly or duopolistic power-sharing as regimes. Chapter 2 presented a review of the various ways political science has distinguished among the various political regimes that have existed. Four elements stood out: (1) political institutions, formal as well as informal, and governmental as well as extragovernmental; (2) how governments use those

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institutions; (3) the relations between state and society, especially which parts of society have greatest access to and influence over government; and (4) the bases of the regime’s legitimacy and what lets it maintain that legitimacy. These four elements are relatively stable, hence easy to identify as the distinguishing marks of a particular political system. Combined, they reveal the essential character of a political system, along with the rules and practices that give it its character. Such a system can be long-lived, as with constitutional monarchy in Britain, or it can have a brief existence, as is often the case with military regimes. What matters is the changing of fundamental rules and practices, not how long they last. Jonathon Hartlyn’s labeling of the sixteen-year existence of the National Front in Colombia as a regime makes the Colombian case particularly apposite to this examination of the eleven-year lifespan of the Alemán-Ortega/PLC-FSLN pacted system in Nicaragua.14 All the elements are there. La Violencia and the military dictatorship of Rojas Pinilla that followed it destroyed the old regime. To ensure a return to civilian rule and electoral democracy a new pacted system was needed, and so the powersharing institutions came to form the framework of a new regime. Those institutions were used by the four administrations that governed under the National Front to restore the credibility of civilian government and build a political culture that ended over a century of Conservative-Liberal civil wars in Colombia. By reducing the salience of partisan identity, state-society relations could assume a new form. Achieving those ends would cement the National Front’s legitimacy. Although the National Front was clearly a transitional regime, a bridge leading to a normal electoral democracy, it was very much a regime. Based on Colombia’s experience with the National Front, it is clear that duopolistic power-sharing pacts can work. But are there conditions under which they might not? The National Front was a time-limited, sixteen-year pact. It also followed an exceptionally violent civil war between Liberals and Conservatives that was just one of a series stretching back 125 years. Is it possible, therefore, that an open-ended, pacted duopoly that was struck for the convenience of two leaders might not work in the long term? In her analysis of the Pacto de Punto Fijo, the foundation of Venezuela’s fifty-year constitutional democratic regime, Terry Lynn Karl noted that pacts are struck among a specific group of partners, with specific aims, who bring specific resources to the table.15 Over time, some of the partners will change their aims, see their resources expand or contract, become more central or more peripheral political players, or see powerful new players emerge outside the pact’s boundaries. Yet a pact is unlikely to have a reopener clause that would let new forces into the game and send weakened ones to the sidelines. Because of this, a power-sharing arrangement can stifle democracy by excluding new forces, whether parties or

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social and economic sectors, while overrepresenting interests of declining importance; this is part of what happened to Nicaragua’s Conservative Republic. Thus a power-sharing system probably will lack a mechanism to deal with a shift in the balance of power between or among the partners, a condition that can easily arise in a duopoly. It certainly occurred in Nicaragua’s latest pacted duopoly.

Introducing the Pact Nicaraguans called the deal to divide the spoils of office struck between Alemán and Ortega simply “the pact.” Giving the power-sharing agreement this name recalled the Somozas’ pact-making ventures of 1950, the “Generals’ Pact” with the Conservatives of General Emiliano Chamorro, and 1971, the “Kupia-Kumi” pact with Fernando Agüero of the Conservatives. Both of those guaranteed the Conservatives a quota of legislative seats (33.33 percent in 1950 and 40 percent in 1971), while the 1971 arrangement extended the offer to a range of other public positions. In both instances the price the Conservatives paid was accepting the results of fraudulent elections: in Somocista Nicaragua the Somozas counted the votes and those who counted always won. Therefore, entering a pact meant accepting and legitimating the continued rule of the Somozas. In the late twentieth century, Nicaraguan citizens did not see their governments offering pacts to their principal opponents to end civil strife and provide better governance, but rather as a device to heighten an administration’s legitimacy or let it more easily secure some other partisan aim. Although the Alemán-Ortega pact was different in many ways from those the Somozas employed, its nature as a partisan instrument still shone through. Given the conditions that existed during the first half of Arnoldo Alemán’s term of office (January 1997 through June 1999), it is easy to understand how the pact that took effect early in 2000 provoked people’s skepticism. As already noted, there was no widespread, continuing violent civil conflict. And although there were occasionally demonstrations that turned violent, they were always contained before they caused grave harm. The state was in no danger of failing. If the government’s behavior at times fell short of democratic ideals, it still exercised effective control. What was at stake was not the existence of the state or the lives of innocent people caught in the crossfire of civil war, for neither condition was present in Nicaragua in 1999. So what was the pact all about? As the last chapter described, Nicaragua’s transition to electoral democracy in 1984 brought with it an impressive array of political experimentation. Among the innovations were free and fair elections that produced changes of government, a functioning legislature, media free from

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political censorship, a new constitution that was followed by a set of important amendments, and legislative recognition of Nicaragua’s multiethnic character. To make these new structures and process work as they should in an electoral democracy there also needed to be corresponding changes in the country’s political culture and in the outlook of its political class. Although there was movement in that direction under the first elected Sandinista administration, after 1990 the political class expanded to admit politicians formed under the Somoza regime to roles within the state. These anti-Sandinistas not only wanted to take apart all the work of the FSLN government but also brought with them a commitment to restore as much of the political style and, in some cases, even the substance of the old regime as possible. Obviously they could not go beyond what was compatible with competitive elections, but those were broad limits. Yet even with the changed array of significant political actors, democratic reforms continued throughout the Chamorro administration, culminating with the adoption of a series of constitutional amendments in 1995, Nicaragua’s democratic high point to date. The previous chapter sketched the amendments’ content and their fraught journey to implementation, noting that the principal point of contention was reducing the president’s authority while increasing the legislature’s. Of course this ran counter not just to Nicaraguan political orthodoxy but to the received wisdom and historic practices of Latin America as a whole.16 But the wave of democratic transitions of the eighties and nineties was making accountability, transparency, fair elections, checks and balances, and impartial justice the centerpieces of reform projects throughout the region. Although a number of these have stalled or reversed, Nicaragua’s experiment with a regime built around a power-sharing duopoly stands alone. As neither the Nicaraguan state nor President Alemán’s government was in danger of failing in 1999 when negotiations for the pact began, we need not consider the reasons that underlie power-sharing pacts concluded to end violence and restore stability and governability to a seriously weakened state. However, there were two other factors at work that merit consideration. The first was pressure from outside actors. The United States and the international financial institutions, here the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, wanted to see the political disputes between the PLC and FSLN settled to permit implementing an effective structural adjustment program.17 Essentially, this meant finding a way to get the Sandinistas to limit their use of extraparliamentary oppositional tactics, such as occasionally violent strikes and protests, to permit implementing a neoliberal economic agenda. Securing that objective required offering the FSLN quotas of power in the form of state offices that they would control. Regarding the second factor, it is plausible that both Alemán and Ortega agreed that their particular interests were best served by a constitu-

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tion that imposed fewer restraints on the government and so joined forces to make the desired changes. This would also result in the Sandinistas gaining control of government posts. I believe that both factors were present but that the latter was more influential, as it offered the two leaders immediate and highly desirable advantages. One advantage both men might have been looking for was a way to maintain their immunity from prosecution, as each faced possible criminal charges: Alemán for corruption and Ortega for sexually abusing his stepdaughter. So it was that the two longtime enemies became partners.

Designing the Pact It became public knowledge in June 1999 that the Liberals and Sandinistas had been in talks that aimed at creating a pact.18 Although both the Liberals and the Sandinistas denied repeatedly that they were considering such an agreement, rumors about the deal had been heard around the country for at least a year by that time.19 Even some details of the points under discussion were in the news well before the official acknowledgment of the pact’s existence.20 Once the affair was out in the open, the two leaders lauded each other’s pragmatism and concern for Nicaragua’s well-being, and the talks moved ahead rapidly to ensure that the necessary legislation could be passed before the legislative session ended in December. The timing was essential for two reasons. Half of what the pact partners were working on involved a series of constitutional amendments. The constitution’s amending formula (Art. 192) specifies that amendments be approved by 60 percent of the whole chamber in two consecutive legislatures. Nicaraguan practice under the 1987 constitution has been to pass the amendments in December, the end of one legislative session, then again in January at the start of another. The other main objective of both the FSLN and PLC was to change the electoral law to ensure that the de facto duopoly got the legal framework that would make it permanent. The reformed electoral process would get its first use in municipal elections set for November 2000, so it, too, had to be passed before the 1999 legislature ended. The Pact’s Content

We can start with the amendments to the electoral legislation, as these illustrate the intent of the FSLN and PLC to keep serious competitors out of elections. However, we also must note that Nicaragua’s elections act needed significant revision. The electoral machinery produced for the 1984 elections made it easy for parties to gain official recognition, which con-

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ferred the right to run in elections, receive public campaign funding, and even gain National Assembly seats. This apparently was the Sandinistas’ aim, since they wanted to ensure a reasonable opposition presence in the country’s first freely elected legislature in half a century. And they got it: seven parties ran and all won seats. This outcome resulted from (1) using a proportional representation model that favored small parties, (2) giving National Assembly seats to defeated presidential candidates who won oneninetieth of the national vote, and (3) providing financing for all parties. The next election in 1990 pitted the FSLN against the fourteen-party UNO alliance and seven third parties, two of which got legislative seats: twenty-two parties, nine contestants, four of them with seats. If 1990 was a yellow warning flag, 1996 waved a red. There were four alliances, grouping twelve parties, plus nineteen parties that stood alone, for a total of thirtyone. Obviously it was time to act and the most logical target for action was the electoral system: the mechanism that translates votes into positions won. And the most logical way to reform the electoral system to disadvantage small parties would be setting a relatively high threshold for winning a National Assembly seat and also making it more difficult to receive official recognition as a political party. Both these points were indeed addressed by the pacted amendments. However, other changes were also made and their combined effect was to approach making a Liberal-Sandinista two-party system as near to a formal duopoly as possible, without proscribing other parties. Among the several key changes brought by the 2000 revision of Nicaragua’s electoral legislation, 21 the sections covering what parties must do to obtain and retain official status (Art. 65 §6–9), hence to run in elections, stand out. Any party that sought official recognition would henceforth have to establish formal organizations (to be verified by the CSE) in all of Nicaragua’s then 151 municipalities, in addition to its fifteen departments, two autonomous regions, and at the national level. Beyond that, all parties, except the FSLN and the Camino Cristiano Nicaragüense (CCN, Nicaraguan Christian Way), whose official status had not changed after the 1996 elections, would have to collect the signatures of 3 percent of the national voters’ list. In 2000 that meant some 75,000 people. Moreover, an individual could sign for only one party; again, the CSE would check this. Finally, a party that did not win votes equal to or greater than 4 percent of the national presidential vote would lose its official standing. In the case of electoral alliances, the threshold was 4 percent for every party in the group, and failure to meet that mark meant loss of official status for both the alliance and all the parties in it.22 This was not a 4 percent threshold to qualify for a legislative seat, but a minimum vote required to retain registration as an official party. Although electoral finance provisions and the details of seat allocation

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were also changed to the detriment of smaller parties, those reforms were less dramatic. Elections also figured in the constitutional amendments that the pacting parties produced. Article 147 defined new rules for runoffs in presidential elections. Where previously the threshold for avoiding a second round was 45 percent, the amended version lowered that to 40 percent or 35 percent with a five-point advantage over the runner-up. Ortega and the FSLN insisted on this provision, which was what let the comandante win a second term as president in 2006. It is interesting that Ortega demanded that this be included, as it presumes at minimum a race among three very closely matched parties. In 1999 when the amendment was crafted, the looming changes to the electoral law promised an electoral duopoly that would exclude the formation of new parties. Julio Luis Rocha called this insistence on the 35 percent threshold “a critical mistake,” as it looked very much as if the FSLN would become the permanent “first loser” in a twoparty system.23 But did Ortega suspect that the pact would provoke splits in both big parties, as in fact happened? Both he and Alemán would have known that some in their parties were uncomfortable with the pact. More importantly, Ortega also would have been aware that shared partisan control over the courts could result in parts of the electoral system reforms being set aside, which indeed occurred in 2002.24 In 1999, however, those would not have seemed the most likely outcomes. Another constitutional amendment that reflected the interest of Alemán and Ortega is Article 133. Both men faced possible prosecution should they lose their immunity as officeholders. Alemán’s problems, it will be recalled, stemmed from allegations of corruption and Ortega’s from accusations of having sexually molested his stepdaughter. These dilemmas were resolved by granting seats in the National Assembly to the past president and the presidential candidate who finished second in the latest general election. Article 133 also provided those two figures, here Alemán and Ortega, an official governmental presence that would let them keep direct control over their parties and maintain their customary high profiles in the media. Regarding the other constitutional changes, only designating the controller general a collegial office (Art. 154), thereby permitting both the PLC and FSLN to name members (three for the governing party and two for the other), involved a substantial institutional reorganization. Three alternate (substitute) members were added to the CSE’s ranks of seven magistrates (Art. 170), the odd numbers permitting the government the deciding vote. Further, Article 173 now stated that decisions of the CSE regarding electoral matters were final, with no judicial appeal allowed. The judiciary’s structure was unchanged, although the number of Supreme Court justices rose from twelve to sixteen. The practice of the pact would see the two parties soon divide the CSJ’s sixteen positions equally.25

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The Duopolistic Regime in Operation, 2000–2011 Nicaragua’s experiment with a power-sharing duopoly, the Alemán-Ortega pact, was the nation’s political regime from January 2000, when the key constitutional amendments took effect, to November 2011, when the PLC collapsed as an electoral force. Although the pact between the FSLN and PLC continues in 2015, the Liberals lack the force to be duopolists and now depend on grace-and-favor appointments granted them by Daniel Ortega. Thus the duopoly covers the last two years of Arnoldo Alemán’s presidency, the administration of Enrique Bolaños, and the second Ortega administration. Of these three periods, it is Bolaños’s term of office that matters most, for that was when the pact started to unravel and the balance of power shifted in the Sandinistas’ favor. This process continued after Daniel Ortega’s comeback win in 2006, but was overshadowed by his successful maneuvers to concentrate power in himself, his family, and his party. Taken as a whole, though, the duopoly’s eleven-year existence constitutes a well-executed exercise in dismantling many of the controls electoral democracy imposes on governors and governments. In examining Nicaragua’s pacted duopoly it is important to remember that it left open the possibility that power could change hands in an election and that the partners could continue actively criticizing and obstructing each other as they had before. Given the ideological differences between the two parties (very conservative neoliberalism for the PLC versus at least rhetorical socialism for the FSLN) and the long-standing animus between the leaders themselves (Alemán had been jailed by the Sandinista government in the late 1980s), no other outcome was likely. Accordingly, it came as no surprise that in August 2000 Alemán undertook to bring down a Sandinista-controlled bank and that Ortega soon replied in kind by doing the same to a bank controlled by PLC investors.26 First Steps

Municipal elections in November 2000 offered the first test of the machinery of the power-sharing pact. In 1996, the Liberal Alliance carried ninetytwo municipalities, the FSLN fifty-one, the Movimento de Renovación Sandinista (MRS, Sandinista Renovation Movement) one, and one city hall was won by a popular subscription association, a purely local municipallevel party, which the electoral law no longer permitted in 2000. The first post-pact elections saw the PLC win ninety-four races, the Sandinistas fifty-two, and the Conservatives five.27 Setting aside the stronger showing of the Conservatives and the elimination of the popular subscription associations, the results are effectively identical and show the continued domination of the two biggest parties in the country’s city halls.28 The previously

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existing electoral duopoly therefore was effectively unchanged by the newly restrictive legislation. One year after those local elections, Nicaragua held general elections for president and vice president, the National Assembly, and delegates to the Central American Parliament. What made these elections interesting was not their outcome, which was another easy win for the anti-Sandinistas (see Table 6.1), but rather the PLC’s standard-bearer: Enrique Bolaños Geyer. In one sense, Bolaños was the logical successor to Arnoldo Alemán, who was constitutionally prohibited from seeking immediate reelection, as he had been Alemán’s vice president. He was seventy-three years old and not a professional politician (though Bolaños was an anti-Sandinista activist from the start), suggesting that he was not a person likely to challenge Alemán’s suzerainty over the party. In fact, Don Enrique, as he is usually known, was not even a Liberal but rather a lifelong Conservative. Having little status within the PLC meant that he had to depend on Alemán, a fact that David Dye believes explains why Bolaños was at the head of the PLC ticket in 2001.29 But other factors should have weighed against him, especially his reputation for independence and personal integrity. The Bolaños Administration

The first major challenge the newly inaugurated President Bolaños had to confront did not come from the Sandinistas or one of the many varieties of natural disasters that so regularly afflict Nicaragua, but from his old boss Arnoldo Alemán. As was his due, the past president assumed the National Assembly seat reserved for him. He did not stop there, however, but went on to have himself elected the legislature’s president. As the National Assembly’s presiding officer, Alemán would control the legislative agenda

Table 6.1 2001 Nicaraguan General Election Results Party/Presidential Candidate PLC/Bolaños FSLN/Ortega PCN/Saboriob Totalsc

Votes for Presidential Candidate (%) 56.3 42.3 1.4 100.0

National Assembly Votes for Party (%)/ Number of Seats Won 53.4/52a 42.3/38a 4.5/2 100.2/92

Sources: Compiled by author from Carter Center, Observing the 2001 Nicaraguan Elections (Atlanta: Carter Center, 2002), www.cartercenter.org/documents/1027.pdf; and International Parliamentary Union, Nicaraguan Election Archives, 2001, www.ipu.org/parline-e /reports/2235_arc.htm. Notes: a. One PLC seat to past president; one FSLN seat to runner-up. b. Partido Conservador de Nicaragua, Alberto Saborio. c. Total may not equal 100 percent due to rounding.

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and serve as the functional leader of the Liberal bench. Given his personal control over the PLC, he was in a position to act as a de facto prime minister, a role not contemplated in Nicaragua’s constitution. Alemán was certainly perfectly placed to stymie any legislation the new president proposed that the ex-president disapproved of. Instead of having a legislative majority at his disposal, Bolaños could well find himself facing a hostile National Assembly headed not by the leader of the opposition, Daniel Ortega, but by the very man who had picked him as successor. President Bolaños clearly had to defend himself and his presidency, and he did so by bringing charges of corruption against Alemán. It is important to remember that Arnoldo Alemán did not need to become president of the National Assembly to keep a tight rein on the PLC caucus. A caudillo-style political boss, like his Sandinista counterpart, Alemán’s control over his party was unquestioned and unquestionable. And just as Daniel Ortega’s leadership of the FSLN kept the media spotlight on him, so too would reporters have sought out the colorful Alemán and preserved his public profile. Whether driven by hubris,30 an insatiable drive to control events, or a deep-seated distrust of both Bolaños and Ortega, Arnoldo Alemán unwittingly started the process that would soon cost him his immunity from prosecution.31 A couple of examples show how Alemán used the presidency of the National Assembly. Legislative proposals coming from the executive got shuffled down the order paper and never made it into law. Further, the budget for the office of the president was dramatically reduced, thereby affecting the president’s ability to work properly. Add this to Bolaños’s campaign that centered on sound fiscal management and cracking down on corruption and it becomes clear why the president decided to move against his predecessor. To understand precisely how Alemán was brought down, we have to consider (1) the charges brought against him and (2) the process used to bring the ex-president to trial. First, the charges, 32 which involve three specific cases: the checazo (check scam), the Channel 6 case, and the huaca (sometimes spelled guaca)—the granddaddy of them all. The first of these involved a charge of misappropriating government checks by Byron Jerez, treasurer of the PLC as well as director of Nicaragua’s tax agency. Jerez was convicted of getting directors of government agencies to steal government funds, send him the money, keep some of the funds himself, and then transfer the rest to Alemán’s private accounts. 33 Regarding Channel 6, then Nicaragua’s only public TV station, the case involved sweetheart contracts (which were never actually executed), supposedly with the Mexican TV network TeleAzteca, to provide goods and services to the station. Principals in the matter were Mr. Alemán and a former Mexican ambassador to Nicaragua. The money in question here went to finance a rigged

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bid by the Mexican for a cellphone license. The grand prize goes to the huaca, one of whose meanings is buried treasure, which saw President Alemán charged with and convicted of the misappropriation of approximately $US100 million. However, as long as Alemán held his legislative seat he was legally untouchable. He could only be made to face charges in the above cases if the National Assembly voted to remove his parliamentary immunity. To do that, there needed to be forty-seven votes, an absolute majority of the ninety-two deputies, in favor of such a motion. Although the thirty-eight Sandinista deputies supported the motion, the Azul y Blanco34 (Blue and White) caucus, dissident Liberals who supported Bolaños, at first brought only eight more votes, for a total of forty-six. In September 2002 that extra vote crossed over and left Mr. Alemán liable to prosecution. The case was then turned over to the highly politicized courts, where the Supreme Court justice responsible for assigning cases in the lower courts, a Sandinista, sent Alemán before a highly partisan Sandinista judge. That judge, Juana Méndez, a year earlier had summarily dismissed charges of sexual abuse brought against Daniel Ortega by his stepdaughter.35 She issued her decision in the Alemán case in December 2002, finding the defendant guilty and sentencing him to twenty years’ imprisonment. At this juncture four things had become clear: (1) the FSLN had a power base in the courts; (2) the loyalty of the pact partners to each other had definite limits; (3) the balance of power within the duopoly had shifted toward the Sandinistas, although it was not certain that the advantage could be maintained; and (4) an outsider like Bolaños could escape the constraints of the power-sharing pact if conditions were right. Within a year, though, the pact was again operating, though not as before, and President Bolaños was again severely constrained. In 2004 he was threatened with the loss of his immunity from prosecution. By 2005 Daniel Ortega was indisputably the strongest politician in Nicaragua. Because the PLC benches refused to support Bolaños after Alemán’s conviction, he had to rely on Sandinista votes to pass the legislation he sought. This put Bolaños in a position similar to that of President Chamorro during her term. However, in 2003, at the behest of the US government, he broke a deal he had with the FSLN, leaving him isolated. A year later, the Sandinistas and Liberals moved to strip Bolaños of his immunity from prosecution, following another decision by Judge Juana Méndez, this one finding the president guilty of violating the campaign finance law.36 That attempt was ultimately unsuccessful. Then in 2005, the pact partners introduced and passed a set of constitutional amendments that greatly restricted the president’s powers of appointment, although a framework law, similar to the one adopted respecting the 1995 amendment package, delayed their entry into force until 2007.37

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Alemán’s fate followed a similarly tortuous path, thanks to decisions by the FSLN-controlled judiciary.38 When the PLC cooperated with the FSLN the conditions of Alemán’s confinement were relaxed, usually house arrest in his finca (ranch) near Managua. Eventually, in the run-up to the 2006 elections, his house arrest was modified to include the entire country. If, on the contrary, the PLC was proving recalcitrant the Sandinistas could threaten to return Alemán to jail. This cat-and-mouse game continued until 2009, when Alemán was finally freed, an issue treated below. What is indisputable is that Ortega controlled Alemán’s prospects for freedom. Although the duopoly continued after Alemán’s 2002 conviction, the correlation of forces within the condominium had clearly shifted in the FSLN’s favor. The Second Ortega Administration

This second Ortega presidency not only led to the end of the regime built around the PLC-FSLN duopoly but at the same time also set in motion forces that produced Nicaragua’s current dominant power regime. Here I emphasize the former, reserving treatment of the latter for the next chapter. Daniel Ortega’s 2006 comeback actually began with the 2004 municipal elections. The FSLN took 87 of 151 localities, up from 52 four years earlier; the PLC dropped from 94 to 57, and third parties carried the rest.39 These outcomes, dramatically different from those of 2000, were produced with a relatively small swing in votes for each duopolist: the FSLN increased its share of the vote from 40.4 percent to 43.6 and the PLC fell to 36 percent from 41.5.40 To explain the Sandinistas’ improved performance, William Grigsby highlighted the good, honest government provided by Sandinista-led city administrations; the alliances the FSLN constructed with several other parties that saw seventeen of those non-Sandinista allies capture city halls; the ability of the FSLN machine to get out the vote; and the disorganization of the PLC.41 Within days of the results Daniel Ortega announced that he would be the party’s presidential candidate in 2006, thereby short-circuiting the aspirations of potential contenders, especially those of outgoing Managua mayor Herty Lewites. There was no convention, nor were there primaries or any vote by the FSLN’s membership. Ortega obviously did not need to even go through the motions of seeking and receiving the Sandinista nomination. That clearly demonstrated his complete control of the FSLN, as few parties would voluntarily forego the publicity a leadership race generates. Regarding the electoral comeback itself (see Table 6.2), it came out of an unprecedented three-way race that would have been a four-way contest had Herty Lewites, standard-bearer of the Sandinista dissidents in the MRS, not died on the eve of the campaign’s official start. As it was, the FSLN

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Table 6.2 2006 Nicaraguan General Election Results Party/Presidential Candidate FSLN/Ortega ALN/Montealegre PLC/Rizo MRS/Jarquín Totalsb

Votes for Presidential Candidate (%)

National Assembly Votes for Party (%)/ Number of Seats Won

38.0 28.3 27.1 6.3 99.7

37.6/38 26.7/24a 26.5/25 8.7/5 99.5/92

Sources: Compiled by author from Political Database of the Americas, “República de Nicaragua/Republic of Nicaragua, Resultados Elección Presidencial 2011/2011 Presidential Electoral Results,” http://pdba.georgetown.edu/Elecdata/Nica/pres11.html; and International Parliamentary Union, Nicaraguan Election Archive 2006, www.ipu.org/parline-e/reports/arc /2235_06.htm. Notes: a. Includes one seat for the presidential runner-up and one for the immediate past president. b. May not equal 100 percent due to rounding.

faced two Liberal contenders. One, the PLC, whose candidate was José Rizo, who had been Bolaños’s vice president, was linked to Alemán and the PLC. The other, the ALN (Alianza Liberal Nicaragüense [Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance]), led by Eduardo Montealegre, was fiercely opposed to both Alemán and the pact. The MRS, who criticized both the duopolistic regime and Ortega’s growing control over the FSLN, suffered a serious setback when Herty Lewites died; his replacement was Edmundo Jarquín, ambassador to Mexico and Spain during the first Ortega administration, and later an FSLN deputy in the National Assembly.42 One of the most interesting parts of the election was the open interference of the government of the United States in the process.43 As had been true since 1984, Washington did not want Ortega to win, but neither did the White House and State Department desire to see the Alemán-controlled PLC victorious. Their pick was Eduardo Montealegre of the ALN, an Ivy League–educated neoliberal technocrat. However, the PLC was not going to bow out and see Montealegre, who was expelled from the party in 2003, win. And neither was Montealegre about to cede any ground to his old nemeses. Thus the FSLN faced two Liberal parties instead of one and those two split the historic anti-Sandinista vote almost equally between them. When the votes were in, Ortega’s 38 percent of the presidential vote gave him a nine-point edge over the runner-up Montealegre, meaning that trailing the combined vote of the two discordant Liberals by seventeen points was irrelevant. A rather more surprising development during the campaign was the FSLN’s proposal to outlaw all forms of abortion, including the previously legal therapeutic abortion: one performed to preserve the health, even the

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life, of the mother. This occurred in October 2006, within ten days of the vote. Supported by both the PLC and the FSLN, the bill passed easily. Although it is impossible to determine if the Sandinistas’ decision to reverse their earlier position affected the election’s outcome, the action was part of a broader, continuing repositioning of the FSLN. Since 1996 the party’s campaign rhetoric had changed to include more Christian symbolism,44 and its stance on key economic issues had become more accepting of neoliberal policies. The important question now, however, is how Daniel Ortega and his Sandinistas brought the duopolistic power-sharing regime to an end in just five years. As the new government began its term in office it appeared as though power-sharing would have to continue. With but thirty-eight of ninety-two seats in the National Assembly the FSLN was nine votes short of a majority for most legislation and eighteen shy of the 60 percent required to amend the constitution. That latter number is significant not just because amending the constitution had become a central political instrument since the Alemán-Ortega pact was struck, but also because Ortega was determined to see himself reelected in 2011. As the 1995 amendments not only proscribed the immediate reelection of the president but also imposed a lifetime limit of two terms as president for any individual, the Sandinista leader was facing the end of his public career unless the constitution was amended yet again. Obviously, Ortega needed votes from outside the FSLN to pass ordinary legislation, too; but at least on some matters, such as economic policy, the Sandinistas and the two bands of Liberals shared enough common ground to avoid gridlock. There were, then, policy fields where polarization was not a problem. It was really only the questions of presidential reelection and the handling of Arnoldo Alemán’s incarceration that generated chronic conflict. To address these problems, Ortega and the Sandinistas counted on their control over the courts. The ex-president’s conditions of confinement had changed frequently before the 2006 elections to suit the needs of the FSLN. This did not change after Ortega’s return to power. Although a 2005 decision by a criminal court judge gave Alemán the freedom to travel anywhere in Nicaragua (and to campaign for the PLC), a 2007 appeals court decision, split along partisan lines—two Sandinistas to one Liberal—rescinded the order and restored the sentence of house arrest. Within a month, however, the criminal court judge reinstated her sentence, holding that the appeals panel’s action was ultra vires, that is, beyond its authority. This embarrassing judicial spectacle finally ended in 2009 with a decision by the Criminal Division of the Supreme Court (composed solely of Liberal justices, their San-

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dinista colleague apparently not having been informed that the court was sitting) that dismissed all charges against Alemán. Martínez Barahona reports that all of the Supreme Court justices she interviewed for her study viewed how Alemán got his freedom “as normal in Nicaraguan political life.”45 There appear to be two factors that explain why Arnoldo Alemán suddenly became a free man. One is linked to the 2008 municipal elections. 46 Although the Liberal caudillo was weakened after the 2006 elections, he still held the votes necessary to elect members of the Supreme Court, the CSE, and the controller, all of whom serve five-year terms. Therefore Alemán thought to use the PLC’s votes to gain more seats on those bodies. 47 For whatever reason, perhaps because he believed that the FSLN would do less well than in 2004, he decided to wait until after the municipal elections were held to strike a deal. In fact, the results of the 2008 vote were extremely favorable to the FSLN, leaving the PLC seriously weakened. In this light, dismissing all charges against Alemán may have signaled that Comandante Ortega saw his old foe as a spent force. The alternative view is that allowing an entirely Liberal panel of the Supreme Court to decide the Liberal leader’s fate benefited the FSLN by setting a precedent. Some nine months after a Liberal court gave Alemán the judicial decision he needed, a similarly entirely Sandinista Constitutional Division of the Supreme Court did the same for their leader and all the FSLN mayors in Nicaragua.48 President Ortega was ineligible to seek reelection on two constitutional grounds: immediate presidential reelection was prohibited and a president was limited to two terms in office in his or her lifetime. To address this problem the president, joined by Sandinista mayors who also could not seek immediate reelection, sought a writ of amparo49 protecting them from these constitutional provisions. Unsurprisingly, the Sandinistas sitting as the Supreme Court’s Constitutional Division (who, to get a quorum, needed to call FSLN alternates to replace the Liberal justices who missed the hearing) found a solution. That court held that the constitutional restrictions on reelections violated the rights of the president and the mayors to free political participation: the constitution was unconstitutional. And as the writ was sought only by those Sandinistas, only they were covered by the decision, leaving them the only ones to whom the constitutional provisions did not apply. So by late 2009, two years before the next general election, President Ortega seemed to have decided that the political power of ex-president Alemán was sufficiently diminished that the Liberal could resume his political life. More importantly, the Sandinista leader had his right to seek reelection affirmed by the Supreme Court. Even if the duopolistic, power-

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sharing regime still stood, it was so weakened that it could no longer countervail the now predominant FSLN.

Recapping the Duopolistic Regime Nicaragua’s experiment in duopolistic power-sharing, the Alemán-Ortega pact, degraded the quality of the nation’s democracy. What had been a functioning if somewhat rough-and-ready pluralistic, electoral democracy was turned into a regime run for the benefit of two caudillo-style political bosses. Yet it did retain open electoral competition between the two dreadnoughts through two general elections. What was to come was less democratic, because the country had been set, knowingly or not, on its way to being dominated by one man, his family, and his party, and unsurprisingly without fully free and fair elections. Kalowatie Deonandan has described the duopolistic, power-sharing pact struck by Alemán and Ortega as an attack on pluralism.50 Emphasizing the Alemán administration, she gives special attention to that government’s attempts to weaken CSOs and restrict the effectiveness of the news media. In both cases Alemán used legal harassment, such as imposing new financial charges or removing tax exemptions—called fiscal terrorism—and creating complicated new criteria that those organizations had to meet to be able to operate. President Bolaños did not continue those policies, but the reelected President Ortega introduced his own means of reducing the reach of political pluralism, as will be seen in Chapter 7. There can be no question that the duopolistic regime left Nicaragua less democratic than it was under its immediate predecessor. The state institutions the two leaders designed to concentrate power in the presidency and avoid accountability posed new challenges to democratic government and, by themselves, lowered the quality of the nation’s democracy. Adding the pact partners impeding the operation of civil society organizations whose work aimed to increase public participation in politics and hindering the news media to the list of obstacles facing pluralist democracy only made matters worse. However, even though the regime built on the PLC-FSLN pact attacked political pluralism and reduced horizontal accountability, it retained free elections. Further, despite encountering serious challenges, independent media continued to exist and function surprisingly well as both watchdogs and critics. Although the quality of democracy in Nicaragua declined under the duopolistic, power-sharing regime, the political system remained sufficiently democratic to allow citizens to change governments by their vote. Unfortunately, free elections—and those of 2004 and 2006 were freer than those of 2000 and 2001 when many parties were excluded—functioned

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within a broader system that worked to constrain competition, undermine judicial independence and the rule of law, and limit governmental transparency and accountability. And since the duopolists were the only parties with a realistic chance of winning, not least because they controlled the agency that ran elections and counted the votes, there was no realistic chance that changing governments would produce more democratic politics.

Was It a Regime? The power-sharing duopoly the pact built was intended to be a regime. That is, it defined the basic institutional structure of the state and provided the model for how and to whom power was to be distributed, as well as how and by whom power was to be exercised. This is clear from examining the machinery the pact adopted and, to a lesser extent, the uses to which both the Liberal and Sandinista administrations put that machinery. Yet there was always an underlying tension because each caudillo, Alemán and Ortega alike, also showed unmistakable signs of seeking political supremacy for himself and for his party. How long the duopoly could have lasted if Alemán had not been tried and convicted of various forms of corruption is a moot point, but two factors were present that always threatened the system. One was naturally the hegemonic pretensions of both leaders, which militated against the institutionalization of a competitive two-party political order, even one that accommodated a significant measure of power-sharing. The second factor was the fact that this power-sharing arrangement was not concluded to end a civil war or some other crisis of governability. Although the Sandinistas made governing difficult for Alemán, he nonetheless was able to govern. If governing is possible outside the duopolistic system, that system can be dispensed with once it becomes inconvenient. Seen in this light the pact and the regime it sustained were admittedly necessary first steps toward the desired goal of unchallengeable dominance, but they were not the final solution to the puzzle of just how to get that dominance. What is striking about the process described throughout this chapter and summarized above is that it reflects a conscious effort by the country’s two most powerful political leaders. When discussing in Chapter 3 the fall of the Conservative Republic, Nicaragua’s civic oligarchy, I referred to it as being similar to what John Peeler labeled “democratic deconsolidation.”51 I chose that label because it implies that the change occurred slowly and, more to the point, although specific decisions made by specific leaders hastened the demise of that regime, destroying the system was not the aim of the politicians. In the case of the Conservative Republic it was only the very last president to serve under that constitution who sought its demise.

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That Nicaraguan democracy began to decompose under the duopolistic regime is clear. Unlike what happened to the Conservative Republic 110 years earlier, though, this decline was the fruit of a conscious, collaborative effort by the nation’s two most powerful political leaders. To the extent that this was the case, something admittedly impossible to confirm without actually knowing Alemán’s and Ortega’s intentions, it qualifies as a case of what Kalowatie Deonandan and I called “undoing democracy.”52 When they work well, democratic regimes diffuse power, promote transparency, demand accountability, and make a politician’s and an administration’s continuance in office dependent on maintaining the support of a substantial proportion of a polity’s citizens. None of these attributes of a properly functioning democracy make the task of governing especially easy. They work against making rapid changes and are inimical to projects that concentrate power in only a few, carefully chosen hands. One can understand why practical politicians might chafe under the limits imposed by democracy. Most politicians in democratic systems, however, accept those bounds and work within them as best they can. Arnoldo Alemán and Daniel Ortega found that by collaborating they could escape democracy’s constraints to a large extent. As the two caudillos worked to tailor a regime suited to their needs, Nicaragua was taking a step away from democratic politics.

Notes 1. Manuel Álvarez Rivera, Election Resources on the Internet: General Elections in Costa Rica, Parts I and II (San José: Election Resources, 2014), www .electionresources.org/cr/index_en.html. 2. Parliament of Canada, Parlinfo, www.parl.gc.ca/parlinfo/compilations/elec tionsandridings/ResultsParty.aspx. 3. Emilio Álvarez Montalván, Cultura política Nicaragüense, 2nd ed. (Managua: Hispamer, 2000). 4. Pippa Norris, Driving Democracy: Do Power-Sharing Institutions Work? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 5. Arend Lijphart, “Consociational Democracy,” World Politics 21, no. 2 (January 1969): 207–225. 6. Paul Drake, Between Tyranny and Anarchy: A History of Democracy in Latin America, 1800–2006 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), pp. 142–160. 7. David Bushnell, The Making of Modern Colombia: A Nation in Spite of Itself (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), p. 151. 8. Some argue that La Violencia began in 1948 with the Bogatazo, the violence that swept Bogotá after the murder of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán. 9. Jonathon Hartlyn, The Politics of Coalition Rule in Colombia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988). 10. The candidate of the party whose turn it was to hold the presidency had to be approved by all factions of that party and be acceptable to the other party; see ibid., p. 94. 11. Caroline Hartzell and Matthew Hoddle, eds., Crafting Peace: Power-

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Sharing Institutions and the Negotiated Settlement of Civil Wars (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2007). 12. Matthew LeRiche and Matthew Arnold, South Sudan: From Revolution to Independence (London: Hurst and Company, 2012). 13. Nic Cheeseman and Blessing-Miles Tendi, “Power-Sharing in Comparative Perspective: The Dynamics of ‘Unity Government’ in Kenya and Zimbabwe,” Journal of Modern African Studies 48, no. 2 (June 2010): 203–229. 14. Hartlyn, Politics of Coalition Rule. 15. Terry Lynn Karl, “Petroleum and Political Pacts: The Transition to Democracy in Venezuela,” in Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Latin America, ed. Guillermo O’Donnell, Philippe Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead, pp. 196–219 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986). 16. Chile’s “parliamentary regime” (1891–1925) is the usually cited exception. However, the fact that it was not repeated points to the strength of the region’s political elites’ preference for strong presidential government. 17. Alejandro Bendaña, “Strange Bedfellows: The Alemán-Ortega Pact,” NACLA Report on the Americas 33, no. 2 (September–October 1999): 20–21. 18. David Dye, Democracy Adrift: Caudillo Politics in Nicaragua (Brookline, MA: Hemisphere Initiatives, 2004). 19. Envio, “Days of Smoke and Tears,” Revista Envio 203 (June 1998), www .envio.org.ni/articulo/1334. 20. Envio, “Time for a Pact or Time for Reflection?,” Revista Envio 204 (July 1998), www.envio.org.ni/articulo/1378. 21. Nicaragua, Ley 331, Ley Electoral, 19 de Enero de 2000, http://repositories .lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/17406. 22. For example, a four-party alliance would have to capture at least 16 percent of the presidential vote for it and each of its members to be able to run in future elections without having to qualify again by getting the signatures of 3 percent of the country’s registered voters. 23. Julio Luis Rocha, “PLC: The Resounding Winner,” Revista Envio 244 (November 2001), www.envio.org.ni/articulo/1547. 24. The CSJ eventually overturned the exclusion of parties that failed to meet the 4 percent standard in 2002, paving the way for a potentially multiparty future. See Lourdes Arróliga, “CSJ: Luz verde a pluripartidarismo,” Confidencial, November 24–30, 2002, www.confidencial.com.ni/archivo/2002-317/politica1-317.html. 25. Note, however, that the FSLN had disproportionate influence in the judiciary, having retained its pre-1990 appointments as part of the transition agreements following Chamorro’s election and then building on this base throughout the 1990s to consolidate a strong position. See Dye, Democracy Adrift. 26. David Dye and David Close, “Patrimonialism and Economic Policy in the Alemán Administration,” in Undoing Democracy: The Politics of Electoral Caudillismo, ed. David Close and Kalowatie Deonandan, pp. 119–142 (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004). 27. Envio, “Nicaragua’s Municipal Elections: The Good, the Bad, and the Uncertain,” Revista Envio 232 (November 2000), www.envio.org.ni/articulo/1459. 28. The percentage of the votes taken by the pacting parties was similarly unchanged from the 1996 municipal results at 81 percent. See Salvador Martí i Puig, “El regreso del FSLN al poder: ¿Es posible hablar de realineamiento electoral en Nicaragua?,” Política y gobierno 15, no. 1 (2008): 81. 29. Dye, Democracy Adrift. 30. David Owen, The Hubris Syndrome: Bush, Blair and the Intoxication of Power (York, UK: Methuen and Co., 2012); Ian Robertson, The Winner Effect: The Neuroscience of Success and Failure (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2011).

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31. David Close, “President Bolaños Runs a Reverse, or How Arnoldo Alemán Wound Up in Prison,” in Undoing Democracy: The Politics of Electoral Caudillismo, ed. David Close and Kalowatie Deonandan, pp. 167–182 (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004). 32. Ibid., pp. 172–176. 33. Jerez was eventually cleared on all charges, as was Alemán. Radio La Primerisima, “¿Alemán y Jerez inocentes?,” November 15, 2013, www.radiolaprimeri sima.com/noticias/152360/aleman-y-jerez-inocentes. 34. Blue and white are the colors of the Nicaraguan flag. 35. Karen Kampwirth, Feminism and the Legacy of Revolution: Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chiapas (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004), p. 74. 36. Lourdes Arróliga, “Sentencia pende sobre Bolaños,” Confidencial, April 4– 17, 2004, www.confidencial.com.ni/archivo/2004-383/politica1-383.htm. 37. Envio, “Is Nicaragua’s Electoral Race Between Trivelli and Chávez?,” Revista Envio 298 (May 2006), www.envio.org.ni/articulo/3301. 38. Elena Martínez Barahona, “A Politicized Judiciary,” in The Sandinistas and Nicaragua Since 1979, ed. David Close, Salvador Martí i Puig, and Shelley A. McConnell, pp. 98–105 (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2011). 39. William Grigsby, “2004: Municipal Elections: Connecting Dots for the Bigger Picture,” Revista Envio 280 (November 2004), www.envio.org.ni/articulo/2671; also his “2004 Municipal Elections: FSLN-Convergence Victory in Numbers,” Revista Envio 280 (November 2004), www.envio.org.ni/articulo/2672. 40. Salvador Martí i Puig, Elecciones y electos en Nicaragua, 1990–2006 (Salamanca: Instituto Iberoamerica, n.d.), http://americo.usal.es/oir/opal/elecciones/Elecc _Nicaragua_Marti.pdf, p. 4. 41. Grigsby, “Connecting the Dots” and “FSLN-Convergence Victory.” 42. Eden Pastora, once an FSLN guerrilla, also ran, heading his own party, the Alianza para el Cambio (Alliance for Change). He got 0.3 percent of the presidential vote. 43. Envio, “Is Nicaragua’s Electoral Race Between Trivelli and Chávez?” 44. Andrés Pérez Baltodano, “Political Culture,” in The Sandinistas and Nicaragua Since 1979, ed. David Close, Salvador Martí i Puig, and Shelley A. McConnell, pp. 65–90 (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2011). 45. Martínez Barahona, “Politicized Judiciary,” p. 104. 46. These extremely controversial elections receive more extensive treatment in the next chapter. 47. Envio, “The Cards Are on the Table,” Revista Envio 313 (August 2007), www.envio.org.ni/articulo/3627. 48. Shelley Ann McConnell, “The Uncertain Evolution of the Electoral System,” in The Sandinistas and Nicaragua Since 1979, ed. David Close, Salvador Martí i Puig, and Shelley A. McConnell, p. 50 (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2011). 49. A writ or decree of amparo serves a function similar to that of a writ of habeas corpus in some cases and as an injunction in others. 50. Kalowatie Deonandan, “The Caudillo Is Dead! Long Live the Caudillo!,” in Undoing Democracy: The Politics of Electoral Caudillismo, ed. David Close and Kalowatie Deonandan, pp. 183–198 (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004). 51. John Peeler, Building Democracy in Latin America, 3rd ed. (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2009). 52. David Close and Kalowatie Deonandan, eds., Undoing Democracy: The Politics of Electoral Caudillismo (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004).

7 Dominant Power and Personalistic Rule, 2011–Present In the 2011 elections Nicaragua’s Liberals again split into two camps: the PLI, whose candidate was Fabio Gadea, officially took 31 percent of the vote; and the PLC, led by Arnoldo Alemán, fell to 5.9 percent. With the collapse of the PLC vote in 2011 (see Table 7.3), Nicaragua’s experiment with official political duopoly ended. The pact still exists, as the PLC has received seats on the National Assembly’s executive as well as positions on the collegial controller. However, these are given at the Sandinistas’ discretion and give the emerging regime an exaggerated air of pluralism. In lieu of a duopoly, Nicaraguans now are governed by a regime that most closely resembles Carothers’s dominant power system. This regime features limited but still real political space, some political contestation by opposition groups, and at least most of the basic institutional forms of democracy. Yet one political grouping—whether it is a movement, a party, an extended family, or a single leader—dominates the system in such a way that there appears to be little prospect of alternation of power in the foreseeable future.1

Nicaragua’s version of a dominant power system naturally has its own traits and reflects Daniel Ortega’s mode of governing. This appears to be based on a triad of forces: a single leader, him; his wife Rosario Murillo as an equal partner, with some of their children assuming supporting roles; and the FSLN. Together, these provide a formidable base for the emerging regime, as well as a daunting obstacle to challengers, whether parties, movements and civil society organizations, or individuals. Moreover, developments since the beginning of Daniel’s third term have brought the military and police into his orbit and perhaps under his sway. As a result, Nicaragua’s political system has taken another step away from not just elec-

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toral democracy but also from political pluralism and toward monism, a too familiar Latin American standby. Chapter 7 describes this system and analyzes its operation. Nicaragua is not the only country that has made such a transition, nor is it alone in possibly continuing toward a decreasingly competitive and democratic regime. This latter issue will be addressed in Chapter 8, but the essential point is that movement away from democratic pluralism is not uncommon. That aside, it is clear that Nicaragua’s political system is not working as numerous observers would have forecast in 1990, when the then-six-yearold electoral democratic regime transferred power from one party to another. Few would have predicted that in ten years anti-Sandinistas and Sandinistas would find common ground in a project to systematically undermine democratic rule or that in sixteen the FSLN would be well along the road to single-party hegemony. For the first seventeen years of democracy’s third wave, from the Portuguese revolution of April 1974 to the fall of the Soviet Union in December 1991, many analysts, commentators, and participants saw bright futures for the newly minted democracies. Those analyzing this remarkable process discerned a “transition paradigm.”2 This envisioned a multistep process that showed the path the emerging democratic states would follow to take their places alongside the world’s established democracies. Such was the optimism of the times that sober scholars of world affairs could speak confidently of the advent of a nearly universal democratic age, when the vast majority of the earth’s peoples would enjoy the fruits of political freedom.3 There were plausible reasons for this optimism. Even the once communist states of Europe, including the constituent elements of the former Soviet Union, organized free and fair elections where voters could actually choose their government, instead of ratifying the Communist Party’s slate. Along with competitive elections came free media providing alternative views on issues and personal liberties that could be put into practice. Yet it was not long before adjectives were being added to describe these new democracies.4 Terms like illiberal democracy,5 electoral authoritarianism,6 and competitive authoritarianism7 were used to describe the evolving political systems, which were not exactly democracies but neither were they textbook dictatorships. Hybrid was the portmanteau term applied to these regimes that “adopted the form of democracy with little of its substance.”8 This literature treating the politics of less than democratic systems is examined in the next chapter. For the moment it is enough to know that Nicaragua did not make this transition alone. To this point, we have seen how three changes of regime have been brought about in Nicaragua since 1979. All were consciously wrought and reflected the vision of a political elite. The first came after a revolutionary insurrection overthrew a long-standing dictatorship, and the vanguard

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regime that was established reflected the preferences of the victorious Sandinistas, especially those of the nine comandantes de la revolución. Just five years later, those same Sandinistas decided that an electoral democracy was the system best able to give their revolution a long political life. This led them to make a second complete overhaul of the political system. Electoral democracy lasted for sixteen years before Arnoldo Alemán and Daniel Ortega struck a deal to bring the PLC and FSLN into a power-sharing duopoly, the third new regime. Their preferred system began tottering within two years, but endured until 2011, before finally falling. Its demise was in large part the work of Daniel Ortega. The regime that succeeded it, Nicaragua’s current polity, reflects his aims and values. Of course this does not imply that this current iteration of Nicaragua’s political regime leaves Daniel Ortega an autocrat. He has advisers, all of the state’s machinery, and a well-organized party to count on and work through. The president must also deal with an array of active and independent if often ineffective opponents. Yet he is the final arbiter. Thus this chapter’s analysis of the dominant power, personalistic regime is also necessarily the study of how Daniel Ortega built a political system that reflected his vision of what a well-governed Nicaragua should look like. Movement toward this fourth regime began well before the new order was consolidated in 2011. That process started in 2000 with the pact and grew stronger after Alemán’s conviction in 2002. It continued through the rest of the Bolaños administration but really became unstoppable only after the 2006 elections returned Ortega to office. On regaining the presidency Daniel Ortega obtained the formal power to match his already substantial real power, a combination that allowed him to carry out this latest regime transition.

The New Regime’s Traits For anyone who remembers the FSLN of the 1980s it only takes opening the webpage of any Nicaraguan government department to see that things are not as they were. The red and black of the FSLN’s flag, colors that symbolized the revolution, are nowhere to be seen. In their place is an arrestingly bright pink. Similarly absent is most of the radical discourse of revolutionary democracy that marked both the revolutionary vanguard regime and the first elected Sandinista government. The new system is Christian, socialist, and solidaristic. This rebadging of the Sandinista project, the work of First Lady Rosario Murillo, is just one sign that a new regime is present. The power-sharing pact of 2000 laid the current system’s foundation. Awarding the governing party (in practice the party of Nicaragua’s president) a majority of places on the CSJ, the CSE, and the collegial controller

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general placed exceptional authority in the hands of that party’s leader. When the president has a legislative majority, there are few avenues for imposing horizontal accountability on the chief executive. Were this dominance of the machinery of state the only resource Daniel Ortega possessed he would be a very powerful president, even among Latin America’s highly executive-centric governments. However, he has more tools at his disposal. One of the first acts of his newly elected administration in 2007 was to issue a decree establishing the Consejos del Poder Ciudadano (CPC, Councils of Citizens’ Power), a part of the El Pueblo Presidente (the People as President) plan. Set up to enable direct, participatory contact between the executive and the citizenry, the CPCs were to be the plan’s organizational base. To ensure that the CPC worked as intended, there were FSLN party professionals orienting the councils at every step along a path that ended at President Ortega’s desk. Moreover, Rosario Murillo was in charge of the entire CPC system. Although this model can facilitate access to decisionmakers, it looks uncomfortably like ward heeler politics.9 It should certainly help the party extend its structures further into the community. In fact, as will be seen below, there has been a serious weakening of municipal authorities since Daniel Ortega’s return to power. Beyond the institutional level, Ortega’s return to power brought the return of violence as a political instrument, as Sandinista supporters began responding violently to peaceful protest, a matter treated later in this chapter. Further, the new government continued the overt harassment of opponents that marked the Alemán administration, targeting civil society organizations and opposition media.10 As well, the Ortega family’s acquisition of television and radio stations and the president’s refusal to talk to any media not controlled by the FSLN or the Ortegas seriously disadvantage independent or opposition-linked outlets. The latter still exist but work under difficult conditions. This political system that the Ortega government has been constructing since taking office in 2007 is verticalist (power is structured and exercised hierarchically), hyperpresidential, personalist with a touch of Banfield’s “amoral familism,”11 and increasingly hegemonic. This is what a dominant power regime should look like. There remains room for independent political action, and nonpolitical activity is generally lightly regulated. However, space to challenge the government is restricted and the weight of an entire regime presses against challengers and protects those who govern. To put this system into perspective, it can be compared to other forms of one-person rule. It has little in common with personalized military dictatorships, such as Pinochet’s Chile, as Ortega’s government is far more pluralistic. Neither is it anything like one-party regimes dominated by a single leader, such as the Castros’ Cuba and the Kims’ North Korea. This new Nicaraguan regime shares substantially more common ground with old-

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fashioned, machine-style boss politics and conventional caudillismo, although not fully corresponding to either. Bosses controlled the city administration, the city council, the local electoral machinery, and ordinarily had great influence over municipal courts. A boss also headed a potent party machine, with enough money to make sure the party faithful got their Christmas turkeys and maybe a job for voting the right way. Caudillos held similar levels of control over the government, but generally paid less attention to building an electoral clientele, because elections mattered less to them. They relied more on force and proclaimed, ignored, or amended their own constitutions when convenient. They were not hesitant to close opposition papers, the only important medium of their day; nor were they inclined to tolerate opponents. Another way in which the two differed was that bosses could not control the state and federal governments, including the courts at those levels. Thus they had to live with the national and state constitutions as they were. Further, a boss almost always faced at least one newspaper that campaigned against him and he could not keep citizens from organizing the reform parties that eventually drove the bosses from power. Finally, bosses could not stop their clients from growing better off and no longer needing the patronage their machines provided. To date, Daniel Ortega has shown greater control of the media than the bosses had but less than what most caudillos exercised. Unlike bosses but like caudillos, he can amend the constitution when and as he considers necessary. He can also use the CSE to keep unwanted parties out of the electoral arena. Equally important, early twenty-first-century Nicaragua does not have the material resources to eliminate people’s dependence on clientelistic politics. In short, the dominant power regime is not at the point of putting itself out of business.

Daniel Ortega’s Comeback Entering 2006, Daniel Ortega’s electoral prospects were good. He was doubtlessly the country’s most powerful politician. He also commanded a political party that was not just well disciplined and organized but also on the rise since the 2004 municipal elections. His principal opponent Arnoldo Alemán was in and out of jail, depending on Ortega’s orders, which made an Alemán candidacy impossible. That left this other modern caudillo and his PLC, the only party with the resources to take on the FSLN, distinctly weakened. Also working to Daniel’s advantage was being able to win the presidency with 35 percent of the vote and a five-point lead over the runner-up. Those numbers made it possible to imagine Ortega’s retaking power, even

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with his recent high-floor (over 35 percent), low-ceiling (under 45 percent) levels of electoral support. A split in the Liberal ranks between Alemán’s pro-pact supporters, whose presidential candidate was José Rizo, and the antipact faction led by Eduardo Montealegre made the chances of an FSLN win even better. The only cloud on Ortega’s horizon was former Managua mayor Herty Lewites at the head of an antipact, Sandinista movement that could cut into the FSLN vote. However, Lewites died just as the formal campaign period was starting, depriving the Sandinista dissidents of a skilled and popular campaigner, and probably giving Ortega the edge he needed to win. In the presidential race (see Table 6.2), Ortega captured 38 percent of the vote and José Rizo got 27.1, making the pact partners the choice of 65.1 percent of Nicaraguan voters. If nothing else, those numbers suggest that duopolistic power-sharing had not completely alienated the citizenry. However, adding the 28.3 percent of the presidential ballots going to Eduardo Montealegre of the ALN to the 27.1 percent taken by the PLC’s Rizo shows the main anti-FSLN option supported by 55.4 percent of voters, a solid majority. Summing all the votes for parties other than FSLN in the presidential race makes it clear that Ortega was rejected by five of every eight voters. These results led most observers12 to predict that Daniel Ortega would have to accommodate his more numerous opponents to get anything done. The result would be a moderate administration. But that did not happen for at least three reasons. First, Daniel had already shown himself a master at creating power “by using the means available to [him] more effectively than others [used theirs].”13 He did this during the Chamorro administration, turning a landslide defeat into a position of influence by becoming the president’s ally. Then, after a second straight loss in 1996, Ortega marshalled the FSLN’s resources to get a power-sharing pact where he and his party occupied key veto points in the system. Finally, as if to prove that those two times were not flukes, Daniel made himself Nicaragua’s indispensable political figure during the administration of Enrique Bolaños, despite being on the opposition bench. If he could do that outside of government, he would certainly do no less from the president’s office. Second, for the first two years of Ortega’s second term, whether Alemán went free or faced house arrest or even jail still depended on Daniel’s decisions. As a result, for at least 2007 and 2008 Ortega could command the PLC votes when necessary. He had, that is, a legislative majority when he needed one. The final factor was Nicaragua’s new foreign supporter: Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. Since 1909 all Nicaraguan governments have had a powerful foreign backer on whom they could depend. Until 1979 the United States assumed that role, ceding it to the Soviet Union and to a lesser degree Cuba

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until 1990, before taking it up again from 1990 to 2007.14 In 2006, just before the electoral campaign officially started, Chávez offered Nicaragua chemical fertilizer and petroleum products at a discounted price, as well as free eye operations.15 The Venezuelan made it clear that he backed Ortega and that with Daniel as president Nicaragua could count on Chávez’s assistance. Ortega therefore was well equipped to govern as if he had a majority mandate.

The Foundations of the New Regime Examining three policy areas clarifies the logic and operational dynamics of the dominant power regime. Economic policy comes first. It was built on three seemingly incompatible bases: redistributing wealth to alleviate poverty (below the $2.50/day threshold) and especially extreme poverty (under the $1.25 daily threshold); following IMF standards and cooperating with Nicaraguan capitalists; and joining ALBA (Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América [Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America]), the regional organization built by Hugo Chávez. Next is foreign policy, whose centerpiece was Venezuela, but also featured good relations with Russia, Iran, and even the United States. The last piece is El Pueblo Presidente, a form of citizen participation that would link local-level organizations to the executive. Economics

Table 7.1 presents Nicaragua’s economic growth figures since 2007 compared to the rest of Central America and to Latin America as a whole. Nicaragua’s economy shows the third highest growth in Central America and effectively matches the Latin American mean during the period considered here. This is a good result.

Table 7.1 Economic Growth in Central America, 2007–2012 (percentages)

Nicaragua Costa Rica El Salvador Guatemala Honduras Panama Latin America

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

Average

5.0 7.9 3.8 6.3 6.2 12.1 5.6

4.0 2.7 1.3 3.3 4.2 10.1 4.1

–2.2 –1.0 –3.1 0.5 –2.4 3.9 –1.5

3.6 5.0 1.4 2.9 3.7 7.5 5.9

5.4 4.4 2.2 4.2 3.8 10.9 4.4

5.2 5.1 1.9 3.0 3.9 10.8 3.1

3.5 4.2 1.3 3.0 3.2 9.2 3.6

Source: Compiled by author from United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, Statistical Yearbook, 2013 (Santiago, Chile: ECLAC, 2013), www.cepal.org.

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The data presented in Table 7.2, which show how well Central America’s nations have done in alleviating poverty in this century, also reflect well on Nicaragua. That only the much wealthier Costa Rica recorded a lower percentage of its population suffering from extreme poverty is truly impressive since Nicaragua is Central America’s poorest country. It is reasonable to assume that Nicaragua’s success in combating poverty contributed to its overall economic growth, as more people had at least a bit more money to spend. Similarly, it was almost certainly the combination of growth and specific policies that reduced poverty.16 What allowed this to happen? Nicaragua’s cornerstone antipoverty policy since 2007 is Hambre Cero (Zero Hunger). This program targets extremely poor, mainly rural families, with a special focus on women. It aims to give recipients a capital base (animals, seeds, and training) to let them increase production. This should lead to greater food security both for families in the program and for all domestic consumers. Hambre Cero gives a cow, a sow, and some chickens to families with one to ten manzanas of land (roughly 1.7 to 17 acres, or 0.7 to 7 hectares). Those with less than a manzana get chickens and tools, and families with urban lots of at least one-quarter manzana (about 18,000 square feet or 1,600 square meters) receive a piglet, chickens, and feed for the animals.17 Hambre Cero’s weak point is how participants are selected. Resources are obviously limited, so not all impoverished families can benefit from Hambre Cero. Given that the program includes the land-poor, the near-landless, and poor urban residents with large lots, it is difficult to define suitable poverty criteria. The default position has been to include subjective, often partisan considerations, determined and applied by representatives of the CPCs and local FSLN political secretaries.18

Table 7.2 Poverty and Extreme Poverty in Central America Poverty (US$2.50/day)

Nicaragua Costa Rica El Salvador Guatemala Honduras Panama

Extreme Poverty (US$1.25/day)

2002 (or nearest)

2012 (or nearest)

2002 (or nearest)

2012 (or nearest)

69.4 (2001) 20.3 48.9 (2001) 60.2 77.3 36.9

42.7 18.8 45.3 53.7 67.4 (2011) 25.3

42.5 (2001) 8.2 22.1 (2001) 30.9 54.4 18.6

7.6 7.3 13.5 29.1 (2006) 42.8 (2011) 12.4

Sources: Compiled by author from United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, Social Panorama, 2013 (Santiago, Chile: ECLAC, 2013), www.cepal.org; Fundación Internacional para el Desafío Económico Global, Encuesta de hogares para medir la pobreza en Nicaragua (Managua: FIDEG, 2012), www.fideg.org/investi gaciones-y-publicaciones/107-2013-06-26-00-53-17; and World Bank, “Poverty and Equity,” Poverty Data (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2014), http://povertydata.worldbank.org/poverty /region/LAC.

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Operating alongside Hambre Cero as an antipoverty tool is Usura Cero (Zero Usury). Usura Cero is the Nicaraguan government’s microfinance program, which specializes in lending to women. It too works in concert with local CPCs, suggesting again the potential presence of partisan oversight. From its founding in 2007 to the end of 2013 the program served some 467,000 women, who can currently access loans of up to 10,000 córdobas (approximately US$400 in 2015) at a fixed interest rate of 5 percent,19 well below bank rates, at 11.6 percent in mid-2015.20 Most of the loans go to finance small businesses that are run out of the home, such as pulperías, “mom and pop” grocery stores. Recent research on microfinance suggests that many microfinance loans do not go toward investments in business but rather support consumption or meeting unexpected expenses.21 The most plausible hypothesis is that the same applies in Nicaragua. Usura Cero’s low interest rate would make it an attractive source of loans for women looking to help their families overcome poverty. ALBA and Albanisa

Just after his inauguration in January 2007, Daniel Ortega worked with Hugo Chávez to draw up a plan to make more resources available to Nicaragua’s government. The result was Albanisa: ALBA de Nicaragua, SA (ALBA of Nicaragua, Inc.). Albanisa is a private company, owned 49 percent by the Nicaraguan state petroleum company Petronic and 51 percent by its Venezuelan counterpart, PDVSA (Petroleos de Venzuela, SA, or Venezuelan Petroleum, Inc.). Actual control of Albanisa, though, rests with Daniel Ortega.22 From 2007 through 2013, loans, grants, and investments from Albanisa brought roughly $2.8 billion to Nicaragua, substantially outstripping other sources of foreign cooperation.23 The greater part of Albanisa’s money comes from the sale of Venezuelan oil in Nicaragua. Half the value of the oil must be paid in ninety days, but the rest is financed at 2 percent interest over twenty-five years, with a two-year grace period. It is the latter that has served as a source of additional funds for the Ortega government. For example, a grant to subsidize electricity consumption by the poor and a $30-per-month pay raise for state employees in 2010 were both initially financed by Albanisa money.24 Further, as Albanisa is a private enterprise, the money it generates that is used by the state does not appear in the budget, hence is not subject to legislative oversight. There are other concerns about Albanisa. One is the reach of its operations. Albanisa is a conglomerate of at least eleven companies,25 an “octopus” according to Luis Galeano.26 A special edition of the newsweekly Confidencial in 2011, titled “Albaleaks” because it was based on leaked documents, produced a long list of problems.27 Among them were repeated

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losses rung up by Albanisa, sloppy accounting and unclear lines of responsibility that reflected a general lack of transparency and accountability, the predominance of individuals who either work directly for the president or are senior figures in the FSLN, close ties between some of Ortega’s children and Albanisa, and of course the relations existing between Albanisa and both the president and the FSLN. To put this in context, Albanisa and its ties to the Ortega administration can be seen as another example of the opaque operations, unclear lines of accountability, and generally top-down governing model that have characterized Nicaraguan politics for generations. Albanisa is just old-time politics in new clothes. Foreign Policy

It is not uncommon for small, poor countries to seek a larger, wealthier ally. Sometimes this ally becomes a patron, a trustworthy source of both material and symbolic support. Nicaraguan foreign policy has worked in this way since at least 1909, when US backing was instrumental in bringing victory to a Conservative coup against the Liberal dictator Zelaya. Before Venezuela assumed the role, it had been filled by two great powers: the United States, to 1979 and again from 1990 to 2007, and the Soviet Union between 1979 and 1990. In those earlier iterations, the great power held substantial influence over Nicaragua’s foreign affairs, expecting Managua to follow its patron’s leadership. Venezuela did not do this. This has let Nicaragua maintain good relations with Washington and develop closer ties with Russia and Iran, without damaging its special relationship with Caracas. As a result, Nicaragua has been able to realize one of the now forgotten aims of the Sandinista revolution, namely, “diversifying dependence” by sustaining a wide array of amicable relations. However, Ortega’s foreign relations have not been trouble-free. Border controversies with Colombia and Costa Rica have been particularly difficult. A maritime boundary was at issue in the Colombian case.28 In 2001, Nicaragua took Colombia to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), claiming that a 1928 treaty transferring several Caribbean islands to the South American state was invalid. The ICJ rejected that claim in its 2012 decision but did grant Nicaragua an exclusive economic zone reaching 200 nautical miles from its coast and overlapping with formerly Colombian waters. Colombia rejected the ruling. Nicaragua responded in 2013 by bringing a new case to the ICJ asking the court to define exact boundaries.29 The matter remains unresolved. Nicaragua’s dispute with Costa Rica is even more complicated. It began in 2005 and has come to center on contending claims to an island on the Caribbean coast, where the Rio San Juan enters the sea. Known as Isla

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Calero to the Costa Ricans and Harbour Head in Nicaragua, the island is sought by both for its tourism potential and as a possible basis for claiming offshore oil reserves. But the issue goes well beyond that, with questions regarding who has rights of access to land along the Rio San Juan for purposes of development.30 The dispute attracted international attention in 2010 when both states dispatched armed security forces to the border. The ICJ ordered both sides to withdraw from the frontier, thereby defusing tensions. This case too is unresolved. Nonetheless, the disputes with Colombia and Costa Rica at least lie outside the realm of great-power politics, which may make them easier to settle. El Pueblo Presidente, Consejos del Poder Ciudadano, and Gabinetes de la Familia

Ortega’s 2006 campaign made much of the slogan “El Pueblo Presidente.” Exactly what that slogan means is not self-evident, although in political-ad English it would probably be “The People: President,” or “The People as President”—something catchy but ambiguous. In practice, it has been the Ortega administration’s way of promoting citizen engagement and participatory democracy, what it calls direct democracy. This system’s foundation was set out in Decreto 3-2007.31 But Decreto 3-2007’s main purpose was restructuring the executive, the normal, early-days reorganization that all new governments undertake. This placed El Pueblo Presidente squarely in the executive branch. Decreto 3-2007 also elaborated the duties of the Council of Communication and Citizenship, created by Decreto 2-2007.32 The executive director of the council has always been Rosario Murillo, the director of the CPCs. Direct democracy, therefore, works not through referendums, initiatives, or recalls, but through the CPCs, which give citizens direct access to the executive. However, the CPCs also give the executive unmediated access to citizens. Accordingly, the CPCs assumed the role of “delivering public services in health and education, and in promoting the administration’s Hambre Cero, Usura Cero, and Food for the People programs.”33 Using CSOs to deliver government programs is common, but in most places an existing CSO receives a contract to do the work. The CPC model differs in that the consejos were created by government to do this job as part of the government’s version of direct democracy.34 However, the CPCs did not flourish. Kelly Bay-Meyers analyzed twenty-three selected CPCs in 2008–2009 and found that no more than 7 percent of the population participated in them.35 However, a nationwide survey in 2010 found that just over 12 percent of Nicaraguans reported some activity in these bodies, which were the only civil society groups to see participation grow from 2008 to 2010.36 If the government’s aim was to give

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the FSLN an entry in the voluntary, community-based sector (VCBS) or to give Sandinista VCBS activists a branded platform for their activity, those numbers might suffice. If, though, the CPC were intended to engage a great mass of participants the results would disappoint. The latter appears to have been the case as the CPCs have now been supplanted by the Gabinetes de la Familia (GF) or Family Cabinets.37 These new organizations came into being in February 2013 via an amendment to the Family Code;38 their role is still in formation. Together, the CPC and GF constitute the FSLN’s efforts to structure citizen participation in governing. Because the GF are very new, analysis of how these bodies work must center on the CPCs. Bay-Meyers found that the consejos’ close links with the state, which they needed to deliver government programs, led to concerns about partisan favoritism in the distribution of benefits. The CPCs generated opposition and stonewalling from non-FSLN mayors, whereas Sandinista mayors were supportive but as openly partisan as their opponents. The end result was limited participation by citizens who did not support the Ortega administration. However, Bay-Meyers also reported that where a history of bipartisan cooperation existed, participation in the CPCs crossed party lines and access to benefits was equitable.39 Although the initiative was intriguing, its partisan identity was too strong for it to work in Nicaragua’s polarized political environment.

The Turning Point in 2008 Most observers expected the FSLN to do well in the 2008 municipal elections. However, it seemed likely that the Sandinistas would lose control of the capital to former ALN presidential candidate Eduardo Montealegre. This did not happen and Montealegre and his followers suspected fraud. The Sandinistas responded with violence. That the CSE never published detailed results of any of the races strengthened the suspicion that some elections were stolen by the FSLN. These events marked a shift toward hegemonic politics. Giovanni Sartori identified two distinct party systems in polities where one party won consistently but allowed other parties to compete.40 He labeled one system one-party predominant. In that system one party wins repeatedly (four straight wins is a reasonable threshold) without resorting to systematic fraud. Botswana (Botswana Democratic Party, 1966–present) leads the current field. Among the industrialized democracies, the bestknown cases are Sweden (Social Democrats, 1936–1976), Japan (Liberal Democrats, 1955–1993), and the US Solid South (Democrat, 1876–1972; Republican, 1980–present). However, Alberta, a Canadian province, deserves a mention because the current national record holder (Progressive

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Conservative Party, 1971–2015) began its streak by defeating another predominant party (Social Credit Party, 1935–1971). These parties take advantage of their incumbency and seek to split the opposition but rarely resort to massive fraud. If they can govern for over three decades straight without blatant illegality, why would they risk committing fraud? Systems where fraud is regularly present Sartori called hegemonic. The best example of such systems is Mexico from 1929 to 1997. The FSLN’s success since the municipal elections of 2008 suggests that Nicaragua has some of the traits of one-party hegemonic systems. In Chapter 3, I suggested that one of the reasons the Sandinistas might have moved from revolutionary vanguardism to electoral democracy was that their strength and the weakness of all the other parties had convinced them that they would never face a serious electoral challenge. They learned in 1990 that such was not the case. Could losing the presidency and remaining Nicaragua’s equivalent of an official opposition in 1996 and 2001 have convinced Daniel Ortega that elections he cannot lose are better than elections he will probably win? Municipal Elections, 2008

The Municipal Elections of 2008 produced the greatest controversy of any vote held since 1984. Of 14641 city halls (mayors plus majorities on council), the FSLN took 105 (72 percent) to 37 (25.3 percent) for the PLC and 4 (2.7 percent) for other parties. This is an impressive result, but final totals, broken down to show the outcome at every 400-voter JRV (Junta Receptora de Votos, or poll), were never published. Further, projecting from nearly complete results (roughly 90 percent) Martí í Puig and Close calculated that the FSLN would have taken about 50.2 percent of the vote, the PLC 46.8 percent, and the rest some 3 percent.42 It is both possible and plausible that a 3.4 percent margin in the vote can yield a disproportionate number of wins to one side, especially if turnout is low, as it was here at 56.4 percent.43 However, without having the full results, poll by poll, the final tally could not be confirmed. Beyond those curious overall results, the mayor’s race in Managua provoked open protest that led to a violent response by FSLN supporters. Eduardo Montealegre, one of the losing presidential candidates in 2006, sought the job of mayor of Managua for a coalition led by the PLC. His principal opponent was Alexis Argüello, a former world champion boxer and vice mayor of the city from 2004 to 2008. Argüello was declared the winner with 51 percent of the votes to 46 percent for Montealegre. However, Montealegre’s poll watchers had results, signed by all the poll watchers of all the other parties and the presidents of all the polling stations in Managua, showing that he had actually won. Based on this evidence he

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claimed that the CSE failed to count ballots from opposition strongholds in Managua and so let the Sandinistas capture the capital.44 Later analysis by political scientist José Antonio Peraza,45 examined below, confirmed this. When his complaints were rebuffed, Montealegre and his followers organized protest marches only to be attacked by Sandinista partisans. The same thing happened when the opposition sought to present claims of fraud at CSE headquarters.46 In response, the government claimed that these were not instances of Sandinista-sponsored intimidation, but rather FSLN supporters acting spontaneously to “defend the vote” and so prevent fraud.47 However, with their control of the CSE, Ortega and the FSLN could have let the CSE carry out a pro forma investigation, even cede more votes to Montealegre to tighten the results, yet leave Argüello victorious. And a word from Daniel Ortega presumably would have stopped any violent counterdemonstrations cold. However, the 2008 municipal elections were not the last word in controversies surrounding Nicaragua’s municipalities. Since June 2010, a number of FSLN mayors have been removed from office by the FSLN itself. Managua mayor Daysi Torres explained the process this way: “Sandinista mayors must accept what the party sends them because the offices are not theirs, but the Sandinista Front’s.”48 This rather unorthodox reading of the function of local elections marked the end of fourteen years of increasing municipal autonomy and growing decentralization of power in Nicaragua.49 Considering that it was the performance of autonomous Sandinista mayors that sparked the comeback of the FSLN as a winning electoral force, seeing the party declare that mayors are effectively its employees is incongruous. It certainly left no doubt where real power rested. Other Examples

Municipal elections in 2012 gave the Sandinistas control of 87 percent (134/153) of Nicaragua’s municipalities, with 67.9 percent of the vote. The PLI took 21.1 percent and won twelve city halls; the PLC, 8.5 percent and three; Yatama, the regional party of the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region, took three municipalities, and the ALN one, each of these last two with less than 1 percent of the national vote.50Although Mauricio Zúñiga concluded that the FSLN’s result was legitimate in the main,51 there were still many charges of irregularities. Roberto Courtney, director of the national observer group Ética y Transparencia (Ethics and Transparency), declared these elections worse than those of 2008, saying “that there was fraud in 70 municipalities,” 45 percent of the total.52 Worse, postelectoral violence claimed three lives.53 However they got it, the Sandinistas’ control over Nicaragua’s local governments is close to complete. The inability of

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the two Liberal parties to unite diluted their 29.6 percent of the local vote, handing more victories to the FSLN. Building political hegemony cannot stop at elections, however. The last chapter described the two court cases in 2009, which demonstrated how the FSLN president could work his way around supposed black letter law: the decision that freed Ortega and the FSLN mayors from the constitutional constraints on reelection. These can be seen as putting the state above the law, something anathema in any constitutional polity. More recently, the FSLN has started to pressure government employees to join the party, even if the individual is formally a member of another party, bringing 3 percent of the worker’s pay to the Sandinistas.54 Commenting on the same phenomenon, the US State Department noted that “employees in various state institutions were required to affiliate with the FSLN and that to apply for a government position, an applicant must receive a written recommendation from the FSLN.”55 Although all political systems reserve places for political appointees, this variation on patronage politics takes a large step toward making the civil service into a Sandinista closed shop, where membership in the FSLN becomes a prerequisite for holding a civil service appointment. As such, it goes beyond the usual mix of government jobs, appointments to boards, and contracts to friends and supporters that characterizes spoils-system politics. In fact, it recalls the Sandinization of the public service after the revolutionary triumph, an action that was then necessary to ensure that the government’s programs would be enacted as intended. That does not appear to be the rationale in the present case, which looks more like a means to finance the party and gain more leverage over public sector employees. General Elections, 2011

General elections in 2011 (see Table 7.3) once again raised doubts and sowed suspicions of electoral improprieties. The results generated charges of fraud from the largest opposition party,56 and neutral observers identified numerous irregularities.57 The government rebuffed the allegations and the CSE declared the results official in record time.58 Interestingly, the alleged manipulations only affected a handful of legislative seats, enough to return the majority needed to amend the constitution without support from other parties. Regarding the critiques, no one but PLI presidential candidate Fabio Gadea denied that Ortega and the FSLN won. Indeed, late in the campaign at least two polls, CID-Gallup of Costa Rica and Siglo Nuevo 59 of Nicaragua, showed the Sandinista with nearly 60 percent of the decided vote and the Liberal with just under 20. However, despite the general cor-

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Table 7.3 2011 Nicaraguan General Election Results Party/Presidential Candidate FSLN/Daniel Ortega PLI/Fabio Gadea PLC/Arnoldo Alemán Others Totals

Votes for Presidential Candidate (%) 62.5 31.0 5.9 0.6 100

National Assembly Votes for Party (%)/ Number of Seats Won 60.9/63a 31.6/27b 6.4/2 1.1/0 100/92

Sources: Compiled by author from Political Database of the Americas, “República de Nicaragua/Republic of Nicaragua, Resultados Elección Presidencial 2011/2011 Presidential Electoral Results,” http://pdba.georgetown.edu/Elecdata/Nica/pres11.html; and International Parliamentary Union, Nicaraguan Election Archives, 2001, www.ipu.org/parline-e/reports /2235_E.htm. Notes: a. FSLN received an extra seat for having the past president; taken by the past vice president. b. PLI received an extra seat for having the presidential runner-up.

respondence of polling data and the final result, observers found a great deal wrong with Nicaragua’s electoral administration. The organization of the elections, 60 the administration of the vote, and how the vote was counted were all called into question. This comment from the European Union’s Election Observation Mission is representative of the tone of the criticisms: The 6 November elections constituted a deterioration in the democratic quality of Nicaraguan electoral processes, due to the lack of transparency and neutrality with which they were administered by the [CSE]. Throughout the process, [this was] a CSE that was virtually monocolour [and] at each of its levels demonstrated scant independence from the ruling party and created unequal conditions for competition as well as outright obstruction to the opposition, who were prevented from having any effective representation within the electoral administration. Some experienced national observation organisations were not accredited and auditing of the process was impeded by the [CSE].61

And these observations omit the postelectoral violence that claimed eight lives.62 None of the above, though, explains how the Sandinistas added twentytwo points to their 2006 total in 2011, a 60 percent increase. Part of the improvement is surely due to the FSLN’s antipoverty policies bringing more of Nicaragua’s poor into their ranks. There might also be a bandwagon effect where poor and working-class voters backed the Sandinistas to make sure that their 400-person JRV showed enough support to keep the benefits flowing. However, the results also appear to owe something to manipulation.

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José Antonio Peraza argues that the FSLN used its control over the CSE for biased vote counting in both 2008 and 2011;63 JRVs where the Sandinistas lost by large margins in prior elections were excluded from the count. Peraza noted that from 1990 to 2006 most JRVs returned extremely regular and predictable percentages of Sandinista and anti-Sandinista votes. Seeing those patterns alter markedly in 2008 and again in 2011 led Peraza to search for an explanation. He discovered that the results of certain JRVs were excluded from the final tallies and that the vast majority of those JRVs returned large majorities against the Sandinistas. On the other hand, polls whose results were counted either recorded large FSLN majorities or produced close wins by either side. In 2008, Peraza found, the skewed results came mostly from municipal counting centers, where illegal challenges and exclusions of opposition-friendly JRVs occurred. However, the author concluded that in 2011, the FSLN and two tiny allied parties (ALN, Alianza Liberal Nicaragüense [Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance] and ARPE, Alianza por la Republica [Alliance for the Republic]) attained such complete control over the operations of so many JRVs that they could exclude accredited opposition poll watchers from the count. Peraza’s analysis is careful and his argument sufficiently persuasive to raise serious doubts about the validity of the results of those two elections.64 His evidence strongly suggests that Nicaragua’s party system should be classed as one-party hegemonic and that the regime itself is decreasingly pluralistic. Why, though, would a party whose leader was the choice of almost 60 percent of voters toward the end of the campaign use fraud? Was it just to give his FSLN the 60 percent majority needed to approve constitutional amendments? The next section examines those amendments and other key points of Ortega’s third term.

The Third Term and Democracy in Nicaragua When Daniel Ortega was inaugurated for a third term in 2012 the old duopoly was no more. The elections of 2008 and 2011 and the freedom from constitutional law the CSJ granted Ortega in 2009 had already signaled its end was nigh. Now with a legislative majority sufficient to approve constitutional amendments without outside support, combined with preexisting control over the courts and electoral apparatus, Ortega and the FSLN were masters of the state’s machinery. Soon the military and the police would fall under his sway. In January 2014, constitutional amendments took effect that secured the legal base of the dominant power regime. Opposition still exists in the formal political system, the media, and civil society, but it cannot do much to check the government.

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Extending Control

In 2014 the Nicaraguan government substantially amended both the Codigo Militar (Military Code) and the Ley de la Policía Nacional65 (National Police Law). Regarding the Military Code, the amendments appear aimed at reversing Nicaragua’s twenty-plus years of experience with a professional, nonpartisan, constitutional military.66 First, the military now reports directly to the president, not the minister of defense. Second, among its tasks the military now counts national security, a broader concept than national defense. Further, military personnel can now serve forty years before having to retire instead of thirty, which makes one wonder if President Ortega distrusts officers who have served only in a professional military. Moving to the police law, that act takes the police from the Ministerio de Gobernación (equivalent to a Ministry of Public Safety) to the direct control of the president, its supreme chief (Art. 1). As well, the act authorizes the president to name the chief of the National Police (Art. 10) without having to consult with other bodies. This places exceptional power in the president’s hands and creates conditions where the police could become loyal to the president, not the country.67 Finally, the police now wear an insignia bearing the silhouette of Sandino, recalling the days before the 1995 constitutional amendments when the force was the Policía Sandinista (Sandinista Police), not the Policía Nacional (National Police).68 These two amended laws give Nicaragua’s president personal control over all the instruments of legitimate state violence in the country. However, Ortega can also mobilize FSLN supporters to apply less legitimate but ostensibly more informal partisan violence. An excellent example of how this works occurred in June 2013 when Sandinista toughs, many wearing the party’s signature pink t-shirts, attacked seniors who were protesting being denied state pensions, despite having contributed to the fund, and the college students there to support them. Tellingly, the police who were present did nothing to halt the violence.69 The 2014 Constitutional Amendments

Every change of regime since 1979 has brought either a new constitution or significant amendments to an existing document. The day after the Sandinistas toppled the Somoza government they proclaimed their Estatuto Fundamental (Fundamental Statute). Three years after the 1984 elections marked the birth of the electoral democratic regime, that political system got its own complete constitution. The significant amendments made to the 1987 document in 1995 did not introduce a new regime, but rather made changes to strengthen Nicaraguan democracy. Amendments adopted in 2000, how-

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ever, did signal the arrival of a new regime, this one based on a power-sharing duopoly; further reforms in 2005 fine-tuned that system. Now in 2014 the dominant power regime has a constitution made to fit its needs. There is a pattern here in which the constitution is adapted to the requirements of the government, rather than the government’s adapting itself to the law of the constitution. Given Nicaragua’s regime instability, this is probably inevitable. In any event, the latest amendments follow the established path. For example, Article 146 changes the rules for presidential elections to give the victory to the winner of a plurality of the vote: a simple first-past-the-post system with no provision for a second-round, runoff election.70 This amendment reinstates the formula in the 1987 constitution and suggests that its drafters did not foresee any need to retain the complicated formula of the 2000 amendments. Perhaps more importantly, there are no longer any limits on reelection: a president can be reelected as many times as he or she can win, thus repealing Article 147a. Another interesting inclusion is Article 178, which stipulates that a party’s list of candidates for local elections must have 50 percent female candidates, and that the ticket for mayor and vice mayor must reflect gender balance.71 El Gran Canal

Nicaraguans have long believed that their country, not Panama, should have been the site of the transisthmian canal. So when President Ortega and Wang Jing, the owner of the Hong Kong–based, Cayman Islands–chartered HKND (Hong Kong Nicaragua Development Investment) Group, announced plans to build a new canal across Lake Nicaragua, the news was joyfully received.72 Wang first broached the idea of an interoceanic canal to President Ortega in the fall of 2012. Despite Wang and HKND’s having absolutely no background in largescale construction projects, in June 2013 the National Assembly approved the draft contract between the state and the firm. A few days later Ortega and Wang signed that contract. There were no calls for other bids and the government held no public hearings on HKND’s proposal. Then on July 9, 2014, Wang revealed his canal’s projected route and promised that, by December 2014, the environmental assessment and a thorough evaluation of the project would be submitted, allowing ground to be broken immediately for the $50 billion megaproject.73 The contract, Ley 840 of 2013,74 lets HKND identify the lands, public or private, needed to build the canal; a Canal Commission, established by the government, will expropriate them.75 It also makes the firm and its subcontractors exempt from all Nicaraguan taxes. HKND can also set and collect fees and tariffs for the canal and ancillary projects like the four resort hotels in the plan, and bring in as many foreign workers as it wants. Wang’s

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firm has a fifty-year contract, renewable for fifty more once it builds the canal. In return for this it pays the Nicaraguan state $10 million annually and also remits 1 percent of its shares in the canal to the government every year until the latter has full ownership in 100 years. Critics of the deal have focused on the concessions made to Wang and the environmental risk involved in building a canal across Lake Nicaragua.76 They have been ignored. Similarly, appeals to the CSJ were brusquely dismissed.77 It is possible that a government from Nicaragua’s electoral democratic regime would have done the same: the project would dazzle any administration. However, under that earlier system parliamentary and extraparliamentary oppositions had more room to operate. As well, critical media were less likely to be drowned out by progovernment voices. And more independent courts might have heard the case against the project with a more open mind, even if they rendered a similar decision. Wang’s proposal could easily have been backed by earlier governments, but it almost certainly would have been vetted more thoroughly. The Quality of Democracy

The quality of Nicaraguan democracy has declined steadily since Ortega’s comeback. In his 2007–2012 term, violence returned to Nicaraguan politics and it continues to be used as a political instrument in the 2012–2017 administration. Also, after his return to power in the 2006 elections, the systematic electoral manipulation that came with the pact has continued and intensified. Politicized justice via Sandinista-controlled courts, which reentered national political life during the Bolaños presidency, also continues. Although some CPCs worked well, the institution was hampered by its reputation as a partisan Sandinista instrument. And intraparty democracy, never strong in any Nicaraguan party, suffered a reverse when the FSLN began removing Sandinista mayors, deputy mayors, and even whole city councils to replace them with more compliant officeholders. Government of, by, and for the people has been grievously undermined. It could be argued that social policies, like Hambre Cero, that contributed to reducing extreme poverty partially offset those negative impacts. However, these policies face two limitations, one general and the other more specific. The universal problem confronting redistributive social policies as democratic instruments is that their effects on political democracy are hard to detect in the short term. Getting more resources to very poor families should let their children grow up healthier and go to school longer. That could make the next generation of Nicaraguans more engaged and effective political actors. That was one of the aims of revolutionary Sandinismo. Unfortunately, it cannot be realized overnight.

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As to the more specific issue, it is one that Nicaragua unfortunately shares with other countries, perhaps many other countries. Even where a nation’s poor are the recognized constituency of the governing party, as is the case in Nicaragua, it often happens that the poor and marginalized really do not get their share. A 2012 countrywide survey in Nicaragua78 showed that 11 percent of households with medium-high and high levels of wealth received cash transfers from the government, whereas only 6 percent of the poorest segment of Nicaraguan society got such benefits. Further, 11 percent of FSLN sympathizers indicated that they had received government transfers, but among everyone else just 5 percent reported receiving them. Another survey, this one conducted by the Nicaraguan government’s Instituto Nacional de Información de Desarrollo (National Institute for Development Information),79 reported that 70 percent of those participating in Hambre Cero and Usura Cero were not poor.80 That does not mean that they were rich, as the $2.50-per-day poverty level yields just over half of Nicaragua’s annual per capita income, the lowest in Central America. It could reflect favoritism, as implied in the 2012 survey, or simply indicate that the programs were ill-designed,81 or probably both.

Conclusion Political regimes have been fragile creatures in post-1979 Nicaragua. Will this dominant power system prove a longer-lasting, more stable governing model? Or will it shift more toward either democracy or authoritarianism? As the Nicaraguan system is structured in 2014, the president exercises ultimate control over the executive parts of government, the legislature, the judiciary, the electoral authority, all but a handful of municipalities, and most of the ostensibly independent agencies. The dominant power regime in Nicaragua is working as Thomas Carothers predicted. It maintains the forms of democracy and is relatively pluralistic. Indeed compared to historic Latin American dictatorships it is quite open and tolerant. However, this regime does have a dominant power. Here it combines a person, Daniel Ortega; a family, the Ortega Murillos; and a party, the FSLN, that together control the polity “in such a way that there appears to be little prospect of alternation of power in the foreseeable future.”82 Arriving at a dominant power regime is the latest stop in Nicaragua’s transition to, through, and from democracy. The current regime, however, is a hybrid. Its polity remains polyarchic: there is still competition and contestation, although these are increasingly constrained; and there are centers of at least potential political power outside the state’s control. Its semiauthoritarian side is most evident in the fact that democratic elections, ones that

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let citizens change their governors, are not a secure part of the political system. Even the possibility of turning one duopolist out to bring in the other one no longer exists. The FSLN is currently so much stronger than its opponents, Liberals and dissident Sandinistas alike, that it could expect repeated wins in an electoral democracy, perhaps for thirty years, but it currently has no reason to run that risk. Complicating democracy’s prospects in Nicaragua is the fact that the dominant power system does not rest solely on elections. It also has politicized courts, increasingly politically responsive security forces, and the sure support of a large and growing share of the media. What, though, do its long-term prospects look like? Prospects for the Dominant Power Regime

Daniel Ortega enjoys high levels of popular support. Polls since the 2011 elections have regularly put his approval rating in the 60 percent range.83 There are also two trends in Nicaraguan political culture that should sustain the Ortega government, although they threaten to undermine democracy’s prospects. One of these is decreasing political tolerance, which could translate into the 60 percent who like Daniel and the FSLN bullying the 40 percent who do not. The other is the reluctance of a majority of those surveyed to talk politics in public, suggesting that the 40 percent may keep their counsel and limit their political participation to voting. Together they point toward a growing political polarization that could form the basis for a stable authoritarianism.84 The system’s outlook is also aided by the weakness of opposition parties. Having failed to take advantage of the strength the anti-FSLN forces had in 2006, those organizations are in decline. The government’s control over elections has hastened their slide, but the parties’ inability to articulate a comprehensive alternative to Ortega’s system has contributed to their downfall. Moreover, the country’s Liberals, who garnered 55 percent of the vote in 2006, are so riven by internal factions, often built around specific leaders, that they hardly represent a credible alternative. It will be difficult for the several opposition parties, not least the Liberals and the MRS, to regain the ground they lost, given the FSLN administration’s control over the political system. This is not to say that the dominant power regime faces no problems. Wherever power is personalized a succession crisis is always possible. Will Daniel be followed by his wife or one of their children? Or will the Ortegas follow the advice of Luis Somoza and withdraw the family from active politics, leaving the FSLN to run the country without their direct input? And since personal governments depend on the person governing, can Daniel’s prestige and political acumen be handed on to his successor? Further, since this is a

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hybrid system, the balance of democratic and nondemocratic traits and practices will doubtlessly change over time, but in which direction? If Daniel Ortega and his successors cannot be comfortable with democracy’s uncertainty, will there be movement toward a more plainly authoritarian government?

Notes 1. Thomas Carothers, “End of the Transition Paradigm,” Journal of Democracy 13, no. 1 (January 2002): 11–12. 2. Ibid. 3. Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History?,” The National Interest 14 (Summer 1989): 1–18. 4. David Collier and Steven Levitsky, “Democracy with Adjectives: Conceptual Innovation in Comparative Research,” World Politics 49, no. 3 (April 1997): 430–451. 5. Fareed Zakaria, “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy,” Foreign Affairs 76, no. 6 (November–December 1997): 22–43. 6. Andreas Schedler, ed., Electoral Authoritarianism (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2006). 7. Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 8. Larry Diamond, “Thinking About Hybrid Regimes,” Journal of Democracy 13, no. 2 (February 2002): 21. 9. In Nicaragua, as throughout Latin America and in Spain, there is a history of cacique politics. These involve local political bosses mobilizing votes for their leaders and delivering material benefits to their own constituents. Their work is similar to that of ward heelers in US political machines. 10. Salvador Martí i Puig and David Close, “The Nicaraguan Exception?,” in The Sandinistas and Nicaragua Since 1979, ed. David Close, Salvador Martí i Puig, and Shelley A. McConnell, p. 297 (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2011). 11. Edward Banfield, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society (New York: Free Press, 1967). 12. I was among them. 13. Kori Schake, “An Administration with Its Head Cut Off,” Foreign Policy, August 7, 2014, http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/08/07/an-administration-with-its -head-cut-off/. 14. Washington’s relations with the Alemán administration were difficult, but the United States remained the most important foreign actor in Nicaragua. 15. Envio, “Is Nicaragua’s Electoral Race Between Trivelli and Chávez?,” Revista Envio 298 (May 2006), www.envio.org.ni/articulo/3301. 16. Rose J. Spalding, “Poverty Politics,” in The Sandinistas and Nicaragua Since 1979, ed. David Close, Salvador Martí i Puig, and Shelley A. McConnell, pp. 215–244 (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2011). 17. Ministerio de Economía Familiar de Nicaragua, Programa Hambre Cero (Managua: Ministerio de Economía Familiar de Nicaragua, 2014), www.economia familiar.gob.ni/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=672&Itemid=22; Eduardo Baumeister, “The Politics of Land Reform,” in The Sandinistas and Nicaragua Since 1979, ed. David Close, Salvador Martí i Puig, and Shelley A. McConnell, p. 264 (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2011).

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18. Paul Kester, “Zero Hunger: Development of Just Raindrops?,” Revista Envio 342 (January 2010), www.envio.org.ni/articulo/4141. 19. Tortilla con Sal, “Entrevista con la Cra. Leonor Corea del 14 de Enero 2014,” January 14, 2014, www.tortillaconsal.com/leonor_14-1-2014.html. 20. Banco Central de Nicaragua, English Index, June 15, 2015, http://bcn.gob.ni /en/index.php. 21. Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo, Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty (New York: Public Affairs, 2012), pp. 168– 178, 212–226. 22. Confidencial, “Las cuentas secretas de Albanisa,” May 3, 2011, www.confi dencial.com.ni/articulo/3388/las-cuentas-secretas-de-albanisa. 23. Octavio Enríquez, “El ‘ordeño’ de Albanisa,” Confidencial, March 6, 2014, www.confidencial.com.ni/articulo/16446/el-ordeno-639-de-albanisa. 24. Council on Hemispheric Affairs, “Nicaragua and Albanisa: The Privatization of Venezuelan Aid,” Washington Report on the Hemisphere, August 13, 2010, www.coha.org/nicaragua-albanisa-the-privatization-of-venezuelan-aid/. 25. Carlos Salinas Maldonado, “Las empresas del grupo Alba,” Confidencial, May 3, 2011, www.confidencial.com.ni/articulo/3395/las-empresas-del-grupo-alba. 26. Luis Galeano, “Albanisa es un pulpo,” El Nuevo Diario, September 28, 2009, www.elnuevodiario.com.ni/imprimir.php/58180. 27. Confidencial, “Las cuentas secretas de Albanisa.” 28. For details see the following: The Economist, “An Islet for a Sea: Colombia Smarts from the Loss of Territorial Waters,” December 8, 2012, www.economist .com/news/americas/21567986-colombia-smarts-loss-territorial-waters-islet-sea; Neinke Grossman, “Territorial and Maritime Dispute (Nicaragua v. Colombia),” American Journal of International Law 107, no. 2 (April 2013): 396–403; Yoshifumi Tanaka, “Reflections on the Territorial and Maritime Dispute Between Nicaragua and Colombia Before the International Court of Justice,” Leiden Journal of International Law 26, no. 4 (December 2013): 909–931. 29. BBC News, “Nicaragua Files New Claim Against Colombia over San Andres,” September 16, 2013, www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-24120241. 30. Nicaraguan dredging in waters claimed by Costa Rica is one of the key issues in the dispute. For details see International Water Law Project Blog, “Nicaragua and Costa Rica Return to the ICJ for a 3rd Case over the San Juan River,” February 12, 2012, www.internationalwaterlaw.org/blog/2012/02/12 /nicaragua-and-costa-rica-return-to-the-icj-for-3rd-case-over-the-san-juan-river/. 31. Gaceta Oficial, La Gaceta: Diario Oficial (Nicaragua) 111, no. 7 (January 10, 2007), pp. 246–248. 32. Gaceta Oficial, La Gaceta: Diario Oficial (Nicaragua) 191, no. 7 (January 10, 2007), p. 246. 33. Roberto Stuart Almendárez, Consejos del Poder Ciudadano y gestión pública en Nicaragua (Managua: CEAP, 2009), p. 5. 34. Sometimes direct democracy appears to have meant harassing the FSLN’s opponents. This apparently happened after the 2008 municipal elections when CPC members allegedly kept members of the press and diplomatic corps from attending a presentation by an opposition party questioning the CSE’s vote count. This question is considered in more detail below. 35. Kelly Bay-Meyers, “Do Ortega’s Citizens’ Power Councils Empower the Poor in Nicaragua? Benefits and Costs of Local Democracy,” Polity 45, no. 3 (July 2013): 405.

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36. Latin American Public Opinion Project, Political Culture and Democracy in Nicaragua, 2010: Democratic Consolidation in the Americas in Hard Times (Nashville: LAPOP, 2010), pp. 150, 216, www.vanderbilt.edu/lapop/nicaragua/2010 -political-culture.pdf. 37. Their formal title is Gabinetes de la Familia, la Comunidad y la Vida (Cabinets of the Family, the Community, and Life); also called Consejos de Familia (Family Councils). 38. Ari Pantoja, “Gabinetes de Familia aprobados,” El Nuevo Diario, February 2, 2013, www.elnuevodiario.com.ni/imprimir.php/278429. 39. Bay-Meyers, “Do Ortega’s,” p. 417. 40. Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976), pp. 192–201, 230–238. 41. Seven municipalities in the North Atlantic Autonomous Region did not vote in November, due to damage caused by Hurricane Felix two months earlier. 42. Martí i Puig and Close, “The Nicaraguan Exception?,” pp. 301–303. 43. Instituto para el Desarrollo y la Democracia, Catálogo estadístico de elecciones en Nicaragua 1990–2011 (Managua: IPADE, 2012), www.ipade.org.ni. 44. The FSLN might have gone to great lengths to capture the capital because Alemán got his big break in politics as mayor of Managua. Much the same can be said for Herty Lewites. It is a high-profile position that a talented and ambitious politician can use as a springboard to greater things. 45. Envio, “How Did They Commit the Fraud?,” Revista Envio 366 (January 2012), www.envio.org.ni/articulo/4418. 46. Kitty Monterrey, “These Elections Were Won by Both Fraud and Theft,” Revista Envio 329 (December 2008), www.envio.org.ni/articulo/3918. 47. Tim Rogers, “Why Nicaragua’s Capital Is in Flames,” Time, November 14, 2008. 48. Nicaragua Network, “Mayor’s Dismissal Roils Political Waters,” Nicaragua News Bulletin, June 16, 2010, www.nicanet.org. 49. Envio, “The Games We Played During the Soccer World Cup,” Revista Envio 348 (July 2010), www.envio.org.ni/articulo/4209; Silvio Prado, “Municipal Autonomy Is More Threatened Than Ever,” Revista Envio 348 (July 2010), www .envio.org.ni/articulo/4226. 50. Leonor Álvarez, “CSE: FSLN gana 134 alcaldias,” El Nuevo Diario, November 5, 2012, www.elnuevodiario.com.ni/elecciones-municipales-2012/268558. 51. Mauricio Zúñiga, “How We Got to These Low Intensity Elections,” Revista Envio 376 (November 2012 ), www.envio.org.ni/articulo/4620. 52. Quoted in Tim Rogers, “Election Protests Continue on Four Battle Grounds,” Nicaragua Dispatch, November 16, 2012, http://nicaraguadispatch.com /201611/election-protests-continue-on-4-battlerounds. See also Envio, “2012 Municipal Elections: Chronicle of an Outcome Foretold,” Revista Envio 376 (November 2012), www.envio.org.ni/articulo/4618. 53. Tim Rogers, “3 Dead in Post-Electoral Violence in Nicaragua,” Nicaragua Dispatch, November 7, 2012, http://nicaraguadispatch.com/2012/11/3-dead-in-post -electoral-violence-in-nicaragua. 54. Tania Sirias, “Carnés del FSLN con fundos públicos,” La Prensa, July 14, 2014, www.laprensa.com.ni/2014/07/16/poderes/203463-carnes-fsln-fondos-publi cos; Wilfredo Miranda Aburto, “Impuesto FSLN a trabajadores públicos,” Confidencial, February 5, 2014, www.confidenical.com.ni/articulo/15959/impuesto-fsln-a -trajadores-publicos#sthash.nwurSPek.dpuf.

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55. US Department of State, 2011 Human Rights Report: Nicaragua (Washington, DC: Department of State, 2011), www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2011/wha/186 529.htm. 56. Envio, “After the Fraud, the Future Will Be Written with an R,” Revista Envio 365 (December 2011), www.envio.org.ni/articulo/4455. 57. Carter Center, The 2011 Elections in Nicaragua: Study Mission Report (Atlanta: Carter Center, 2011), www.cartercenter.org/resources/pdfs/peace/Americas /Nicaragua_2011_report_post.pdf; European Union, EU Election Observation Mission, Nicaragua 2011: Final Report on the General Elections and Parlacen Elections (Brussels: European Union, 2012), www.eueom.eu/files/dmfile/moeue -nicaragua-final-report-22022012_en.pdf. 58. Useful summaries of the 2011 elections are found in Observatorio Nacional de Gobernabilidad, Nicaragua: Elecciones 2011 (Managua: Observatorio Nacional de Gobernabilidad, 2011), cinco.org.ni/archive/386.pdf; and Carter Center, The 2011 Elections in Nicaragua. 59. Conexiones, “Mi elección 2011,” October 2011, www.conexiones.com.ni /elecciones/poll.php?id=11. 60. Partisan control by the FSLN government over the distribution of cédulas, national IDs that also serve as voter registration cards, was a special concern; see Envio, “After the Fraud.” Indeed it has continued to be a concern. For details consult Tim Rogers, “Watchdog Group Takes Cédula Complaints to OAS,” Nicaragua Dispatch, March 13, 2013, http://nicaraguadispatch.com/2013/03/watchdog-group -takes-cedula-complaints-to-oas/; and Michelle Flash, “Access to Identity Cards and Effective Judicial Resources in Nicaragua,” Human Rights Brief, March 14, 2013, http://hrbrief.org/2013/03/access-to-identity-cards-and-effective-judicial-resources -in-nicaragua/. 61. European Union, EU Election Observation Mission, p. 3. 62. Amnesty International, “Nicaragua Must Investigate Post Election Violence,” News, November 11, 2011. 63. Envio, “How Did They Commit the Fraud?” 64. Findings regarding citizens’ perception of the fairness or unfairness of Nicaragua’s electoral system taken from a 2012 national survey support Peraza’s conclusions: 26.7 percent of those interviewed reported witnessing or being the victim of some irregularity. Latin American Public Opinion Project, Political Culture of Democracy in Nicaragua and the Americas, 2012: Towards Equality of Opportunity (Nashville: LAPOP, 2012), pp. 274–276, www.vanderbilt.edu/lapop/nicaragua /Nicaragua_Country_Report_2012_English_V2_revised_W.pdf. 65. Its formal title is the Ley de Organización, Funciones, Carrera y Régimen Especial de Seguridad Social de la Policía Nacional (Law Concerning the Organization, Functions, Career, and Special Social Security System of the National Police), Ley/Law 872. 66. Envio, “The Army Is the Final Piece in Ortega’s Political Project,” Revista Envio 390 (January 2014), www.envio.org.ni/articulo/4802; see also Irving Dávila, Análisis jurídico comparado del Código Militar vigente y la iniciativa de reformas propuestas por la Presidencia de la República a la Asamblea Nacional (Managua: IEEPP, 2014), www.ieep.org. 67. Camilo Mejia Giraldo, “Nicaragua Police Reforms Could Politicize Security,” Insight Crime, July 25, 2014, www.insightcrime.org/news-analysis/nicaragua -police-reforms-could-politicize-security-forces. 68. Envio, “National Police,” Revista Envio 396 (July 2014), www.envio.org.ni /articulo/4879.

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69. Benjamin Witte-Lebhar, “Police, Pro-Government Mob Crack Down on Pension Protests in Nicaragua,” Latin America Data Base, July 11, 2013, http://ladb.unm.edu/noticen/2013/07/11-079020. 70. Asamblea Nacional de Nicaragua, Constitución Política de la República de Nicaragua (Managua: Asamblea Nacional de Nicaragua, 2014), www .asamblea.gob.ni. 71. As a statement of principle, Article 178 is laudable, but it might be better included in a municipalities act. 72. Jon Lee Anderson, “The Comandante’s Canal,” The New Yorker, March 10, 2014; Charles Castaldi, “Trends: China Syndrome,” Milken Institute Review (July 2014): 5–13, http://assets1c.milkeninstitute.org/assets/Publication/MIReview/PDF /05-13-MR63.pdf. 73. The deadline was missed. 74. The contract was drafted in Hong Kong in English and was originally published in English in Nicaragua’s official gazette. See La Gaceta: Diario Oficial 110, no. 4972 (June 14, 2013), www.asamblea.gob.ni/digesto-juridico-nicaraguense /coleccion-digital-la-gaceta-3/. 75. Since September 2014 there have been protests by people whose homes are designated for expropriation. This matter is treated in more detail in Chapter 8. 76. Academia de Ciencias de Nicaragua, El canal interoceánico por Nicaragua: Aportes al debate. Coordinación editorial por Jorge A. Huete-Pérez, Rafael Lucio Gil y Manuel Ortega Hegg (Managua: Academia de Ciencias de Nicaragua, 2014), www.cienciasdenicaragua.org/index.php/publicaciones/lbrs. 77. El País (Madrid), “Corte Suprema rechaza recursos contra el canal interoceánico en Nicaragua,” December 19, 2013, http://economia.elpais.com/economia /2013/12/19/agencias/1387474905_685788.html. 78. LAPOP, Political Culture 2012, pp. 201, 264. 79. Instituto Nacional de Información de Desarrollo, Encuesta de hogares sobre mediación del nivel de vida 2009 (EMNV 2009) (Managua: INIDE, 2011), www .inide.gob.ni. 80. Perspectivas, “Trasparencia cero: Un programa en crisis,” no. 93 (April 2015), www.cinco.org.ni. 81. Baumeister, “The Politics of Land Reform,” pp. 263–264. 82. Carothers, “End of the Transition Paradigm,” p. 12. 83. La Prensa, “Encuesta continental: Daniel Ortega saca ‘nota alta,’” October 3, 2014, www.laprensa.com.ni/2014/10/03/politica/1245775-daniel-ortega-saca-nota -alta. 84. Kenneth Coleman and Arturo Maldonado, Análisis preliminar de la encuesta nacional de LAPOP en Nicaragua, 2014 (Nashville: LAPOP, 2014).

8 Putting Nicaragua in Perspective

The material presented in the first seven chapters leads to three conclusions. The first is that Nicaragua in 2015 is neither the Nicaragua of the 1979 Sandinista revolution nor that of the 1990 electoral victory of Violeta Chamorro. The effervescent enthusiasm of the first years of the revolutionary experiment in the early 1980s is long past; the similarly heady days that followed the apparent consolidation of electoral democracy in the 1990s are gone as well. Both the revolutionary vanguard regime and the electoral democratic regime that followed it made Nicaragua politically more pluralistic and democratic. This hopeful phase of the nation’s history ended with the Alemán-Ortega pact. Movement toward institutionalizing accountable, responsive government essentially stopped at that point and the development of a tolerant, pluralistic politics stalled. It is not that the period since 2000 has erased all traces of the twenty-one years preceding it, but rather that the values and practices developed under the first two post-Somocista systems now carry less weight with those who manage the state. As to the second conclusion, it is that political leaders can, given the right circumstances, overcome institutions designed to favor democracy. What those “right circumstances” are is harder to know. In Nicaragua, the conditions that weakened democracy in the twenty-first century were not those that produced democratic breakdowns in the twentieth century, namely, economic crisis and radical, antisystem parties.1 Rather, democratically elected politicians, notably Arnoldo Alemán and Daniel Ortega, found ways to undermine institutions of electoral democracy that were supposed to keep ambitious individuals like them in line. They profited from specific circumstances and used the considerable political skill each possessed to work the reforms they sought.

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This happened in Nicaragua in no small part because the leaders of the country’s two largest parties preferred a political system that was extremely executive-centric and left the president much less accountable and controllable than the 1995 constitution did. Furthermore, both Alemán and Ortega were adept at operating within highly polarized political environments. Each was skilled at us-versus-them politics and could turn an unbridgeable breach to his advantage. At the same time, though, each could strike a deal with his most determined opponent. Given Nicaragua’s history, as well as the backgrounds of the two men, this is not surprising. Alemán and Ortega had absorbed the political orthodoxy of their homeland. Put differently, two of Nicaragua’s informal political institutions, personalistic rule and sharp political polarization, trumped the formal, less deeply rooted institutions of electoral democracy. This leads to the third conclusion. Nicaragua’s search for a governing model, in other words a political regime, that is durable has been carried out by the nation’s seriously divided political elite. That is to be expected. The median citizen of any country, especially a democratic one, will have reasonably well developed policy preferences on some issues but not all, will know the ostensible functions of the principal state institutions, and have at least a rough idea of how the system works. That is insufficient to propose and carry through detailed reforms of or alternatives to a specific political system. What is less expected is that this search continues after thirty-five years, with the political elite still divided over how best to govern Nicaragua. Knowing that the nation’s history of polarized politics underlies this problem says little about how to fix it. Increasing political pluralism to the point of embracing electoral democracy was the prescription for twenty-one years. Even though that model developed under considerable stress (a US-financed insurgent war, hyperinflation and near economic collapse, and extreme political polarization), the state did not fail nor did the country become ungovernable. Rather, significant reforms were carried out under the aegis of regimes built around growing political pluralism. Presumably it could have continued working, becoming the keystone of a political system that no one would think to alter. Its failure to do so puzzles all who believe in the moral and practical superiority of democracy. How could a political actor take advantage of a specific conjuncture and undermine structures intended to keep individuals from overwhelming institutions? Why are institutions so weak that a determined leader can bend them to his or her ends? Is it because those institutions are too new? Could a country’s stronger non- or antidemocratic political institutions, formal or informal, trump its democratic ones? What if having democratic institutions counts less with voters than having economic and personal security? Did conjunctural factors, such as the austerity policies imposed by

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democratic governments, play a role? Obviously, some or all of these could interact, so there are plenty of plausible explanations and every real case will display its own idiosyncratic mix. Comparative analysis is the best way to discover how specific political systems go about undoing democracy. How, that is, does the conscious deconsolidation of a functioning democratic regime unfold? There are three cases that are broadly analogous to Nicaragua: Hungary, Russia, and Venezuela. Like Nicaragua, these are examples of dominant power regimes whose political leaders have given conventional representative democracy an extended trial and found it wanting. To set the stage for comparative analysis, I summarize the material on Nicaragua presented to this point. Then, to put Nicaragua into a broader context, I follow with a quick review of contemporary thinking about hybrid and authoritarian regimes.

Summarizing Nicaragua’s Transitions Chapters 3–7 described how Nicaragua navigated transitions to, through, and from democracy. Now it is necessary to identify the factors that produced those transitions to derive a framework for looking at Hungary, Russia, and Venezuela. As in those earlier chapters, this analysis starts with an overview of the country’s political history since independence. Nineteenth-century Nicaraguan political history has four phases. The first, 1821–1855, which included its membership in the Federal Republic of Central America (1821–1838), was marked by political polarization and civil war. Regional rivalries between Liberals and Conservatives underlay the violent unrest. The resulting instability, however, was broadly similar to that found in most of Latin America and not limited to Nicaragua.2 This period ended in 1855 when the American filibuster William Walker seized control of Nicaragua, aiming to make it a slave state. Although Walker’s citizenship and plans for the country distinguish him, like other dictatorial caudillos, he used violence to take power and was expelled from power by violence. From 1858 to 1889, Nicaragua broke new ground in Central America by establishing a constitutional, civic oligarchy: the Conservative Republic. This was a predemocratic but broadly constitutional regime, in which the franchise was very limited and the exercise of power was de facto reserved to the Conservatives. Nevertheless, it developed institutions to limit presidential power and to mitigate the rivalries, geographic and partisan, that characterized Nicaragua’s first four decades. Unfortunately, constitutional provisions proved unable to manage regional dissatisfaction indefinitely and in 1889, territorial interests reasserted themselves. They were joined by partisan conflict in 1893, which brought this experiment in stable, constitu-

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tional rule to a close, ushering in another round of dictatorship and, eventually, civil war. In too many ways, Nicaragua’s twentieth-century politics reprised the nineteenth century. The dictator who seized power in 1893, the Liberal José Santos Zelaya, fell in 1909 to a Conservative-led revolution that was backed by Washington. Despite being supported by the United States, the new government was soon embroiled in a civil war against the Liberals that lasted until 1927. It also brought US troops to Nicaragua from 1912 to 1925, and again from 1926 to 1933, nearly twenty years in all. Although the US military presence in Nicaragua eventually fell to 100 troops, just having them there “to protect American lives and property” was evidence of Nicaragua’s compromised sovereignty. Not all developments were negative, however. Honest elections were held in 1924, organized by the Nicaraguans, and in 1928 and 1932, which the US forces in Nicaragua organized. This experiment unfortunately did not lead to an updated, democratic version of the Conservative Republic. Rather its successor was the Somoza family’s four decades of dictatorship. Yet, as dictators go, the Somozas were relatively pluralistic. They structured licensed party opposition into their regime, eventually assigning their official opponents quotas of legislative seats and even appointive government positions. Further, although the Somozas routinely censored, harassed, and closed opposition media temporarily, they did not prohibit them: there was no permanent government monopoly on information. Despite having those atypical traits, Somocismo was still a personal dictatorship and it spanned two generations. Therefore, the three Somozas who ruled Nicaragua continued the country’s record of personal rule. And as is common with personal rule, all three Somozas used a “with me or against me” style of politics, pitting a handful of insiders against a much larger number of outsiders in a toxically polarized political environment. Although this was nothing new for Nicaragua, it was hardly a governing model that could ever become democratic or embrace the rule of law. The Sandinista revolution was supposed to change all this by sweeping out the old political class and bringing in a new elite with different values. It certainly brought a new regime: a nondemocratic but quite pluralistic revolutionary vanguard. However, the FSLN’s quick turn to electoral democracy indicated that things really had changed. When the revolutionary government accepted electoral defeat in 1990, it seemed that the corner had been turned. Unlike Nicaragua’s two earlier, ultimately failed moves toward democratic, constitutional government, therefore, this time there would be no reversals. Unfortunately, though, that did not happen. As in the past, Nicaragua fell short of consolidating a democratic political system. The country had sixteen years under the electoral democratic regime (1984–2000), followed by another six (2000–2006) with less com-

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petitive but still free elections. During that time the country functioned moderately well. Despite putting together a respectable record as an electoral democracy, some key Nicaraguan political elites still dedicated themselves to loosening the restraints on the exercise of power that democracy necessarily brings. The first step away came with the pact: the power-sharing duopoly inaugurated by Arnoldo Alemán and Daniel Ortega in 2000. Had that system endured, it would have seen the junior partner in the duopoly as the main horizontal check on the president (and presumably the legislative majority). Elections would have been PLC-versus-FSLN affairs, since the electoral authority would not have let serious contenders arise; yet it remained possible to vote one party out and the other in. However, the totally unpredicted prosecution of Alemán by his former vice president and successor as president, Enrique Bolaños, unwittingly condemned the regime to a slow demise. The duopoly was an obvious move away from democracy, but it maintained some effective instruments of both horizontal and vertical accountability. It was the next and latest regime transition in 2011 that left electoral democracy with an even weaker institutional base. The elimination of the PLC as a serious contender for power, the failure of the antipact Liberals and the dissident Sandinistas to fashion themselves into a party with an organization and a program as well as a leader, and the continuing concentration of power in the presidency (and now in the Ortega family, too) leave Nicaragua with a government that is increasingly unaccountable, decreasingly transparent, and seemingly determined to stay in power indefinitely. Yet it is not an unvarnished dictatorship. There remain enough signs of pluralism, as there are centers of power beyond the state’s control, and polyarchy, for political contention and competition do exist, to keep the regime classed with the hybrids. It is, however, moving further from the democratic side of that group and drawing closer to the authoritarian. Until now, I have talked about the political machinery of this current regime and its most evident characteristic: the concentration of control over the instruments of rule in the hands of President Ortega, thus its status as a system exhibiting the traits of personal rule. But a regime is also characterized by the relationships between the state and both society and the individuals who comprise society. As well, every regime has its own roster of influentials: the people who either are key if secondary decision-makers or those who have privileged access to them. Before finishing this overview, these two points need to be addressed. To begin with relations between state and society and those between the state and individuals, from 1979 to 1990 the FSLN government was quite interventionist, both as a vanguard and then as an electoral democracy. That was to be expected, as the Sandinistas had ambitious plans for transforming Nicaragua. The latest iteration of an FSLN government is cer-

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tainly less interventionist in its economic policy. However, the greatest potential effect on state-society relations is the weakness of the instruments of governmental accountability. We have seen that the FSLN controls the Asamblea Nacional, the vast majority of Nicaragua’s local governments, the courts, and the Consejo Supremo Electoral, hence elections. Thus the main instrument of vertical accountability, elections, is compromised, as are two instruments of horizontal accountability, the assembly and the courts. To this must be added the fact that the security forces, military and police, now report directly to the president. But what about the media? There are independent media—the daily La Prensa, Channel 12, Radio Corporación, and the weekly Confidencial—but they are dwarfed by those controlled by the president’s family, friends of his like the Mexican entrepreneur Ángel González, and the FSLN. The Ortega-Murillo family alone owns four TV stations (Channels 4, 8, 13, and has effective control over channel 2) and at least seven radio stations.3 As well, they control Nicaragua’s public broadcasters (Channel 6 and Radio Nicaragua), the FSLN’s Radio Sandino, and the Sandinista-linked Radio La Primerisima. González owns eleven television stations and at least twelve radio stations. His stations are pro-administration, thus the president’s message will get out. The state thus has the resources and freedom of action to dominate society. If the state does not exercise this capability it is because it chooses not to rather than because it is legally and practically restrained from doing so. Society and the individuals who comprise it therefore have fewer means of self-defense, should the government decide to further limit the scope of political pluralism. This is not a recipe for constitutional democratic rule. As to the influentials, I should note the reconciliation of Nicaraguan big business, acting through COSEP, and the Ortega government. There have, though, been matters over which the two have clashed. One particularly long-lived dispute (it began in 2013 and continues in mid-2015) concerns control of the Internet.4 The administration has sought to put the Internet under military control, arguing that it is a matter of national security. The private sector has resisted. If business needs the president more than he needs them, Nicaragua will have a state-monitored system of cyber communications. Yet the really influential players in Nicaragua’s current political system are the president, his wife, and some of his children. This is best seen as a family business. In that respect, it resembles the Somozas’ regime, although it is less repressive and more pluralistic and polyarchic than the system overthrown by the Sandinistas. In concluding this section, I again draw attention to four striking traits of Nicaraguan politics since the 1979 Sandinista revolution. First, the nation’s political elites have changed regimes three times since the FSLN

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established its first polity, the revolutionary vanguard regime. Second, the three latest regime transitions were the work of sitting governments, twice on their own and once with the aid of another party. Third, the first two regimes (revolutionary vanguard and electoral democracy) made Nicaragua more politically pluralistic and democratic; the last two (power-sharing duopoly and dominant power) have moved it away from pluralism and democracy. Fourth, Nicaragua had an extended period as a reasonably effective and efficient electoral democracy: its people and politicians have shown themselves able to manage an open, competitive political system. Democracy, then, was not a failure but an impediment to the governing model sought by Alemán and Ortega. The next section looks at three similar cases to examine variations on the Nicaraguan theme.

To, Through, and from Democracy in Hungary, Russia, and Venezuela Why these three? In Hungary, Russia, and Venezuela, governments have reformed their country’s political systems, and left them less accountable, competitive, pluralistic, and transparent—that is, with a less democratic polity. Although these countries are much richer than Nicaragua, between six and seven times,5 all share with the Central Americans an essentially undemocratic past. Venezuela’s fifty-two years of electoral, constitutional democracy (1945–1948, 1958–2007)6 are by far the most among this group. Nevertheless, all have known success in running democratic political systems. Although each has encountered problems, and Venezuela’s were arguably the most serious, none experienced a full-fledged democratic breakdown. All, however, have opted to weaken their democracies. Finally, in these three cases, as in Nicaragua, the key actor is a powerful individual leader. Hungary

Modern Hungary emerged as a nation after the dissolution of the Hapsburg Empire at the end of World War I. From late 1918 to early 1919, Hungary was democratic. That regime fell to Bela Kun’s communists, who proclaimed the Hungarian Soviet Republic. This experiment lasted only seven months, before Romanian troops overthrew Kun. Then in early 1920, Admiral Miklos Horthy assumed power, which he retained until 1944. Although the polity was formally democratic, during World War II Hungary was effectively a German client. First liberated and then occupied in 1944 by Soviet forces, Hungary was a People’s Republic until the communist regime collapsed in 1989.7

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Along with the other Central and Eastern European People’s Republics, Hungary made its transition to democracy with little background in competitive politics, and as was true of most of its peers it did so rather well, at least from 1989 to 2010. Politics has been competitive: until 2006 the incumbent always lost power. From 1998 to 2010, Hungary had two-partydominant politics, with the Social Democrats on the left, and Fidesz (Alliance of Young Democrats) on the right, as the major players. However, in 2010, Hungarians, battered by the economic crisis that began in 2008, gave Fidesz and its leader Viktor Orbán 68 percent of the seats in parliament (263/386). If one adds to that number the forty-seven seats won by the far right party Jobbik, conservatives controlled four-fifths of the legislature. Orbán began his career as a libertarian liberal but by 2010 had become an ardent nationalist and populist.8 What justifies comparing his record to Daniel Ortega’s is the prime minister’s use of his mammoth majority to amend Hungary’s constitution at will and thereby create a regime in Hungary that bears his signature. This new system will be extremely difficult to change, even should Fidesz lose power. There are two aspects of Orbán’s achievements that must be underlined. First, and more attention-grabbing, are the changes themselves. The courts and the electoral authority were packed with Fidesz faithful; the electoral law was rewritten and constituency boundaries were redrawn, in effect gerrymandered; and journalists, academics, and nongovernmental organizations that receive foreign funding all came under pressure.9 This is pretty standard fare in hybrid regimes and even in some democracies. The result of such measures has been to reduce, but not eliminate, the sphere of political activity that the government does not control. More importantly, Orbán acknowledges that he and his party can be ousted from power, despite the defenses against that embedded in the reforms. In 2014 Fidesz returned to power, using the new electoral law to turn 45 percent of the vote into two-thirds of the seats. This result ensures Prime Minister Orbán’s ability to amend the constitution further, if he so wishes. Lane Schepelle describes these elections as “legal but unfair,” and argues that they let Orbán consolidate a “well-orchestrated constitutional coup.”10 As did Daniel Ortega and the other leaders in this group, Orbán used legal, constitutional instruments to secure his objective. Russia

Was Russia ever a democracy? Certainly not under the czars or when it was the centerpiece of the Soviet Union, and in 2015 it would require impressive conceptual gymnastics to place President Putin’s political system in the class of democracies. But what about Yeltsin’s presidency or Putin’s first government? Where would those governments fit? They were certainly

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more open and pluralistic than even Gorbachev’s years at the helm of the USSR. But were elections fair enough, the rule of law strong enough, checks on authority effective enough to move Russia’s regime into even the fringes of the democratic sphere? Two leading students of Russian politics, Richard Sakwa and William Zimmerman, believe that they were.11 However, what is perhaps more germane here is that Russia unquestionably enjoyed a period of distensão e apertura (relaxation and opening), the terms used by the Brazilian military regime in the 1970s to describe its loosening of the bonds of authoritarian rule to let the country begin moving toward a democratic system. Yet whereas Brazil’s admirals and generals let the process run until a democratic government was in place, Vladimir Putin soon began steering Russia in a more authoritarian direction. Sakwa describes the regime that developed around Putin as a dual state.12 The first of these is a constitutional state, governed by law and reflecting democratic values. Its counterpart Sakwa calls an administrative regime, which exists outside the constitutional order but does not repudiate its principles.13 This is a bit like the familiar pays réel, pays légal dichotomy, except that both systems really do exist and together combine to form the dual-state system. Moreover, the concept of the dual state also broadly describes the systems now governing Nicaragua, Hungary, and Venezuela. Elections are the most striking example of how the Putin dual-state system works, the best illustrations of movement toward consolidating a more monistic and personalistic polity. An examination of Russia’s 2011 legislative elections and 2012 presidential contest led Ivan Kratsev and Stephen Holmes to ask, “Why did the Kremlin rig elections so flagrantly that nobody could doubt they were rigged and that the Kremlin was doing the rigging?”14 More importantly, both those rigged votes, which almost certainly did not need rigging for Putin and his party United Russia to win, provoked massive protests. Yet fraud was valuable for many reasons, not least to demonstrate the government’s control over the political world and hence the regime’s potency.15 The same rationale may also apply to Ortega’s apparent manipulation of Nicaragua’s municipal elections in 2008 and the national vote in 2011, although in those cases intervention was arguably necessary to get the results his administration needed. In both the above cases, the presidents dispensed with democracy by staging something similar to what Herman and Brodhead labeled “demonstration elections.”16 Venezuela

Of these three cases, Venezuela has the longest experience with a democracy that worked well, but it also had the democratic system that encountered the greatest difficulties before beginning its shift away from democ-

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racy. Its first attempt at democracy, 1945 to 1948, ended in a coup. Another coup nine years later opened the way to a pacted democracy built around two dominant parties: Acción Democrática (Democratic Action), centerleft, and Copei (Comité de Organización Política Electoral Independiente [Committee of the Independent Electoral Political Organization]), centerright. This iteration of Venezuela’s democratic regime, often called a partyarchy because of the centrality of the two major parties, thrived until roughly 1989. At that point, a combination of severe economic problems and increasing evidence of corruption in high places produced a loss of legitimacy for not just the actors immediately involved but even the system itself. The 1998 electoral victory of failed golpista, or “coupster,” Hugo Chávez marked the beginning of the end of that system. Javier Corrales and Michael Penfold view the new polity he then set up as the apotheosis of a hybrid regime.17 Besides being a failed coup-maker, Hugo Chávez was a populist. He played outsider politics, organizing his own movement (M5R, Movimiento para la Quinta República [Movement for the Fifth Republic]); prepared his run assiduously; campaigned effectively; and was helped on his way to victory by distinctly less exciting opponents. His campaign promised comprehensive reform, beginning with a referendum on whether to call a constitutional convention. He carried that referendum with 92 percent of the vote, won a large majority in the convention, and saw the new constitution approved with 72 percent of votes cast. Venezuela was now a Bolivarian republic and was entering a Bolivarian revolution. That not all Venezuelans were content with these developments can be seen in a failed coup of 2002, a general strike in 2003, and an unsuccessful recall attempt in 2004. That President Chávez came to distrust his opposition is understandable. In operation, the Chavista regime is personalistic. Further, it packs the courts and electoral authority with its supporters, punishes opposition media, and harasses its opponents.18 Like its Hungarian, Russian, and Nicaraguan peers, its politics is polarized and decreasingly pluralistic. Unlike them, though, Chávez took every possible opportunity to go to the people in an election or a referendum: Chávez was a natural-born populist who thrived on contact with his people. Orbán shows this trait to some extent, but neither Ortega nor Putin (the various publicity photos of the latter playing el hombre más macho, a he-man’s he-man, notwithstanding) is a natural for that role. Yet it is precisely Chávez’s enormous personal magnetism that demonstrates the perils of personalist rule. When Hugo Chávez died in March 2013, he was succeeded by his vice president, Nicolas Maduro. Although Maduro won a narrow electoral victory in April 2013, he has nothing of his predecessor’s charisma. Thus, although he commands an ostensibly power-

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ful state apparatus, he can only invoke Chávez’s memory to legitimate his attempts to come to terms with the growing social and economic problems his nation faces.

Comparing the Four In these four cases elites, actually one or two persons (Ortega, Orbán, Putin, Chávez, or Alemán and Ortega), brought about regime transitions. Further, they all did so using existing legal-constitutional processes. In all cases, the government that implemented the change of regime carried on in office for at least the next electoral period, thus minimizing political disruption. Similarly, in each case nonpartisan institutions, especially courts and electoral authorities, were converted to partisan instruments under the leader’s control, rather like nineteenth-century machine politics in US cities. Again in all instances, the rule of law does not apply to the leader and his state. Finally, in every instance except Nicaragua, the leader who would orchestrate the transition from democracy took power following either a period of economic distress (Hungary), ineffective government (Venezuela), or both (Russia). So in this selection of cases, which is too small to be representative of even transitions from democracy, direct personal control over the state and minimal limits on the leader’s use of authority replace democratic pluralism. What is patent is that in none of the cases had democracy become the only game in town. There were plenty of skilled political figures in all four states who wanted something a bit more flexible and better suited to their interests and objectives. Whatever democratic political institutions existed in these countries proved unable to resist the efforts of determined leaders to build new governmental machinery that would facilitate securing their objectives. Moreover, these leaders did so by using the instruments of democracy to weaken democratic rule. Regarding the differences among them, the most obvious is income (see Table 8.1). World Bank figures put the three cases used as comparisons either at the top of the upper-middle-income countries ($4,087–$12,616) or at the bottom of the high-income countries (>$12,616), whereas Nicaragua ranks below the midpoint for lower-middle-income states ($1,035– $4,086).19 Abandoning political pluralism and democratic processes is not, therefore, associated solely with poverty. Nor, taking Venezuela into account, is it limited to countries with limited experience with political democracy. The most striking point of divergence between Nicaragua and the other three is that all of the latter’s shifts away from democracy began following a crisis (economic, political, or both) that more democratic governments had been unable to overcome.

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Table 8.1 Comparison of per Capita Income, 2014 Country Nicaragua Hungary Russia Venezuela

Per Capita Income (US$) $1,780 $12,390 $12,700 $12,470

Source: Compiled by author from World Bank, World Development Report (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2014), pp. 296–297, http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTNWDR2013 /Resources/8258024-1352909193861/8936935-1356011448215/8986901-138004698 9056/WDR-2014_Complete_Report.pdf.

Democratic, Hybrid, or Autocratic? That Nicaragua’s present political regime is not a constitutional democracy, one in which the government is bound by the law, is clear; and even its status as an electoral democracy, where free and fair elections determine who governs, is disputable. But how far has it departed from its earlier experiment with democracy? And what kind of a political system does the country have if it no longer belongs with the democracies? Is it a hybrid regime that is neither fully democratic nor fully authoritarian? Or is Nicaragua better classed with the autocratic states in 2015? Finally, what indicators best show what kind of political regime today’s Nicaragua has? Political analysis, whether academic political science or applied political journalism, keeps trying to separate political regimes into two classes, one good and the other bad. The good class always is made up of democracies, at least when the classifying is done in a democratic country. The bad class is then composed of nondemocracies, whether called dictatorships, autocrats, or authoritarians. This is sound policy analytically but causes dilemmas when considering individual political systems. The majority of cases plainly belong among either the democracies or the dictatorships, which argues for a dichotomous classification. But placing those cases along a continuum from most democratic to most dictatorial reveals the problem that arises from dichotomizing. Approaching the midpoint of the path from the most democratic regime to its least democratic counterpart, the cases increasingly manifest a blend of democratic and authoritarian characteristics. Fifty years ago, Juan Linz addressed this problem when he divided dictatorships into two classes: totalitarian, such as the Soviet Union, and authoritarian, the label he applied to Franco’s Spain.20 In the 1960s, Spain was very much a dictatorship, but unlike the totalitarians it permitted organizations outside the state to exist, for example, the Catholic Church. Therefore, distinct approaches were needed to understand the two types of undemocratic states. Something similar happened after the third great wave

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of democratic expansion ended in the mid-1990s. The regimes that were neither unquestionably democracies nor unmistakably dictatorships formed the class that is usually called hybrids. Chapter 2 sketched how four different organizations that classify political regimes handled this matter. Freedom House, the Economist Intelligence Unit, and Polity IV each have an unquestionably democratic class, a similarly unarguably autocratic or authoritarian category, and a segment composed of cases that fit among neither the democracies nor the autocracies. The Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI), however, has three democratic variants and two autocratic ones; nevertheless, the BTI’s highly defective democracies and moderate autocracies do bridge the democratic and autocratic spheres.21 Each organization uses a distinct rating system. The Bertelsmann Transformation Index employs eighteen indicators, scoring each of 129 countries on a 1–10 scale for each indicator, where a score of 1 is lowest and 10 highest. The Economist Intelligence Unit uses sixty indicators and an overall score from 0 to 10 is possible for each of the 167 nations it analyzes. Freedom House works with a seven-point scale, with a score of 1 indicating a free country and 7 denoting one that is not free; 195 states are included. Finally, the Polity IV project evaluates 167 countries, using thirty-six variables; scores can run from –10, purely autocratic, to 10, purely democratic. Table 8.2 presents how those same four organizations categorized Nicaragua, Hungary, Russia, and Venezuela in 2014. It is obvious that there is little agreement among the raters, except in the case of Venezuela. Equally apparent is that at least one of the four rating organizations places at least one of the four countries in a class other than unquestionably democratic or completely undemocratic. But what characteristics indicate that a political system is a hybrid regime? One way to answer those questions is to use the criteria employed by the organizations that classify political systems. Freedom House,22 the oldest and best known of these regime evaluators, uses the status of political rights and civil liberties in a country to decide if it is free, partly free, or unfree. Partly free states, like Nicaragua, offer some protection of rights and liberties, but face problems of corruption, place strictures on the government’s opponents, restrict media freedom and union activities, and often discriminate against minorities and women. The EIU calls its intermediate class hybrid.23 Their checklist is longer and includes, beyond the indicators used by Freedom House, substantial electoral irregularities, limited government capacity, low levels of political participation, a weak rule of law alongside a politically subservient judiciary, and state controls on civil society. Polity IV describes anocracies, its semidemocratic/semiauthoritarian category, as having weak institutions,

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Table 8.2 Regimes Classified by Organization Bertelsmann Transformation Index (score 1–10; rank)

Economist Intelligence Unit (score 0–10; rank)

Freedom House (score 1–7)a

Polity IV (score –10 to 10)a

Highly defective democracy (5.57; 67/129)

Hybrid (5.32; 94/167)

Partly free (3.57)

Democracy (9)

Hungary

Defective democracy (8.05; 16/129)

Flawed democracy (6.90; 51/167)

Free (27)

Democracy (10)

Russia

Moderate autocracy (5.24; 77/129)

Authoritarian (3.39; 132/167)

Not free (67)

Anocracy (4)

Venezuela

Moderate autocracy (4.60; 93/129)

Hybrid (5.07; 100/167)

Partly free (57)

Anocracy (4)

Nicaragua

Sources: Compiled by author from Bertelsmann Stiftung, Transformationsindex BTI 2014 (Gütersloh, Germany: Bertelsmann Stiftung, 2014), www.bti-project.de; Economist Intelligence Unit, Democracy Index 2013 (London: Economist Intelligence Unit, 2014), www.eiu.com/public/topical _report.aspx?campaignid=Democracy0814; Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2014 (Washington, DC: Freedom House, 2014), https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world -2014#.VXHAlkYbMQI; and Polity IV, Polity IV Project: Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800–2012 (Vienna, VA: Center for Systemic Peace, 2014), www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4 .htm. Note: a. Freedom House and Polity IV do not provide a rank order of individual countries.

inadequate instruments for overseeing and controlling the executive, and often high levels of political polarization.24 Finally, although as already noted the BTI does not have a specific group of intermediate regimes, it does identify a class of highly defective democracies (which includes Nicaragua) that, like the EIU’s hybrids, have a weak rule of law and suffer electoral manipulation. 25 BTI also publishes country-by-country analyses that give more details. Its 129 country reports present a political transformation index that has five categories: stateness, political participation, rule of law, stability of democratic institutions, and political and social integration.26 Only the last four are considered here, and only seven of the fourteen variables employed in those categories figure in Table 8.3: free and fair elections; freedom of association and assembly; freedom of expression; civil rights in general; judicial independence; commitment to democracy; and interest group activity, including civil society. The highest score in the 2014 index is 9.95, which belongs to Uruguay. Of the four nations examined here, Hungary, a “defective democracy” in Bertelsmann’s system, leads with a score of 7.95 (21/129), followed by Nicaragua, a “highly defective democracy,” at 6.80 (68/129), Venezuela with 4.52 (85/129), and Russia at 4.40 (86/129), both of which are classed as “moderate autocracies.” There can and will be disagreement about the specific scores the evaluators assigned to their countries, but three patterns are eye-catching. One

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Table 8.3 Bertelsmann Political Transformation Index (PTI), Selected Scores by Country

Hungary Nicaragua Russia Venezuela

FFE

AA

FE

CR

JI

CD

IG

PTI score

9 6 5 6

9 7 3 5

7 7 4 4

8 6 3 5

7 3 4 2

8 4 2 3

7 6 4 4

7.95 6.80 4.40 4.52

Source: Compiled by the author from Bertelsmann Transformation Index, Hungary Country Report 2014, Nicaragua Country Report 2014, Russia Country Report 2014, Venezuela Country Report 2014. Notes: FFE, free and fair elections; AA, freedom of association and assembly; FE, freedom of expression; CR, civil rights in general; JI, judicial independence; CD, commitment to democracy; IG, interest group activity.

concerns the weakness of judicial independence, the foundation of the rule of law, in the three lowest-scoring states: Nicaragua, Russia, and Venezuela. The governments of those same three states were adjudged to have the lowest commitment to democracy. In these three cases, that also correlates with extremely executive-centered personal rule, indicating that supposedly democratic structures are either incapable of restraining powerful executives or were never intended to do so. Finally, the two moderate authoritarians, Russia and Venezuela, scored the lowest of the four on the interest group–cum–civil society variable, a measure of a political system’s pluralism. None of this is surprising, but it does confirm that there is an intermediate status between democracies and authoritarian regimes. Although these regime classification publications are attractive because they provide yearly updates and are easily available, there are also sophisticated models of hybrid systems developed by political scientists. In this instance, it is important to bear in mind that the study of these mixed regimes began as it was becoming clear that democratic transitions were not working as predicted. Instead of consolidated democracies in which democratic government and society reinforced each other to make democracy a bedrock value and the only imaginably acceptable regime, many transitional regimes fell short of the standards set by the world’s historic democracies. There were delegative democracies where executives took electoral victory as a mandate to govern as they saw fit until the next election; 27 electoral authoritarians,28 who hold regular elections but convert elections into support for authoritarian rule; and competitive authoritarians, in which there is competition but the rules are heavily skewed in the ruler’s favor.29 Merkel pooled all of these under the label “defective democracies.”30 He could, however, have called them defective dictatorships, for they also failed to measure up to the criteria for autocratic systems. All of these variations on the hybrid theme show that although hybrid regimes have governmental machinery that mirrors that found in democracies, it does not work the same way. Those institutions coexist with some

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combination of weak vertical and horizontal control over government, state machinery dedicated to keeping the present rulers ruling, tight controls over political opponents, and clear limits on political pluralism. Although the structural framework of democracy is rightly the centerpiece of inquiries about hybrid regimes, there are two further factors to consider when examining such systems. One is political pluralism, which demands the existence of centers of power that the state does not control and that thus can take political action when and as they see fit. These can be parties, interest organizations, voluntary and community-based groups, or movements. Political pluralism does not demand that parties alternate in power, only that the possibility of the ruling party’s losing power exists in law. It is this last requirement that separates the limited pluralism found in Nicaragua under the Somozas and during the Sandinistas’ revolutionary vanguard regime from the pluralism that sustains democracy. State autonomy is the second factor. To the extent that a government is controlled by a foreign power it is not autonomous and cannot be a democracy; at most it can be a protodemocracy or quasi-democracy. The same logic applies to a government so completely under the sway of an individual, party, or other institution, perhaps the military, that the state’s ability to act independently and, more importantly, with minimal attention to partisan concerns is undermined. Accordingly, the extent to which a regime that permits a government to operate in the service of society, constrained only by the law, the material resources it commands, and the popular support it enjoys, is another indicator of a system’s democratic status. State autonomy, however, is far less important than legal and political equality, free and fair regular elections, or constitutional government, one that itself is subject to the law, in determining if a regime is democratic. Crucially important is holding elections the incumbent can lose. For although a hybrid regime can easily be governed by a hegemonic party, one that not only does not lose but also uses any and all means necessary to ensure that result,31 a democratic one cannot. Despite all these deviations from democratic practice, however, the resulting political system in Nicaragua still fails to approximate the degree of concentrated power and willingness to use repression common in unambiguously authoritarian regimes. Nondemocratic and antidemocratic regimes do not disperse power but rather concentrate it in an individual, party, or movement. Although some regimes that eschew formal democracy do secure important levels of substantive equality for their populations, communist regimes for example, participatory rights and guarantees of legal due process are slighted. Elections that can actually change governments are avoided. And it is unthinkable that a government could be subject to its own laws. Nevertheless, most authoritarian systems use some of the machinery of democratic government, and not just as window dressing.32 In fact, such

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familiar democratic institutions as elections and representative assemblies have been used by autocrats to secure their ends. They are employed as instruments and are not intended to become institutions that would be integral parts of the political system. Further, recent research indicates that personal dictatorships, such as the Somozas’, are longer-lived than institutional (party or military) ones.33 The reason is that in a personal dictatorship the leader is not accountable to any institution, but rather embodies the state in his or her person. Such a leader does not face a selectorate—those who “select and remove a leader by established procedures”34—with loyalties to the institution as well as the leader, but rather to individuals whose allegiance is solely to the leader.35 So although all authoritarian or autocratic regimes are by definition undemocratic, there are great differences as to how each system is undemocratic in practice. To summarize the foregoing, mixed systems will display some level of political pluralism, at least enough to be a quasi-polyarchy in which some competition for power exists and at least limited contestation is permitted.36 In practice, the opposition in such systems has some freedom to act, even if it has almost no chance of exercising power. As well, there must be objectively independent media, even if they are badly placed to compete with official outlets. And although government may ignore CSOs, these organizations still must function reasonably freely in a hybrid system. The right to participate actively in governing need only extend to universal suffrage and regular elections, however. Further, free and fair elections may be compromised by the government’s abuse of incumbency, not least via control of a nation’s electoral authority. As a result, although challengers can win some elections, perhaps even a sizable minority of legislative seats, the playing field will be so tilted to the incumbent’s advantage as to make a change of government unrealizable. Finally, the rule of law will be weak, though not absent; and although judiciaries are quite attentive to the wishes of the executive, they can rule fairly in circumstances that are not politically sensitive.

Classifying Nicaragua’s Present Regime With the exception of Polity IV, the organizations that classify political regimes agree that Nicaragua is one of those hybrids. As things stand in 2015, it is difficult to make the case that Nicaraguan politics is democratic. Recent cases of electoral manipulation, a politicized and subservient judiciary, and the return of coercing opponents as an instrument of rule put the country out of the democratic ranks, egalitarian social policies notwithstanding. At the same time, an increasingly plausible argument can be made for shifting the country into the authoritarian ranks. In addition to those fac-

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tors, there is the direct control over the military and the police that new legislation recently gave to the president, adding to the already significant instruments of governance that President Ortega has in his hands, reinforcing his capacity for personal rule and making the resources at his disposal look like those the three Somozas held. What, then, makes it possible to treat Nicaragua’s current regime as a hybrid dominant power system with some democratic aspects, but where the opposition will almost certainly not win an election? The place to start analyzing the Nicaraguan case is with the machinery of government that once served democracy. We know that electoral machinery and the Supreme Court of Nicaragua came fully under the control of President Ortega and his FSLN37 from 2007 to 2011. Those institutions had already become politicized under the power-sharing duopoly. What changed was that the PLC was progressively weakened during Ortega’s second administration, which removed the possibility of one strong party countervailing the other. This permitted the functions of key institutions in the Nicaraguan polity to work almost exclusively for the benefit of President Ortega and the FSLN. Institutions designed to serve a democracy predictably changed the roles they played as the regime in which they operated changed to a duopoly and then to a dominant power system.38 Something similar happens in democracies when governments change. However, it is unusual for democratic governments to ensure their longevity by continually revising the constitution. That is precisely what draws the attention of analysts to Orbán’s Hungary, Putin’s Russia, and Chávez’s Venezuela, as well as Ortega’s Nicaragua. Do Nicaragua’s state institutions remain sufficiently democratic to give its government a serious claim to hybrid status? Although elections do not presently determine who governs, they do permit independent opposition parties to campaign relatively freely, present their programs, and remain alive as alternatives to the Sandinistas. That the FSLN’s opponents, currently consisting of several varieties of Liberals and the dissident Sandinistas in the MRS, show few signs of being able to mount a challenge to the ruling party could persuade President Ortega to rely more on the tools available to any sitting government, such as managing the electoral business cycle, and less on more direct manipulations, for example of vote counts. That is what dominant parties in democracies do. Whether President Ortega or his wife or children, depending on who succeeds him, would risk even the possibility of defeat is an open question. The control that the dominant powers of this system, Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, currently exercise over their chief political instrument, the FSLN, gives little indication that they would seriously entertain such a prospect. Nor have there been signs of making the judiciary more independent or of letting more state agencies function free of the leader’s political control.

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Nicaragua’s status as a hybrid, a semidemocracy-cum-semiautocracy, therefore has to rest on the autonomy of the state and the existence of some significant degree of political pluralism. The state’s autonomy is the easier of the two to deal with, so it is best to start there by recalling that no state is absolutely autonomous. Even the United States in its brief moment as a supposedly unchallengeable hyperpower discovered that a minor nonstate actor like Al Qaeda could affect its decisions. Small, weak states such as Nicaragua have far less room for maneuver in the international sphere. Yet that does not automatically mean that such states are pawns moved by greater powers. Although Nicaragua’s sovereignty was seriously curbed by the United States from 1912 to 1933, for the last eighty years it has been able to chart its own course, as much as any small country can. True, it faced an insurgency financed by the US government, one that brought the electoral defeat of the Sandinistas in 1990, but even that reflected a decision made by Nicaraguan voters. It is also true, though, that since 1909, Nicaragua has aligned itself with a larger power. Until 1979 and again from 1990 to 2007, that power was the United States. From 1979 until 1990 the Soviet Union assumed that role. Since 2007, Venezuela has been the larger, wealthier benefactor, although by 2015, Venezuela’s economic straits had reduced its ability to aid its friends in Managua. However, such unequal partnerships are common, as poorer, weaker states seek reliable sources of material aid and diplomatic support. Nicaragua thus passes the autonomy test. That leaves political pluralism as the acid test for establishing Nicaragua’s credentials as a hybrid political system. It may also be what keeps the country from becoming more authoritarian, and perhaps offers Nicaragua an opening for a partial rebuilding of democratic government. A conservative approach is necessary here in order not to make political pluralism unrealizable, which means using a minimal definition of the concept. At base, pluralist politics accepts diversity within the political system. As a practical matter, that requires allowing the existence of centers of political power able to shape a government’s agenda outside of the state’s control. Monism, in contrast, advocates concentrating extreme power in the state. That goes beyond wanting a powerful state, whether to countervail strong private interests or to be able to defend the national interest in international affairs. Mussolini’s “everything in the state; nothing outside the state; nothing against the state” is a good if extreme statement of a monist position.39 How did political pluralism fare in Nicaragua in 2015? There are three indicators that have special value: political parties, independent media, and organized nongovernment-related interests. Parties in Nicaragua present a mixed picture. On the positive side, independent opposition parties, such as the MRS, PLI, and PLC at the national level,40 do exist and offer alternatives to the FSLN. That none of these parties is

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capable of making a serious challenge is only partly explained by the highly partisan CSE. In fact, unlike the period from 1996 to 2006 when the PLC was the organizational peer of the Sandinistas, the latter now encounter an oppositional panorama similar to what existed from 1984 to 1990, when the FSLN’s opposition was composed of many small, weak parties. Another test of political pluralism centers on the existence of an independent media that can provide citizens with an alternative to the government’s vision of the world. Nicaragua has independent print, digital, and electronic (television and radio) media, although they are outweighed by those controlled by the government and the Ortega family (four TV and seven radio stations), as well as by Mexican media magnate Ángel González (eleven TV and twelve radio stations), who is reportedly close to the Ortegas.41 More troubling, top government officials, led by the president, do not give interviews and only those media friendly to or controlled by the administration can attend briefings.42 Despite these limitations, Nicaragua does not fare badly in international assessments of the state of press freedom. Table 8.4 gives the rankings of media freedom done by Freedom House and Reporters Without Borders. The former surveys 197 states, the latter 179. In both instances, Finland finishes first and North Korea last. Although the two organizations use somewhat different criteria to establish their rankings, the results are similar enough for present purposes. Hungary is in or near the top third on both scales, whereas Nicaragua is just into the lower half in the Freedom House index but classed in the freest 40 percent by Reporters Without Borders. Discrepancies aside, in terms of media freedom, Nicaragua fits better with the hybrids than the authoritarians. Finally, there is the matter of interest organizations that are independent of government. It is not necessary to subscribe to all the tenets of 1950s interest group pluralism to acknowledge that democracy demands not just the existence of organizations that are not arms of the state but also that those organizations can act politically. They can do this by financing candi-

Table 8.4 Media Freedom Rankings

Nicaragua Hungary Russia Venezuela

Freedom House

Reporters Without Borders

109/197 (tie) 71/197 (tie) 176/197 (tie) 171/197 (tie)

71/179 64/179 148/179 116/179

Sources: Compiled by author from Freedom House, Freedom of the Press 2014 (Washington, DC: Freedom House, 2014), https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/freedom -press-2014; and Reporters Without Borders, World Press Freedom Index 2014 (Paris: Reporters sans frontières, 2014), http://rsf.org/index2014/e-index2014/php.

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dates and parties, seeking to influence public opinion, or lobbying government in an attempt to shape public policy. It does not matter if the form of representation is pluralist or corporatist, as long as the organizations have some capacity to act independently. Further, even if powerful organizations have the best access to government, there should be no serious obstacles to citizens seeking to act on their own in pursuit of some public objective. How well does this description fit Nicaragua today? One of the great surprises of the post-2007 version of Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas is their having mended fences with both COSEP, the apex organization of Nicaraguan big business, and the Roman Catholic Church, at least with Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo. The reconciliation with COSEP reflects the strength of business interests within the FSLN, not least the first family, the pro–economic development perspective shown by the Ortega administration since 2007, and a generational change in COSEP, with new business leaders being more disposed to engage with a much more moderate Sandinista government.43 The fruits of this new relationship were on display in late 2013 when the president and the leaders of COSEP privately negotiated changes to a series of proposed constitutional amendments the business leaders found unacceptable.44 Although this particular privilege was not extended to other organizations, Ortega has also engaged with the Church. The FSLN’s decision to introduce a total ban on abortions just prior to the 2006 elections was the key event. Since then, Ms. Murillo has christened her husband’s government “Christian, socialist, and solidaristic.” And when Nicaragua’s bishops issued a document criticizing the Ortega government on a broad range of issues, they were invited to a private meeting with the president and his wife to discuss the matter.45 The Ortega government obviously practices what Robert Presthus called elite accommodation.46 When dealing with nonelites the government’s record is more mixed. Chapter 7 described the Ortega administration’s reactions to protests growing from allegations of electoral fraud as well as those held in support of retirees seeking better pensions. In both instances there was zero tolerance for protest and party toughs were loosed on the demonstrators. However, since September 2014 there have been significant mobilizations protesting the expropriation of lands for the proposed transisthmian canal. Resistance has been sufficiently serious that the Chinese surveyors only work accompanied by armed Nicaraguan soldiers.47 Despite cries of “Chinese out!” and “Ortega traitor!”48 the protests at first were allowed to continue with minimal interference. This was rather surprising, for although these protesters are poor and may vote Sandinista, there are also many from historic antiSandinista strongholds who voice their opposition essentially unhindered. By late December, however, police began cracking down on these demonstrators as well.49

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Putting all of the above together leaves a picture of a country that has a certain degree of political pluralism, even though the behavior of its government is increasingly hegemonic. Perhaps the dominant power regime can accept independent political actors as long as they do not threaten the government’s ability to rule as it wishes. For the moment, what can be said is that as long as the possibility exists for political action that is free from state control, Nicaragua belongs among the world’s hybrid regimes.

Personalism, Political Polarization, and Nicaragua’s Recent Transitions Three times in its history Nicaragua has had a caudillo-style, personalistic strongman ruler reverse the country’s trajectory toward a possible democratic future by disarticulating a consolidated regime that was at least protodemocratic. The first occurred in 1889 when Roberto Sacasa became the first person from León to be president of the country’s Conservative Republic. Sacasa, however, opted to make up for thirty years of relative exclusion from power for his hometown by rewarding his friends with appointments and breaking the consensus that let the Conservative Republic work. The result was a sixteen-year Liberal dictatorship that was followed by eighteen years of civil war. Forty-seven years after Sacasa began dismantling the government that gave Nicaragua thirty years of stability, Anastasio Somoza García ended a twelve-year experiment in fair elections that might have presaged electoral democracy. In its place Somoza García initiated a two-generation family dictatorship that fell only in 1979. Whereas Sacasa appeared to be settling scores on behalf of the citizens of León, Somoza looked more like he was seizing a not-to-be-missed opportunity to assume power. What both shared was their distaste for the regimes under which they began their careers. The latest turn from democracy began in 2000 and continues in 2015. Of the sponsors of this initiative, Arnoldo Alemán and Daniel Ortega, only the latter remains a political figure of note in Nicaragua. He is in his second of what may become several consecutive terms as president, his third overall. As to his former pact partner, although Mr. Alemán still leads the PLC, he scarcely counts in most political calculations. In this most recent case, the proximate cause of the transition away from democracy appears to have been constitutional amendments adopted in 1995 that restricted presidential power by making the chief executive more accountable. Neither Alemán nor Ortega was comfortable with how the democratic regime initiated by the Sandinistas was developing. The common thread linking all three cases is the ease with which the more democratic regime succumbed. All of them naturally had their weak-

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nesses, some of them undoubtedly serious. The Conservative Republic was becoming sclerotic and had failed to include either the region around Managua or the rapidly emerging coffee-growing interests as parts of the normal processes of government. What Anastasio Somoza confronted was a potential electoral democracy that, although begun by Nicaraguans, came to be seen as the project of the United States. In any case, free elections had been in place for only a dozen years when toppled, hence were too new to have become embedded in the nation’s political psyche. The most recent experiment in electoral, representative democratic politics was hobbled by being identified with the austerity policies that came with structural adjustment programs. Nonetheless, there were obviously not just more people but also more powerful ones who were more disposed to attack the regime than to defend it. Although it may be that Nicaraguans have simply had the bad luck to see powerful, antidemocratic caudillos emerge whenever a democratic future seemed at hand, throughout the book I have treated this as a question of a powerful informal institution. Specifically, it refers to a view of how best to govern shared by enough of Nicaragua’s political class to let it vanquish a more democratic alternative. This is hardly surprising, given Nicaragua’s history. In fact, that history might also account for the weakness of any defense of democracy, particularly the most recent experiment. If democracy is more of an abstract concept than a form of rule known to produce good results for many people, it may be hard to marshal vigorous support for it. This would be even more the case where the externals of democracy (elections, legislative debates, opposition groups criticizing government in the media, and no troops in the streets) are left untouched and normal democratic procedures are used to move away from democracy, as is the case with the current Nicaraguan administration. In all three episodes, polarized politics—another of Nicaragua’s informal institutions—accompanied the shift toward personal rule. This was not the stylized polarization between government and opposition in Westminster-style parliaments, where whatever government suggests is roundly denounced by the “honourable members opposite.” As a strategy, polarization works to isolate the government’s opponents, paint them as enemies of sound governmental practices, and turn them into easy targets for scapegoating when anything goes wrong. More significantly, polarization turns opponents of the government into enemies of the regime. This is partly the government’s aim, but it is also a by-product of structuring a political system so completely to suit the needs of the ruler. This was true of nineteenthcentury caudillo politics and it remains true today, even if armed force is less important now. Personalized politics can build regime instability into a system, because the regime is tailor-made for one leader or one party; therefore, changing the government necessarily means changing the regime.

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Seen in that light, what has happened in Nicaragua since 1979 is more comprehensible. Furthermore, thinking of the dynamics of polarized, personalistic government helps explain why Nicaraguan elites have been unable to agree on a general model for governing their country: everybody wants their side to control everything and to leave only crumbs for the others.

The Takeaways The key finding reported in this book is how easily a determined leader can move a government away from democracy to hybridism or even autocracy. This is especially possible where there are long traditions of interelite polarization and personalistic, strongman politics. Political analysis divides its focus between actors and institutions. In the early days of democratic transitions actors were emphasized, but when democratic strengthening became the order of the day in the mid-1990s the focus moved to institutions, where it has stayed. Institutions are supposed to provide incentives to govern democratically. It should not be possible to use them against democracy; yet that is what has occurred in Nicaragua since 2000.50 Clearly both active agents and the structures they either build or take apart must be parts of any analysis of political transitions. A second finding is that regimes can change, yet governing parties and political leaders do not. At one level, every observer of politics knows that ambitious leaders try to shape governmental machinery to let them do whatever they want, both legally and more easily. However, Alemán and Ortega, Orbán, Putin, and Chávez all restructured entire political systems and then went on to govern using the systems they designed. A further point concerns Nicaragua and how it has changed since 1979. This is now a very different country and the Sandinistas are no longer los muchachos (the young guys) who overthrew Somoza. The onetime revolutionaries have become a party far closer to the historic Nicaraguan norm.51 It is true, however, that the FSLN is the only party in Nicaragua that has taken serious steps to address the country’s poverty, and it has made measurable progress. Yet the center-left Concertación in Chile made equally impressive progress, as did the centrist PRI in Mexico. Poverty reduction is a policy that can be undertaken by governments from the center-left to the center-right; radicals do not hold a monopoly. Similarly, although Daniel Ortega came to power as a revolutionary, he has since adapted to the exigencies of rule. As a result, he has become a fairly typical personal ruler, albeit one with a more progressive discourse than some others. How did this happen? One possible (and plausible) explanation centers on the Sandinistas’ shift to electoral democracy in 1984. Perhaps the most distinctive trait of the vanguard era was the role of the nine

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comandantes who formed a collective executive. Whatever its faults—a Managua taxi driver once told me that with nine guys you play baseball, not run a country—los nueve (the nine) were an antidote to personalistic caudillismo. By adopting a presidential constitution and free elections, however, the Sandinistas, perhaps unwittingly, laid the groundwork for a return to personalistic politics. First as candidate, then as president, Daniel became Nicaragua’s chief newsmaker and the personification of the Sandinistas. Even after his defeat in 1990 he continued as the party’s public face, most effective politician, and eventually its unquestioned leader. At the time, this seemed a positive outcome—better than a bitter struggle over the leadership of the FSLN, at any rate. But as the years passed it became increasingly clear that Ortega was following the same path to individual dominance over the state that Zelaya and the Somozas had taken. Daniel has been a central figure in Nicaraguan public affairs for over three and a half decades. During that time many of his views on politics and government have changed. Nicaragua’s leading capitalists, formerly the FSLN’s fiercest foes, are now friends and have generally good relations with Ortega’s government; and the Roman Catholic hierarchy, another onetime bitter opponent, also maintains a proper working relationship with the FSLN’s leader. What has not changed is the president’s use of anti-imperialist, revolutionary language. One striking example of this occurred at the 2015 CELAC (Comunidad de Estados Latinoamericanos y Caribeños [Community of Latin American and Caribbean States]) meeting of heads of state and government, held in San José, Costa Rica. Daniel stole the show (and almost brought proceedings to a halt) by yielding the floor to Rubén Berrios Martínez, leader of the Puerto Rican Independence Party (Partido Independentista Puertorriqueño), whom Ortega had named to the Nicaraguan delegation. Before Berrios spoke, however, Daniel made these points: Who is behind the Blockade of Cuba? Who is behind the Embargo? Who is the Great Power that systematically violates the Human rights of an entire People, refusing to recognize the majority vote of the General Assembly of the United Nations? One hundred eighty-eight Nations, continually voting against the Blockade, but Democracy doesn’t count for the yanqui. . . . For the yanqui only force counts. . . . And who is behind the Politics of the Neo-colonization of Puerto Rico? The yanqui! The yanqui doesn’t change! The World changes, but the yanqui doesn’t change.52

Despite the rhetoric, President Ortega maintains good enough relations with the US government to permit the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to work in Nicaragua53 and to have Nicaraguan military personnel attend training programs offered by the US military.54

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Most importantly, Ortega really is the architect of Nicaragua’s current regime. He, more than any other individual, has been an active and critical participant in Nicaragua’s transitions to, through, and now from democracy. Although many of his policies, especially economic ones, have shifted from the revolutionary left to the neoliberal right over the past three-plus decades, Edmundo Jarquín, Nicaragua’s ambassador to both Spain and Mexico during the 1980s and later an FSLN legislator, argues that Daniel belongs to neither the left nor the right. Rather he seeks power for power’s sake, uses power to get wealth, and wealth to get power.55 Seen in this light, Ortega is a pragmatist whose ideology is political and economic power. In his excellent political biography of Daniel Ortega, Kenneth E. Morris observes that Ortega will have succeeded in really improving the lives of poor Nicaraguans when Nicaragua no longer needs rulers like him.56 In fact, from 1984 to 2000, during the electoral democratic regime, Nicaragua had already shown that it no longer needed leaders like him; indeed, Ortega was one of those democratic leaders. What the Alemán-Ortega pact, which ended the country’s democratic experiment, did was create—perhaps recreate is a better word—a Nicaragua that modern caudillos could run as their private fiefdoms. Nicaragua did not need the leader Daniel Ortega has become nearly as much as Daniel Ortega needed the country that Nicaragua became after 2000.

Notes 1. Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, eds., The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978); and Nancy Bermeo, Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003). 2. The clearest exception was Brazil; however, Chile and to a lesser extent Costa Rica were also more stable than the norm. 3. This section draws on Cecilia Castro, “Who Owns the Media in Nicaragua?,” Observacom, September 2014, http://observacom.org/who-owns-the -media-in-nicaragua; and Josué Bravo, “Familia Ortega monopoliza medios de comunicación en Nicaragua,” Diario Las Americas, February 24, 2015, www.dia riolasamericas.com/4849_centroamerica/2965310_familia-ortega-monopoliza -medios-de-comunicacion-en-nicaragua.html. 4. Vladimir Vásquez and Mabel Calero, “Gobierno insiste en papel de ciberpolicía,” La Prensa, May 10, 2015, www.laprensa.com.ni/2015/05/10/nacionales /1829551-gobierno-insiste-en-papel-de-ciberpolicia. 5. World Bank, “GDP per Capita (Current US$),” Data (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2014), http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD. 6. The starting date, 1958, marks the first elections held under the restored democracy. Chávez’s acceptance of his failure to get a package of constitutional revisions approved in a 2007 referendum, his only electoral defeat, was a clear example of properly functioning electoral democracy in Venezuela, the last such under Chávez. Since then elections can be considered honest but unfair, due to the government’s domination of the electoral authority.

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7. Bryan Cartledge, The Will to Survive: A History of Hungary (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011). 8. Zsolt Enyedi, “Plebeians, Citoyens and Aristocrats, or Where Is the Bottom of Bottom-Up? The Case of Hungary,” in Populism in the Shadow of the Great Recession, ed. Hanspeter Kriesi and Takis Pappas, pp. 338–362 (Colchester, UK: ECPR Press, 2014). 9. Tamas Ziegler, “When the European Moral Vacuum Meets the Hungarian Autocratic Regime,” Occasional Paper 5, Social Europe (October 2014), www.social-europe.eu/occasional-papers/op-5-european-moral-vacuum-meets -hungarian-autocratic-regime/. 10. Kim Lane Schepelle, “Hungary and the End of Politics,” The Nation, May 26, 2014, www.thenation.com/issue/may-26-2014. 11. See Richard Sakwa, The Crisis of Russian Democracy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011); and William Zimmerman, Ruling Russia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014). 12. Richard Sakwa, “The Dual State in Russia,” Post-Soviet Affairs 26, no. 3 (2010): 185–206. 13. Ibid., p. 185. 14. Ivan Kratsev and Stephen Holmes, “An Autopsy of Managed Democracy,” Journal of Democracy 22, no. 3 (July 2012): 34. 15. That is, the fraud was undisguised precisely to show potential challengers that the government could do whatever it wished and do so with impunity. For a discussion of how this strategy manifested itself in another setting see Beatriz Magaloni, Voting for Autocracy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 16. Edward Herman and Frank Brodhead, Demonstration Elections: Staged Elections in the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, and El Salvador (Boston: South End Press, 1984). 17. Javier Corrales and Michael Penfold, Dragon in the Tropics: Hugo Chávez and the Political Economy of Revolution in Venezuela (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2011). 18. Allan R. Brewer-Carias, Dismantling Democracy in Venezuela: The Chávez Authoritarian Experiment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 367– 413; Corrales and Penfold, Dragon in the Tropics, pp. 14–46; Ryan Brading, Populism in Venezuela (London: Routledge, 2013), pp. 135–157. 19. World Bank, World Development Report (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2014), p. 293, http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTNWDR2013/Resources/825 8024-1352909193861/8936935-1356011448215/8986901-1380046989056/WDR -2014_Complete_Report.pdf. 20. Juan Linz, “An Authoritarian Regime: The Case of Spain,” in Cleavages, Ideologies and Party Systems: Contributions to Comparative Political Sociology, Transactions of the Westermark Society, vol. 10, ed. by Erik Allardt and Yrjö Littunen, pp. 291–341 (Helsinki: The Academic Bookstore, 1964). 21. Details on the four classification schemes are given below. 22. Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2014 (Washington, DC: Freedom House, 2014), https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world -2014#.VXHAlkYbMQI. 23. Economist Intelligence Unit, Democracy Index 2013 (London: Economist Intelligence Unit, 2014), p. 28, www.eiu.com/public/topical_report.aspx?campaig nid=DemocracyIndex123. 24. Polity IV, Polity IV Project: Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800– 2012 (Vienna, VA: Center for Systemic Peace, 2014), p. 21, www.systemicpeace.org /polity/polity4.htm. Polity IV is the only index that classes Nicaragua as a democ-

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racy. This may be because that project places great emphasis on formal institutional factors like political competition, executive recruitment, and constraints on the executive. Even so, the score of 9 out of 10 seems high. 25. Bertelsmann Stiftung, Transformationsindex BTI 2014 (Gütersloh, Germany: Bertelsmann Stiftung, 2014), www.bti-project.de. 26. Ibid. 27. Guillermo O’Donnell, “Delegative Democracy,” Journal of Democracy 5, no. 1 (January 1994): 55–69. 28. Andreas Schedler, ed., Electoral Authoritarianism (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2006). 29. Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 30. Wolfgang Merkel, “Embedded and Defective Democracies,” Democratization 11, no. 5 (2004): 33–58. 31. Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976). 32. Jennifer Gandhi and Adam Przeworski, “Authoritarian Institutions and the Survival of Autocrats,” Comparative Political Studies 40, no. 11 (November 2007): 1279–1301; Jennifer Gandhi, Political Institutions Under Dictatorship (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 33. Erica Frantz and Natasha Ezrow, The Politics of Dictatorship: Institutions and Outcomes in Authoritarian Regimes (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2011). 34. Zimmerman, Ruling Russia, p. 3; see also Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith, The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior Is Almost Always Good Politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2011), p. 5. 35. Frantz and Ezrow, Politics of Dictatorship, pp. 87–91. Of course, when personal and institutional rule combine in a single dictatorship, for example, as with Fidel Castro and the otherwise very different Augusto Pinochet, the regime can be quite resilient. 36. Robert Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1971). 37. It has really been Ortega’s FSLN since the middle 1990s. His position within the party is effectively beyond challenge. 38. See Lee Morgenbesser, “Elections in Hybrid Regimes: Conceptual Stretching Revived,” Political Studies 62, no. 1 (March 2014): 21–36. 39. On monism in Latin America see Glen Dealy, “The Tradition of Monistic Democracy in Latin America,” Journal of the History of Ideas 35, no. 4 (October– December 1974): 625–646. 40. At the regional level, the Miskitu party Yatama has a similarly clear identity. Although it was allied with the FSLN from 2006 to 2014, Yatama has now broken with the government party. Gloria Picón Duarte, “Yatama ‘rompe’ con el FSLN,” La Prensa, March 3, 2014, www.laprensa.com.ni/2014/03/12/politica/186333-yatama -rompe-con-el-fsln. 41. Castro, “Who Owns the Media in Nicaragua?” 42. Adrián Uriarte Bermúdez, “Se requiere un nuevo periodismo en Nicaragua,” La Trinchera de la Noticia, January 13, 2014, www.trincheraonline.com/2014/01/13 /se-requiere-un-nuevo-periodismo-en-nicaragua. 43. Rose J. Spalding, “Business and State Relations in Post-Revolutionary Nicaragua: Elite Realignment and the New Strategy of Collaboration,” Central American Elites Project (San José, Costa Rica: FLACSO, 2013), https://www.amer ican.edu/clals/upload/Spalding_Business_and_State_in_Nicaragua.pdf.

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44. Tim Rogers, “Nicaragua’s New Pacto,” Confidencial, December 17, 2013, www.confidencial.com.ni/articulo/15348/nicaragua-039s-new-pacto; Carlos Salinas Maldonado, “COSEP Negoció Con Ortega,” Confidencial, December 16, 2013, www.confidencial.com.ni/articulo/15319/cosep-negocio-con-ortega. 45. Tim Rogers, “Nicaragua’s Catholic Bishops Criticize Ortega’s Government,” Nicaragua Dispatch, May 23, 2014, http://nicaraguadispatch.com/2014/05/what -can-nicaraguans-learn-from-church-state-powwow. 46. Robert Presthus, Elite Accommodation in Canadian Politics (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1973). 47. David Boddiger, “Nicaragua Canal Survey off to Rocky Start Marked by Fear and Distrust,” Tico Times, September 4, 2014, www.ticotimes.net/2014/09/04 /nicaragua-canal-survey-off-to-rocky-start-marked-by-fear-and-mistrust; Tico Times, “Southern Nicaraguan Communities Protest Ortega’s Canal Plans,” October 22, 2014, www.ticotimes.net/2014/10/22/southern-nicaragua-communities-protest-orte gas-canal-plans. 48. In Spanish the anti-Ortega cry was “Ortega vendepatria.” In colloquial English it would be, “Ortega sold us out!” 49. The Guardian, “Protests Erupt in Nicaragua over Interoceanic Canal,” December 24, 2014, www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/24/nicaragua-protests -interoceanic-canal-rivas. 50. The removals of Honduran president Manuel Zelaya in 2009 and Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo in 2012 are other examples from contemporary Latin America that demonstrate the adaptability of democratic institutions to undemocratic ends. 51. Andrés Pérez Baltodano, “Political Culture,” in The Sandinistas and Nicaragua Since 1979, ed. David Close, Salvador Martí i Puig, and Shelley Ann McConnell, pp. 65–90 (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2011); Salvador Martí i Puig and David Close, “The Nicaraguan Exception?,” in The Sandinistas and Nicaragua Since 1979, ed. David Close, Salvador Martí i Puig, and Shelley Ann McConnell, pp. 287–307 (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2011). 52. Daniel Ortega, “Discurso del Presidente-Comandante Daniel en la III Cumbre CELAC (28 de Enero del 2015) (Texto íntegro),” La Voz del Sandinismo, January 28, 2015, www.lavozdelsandinismo.com/nicaragua/2015-01-29/discurso -del-presidente-comandante-daniel-en-la-iii-cumbre-celac-28-de-enero-del-2015. Author’s translation, capitalization in original, italics added. 53. Embassy of the United States, Managua, Nicaragua, DEA in Nicaragua (Managua: Embassy of the United States, 2015), http://nicaragua.usembassy.gov /dea.html. 54. Embassy of the United States, Managua, Nicaragua, U.S. Military Group (Managua: Embassy of the United States, 2015), http://nicaragua.usembassy.gov /milgroup.html. 55. Edmundo Jarquín, “Los límites del poder orteguista,” El pulso de la semana 344 (August 1, 2015), https://lanicaragualinda.wordpress.com/2015/08/01/el-pulso -de-la-semana-edicion-no-344-1-de-agosto-2015/. 56. Kenneth E. Morris, Unfinished Revolution: Daniel Ortega and Nicaragua’s Struggle for Liberation (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2010), pp. 209–210.

Acronyms

AL ALBA

Alianza Liberal (Liberal Alliance) Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America) ALN Alianza Liberal Nicaragüense (Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance) CCF Cooperative Commonwealth Federation CDS Comités de Defensa Sandinista (Sandinista Defense Committees) CE Consejo de Estado (Council of State) COSEP Consejo Superior de la Empresa Privada (Superior Council of Private Enterprise) CPC Consejos del Poder Ciudadano (Councils of Citizens’ Power) CSE Consejo Supremo Electoral (Supreme Electoral Council) CSJ Corte Suprema de Justicia (Supreme Court) CSO civil society organization DN Dirección Nacional (National Directorate) FSLN Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (Sandinista National Liberation Front) GF Gabinetes de la Familia HDI Human Development Index ICJ International Court of Justice IMF International Monetary Fund JGRN Junta de Gobierno de Reconstrucción Nacional (Governing Council of National Reconstruction) JRV Junta Receptora de Votos (polling station) MAP-ML Movimiento de Acción Popular–Marxista Leninista (MarxistLeninist Popular Action Movement) MDN Movimiento Democrático Nicaragüense (Nicaraguan Democratic Movement) MO mass organization 193

194

Acronyms

MRS MUR OAS PCD PCN PLC PLI PLN PPSC PRI PSC PSN RAAN RAAS RACCN RACCS SAP TPAS UDEL UNAG UNO VCBS

Movimiento de Renovación Sandinista (Sandinista Renovation Movement) Movimiento de Unidad Revolucionaria (Movement of Revolutionary Unity) Organization of American States Partido Conservador Democrático (Democratic Conservative Party) Partido Comunista Nicaragüense (Nicaraguan Communist Party) Partido Liberal Constitucionalista (Constitutionalist Liberal Party) Partido Liberal Independiente (Independent Liberal Party) Partido Liberal Nacionalista (Nationalist Liberal Party) Partido Popular Social Cristiano (Popular Social Christian Party) Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional Revolutionary Party [Mexico]) Partido Social Cristiano (Social Christian Party) Partido Socialista Nicaragüense (Nicaraguan Socialist Party) Región Autónoma del Atlántico Norte (North Atlantic Autonomous Region) Región Autónoma del Atlántico Sur (South Atlantic Autonomous Region) Región Autónoma de la Costa Caribe Norte (North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region) Región Autónoma de la Costa Caribe Sur (South Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region) structural adjustment program Tribunales Populares Anti-Somozistas (Popular Anti-Somocista Tribunals) Unión Democrática de Liberación (Democratic Union of Liberation) Unión Nacional de Agricultores y Ganaderos (National Farmers’ and Ranchers’ Union) Unión Nacional Opositora (National Union of the Opposition) voluntary, community-based sector

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Index

Abortion: and FSLN, 126, 183; and PLC 127; declared illegal, 126–127 Acción Democrática (Democratic Action), 96, 172 Agrarian reform: and cooperatives, 78– 79; Sandinista model, 70, 71, 78 Agüero, Fernando, 116 AL (Alianza Liberal; Liberal Alliance), 25 ALBA (Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América; Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America), 141, 143 Albanisa, 143; criticisms of, 143–144; and FSLN; and Ortega 143; and Ortega-Murillo family, 144 Alemán, Arnoldo, 10, 25, 26, 31; administration (1997–2000), 102– 106, 138; charges overturned by Supreme Court, 125, 128; conditions of arrest, 124, 140; corruption charges, trial, and conviction, 122– 124; and election of 1996, 100–102; and election of 2011, 160; and Hurricane Mitch, 1998, 103; as mayor of Managua, 103, 159n44; and Ortega, 2, 3, 14, 106–107, 129–131; as president of National Assembly, 122–123. See also Alemán-Ortega pact Alemán-Ortega pact, 2, 26–27, 29, 112– 114, 129–131, 163, 188; background, 106, 116–118, 121–122; content of

the pact, 118–120, 127. See also Power-sharing pact; Power-sharing duopoly regime ALN (Alianza Liberal Nicaragüense; Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance), 126, 140, 146, 148, 151 Argentina, 19, 23, 34, 80, 108, 113, 115n3 Argüello, Alexis: and 2008 Managua mayoral election, 147 Asamblea Nacional. See National Assembly Authoritarian regimes, 21, 23, 28, 63, 165; and democracies, 87; and hybrid regimes, 177–178 Autonomy Statute, Atlantic Coast, 25, 91, 92, 108n14 Bagehot, Walter, 73 Banfield, Edward, 138 Barreda, Mikel, 30 Batista, Fulgencio, 68 Batlle y Ordóñez, José, 77 Bay-Meyers, Kelly, 145–146 Berrios Martínez, Rubén, 187 Bertelsmann Transformation Index, 17, 175, 176 Bolaños administration, 122–124; corruption charges brought against Alemán, 123; formation of proBolaños Azul y Blanco caucus, 124; loses support of FSLN caucus, 124; loses support of PLC caucus, 124. See also Bolaños, Enrique

211

212

Index

Bolaños, Enrique, 27, 31, 101, 121–122; and Alemán, 28, 101, 122–124; and Alemán-Ortega pact, 121, 124; charged with breaking electoral finance law, 124; and Ortega, 28, 123–124; and 2005 constitutional amendments 124 Bolivarian Republic (Venezuela), 172 Bolivarian Revolution (Venezuela), 172 Borge, Tomás, 67, 74 Boss-style politics: North American bosses and caudillos, 138–139; and Ortega 128–131, 139; and personalistic politics, 5, 31, 33, 123 Brazil, 19, 72, 108n3, 171, 188n1; Cabildos abiertos, 91 Cabinets of the Family, Community, and Life (Gabinetes de la Familia, la Comunidad y la Vida, GF), 28, 153; and Councils of Citizen Power, 146; and Rosario Murillo, 28 Calderón Guardia, Rafael Ángel, 77 Carazo, Evaristo, 45 Carothers, Thomas: and dominant power regime, 27–28, 155; and transition paradigm, 21 Castro, Fidel, 23, 63, 64 Caudillo, 5, 10, 14, 26, 43–44, 184–185, 188; Alemán and Ortega as, 33, 123, 128–131, 139, 165; characteristics of caudillo rule, 5–6; compared to North American bosses, 138–139; electoral caudillismo, 14, 105; Somozas as, 23, 55, 58; Zelaya as, 32, 47. See also Personal rule CCF. See Cooperative Commonwealth Federation CDS. Comités de Defensa Sandinista CE. See Council of State Cédula (national ID card): problems with in 1996 election, 100; problems in 2011 elections, 160n60 Censorship: and FSLN, 1979–1990, 80. See also Media ownership Center Group, 98 Central America: peace process, 91– 92 César, Alfredo, 97 Chaguacedo, Armando, 18 Chamorro, Carlos Fernando, 33 Chamorro, Emiliano, 116

Chamorro, Pedro Joaquín: assassinated, 55; and UDEL, 67 Chamorro, Violeta, 25, 31; as member of JGRN, 74; politics of, 93 Chamorro administration: conflict with Alfredo César, 97; and constitutional amendments, 1995, 98–99; economic policy, 96; elections of 1990, 93–94; opposition to within the UNO, 95, 96. See also National Union of the Opposition Chávez, Hugo, 8, 35–36; politics of, 172–173; and problems of personal rule, 17; support for Daniel Ortega, 140–141, 143 Chelabi, H. E., 17 Chile, 72, 107n3, 111, 138, 186, 188n2 Church-state relations: FSLN with Protestant churches, 93; FSLN relations with Roman Catholic Church (1979–1990), 80–81, 92; FSLN relations with Roman Catholic Church since 2006, 183; in 1996 election, 101 Civil society organizations (CSO), 72, 112, 135, 138, 145, 76; and democracy, 129, 151, 175, 177, 179. See also Interest organizations Codigo Militar: amendents to, 152 Colombia, 26, 34, 41; boundary dispute with, 144, 145; National Front, 113, 115 Comandantes de la Revolución (Commanders of the Revolution), 4, 24; as collegial government, 33; and Dirección Nacional, 73–74; and electoral democracy, 82–83 Comités de Defensa Sandinista (Sandinista Defense Committees, CDS), 75 Committee of the Independent Electoral Political Organization (Comité de Organización Política Electoral Independiente, Copei), 172 Consejo de Estado. See Council of State Consejo Supremo Electoral. See Supreme Electoral Council Consejos del Poder Ciudadano (CPC). See Councils of Citizen Power Conservative Republic, 9, 32, 44–46 Conservative-Liberal conflict (1821– 1855), 42–44

Index

Constitution of 1987, 90–91 Constitutional amendments: of 1995, 98– 99; of 2000, 118, 120; of 2005, 124; of 2014, 151– 153 Constitutional Liberal Party (PLC), 3, 4, 14, 103, 106; election of 1996, 25, 27, 100–101, 107; election of 2001, 122– 125; election of 2006, 126, 129, 140; election of 2011, 121, 149–150; municipal election of 2000, 121; municipal election of 2004, 125; municipal election of 2008, 128, 147– 148; municipal election of 2012, 148–149; opposes Bolaños. See also Alemán, Arnoldo; Alemán-Ortega pact Continuismo, 53,55 Controlador General de la República. See Controller General’s Office Controller General’s Office: made collegial, 104. See also Jarquín, Agustín; Alemán-Ortega pact Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), 73 Coordinadora Democrática Nicaragüense, 89, 92 Copei. See Committee of the Independent Electoral Political Organization Córdova Rivas, Rafael, 74 Corrales, Javier, and Michael Penfold, 17 Correa, Rafael, 36 Corte Suprema de Justicia. See Supreme Court of Justice COSEP (Consejo Superior de la Empresa Privada, Superior Council of Private Enterprise): and Coordinadora Democrática, 89; and first FSLN government, 81; relations with second and third Ortega administrations, 168, 183 Costa Rica: boundary dispute with Nicaragua, 144–145, 158n30; CELAC conference (2015), 187; economic data, 2012, 141–142; as electoral democracy, 34, 41, 56 81; political and economic data, 1979, 56–57; relations with Nicaragua’s revolutionary vanguard regime, 82; and SAP, 96; social policies, 76; twoparty system, 26, 112; and United Provinces of Central America, 42

213

Council of Communication and Citizenship (Consejo de Comunicación y Ciudadania), 145 Councils of Citizens’ Power (Consejos del Poder Ciudadano, CPC); operation 142, 143, 145; origin, 138; perception of partisanship, 146; Rosario Murillo and,138. See also Bay-Meyers, Kelly Council of State (Consejo de Estado, CE), 24; composition, 75–76; conflict over, 75; description, 25, 74 Courtney, Roberto, 148 CPC. See Councils of Citizen Power Crick, Bernard, 65 Cruz Porras, Arturo: and JGRN; as presidential candidate (1984), 74, 89 CSE. See Supreme Electoral Council CSJ. See Supreme Court of Justice CSO. See Civil society organizations Dawson pact, 49 Dawson, Thomas C., 49 Decreto 2-2007, 145 Decreto 3-2007, 145 Democratic audit, 30 Democratic Conservative Party (Partido Democrático Conservador, PCD), 90, 108n7, 108n8 Democratic deconsolidation, 46, 130, 165 Democratic deficit, 29 Deonandan, Kalowatie, 3, 129, 130 Diamond, Larry, and Leonardo Morlino, 30 Díaz, Adolfo, 49 Dictatorship of the proletariat, 23. See also Revolutionary vanguard regime Dirección Nacional (DN). See National Directorate Distensão e Apertura (relaxation and opening): in Russia, 171 Dix, Robert, 68 DN. See Dirección Nacional (National Directorate) Dominant power and personalistic regime, 3, 10–11; defined, 141–146; foundations in Nicaragua, 137–138, 147–151; and quality of democracy in Nicaragua, 154–155. See also Dominant power regime Dominant power regime, 3; compared to Hungary, Russia, and Venezuela, 165,

214

Index

169–174; defined, 28; as hybrid regime, 14; in Nicaragua, 27–30, 36, 125, 135, 139, 155–157, 179–184. See also Dominant power and personalistic regime Drake, Paul, 105 Dual-state in Russia, 171 Duvalier, François, 34 Duvalier, Jean-Claude, 34 Economic policy: Chamorro administration, 96; Sandinista Revolutionary Vanguard, 77–79, 83; Somozas, 53; structural adjustment, 96, 102, 117, 185; third Ortega administration, 141–145, 168, 183; Zelaya 48 Economist Intelligence Unit, 17, 87, 175–176 Ejército Popular Sandinista (Sandinista People’s Army), 72 El Gran Canal (the Great Canal), 153– 154, 183. See also Wang Jing El Nuevo Diario, 93 El Pueblo Presidente, 138, 141, 145 El Salvador, 45, 48, 53, 92; civil war in, 92; economic data, 2012, 141–142; political and economic data, 1979, 56–57; and United Provinces of Central America, 42; and Zelaya regime, 48 Elections, pre-1984: Conservative Republic, 44; elections of 1924, 50, 59n3; elections of 1928, 50; elections of 1932, 50; during Somoza era, 53, 55, 56, 84. See also Electoral democratic regime Elections, 1984, 81; background to, 8, 20, 24–25, 82–83, 88–90; Coordinadora Democrática, 88–89; external influence, 8, 20, 24, 37n14; FSLN, 20, 88–90; opposition parties, 89–90, 108n7; results 90 Elections, 1990, 93, 94–95; results, 95; UNO, 94–95; and Chamorro, 95 Elections, 1996, 100–101; and Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, 101; electoral law of 1995; FSLN protests results, 101; and Ortega, 100, 101; problems with vote count, 101; results, 100

Elections, 2001, 105, 122 Elections, 2006, 121, 125, 126; multiparty race, 125–126; role of United States, 126 Elections, 2011, 149–151; claims of irregularities, 149–150, 151; postelection violence 150; results, 150 Elections, municipal, 2000, 121; and Alemán-Ortega pact, 119 Elections, municipal, 2004, 125 Elections, municipal, 2008, 147–148; charges of fraud and opposition protests, 147–148; results, 147; violence by FSLN supporters, 148 Elections, municipal, 2012, 148 Electoral democracy, 24–26, 29–30, 35, 47, 58, 65, 87–110; foreign influence, 8, 20; Freedom House definition of, 87; FSLN adopts, 3–4, 7, 20, 81–83, 88–90 Electoral democratic regime, 2, 87–88, 92–93, 95, 97, 100; electoral democratic regime in Nicaragua, 104–107; and quality of democracy, 104. See also Electoral democracy Electoral law, 1984, 24, 25, 27, 88 Electoral law, 1995, 99, 100, 105 Electoral law, 2000: as part of the Alemán-Ortega pact, 118, 120, 121 Estado de derecho. See Rule of law Estrada, Juan José, 49, 60n16 Fidesz,170 Foco, 66 Fonseca, Carlos, 67 Foreign policy, 37n14; border controversy with Colombia, 144; border controversy with Costa Rica, 144–145; of FSLN, 70, 71, 79–80; Nicaraguan model, 144; Ortega, relations with United States, 144; relations with Venezuela, 140, 141, 143, 144; of the Somozas, 53; of Zelaya, 48 Formal Executive: JGRN as, 73 Framework Law, 1995, 99 Framework Law, 2005, 124 Freedom House, 17, 87 175 176, 182 Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN). See Sandinista National Liberation Front

Index

FSLN. See Sandinista National Liberation Front Fully democratic regime. See Liberal democratic regime Gabinetes de la Familia, la Comunidad y la Vida (GF). See Cabinets of the Family, Community, and Life Gadea, Fabio, 135, 149 The Generals’ pact of 1950, 11 GF. See Cabinets of the Family, Community, and Life Gómez Fortes, Braulio, and Irene Palacios Brihuega, 30 González, Ángel, 168, 182 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 171 Govermental machinery. See Machinery of government Governing Council of National Reconstruction (JGRN), 23–24, 71; as formal executive of first FSLN government, 73; Ortega as chair, 73– 74 Granada, Nicaragua: and Conservative Republic, 44–47; as conservative stronghold, 43 Grigsby, William, 125 Grupo de Apoyo (1995), 99 Guardia Nacional. See National Guard Guatemala, 42, 53, 56–57, 81, 92; economic data, 2012, 141–142; political and economic data, 1979, 57; and United Provinces of Central America, 42 Guerra Popular Prolongada. See Prolonged People’s War Guerrilla insurgency: and FSLN, 65–68 Guzmán, Luis Humberto, 99 Haiti, 52, 54; regime changes, 34–3 Hambre Cero. See Zero Hunger Hartlyn, Jonathon, 115 Hassan, Moïses, 74 HDI. See Human Development Index Herman, Edward, and Frank Brodhead, 171 HKND. See Hong Kong Nicaragua Development Investment Group Ho Chi Minh, 64 Honduras, 26, 48, 53, 56, 66, 111; economic data, 2012, 141–142;

215

political and economic data, 1979, 57; and United Provinces of Central America, 42 Hong Kong Nicaragua Development Investment Group (HKND), 153 Horthy, Admiral Miklos, 169 Human Development Index, 56 Hungary, 8, 10, 57, 65; compared to Nicaragua, Russia, and Venezuela, 173–174; transition from democracy, 169–170, 171. See also Orbán, Victor; Fidesz, Jobbik Hurricane Mitch, 1998, 103 Hybrid regime, 9, 11 17, 18, 39n38; defined, 9, 11, 16–17, 136; examples of, 136; Hungary as, 170; Nicaragua as hybrid regime, 14, 155–156, 165, 167, 179–184; Nicaragua compared to Hungary, Russia, and Venezuela, 174–179, 182–183; and political pluralism, 129, 134, 167–169, 178– 179, 181–182, 184; Venezuela as, 172–173 ICJ. See International Court of Justice IMF. See International Monetary Fund Independent Liberal Party (PLI): in Council of State, 76; election of 1984, 90; election of 2011, 149–150; and Fabio Gadea, 136, 149 Influentials, 2, 5, 15, 19, 167, 169; and political regime, 2, 19, 167 Informal institutions, 4, 31– 34, 73, 185 Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revoucionario Institucional, PRI), 20 Insurgent guerrilla. See Guerrilla insurgency Interest organizations, 178, 182; and political pluralism, 182. See also Cosep; CSO; International Court of Justice; Nicaragua and Colombia boundary dispute; Nicaragua and Costa Rica boundary dispute International Monetary Fund (IMF): and the Alemán administration, 102, 117; and second and third Ortega administrations, 141; structural adjustment programs, 96 Jarquín, Agustín, 103–104

216

Index

Jarquín, Edmundo: assessment of Daniel Ortega’s politics, 188 JGRN. See Governing Council of National Reconstruction Jobbik, 170 JRV. See Junta Receptora de Votos Junta de Gobierno de Reconstrucción Nacional. See Governing Council of National Reconstruction Junta Receptora de Votos (polling station), 99, 101; and voting irregularities, 147, 151 Karl, Terry Lynn, 115 Kinloch Tijerino, Frances, 43 Kratsev, Ivan, and Stephen Holmes, 171 Kun, Bela, 169 La Prensa, 67, 81, 92, 99, 101, 168; censored by FSLN, 81; censored by Somozas, 23 Lacayo, Antonio, and Daniel Ortega, 102; and Chamorro, 98, 99 Lane Schepelle, Kim, 170 Lawyers’ Committee for International Human Rights: assessment of Popular Anti-Somocista Tribunals, 75, 77 León, Nicaragua, 51, 53, 184; and conservative republic, 46; as liberal stronghold, 43, 45 Levine, Daniel, and José Enrique Molina, 30 Lewites, Herty: as mayor of Managua, 126, 140, 159n44; as presidential candidate (2006), 125–126, 140 Ley de Policía Nacional (2014), 152 Ley 840 (El Gran Canal) (2013), 153 Liberal democratic regime, 87, 91, 101; distinguished from electoral democratic regime, 87 Licensed opposition, 23, 33; and 1982 Parties Law, 24, 82; and the Somozas regime, 26, 54, 77, 83, 106, 168 Lijphart, Arend, 112 Linz, Juan, 17, 174 Lipset, Seymour Martin, 73 López Pérez, Rigoberto, 53 Los Doce (The Twelve), 67, 74; and FSLN, 74; and Sergio Ramírez, 74 M5R (Movimiento para la Quinta

República; Movement for the Fifth Republic), 172 Machinery of government, 6, 18, 25–26, 30, 49, 55; of dominant power and personalistic regime, 137– 138, 151, 180; of electoral democracy, 90, 106, 173, 178, 186; of power-sharing duopoly, 118–122, 130; of revolutionary vanguard, 72–73, 78, 80 Maduro, Nicolás, 35, 172 Managua earthquake (1972): response of National Guard, 54; response of Somoza government, 54 Managua, Nicaragua, 46, 5, 54, 80, 82, 83, 100, 101, 103, 125, 140, 181, 185, 187; and José Santos Zelaya, 46. See also Managua earthquake; Mayoral election Mao Zedong, 55, 64 MAP-ML (Movimiento de Acción Popular–Marxista Leninista; MarxistLeninist Popular Action Movement), 90 Martínez Barahona, Elena, 128 Marxist proletarian dictatorship. See Revolutionary vanguard regime Mass organizations (MO), 89 MDN (Movimiento Democrático Nicaragüense; Nicaraguan Democratic Movement), 74 Media, 1, 19, 23; and Ángel González, 168, 182; concentration of ownership, 156; and FSLN, 1979–1990, 72, 80, 81, 92, 93; and FSLN, 2007–2015, 138–139, 151, 154; in hybrid regimes, 175, 179, 181–182, 185; media in Nicaragua, 1990–2006, 116, 123, 129; media freedom in Nicaragua, compared to Hungary, Russia, and Venezuela, 172, 181–183; and Ortega-Murillo family, 1, 168, 182; and the Somozas, 54, 56, 166 Méndez, Judge Juana, 124 Merkel, Wolfgang, 21, 177 Millett, Ricard, 52 MO. See Mass organizations Moncada, José María, 51 Montealegre, Eduardo: mayoral candidate of Managua (2008), 146– 147; presidential candidate (2006),

Index

126, 140, 141; and protest of 2008 electoral results, 148 Morales, Evo, 36 Morris, Kenneth E., 188 Movement of Revolutionary Unity (Movimiento de Unidad Revolucionaria, MUR), 74 MRS. See Sandinista Renovation Movement Municipal autonomy, 125, 148 MUR. See Movement of Revolutionary Unity Murillo, Rosario, 14; and CPC, 28, 138, 145; and GF, 28; head of Council of Communication and Citizenship, 145; labels post-2007 Ortega administrations “Christian, socialist, and solidaristic,” 137, 193; and Ortega, 14, 31, 135, 180; role in government, 28, 31. See also OrtegaMurillo family National Directorate (Dirección Nacional, DN), 24, 68, 73–74 National Front (Colombia): as powersharing regime, 113, 115 National Guard, 23, 52; Anastasio Somoza García as first commander, 50–52; defeated by FSLN, 55; formation of, 50; and Managua earthquake (1972), 54–55; role in the Somozas’regime, 52–54 National Union of the Opposition (Union Nacional Opositora, UNO): and Alfredo César, 97–98; Chamorro as presidential candidate, 94; composition of, 94; elections of 1990, 25, 94–95; as majority party in National Assembly, 97; relations with Chamorro administration, 96 National War (1856–1857), 44 Nationalist Liberal Party (PLN) 23; and Arnoldo Alemán, 26; and Somocismo, 51, 53, 54 Nicaragua: compared to Hungary, Russia, and Venezuela, 169–174; economic and political data, 1979, 57; economic data, 2012, 141–142; historic patterns of rule, 4–8; as hybrid regime, 180–185; overview of political history, 41–59, 63; political

217

regime classified (2015), 174–179; quality of democracy in, 28–31; regimes, 2–3, 13–16, 19–28, 34–35. See also Foreign policy; FSLN; Ortega, Daniel; Political transitions Nicaraguan Christian Way (Camino Cristiano Nicaragüense, CNN),119 Nicaraguan Communist Party (Partido Comunista Nicaragüense, PCN), 90, 108n8 Nicaraguan Congress, Somoza era, 53, 54, 67, 68 Nicaraguan Socialist Party (Partido Socialista Nicaragüense, PSN), 90, 108n8 North Atlantic Autonomous Region (Región Autónoma del Atlántico Norte, RAAN), 92 North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region (Región Autónoma de la Costa Caribe Norte, RACCN), 108n14 O’Donnell, Guillermo, 18, 30 OAS. See Organization of American States Obando y Bravo, Cardinal Miguel, 31; anti-Sandinista, 80–81; antiSomocista, 80, 86n34; and 1995 constitutional amendments, 99; and 1996 election campaign, 100–101; reconciliation with Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, 175 One-party hegemonic system, 147 One-party predominant system, 146– 147 Opposition parties: and elections of 1984, 89–90; and elections of 1990, 94–95; and elections of 1996, 101; and elections of 2006, 125–126; and elections of 2011, 149, 150, 156; and first Ortega government, 91; FSLN as opposition party (1990–2007), 14, 20, 95; and municipal elections of 2008, 147–148; and municipal elections of 2012, 148–149; and power-sharing duopoly regime, 122–125; and pluralism, 180–181; and revolutionary vanguard regime; and the Somozas regime Orbán, Viktor, 170

218

Index

Organization of American States: and Sandinista Revolution, 68 Ortega, Daniel, 1–3, 12, 14, 25–26, 31– 33, 137, 180; and Alemán, 10, 14, 93, 101–104, 106–107, 121, 123–124, 163, 164; approval ratings, 156; and Chamorro, 93, 96; and Chávez, 140– 141, 143, 147; Comandante de la Revolución, 4; compared to Orbán, Putin, and Chávez, 169–173; constitutional amendments of 1995, 98–99; election of 1996, 100–101; election of 2001, 122; election of 1984, 2; election of 1990, 2; election of 2006, 125–129; election of 2011, 138–141, 149–150; eligible for a third term, 128–129; ideology of, 188; and JGRN, 74; as personal leader, 3, 14, 167, 180, 186–187; and political comeback, 3, 36, 121, 139–141; potential succession issues, 156–157; and Rosario Murillo, 14, 31, 135, 138, 180; relations with United States, 144, 187; second term as president, 34, 36, 124–129, 131, 135, 137–139, 143– 146; third term as president, 143–146, 148–149, 151–152, 155, 167–169, 182–183; and 2014 constitutional amendments, 152–153. See also Alemán-Ortega pact; El Gran Canal; Elections, 1984; Elections, 1990; Personal rule; Wang Jing Ortega, Daniel, first administration (1984–1990), 90–93; Autonomy Statute, 1987; Central America peace process; constitution of 1987 Ortega, Daniel, second administration (2007–2012), 121, 125–129; and Alemán, 124, 127–128; presidential reelection, 127, 128, 142; Supreme Court declares Daniel Ortega eligible for re-election, 128, 151; Zero Hunger, 142; Zero Usury, 143. See also Councils of Citizens’ Power; Elections, 2006; Municipal elections of 2004; Municipal elections of 2008; The People as President Ortega, Daniel, third administration (2012–present), 131, 135, 151–158; amendments to Código Militar (Military Code), 152; amendments to

Ley de la Policía Nacional (National Police Law), 152; compared to Chávez, Orbán, and Putin, 173, 181; constitutional amendments, 2014, 152–153; and El Gran Canal, 153– 154; extending political control, 152; response to protest, 152, 183 Ortega family, 1, 3, 10, 13, 15; and Albanisa, 143–144; as the dominant power in the dominant power regime, 121, 129, 155, 167; economic interests, 183; media ownership by, 138, 182; and successor to Ortega, 156. See also Ortega-Murillo family Ortega, Humberto, 97 Ortega-Murillo family, 168 Pact of Espino Negro (1927), 50, 51 Pact of Kupia Kumi (1971), 116 Pacto de Punto Fijo (1958), 115 Panama Canal, 48, 153; economic data, 2012, 141–142; political and economic data, 1979, 56–57 Partido Liberal Constitucionalista (PLC). See Constitutionalist Liberal Party Partido Liberal Independiente (PLI). See Independent Liberal Party Partido Liberal Nacionalista (PLN). See Nationalist Liberal Party Partido Popular Social Cristiano (PPSC). See Popular Social Christian Party Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institucional Revolutionary Party, PRI). See Institutional Revolutionary Party Partido Conservador Democrático (PCD). See Democratic Conservative Party Partido Comunista Nicaragüense (PCN). See Nicaraguan Communist Party Partido Popular Social Cristiano (PPSC). See Popular Social Christian Party Peeler, John, 46, 130 The People as President (El Pueblo presidente), 145 Peraza, José Antonio: electoral manipulation by FSLN, 148, 151, 160n64 Personal dictatorship, 16, 32, 35, 41, 42, 55–56, 69, 171; of the Somozas, 50, 54, 58, 83, 166; of Zelaya, 46, 47–48

Index

Personal rule: and Daniel Ortega, 3, 167, 180, 186; general attributes, 5, 11n3, 43, 91, 166, 177; in Nicaragua, 10, 16, 31, 33–34; and political polarization, 185; prone to succession problems, 44, 156; and regime change, 185–188. See also Personal dictatorship Personalism, 6, 22, 33, 184–186. See also Personal rule Personalistic regime, 5, 8, 10, 16 33; in contemporary Nicaragua, 35–36, 184, 186–187; as informal institution, 58, 73; Somozas as, 53–56, 58. See also Personal rule Pinochet, Augusto, 18, 85n16, 138, 190n35 Pinochetistas, 69 PLC. See Constitutionalist Liberal Party PLI. See Independent Liberal Party PLN. See Liberal Nationalist Party Police (Policía Nacional de Nicaragua; Nicaraguan National Police), 98, 107, 135, 152. See also Ley de Policía Nacional; Policía Sandinista Policía Sandinista (Sandinista Police), 72, 98, 152 Political elites, 4–5, 112, 136–137; and Conservative Republic, 42–49; FSLN, 67, 78; lack of consensus among, 31–32, 36, 164; and regime change, 168, 173, 184–186; and the Somozas, 53, 55–58. See also Political polarization Political executive, 73 Political parties, 24, 28, 33, 72, 74, 78, 82, 88, 89, 92, 95, 107, 119, 139; opposition parties in Nicaragua, 2015, 156; and political pluralism, 181–182. See also specific political parties Political Parties Law, 24, 81–83; and electoral democracy, 82 Political pluralism, 2, 164, 173, 178–179; and the Alemán-Ortega pact, 129, 135; and the dominant power regime, 167–169; and electoral democracy, 90, 105–106, 164; and the FSLN, 71, 77; and hybrid regimes, 179–184; and independent organizations, 177–178, 182–183; and media freedom, 182; in

219

Nicaragua in 2015, 164, 167–169, 178, 181–184; and the revolutionary vanguard regime, 24–25, 65, 74, 80, 83–84; and the Somozas, 23, 56, 83 Political polarization, 5, 176; and the FSLN, 78; in Nicaragua historically, 31, 34, 36, 43, 58, 165; in Nicaragua in 2015, 158, 164; and regime transition in Nicaragua, 184–186;. See also Personal rule Political stability, 6, 102 Political transitions, 1, 2, 4, 11, 29, 31, 115, 186; compared to Hungary, Russia, and Venezuela, 169–174; from democracy, 15, 136–137, 155; to democracy, 8–9, 16, 19–21, 88, 93, 116–117, 178; from insurgent force to party, 64; Nicaragua’s recent transitions, 165–169, 184–186; Ortega and, 188; to socialism, 24; transition paradigm, 21, 136 Polity IV, 17, 175, 179, 189n24 Power-sharing duopoly regime, 2, 10, 14, 35–36; and competitive elections, 167; in contemporary Nicaragua, 102, 117, 121, 127, 129–131, 137, 140, 169, 180; in Kenya and Zimbabwe, 113; natural two-party duopolies, 111–112; in Nicaragua, historically, 112–114; power-sharing defined, 111–112; and quality of democracy, 129; as a regime, 114–116. See also National Front Power-sharing pacts, 106, 113, 114; 115, 117. See also Alemán-Ortega pact, 2000; Generals’ pact of 1950; Pact of Kupi Kumi, 1971; Power-sharing duopoly regime PPSC. See Popular Social Christian Party PRI. See Institucional Revolutionary Party Proletarian Tendency (Tendencia Proletaria, TP), 67 PSC (Partido Social Cristiano). See Social Christian Party PSN (Partido Socialista Nicaragüense). See Nicaraguan Socialist Party Popular Social Christian Party (Partido Popular Social Cristiano, PPSC), 90, 108 n8 Prolonged People’s War Tendency

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Index

(Guerra Prolongada Popular, GPP), 67 Putin, Vladimir, 8; and electoral fraud, 171; as personal ruler, 35; and political transition in Russia, 35, 171 Quality of democracy, 3, 5, 15; defined, 29–31; and dominant power, personalistic regime in Nicaragua, 154–156; and electoral democratic regime in Nicaragua, 104–105; indicators of, 29–31; and powersharing duopoly regime in Nicaragua, 129; and revolutionary vanguard regime in Nicaragua, 83–84 RAAN. See North Atlantic Autonomous Region RAAS. See South Atlantic Autonomous Region RACCN. See North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region RACCS. See South Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region Radio Católica, 92 Radio Corporación, 23, 81, 92 Ramírez, Sergio: and constitution of 1995, 99, 110n30; and Los Doce, 74; and MRS, 99; vice president of Nicaragua, 74 Reagan, Ronald: and anti-Sandinistas, 75; and 1984 elections, 24, 25, 89; and Sandinista foreign policy, 37n15, 79, 94 Regime, 13–40; classification of, 174– 177; definition, 16–18; Nicaraguan regimes since 1821, 21, 22, 23–28, 188. See also Regime change; specific regimes Regime change, 1–7, 9–11, 13–16, 31, 34–36; accompanied by governmental stability in Nicaragua, 4, 6, 35–36, 41, 65, 69–70; in Hungary, 169, 170– 171; initiated by sitting government, 20, 186; in Russia, 35, 38, 170–171; in Venezuela, 35, 38, 171–173. See also Transitions, political Reporters Without Borders, 182 Revolutionary vanguard regime, 2, 35– 36; described, 10; FSLN’s compared to other revolutionary vanguard

regimes, 68–69, 77, 83–84; in Nicaragua, 14, 23–24, 64–65, 68–84; quality of democracy in, 84. See also Sandinista government, first Rizo, José, and Enrique Bolaños, 126; and PLC, 126, 140 Robelo, Alfonso, 74 Rocha, Julio Luis, 120 Rojas Pinilla, Gustavo, 115 Roman Catholic Church. See Churchstate relations Román y Reyes, Víctor Manuel, 38n22 Roosevelt, Franklin, 23, 94 Rule of law, 28, 48, 54–5, 81, 87–88, 93, 130; and the La Verona case, 91–92; in Nicaragua since 2007, 175–179, 212; and power-sharing duopoly regime, 130 Russia, 7 8, 11, 141; compared to Nicaragua, Hungary, and Venezuela, 173, 174–77, 180; elections and electoral fraud in, 171; and political transitions, 35, 88, 170–171. See also Putin, Vladimir Sacasa, Juan Bautista, 50 Sacasa, Roberto, 45–46, 56 Sakwa, Richard, 171 Sandinista Defense Committees (Comités de Defensa Sandinista, CDS), 75 Sandinista government, first (1979– 1984), 69–72; agrarian reform, 70, 71, 78–79; and counterrevolution, 77, 79, 80–81; censorship, 81; Council of State, 74–75, 76; electoral law (1984), 24, 25, 27, 88; foreign and defense policy, 79–80; governing Junta of National Reconstruction, 73–74; judiciary, 75, 77; machinery of government, 72–73; National Directorate, 73–74; Political Parties Law of 1982, 81–83; relations with United States, 74, 79; social and economic policy, 77–79. See also Revolutionary vanguard regime Sandinista National Liberation Front (Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional, FSLN), 1–3, 13–14, 20, 22, 34, 58; and abortion, 127; and Alemán-Ortega pact, 26, 115, 117–

Index

121, 125, 127–129; as “Christian, socialist, and solidaristic,” 137, 183; claims to legitimacy, 69–72; Dirección Nacional of, 68; division into three factions, 67; economic policy, 2007–, 167–168; and first Ortega administration, 24–25, 83–84; and electoral democracy, 88–90, 91– 99; as extra-parliamentary opposition, 102–103; foreign and defense policy, 2007– , 144–145; as guerrilla insurgents, 19–20, 41, 53, 57, 63–67; as governing party, 2007– , 27, 125– 126, 135–138, 144–151; 1969 Historic Program of the FSLN, 70– 71; 1979 Bases programáticas del FSLN para la democracia y la reconstrucción de Nicaragua (Programmatic Bases of the FSLN for Democracy and the Reconstruction of Nicaragua), 71; 1979 Estatuto Fundamental de Derechos y Garantias (Fundamental Statute of Rights and Guarantees), 71; 1977 General Political-Military Platform, 66; as principal governing instrument of Ortega, 28, 151–157; relations with Alemán administration, 101–103; relations with Bolaños administration, 122–125; relations with business, 2007– , 168, 183; relations with Catholic Church, 2007– , 183; relations with Chamorro administration, 98–99; as revolutionary vanguard regime (1979–1984), 23–24, 29, 32, 33, 35, 68–69, 121; Sandinization of civil service, 72–73; social policy, 2007– . See Sandinista government, first; Ortega, Daniel; Ortega, Daniel, first administration; Ortega, Daniel, second administration; Ortega, Daniel, third administration Sandinista Renovation Movement (Movimiento de Renovación Sandinista, MRS): election of 2006, 121, 125–126; prospects for, 156, 180–181; split from FSLN, 99 Sandinista Revolution, 1, 3, 5, 9, 31, 144; and assassination of Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, 17; and execution of Bill

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Stewart, 68; as guerrilla insurgency, 1961–1979, 56; ideology of, 32, 63; institutionalization of, 81–83, 91; as multiclass movement, basic documents of, 68, 70–71, 68; and revolutionary vanguard, 13, 68, 84; and the three FSLN factions, 67. See also Somocismo; Revolutionary vanguard regime; Sandinista government, first Sandino, Augusto César, 51–52, 64, 152; executed by National Guard, 52; as revolutionary guerrilla, 51 SAP. See Structural adjustment program Sartori, Giovanni, 146–147 Siaroff, Alan, 18 Social Christian Party (Partido Social Cristiano, PSC), 103 Social Policy. See Consejos del Poder Ciudadano; Hambre Cero; Usura Cero Solórzano, Carlos, 50, 60n34 Somocismo, 24, 67, 82–83, 103, 166; as regime, 51–56 Somoza Debayle, Anastasio: as commander of National Guard, 54; as president, 54–56; overthrow of, 55; and Pact of Kupia Kumi, 116. See also Somocismo Somoza Debayle, Luis: succeeds father as president, 53–54; suggests family leave politics, 54. See also Somocismo Somoza, García Anastasio, and Henry Stimson, 52; assassination, 1956, 53; and the National Guard, 50; takes power, 50–51; Generals’ pact of 1950, 116. See also Somocismo South Atlantic Autonomous Region (Región Autónoma del Atlántico Sur, RAAN), 92 South Carribean Coast Autonomous Region (Región Autónoma de la Costa Caribe Norte, RACCN), 108n14 Soviet Union, 2, 69, 73, 174; regime change in, 35, 136, 170; relations with Nicaragua, 1979–1990, 79, 140– 141, 144, 181 State autonomy: as indicator of pluralism, 178

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Index

State-individual relations. See Statesociety relations State-society relations: and FSLN governments, 1979–1990; and political regime, 18, 80–81, 115, 168 Stewart, Bill, 68 Stimson, Henry 52 Structural adjustment program (SAP), 96, 98, 185; and Alemán administration, 102; and AlemánOrtega pact, 117; and Chamorro administration, 96 Supreme Court of Justice (Corte Suprema de Justicia, CSJ), 27, 53–54 77, 97, 99,154, 180, 188; and Alemán-Ortega pact, 27, 120, 137; and corruption charges against Alemán, 124, 127–128; and La Verona case, 91–92; and reelection of Ortega, 128, 151 Supreme Electoral Council (Consejo Suprema Electoral, CSE), 27, 182; alleged abetting of electoral fraud, 28; and elections of 2011, 149–151; and municipal elections of 2008, 128; and 1995 electoral law amendments, 99, 100, 112; as partisan body under the Alemán-Ortega pact, 96, 119–120, 137, 139. See also Peraza, José Antonio Terceristas (Third Tendency), 67 Tirado López, Victor, 33, 74 Torres, Daysi, 148 Transition paradigm, 21, 136 Tribunales Populares Anti-Somocistas (Popular Anti-Somocista Tribunals, TPAS). See Lawyers’ Committee for International Human Rights Turbas divinas (divine mobs), 89 Tutelary regime: revolutionary vanguard as, 23,83 UDEL (Unión Democrática de Liberación; Democratic Union of Liberation), 67 UNAG (Unión Nacional de Agricultores y Ganaderos; National Farmers’ and Ranchers’ Union), 103 Unión Nacional Opositora (UNO). See National Union of the Opposition

United Provinces of Central America, 42 United States, 19, 20, 26, 43, 74–75, 79, 103, 112, 114, 146, 181; and Alemán 117; and Bolaños, 124; and Chamorro administration, 87, 95; and elections of 2006, 126; and the FSLN, 1979– 1990, 68, 79, 82, 90, 92, 164; intervention in Nicaraguan politics, 49–51, 166, 168; and Nicaragua, 2, 6; Ortega and, 187; and the Somozas, 51–54, 68, 185; and third Ortega administration, 140, 141, 144, 149; US Marines in, 32; and the Zelaya goverment, 47–48, 146 UNO. See National Union of the Opposition Urcuyo, Francisco, 68 Uruguay, 18, 72, 78, 107n3, 111, 113, 176 Usura Cero. See Zero Usury VCBS. See Voluntary, community-based sector Venezuela, 8, 11, 32, 34, 41, 96, 115, 171–173; and Albanisa, 143–144; and elections of 2006, 140–141; compared to Nicaragua, Hungary, and Russia, 165, 174–177, 180, 181; political transition in, 35–36; relations with Nicaragua, 2007–2015, 144. See also Chávez, Hugo; Maduro, Nicolas Violence, 3, 10, 58, 138, 154, 165; against pensioners’ protest (2013), 152; Conservative Republic and, 42– 44, 49; electoral democracy and, 105; electoral violence, 148, 150, 152; FSLN insurgents and, 64, 67, 70; by FSLN supporters after 2008 municipal election, 147, 148; and power-sharing, 27, 29, 113–114, 117; and regime change, 19; by security forces against interoceanic canal protesters (2014), 183; Somozas and, 55 Voluntary, community-based sector (VCBS), 146 Walker, William, 43 Walter, Knut, 53

Index

Wang Jing, 153–154 World Bank, 173; and structural adjustment programs, 96, 102, 117 Yeltsin, Boris, 35, 170

Zelaya, José Santos, 46, 47–48 Zero Hunger (Hambre Zero), 142 Zero Usury (Usura Cero), 143 Zimmerman, William, 171 Zúñiga, Mauricio, 148

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About the Book

Since the 1970s, Nicaragua has experienced four major regime changes—shifts in its fundamental logic, structure, and operational code of governance. What accounts for such instability? Have other states that transitioned to democracy followed a similar path? Considering these questions, David Close explores the dynamics of Nicaragua’s movements toward and away from democracy since 1979. David Close is professor of political science at the Memorial University of Newfoundland. His previous publications include Nicaragua: The Chamorro Years and the coedited The Sandinistas and Nicaragua Since 1979.

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