Survival of Ministers and Configuration of Cabinets in Chile and Uruguay (Latin American Societies) 3030928012, 9783030928018

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Latin American Societies Current Challenges in Social Sciences

Alejandro Olivares L.

Survival of Ministers and Configuration of Cabinets in Chile and Uruguay

Latin American Societies Current Challenges in Social Sciences Series Editors Adrián Albala, Institute of Political Science (IPOL) University of Brasília Brasilia, Brasília, Brazil María José Álvarez Rivadulla, School of Social Sciences Universidad de los Andes Bogotá, Colombia Alejandro Natal, Department of Social Processes Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Lerma de Villada, Estado de México, Mexico

This series aims at presenting to the international community original contributions by scholars working on Latin America. Such contributions will address the challenges that Latin American societies currently face as well as the ways they deal with these challenges. The series will be methodologically agnostic, that is: it welcomes case studies, small-N comparative studies or studies covering the whole region, as well as studies using qualitative or quantitative data (or a mix of both), as long as they are empirically rigorous and based on high-quality research. Besides exploring Latin American challenges, the series attempts to provide concepts, findings and theories that may shed light on other regions. The series will focus on seven axes of challenges: 1) Classes and inequalities The first set of challenges revolves around the creation and distribution of symbolic and material rewards across social groups and their crystallization in stratification systems. How have social classes changed in Latin America? Which are the causes and consequences of the growth of middle classes with considerable education levels which nonetheless remain vulnerable to falling into poverty due to economic crises? Why has poverty declined but inequality remained persistently high? Moving to other kinds of inequalities, have the gaps in rewards between men and women and between ethnic groups changed, and do they vary across countries? Which are the territorial expressions of inequality, and how do they affect access to housing and the formation of lower-class ghettoes? 2) Crime, security and violence The second set of challenges stem from the persistence of violence and insecurity among Latin Americans, which consistently rank crime and insecurity at the top of their biggest problems. Crime organizations – from youth gangs to drug cartels – have grown and became more professionalized, displacing state forces in considerable chunks of national territories and, in some cases, penetrating the political class through illegal campaign funding and bribes. To this we should add, in some countries of the region, the persistence of armed insurgents fighting against governmental forces and paramilitaries, therefore creating cross-fires that threaten the lives of civilians. This results in massive human rights violations  – most of which remain in impunity – and forced population displacements. 3) Environmental threats A third challenge is related to the sources and consequences of environmental change – especially human-related change. These consequences threaten not only Latin American’s material reproduction (e. g. by threatening water and food sources) but also deeply ingrained cultural practices and lifestyles. How do existing models of economic development affect the natural environment? What are their social consequences? How have governments and communities faced these challenges? Are there viable and desirable alternatives to economic extractivism? What are the environmental prospects of Latin America for the next few decades and which are their social implications?

4) Collective action A fourth theme has to do with how collective actors  – social movements, civil society organizations, and quasi-organized groups – deal with these challenges (and others). How have labor, indigenous, student, or women’s movements adapted to environmental, economic and political changes? To what extent have they been able to shape the contours of their issue areas? Have they been successful in fighting inequality, patriarchy, or racism? Have they improved the lives of their constituencies? Why under some circumstances does collective action radicalizes both in tactics and goals? We welcome studies on a wide array of collective actors working on different issues, with different tactics, and diverse ideological stances. 5) Cultural change and resistance Culture – the understandings, symbols, and rituals that shape our quotidian – has never been static in Latin America, but modernization processes have affected it in complex ways. How has religion, lifestyles and values changed under market reforms and democratization processes? How multicultural are Latin American societies, and how they deal with the potential tensions derived from multiculturalism? Which are the causes and consequences of the decline in influence of the Catholic church, the awakening of new religious identities, and the growing sector of non-­ religious Latin Americans? How are new digital technologies and global consumption patterns shaping Latin Americans’ norms and beliefs about race, gender, and social classes? Are Latin Americans becoming “post-materialist”, and if so, why? 6) Migrations Political, economic, and environmental crises, as well as promises of better opportunities in other lands, have encouraged Latin Americans to migrate within their national borders or beyond them. While during the 1970s Latin Americans often migrated to other regions, nowadays national crises encourage them to seek other destinations in more nearby countries. What causes migration patterns and how do they affect both expelling and receiving communities? How do migrants adapt to their new residence places and coexist with native populations? How does migration contribute to social capital, national identities and gang formation? 7) Political inclusion and representation Dealing with social and ethnic minorities constitutes one of the most recurrent and unresolved challenges for the Latin American democracies. This topic includes the representation of the minorities, but includes also the study of the socio-political elites. Hence, how women are represented in the Latin American democracies? How are indigenous and blacks included into the socio-political arena? Which policies are being adopted for increasing the inclusion of such minorities? How representative are Latin American political elites? Both solicited and unsolicited proposals will be considered for publication in the series. More information about this series at https://link.springer.com/bookseries/16592

Alejandro Olivares L.

Survival of Ministers and Configuration of Cabinets in Chile and Uruguay

Alejandro Olivares L. Department of Sociology, Political Science and Public Administration Temuco Catholic University Temuco, Chile

ISSN 2730-5538     ISSN 2730-5546 (electronic) Latin American Societies ISBN 978-3-030-92801-8    ISBN 978-3-030-92802-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92802-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For Camila and Facundo. Thank you for giving everything meaning. You are the most important part of my life.

Acknowledgments

This book was made possible thanks to the help of many people who at various times supported the reflection and writing process. I especially want to thank Camila Carrasco-Hidalgo for all her understanding and support. To my friends and colleagues who read, criticized, or talked about the work: Adrián Albala, Toki Tricot, Mabel Puerto, Eduardo Robledo, Vicente Robledo, Antoine Maillet, Antonio Canale-Mayet, Bastián González-Bustamante, Carla Cisternas, Bora Hysi, Daniel Chasquetti, Valentina Carrasco, Ignacio Quiroga, Germán Bidegain, Federico Rojas, Jaime Baeza, Fernando Rosenblatt, María Cristina Escudero, Juan Carlos Arellano, Mariana Ardiles, Michelle Helguero, Octavio Avendaño, Ricardo Gamboa, Sergio Toro, Anabel Yanes, José Zurita, Sergio Huertas, Patricia Sotomayor, María Emilia Tijoux, Emmanuelle Barozet, Miguel Urrutia, Raúl Elgueta, Manuel Antonio Garretón, Jaime Fierro, Cecilia Martinez-Gallardo, Marcelo Camerlo, Joaquín Rozas, Santiago Basabe, Simón Pachano, Carlos Huneeus, Nick Levine, Christopher Martínez, Rodolfo de Camargo, Pablo Medina, Sebastián Carrasco, Bernardo Navarrete, Emilio Moya, Nibaldo Olivares and Juanita Lavados. A special thanks to Esteban Efraín for all the joys he gave me while writing this text. This book also received direct and indirect cooperation from several institutions. I thank the University of Chile Institute of Public Affairs (INAP) and Sociology Department for their patience and support, in addition to the master’s degree program in Comparative Politics at the Political Studies Department of the Latin American School of Social Sciences (FLACSO), Ecuador campus, which allowed me to give presentations at its research seminars and teach a course on cabinets and ministers. Thanks to the Department of Political Science of the University of the Republic of Uruguay for all the support it gave me to engage in my fieldwork in that country in 2013. Finally, this work would not have been completed without the support of the Catholic University of Temuco Department of Political Science, Sociology and Public Administration, which I thank very much for its trust. Finally, the research received the support of the National Research and Development Agency (ANID) through the Project for Initiation in Research #11200345. ix

Contents

1 Introduction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    1 1.1 The Book’s Analytical Proposition ��������������������������������������������������    2 1.2 Chile and Uruguay: Two Case Studies of Ministers and Cabinets ��    3 1.3 The Unit of Analysis: Ministers��������������������������������������������������������    7 1.4 How to Measure the Survival of Ministers in Cabinets?������������������   10 1.5 Working Hypothesis��������������������������������������������������������������������������   13 1.6 Book Plan������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   15 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   15 2 Why Are Ministers Important? The State of the Art on Ministers and Cabinets ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   19 2.1 Cabinet Formation����������������������������������������������������������������������������   20 2.2 Studies Based on Ministers’ Attributes��������������������������������������������   25 2.3 The Processes of Ministers’ Departure and Cabinet Dissolution ����   28 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   30 3 Cabinet Formation in Uruguay��������������������������������������������������������������   33 3.1 Cabinet Formation in Uruguayan Democracy 1942–1973 ��������������   33 3.2 From Neo-Batllism to the End of Liberal Governments������������������   34 3.2.1 Cabinets During the Collegiate Executive����������������������������   39 3.2.2 Cabinets in the New Executive ��������������������������������������������   42 3.3 Cabinets After the Military Regime��������������������������������������������������   46 3.4 Some Elements of the Uruguayan Dictatorship��������������������������������   46 3.5 From the National Unity Cabinets to the Frente Amplio������������������   47 3.6 Uruguayan Ministers and Cabinets from a Global Perspective��������   58 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   62 4 Cabinet Formation in Chile��������������������������������������������������������������������   65 4.1 History of the Political System ��������������������������������������������������������   66 4.2 Cabinets Under the 1925 Constitution����������������������������������������������   68 4.3 Cabinets in Periods of Transformation ��������������������������������������������   83 4.4 Cabinets After the Military Regime��������������������������������������������������   90 xi

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Contents

4.5 From the Cabinets of the Concertación to Piñera ����������������������������   92 4.6 General Balance: Cabinets and Ministries in Chile��������������������������  100 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  105 5 Analysis of Ministers’ Survival in Chile and Uruguay������������������������  111 5.1 The Survival of Ministers�����������������������������������������������������������������  111 5.2 Their Age and Gender of Ministers��������������������������������������������������  112 5.3 Ministers’ Professions����������������������������������������������������������������������  115 5.4 Ministers’ Party Membership ����������������������������������������������������������  116 5.5 Family Capital����������������������������������������������������������������������������������  118 5.6 Survival Analysis������������������������������������������������������������������������������  120 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  132 6 Final Remarks: Survival of Ministers and Configuration of Cabinets������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  133 6.1 Chile and Uruguay: Differences and Similitudes in Cabinet Formation������������������������������������������������������������������������  134 6.2 Ministerial Survival: Hypothesis Evaluation������������������������������������  136 6.3 Concluding Remarks������������������������������������������������������������������������  138 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  139 Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  141

Chapter 1

Introduction

“I hope the incoming minister is luckier. I know that he is more than capable.” These were Uruguayan President José Mujica’s words as he greeted Mario Bergara after appointing him minister of the economy. The new minister took over after Fernando Lorenzo resigned from the post. Lorenzo left office even though the president had confirmed him, the vice president had expressed his support, and he received the backing of the leaders of his party, the Frente Amplio, only a few days before. He had previously successfully overcome an interpellation in the legislature. The “bad luck” that led Lorenzo to resign was actually political responsibility for a threat against him that could harm the entire government. Lorenzo resigned before entering to testify in a cause on the bankruptcy of the airline PLUNA (in which the Uruguayan state owned a 25% stake). Given the stability of Uruguayan cabinet ministers, it is highly likely that Lorenzo would have remained in office until the end of the presidential term if the judiciary had not begun an investigation. Both minister and president had expected the relationship to last forever (the entire government in this case), but events beyond their control terminated the relationship. That is why, even though it is over, the one who leaves wishes the best to the other. Lorenzo’s early departure from Mujica’s cabinet reveals some of the problems that the literature on ministers has analyzed for the last few years (Camerlo & Martínez-Gallardo, 2018). This example illustrates what the literature calls a shock that forces the chief of government to make changes to his cabinet. Against his will, the president had to remove his minister and quickly look for a replacement who would guarantee a certain continuity in terms of policy and that way send a clear sign of stability. This, considering that changing a minister, especially one in such an important brief, can have an impact on the economy and the party system and, eventually, create a crisis in the government. Ministers are the political authorities with administrative responsibilities who design and implement public policies in line with the orientations of a government program and presidential guidelines. Therefore, the recruitment of ministers and the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Olivares L., Survival of Ministers and Configuration of Cabinets in Chile and Uruguay, Latin American Societies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92802-5_1

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1 Introduction

formation of cabinets tend to be one of a government’s hardest political tasks. This is because, regardless of the moment when ministers are appointed, they have to have a certain level of ideological and programmatic affinity with the chief executive. As Dowding and Dumont (2008) point out, ministers are expected to be competent institutional decision-makers, as well as being capable of managing their officials and running their ministries. They must analyze complex scenarios quickly and be capable of receiving and following appropriate expert advice. Ministers must also address the problems of administration and deal with the media. On the other hand, they are expected to have policy ideas of their own and be capable of implementing them, but at the same time, agency problems increase when ministers have an agenda of their own. Therefore, while initiative can be a good thing, it is undesirable—theoretically, at least—for them to have an agenda or interests of their own. In addition to their political and management skills, it is desirable for cabinet members to have stable families and for them to stay away from financial, social, and sexual scandals (Dowding & Dumont, 2008). As frontline political decision-makers and as subjects of the chief of government’s political confidence, ministers can be dismissed from office at any time. It is not easy to achieve stability in a position of political confidence (see: Maillet, 2017). Any mistaken decision of public policy failure can mean their exit from the post and oblige the executive to reorganize the cabinet, which in extreme situations can even change the government agenda. Beyond what presidents and the ministers themselves would like, cabinet changes often respond to external pressures rather than the chief executive’s will. These pressures can take different forms and come from many directions, for example, the judiciary (as in Lorenzo’s case), the social environment, the opposition, or the head of state’s political allies. Therefore, to study the stability or survival of ministers in their posts, the context in which changes are made and the extent to which they are in response to the context or a strategic action by the president for the development of his agenda need to be understood. With these elements in mind, it is important to understand governments’ distinctive characteristics, specifically their policy of alliances, presidential style of leadership, among other aspects of the executive to be studied, as this book does.

1.1  The Book’s Analytical Proposition The study of ministerial cabinets as a growing concern has predominated in the literature on presidential systems (Camerlo, 2013; González-Bustamante, 2020). Three types of logic that do not necessarily engage in dialogue with each other can be distinguished in this research agenda, which has progressed quite significantly over the last decade: coalition presidential, ministerial turnover, and recruitment of ministers (Camerlo, 2013; Camerlo & Martínez-Gallardo, 2018).

1.2  Chile and Uruguay: Two Case Studies of Ministers and Cabinets

3

Except for specific cases (Arellano et  al., 2018; Siavelis & Galván, 2015), research on cabinets and ministers in Latin American presidential systems tends to concentrate on the periods beginning with the return to democracy after the 1980s. This situation means that there is scant knowledge of the period prior to the coups. It is usually assumed that it was a time of upheaval, but little has been studied about the effect of this on cabinet configurations and ministers’ survival. This research seeks to fill this empirical gap and, to do so, analyzes two important cases in the southern cone in pre-and post-coup periods. Thus, this book analyzes ministerial recruitment in the process of government formation in two presidential democracies, in addition to the process of dismissing ministers from the cabinet. The two cases correspond to countries that have tended to lead democracy indicators in the region, and which have also had stable presidential systems in the southern cone of Latin America: Chile and Uruguay. The time frames of this research correspond to the democratic cycles described which I shall return to in the chapters that follow. For pre-coup democracy, the cases include the governments of Chile between 1933 and 1973 and Uruguay between 1943 and 1973. The period is resumed in the democratic transitions for both cases, i.e., 1985 for Uruguay and 1990 for Chile. The analysis of each country allows readers to compare within and between the two countries. As we shall see below, both countries have presidential systems with high levels of human development (González-­ Bustamante, 2019) and historical and political similarities, which makes it possible to use the framework of each one to analyze cabinets and ministers.

1.2  C  hile and Uruguay: Two Case Studies of Ministers and Cabinets The cases analyzed in this book are small countries with a comparable history of breaks with democracy in temporal terms and which are normally studied together for the reasons that triggered those processes (Altman & Policzer, 2013). It should be noted that both experienced similar types of military dictatorships, albeit with differences in terms of duration and intensity. Recent literature on Latin American political systems tends to stress the similarities between Chilean and Uruguayan democracy in at least three areas: historical trajectory, institutional performance, and functional social foundations (Garcé, 2017b). From an institutional perspective, the two presidential systems have similar trajectories. An example of this is the problems installing the respective republics in the nineteenth century following periods of political instability, albeit with different emphases, which were partially resolved during the first half of the twentieth century. We then see how, almost 10 years apart, the two countries began a stage of representative democracy that the coups in both countries brought to a halt in 1973. However, Uruguay managed to return to democratic rule in the mid-1980s, and Chile did so at the end of the same decade. Following the logic of Chasquetti and

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1 Introduction

Buquet (2004) and Garcé (2017a), this trajectory allows three democratic periods to be identified.1 To gain a broad understanding of the formation of governments in the countries being studied, in addition to an understanding of the survival of ministers in charge of state institutions, I analyze two time periods of interest. Thus, I analyze the second democratic period in Chile and Uruguay and, at the same time, examine the ministerial behavior of the third period in the democratic history of these countries. The book does not study the first periods. As in both cases, the first polyarchy corresponds to attempts at creating an institutional framework that did not achieve full legitimacy. For example, Chilean democracy was exclusionary before 1925, restricting the vote and without any guarantees. Chile’s emerging democracy faced several crises between 1833 and 1924. The first part was marked by a strong executive, under progressive threat from a legislature that, after the civil war of 1891, ended up imposing itself as the main political institution. A consequence of this event was high cabinet turnover, in line with a political dynamic in which the legislative branch predominated over the executive, though without formally losing the logic of a presidential system (Arellano et al., 2018). In Uruguay, history reminds us that democracy was fragile prior to the 1942 Constitution. Normalization of the democratic system began that year, with Juan Jose de Amézaga’s election as president of the republic. Amézaga became the president of Uruguay on 1 March 1943, and his government normalized the situation in the country following the 1933 and 1942 coups. Both coups were staged by the presidents in power at the time: Terra in 1933 and Baldomir in 1942. These coups entailed significant institutional changes, as they were accompanied by new constitutional documents. On the one hand, Terra’s changes sought to legalize his government and eliminate the two-headed executive. For its part, Baldomir’s coup in 1942 has been considered “good” because it restored rights that Terra had eliminated in 1934. This began a period of expanding rights that lasted until the coup in 1973. Regarding the organization of political systems, the two countries followed paths that can be analyzed under a logic of similarities and differences. For example, they share the similarity that political parties were the central axes of the political systems’ operation. A national scope was achieved in both, characterized by covering the entire political spectrum. At the same time, both cases have systems with strong and institutionalized parties that served as articulators of the growth from new social sectors. However, despite the differences in the political processes of each case, both party systems collapsed in 1973 due to the rupture with democracy. On the other hand, by way of contrast, Uruguay has a bipartisan system and Chile a multiparty system. It is worth noting that in Uruguay, despite the bipartisanship, the centrality of the parties is so great that some authors have referred to the case as a “particracy” (Chasquetti & Buquet, 2004; Lanzaro, 2012). Even though 1  The first democratic period in Uruguay was from 1918 to 1934. The second was between 1942 and 1973. The third was from 1985 through today. In Chile, the first period was from 1833 to 1924 and the second between 1933 and 1973. The third was from 1990 through today.

1.2  Chile and Uruguay: Two Case Studies of Ministers and Cabinets

5

Chile’s recent history was marked by the binomial system, the multiparty system allowed the parties to interweave with social organizations (Garretón, 1983). Another important similarity is that left-wing parties managed to significantly increase their influence and implemented successful strategies to position themselves in the national political scene. Both communist parties became parties of the masses with powerful influence over different social sectors (Garcé, 2017a). One significant difference is that only in Chile did the Communist Party reach power by forming coalitions, first with the Frente Popular between 1935 and 1948 and then between 1970 and 1973 with the Unidad Popular. Some of the biggest points of contrast are in the logic of how the executive branch is organized. There were no changes to the formal structure of the executive branch in Chile between 1933 and 1973. The Chilean presidential system operated with a single person as head of government directly elected by the population. It included the electoral rule of Congress choosing between the two candidates with the most votes if there was no absolute majority in the presidential election, thus providing a clear incentive to form coalitions. In fact, all Chilean governments— except the Eduardo Frei Montalva administration (1964–1970)—were coalitions. In Uruguay, the configuration of institutions changed after the single-person presidencies of Juan José de Amézaga and Luis Batlle Berres.2 The collegiate executive was reinstated during the Martínez Trueba administration (1951–1955). This National Government Council, which was in place between 1952 and 1967, had nine members elected by vote to serve a four-year term. The positions were distributed among parties (known as lemas), with six seats going to the one with the most votes and three to the one with the second most votes. The National Council rotated the presidency among the members of the lema that had obtained the majority and in the order of their position on the respective list. Despite being a collegiate executive, they could change the cabinet and appoint new ministers when they assumed as heads of the government. For this reason, notwithstanding its collective nature, it operated in a comparable way to the Chilean single-person system. The 1970s marked a change in social and political relations in both cases (Garcé, 2017b), creating so much tension in the political system that both countries ended with coups in 1973. The dictatorships in each country—which are not the subject of this work—had different focuses. While the Chilean dictatorship took on a transformational nature expressed in the implementation of neoliberal policies, Uruguay maintained the social matrix inaugurated by Batlle in the early twentieth century. The Uruguayan military nevertheless attempted to implement radical changes. The difference with Chile is that, in keeping with the spirit of previous dictatorships (e.g., 1934 with Terra), an attempt was made to legitimize the process with a plebiscite in 1980.

2  Juan José de Amézaga was succeeded in his post by Tomás Barreta, who died 5 months after taking office. Barreta’s death led Vice President Luis Batlle Berres to assume the presidency.

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1 Introduction

The Uruguayan citizenry’s rejection of the dictatorship’s proposed constitutional change (with over 55% of the vote) marked the start of a transition to democracy. This process was characterized by agreements among political pacts that allowed democratic elections to be held in 1984, which José María Sanguinetti won. This story was repeated with the Chilean dictatorship in 1989 when the “No” option won, and the dictatorship was forced to convene democratic elections and start a series of negotiations with the winners of the plebiscite and in that way agree to a transition to democracy.3 Once their respective authoritarian governments ended, both countries began processes of consolidating democracy. In the case of Uruguay, the bipartisan system gave way to a moderate multiparty system after the Frente Amplio joined the Partido Nacional and Partido Colorado, the country’s two traditional parties (Buquet & Piñeiro, 2014). In Chile, the historical multiparty system resurfaced constrained by the new institutional rules, a proportional binominal electoral system with the effect of creating majorities, which despite the multiparty system created powerful incentives to form coalitions, which led the system to operate tactically as a bipartisan system (Alemán et al., 2021). This book examines their ministers with a focus on their permanence in the cabinet. As we shall see in the next section, one of the consequences this has is that attention is focused on subjects as a unit of analysis. Thus, in presidential systems, changes in ministers are usually considered strategic moves by presidents to deal with problems and negotiate with the parties. This latter point is even relevant in times without problems within the government.4 One of the normative assumptions that underlie a considerable proportion of the research on presidential systems is that cabinet turnover and changes are tools of adjustment that help the head of the executive to weather adversity. It is assumed that the larger the number of changes, the larger the number of problems affecting a government. This is without distinguishing what ministerial turnover is. The literature in English distinguishes individual terminations vs. cabinet reorganizations. For example, the work by Huber and Martínez-Gallardo (2008) is about individual terminations, while the article by Indridason and Kam (2008) is about reorganizations, which in their analysis is usually characterized by including more than two ministers. This work examines the departure of ministers as individual terminations, even if they are part of a greater shakeup. For this reason, in addition to studying the cabinet formation process, it examines ministers’ ability—once appointed to the cabinet—to survive on the front line of the executive branch. The next section presents the way in which the ministers’ profile was operationalized before going on to understand the way in which the survival of these political actors in their cabinets is measured.

 For a detailed analysis of the Pinochet regime, see Huneeus (2000).  In parliamentary systems, the removal of ministers can be a sign of renewal of policies (Huber & Martínez-Gallardo). 3 4

1.3  The Unit of Analysis: Ministers

7

1.3  The Unit of Analysis: Ministers One of the contributions this work makes is the compilation of information that, while public, is not systematized. To ensure that complete data are available, SEDEPE (2010) will be taken as a basis, from which the biographical data of all ministers in the two countries were obtained. The name of each minister was traced and reviewed in different media sources. This, with the purpose of preventing people with remarkably similar names from being confused with one another or the mixing of biographical data of fathers and sons with the same name.5 A person’s appointment to run a state ministry is registered as yet another observation in the data set, regardless of whether it represents the transfer of the same person from the head of one ministry to another or a new person in charge of a ministry. This strategy, which has already been tested and validated by González-­ Bustamante and Olivares (2015, 2016) and Olivares (2018), is used to ensure that the information captured can be replicated. Therefore, the database built for this research contains the precise date on which each minister assumed and left office. In addition, data on the professional and public trajectories of each person was registered, including elected office and positions in the state, political party membership, and leadership within the stated party. Regarding the political organizations ministers belong to, their election or appointment to representative party bodies was specifically captured, such as the national board, committee, council, or other on the national, regional, or local level. Their profession, age upon assuming office, and their main family connections who have participated in politics were also registered. In sum, the database that the book works with contains a total of 1200 observations distributed among the 30 governments in the two countries’ studies, as shown in Table 1.1. A profile of each minister was compiled based on the information collected from their biographies. This task was performed considering that the main guidelines contained in the literature distinguish among five types of agents in charge of ministries: (a) technocrats, (b) technopols, (c) politicians with experience in Congress, (d) politicians without experience in Congress, and (e) nonpartisan. These categories are mutually exclusive, which guarantees a clean codification regarding the profile of each of the ministers in the database. According to Collier (1985: 404), technocrats are understood as actors with agency, who are characterized by being “individuals with high levels of specialized academic training that serves as the main criterion for being chosen and to hold key advisory or decision-making decisions in broad and complex organizations, public or private.” In the twentieth century, these qualities were associated with the 5  Press information was contracted from academic sources: Filippi (2006) and de Ramón (1999) for the case of Chile and Oddone (1967) in the case of Uruguay. The website http://www.rulers.org was also used, which provides the names of all rulers around the world and, in some cases, such as Uruguay, includes the names of ministers, as was the “Cabinet Composition” database of the University of the Republic of Uruguay School of Social Sciences (Available at: http://cienciassociales.edu.uy/bancosdedatos/secciones/area-de-politica-y-relaciones-internacionales/

8

1 Introduction

Table 1.1  Government included in the analysis President Juan de Amézaga (1943–1947) Tomás Berreta (1947) Luis Batlle Berres (1947–1951) Andrés Martínez (1951–1952) Collegiate 1 (1952–1955) Collegiate 2 (1955–1959) Collegiate 3 (1959–1963) Collegiate 4 (1963–1967) Óscar Gestido (1967) Jorge Pacheco (1967–1972) Juan María Bordaberry (1972–1973) Julio Sanguinetti 1 (1985–1990) Luis Alberto Lacalle (1990–1995) Julio Sanguinetti 2 (1995–2000) Jorge Batlle Ibáñez (2000–2005) Tabaré Vázquez (2005–2010) José Mujica (2010–2015) Arturo Alessandri Palma (1932–1938) Pedro Aguirre Cerda (1938–1941) Juan Antonio Ríos (1942–1946) Gabriel González Videla (1946–1952) Carlos Ibáñez (1952–1958) Jorge Alessandri Rodríguez (1958–1964)

Duration of the Country government (months) Uruguay 48

No. of ministers in the government 19

No. of ministries 9

Uruguay 5 Uruguay 43

9 29

9 9

Uruguay 12

9

9

Uruguay 36

13

9

Uruguay 48

28

9

Uruguay 48

14

9

Uruguay 48

18

9

Uruguay 9 Uruguay 51

19 51

11 11

Uruguay 16

26

11

Uruguay 60

22

12

Uruguay 60

34

12

Uruguay 60

26

12

Uruguay 60

34

13

Uruguay 60

27

13

Uruguay 60

21

13

Chile

72

59

11

Chile

39

44

12

Chile

55

80

12

Chile

72

88

12

Chile

72

136

13

Chile

72

49

13 (continued)

9

1.3  The Unit of Analysis: Ministers Table 1.1 (continued) President Eduardo Frei Montalva (1964–1970) Salvador Allende (1970–1973) Patricio Aylwin (1990–1994) Eduardo Frei Ruiz-­ Tagle (1994–2000) Ricardo Lagos (2000–2006) Michelle Bachelet (2006–2010) Sebastián Piñera (2010–2014)

Duration of the Country government (months) Chile 72

No. of ministers in the government 40

No. of ministries 15

Chile

34

74

15

Chile

49

27

21

Chile

72

54

21

Chile

72

53

21

Chile

49

46

22

Chile

49

52

23

Source: Author’s compilation

possession of postgraduate studies. It should be noted that for the pre-coup codification, academic credentials were considered to be a sufficient feature to consider these agents as having a technocratic profession. That is, it is sufficient for them to have been engineers or economists because it was uncommon to have postgraduate studies in the pre-coup period in both countries. Following this logic, technopols are agents with technical credentials who also have political influence in their respective countries (Joignant, 2011a). Membership of political parties was considered evidence of political resources. This typology considers participating in think tanks related to political parties as a way of engaging in partisan politics since they are “individuals with a declared or known preference for a specific party but without active membership in that party” (Camerlo & Martínez-Gallardo, 2018: 18). Therefore, agents who arrive in ministries with technical credentials and ties to partisan think tanks are included in this group. The ministers’ political profiles were codified into two groups. On the one hand, there are agents without technical credentials who were just party members or with experience in partisan research centers but without signed affiliation. Ministers with these qualities were categorized as politicians without experience in Congress. On the other hand, agents with prior experience in Congress, as deputies or senators, were classified as politicians with experience in Congress. The difference between the two groups is important to achieve a government’s objectives. Being a politician with a track record in a party is not the same as being a former congressperson who is familiar with the legislative technique and can therefore offer certain advantages for the processing of laws. Lastly, ministers without political credentials or technical capital were considered nonpartisan. They are people who reach the cabinet due to their public notoriety or their closeness to the president. Including nonpartisan minister offers presidents certain advantages in controlling the risk of agency loss, considering that

10

1 Introduction

Table 1.2  Distribution of minister profiles in the case studies Technocrats Technopols Politician without exp. in Congress Politician with exp. in Congress Nonpartisan Total

Uruguay 30 5 153 207 3 398

Chile 45 20 494 170 73 802

total 75 25 647 377 76 1200

Source: Author’s compilation

sometimes ministers active in partisan politics can be unreliable agents of the presidents. The literature has discussed such behavior, based on the fact that a minister’s loyalty to the party may be greater under certain types of scenarios or conditions (Martínez-Gallardo & Schleiter, 2015). Table  1.2 shows that cabinet positions in both countries are highly concentrated in political agents. However, one can see that the population is doubly unbalanced between the two cases—Chile doubles the number of appointments in Uruguay—and within the typology of profiles. This situation does not pose a major problem for the analysis, as each case is analyzed separately. In addition, each category is examined independently when it comes to analyzing ministers’ survival capacity, which means that the data imbalance between cases is not a concern. Having specified the unit of analysis to be studied, I will now discuss how the survival of agents is understood for the purposes of statistical analysis.

1.4  How to Measure the Survival of Ministers in Cabinets? This section presents the methodological considerations to analyze ministers’ survival in their respective briefs. With this in mind, I follow a logic similar to the survival analysis by Kerby (2015), who studies ministerial careers in Canada, by Quiroz Flores (2017) for US cabinet members, by González-Bustamante and Olivares (2016) for Chilean governments of Chile since 1990, and by Mejía et al. (2021) for Colombian ministers. This book estimates the survival of ministers in Chile and Uruguay using Kaplan-Mier curves and Cox’s non-parametric proportional risk models (1972). This type of model allows identifying survival predictors considering different variables. We have included personal traits of the ministers, variables that reflect the effects of the electoral calendar, and certain macroeconomic variables as controls. As with any econometric model, when performing this analysis, one must avoid developing a study without variance in the dependent variable or the event being analyzed. For example, if we only examine the appointment, there would be no variance since we would not have the dataset regarding the time the minister spent in the

1.4  How to Measure the Survival of Ministers in Cabinets?

11

office. Therefore, the departure from cabinets must be registered.6 While this is an empirically adequate strategy for evaluating the departure of individual ministers, it is important to consider that classic proportional risk models are not free of problems associated with possible biases caused by data imbalances, though they do allow relevant trends to be evaluated that should be maintained in general terms even in balanced data. In consideration of the above, the difference between the effects of certain variables must be carefully assessed. Given the characteristics of this technique, this type of statistical model can explain both survival and mortality, which requires a precise definition of the event being analyzed. Our measurement considers successful ministers to be those individuals who meet one of the following conditions: (a) ministers who took office at the start of a government and managed to remain in the cabinet throughout the duration of the term, regardless of whether they changed ministries; (b) ministers who joined the cabinet when the government had already begun and managed to reach the end of the government, even if they moved from the ministry they were initially appointed to. In other words, the survival variable has a value of 1 (survives) when people manage to remain in the cabinet until the end of the government, regardless of the moment they took office as ministers. The variable has a value of 0 in all other cases. Regarding the characteristics of economic system variables, the study considered inflation and gross domestic product. This is on the assumption that these two indicators have a particular effect on the political system, as sudden changes tend to mean problems for a country and create the conditions for critical events (see Camerlo & Pérez-Liñán, 2015a). The data was extracted from the central banks and from the national statistical institutes of both countries. The data was also revised by cross-referencing with information in academic sources (Bucacos, 2013; Luders, 2010) and with statistics from the World Bank. Minister’s personal traits include, above all, the sociodemographic variables used to control for survival, that is, their age and gender. The gender variable precisely reflects the problem of working with observational data and unbalanced samples, as there are periods in which the sample is made up entirely of men. It is, therefore, a variable whose effects naturally tend to be biased. In the case of Uruguay, women have had a marginal presence in cabinets. In Chile, women’s participation has been growing. On the other hand, the literature has shown that lawyers tend to be the predominant profession in executive posts (Besley & Reynal-Querol, 2011). However, as liberalization of the economy progresses, the lawyers’ hegemony has given way to professions related to economics and engineering. Without failing to acknowledge that other trades or professions may also be relevant, I opted to assess these two professions (engineers/economists on the one hand and lawyers on the other) to see whether the discussion in the literature can be applied to presidential systems. Since

 On the problems that this could cause, see González-Bustamante (2020: 8).

6

12

1 Introduction

part of this information was used to build the profile, these variables come from the profile itself when they are entered into the statistical model. There is a tendency for families to participate in politics in the cases analyzed, making use of the advantage a surname gives in politics (see González-Bustamante, 2014; Joignant, 2014). A variable showing the family’s political capital was built to examine this advantage, and at the same time, the ministers’ ties of kinship were captured. For this, parents, siblings, uncles/aunts, grandparents, and spouses were considered as part of the ministers’ inner circle. This entailed analyzing whether a person in charge of a state ministry had any direct relatives in politics. When there is evidence that a close relative is well known and active in national politics, the minister will be considered to have family political capital. This is regardless of whether that activity is through appointments to positions of confidence, participation in elections, or leadership of a party. If we consider that political parties play a very important role as articulators of demands and promoters of political personnel in the cases analyzed (Garretón, 1983; Lanzaro, 2012), being a member of the president’s party is considered an eventual factor that could help survival in office. This is assuming a closeness between the president and those ministers due to their membership in the same party, though there is a body of literature that argues that they could pose a risk to the president because ministers from the party could see their capacity for agency reduced (see Martínez-Gallardo & Schleiter, 2015). In the case of Uruguay, the nature of the political system means that the variable corresponds to membership in the same faction (lema) as the president. Based on an examination of the cases and the review of the literature, it is assumed that the electoral calendar can put pressure on some ministers to leave the cabinet (Camerlo & Pérez-Liñán, 2015a), either to participate as candidates or to join campaign teams. For this reason, I will assess the extent to which the proximity of the elections has an influence on the survival of ministers in their posts. The construction of this variable considered the departure of ministers up to 6 months before each election and 30 days after the same to be potentially attributable to the election (this must be evaluated in the statistical model). The elections considered were those for the president, Congress, and local authorities. In the case of Uruguay, elections were held on the same day until 2005, when the election of local authorities began to be held after the presidential election. There have been few moments in Chile when elections have coincided. For example, before the coup, presidents faced local and congressional elections in their first years. Presidential and congressional elections have been held on the same day since the 1990s. Lastly, executive branch scandals were established as a control for the period of the third wave of democracy in each country (Chile from 1990 and Uruguay from 1985). Using Martínez’s data (2021),7 an event was coded as a scandal (1) if there was at least one accusation of corruption (bribery, influence peddling, embellishment, etc.), a morally charged accusation (infidelity, paternity scandal, an ethics

 Database is available at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/ZOYT7R

7

1.5  Working Hypothesis

13

violation, public drunkenness, etc.), or an accusation of abuse of power against the president and/or his/her inner circle (e.g., espionage against political opponents, illegal dismissal from public office, non-compliance with electoral laws, censorship of the media, etc.). Since we will be trying to see the effect on the exit, in this case, I will consider that the effect lasts for at least 1 month after the scandal has been reported. In other words, it is considered 1 (scandal) from the moment it explodes until 1 month later.

1.5  Working Hypothesis As an in-depth analysis of two cases with specific observation units within each case, a pragmatic strategy for the theoretical-methodological approach was chosen. At various times, the book’s assumptions use inductive logic with assumptions built based on the cases and deductive logic when there is theory on the subject.8 Based on this strategy, a better understanding is gained of the phenomenon that is the focus of this book’s study, while at the same time, it confers analytical wealth to the data worked with. As has been noted and is further elaborated in the next chapter, in presidential systems, the appointment of the cabinet and the departure of ministers are decisions that formally fall to the president. Though other actors may influence the decision informally, the strategic calculation associated with quotas and power distribution, in addition to all actions taken, is the presidents’ responsibility. Therefore, in political systems like those of Chile and Uruguay, they are the only actors capable of vetoing any alliance opposed to their interests. Based on this argument, one can say that presidents always act as formateurs during the process of forming their governments and cabinets, as they must choose and appoint ministers, even if they lack a majority the legislative branch (Alemán & Tsebelis, 2012; Cheibub, 2007). They use different strategies in this process, depending on their political and government administration goals (Amorim Neto, 1998). Presidents may face formal and informal restrictions when it comes to forming their ministerial cabinets. Formally speaking, the most common constraint is for the legislature to have the authority to ratify cabinet ministers. In two-chamber systems, this power could fall to one of the chambers, a plenary session, or a joint committee. When this happens, political parties are expected to be part of the process. For their part, informal rules correspond to a series of common practices within the system that offer tolerated or expected margins of action for the appointment of ministers. Examples from these types of rules include appointing ministers with certain profiles in specific ministries, such as economists in economic ministries, or subsidizing parties that lost a lot in the elections to build trust within the ruling coalition. Other practices may be not

 This approach is inspired by the proposal by Bril-Mascarenhas et al. (2018).

8

14

1 Introduction

rewarding the president’s party or inviting the leaders of government parties to evaluate the names of potential ministers. With formal and informal restrictions in mind, one of the elements that can be used to justify a person’s arrival and permanence in a ministerial post is his/her technical credentials and/or political trajectory (Dávila, 2021; Garcé, 2009; Joignant, 2011b). All of this is in consideration of the fact that this research argues that ministers belong to the political elite (see Chap. 2). Therefore, does it make sense to ask how to explain people’s arrival and permanence in ministerial posts based on their personal characteristics, which define them as part of that elite? From this perspective, the importance of personal qualities in different countries will depend on various factors that may also change over time (Garcé, 2017b). However, the literature suggests that personal variables, and certain political ones, could explain the arrival and permanence in the cabinet (Rodríguez, 2011). Therefore, this research assumes that it is possible to observe important variations in the profiles of ministers in each case, as “since the dictatorships, cabinets have had younger ministers, with a gender balance progressively tending toward parity, diverse professional profiles and with less importance placed on party membership” (hypothesis 1). Another point to bear in mind is that, in most presidential systems, leaders of the executive can appoint and remove ministers without the legal need to take the opinion of their parties (or coalitions) into account. This reaches the point where, on some occasions, presidents do not consult the parties, and they are only informed once the event is about to take place. At least, experience has shown this to be the case in Chile, where presidents have had strained relations with their political parties. For this reason, inspired by the experience, I examine how membership in the president’s party influences one’s chances of remaining in office. In this sense, the expectation is that, given the conflict between presidents and their parties in the case of Chile, membership in that party could have negative effects on survival in the cabinet (hypothesis 2.1). In contrast, given the dynamics of the Uruguayan political system, membership in the president’s faction is expected to be a factor of survival (hypothesis 2.2). Among other elements, the literature recognizes critical events (shocks) and the electoral calendar as relevant factors in the possibility of ministers remaining in office (Camerlo & Pérez-Liñán, 2015a, b; Martínez-Gallardo, 2014). Thus, this work analyzes how the proximity of elections and adverse events for the executive affect the possibility of staying in the cabinet or not. Regarding the proximity of elections, it is assumed that these events also mobilize the government and that, for this reason, ministers could be candidates or go to their parties and coalitions’ campaign teams. Hence, I expect the possibility of ministers leaving the cabinet to increase as elections approach (hypothesis 3).

References

15

1.6  Book Plan The book describes the cabinet formation processes in two stable countries in the southern cone. The chapters that follow take multiple steps to connect the theoretical elements with the empirical evidence, allowing an understanding of the strategies that presidents follow in the formation of governments, ministerial turnover, and ministers’ survival in office. Chapter 2 engages in dialogue on the existing arguments in the literature that discuss cabinet formation, ministers’ attributes, and the processes of leaving ministries and dissolving cabinets. With all these elements on the table, I detail the book’s theoretical argument, which, on the one hand, relates theoretical expectations regarding the formation of state cabinets and the dynamics that can be created in presidential governments under different political contexts. On the other, the chapter discusses ministers’ personal characteristics and qualities, which allow them shorter or longer stays in office. In addition, the causal relationship between factors related to political functioning (electoral calendar) and external shocks (economic variations) and the minister’s survival is established. The following chapters focus attention on empirical cases to prove the theoretical argument, and both chapters develop a dense description of the processes. Chapter 3 examines the case of Uruguay, while Chap. 4 does the same with Chile. These two chapters highlight the particularities of each case and refer to the ministerial cabinets formation processes and the departure of these actors from office in the pre-and post-coup periods. Chapter 5 offers a statistical analysis based on survival models allowing the proposed hypotheses to be confronted. Lastly, the main theoretical and empirical statements are examined in the conclusions (Chap. 6). The theory followed, and its applicability to other cases, is also discussed, allowing a course to be set for future research. In addition, the conclusions also offer final reflections on the implications of the theory of ministerial survival for stability and crisis in a democratic presidential government.

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Besley, T., & Reynal-Querol, M. (2011). Do democracies select more educated leaders? American Political Science Review, 105(3), 552–566. Bril-Mascarenhas, T., Maillet, A., & Mayaux, P.-L. (2018). Process tracing: Inducción, deducción e inferencia causal. Revista de ciencia política (Santiago), 37(3), 659–684. Bucacos, E. (2013). El índice de precios al consumo y el ajuste por calidad. Una aplicación al caso uruguayo (Documentos de trabajo No 2013009). Banco Central del Uruguay. Retrieved from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bku/doctra/2013009.html Buquet, D., & Piñeiro, R. (2014). La consolidación de un nuevo sistema de partidos en Uruguay. Revista Debates, 8(1), 127–148. Camerlo, M. (2013). Presentación. América Latina Hoy, 64, 11–12. Camerlo, M., & Martínez-Gallardo, C. (2018). Portfolio allocation in the Americas. In M. Camerlo & C. Martínez-Gallardo (Eds.), Government formation and minister turnover in presidential cabinets: Comparative analysis in the Americas (pp. 1–17). Routledge. Camerlo, M., & Pérez-Liñán, A. (2015a). Minister turnover, critical events, and the electoral calendar in presidential democracies. The Journal of Politics, 77(3), 608–619. Camerlo, M., & Pérez-Liñán, A. (2015b). The politics of minister retention in presidential systems: Technocrats, partisans, and government approval. Comparative Politics, 47(3), 315–333. Chasquetti, D., & Buquet, D. (2004). La democracia en Uruguay: Una partidocracia de consenso. Revista Política, 42, 221–247. Cheibub, J.  A. (2007). Presidentialism, parliamentarism, and democracy. Cambridge University Press. Collier, D. (Ed.). (1985). El nuevo autoritarismo en America Latina. Fondo de Cultura Económica. Cox, D.  R. (1972). Regression models and life-tables. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series B: Methodological, 34(2), 187–220. Dávila, M. (2021). Presidencialismo a la chilena. In Coaliciones y cooperación política, 1990–2018. Editorial Universitaria. de Ramón, A. (1999). Biografías de chilenos: Miembros de los poderes ejecutivo, legislativo y judicial (pp. 1876–1973). Ediciones Universidad Católica de Chile. Dowding, K., & Dumont, P. (2008). Structural and strategic factors affecting the hiring and firing of ministers. In K. Dowding & P. Dumont (Eds.), The selection of ministers in Europe: Hiring and firing (pp. 1–20). Routledge. Filippi, E. (2006). La clase política chilena. Pehuén Editores Limitada. Garcé, A. (2009). Economistas y política en Uruguay (1932–2004). Quantum: revista de administración, contabilidad y economía, 4(1), 80–97. Garcé, A. (2017a). Los orígenes políticos de la democracia. Legado colonial, guerra y pactos políticos en la construcción de la república en Uruguay. Revista de Historia, 2(24), 43–79. Garcé, A. (2017b). Regímenes Políticos de Conocimiento: Tecnocracia y democracia en Chile y Uruguay. Millcayac—Revista Digital de Ciencias Sociales, 4(7), 17–48. Garretón, M. A. (1983). El proceso político chileno. FLACSO. González-Bustamante, B. (2014). Elección directa de consejeros regionales 2013. Rendimiento del capital político, familiar y económico en una nueva arena electoral en Chile. Revista Política, 52(2), 49–91. González-Bustamante, B. (2019). Brechas, representación y congruencia élite-ciudadanía en Chile y Uruguay. Convergencia, 26(80), 1. González-Bustamante, B. (2020). El estudio de las élites políticas gubernamentales en América Latina: Panorama, agendas de investigación y desafíos metodológicos. SocArXiv. https://doi. org/10.31235/osf.io/syqu4. González-Bustamante, B., & Olivares, A. (2015). Rotación de subsecretarios en Chile: Una exploración de la segunda línea gubernamental (1990–2014). Revista de Gestión Pública, 4(2), 150–191. González-Bustamante, B., & Olivares, A. (2016). Cambios de gabinete y supervivencia de los ministros en Chile durante los gobiernos de la Concertación (1990–2010). Colombia Internacional, 87, 81–108.

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Huber, J., & Martínez-Gallardo, C. (2008). Replacing Cabinet Ministers: Patterns of Ministerial Stability in Parliamentary Democracies. American Political Science Review, 102(2), 169–180. Huneeus, C. (2000). El régimen de Pinochet. Editorial Sudamericana. Indridason, I. H., & Kam, C. (2008). Cabinet Reshuffles and Ministerial Drift. British Journal of Political Science, 38(4). Joignant, A. (2011a). Tecnócratas, technopols y dirigentes de partido: Tipos de agentes y especies de capital en las elites gubernamentales de la Concertación (1990–2010). In A.  Joignant & P. Güell (Eds.), Notables, tecnócratas y mandarines: Elementos de sociología de las elites en Chile (pp. 1990–2010). Ediciones Universidad Diego Portales. Joignant, A. (2011b). The politics of technopols: Resources, political competence and collective leadership in Chile, 1990–2010. Journal of Latin American Studies, 43(3), 517–546. Joignant, A. (2014). El Capital Político Familiar: Ventajas de parentela y concentraciones de mercado en las elecciones generales chilenas de 2013. Revista Política, 52(2), 13–48. Kerby, M. (2015). Canada: Ministerial careers. In K. Dowding & P. Dumont (Eds.), The selection of ministers around the world (pp. 264–296). Routledge. Lanzaro, J. (2012). Continuidad y cambio en una vieja democracia de partidos: Uruguay 1910–2010. Cuadernos del Claeh, 33(100), 37–77. Luders, R. (2010). Sistemas Económicos, Tecnología y Acción Oficial en Defensa de la Libre Competencia: Chile 1810–2010 (No 410; Documento de Trabajo). Instituto de Economía. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Maillet, A. (2017). Más allá de la confianza política. El rol de las competencias profesionales en la permanencia interpresidencial de los superintendentes en Chile (1990–2014). Revista del CLAD Reforma y Democracia, 67, 163–196. Martínez, C.  A. (2021). Presidential instability in Latin America: Why institutionalized parties matter. Government and Opposition, 56(4), 683–704. https://doi.org/10.1017/gov.2020.18 Martínez-Gallardo, C. (2014). Designing cabinets: Presidential politics and ministerial instability. Journal of Politics in Latin America, 6(2), 3–38. Martínez-Gallardo, C., & Schleiter, P. (2015). Choosing whom to trust: Agency risks and cabinet partisanship in presidential democracies. Comparative Political Studies, 48(2), 231–264. https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414014544361 Mejía, L. B., Barinas, A., & Mora, M. (2021). ¿Es hora de un cambio de ministro? La supervivencia del gabinete en Colombia 1958–2018. Desafíos, 33(2), 1–32. https://doi.org/10.12804/ revistas.urosario.edu.co/desafios/a.8524 Oddone, J. A. (1967). Cronológicas. In Poder Ejecutivo-Poder Legislativo, 1830–1967. Universidad de la República. Olivares, A. (2018). Ministros y precandidatos presidenciales en Chile 1990–2014. Revista Chilena de Derecho y Ciencia Política, 9(2), 230–258. Quiroz Flores, A. (2017). Ministerial survival during political and cabinet change: Foreign affairs, diplomacy and war. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Rodríguez, J. (2011). Los ministros de la España democrática. Centro de Estudios Constitucionales. SEDEPE. (2010). Codebook. The selection and deselection of political elites research network. SEDEPE. Retrieved from http://sedepe.net/?page_id=169. Siavelis, P., & Galván, H. (2015). Chile. Ministerial selection and de-selection. In K. Dowding & P. Dumont (Eds.), The selection of ministers around the world (pp. 244–263). Routledge.

Chapter 2

Why Are Ministers Important? The State of the Art on Ministers and Cabinets

Research on ministers and cabinets has gone through distinct stages or waves of production. There have been studies on the political elites in general and ministerial ones for decades for parliamentary systems. The phenomenon is a new one for presidential democracies but has quickly gained academic notoriety. As Camerlo (2013) points out, the issue has gone through three phases: (a) seeing cabinets as a unilateral expression of heads of government; (b) seeing diverse political negotiation and management strategies, the same as in parliamentary democracies; and (c) analyzing the ministers, including their background, careers, and profile. Regardless of the institutional characteristics, a minister is usually the highest position that can be achieved in a government, excluding that of the head of state or government. It is not surprising that individuals who become ministers can become actors who manage to remain on the political stage for a long time, rotating among the highest positions in the public sector and even eventually projecting themselves as future candidates for head of government. This is based on the idea that cabinets are formed with ambitious politicians (Dowding & Dumont, 2008b). Not all politicians reach the post of minister, which is why there is a need for clarity on the characteristics of those who did reach that position, among other elements identifying the individual attributes to explain their arrival in the position. As we shall see in this chapter, according to the literature, when heads of government form their cabinets, they do so in hopes that the ministers will complement each other and that they will be capable of collaborating with them, administering ministries, and working as a team in the cabinet. As Dowding and Dumont (2008a) note, a head of government may have an ideal cabinet in private, but it may not correlate with reality due to the availability of staff, political and constitutional constraints, or because the political parties do not allow it. This last obstacle tends to be one of the hardest to manage, as the head of government must balance relations among party factions and balance appointments among the various partners when there is a coalition. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Olivares L., Survival of Ministers and Configuration of Cabinets in Chile and Uruguay, Latin American Societies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92802-5_2

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We shall now go over the main theoretical perspectives on ministers and cabinets, distinguishing the analyses performed on cabinet formation from studies on ministers and work on the dissolution of cabinets.

2.1  Cabinet Formation In parliamentary systems, the appointment of the cabinet is always the result of an agreement in the legislative branch. There is no government without the support or tolerance of a parliamentary majority (Pasquino, 2004), given that its formation depends on the existence and maintenance of an agreement in parliament (Cheibub et al., 2015). As Chasquetti (2006) points out, studies on the formation of governments in these systems abound, and there has been sustained scientific production on this for over three decades. In this debate, arguments have been put forth regarding how governments begin, giving an account of the negotiations to form them, the rewards parties expect when they join cabinets, and the distribution of positions (De Swaan, 1973; Laver, 2000; Laver & Shepsle, 1996; Strom et al., 1994; Warwick & Druckman, 2001). The agreement to form a government and, therefore, to name a cabinet is expressly or implicitly formalized. Expressly when there is a vote of confidence and implicitly when the parties allow the formation of a government by abstaining in the vote, thus allowing a given party or coalition to reach power with a relative majority (Vallès & Martí i Puig, 2015). In general, parliamentary governments can be single-­ party or coalition governments. Government formation tends to be quick when a single party holds a parliamentary majority and is usually a process in which the party’s leader negotiates the cabinet names with its factions. The situation changes when dealing with a coalition, as, in the absence of a majority, the formation of coalitions is sought to create one. There has been significant theoretical and empirical development in the analysis of political government coalitions since the 1960s, originating in applying game theory to government formation in parliamentary systems (Gamson, 1961; Riker, 1962). One of the main concerns of this body of literature is the negotiation process in parliamentary systems when it comes to naming a government. Gamson (1961) argues that there is a proportionality between the relative representation of each coalition party in the cabinet and the seats it holds in the legislature. Hence, cabinet formation can be understood as a power distribution among coalition parties (Carmignani, 2001). When they join a coalition, parties expect rewards equivalent to what they contribute to the formation of the government. That is, not all parties ask for the same thing when joining a coalition. Though this approach has been criticized over time, it serves as a starting point for an analysis of the distribution of posts, given that it shows the existence of strategic coordination according to the size of the actors. The size of a political party, measured in the number of seats, is also relevant when considering the possibility of a party being the one to originate the coalition

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or not. According to Warwick (1996), the likelihood of being the formateur depends on a party’s size, prior government experience, ideological stance, and centrality in the political spectrum. Browne and Franklin (1973) analyze over 60 parties that originated 114 coalitions between 1945 and 1969 to show that large parties in small coalitions (with few actors) are underrepresented and that small parties in small coalitions are overrepresented. Analyzing Western European democracies between 1950 and 1995, Carmignani (2001) notes that the cabinet is proportional to the degree of diversity among the coalition’s members. The stronger the forming party’s negotiating capacity expressed in the legislative size of the party and its position regarding the policy area, the more ministries it assures itself. On the other hand, it has fewer when the negotiating environment is more complex. This author shows that the size of a party is not a decisive factor for the most critical ministries. For their part, Warwick and Druckman (2001) argue that the allocation of ministries is balanced in both the number (quantitative criterion) and the importance of ministries (qualitative criterion). Therefore, proportionality not only occurs based on the percentage of posts but also according to the relative importance of ministries. They claim that the larger parties and usually the forming one tend to be under-compensated in terms of the number of ministries. However, they obtain qualitative compensation by receiving the most critical ministries or those most widely appreciated and visible. These analyses work pretty well for Europe’s most consolidated democracies. On post-communist democracies, the analysis by Grzymala-Busse (2001) shows that the formation of the first governments did not necessarily respond to the logic of proportionality. Grzymala-Busse argues that when it comes to forming governments, the parties do so following the divisions inherent in the transition to democracy. “The primary priority of new parties after the democratic transition is to develop a consistent identity and a reputation that allows them to gain a stable electorate” (Grzymala-Busse, 2001: 100). For this reason, they only enter pacts of action or omission with parties that can ensure their continuity over time. That is, a left-­ wing party will not allow the formation of a right-wing government and vice versa, as when that happens, the electorate tends to punish the parties that broke with the divide. In other words, proportionality would be subordinated to the ideological divide. In the case of democracies with presidential systems, the objective of this agenda has been to identify and evaluate cabinet formation strategies (Altman, 2000; Amorim Neto, 1998). The importance of this type of research is that the literature on coalitions rejects the argument that presidential systems were incapable of creating incentives for cooperation and negotiation among parties. Indeed, for most scholars in the 1990s, coalitions were considered unnecessary, accidental, worse, or undesirable (Albala, 2016, 2017, 2020). There was a scant analysis of presidential cabinets until the early 1990s, and they were used as indicators of instability in the institutional design of the presidential system. In contrast to prime ministers, the executives in presidential systems do not need congressional confidence to remain in the government (Cheibub, 2007). Thus,

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presidents can use the proportionality rule, albeit not precisely (Amorim Neto, 2006b). Amorim Neto (2006a) argues in his research that presidents maximize the possibility of implementing their policies by choosing decrees or laws that depend on different variables. This analysis suggests that the size of a president’s party, the presence of extremist parties, and situations of the economic crisis are the variables that explain the impact on dependent variables. These elements are, in turn, the criteria for selecting ministers, party members, or independents for proportionality in the allocation of briefs and the legislative status of the cabinet (majority or minority). According to Amorim Neto (2006b), these appointments tend to correlate with the different coalition parties’ representation in the legislative branch. That is, their relative weight is calculated based on the seats they hold. In contrast, if presidents intend to govern without legislative support, they are highly likely to appoint technical and independent ministers and/or people from their circle of trust. It is essential to highlight a unique feature of ministerial changes in presidential systems. The ministers who are appointed to the first cabinet, the one that is announced before the president has taken office, receive the most attention from the press and public opinion. This is justified on the assumption that the initial cabinet is the one that best represents the president’s hallmark, giving information on policy priorities and the work style to be developed (King & Riddlesperger, 2012). Accordingly, it is the ministers who take office in that cabinet who receive the most attention. The press disseminates their resumes, trajectory, background, and family ties to highlight the appointment or criticize the person’s work prior to reaching the position. This is a significant source of information for building databases. Unfortunately, the same is not true of subsequent changes, which do not receive the same media treatment unless the change is large-scale or there is a very scandalous departure. In this context, De Luca (2011) argues that at least three groups of factors must be considered in cabinet formation. The first is composed of how candidates won their elections and the characteristics of the parties or coalitions that supported them. The second has to do with the president’s training, experience, and political background. The third corresponds to the government’s objectives and the head of government’s political resources and ability to implement its agenda. De Luca (2011) argues that the influence of these factors varies depending on whether the cabinets are inaugural, intermediate, or at the end of the term. Regarding initial cabinets, it must be stressed that this is when presidents have more options, especially when they have won by a wide margin: everyone wants to be on the team. The problems arise when dealing with intermediate and end-of-term cabinets. The options are considerably reduced in this context, as parties and potential ministers are less likely to accept a position in the cabinet, given the proximity of the next elections. For example, Alemán and Tsebelis (2012: 15) argue that “parties are less inclined to join a government when a cabinet is restructured late in the presidential term.” As noted before, many cabinet changes can be a source of wear and tear for heads of government and their administrations. This is explained by the fact that

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adjustments need to be made in the distribution of power among the different partners, replacements need to be found, and the cabinet reconfigured. However, Best (1981) says that presidents change ministers in an attempt to improve the management of state ministries and, in that way, prosper in the operation of their governments. Initial cabinet appointments can “generate greater legitimacy” for their administration due to the type of minister, their backgrounds, or the composition of the cabinet. However, as the government progresses, there is a need to worry more about the course it is taking. Thus, when the departure of ministers becomes recurrent, it could be an indicator of the president’s weakness and bad decisions with appointments. In this sense, I argue that changes in cabinets are not of themselves bad, but they are harmful when they become too recurrent. Another issue discussed in the literature is that the appointment first and survival in an office next do not depend exclusively on the head of government. There is a balance between formal and informal factors (Chasquetti et  al., 2013; González-­ Bustamante & Olivares, 2016). However, this balance is not always known to the entire political system. In this context, agreements can be reached among the fractions of a party or coalition partners. There can also be informal rules, such as not changing the head of a ministry so as not to send markets a given signal. Regardless of this, one of the elements that would keep ministers in their posts is for them not to engage into direct confrontation with the head of government, for them to respect the coalition agreement, or for them to follow the party or coalition’s program. According to Indridason and Bowler (2013), for cabinets to work—that is, for them to be stable—the chief executive needs to coordinate two elements. On the one hand, there is a need to coordinate the expectations parties have of the government, so they operate as the expected rewards. On the other hand, relations between parties and ministers must be coordinated. All this is to ensure that ministers and parties fulfill the government’s objectives and not their own agendas, something directly related to agency and moral risk problems. On the other hand, Altman and Castiglioni (2008) analyze the impact of partisan cabinet fragmentation and the ideological position of the president in the scope of structural reforms in nine Latin American presidential democracies in the post-­ authoritarian era. In their study, the authors consider cabinets as a set of actors who are accountable both to the president as well as their parties, who coexist with independent actors who are only accountable to the president. That is people who have only one principal. According to Altman and Castiglioni (2008), the larger the percentage of independent ministers, the lower the cost associated with negotiating reforms in the executive. Therefore, when presidents put together coalition governments, they are limiting their ability to act unilaterally because political parties play a leading role in the process. Nevertheless, the benefits for the latter may be higher, given that they are better prepared to advance their reform proposals than in single-­ party governments. Based on the multiple balances that heads of governments must maintain to configure their cabinets, relations between them and their ministers must be analyzed from the perspective of principal and agent. In this context, there has been research

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that studies the duration of British cabinets (Berlinski et al., 2010) to understand cabinet reorganizations and calls for resignation (Indridason & Kam, 2008), as well as to explain ministers’ departure from their posts (Bucur, 2013) and to analyze the conflict between the president and the cabinet (Elgie, 2020). As people in charge of state ministries, ministers are double agents (Andeweg, 2000) who are in two chains of command, as they are simultaneously the president’s agents and the principals of their ministries (Bucur, 2020). Ministers are agents tasked with fulfilling the objectives that the head of government has entrusted them with. However, it is also clear that each of the actions that ministers take in fulfillment of their objectives will have consequences for the president (Quiroz Flores, 2017). This is because ministers have autonomy delegated by the head of government, who therefore loses control over what happens in each ministry. The problem is that if ministers care more about politics than management, it is possible that they will use their autonomy to promote their political visions and personal interests, regardless of whether they are consistent with those of the government they must respond to (Andeweg, 2000). The literature has identified at least two strategies to reduce ministers’ autonomy and prevent them from deviating from the government’s interests. The first is to appoint an undersecretary in each ministry who is a potential threat to one-way decision-making on the part of the minister (Indridason & Kristinsson, 2013). This practice has also been progressively used in coalition presidencies to generate balance among parties. The second strategy consists of the drafting of coalition agreements that operate as a government program. In single-party governments, the government program is usually the same as the one previously developed by the ruling party. In contrast, coalition governments must forge an agreement among the parties so the government can present a clear agenda to the population. This also helps to reduce ministers’ autonomy, though it must be pointed out that these agreements must meet two conditions. The first is that the ministers cannot have drafted the agreement so that parties and their leaders can have some autonomy. The second condition is that the coalition agreement must be broad-based and cover diverse points to ensure dispute resolution mechanisms (Andeweg, 2000). One of the problems governments can face is adverse minister selection. That is, hiring people with insufficient knowledge of how the public apparatus works and/or who have marked differences with private structures. To avoid selection problems and uncertainty regarding ministers’ work, one strategy is to convene people with a relevant background, either in the state or in political positions in their parties (Dowding & Dumont, 2015). This ensures that the president will have ministers who know the dynamics of how the political system operates, understand the problems and codes in the political playing field, and can manage in it. The above discussion would make it possible to complement the analysis of agency with a perspective of minsters’ attributes.

2.2  Studies Based on Ministers’ Attributes

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2.2  Studies Based on Ministers’ Attributes From their positions in the cabinet, ministers are key actors in the executive branch’s operation, which is why cabinet formation and ministers’ departure from office are events that attract the attention of all actors in the political system. They are entrusted with implementing the government program based on the fulfillment of targets or tasks in the ministry they have been tasked with leading. Therefore, to study ministers is to study a group of central agents in the public policy process, as the success or failure of a government largely depends on them. If ministers do their jobs well, the government will be stable and prosperous. In contrast, when ministers do not meet targets and objectives or when they have high-level problems, they can become obstacles that eventually destabilize the government that they are a part of. The analysis of ministers’ attributes allows distinguishing between professional politicians and people who are not, all this on the understanding that not all ministers have political careers before taking office. Sometimes people become heads of a state ministry because they have stood out in a given area of civil society or because they belong to the head of government’s inner circle. These phenomena are clear to see in presidential systems, where presidents are the most relevant actors in the process of naming ministers and empowered to autonomously form a cabinet and invite people and parties to join their governments according to their particular vision. The exclusive authority described is a window of opportunity for nonpartisan individuals to join cabinets, a situation that boosts presidential autonomy because these agents owe their loyalty to the president alone. This situation contrasts with ministers who are party members and thus hold a dual responsibility: to the president and to their parties (Altman & Castiglioni, 2008). Regarding ministers who belong to parties, it is interesting to consider the possibility of an intermediate option. For example, Camerlo and Martínez-Gallardo (2018) consider ministers’ level of partisanship on three levels “individuals with no political party affiliation; individuals with a declared or known preference for a specific party but without active membership in that party, or only recently affiliated to the party; and strictly partisan individuals” (p. 18).1 For professional politicians (strictly partisan), those dedicated exclusively to politics (Alcántara, 2012), holding the post of the minister could be one of the highest points of their careers, given that they can attain the visibility that allows them to better project their political careers. For people without a political career, nomination to the position of minister can be the first step to beginning a political career or else a significant experience (designing and implementing public policy). At the same time, people without political trajectories can use the ministerial experience to

1  The operationalization that Camerlo and Martínez-Gallardo (2018) offer could be an essential starting point for the debate on how to best address variance in ministers’ profiles regarding partisanship, considering that it can go beyond signing up for membership.

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capitalize on the power of influence and return to the private sector (Castellani & Dulitzky, 2018; Dörrenbächer, 2016; Maillet et al., 2019). Thus, the inclusion of nonpartisans can be explained by several factors: presidents’ political will to distance themselves from the parties, their lack of centrality in the system, or disagreement between presidents and parties over appointments and the distribution of posts (Amorim Neto, 2006a). Regardless of the president’s particular reasons, the literature holds that a cabinet composed mainly of people who come from outside the political field is a nonpartisan cabinet (Martínez-­ Gallardo & Schleiter, 2015). The possibility of people previously unrelated to politics taking office is related to the characteristics of political systems. Dogan (1979) takes the case of France between 1870 and 1978 to show that the institutionalization of the party system is fundamental to understanding the logic behind the recruitment of ministers and the stability of cabinets. The author contends that, in addition to individuals’ personal traits, the way the party system organizes with parliament is essential. In contexts of fragile party systems, parliamentary committees take on the promotion of ministers who can come from different social backgrounds and who take office for a brief period. In contrast, when the party system is strong, the likelihood of ministers being party leaders increases. Sotiropoulos and Bourikos (2002) analyze Greek ministers, considering a longitudinal perspective from the nineteenth century to 2001. In line with the theory of elites, their work concludes by arguing that there is high stability regarding the head of government’s profile. After controlling for the type of regime, no significant changes could be found over the course of time, and when there are changes, they come at specific moments. In the nineteenth century, ministers were mostly large landowners, while in the twentieth century, they were primarily lawyers. This tendency of having lawyers in power is not exclusive to cases analyzed. AI Camp (1985) studies Mexican secretaries and undersecretaries between 1935 and 1983, showing that lawyers are the most numerous, though the trend is for the number of economists and engineers to increase. Both cases are confirmed by Besley and Reynal-Querol (2011), who demonstrate the prevalence of lawyers in democracies and the military in autocracies. According to these authors, the tendency for lawyers to be the predominant profession in democracies can be explained by the skills that lawyers acquire in their training: oratory, control of complex situations, persuasion, among others (Besley & Reynal-Querol, 2011). In this context, the literature reveals a power struggle between lawyers and economists for control over the state apparatus (Dezalay & Garth, 2002). Economists represent the latest trends in the depoliticization of public administration and the primacy of technical knowledge. Thus, in modern societies, the stability of ministers is increasingly associated with their level of professionalization, either by obtaining academic degrees or developing careers in accordance with academic credentials. This phenomenon, known as the technification of politics, does not occur in the same way in all countries. The factors that legitimize authorities, especially ministers, are heavily influenced by political history and formal and informal institutional factors inherent to

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each political system (see Garcé, 2017). The technocratization of economic policy was presented as a measure to put an end to the populist practices of the past (Silva, 2011). In general, when there are technocrats in cabinets, they tend to be outnumbered by politicians. This does not mean that they have little relevance. On the contrary, given their credentials, they tend to hold high-level ministries such as finance, treasury, and the economy. However, it is almost impossible to find cabinets with only technical people. As has been noted, the possibility of a person developing a ministerial career can be associated with specific individual characteristics like gender, education, and experience among those who are part of the political elite. For example, in this way, one expects the experience to influence ministers’ ability to do their jobs. Huber and Martínez-Gallardo (2008) argue that ministers need technical knowledge of the areas where they will be responsible for implementing policies. Likewise, they need political skills to generate commitments with other key stakeholders. However, these characteristics are not necessarily the same in each country, as the existence of formal and informal rules regulates access to power according to what that society needs and seeks at a given time. Following this logic, the appointment of ministers could be described as a distribution of political power in the executive, mediated by the existence of prior consensus and informal rules. In the analysis of a ministerial career, all positions assumed in the state can be interpreted as a learning process in which political positions are accepted with the hope of reaching a goal: a cabinet position. Under this perspective, from the moment politicians join the state, they are preparing to become ministers 1 day. To be sure, not all succeed. Only those who are part of the elite among professional politicians have absolute chances of achieving that goal. There are many professional politicians who, for distinct reasons, never become ministers; even when parties promote their names, they are well-known political figures and wish to be ministers. This is what Rodríguez calls ministrable (Rodríguez, 2009). The “ministrability” of individuals can only be analyzed retrospectively and to the extent that they become ministers, which is an event beyond their control. In the case of ministers with political careers, this research assumes that all positions in the state and government prior to the first appointment are part of the learning process and construction of a profile of potential minister. In general, ministers’ careers in presidential systems are among the elements that have received the least attention from researchers of cabinets and ministers. There is a theoretical and empirical void that this research hopes to help fill. Rodríguez (2009, 2011), one of the strategies for the study of cabinets, is to define ministers as a particular type of elite: the “ministerial elite.” The composition and circulation of this elite are of great interest as a product of political selection and a factor to explain the public decision-making process. When a study’s focus is placed on the logic of the product, cabinets are seen as an explanatory factor in the political decision-­ making process within the political system. This provides a general framework for studying individuals’ life stories and analyzing the social spaces that ministers have developed. Ministers’ careers vary between parliamentary and presidential systems (Rodríguez, 2011). In parliamentary systems, the career is narrower and longer than

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in presidential systems. It is narrower because the entry barriers are higher than in presidential systems, where it is common for people who are not from the political sector to take office. It is longer because the people who develop the career tend to be professional politicians, in contrast to presidential systems, where many people serve just once (and briefly). Notwithstanding the fact that it is an interesting argument, it must be assessed in greater depth because the conclusion is based on the work by Linz and not recent research questioning the argument that presidential systems are institutionally weaker.

2.3  T  he Processes of Ministers’ Departure and Cabinet Dissolution In parliamentary systems, as a collegiate body, the cabinet is accountable to parliament, meaning that the latter can request the removal of a given minister or the entire cabinet through a motion of no confidence, such as when the legislative majority shifts. In this type of system, a change in cabinet tends to mean the end of a government or the end of the coalition supporting the government. A vote of no confidence or a party’s withdrawal from the government makes it necessary to change the cabinet. In this sense, Indridason and Kam (2008) argue that cabinet changes can be understood as a strategy to reduce the loss of agency caused by the actors’ different interests. In other words, prime ministers resort to cabinet changes when they or their ministers have changed their interests. Cabinet reorganizations emphasize both systematic causes and temporal variations. Prime ministers use cabinet adjustments to hold onto power in the face of challenges that threaten their leadership within the party to confront electoral challenges (Indridason & Kam, 2008). According to Dowding and Dumont (2008a), there are at least three reasons why a prime minister might dismiss a minister. First, a political disagreement: a minister who does not toe the government line can be asked to leave. At the same time, ministers can also use a political disagreement to harm the prime minister and promote their own interests. Second, a minister can resign or be fired after a personal or political scandal. The third reason prime ministers dismiss their ministers is the reorganization of the cabinet to revitalize the government, that is, to reduce the loss of agency. This last reason can imply movement among specific ministries, in addition to the incorporation of fresh faces, possibly through the retirement of older ministers. For example, Berlinski et al. (2007) show that older ministers and those who have served in previous cabinets run a higher risk than younger and less experienced ministers. In subsequent work (see Berlinski et al., 2010), the same authors analyze the relationship between prime ministers and their cabinets. The risk of ministers leaving the cabinet increases exponentially after the first change in ministers,

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29

especially for older cabinet ministers. However, the bigger the cabinet change, the lower the chance of other subsequent changes. Lastly, as Quiroz Flores (2017) points out, even though ministers fulfill the function of advising a head of government and responding to their bosses’ instructions, they also follow their own agendas. This could cause problems related to moral risk and loss of agency. That is why the recent literature on cabinets notes—mainly for parliamentary systems—that the departure of ministers and the restructuring of cabinets is a possible solution to agency problems (Quiroz Flores, 2017). Huber and Martínez-Gallardo (2008) argue that the relationship between events that end governments and ministers is weak. Ministers are fundamental to policymaking, meaning that their removal can be a sign of renewal or innovation instead of instability. Based on these arguments, cabinet reorganization could be a solution to agency problems. In the context of presidential systems, Martínez-Gallardo (2012b) has argued that cabinet dissolution is more likely when presidents assign less value to the formation of coalitions as a decision-making strategy because presidents with strong powers do not have incentives to commit themselves to the parties. In the same way, effective congresses and high approval ratings for the executive significantly contribute to more stable governments. Martínez-Gallardo (2012b) subsequently analyzed the strategic use of cabinet appointment processes, arguing that turnover and cabinet changes are tools for an adjustment that help to cope with unpredictable external shocks. On the other hand, the duration of government coalitions in presidential systems varies and is determined by the incentives that parties have to be part of the government. In this context, it is likely that the cabinet will be dissolved when the president assigns a less central role to the coalition in the design of public policy and when parties face higher costs for being part of a government (Martínez-­ Gallardo, 2012a). Along these same lines, Camerlo and Pérez-Liñán (2015), using survival analysis for 12 Latin American democracies between 1979 and 2007, argue that the departure of ministers from office is conditioned on strategic factors like the president’s interests. The authors also discuss institutional factors like the proximity of elections and the possibility of presidential reelection. According to this study, critical shocks or events (media scandals and social protest, economic crises, and low popularity) increase the risk of ministerial turnover, which is conditioned by institutional factors and strategic issues related to the electoral calendar and constitutional constraints like the possibility of reelection. In an attempt to understand what determines the departure of ministers in presidential systems, Escobar-Lemmon and Taylor-Robinson (2015) show that that there are specific personal characteristics that cannot explain this phenomenon. Among the authors’ findings are that the person’s political experience, prior experience as a minister, or personal closeness to the president does not affect whether they leave or not the government before the end of the term or not. However, they do show that ministers with political experience are less likely to face an abrupt end and that ministers with political experience in parties are 53% less likely to end badly (Escobar-Lemmon & Taylor-Robinson, 2015). In addition, they conclude that there

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are no significant differences when controlling by gender: women seem to succeed or fail with the same frequency as men. The studies on ministers’ departure discussed so far have not been part of broader research on ministers’ trajectories. For the same reason, to gain a full understanding of ministers’ survival in cabinets, I propose the need to understand which aspects related to their backgrounds could have an influence. Thus, the following chapters on the case studies of Chile and Uruguay identify which characteristics of the trajectory prior to holding the post might influence the formation of cabinets and ministers’ survival. At the same time, variables like the operation of the political system and the government’s performance must be considered as possible factors affecting the phenomenon that this research focuses on. For this reason, the next chapter develops the book’s theory and identifies which variables influence cabinet formation and ministers’ survival.

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Bucur, C. (2013). Who fires ministers? A principal-agent approach to ministerial deselection [Tesis de Doctorado]. Dublin City University. Faculty of Humanities and Social Science. Bucur, C. (2020). Presidents and cabinet payoffs in coalition governments. Political Studies Review, 18(1), 30–52. Camerlo, M. (2013). Presentación. América Latina Hoy, 64, 11–12. Camerlo, M., & Pérez-Liñán, A. (2015). Minister Turnover, Critical Events, and the Electoral Calendar in Presidential Democracies. The Journal of Politics, 77(3), 608–619. Camerlo, M., & Martínez-Gallardo, C. (Eds.). (2018). Government formation and minister turnover in presidential cabinets: Comparative analysis in the Americas. Routledge. Camp, R. A. (1985). The political technocrat in Mexico and the survival of the political system. Latin American Research Review, 20(1), 97–118. Carmignani, F. (2001). Cabinet formation in coalition systems. Scottish Journal of Political Economy, 48(3), 313–329. Castellani, A., & Dulitzky, A. (2018). The reverse revolving door: Participation of economic elites in the public sector during the 1990s in Argentina. Latin American Business Review, 19(2), 131–156. Chasquetti, D. (2006). La supervivencia de las coaliciones presidenciales de gobierno en América Latina. POSTData: Revista de Reflexión y Análisis Político, 11, 163–192. Chasquetti, D., Buquet, D., & Cardarello, A. (2013). La designación de gabinetes en Uruguay: Estrategia legislativa, jerarquía de los ministerios y afiliación partidaria de los ministros. América Latina Hoy, 64, 15–40. Cheibub, J.  A. (2007). Presidentialism, parliamentarism, and democracy. Cambridge University Press. Cheibub, J. A., Martin, S., & Rasch, B. E. (2015). Government selection and executive powers: Constitutional design in parliamentary democracies. West European Politics, 38(5), 969–996. De Luca, M. (2011). Del Príncipe y sus secretarios. Cinco apuntes sobre gabinetes presidenciales en Argentina reciente. In A.  Malamud & M.  De Luca (Eds.), La política en tiempos de los Kirchner. Eudeba. De Swaan, A. (1973). Coalition theories and cabinet formations; a study of formal theories of coalition formation applied to nine European parliaments after 1918. Jossey-Bass. Dezalay, Y., & Garth, B. (2002). La internacionalización de las luchas por el poder: La competencia entre abogados y economistas por transformar los Estados latinoamericanos. ILSA. Dogan, M. (1979). How to become a cabinet minister in France: Career pathways, 1870–1978. Comparative Politics, 12(1), 1–25. Dörrenbächer, N. (2016). Patterns of post-cabinet careers: When one door closes another door opens? Acta Politica, 51(4), 472–491. Dowding, K., & Dumont, P. (2008a). Structural and strategic factors affecting the hiring and firing of ministers. In K. Dowding & P. Dumont (Eds.), The selection of ministers in Europe: Hiring and firing (pp. 1–20). Routledge. Dowding, K., & Dumont, P. (Eds.). (2008b). The selection of ministers in Europe: Hiring and firing. Routledge. Dowding, K., & Dumont, P. (Eds.). (2015). The selection of ministers around the world. Routledge. Elgie, R. (2020). Presidents and cabinets. In R. B. Andeweg, R. Elgie, L. Helms, J. Kaarbo, & F. Müller-Rommel (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of political executives (pp. 401–419). Oxford University Press. Escobar-Lemmon, M. C., & Taylor-Robinson, M. M. (2015). Sex, survival, and scandal: A comparison of how men and women exit presidential cabinets. Politics & Gender, 11(4), 665–688. Gamson, W. (1961). A theory of coalition formation. American Sociological Review, 26(3), 373–382. Garcé, A. (2017). Regímenes Políticos de Conocimiento: Tecnocracia y democracia en Chile y Uruguay. Millcayac - Revista Digital de Ciencias Sociales, 4(7), 17–48. González-Bustamante, B., & Olivares, A. (2016). Cambios de gabinete y supervivencia de los ministros en Chile durante los gobiernos de la Concertación (1990–2010). Colombia Internacional, 87, 81–108.

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Grzymala-Busse, A. (2001). Coalition formation and the regime divide in new democracies: East Central Europe. Comparative Politics, 34(1), 85–104. Huber, J., & Martínez-Gallardo, C. (2008). Replacing cabinet ministers: Patterns of ministerial stability in parliamentary democracies. American Political Science Review, 102(2), 169–180. Indridason, I. H., & Bowler, S. (2013). Determinants of cabinet size: Determinants of cabinet size. European Journal of Political Research, 53(2), 381–403. Indridason, I. H., & Kam, C. (2008). Cabinet reshuffles and ministerial drift. British Journal of Political Science, 38(4), 621–656. Indridason, I. H., & Kristinsson, G. H. (2013). Making words count: Coalition agreements and cabinet management. European Journal of Political Research, 52(6), 822–846. King, J., & Riddlesperger, J. (2012). Replacing cabinet officers: Political factors affecting presidential choices. Annual Meeting of the Western Political Science Association. Laver, M. (2000). Government formation and public policy. Political Science & Politics, 33(1), 21–23. Laver, M., & Shepsle, K. (1996). Making and breaking governments: Cabinets and legislatures in parliamentary democracies. Cambridge University Press. Maillet, A., González-Bustamante, B., & Olivares, A. (2019). Public-private circulation and the revolving door in the Chilean executive branch (2000–2014). Latin American Business Review, 20(4), 367–387. Martínez-Gallardo, C. (2012a). Cabinet stability and policymaking in Latin America. In J. Santiso & J.  Dayton-Johnson (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of Latin American political economy. Oxford University Press. Martínez-Gallardo, C. (2012b). Out of the cabinet what drives defections from the government in presidential systems? Comparative Political Studies, 45(1), 62–90. Martínez-Gallardo, C., & Schleiter, P. (2015). Choosing Whom to Trust: Agency Risks and Cabinet Partisanship in Presidential Democracies. Comparative Political Studies, 48(2), 231–264. https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414014544361 Pasquino, G. (2004). Sistemas políticos comparados Francia, Alemania, Gran Bretaña, Italia y Estados Unidos. Prometeo. Quiroz Flores, A. (2017). Ministerial survival during political and cabinet change: Foreign affairs, diplomacy and war. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Riker, W. (1962). The theory of political coalitions. Yale University Press. Rodríguez, J. (2009). Reclutamiento y carrera ministerial de los ministros en España (1976–2005) (Working Paper No. 273). Institut de Ciències Polítiques i Socials. Retrieved from http://ddd. uab.cat/record/54872 Rodríguez, J. (2011). Los ministros de la España democrática. Centro de Estudios Constitucionales. Silva, P. (2011). Tecnocracia y Gobernabilidad Democrática en América Latina. FLACSO. Sotiropoulos, D., & Bourikos, D. (2002). Ministerial elites in Greece, 1843–2001: A synthesis of old sources and new data. South European Society and Politics, 7(2), 153–204. Strom, K., Budge, I., & Laver, M. (1994). Constraints on cabinet formation in parliamentary democracies. American Journal of Political Science, 38(2), 303–335. Vallès, J., & Martí i Puig, S. (2015). Ciencia política: Un manual. Ariel. Warwick, P. (1996). Coalition government membership in west European parliamentary democracies. British Journal of Political Science, 26(4), 471–499. Warwick, P., & Druckman, J. (2001). Portfolio salience and the proportionality of payoffs in coalition governments. British Journal of Political Science, 31(4), 627–649.

Chapter 3

Cabinet Formation in Uruguay

This chapter analyzes cabinet formation in Uruguayan democracy and accounts for the most significant political elements influencing the process. It also aims to identify regularities in ministerial profiles prior to authoritarian rule (1942–1973) and after (1984–2015). Specifically, presents a brief overview of the most relevant events surrounding different governments’ installation and cabinets. All this considering that Uruguay is an interesting case due to the levels of democratization of its political system (see Buquet, 2012; Altman, 2020). Many of the country’s democratic practices result from a development model in which the state has been a promoter of the economy and an articulator of society.

3.1  Cabinet Formation in Uruguayan Democracy 1942–1973 To understand the dynamics underlying the selection of ministers and the formation of cabinets in Uruguay, one first needs to understand the presidential election mechanism. According to Caetano (2011) and Madrid (2019), the Uruguayan democracy that was inaugurated in 1919—since the Constitution of 1918 entered into force on 1 March that year—was fundamental to the expansion of suffrage and the development of complex electoral legislation, known as the simultaneous double vote (DVS) system. Though this legislation dated back to 1910, the new Constitution enshrined the system and extended and expanded its application to presidential elections (Greising et al., 2011b; Nahum, 2011). In this system, each voter simultaneously votes for a political party and for candidates (Buquet, 2003). That is, a parallel vote is established in which people must vote for a party (or lema) and a candidate (or list of candidates) identified with a tendency or fraction within the party (sublema). This particular institutional arrangement tends to operate as an intra-party preferential voting mechanism and assumes © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Olivares L., Survival of Ministers and Configuration of Cabinets in Chile and Uruguay, Latin American Societies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92802-5_3

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that the party is the primary target of the vote, followed by the candidate (Buquet, 2003). This had an impact on the political system’s competitive structure, favoring the emergence of bipartisanship. The application of the simultaneous double vote to presidential elections meant that “the winner is not necessarily the candidate with the most votes, but rather the strongest candidate within the party with the most votes” (Morgenstern, 2001: 117). Since the party vote prevails over candidates’ votes, the lema that obtains the largest number of votes ensures that its most-voted candidate will reach the government, even without receiving the most votes at the individual level (Buquet, 2003). The system allowed the factions within each party to compete with each other without harming their party’s chances of winning the elections (Altman, 2000). Until 1996, when single candidacies per party were established, each lema could present multiple formulas in the same presidential election, which competed among each other without causing electoral damage to the party. This “configured contradictory effects: on the one hand it stimulated the fragmentation of the party system, while on the other it contained it and fostered bipolar competition” (Chasquetti, 1997: 36). The simultaneous double vote system favored the internal splintering of parties by institutionalizing a mechanism for intra-party competition that did not harm the parties’ political aspirations and electoral results (Lanzaro, 2004). Highly organized factions emerged that provided a “multiparty façade” (Morgenstern, 2001: 113). The party system maintained great stability until the hegemony of traditional parties came under threat from leftist sectors starting in the 1960s, in a context of “deepening economic stagnation” (Alcántara & Luna, 2004: 138). These sectors then consolidated their participation on the political-electoral stage by creating the Frente Amplio in 1971, a situation that completely disrupted the bipartisan political scenario when democracy resumed (Buquet & Piñeiro, 2014). With these elements in mind, the following section gives an account of the cabinet-­forming process in Uruguayan democracy. In particular, the trends of the period and how they change ministerial profiles are analyzed. Special emphasis is given to certain elements highlighted in the literature on ministers and cabinets, including the role played by coalitions and ministers’ sex, background, and profile.

3.2  From Neo-Batllism to the End of Liberal Governments1 The 1942 Constitution brought an end to the period of restrictions on individual freedoms caused by the conflicts of the preceding decade. Democracy was restored, and a new political cycle began. This period begins with the 1942 elections, in which Juan José de Amézaga and Alberto Guani of the Partido Colorado won after emerging as the most-voted duo within their party and nationally, with 40.74% of 1  The electoral results presented in the section were taken from Venturini (1989) and from the Vote Tally Sheets Archive, Electoral Court of Uruguay. Available at: https://www.corteelectoral.gub.uy/ estadisticas/historial-hojas-de-votacion/historial-hojas-de-votacion (last consultation 20-02-2021).

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the total vote. On that occasion, in addition to the winning ticket, the Partido Colorado also competed with the duos Blanco Acevedo and Carlos Vilaró Rubio of the sublema “Para Servir al País”; and with Eugenio Lagarmilla and Carlos Oneto y Viana of the sublema “Libertad y Justicia.” The substantial number of factions is evidence of the diversity within the party. Amézaga’s presidency (1943–1947) was tasked with overseeing the country’s political transition and implementing the recently approved Constitution. For this, he surrounded himself with ministers with political experience. Amézaga’s strategy for appointing ministers was to assign ministries to the factions of his party according to the presidential election results. Batllism was the Colorado Party faction with the most ministers, seven, followed by the sublema “Para Servir al País” with five, and lastly the sublema “Libertad y Justicia” with four ministers. The strategy follows the arguments put forth by Dowding and Dumont (2008), as Amézaga expected his ministers to be competent institutional decision-makers, considering that he presided over a government in transition to democracy. A majority of Amézaga’s 19 ministers (73%) were politicians with previous experience in Congress. None of the ministers was in office for the entire term. Ministers spent an average of 692 days (22.7 months) in office. The ministers who lasted the most in office were those in charge of ministries that were fundamental to the legislation promoted by the President (see Table 3.1). The high ministerial turnover is a consequence of divisions within the Partido Colorado. The alliance between Batllism and the sublema “Para Servir al País” began to crack shortly after the government began (Nahum et al., 2011). This situation led to a cabinet reorganization, one of the mechanisms chief executives have to resolve eventual problems within their governments (Indridason & Kam, 2008). This is why the President had to seek support beyond his party’s ranks and appointed three ministers from the Partido Nacional Independiente, which emerged as a spinoff of the Partido Nacional in the 1930s and had been an ally of the Partido Colorado in previous battles. By including a second party in the cabinet, the overall distribution of the cabinet was 15.8% ministers for the Partido Nacional Independiente and 84.2% for the diverse factions of the Partido Colorado. As Nahum et al. (2011) note, three aspects stand out in this government’s administration where ministers play a very important role. First, it tried to eliminate the Table 3.1  Ministers with the most time in the Amézaga government (1943–1947) Minister Juan José Carbajal Tomás Berreta Héctor Álvarez Alfredo Campos

Ministry Interior Public works Economy and finance National defense

Date of appointment 23-Jun-43

Date of departure from post 01-Mar-47

No. of days in post 1347

01-Mar-43 03-Nov-43

24-Oct-46 01-Mar-47

1333 1214

01-Mar-43

24-Jun-43

1211

Source: By author based on ministers’ data

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3  Cabinet Formation in Uruguay

arbitrariness of the Terra dictatorship.2 To this end, it established special procedures for dealing with grievances over unjustified layoffs in the state. Second, it was a major promoter of public works, which allowed it to significantly reduce unemployment and increase the popularity of his minister (Tomás Berreta), who left the ministry to run for President. Lastly, it was particularly concerned about the functioning of the domestic economy. The Wage Councils3 were created during this government, in addition to severance compensation, and progress was made toward equal rights for women (see Notaro et al., 2011). The second government term in the period analyzed was that of the Partido Colorado’s Tomás Berreta (1947–1951). The Partido Colorado’s list obtained 47.81% of the vote, versus 32.05% for the Partido Nacional ‘s list (Caetano & Rilla, 1995). Berreta and his running mate Luis Batlle Berres were the most-voted ticket within the most-voted list. This victory began a political period known as Neo-­ Batllism,4 which lasted until 1958 and corresponded to “the work deployed from the state by the Partido Colorado led by Luis Batlle Berres to implement a national project that picked up on the Batllist tradition and was capable of achieving ambitious goals in terms of social and economic progress” (Nahum et al., 2011: 94). Neo-Batllism began with the victory of Berreta, who did not need alliances with other sectors of the Partido Colorado to win. That is why he formed a cabinet that was 60% from his sublema (Batllism) when he took office in March 1947. Each of the other two sublemas (“Para Servir al País” and “Libertad y Justicia”) received two each of the remaining four ministries. All the ministers were men, the majority (66%) with congressional experience. This pattern is in line with Grzymala-Busse’s (2001) arguments, as we can see how the benefit of the President’s sector prevailed in the initial cabinet, reflecting the presidential election results. The government had just one cabinet, as Berreta died on 2 August 1947, just 5 months after taking office. Thus, Vice President Luis Batlle Berres took over as the new President. He only changed the minister of the economy and finance, replacing Héctor Álvarez Cina with Ledo Arroyo Torres, also an attorney. The fact

2  From the outset of his government, José Luis Gabriel Terra (1931–1938) promoted a constitutional amendment to eliminate the collegiate executive. This, coupled with the effects of the Great Depression, certain sectors’ displeasure with the system of political co-participation (Rodríguez, 2007), and the growing fragmentation of the traditional parties (Nahum et al., 2011) were some of the reasons for the self-coup he staged in 1933. In addition to devoting itself to changing the Constitution to eliminate the two-headed executive, Terra’s de facto government also suppressed many personal liberties and implemented a repressive policy against opponents (i.e., Batllism, members of leftist parties, and certain people from the Partido Nacional). It was a clearly authoritarian, conservative, and anticommunist government (Rodríguez, 2007). 3  These councils were organized to set minimum wages by the type of activity and were composed of members of the government, unions, and employers (Ermida, 2006). 4  Neo-Batllism is the updated version of Batllism, which in addition to being an ideology represents the political stage in Uruguay spanning from 1900 to 1930, which is characterized by being the period in which the republic was organized based on the ideas of Batlle y Ordoñez. In very general terms, in Batllism executive power should not be vested in a single person. It was supposed to be a collective instance that represented the interests of all political parties (Finch, 2005).

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that there was only one change was a sign of continuity that does not really allow the new President’s strategy to be assessed. That is why it is better to analyze the composition of Batlle Berres’s second cabinet, appointed in December 1947. The ministers from the sublema “Libertad y Justicia” were left out of this cabinet. With the change, the cabinet was composed only of men, seven from Batllism and two from the sublema “Para Servir al País.” Eight of the nine ministers had previous experience in Congress. In other words, it was a cabinet with a pronounced political hallmark that allowed it to develop political and state reforms through legislation. The economy experienced a decade of accelerated economic growth after 1947, thanks to industrial development (Finch, 2005). This process based on import substitution industrialization was reinforced with the appointment of two technocratic ministers. A nonpartisan economist was appointed minister of the economy and finance for the first time in 1949 and remained in the ministry until the end of the government: Nilo Berchesi. The new minister, a graduate of the first cohort of economists from the University of the Republic School of Economic Sciences, held a Ph.D. in economics and was an academic at the same university (Garcé, 2002). The second technocrat in Batlle Berres’s cabinets was the engineer José Acquistapace, who served as public works minister between November 1949 and the end of the government. The permanence of these two actors demonstrates the importance that  Batlle Berres placed on these people with “a high level of academic training” holding key responsibilities in the governments (Collier, 1985: 404); this, considering that both ministers were key to strengthening the government, as implementing the government’s economic plan required the nationalization of goods and services companies, in addition to the development of an extensive state network to regulate prices and administer state companies (Nahum et al., 2011). Batlle Berres’s policies can be summed up in a constant concern “for maintaining order, making changes through legal means, avoiding conflict and violence; the idea of ‘revolution with order’ based on his appreciation and confidence in democracy, deepens and consolidates this association between social justice and democracy, law and order” (Arias, 2018). Considering all changes, the Batlle Berres administration Berres had a total of 29 ministers, all men. Most had political experience: 69% of ministers had prior experience in Congress, and just 21% were politicians without prior legislative experience. The remaining ministers were the two technocrats already mentioned (Acquistapace and Berchesi) and a nonpartisan who briefly served as health minister (Julio López Estévez, who was minister between June and August 1949). As shown in Table 3.2, the government made various ministerial changes. This was a consequence of internal adjustments in the Partido Colorado and the need to find support for state reforms through alliances with other parties in the political system. This is why a minister from Unión Cívica, the lawyer Dardo Regules, was appointed. Thus, two parties participated in the cabinet: the Partido Colorado with 27 appointments and the Partido Unión Cívica with one minister. The government achieved continuity in the 1950 election when the Partido Colorado ticket of Andrés Martínez Trueba for President and Alfeo Brum for Vice President was the most-voted formula of the party with the most votes (Caetano &

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Table 3.2  Number of Ministers in the Batlle Berres administration (1947–1951) Ministry National Defense Livestock and agriculture Economy and finance Industries and labor Public education and social security Interior Public works Foreign relations Public health Total

Number of ministers 2 3 2 3 3 3 3 4 6 29

% 6.9 10.3 6.9 10.3 10.3 10.3 10.3 13.8 20.7 100

Source: By author based on ministers’ data

Rilla, 1995). The Partido Colorado achieved an absolute majority (52.61%). The duo from the Partido Nacional received the most votes, but the poor results obtained at the party level prevented them from reaching the government. In addition to the country’s two traditional parties, another nine parties presented single presidential tickets that received less than 18% of the total votes cast between them. As historians of the period have pointed out, this fact reveals that political activity had expanded massively, and there was a need to develop new communications and engagement strategies between voters and candidates (Nahum et al., 2011). Andrés Martínez Trueba took office in March 1951, appointing a cabinet of men, all politicians and mostly from the Batllist sublema. The cabinet and government lasted exactly 1 year. This short duration is because the structure of the executive branch changed to a new collegiate system on 1 March 1952, after a constitutional reform (Altman, 2020). From the moment he took office, Martínez Trueba expressed his intention to reform the Constitution and follow the Batllist ideology of creating a collegiate government (Chasquetti, 2001). After a series of negotiations between the President, sectors of the Partido Colorado, and the leaders of the Partido Nacional, a constitutional reform creating the National Government Council was drafted and passed by Congress.5

5  The reform was subjected to a plebiscite and approved by voters in December 1951. The new Constitution entered into effect in January 1952 and led to significant transformations in the Uruguayan institutional framework, especially in the composition of the executive branch. That year the figure of the National Government Council was established. It was composed of nine members, of which six belonged to the sublema with the most votes in the elections and three to the one to come second. This Council was chaired annually by one of these nine members. The new Constitution eliminated the positions of president and vice president of the republic and, therefore, elections through the mechanism of presidential tickets. In addition, the number of senators was increased from 30 to 31, while at the district level the number of deputies or representatives remained at 99 in the General Assembly.

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3.2.1  Cabinets During the Collegiate Executive The National Government Council, which operated between 1952 and 1967, had nine members elected by vote to serve a four-year term (see Table 3.3). The National Council rotated the chair among the members of the lema that obtained the majority and in the order of preference on the respective list (Altman, 2020). Despite being a collegiate executive, the Council presidents could change the cabinet and appoint new ministers when they assumed as heads of the government. In theory, this should mean an increase in ministerial turnover. Consistent with the climate of consensus that characterized the process of constitutional change, council members were, exceptionally, appointed by the General Assembly. The council members from the Partido Colorado were Francisco Forteza, Antonio Rubio (Batllists Lisa 15); Álvarez Cina, Luis Brause (List 14); Eduardo Blanco Acevedo (Blancoacevedistas). The Partido Nacional appointed Álvaro Vargas, Martín Echegoyen, and Roberto Berro. Andrés Martínez Trueba led the new collegiate body for the term (1952–1955). There were 13 ministerial appointments in the first collegiate government, all of them men. The vast majority were politicians with previous experience in Congress (61.5%) and one technocrat, with the engineer Acquistapace returning to the Public Table 3.3  Collegiate governments of Uruguay (1952–1967) The year the head of government took office 1952 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966

President Andrés Martínez Luis Batlle B. Alberto Fermín Zubiría Arturo Lezama Carlos L. Fischer Martín R. Echegoyen Benito Nardone Eduardo Víctor Haedo Faustino Harrison

Party Colorado Colorado Colorado

Faction List 15 List 16 List 17

Colorado List 18 Colorado List 19 Nacional Herrerism Nacional Liga Federal de Acción Ruralista Nacional Herrerism

Nacional Liga Federal de Acción Ruralista Daniel Fernández Nacional Liga Federal de Acción Ruralista Luis Giannattasio Nacional Unión Blanca Democrática Washington Beltrán Nacional Unión Blanca Democrática Alberto Héber Nacional Herrerism

Source: By author based on ministers’ data

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3  Cabinet Formation in Uruguay

Works Ministry. Ministers spent an average of 758 days, or 24.9 months, in office. During this administration, a process of economic stagnation began that was to become an economic crisis in 1955 (Finch, 2005). A significant decline in the price of exports, mainly meat and wool, the loss of purchasing power, and the inability to maintain social benefits were observed before the crisis, in 1953, which led to increased union agitation and social discontent (Nahum et al., 2011). For example, the CPI grew by an annual rate of 11% between 1951 and 1956 (Oddone, 2010). Protests increased with the economic crisis and directly hit the traditional parties, which tended to fragment, a situation that exacerbated conflicts between sectors (Costa Bonino, 1985). The 1954 elections were held in this troubled political environment. The Partido Colorado once again received the most votes, with 50.55% of the total, obtaining six of the nine seats on the Council. The Partido Nacional came in second, with 35.24% of preferences, thus filling the remaining three seats with Luis A. de Herrera, Ramón Viña, and Daniel Fernández. The six council members from the Partido Colorado were from the List 15 sector: Luis Batlle Berres, Alberto Zubiría, Carlos Fischer, Arturo Lezama, Justino Zavala, and Zoilo Chelle. The fact that all Partido Colorado members were from the same sublema created an interesting scenario. It is possible to assume that, notwithstanding the rotating council presidency, the President’s sublema did not change, and it was, therefore, to be expected that no ministerial changes be made. Evidence supports this expectation as ministers lasted 466.18 days in their posts for close to 15  months. The second collegiate government appointed 28 ministers, of whom 75% had previous experience in Congress. All were men and party members, mostly from the List 15 sublema (89%). As Oddone (2010) has noted, the economic crisis became self-evident. Inflation averaged 31% per year between 1957 and 1963. Though the government attempted to reverse the situation with changes in exchange rates, import restrictions, and increased access to external financing, the measures were not enough to overcome the adverse scenario (Nahum et al., 2011). These economic problems were compounded by tensions between urban interests and rural sectors. As Garcé (2002) has noted, small and medium-sized rural producers had stopped feeling represented by national politics since the early 1940s. According to these sectors, the Partido Colorado was worried about urban industries, while the Partido Nacional prioritized large-scale agricultural and livestock producers. Thus, the ruralist leader Benito Narbone helped to institutionalize this displeasure by creating the political movement “Liga Federal de Acción Ruralista.” This new organization played a fundamental role in channeling the displeasure with traditional parties. The generalized discontent led the Partido Colorado to lose the 1958 elections. This time the Partido Nacional imposed itself with 49.68% of the vote against the Partido Colorado’s 37.7%. In addition, another nine parties presented Council candidates in these elections. It was a historic election because it was the first time in 93 years that the Partido Nacional reached the presidency (Caetano & Rilla, 1995). Having achieved a majority in this new government, all cabinet members belonged to the Partido Nacional, mainly Herrerism (71%), an ideological current founded by party leader Luis Alberto de Herrera. This sector had the support of the

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Liga Federal de Acción Ruralista (Nahum et al., 2011). This first collegiate government under the Partido Nacional (1959–1962) was characterized as being a government with a discourse focused on economic recovery. Its economy and finance minister, the technocrat Juan Eduardo Azzini, an accountant by profession, held the post throughout the entire government, from 1 March 1959 to 28 February 1963. One of his most remembered policies was the Monetary and Exchange Reform, which ended a system of multiple dollar prices. In addition, trade controls were dismantled and bilateral agreements terminated (Oddone, 2010).6 There were a total of 14 ministers, all men and mostly without congressional experience. Politicians with previous experience in Congress represented just 35.7% of ministers. This marked a clear difference with Partido Colorado governments, which always privileged people with prior experience in Congress. However, it did maintain another trend, which at this stage could be viewed as systemic: the low importance assigned to the ministers’ technical credentials. Ministers spent an average of 937 days in office (30 months). In addition to the economy and finance minister, the ministers of public works, foreign relations, public education and social security, and livestock and agriculture also remained in office for the entire term. The Partido Nacional obtained the most votes again in the 1962 election: 46.54% vs. 44.51% for the Partido Colorado. However, this time ministries were not concentrated in the hands of Herrerism but also included sectors such as the Unión Blanca Democrática, founded in 1956 (Ruíz, 2007). Herrerism only obtained 27.8% of the appointments. The government’s 18 ministers were all men. Half of them had previous experience in Congress. The other nine ministers were politicians without prior legislative experience. This scenario is in line with Chasquetti's (1997) theoretical argument, which underscores the importance of seeking coalitions for the government to function properly. Despite this, the government’s economic policy was characterized by instability and by the continuing changes between liberal policies and policies of a statist nature (Oddone, 2010). The indecision between liberalism and statism meant a high turnover among ministers of the economy and finance. Four ministers were appointed during that period, of whom just Raúl Ybarra San Martín, who held the post between 17 October 1963 and 11 June 1964, was a specialist in economics. The others were lawyers with previous experience in state administration. This underscores the continuous struggle between lawyers and economists for the control of the state apparatus that Dezalay and Garth (2002) warn us about. Neither experience with the Partido Nacional in power yielded positive results. They failed against inflation, which was over 50% per year between 1963 and 1966, meaning that they were unable to improve the overall situation in the country. That is why it came as no surprise when the Partido Colorado won the election again in 6  According to Finch (2005), this measure, which was agreed with the International Monetary Fund, was an attempt to liberalize the economy. However, it was impossible to implement: “GDP grew and inflation relented in the early 1960s. However, problems were quick to emerge (...) the disappearance of import controls led to a trade deficit (…) loans granted to companies increased foreign debt” (Oddone, 2010: 130).

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1966. These elections were particularly relevant to the Uruguayan institutional framework. The “criticism of the collegiate body’s slowness to make decisions and the lack of leadership in Executive circles” (Chasquetti, 2001: 78) fueled the idea of the need to repeal the 1952 Constitution and end the collegiate executive. Thus, four different constitutional reform projects were subjected to a plebiscite simultaneously with the November elections. The reform that won by a wide margin was the one representing an inter-party consensus between a majority from the Partido Colorado and important sectors from the Partido Nacional (Chasquetti, 2001). Among other points, it proposed returning to a 30-seat Senate, elected directly in a single electoral constituency, and ending the collegiate executive by reinstating the offices of President and Vice President of the Republic. In the 1966 elections, the different lemas’ ballots had to include not only candidates for the National Government Council but also candidates for President as a projected regime in the event that the constitutional reform was approved and the collegiate executive terminated. The constitutional change also increased the number of ministers from 9 to 12. The Ministries of Culture and Transport were created, and the Ministry of Industries and Labor was split in two, creating the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Ministry of Labor and Social Security.

3.2.2  Cabinets in the New Executive After the plebiscite approved a new constitution that restored the presidential regime, the Partido Colorado ticket running Óscar Gestido for President and Jorge Pacheco for Vice President won the election. The Partido Colorado managed to recover the electoral lead after two terms under the Partido Nacional, receiving 49.33% of the vote against 40.34% for the latter. The simultaneous double vote allowed the Partido Colorado duo of Gestido and Pacheco to reach the government despite not being the most-voted presidential formula. In principle, new President Óscar Gestido was to govern from 1967 to 1972, as the 1967 Constitution extended the presidential term from 4 to 5 years. Gestido’s first cabinet was characterized by representing one party, with lesser presence by the Quincista sector, weakened and scattered after the death of its leader, former president Luis Batlle Berres, in 1964. Different Colorado sublemas were present in the cabinet, with majority participation by the Unión Colorada y Batllista sector, which emerged from List 14, to which President Gestido belonged. President Gestido died on 6 December 1967, 9 months after taking office. Despite having been in power for just 280 days, Gestido appointed 19 ministers, detailed in Table 3.4. All the ministers were men, mostly politicians with previous experience in Congress (57.9%). Their average duration in office was 161 days (5 months), and only three ministers remained throughout the period: transport, communications and tourism, livestock and agriculture, and national defense. As Oddone (2010)

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Table 3.4  Number of ministers in the Gestido administration (1967) Ministries Culture Economy and finance Industry and trade Public works Labor and social security National Defense Livestock and agriculture Interior Foreign relations Public health Transport, communications and tourism Total

Number of ministers 3 3 3 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 19

% 15.8 15.8 15.8 10.5 10.5 5.3 5.3 5.3 5.3 5.3 5.3 100

Source: By author based on ministers’ data

points out, Gestido led a government incapable of imposing a clear direction in terms of economic policy. An example of this is the fact that he appointed three ministers of economy and three ministers of industry during his brief government. After President Gestido’s death, Vice President Jorge Pacheco Areco, a member of the Unión Colorada y Batllista, took over as the new president. He remained in office until the end of the presidential term in March 1972. The Pacheco administration was marked by its attempts to manage the economic crisis. To tackle inflation, which reached 180%, a powerful shock policy was implemented “to freeze prices and salaries by decree” (Oddone, 2010: 129). This obviously caused social unrest. Leftist groups, unions, and social organizations protested against the government in different ways, and it responded with “prompt security measures” to repress dissidents, as well as ending Neobattlism’s redistributive policies (Finch, 2005: 37). All these events led the government to have high cabinet turnover, with ministers lasting an average of 10 months in office. Pacheco made a total of 51 ministerial appointments (see Table  3.5), mostly concentrated in the members of Unión Colorada y Batllista (53%). The only minister who lasted the entire term was the architect Walter Pintos Risso, minister of Public Works. Pintos was a prominent real estate entrepreneur and a longstanding member of the Partido Colorado. Pacheco’s ministers were mostly politicians with prior experience in Congress (62.7%). This government had two technocrats, the engineer Jorge Sapelli, minister of labor and social security between 11 June 1969 and 1 March 1972, and the accountant Juan Pedro Amestoy, head of industry and trade between 2 April 1971 and 1 March 1972. One important novelty in this government is that it was the first time in the country’s history that a woman was appointed minister: the lawyer and poet Alba Roballo, who was the minister of culture between 3 May 1968 and 13 June that same year, when she resigned along with another three ministers over big differences with the President. Roballo had a long history in the Partido Colorado.

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Table 3.5  Number of Ministers in the Pacheco administration (1967–1972) Ministry Culture National Defense Economy and finance Education and culture Livestock and agriculture Industry and trade Interior Public works Foreign relations Public health Labor and social security Transport, communications, and tourism Total

Number of ministers 3 3 5 4 5 6 7 1 4 3 4 6

%

51

100

5.9 5.9 9.8 7.8 9.8 11.8 13.7 2 7.8 5.9 7.8 11.8

Source: By author based on ministers’ data

She was elected for the first time in 1958 and from that position was a powerful opponent of the Partido Nacional. Her leftist stances gradually distanced her from the logic of the party, and she became one of the founders of the Frente Amplio in 1971 (Mazzeo, 2005). A new constitutional reform aimed at allowing immediate reelection of the President of the Republic was subjected to a plebiscite in November 1971. This reform was promoted by the Unión Nacional Reeleccionista, composed of members of the Unión Colorada y Batllista who sought Pacheco’s reelection. For this reason, candidacies were launched and votes cast considering a projected regime in the event the reform allowing reelection was approved, as well as one on the current regime, should the reform be rejected (Albistur, 2012: 30). Voters ultimately rejected the constitutional reform, making Jorge Pacheco’s reelection impossible. The 1971 elections were a close competition and a virtual tie between the Partido Colorado and the Partido Nacional, with the former winning by less than one percentage point: 40.96% of the votes against 40.19%, respectively. Jorge Pacheco’s former minister of livestock and agriculture, Juan María Bordaberry, led the winning ticket accompanied by Jorge Sapelli (Caetano & Rilla, 1995). The Frente Amplio also participated in this election for the first time. As mentioned above, this party was created early that same year from the union between a group of leftist organizations, movements, and political parties. The Frente Amplio gradually acquired a more prominent role in Uruguayan politics. Its single presidential ticket

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for its first electoral participation received 18.28% of the total vote, and it also won five seats in the Senate and 18 in the Chamber of Representatives.7 Bordaberry took office in a convulsed political and social context (Caetano & Rilla, 1995). In addition to the electoral strength of the left, armed movements seeking a revolution had existed for almost 10 years. The most important of these leftist groups was the National Liberation Movement (Tupamaros). Like many others in Latin America, this group strongly identified with the Cuban Revolution, influencing its ideological identification and subsequent actions. At first, Tupamaros did not have connections with any existing political party (see Mazzeo, 2005). In addition, the emergence of the Frente Amplio as a new political actor laid bare the need for traditional parties to establish inter-party agreements with the aim of implementing their government programs and preventing them from being blocked in Congress. While government agreements were nothing new, “as of 1971 there was a qualitative shift in the characteristics of the government agreement and mainly in the composition of the government” (Chasquetti, 1997: 38). A clear example of this is that in 15 months, President Bordaberry appointed five ministers from the Partido Nacional (19.2%), one from the Union Radical Cristiana (3.8%), and one from Unión Cívica (3.8%). The rest included one independent and 18 ministers from the Partido Colorado, mostly members of the Unión Colorada and Batllista, the sector that had promoted Bordaberry’s campaign in the event that Pacheco’s reelection and the sector that he belonged to failed. Following Carmignani’s (2001) logic, the pattern of ministerial appointments during this government can be understood as a distribution of executive according to the seats held by the coalition’s members in the legislature. Among other aspects, it should also be noted that all Bordaberry’s ministers were men, the majority party members without prior experience in Congress (53.8%). Ministers spent an average of 6.6 months in office (202 days). Only two ministers remained in office throughout the entire government. As Chasquetti (1997) has noted, the existence of coalition cabinets can be seen in this government. That is one with the formal presence of the two traditional parties. On 27 June 1973, just over 2 years after the start of the Bordaberry government, the President and the Armed Forces staged a self-coup, thus beginning a dictatorship in Uruguay that lasted until 1985. Bordaberry immediately dissolved the General Assembly and replaced it with a Council of State. This Council operated as a legislative and supervisory body. In addition, civil liberties were restricted, and the Armed Forces were given an increasingly predominant role in political activities. Thus, military officers came to hold positions in the government and public administration. They were even appointed ministers, which corroborates the findings of Besley and Reynal-Querol (2011), who show the prevalence of lawyers in democracies and the military in autocracies, though most ministries remained in civilian hands.

7  On the foundation, evolution, and membership of the Frente Amplio I recommend Moreira (2004) and Pérez et al. (2020).

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3.3  Cabinets After the Military Regime As already mentioned, this book does not examine the authoritarian periods. However, a brief description of certain elements is provided to help understand some of the dynamics of the transition. Specifically, certain elements related to political parties during the Uruguayan dictatorship and which affected the democratic transition process are addressed.8 The cabinet formation processes in the new democracy are subsequently analyzed.

3.4  Some Elements of the Uruguayan Dictatorship On 12 June 1976, the Armed Forces junta removed Bordaberry and appointed fellow Partido Colorado member Alberto Demicheli in his place. Upon taking office, Demicheli suspended the elections constitutionally scheduled for that year, and the Council of the Nation was created, a body that was to designate the President of the Republic and the members of the Council of the State. Demicheli held office for just 3 months because of differences with the military and was replaced by the Partido Nacional member Aparicio Méndez, who had been health minister between 1961 and 1964. Under his presidency, a plebiscite was held on 20 November 1980 to approve a new constitutional reform designed to legitimize the institutional transformations implemented by the dictatorship. The members of political parties did not participate in the process of discussing and drafting this reform. This initiative was rejected by approximately 56% of the votes cast. After the constitutional project was rejected, the military replaced Méndez with General Gregorio Álvarez. This began a slow process of transformations that facilitated the return to democracy. The possibility of holding internal elections in traditional parties was restored in 1982. However, the prohibition against certain leaders and political parties with leftist ideologies continued until 1985. In contrast, sectors opposed to the military government won the internal elections of the Partido Nacional, the Partido Colorado, and Unión Cívica. This forced the military to start a series of talks with the opposition. For this reason, the Uruguayan transition, in a way similar to the Chilean one, is what the specialized literature recognizes as a negotiated transition (Alcántara & Luna, 2004; Corbo, 2007). The first talks between the government and the opposition were scheduled for mid-May 1983. They failed in part because of the government’s unwillingness to loosen its policy against opposition leaders and the lack of guarantees for the press. However, it is important to stress that the entire development of the negotiation process was heavily conditioned by the massive trade union demonstration on 1 May 1983. The activity in commemoration of International Workers’ Day, the first public demonstration authorized by the government in 10  years, convened over  For more details on this period, see Greising et al. (2011a).

8

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100,000 workers demanding “Freedom, Work, Wages, Amnesty.” These events prompted the opposition to change its strategy to force the government to engage in dialogue. Thus, for a year, the opposition organized a series of increasingly massive pot-banging protests and demonstrations. The Obelisk Act stands out among these protests as one of the most symbolic events, as it managed to convene about 400,000 people (Greising et al., 2011a). This political and social discontent was compounded by economic deterioration. In general terms, the Uruguayan dictatorship’s economic policy was one of continuity with the one implemented by the Pacheco and Bordaberry governments, which attempted to change the foundations of the way that the economy operated by changing the role played by the state and by opening it up to the outside (Greising et al., 2011a). Until 1978 the regime implemented a market deregulation policy with a high real exchange rate to promote exports, which were mainly aimed at Arab countries. This policy caused nontraditional exports to rise from 38% to 70% (Greising et al., 2011a). After 1978, the de facto government developed the Financial Market Project, which sought to boost the local economy by attracting foreign capital, mainly through the dollarization of the economy and the elimination of fiscal controls, in addition to the implementation of high-interest rates (Greising et al., 2011a). The economic situation in all of the region’s countries deteriorated drastically when the Latin American debt crisis exploded in 1982 (Ocampo et al., 2014). In a context of growing public discontent with the dictatorship, in 1984, the negotiations at the Naval Club that would ultimately seal the pact between opposition and government for a transition to democracy were held (Corbo, 2007). These agreements allowed national and departmental elections to be held in 1984, marking the end of the dictatorship and the return to democracy in Uruguay.

3.5  From the National Unity Cabinets to the Frente Amplio According to Chasquetti et al. (2013), ministerial cabinets in the post-dictatorship Uruguayan presidential system express different government strategies that range from lax coalitions to single-party governments. The Sanguinetti government (1985–1990) attempted unsuccessfully to form a coalition, with the misters from the Partido Nacional participating in their personal capacity. The three governments that followed fared better and were almost forced to form coalitions to govern, as the new configuration of the party system did not allow for the existence of single-­ party governments with legislative majorities (Luján & López, 2016). The 1966 Constitution was reinstated as of March 1985 (Silvero, 1999). The restrictions imposed by the Uruguayan Armed Forces were essentially limited and basically aimed at banning certain candidates from the Partido Nacional and in the Frente Amplio (Alcántara & Luna, 2004). The two biggest losers from the ban were Wilson Ferreira, the main leader of the Partido Nacional, and General Líber Seregni, the leader of the Frente Amplio (Greising et al., 2011b). The elections were held in

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November and handed a new victory to the Partido Colorado, which received 41.23% of valid votes cast. Thus, Julio Maria Sanguinetti (Batllist) became President and Enrique Tarigo Vice President, the most-voted ticket at the level of lemas and in general. The Partido Nacional came second after the Partido Colorado lema, with 35.03% of the vote, while the Frente Amplio came third with 21.6%. De Facto President Gregorio Álvarez handed over power on 12 February 1985, after which the post fell to the President of the Supreme Court of Justice Rafael Addiego, who was interim President of the Republic until 1 March and was tasked with passing the presidential sash to the new president-elect, Julio María Sanguinetti. Sanguinetti sought to form a national unity government with members of different political parties in ministries (Greising et al., 2011b). Talks to form a national coalition failed. Hence, in this period, the main ministries were led by members of his own party (Chasquetti et al., 2013). There was only agreement for a government with a national “tinge” by reaching a limited, albeit operative, the agreement between the Partido Nacional and the Partido Colorado (Caetano, 2005). It allowed members of the former to join the cabinet in their personal capacity. The Catholic party Unión Cívica was also part of the cabinet. The two ministers from the Partido Nacional were Enrique Iglesias, former Central Bank President (1967–1968) and former executive secretary of ECLAC, who became foreign minister until he was elected President of the Inter-American Development Bank9; and Raúl Ugarte Artola, a member of the Movimiento Por la Patria, the same as the party leader Wilson Ferreira, who took over in Health. Both consulted with Wilson Ferreira before accepting, and he did not oppose it as long as they acted as individual agents and not as representatives of the party (D. Chasquetti, personal communication, December 2014). Of the 21 appointments made during the Sanguinetti term, two (9%) were women. The scant appointment of women is consistent with what Escobar-Lemmon and Taylor-Robinson (2015) have noted, highlighting a low presence of women and a higher rate of departure from cabinets compared to their male counterparts. Ministers spent an average of 30  months in office. Most ministers were politicians without prior experience in Congress (63%). Three ministers can be regarded as technocrats: Enrique Iglesias, the economist Ricardo Zerbino, who was head of economy and finance for the entire term, and the engineer Luis Brezzo, who took office as labor minister for the last 10 months of the administration. However, Sanguinetti’s strategy “was to have ministers who belonged to other parties which inspired the trust of the opposition at such a delicate moment as the transition” (Chasquetti et al., 2013: 23). While this was the strategy, the development of senior government administration was marked by various political difficulties.

9  Though with a Partido Nacional tradition, Iglesias’s technical experience, mainly internationally, places him above the division between the two parties. See: http://www.lanacion.com. ar/612512-en-uruguay-todos-los-candidatos-se-disputan-a-enrique-iglesias

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The government had to face two major problems regarding administration. On the one hand, a series of issues related to the dictatorship and especially human rights; on the other, economic problems inherited from dictatorship. Regarding human rights, the government promoted an amnesty law, which was issued in March 1985 in favor or of the people who still remained in custody, sentenced by the military justice system for political crimes.10 The public officials dismissed by the dictatorship were also reinstated (Greising et al. 2011b). These two initiatives were not as controversial as the Expiration of Punitive Claims Against the State Act, voted in Congress in December 1986 (Caetano, 2005). In the context of court actions against members of the military, the executive promoted an amnesty law for the military and police. The Frente Amplio and Partido Nacional rejected the legislation (Greising et  al., 2011b). The pressure from the military, which refused to respect the authority of the Judiciary, coupled with fear of a return to authoritarianism, influenced the government to seek consensus with the Partido Nacional to amnesty the members of the military who had committed human rights violations, but not civilians. This law was popularly known as the impunity act (Caetano, 2005).11 From the economic perspective, the government had to face the consequences of the 1982 economic crisis. According to Greising et al. (2011b), the effects of the crisis accentuated some of the country’s structural problems. For the first democratic government, they have inherited problems related to inflation, diminished salaries, productive stagnation, unemployment, and significant levels of foreign and domestic debt. The government managed to make progress in some areas, such as “the recovery of certain macroeconomic balances (…), GDP grew, an effective increase in real wages was achieved, the return of tripartite negotiation, inflation declined despite the ups and downs, social indicators improved significantly, [and] increased investment in different areas was promoted” (Caetano, 2005: 23). The 1989 elections, for the term spanning from 1990 to 1995, marked a shift on the Uruguayan political stage, as the Partido Nacional won with the ticket composed of Luis Alberto Lacalle and Gonzalo Aguirre for President and Vice President, respectively. The party won with 38.87% of the votes at the lema level, followed by the Partido Colorado in second place with 30.29% of the vote. The Frente Amplio once again came third with 21.23% of the vote. Unlike the Partido Nacional and Partido Colorado, the Frente Amplio presented a single presidential formula composed of its leader Líber Seregni and Danilo Astori. This ticket was the one to receive the second-most votes after the Lacalle-­ Aguirre duo, displacing the most-voted Partido Colorado formula to third place.  The list of beneficiaries included the leaders and founders of the National Liberation Movement, including Raúl Sendic, José Mujica, Eleuterio Fernández, among others, all of them considered hostages of the dictatorship. 11  Once enacted, human rights associations promoted and obtained a recall referendum on the law. The vote was held on 16 April 1989 and the option of ratifying the law won (Greising et  al., 2011b). Before the law was applied, cases were processed by a military prosecutor (Caetano, 2005), which provoked a sense of impunity. 10

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The rise of the left was a reality. In addition to its strong showing in the presidential election, the Frente Amplio won the department of Montevideo with Tabaré Vázquez, the first governor from a nontraditional party in the history of Uruguay. They also received 21% of the Chamber of Representatives and 23% of the Senate (Buquet & Piñeiro, 2014). This data shows a clear trend toward the shedding of a bipartisan logic and the development of a moderate multiparty system with three parties showing the capacity to reach power (Pérez et al., 2020). This trend had a direct impact on the criteria used for cabinet formation. The traditional parties, which failed to reach a coalition government agreement during Sanguinetti’s administration, joined forces to avoid a legislative blockade from the Frente Amplio. Given its lack of a majority in Congress, the ruling party, which had obtained 40% of the Chamber of Representatives, sought support from the Partido Colorado, which controlled 30% of the lower house. Thus a government of National Agreement was born, in which four ministers were from the Partido Nacional and the other eight from the Partido Colorado (Mancebo, 1990). This new cohabitation agreement among the traditional parties was a step beyond Sanguinetti’s experience. While not without problems, it allowed the government to pass several bills that would otherwise have failed (Greising et al., 2011b). In the 60 months that Lacalle was in power, 34 ministers, all men, were appointed, marking a setback in the progress women had made in ministerial appointments. This is evidence of the difficulties women face to reach top political positions like cabinet ministries (Camerlo & Martínez-Gallardo, 2018). Most of these ministries were led by people from the Partido Nacional (29 ministers), and a minority (five ministers) were from the Partido Colorado. Ministers spent an average of 640 days, or 21 months, in office. The ministers’ profiles were a mix between those with previous congressional experience (56%) and those without (41%). Only Labor Minister Carlos Cat met the requirements for being considered a technocrat. This engineer from the University of the Republic and a party member from the ranks of Herrerism remained in office until he was appointed director of the Planning and Budget Office in August 1991. Cat was subsequently president of the Banco de la República Oriental del Uruguay (BROU). In terms of economic policy, the Lacalle government implemented the first-­ generation reforms of the Washington Consensus in the country. This entailed implementing a monetary policy dominated by the reduction of the fiscal deficit as a measure against inflation, the reform of the state by reducing the public apparatus, and deregulation of the labor market, among other measures (Caetano, 2005). In general terms, a period of economic growth, falling inflation, and a rise in the production of goods and services began with the Lacalle government. This trend continued until 1999 when a new economic crisis began (Greising et al., 2011b). The high ministerial turnover is explained largely by the problems arising from the National Agreement. The Partido Colorado government’s support came from the Unión Colorada y Batllista or Pachequism (the party’s right-wing), while the Foro Batllista (the sector of former president Sanguinetti) supported the alliance for just 18  months and the List 15 lema did so for just 2  years. In addition, the factions Nacionales, Movimiento Nacional de Rocha, and Movimiento Renovación y

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Victoria left the government in 1993 (Greising et al., 2011b). The government was left in the minority in March 1993, with only the support of the Unión Colorada y Batllista. For this reason, certain reforms to make the labor market more flexible allow the entry of private capital into public enterprises, and the social security reform failed (Caetano, 2005). The 1994 elections brought the Partido Colorado back to power with former President Sanguinetti, this time with Hugo Batalla as second in command. What was unique about the results of this election, as can be seen in Table 3.6, is that there was almost a three-way tie. The Partido Colorado won with 32.35% of the total vote, followed by the Partido Nacional in second place with 31.21% and the Frente Amplio lema third with 30.61%. In addition, the single ticket presented by the Frente Amplio, composed of Vázquez and Nin Novoa, was the presidential duo that received the most votes at the formula level, surpassing the most voted of the two parties with the most votes. As in his previous government, Sanguinetti sought an agreement with the Partido Nacional to form a coalition government. Unlike earlier, when the ministers who participated as did so in their personal capacity, this time an agreement was reached that allowed the establishment of a coalition government (Caetano, 2005). This was reaffirmed by support from all sectors in the Partido Nacional (Chasquetti, 1997). For this reason, there was clear cabinet participation by both parties, though always to the advantage of the President’s party. This is evidence of the advantages of being the formateur in presidential systems compared to parliamentary ones (Cheibub, 2007). Another important matter is that 25 ministers were appointed throughout the government, three of whom were women. Ministers remained in office for an average of 876 days, or just over 28 months. The Partido Colorado received 60% of the appointments (15 ministers), the Table 3.6  Results of 194 Uruguayan presidential elections Party P. Colorado

P. Nacional

Frente Amplio Nuevo Espacio Other parties

Candidates Sanguinetti-Batalla Batlle-Bouza Pacheco-ache Barreiro-bas For lema Total P. Colorado Volonté-Ramos Ramírez-Chiruchi Pereyra-Elso Goñi For lema Total P. Nacional Vázquez-Nin Novoa Michelini-Pérez 11 different formulas

Votes 500,767 102,551 51,926 227 957 656,428 301,641 264,312 65,665 1766 633,384 621,226 104,773 13,470

% / total 24.68 5.05 2.56 0.01 0.05 32.35 14.86 13.02 3.24 0.09 31.21 30.61 5.16 0.66

% / party 76.29 15.62 7.91 0.03 0.15 47.62 41.73 10.37 0.28

Source: Author’s compilation based on the table by the Political and International Relations Area of the FCS Data Bank based on data from the Electoral Court

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3  Cabinet Formation in Uruguay

Partido Nacional 32% (eight ministers), and the other two ministers were from Unión Cívica of the Partido por el Gobierno del Pueblo.12 This government is the one that had the largest number of technocrats in the cabinet (six ministers), who were in the ministries of Economy and Finance, Transportation and Public Works, Industry, Energy and Mining, Housing, Territorial Planning and Environment, Education, and Culture. The remaining ministers were politicians without congressional experience (10 ministers) and with legislative experience (nine ministers). The great presence of technocrats is consistent with the government’s style, especially in economic policy, as the second Sanguinetti government was practically continuing with the reforms begun by Lacalle (Greising et al., 2011b). The neoliberal reforms advanced successfully as the government had the support of 63 representatives and 21 senators, who together represented 64% of the legislative branch (Caetano, 2005). This situation reveals the importance of forming government coalitions that balance legislative seats with state ministries (Indridason & Bowle, 2013). This also caused the economic situation to remain on the upside. However, certain social indicators began to show problems. “Thus, economic growth began to coexist with signs of social deterioration” (Greising et al., 2011b: 43). The problems with the economy’s operation were to be felt with force after 1999 when the Asian crisis hit. To be sure, this government did not see those effects because the presidential elections took place that same year. Another important issue for the government, one that created various problems, was the reopening of controversies related to human rights (Caetano, 2005). In the second half of the 1990s, the will of multiple parties made it possible to “reach a majority consensus aimed at modifying the electoral system” (Chasquetti, 2001: 81). Therefore, a new plebiscite was held in December 1996 to reform the 1967 Constitution, which was approved with 50.45% of the vote. The most significant transformations included the end of the simultaneous double vote system for the presidential elections (Buquet & Piñeiro, 2014). This reform meant that parties had to hold internal primary elections, both to elect their authorities and to choose their single presidential candidates (Buquet, 2003). In this way, the single presidential candidacy per party was implemented, thus eliminating the possibility that had existed until then for the lemas to present more than one presidential ticket at the same time, a practice that both the Partido Colorado and the Partido Nacional had consistently used in the past. On the other hand, the reform introduced the requirement of an absolute majority to be elected President of the Republic, and a runoff election system was created for cases when neither of the most-voted candidates obtained an absolute majority in the first round. The reforms “sought to adapt the electoral rules to a fragmentation that was no

 The Partido por el Gobierno del Pueblo, or List 99, is a political group founded within the Partido Colorado in the early 1960s. It joined the Frente Amplio in the 1970s. It left the Frente in 1980 to seek its own path. It formed an alliance with the Partido Colorado in 1993 and was reincorporated into the party in 1999 (La Diaria, 1999).

12

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longer compatible with a system of the relative majority due to the existence of three parties of similar size” (Luján & López, 2016: 173). General elections were moved ahead to October since the reform, so the presidential runoff election could be held in November, if necessary. Thus, the 1999 general elections were the first to be held in the new electoral scenario. Five parties presented their single presidential formulas: Partido Colorado, Partido Nacional, Frente Amplio, Nuevo Espacio, and Unión Cívica. The two lemas with the most votes were the Frente Amplio, with 40.1%, and the Partido Colorado Party, with 32.8%, thus forcing a runoff election. While the Frente Amplio ticket composed of Tabaré Vásquez and Rodolfo Nin Novoa received the most votes in the first round, the Partido Colorado formula led by Jorge Batlle Ibáñez with Luis Hierro as his vice president imposed itself in the runoff with 54.13%. The Partido Colorado reached an agreement with the Partido Nacional to obtain that runoff election victory. For the first time, the coalition between them could be defined as pre-electoral. Jorge Batlle’s cabinets were characterized by a majority of Partido Colorado members, especially from the Batllist List 15, the sublema Batlle was the leader of. There were also six members of the Partido Nacional and an independent in the ministerial cabinet. The 34 appointments were all men, most of whom (50%) did not have previous experience in the legislature. Five ministers were technocrats and in charge of the ministries of Economy and Finance, Housing, Territorial Planning and Environment, and Transport and Public Works (see Table 3.7). Ministers were in office for an average of 694 days, or 22 months. Health and Transport were the ministries with the highest turnover. The foreign minister was the only one to remain throughout the entire term. To a great extent, the high turnover can be explained by the problems within the ruling coalition caused by the Table 3.7  Number of ministers in the Jorge Batlle administration (2000–2005) Ministry Public health Transport and public works Sports and youth Economy and finance Education and culture Industry, energy, and mining Interior National Defense Livestock, agriculture, and fisheries Labor and social security Tourism Housing, territorial planning, and environment Foreign relations Total Source: By author based on ministers’ data

Number of ministers 4 4 3 3 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 2

% 11.8 11.8 8.8 8.8 8.8 8.8 8.8 5.9 5.9 5.9 5.9 5.9

1 34

2.9 100

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eruption of the 2002 economic crisis (Chasquetti et  al., 2013). As noted, the Colorado-Nacional pact was pre-electoral. That is, there was prior consensus regarding government policies. However, there were a series of problems implementing the program that ultimately led the coalition to break up in early 2002 (Greising et al., 2011). These policies were essentially related to the response, or lack thereof, to the economic crisis. Such was the impact on cabinets that an analysis of ministers’ appointment dates reveals that 50% of them were made after 11 March 2002. One of the most critical moments for the government came in 2002. Without support from the Partido Nacional and the economy in freefall, Batlle’s leadership was strongly questioned (Caetano, 2005). Unemployment grew year by year, the trade balance was negative, debt was rising, salaries were falling, and inflation soared. Thus, the appointment of the Partido Colorado politician Alejandro Atchudarry as minister of economy and finance in July 2002, in the replacement of the technocrat Alberto Bensión Salinas, established a “sort of tacit shift of in government leadership, from a paralyzed presidential center without credibility to a sort of prime minister who lays the foundations of governance amid the storm” (Caetano, 2005: 41). Everyone knew that Atchugarry was not an expert in economics, but his ability as a political negotiator raised expectations for his tenure (Greising et al., 2011b). The economic crisis of 2002 was one of the most complicated episodes in Uruguayan history. Minister Atchugarry, who led the government at the end of the crisis, described the situation as a perfect storm, as the Uruguayan economy had entered a recession in January 1999 after the devaluation of the Brazilian currency. The Argentine crisis of 2001 promoted incredible levels of capital flight from the Uruguayan banking system, causing the country’s debt to double in 2002 as the economy fell and unemployment rose (Chasquetti, 2013: 85). Minister Atchugarry’s efforts allowed certain political agreements to be reached that helped to improve the situation. For example, Atchugarry managed to increase private capital for the airline PLUNA and to pass a law postponing the payment of savings to stop the massive withdrawal of deposits. He also negotiated the debt with the United States and avoided a default (Greising et  al., 2011b). All his actions required the support of the legislative branch, which is why the figures of both the minister and Congress acquired significant importance on the political stage. This is why the minister’s resignation in August 2003 came as a surprise, especially considering that shortly before, he had announced a proactive relaunch of the government, inviting Congress to debate the country’s tax system (Caetano, 2005). Though the economy recovered faster than expected, partially thanks to the international context and the success of domestic measures (Greising et al., 2011b), the government lost internal political capacity with Atchugarry’s resignation. The technocrat Isaac Alfie’s appointment changed the sense of the government, going from “a negotiating and eclectic minister to one with a more technical and heterodox profile” (Caetano, 2005: 44). In the President’s own words, “the time of politicians is over; the time of the technical experts is here” (Greising et al., 2011b: 56). The last year of the government was marked by economic reactivation, but the government nevertheless suffered a harsh electoral setback. The law regulating the

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public company National Fuel, Alcohol and Portland Cement Administration (ANCAP), tasked with exploiting and administering the monopoly over alcohol and cement, in addition to importing, refining, and selling petroleum products, was subjected to a vote in December 2003. This referendum was seen as a political trial of the government.13 The results anticipated what was to come the following year: the change was rejected by 62% of voters. This was a victory for the Frente Amplio and particularly for Tabaré Vázquez, who led the process (Caetano, 2005; Greising et al., 2011b). The Frente Amplio, the main opposition party, led to criticism of the technification of politics and the process of how the crisis was addressed. From the start of the crisis, the FA had alleged the reduction of the state “as a major cause of the crisis (for example, the lack of regulations for the financial sector). The weakness of the state was also presented as a problem for addressing the economic as well as social consequences of the crisis” (Bidegain et al., 2021:8). Thus, it was not particularly surprising that the Frente Amplio won the October 2004 elections for the 2005–2010 term. After two failed bids, the duo composed of the former head of the Montevideo government Tabaré Vásquez and Rodolfo Nin Novoa was elected. The Frente Amplio was elected in the first round with 51.7% of the vote, followed by José Larrañaga of the Partido Nacional with 35.1% and Guillermo Stirling of the Partido Colorado with just 10.6%. The Frente Amplio’s victory in the 2004 elections was the result of steady growth since the 1989 elections (Bidegain et al., 2021: 4). Tabaré Vásquez’s Frente Amplio government meant that the Partido Colorado and/or Nacional were absent from the cabinet for the first time since the creation of the Uruguayan party system (Pérez et al., 2020). While the Frente Amplio’s victory and the leftist government posed a major challenge to Uruguayan democracy, the democratic system successfully overcame the challenge of alternation (Chasquetti, 2007). The fact that the Frente Amplio also obtained a majority in both houses of Congress meant that it did not need to form a coalition to govern. The Frente Amplio’s experience in power showed that “coalition governments in Uruguay had been more out of the need of minority governments rather than a permanent trend” (Luján & López, 2016: 174). All ministers in the Vázquez administration were members of the Frente Amplio except for Jorge Lepra, head of the Industry Ministry, for 3 years. President Vázquez appointed faction leaders to the cabinet, giving each sector a ministry, and there was even room for members who were not part of any organic structure, as can be seen in Table 3.8. As tradition dictates, the tendency is for the party with the most ministers to be the one the President belongs to, in this case, the Socialist Party. This situation heralded “a form of government organization that differed from previous ones and attempted to prevent the fragmentation of the cabinet and the development of policy areas reserved for groups” (Chasquetti et al., 2013: 26).

 On the use of referendums and plebiscites as a strategy to halt changes aimed at reducing the size of the Uruguayan state, I recommend Bidegain and Tricot (2017); Monestier (2010).

13

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Table 3.8  Membership of Frente ministers under Tabaré Vázquez (2005–2010) Party Independents Frentistas sin Lema Movimiento de Participación Popular Vertiente Artiguista Asamblea Uruguay Socialist Party Alianza Progresista Communist Party Compromiso Frenteamplista Total

Number of ministers 1 4 5 3 1 9 2 1 1 27

% 3.7 14.8 18.5 11.1 3.7 33.3 7.4 3.7 3.7 100

Source: By author based on ministers’ data

Ministerial profiles were quite diverse. In addition to the nonpartisan Jorge Lepra, three technocrats were appointed: Carlos Colacce, María Simón, and Álvaro García Rodríguez. There were three technopols: Danilo Astori, Jorge Brovetto, and Daniel Martínez. Six ministers had no prior experience in Congress, and 14 had previously served as deputies or senators. Though only 5 of the 27 ministers were women, this is the largest number of women ever in a government. This is consistent with the literature on women in ministries, which notes that only in the early twentieth century did the number of women in charge of state ministries begin to increase (Escobar-Lemmon & Taylor-Robinson, 2015). Uruguayan democracy had pending issues that the new government tried to overcome (Chasquetti & Buquet, 2004). They included the 1986 amnesty law in favor of members of the military and everything related to human rights. As Chasquetti (2007) points out, the Vázquez administration took a major step toward resolving this deficit and managed to find the remains of missing detainees and allowed the conviction of important leaders of the military dictatorship to prison. During his tenure, Vázquez promoted a package of transformations on the organization of the state, the social sector, and the economy (Garcé, 2010). For example, the creation of the Social Development Ministry stands out, giving a special hallmark to policies aimed at poverty reduction, such as the Ceibal Plan to distribute one computer per child. On the economic front, it implemented a Conditioned Monetary Transfer Program (PANES), created the National Research and Innovation Agency, implemented tax reform, reformed the health sector with the creation of the National Comprehensive Health System, convened a national debate to reform the Education Act, and significantly increased the education budget, among others (Garcé, 2010). This new political cycle that began with the Vázquez administration was subsequently ratified in the October 2009 elections, when the Frente Amplio formula composed of José Mujica and Danilo Astori, two former Vázquez ministers,14 once again obtained the national majority with 49.58%. The Partido Nacional came second, with former president Luis Alberto Lacalle leading the ticket, who received 14  Tabaré Vázquez openly promoted Daniel Astori’s candidacy (Garcé, 2010). However, the Frente Amplio grassroots chose Mujica.

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29.79%. The Frente Amplio beat the Partido Nacional in the runoff election by 54.63%–45.37%. The Mujica-Astori formula represented the Frente Amplio’s main currents (Buquet & Piñeiro, 2014). Mujica, a former Tupamaro and current leader of the Movimiento de Participación Popular, a former legislator, and former minister of livestock, agriculture, and fisheries in the Tabaré Vásquez government represented the more leftist sectors of the Frente Amplio. For his part, Danilo Astori was the leader of the social democrats, an economist and public accountant, former dean of the University of the Republic of Uruguay School of Economics, and former minister of the economy. Given the characteristics of the presidential formula, it came as no surprise that the cabinet design followed a logic of checks and balances, appointing a minister from one faction and a deputy minister from another in each ministry (Luján & López, 2016). This is an important shift in the Frente Amplio’s policy, as when ministers left office, the people who replaced them were generally the deputy ministers because they belonged to the same tendency. Appointments tended to follow a logic of distribution according to the size of the factions, with the President’s faction, the Movimiento de Participación Popular, the one to obtain the largest number of ministers (see Table 3.9). A total of 21 ministers were appointed to Mujica’s cabinets, of whom just four were women. Politicians with prior experience in Congress represented the largest number of cabinet members (36%). The Mujica administration shows the lowest turnover rate and the early departure of ministers, which according to the literature is an example of an effective capacity to distribute power among the members of his faction (Carmignani, 2001). It is also evidence of presidents’ ability to use different strategies in the process of forming their cabinets (Amorim Neto, 1998). This government appointed four people with technical credentials. On the one hand, the economist Daniel Olesker was appointed to lead the Health Ministry from the start of the government until 19 July 2011, when he was appointed social Table 3.9  Membership of Frente ministers under José Mujica (2010–2015)

Nonpartisan Movimiento de Participación Popular Vertiente Artiguista Asamblea Uruguay Frente Líber Seregni Socialist Party Corriente de Acción y Pensamiento-Libertad Alianza Progresista Nuevo Espacio Communist Party Total

Frequency 1 5

% 4.5 23.8

2 1 1 3 2

9.1 4.5 4.5 13.6 9.1

2 1 3 21

9.1 4.5 13.6 100

Source: By author based on ministers’ data

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development minister, a position he held until the end of the government. Similarly, President Mujica appointed two ministers of the economy and finance: the technocrat Fernando Lorenzo and the technopol Mario Bergara. The economist Lorenzo, who was appointed to lead the ministry at the start of the government, resigned because of legal action against him for the bankruptcy of the airline PLUNA. Lorenzo’s departure was in response to external pressures. President Mujica made this clear when he said he had not asked for his resignation.15 He was replaced by Mario Bergara, an economist and public accountant from the University of the Republic of Uruguay, and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley. Bergara remained in office until the end of the government. Before taking office, he had been President of the Central Bank and before that undersecretary of the economy and finance when Astori was the minister in the post. Lastly, Roberto Kreimerman, a chemical engineer from the University of the Republic of Uruguay with an MSc in finance from the University of Barcelona, was the minister of industry throughout the entire government. This is despite having submitted his resignation in May 2014 because of a dispute with the Labor Ministry over salary compensations for his ministry’s employees, which President Mujica did not accept (see El Pais, 2014).

3.6  U  ruguayan Ministers and Cabinets from a Global Perspective This chapter has analyzed cabinet formation in Uruguayan democracy. It gives an account of the most significant political processes that influenced cabinet configuration. Among these processes, the constitutional changes that modified the structure of the executive branch stand out, along with changes in the party system that prompted changes in cabinet formation practices and the general situation in the country, which on various occasions triggered ministerial adjustments. Details were also provided on the change in the typology of ministers proposed over time. Uruguayan presidents have developed various strategies to appoint ministers. For example, they resorted to a strategy discussed in the literature, which is the formation of coalitions when a party fails to obtain a legislative majority or when the political situation does not allow a single-party government (Warwick & Druckman, 2001). The transformation of historical bipartisanship into a moderate multiparty system caused major changes in the exercise of government (Chasquetti, 2007), which had an impact on the appointment of ministers. Single-party governments returned with the return of bipartisanship. I hold that the system structured around two parties returned because the Frente Amplio displaced the Partido Colorado after the Vázquez government (2005), making it the third electoral force after falling to about 10%. Thus, the system created a replacement for the main electoral force. Regardless of the legislative contingent, Uruguayan presidents  “Lorenzo submitted his resignation on his own initiative, seeking to facilitate the path to justice” (Presidencia de Uruguay, 2013).

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formed cabinets with a more political than technical inclination. These political cabinets were preferably composed of people who were members of the same faction as the President (Altman, 2000). Table 3.10 shows a data series on ministerial composition in each government. As noted above, one can see that the Pacheco administration (1967–1972) is the one with the most changes, appointing more than four ministers per ministry and with the Interior Ministry being the one with the highest turnover. This is evidence of the political problems this government faced. The evidence would seem to indicate that the ministries with the highest turnover are those where the government had the most problems. For example, Bordaberry had to face increasing pressure from the Armed Forces, which is why he had so many defense ministers. As we have also pointed out, the fourth collegiate government had problems managing the economic crisis. All these dynamics and trends in cabinet formation observed for this period seem to be related to the development of the party system because when parties were divided and, for example, participated in the presidential election with several lemas, the President tended to integrate those lemas into the cabinet. The description suggests that episodes of economic crisis tend to increase cabinet turnover. This agrees with what the literature says about presidents’ strategic role when they change ministers, the idea being that these changes are to improve the management of state ministries to boost the government’s vitality (Best, 1981; Martínez-­ Gallardo, 2014). After democracy was restored in the country, the Lacalle (1990–1995) and Batlle (2000–2005) governments had the most ministerial changes, appointing an average of almost three ministers per ministry. Vázquez and Mujica’s single-party governments showed greater stability than coalition governments. This is in line with what Cheibub (2007) argues theoretically, revealing the strengths of presidential systems by not having to negotiate cabinet configuration with other parties. However, it is striking that the ministries of Livestock and Health were the ones with the most ministers during the period. Progress needs to be made in explaining this fact, especially in the Lacalle government and Sanguinetti’s second term. On the other hand, the Uruguayan health sector has had recurring problems, especially with a sector as powerful as doctors, meaning that it is not strange for this ministry to have a high turnover. In the case of the Vazquez government, a large number of state ministries that were run by three ministers can be observed. Most of the changes correspond to the participation by ministers who, as already noted, were faction leaders in the primary, presidential, or congressional elections. The data suggest that cabinet changes increase when governments face economic problems, as Lacalle and Batlle did. This would appear to be a long-term trend in the Uruguayan system, as it can also be observed for the period 1942–1973. The survival capacity and the impact of economic problems will be analyzed in the chapter on ministers’ survival (see Chap. 5). It is possible to state that cabinets in Uruguay had a markedly political configuration before and after the authoritarian experiences. However, after the recovery of democracy and because of the adjustment processes, the technocratic logic was installed as a reality that cannot be excluded from the analysis. Therefore, this

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Table 3.10  Presidents and cabinets in Uruguay

President Amézaga

Days in term 1461

No. appointments (a) 19

No. of ministries (b) 9

Berreta Batlle B. Martínez Collegiate 1 Collegiate 2 Collegiate 3 Collegiate 4 Gestido

154 1307 365 1096 1461 1461 1461 283

9 29 9 13 28 14 18 19

9 9 9 9 9 9 9 11

1 3.2 1 1.4 3.1 1.6 2.0 1.7

Pacheco Bordaberry Sanguinetti 1 Lacalle Sanguinetti 2 Batlle Vázquez

1547 483 1826 1826 1826 1826 1826

51 26 21 34 26 34 27

11 11 12 12 12 13 13

4.6 2.4 1.8 2.8 2.2 2.6 2.1

Mujica

1826

21

13

1.6

(a)/(b) 2.1

Ministry with the most changes Public education and social security – Foreign relations – Foreign relations Interior Interior Economy and finance Culture and; education; industry; economy and finance Interior Defense Interior Livestock Livestock Health Defense; livestock; industry, energy; interior; foreign relations Health

Source: By author based on ministers’ data

evidence is consistent with other studies that have discussed the role of technocrats in strengthening cabinets by including individuals with academic credentials to perform their ministerial role (Silva, 2006). Even leftist political sectors that are declared opponents of the neoliberal model, like a significant part of the Frente Amplio, convened ministers with technical credentials like PhDs and master’s degrees in the areas of economics and finance (see Table 3.11). Though it was not one of the initial questions, as the research developed, the concern arose regarding the potential concentration of appointments in certain people. At some times, many people can be seen repeating as ministers in different governments. Therefore, the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) is calculated to evaluate whether there was concentration. While not a frequently used indicator, for example  the HHI has recently been rediscovered by political science to examine how candidates are concentrated in Chilean elections (Joignant, 2014) and how names are repeated in Congress (González-Bustamante & Cisternas, 2016). In this index, a market is considered to be unconcentrated when the index is less than 1000, moderately concentrated when it ranges between 1000 and 1800, and highly concentrated when it exceeds 1800.

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Table 3.11  Evolution in the type of ministers Politician without exp. in Technocrats Technopols Congress de Amézaga 0 0 5 Berreta 0 0 3 Batlle B. 2 0 6 Martínez 0 0 1 Collegiate 1 1 0 4 Collegiate 2 0 0 7 Collegiate 3 1 0 8 Collegiate 4 0 1 8 Gestido 1 0 7 Pacheco 2 0 17 Bordaberry 1 0 14 Sanguinetti 1 3 0 13 Lacalle 1 0 19 Sanguinetti 2 6 0 11 Batlle I. 4 1 17 Vázquez 3 3 6 Mujica 5 0 7 Total 30 5 153

Politician with exp. in Congress 14 6 20 8 8 21 5 9 11 32 11 5 14 9 12 14 8 207

Nonpartisan Total 0 19 0 9 1 29 0 9 0 13 0 28 0 14 0 18 0 19 0 51 0 26 0 21 0 34 0 26 0 34 1 27 1 21 3 398

Source: By author based on ministers’ data

For a more specific analysis and in search of differences between the various coalitions and parties, the HHI was calculated in two stages, the first for the entire dataset and the second grouped by governments. On the one hand, an analysis of all Partido Colorado governments between 1942 and 1958 was performed. On the one hand, a calculation was made for all governments between 1958 and 1973. A third group corresponds to the governments that followed the restoration of democracy (1984–2004). The Frente Amplio governments (2005–2014) comprise the fourth group. The results in Table 3.12 confirm very low concentration. Though the variation between the periods examined is minimal, there are slight differences that require explanation. Concentration is generally very low both before and after the coup: the 236 appointments made before the coup were for 157 people, and after the authoritarian experience, the 164 appointments went to 136 individuals. This is evidence of the substantial number of party members and political personnel in all political parties. However, when analyzed according to governments’ political orientation, one can see that concentration in the governments of the Partido Colorado and the Partido Nacional is low compared to those of the Frente Amplio. This shows a tendency to repeat people in cabinets during the governments of the Uruguayan left. At any rate, the indicator is low, and it remains an unconcentrated market.

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Table 3.12  Herfindahl-Hirschman Index for Uruguayan cabinets Group/Period Pre-coup Post-authoritarianism Colorado governments Governments between 1958 and 1973 Democratic recovery governments (1984–2004) Frente Amplio governments

HHI 182.59 184.027 181.75 139.2 124.9 251.7

Source: By author based on ministers’ data

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Caetano, G., & Rilla, J. (1995). Relaciones interpartidarias y gobierno en el Uruguay (1942–1973). Revista Uruguaya de Ciencia Política, 8, 15–34. Camerlo, M., & Martínez-Gallardo, C. (Eds.). (2018). Government formation and minister turnover in presidential cabinets: Comparative analysis in the Americas. Routledge. Carmignani, F. (2001). Cabinet Formation in Coalition Systems. Scottish Journal of Political Economy, 48(3), 313–329. Chasquetti, D. (1997). Compartiendo el Gobierno: Multipartidismo y Coaliciones en el Uruguay. Revista Uruguaya de Ciencia Política, 10, 25–45. Chasquetti, D. (2001). El proceso constitucional en el Uruguay del siglo XX.  In B.  Nahum & G. Caetano (Eds.), El Uruguay del siglo XX. Ediciones de la Banda Oriental. Chasquetti, D. (2007). Uruguay 2006: Éxitos y dilemas del gobierno de izquierda. Revista de Ciencia Política (Santiago), 27(ESP), 249–263. Chasquetti, D. (2013). Cabinets and legislative cartels in Uruguay: Examining the legislative consequences of government formation. Journal of Politics in Latin America, 5(1), 67–94. Chasquetti, D. (2014, December). Entrevista Personal [Personal communication]. Chasquetti, D., & Buquet, D. (2004). La democracia en Uruguay: Una partidocracia de consenso. Revista Política, 42, 221–247. Chasquetti, D., Buquet, D., & Cardarello, A. (2013). La designación de gabinetes en Uruguay: Estrategia legislativa, jerarquía de los ministerios y afiliación partidaria de los ministros. América Latina Hoy, 64, 15–40. Cheibub, J.  A. (2007). Presidentialism, parliamentarism, and democracy. Cambridge University Press. Collier, D. (Ed.). (1985). El nuevo autoritarismo en America Latina. Fondo de Cultura Económica. Corbo, D. (2007). La transición de la dictadura a la democracia en el Uruguay. Perspectiva comparada sobre los modelos de salida política en el Cono Sur de América Latina. Humanidades: revista de la Universidad de Montevideo, 7(1), 23–47. Costa Bonino, L. (1985). Crisis de los partidos tradicionales y movimiento revolucionario en el Uruguay. Ediciones de la Banda Oriental. Dowding, K., & Dumont, P. (2008). Structural and strategic factors affecting the hiring and firing of ministers. In K. Dowding & P. Dumont (Eds.), The selection of ministers in Europe: Hiring and firing (pp. 1–20). Routledge. Dezalay, Y., & Garth, B. (2002). La internacionalización de las luchas por el poder: La competencia entre abogados y economistas por transformar los Estados latinoamericanos. ILSA. El Pais. (2014, May 21). Kreimerman renunció al Ministerio de Industria. El Pais. Retrieved from http://www.elpais.com.uy/informacion/kreimerman-­continuidad-­gabinete-­ministro-­duda.html. Ermida, O. (2006). La nueva legislación laboral uruguaya. Iuslabor, 4, 22–29. Escobar-Lemmon, M.  C., & Taylor-Robinson, M.  M. (2015). Sex, Survival, and Scandal: A Comparison of How Men and Women Exit Presidential Cabinets. Politics & Gender, 11(4), 665–688. Finch, H. (2005). La economía política del Uruguay contemporáneo, 1870—2000. Banda Oriental. Garcé, A. (2002). Ideas y competencia política en Uruguay (1960–1973): Revisando el “fracaso” de la CIDE. Ediciones Trilce. Garcé, A. (2010). Uruguay 2009: De Tabaré Vázquez a José Mujica. Revista de Ciencia Política (Santiago), 30(2), 499–535. González-Bustamante, B., & Cisternas, C. (2016). Élites políticas en el poder legislativo chileno: La Cámara de Diputados (1990-2014). Revista Política, 54(1), 19–52. Greising, C., Pérez, C., Rostan, E., & Silva, M. (2011a). In B.  Nahum (Ed.), La dictadura (1973-1984) (Vol. 11). Ediciones de la Banda Oriental. Greising, C., Pérez, C., Rostan, E., & Silva, M. (2011b). In B.  Nahum (Ed.), La restauración democrática (Vol. 12). Ediciones de la Banda Oriental. Huber, J., & Martínez-Gallardo, C. (2008). Replacing Cabinet Ministers: Patterns of Ministerial Stability in Parliamentary Democracies. American Political Science Review, 102(2), 169–180. Indridason, I. H., & Bowler, S. (2013). Determinants of cabinet size: Determinants of cabinet size. European Journal of Political Research, 53(2), 381–403. Indridason, I. H., & Kam, C. (2008). Cabinet Reshuffles and Ministerial Drift. British Journal of Political Science, 38(4), 621–656.

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Joignant, A. (2014). El Capital Político Familiar: Ventajas de parentela y concentraciones de mercado en las elecciones generales chilenas de 2013. Revista Política, 52(2), 13–48. La Diaria. (1999, May 5). Festejen, colorados. A 47 años de la fundación de la 99, Bordaberry visitó ayer un local de esa lista. La Diaria, N°799 año 4, p.3. Lanzaro, J. (2004). Fundamentos de la democracia pluralista y estructura política del Estado en el Uruguay. Revista Uruguaya de Ciencia Política, 14, 103–135. Luján, D., & López, C. (2016). El Tercer Gobierno del Frente Amplio en Uruguay: Supremacía electoral de la izquierda y perspectiva de reformas institucionales. POSTData: Revista de Reflexión y Análisis Político, 21(1), 171–206. Madrid, R. (2019). Opposition parties and the origins of democracy in Latin America. Comparative Politics, 51(2), 157–175. Mancebo, M.  E. (1990). De la “Entonación” a la “Coincidencia Nacional”: Los problemas del presidencialismo en el caso uruguayo. Revista Uruguaya de Ciencia Política, 4, 29–46. Martínez-Gallardo, C. (2014). Designing Cabinets: Presidential Politics and Ministerial Instability. Journal of Politics in Latin America, 6(2), 3–38. Mazzeo, M. (2005). MPP: Orígenes, ideas y protagonistas. Ediciones Trilce. Monestier, F. (2010). Movimientos Sociales; Partidos Políticos Y Democracia Directa Desde Abajo En Uruguay. CLACSO-Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales. Moreira, C. (2004). Final de juego: Del bipartidismo tradicional al triunfo de la izquierda en Uruguay. Ediciones Trilce. Morgenstern, S. (2001). Grupos organizados y partidos desorganizados. Incentivos electorales en Uruguay. América Latina Hoy, 29, 109–131. Nahum, B. (2011). La época batllista, 1905-1929 (Vol. 8). Ediciones de la Banda Oriental. Nahum, B., Cocchi, Á., Frega, A., & Trochon, Y. (2011). Crisis política y recuperación economica. 1930–1958 (Vol. 9). Ediciones de la Banda Oriental. Notaro, J., Chevalier, M., Fernández Caetano, C., Motta, V., & Viera, M. (2011). El origen del sistema de relaciones laborales en el Uruguay. Instituto de Economia (No. 1; Serie Documentos de Trabajo). Ocampo, J. A., Stallings, B., Bustillo, I., Velloso, H., & Frenkel, R. (2014). La crisis latinoamericana de la deuda desde la perspectiva histórica (Primera edición). In Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL): Cooperación Alemana Deutsche Zusammenarbeit: CAF. Banco de Desarrollo de América Latina. Oddone, G. (2010). El declive: Una mirada a la economía de Uruguay del siglo XX. Librería Linardi y Risso. Pérez, V., Piñeiro, R., & Rosenblatt, F. (2020). How party activism survives: Uruguay’s Frente Amplio. Cambridge University Press. Presidencia de Uruguay. (2013, December 21). Mujica comunicó solicitud de renuncia del ministro de Economía Fernando Lorenzo—Presidencia de la República. Presidencia República Oriental Del Urguay. Retrieved from https://www.presidencia.gub.uy/comunicacion/ comunicacionnoticias/renuncia-­lorenzo Rodríguez, A. M. (2007). La República del compromiso. 1919–1933. In A. Frega (Ed.), Historia del Uruguay en el siglo XX: (1890–2005). Ediciones de la Banda Oriental: Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores: Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación. Ruíz, E. (2007). El “Uruguay próspero” y su crisis. In A. Frega (Ed.), Historia del Uruguay en el siglo XX: (1890–2005). Ediciones de la Banda Oriental: Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores: Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación.. Silvero, J. (1999). El sistema de división de poderes en las constituciones de Argentina, Chile, Paraguay y Uruguay. Pensamiento Constitucional, 6(6), 135–161. Silva, P. (2006). Los tecnócratas y la política en Chile: Pasado y presente. Revista de Ciencia Política (Santiago), 26(2), 175–190. Venturini, A. (1989). Estadísticas electorales, 1917–1989 y temas electorales. Ediciones de la Banda Oriental. Warwick, P., & Druckman, J. (2001). Portfolio Salience and the Proportionality of Payoffs in Coalition Governments. British Journal of Political Science, 31(4), 627–649.

Chapter 4

Cabinet Formation in Chile

Like Uruguay, Chile is a case of interest to Latin American political science due to its levels of democratization as a result of an early institutionalization of the party system (see Alcántara & Luna, 2004). Political parties have been fundamental organizations for the development and proper functioning of democracy (Valenzuela, 1995). However, in contrast to other countries in the region, political parties in Chile “are on opposite poles of the political spectrum and one at least is located between the poles” (Scully, 1996: 83). This means that political forces have been aligned in three major blocs: right, center, and left. In addition to being a system with a multiparty tradition, Chile also has a strong presidential tradition. The Chilean presidential system enjoyed a resurgence between 1933 and 1973, after a period in which the president lost capacity to Congress (Cea, 2015). In this context of a multiparty presidential system, cabinet formation is the responsibility of a president who is mediated by the state of the party system. Thus, this chapter analyzes cabinet formation as a meeting point between the two factors. On the one hand, it seeks to account for the most important political processes that influence cabinet configuration, mainly those related to that the party system. On the other, it seeks to identify regularities in the dynamics of cabinet composition and ministerial profiles. For this, the period prior to authoritarian rule (1933–1973) and the one that followed (1990–2015) are analyzed. The first part of this chapter presents an analytical description of the country’s historical background. Emphasis is placed on developing a summary review of the context of the political system’s institutionalization. The second part of the chapter analyzes the context of each democratic government between 1933–1973 and 1990–2015. This section describes the composition of cabinets and presents a brief overview of the most relevant events surrounding the installation of different governments and their ministerial cabinets. Lastly, the third section presents certain preliminary findings on the case.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Olivares L., Survival of Ministers and Configuration of Cabinets in Chile and Uruguay, Latin American Societies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92802-5_4

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4.1  History of the Political System The criteria for the formation of ministerial cabinets have undergone considerable changes over the course of history. The first decades of the twentieth century were marked by significant instability with regard to cabinet composition (Arellano et al., 2018). The historiography has called this period between 1891 and 1925 the “parliamentary republic” or parliamentary period. As Álvarez (2012) notes, this period refers to an atypical era in Chile’s political development, one in which the president’s authority was considerably diminished. During the “parliamentary republic”, the limitation on executive power that can be traced back to 1891, such as Congress’s significant power over the appointment of ministers and their dismissals based on ministers with votes of no confidence, led to high ministerial turnover rates (Arellano et al., 2018). This made ministers’ work more complicated and curtailed the president’s political capabilities. The president even became considered an actor without capacities (Cea, 2015). From the contextual perspective, it is important to note that the period coincides with the expansion of the nitrates cycle. Nitrates exports changed the nature of the Chilean economy substantially (Barria & Llorca-Jaña, 2017). The country’s economy was underdeveloped and had a low growth rate before this industry was developed (Meller, 1996). The changes in the productive structure modified Chile’s social structure and the social demands of the state from new emerging sectors. One example is the growth in unionization and strikes, which were one of the main tools to put pressure on the political system to demand improvements in working and social conditions (Arellano et al., 2018). Social changes were not necessarily processed by the political system, which responded to an oligarchical logic, creating wide gaps between workers and the upper social classes. This situation gave rise to social issues associated with the demands of marginalized sectors (see Góngora, 2006).1 Divisions among party factions caused cabinets to fall during this period. Ministers were the main victims of changes in political alliance compositions and had to face the pressure of their parties to leave office. This pressure could reach the point of accusations to force them into leaving their posts. A president could have cabinets with liberals, conservatives, or both, known as national unity cabinets over the course of his term (see Yáñez, 2003). The question that arises in this context is: what impact did this period have on Chile’s political development in the twentieth century? The first is the confirmation that ministerial hypermobility paralyzes government action, as in this period 1  Political parties did not display major ideological divisions until the emergence of social issues. There were two combinations of parties vying for power in the parliamentary period: the Alianza Liberal and the Coalition. The former was composed of liberals and radical democrats. The latter by conservatives, nationals, liberal democrats, and certain sectors of the Partido Liberal (Millar, 1982). The emergence of the social issue reorganized the political landscape. For example, the first parties of the masses appeared, starting with the Communist Party, under the name of the Socialist Workers Party, founded by Luis Emilio Recabarren and a group of nitrates workers to represent the interests of the working class.

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ministerial turnover is usually interpreted as evidence of failures on the part of the respective governments to address social issues (Arellano et al., 2018). The second is the emergence of two leaders who dominated the political agenda for several decades: Arturo Alessandri and Carlos Ibáñez del Campo. Both were government actors who led the country to a new political era.2 The political and economic problems, and the emergence of social issues set the agenda of the 1920 elections, which marked a turning point. The liberals broke their coalition and two of their members competed for the presidency: Luis Barros Borgoño, supported by conservatives, and Arturo Alessandri, supported by the liberals. In addition, Luis Emilio Recabarren of the Socialist Workers’ Party competed. When Arturo Alessandri was confirmed as presidential candidate, his opponents paid for an insert in the newspaper El Mercurio under the headline “Ad-Portas Hannibal,” which warned that Alessandri’s reformism could be a threat to the oligarchy. They accused the former minister and former liberal deputy of being communist and wanting to destroy the country, thus calling on “Men of Order” to defend national interests and their own security (Subercaseaux, 2009). This was a clear sign of how tough the presidential election would be. The difficulties described went beyond the electoral process with accusations of fraud, impersonation, problems in electoral colleges, among others (Millar, 1982). Alessandri won the presidential election with a campaign promising expanded rights for popular sectors, the creation of social legislation and laws like workers’ insurance (Collier & Sater, 1999; Millar, 1982). The campaign promises and social legislation collided with a Congress that did not support the president. Alessandri’s situation did not improve in the 1921 parliamentary elections, when the Alianza only increased its seats by one deputy in the lower house and failed to gain an advantage in the Senate. The Alianza was to gain a majority in both houses in a new parliamentary election 3  years later. This scenario could  let us to believe that Alessandri would make progress with his legislation, built the Alianza quickly broke up, thus diluting the president’s expectations. By 1924, the euphoria of 1920 had become disappointment and frustration (Collier & Sater, 1999) and relations between the government and Congress were frozen as of mid-year. All social legislation was at a standstill until the Armed Forces intervened. There was an uprising of the army’s lieutenants and junior officers in September 1924. It all began with the Rattling of Swords, as the protest by military officers in the Senate is known, which took place during a debate on pay for legislators while the president’s proposals remained frozen. This was followed by a series of uprisings, reformist, and counter-­ reformist, by different sectors of the Military High Command.3 Without getting into the complexity of this period in depth, which is beyond the analysis of this book, 2  The change in era is usually considered to have begun toward the end of World War I and with the end of the nitrates boom. After the war, Chile put a political system to test whose ineffectiveness was clear for many as “the post-war difficulties exposed the economy’s limitations: overdependence on the production of raw materials, inadequate fiscal and monetary policies, and rising inertia in agriculture” (Collier & Sater, 1999: 183). 3  For an analysis of the entire process, I recommend Aldunate (1971).

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some of the milestones to be highlighted include the president’s self-exile in Italy and the closure of Congress by a military junta that ruled by decree until Alessandri’s return. Colonel Carlos Ibáñez del Campo was one of leading actors in this process, so Alessandri kept him in the cabinet when he resumed the presidency in 1925 (Collier & Sater, 1999). Alessandri focused on the task of drafting a new Constitution. It was approved with military pressure and ratified by the citizenry. One of the most important milestones of the new Constitution was the separation between the Catholic Church and the State. From the political perspective, the Constitution restored the power of the executive and left the parliament system behind. Unfortunately for the operation of democratic institutions, the new Constitution did not begin to operate until 1932, because Ibáñez managed to get Alessandri to resign and then President Emiliano Figueroa, convening new elections where he ran as the sole candidate. The period following the 1925 change in the Constitution was marked first by political instability and then by the economic recession caused by the 1929 crisis, when Chile was one of the countries hardest hit by the Great Depression. For example, in 1932 Gross Domestic Product fell by 38.3%, exports by 78.3%, and imports by 83.5%, and the price of nitrates and copper fell by 61.1% and 63.4%, respectively (Meller, 1996). Before this, the Ibáñez government had been highly active in public works, state promotion of production, and a comprehensive plan of institutional reforms that marked his tenure. Important institutions were created, such as the Office of the Comptroller General of the Republic (1927), Carabineros de Chile (national uniformed police, 1927), and the Chilean Air Force (1929). However, the effects of the 1929 crisis made economic policy unmanageable and triggered a scenario of instability. In 1931, protests against the government became uncontrollable and the massive strike by students and professionals forced the president to resign (Collier & Sater, 1999). Nine interim presidents held office after Carlos Ibáñez del Campo’s resignation: vice presidents, government juntas, Supreme Court presidents, among others. The weakness of the executive branch persisted until Arturo Alessandri Palma’s return to the presidency in late 1932 (Arellano et al., 2018).

4.2  Cabinets Under the 1925 Constitution The 1925 Constitution enshrined the return of a presidential regime. Regarding the configuration of cabinets, the new Constitution declared the position of minister of state one of exclusive dedication, making it incompatible with the positions of deputy, senator, or any other elected office. Similarly, Article 72 consolidated the president’s authority to appoint and remove ministers at will as a post of presidential confidence not requiring confirmation from Congress to remain in office. This is an institutional power of heads of government in presidential systems that contrasts with parliamentary ones (Cheibub et al. 2004, 2015). Likewise, accusations against

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ministers and their removal by members of Congress were hindered to avoid excessive removal of ministers, until then as frequent practice. The Partido Liberal and Partido Radical supported Alessandri in the presidential election. However, he appointed a national unity cabinet when he took office in December 1932, with ministers from different political parties. However, as can be seen in Table 4.1, the Party Liberal bore the weight of the government as the same party the president belonged to. An analysis of the most important ministries reveals that the members of various parties were appointed to them. Horacio Hevia (Partido Social Republicano) took office as interior minister, Miguel Cruchaga (Partido Conservador) was appointed in Foreign Relations, Gustavo Ross (Partido Liberal) was head of Finance, and, lastly, Domingo Durán (Partido Radical) was appointed to Justice. The purpose of appointing a diverse cabinet was to force political parties to reach a consensus that would allow the institutional transition to be overcome with success. Throughout his government 59 ministers were appointed among 40 people and no women were appointed minister. There was significant rotation among posts: a group of 11 people served as minister twice or more (Table 4.2). This situation illustrates the different strategies Amorim Neto (1998) talks about when he says that presidents can use the distribution of ministries according to their political objectives, which in this government’s case was to intensify a policy of consensus. Regarding the ministerial profiles, a concentration in people with political experience can be observed. Former deputies and former senators represent 57% of ministers, while party members without legislative experience account for 39%. The remaining ministers are nonpartisan. One example is former Colonel Luis Cabrera Negrete, “a passionate friend of Alessandri’s who would later be appointed ambassador to Ecuador and then minister of the interior at a difficult time in his government” (Arancibia Clavel, 2007: 529). The cabinet also included a technocrat: the engineer and agricultural entrepreneur Ricardo Bascuñán, who became development minister. Bascuñán was to be given responsibilities in the executive during the González Videla government, specifically the Ministry of Public Works and Means

Table 4.1  Ministers’ membership Party Liberal Radical Conservador Democrático Social Republicano Nonpartisan Demócrata Liberal Democrático

Number of ministers 21 17 6 6 4 3 1 1

Source: By author based on ministers’ data

% 35.6 28.8 10.2 10.2 6.8 5.1 1.7 1.7

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Table 4.2  Ministers with two or more appointments in the Alessandri P. government (1932–1938) Name Alejandro Errázuriz Mackenna Francisco Garcés Gana Alfredo Piwonka Jilabert Luis Salas Romo Alejandro Serani Burgos Matías Silva Sepúlveda Guillermo Correa Fuenzalida Domingo Durán Morales Carlos Henríquez Argomedo Horacio Hevia Labbé Arturo Montecinos Rozas

Number of times minister 3 3 3 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 2

Source: By author based on ministers’ data

of Communication in 1943, Agriculture between 1947 and 1948 and Lands and Colonization in 1947. As Collier and Sater (1999) note, Alessandri’s main achievement in the 1930s was to restore the stability of Chilean democracy, laying the foundations for four decades of expanding democracy. For this, he had the support of cabinets committed to the president; in particular “a loyal defense minister, Emilio Bello, and a totally professional commander-in-chief, General Oscar Novoa, made sure that the Army did not get involved in politics anymore” (Collier & Sater, 1999: 202). Institutional normality returned with time and the change in individual and institutional actors became clear. Thus, the Alessandri government is in line with what Indridason and Bowler (2013) argues when discussing the importance of coordinating relations between parties and ministers to avoid agency and moral risk problems. Some parties gradually mutated from cadre parties to mass parties. That is, they went from being instruments of the elite and oligarchs to spaces for mobilization and political socialization. The organizational shift is particularly clear in the left, a sector that saw parties declaring themselves socialists, Marxists, and/or communists proliferate in the 1930s. The most important parties to emerge in this period were the Socialist Party (1933) and the National Socialist Movement (1932). However, at various times the government faced problems with the parties in its cabinet. The problems with the Partido Radical had to do with the party’s shift to the left. Its ministers resigned from their positions in the cabinet after the Partido Radical convention in June 1933, and in consideration that the party issued a statement of principles that was very close to socialism (Palma Zúñiga, 1967). However, Alessandri ratified them on the grounds that ministers of state respond exclusively to the confidence of the President of the Republic (Benavente, 2003). Though the president’s strategy was timely to provide stability to the government, this scenario only shows the coexistence of accountability to the party and the leader of the

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executives that ministers were subjected to when they took office (Altman & Castiglioni, 2008). The Partido Radical ultimately left the government in April 1934 and became opposition, though it did not join the leftist bloc. Alessandri appointed the Partido Radical members Humberto Álvarez as justice minister, Luis Álamos as development minister, and Remigio Medina as agriculture minister on 2 September 1936. Their inclusion did not lead the party to break with the Frente Popular because it was understood that the cabinet’s purpose was to offer the broadest guarantees in the 1937 legislative elections (Benavente, 2003). However, a month after their appointment, the Partido Radical pressured its ministers to leave office. As Benavente (1984) points out, this led to the resignation of ministers Álvarez and Medina; the members of the party who remained in the government did so in their personal capacity. The events described reinforce the point Bucur (2013) makes when noting the need to analyze the ministers’ behavior and their departure from office from the perspective of principal and agent. Alessandri also had problems with the Partido Conservador. Though their repercussions did not have direct effects on his administration, they had a long-term impact on the political dynamics in Chile. As the government came to an end and the time came to define the ruling coalition candidate, the Partido Conservador youth declared itself in rebellion over Finance Minister Gustavo Ross‘s candidacy (Benavente, 1984). The Partido Conservador youth wing, which had been operating as a semi-independent structure for several years under the name Falange Nacional, began its definitive separation from the party, completed in 1938. This group’s influence in national politics gradually rose, and it became the Christian Democratic Party in 1958 (Benavente, 1984). Gustavo Ross was the presidential candidate of the liberal-conservative coalition despite the Falange’s opposition. Ross’s candidacy was based on the positive economic indicators he achieved during the government (Collier & Sater, 1999). The economic crisis triggered a shift in the development strategy and an import substitution model was implemented. Deploying this model required making progress toward industrialization, which the state promoted. The strategy initially managed to reverse the decline in economic indicators with tariff restrictions and exchange rate mechanisms, along with significant state participation. The political landscape in the country was reorganized during the Alessandri government. New parties and coalitions emerged. The new actors faced off in the 1938 presidential election, when three candidates competed for the presidency. Gustavo Ross, Alessandri’s former finance minister, was the candidate of the rightwing liberal-conservative alliance. Ross’s candidacy confirmed a pact begun at the beginning of the government that “lasted as the main action model for the traditional right until its definitive crisis, unleashed three decades later” (Rubio, 2010: 116). At the same time, his presidential candidacy revealed early on what Olivares (2018) mentions when discussing the role played by ministries in driving people’s political aspirations and careers. The candidate on the left was Pedro Aguirre Cerda, a member of the Partido Radical. He brought together preferences in the Frente Popular, a coalition built on

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the Bloque Izquierda that included the Communist, Socialist, Radical, Demócratico and Radical Socialist parties, and the Chilean Confederation of Workers. The third candidate was Carlos Ibáñez del Campo, who had the support of the National Socialist Movement. He also intended to be the candidate of the Frente Popular, the Socialist Union, the Partido Nacional Ibañista, and other small groups that were part of the Alianza Popular Libertadora (Benavente, 2003). One thing worth highlighting about the end of the Alessandri government and the presidential campaign is that they were marked by the Chilean National Socialist Movement’s attempted coup in 1938. Civilian and military followers of Ibáñez participated in this uprising. The Nazis murdered the Carabinero guard and occupied tower of the Workers Insurance Building opposite La Moneda Palace. Another group occupied the University of Chile headquarters, just a few blocks away from the government palace (Sznajder, 1990). The armed forces quickly got both groups to surrender. The Nazis in the university were taken to the Workers Insurance Building. When they had all been gathered in that building, they were shot to death without due process. The leaders of the uprising handed themselves in to the justice system. Ibáñez sought refuge in a military unit and then renounced his presidential candidacy (Benavente, 2003).4 The Nazi movement was not able to overthrow Alessandri, but it directly influenced the defeat of his former minister Gustavo Ross. Ibáñez called for people to vote for the Frente Popular after withdrawing his candidacy, a factor that probably tipped the election in favor of Aguirre Cerda (Collier & Sater, 1999). The 25 October 1938 election proved to be a very tough contest. Aguirre Cerda won with 222,720 votes (50.2%). For his part, Ross received 218,609 votes (49.3%). The victory was probably due to the Ibáñez factor, as Collier and Sater point out (Collier & Sater, 1999: 208): “Thanks to General Ibáñez and the Nacistas [sic], Chile had elected the only Popular Front government outside Europe.” Pedro Aguirre Cerda took office on 24 December 1938. His first cabinet was composed of four members of the Partido Radical, three socialists and two from the Partido Demócrata. He appointed an independent to the Finance Ministry, Roberto Wachholtz, who years later joined the Partido Radical. The cabinet was modified in April 1939. The defense minister was appointed ambassador to the United States and was replaced by his fellow party member Guillermo Labarca. On 28 September 1939 the Socialist Party asked for its ministers to be changed (Benavente, 1984). The new ministers were sitting congressmen at the time of their appointment. New Health Minister Salvador Allende stands out in this group. From the moment Aguirre Cerda took office, rightwing parties immediately announced that they would exercise their opposition forcefully. However, this was not the government’s biggest problem, because the president had to deal with a difficult relationship with his party (Moulian, 1993). The agency problems discussed by the theory presented in Chap. 2 became latent. For example, the cabinet was

 On the history of the National Socialist Movement, I recommend the chronicle by Valenzuela (1995).

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changed in March 1940 because the Partido Radical asked for its ministers to be changed. Senators Humberto Álvarez and Cristóbal Sáenz took over at the ministries of the Interior and Foreign Affairs, respectively. Senator Juan Pradenas of the Partido Democrático also joined the cabinet at the time. These changes were important because the president, uncomfortable with the pressure from his party, drafted his resignation from office, something that ultimately did not materialize (Moulian, 1993). Another conflict between the president and his party came after the 1941 legislative elections, when the Partido Radical ordered its ministers to submit their resignations to reorganize the cabinet. The ministers resigned but the president rejected their resignations. The party expelled the ministers in response (Benavente, 1984). These examples reveal a persistent element in the Chilean presidential system: for parties, loyalty to the group is more important than loyalty to the cabinet and the president. As Benavente (1984) notes, the expelled ministers asked to be reinstated in the party in May 1941, except for the minister of the interior. The Partido Radical convention restored their membership and authorized them to remain in office. This type of actions reflects what Andeweg (2000) discusses, whose study argues the need to draft agreements within coalitions to assure the existence of dispute resolution mechanisms. The lack of agreements led to a new conflict with the government, as they asked that the former member of the Partido Radical Arturo Olavarría leave office as the minister of the interior. The party’s pressure increased with the passing months. The president did not give in; the Partido Radical’s ministers left the government and were replaced by members of the Radical Socialist Party: Juan Rossetti in Foreign Relations and the independents Guillermo del Pedregal in Finance, Raimundo del Río in Education, Domingo Godoy in Justice, and Carlos Valdovinos in Defense. The member of the Partido Democrático Raúl Puga was relocated from the Justice Ministry to Agriculture. The radicals got the socialists to pressure the president for Olavarría’s resignation. Olavarría resigned in September, along with the ministers of education and justice. They were replaced by the Partido Radical members Leonardo Guzmán in the Interior, Ulises Vergara in Education, and Tomás Mora in Justice. Jerónimo Méndez Arancibia was appointed minister of the interior on 10 November 1941. It should be noted that Méndez was the highest authority in the Partido Radical. The president resigned due to illness on the same day as his appointment and dies on 25 November that year. Méndez took office to convene the elections. He made some changes to the cabinet to deal with the process, appointing the radicals Juvenal Hernández and Alfredo Rosende as ministers of defense and interior, respectively. Including the ministers appointed by Méndez as part of the Pedro Aguirre Cerda administration, a total of 44 ministers, all men, were appointed throughout the entire term of government, from 24 December 1938 to 2 April 1942. Most (59%) were politicians who had congressional experience before being appointed. Despite the difficulties with its party, the Aguirre Cerda government mostly appointed ministers from the Partido Radical. The remaining parties in the Frente Popular had scant participation, as shown in Table 4.3.

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Table 4.3  Parties in Aguirre Cerda’s cabinets

Radical Socialist Democrático Nonpartisan No information Radical socialist Total

Number of ministers 29 6 4 2 2 1 44

% 65.9 13.6 9.1 4.5 4.5 2.3 100

Source: By author based on ministers’ data

The Frente Popular experience proved that a new policy of alliances could exist, one in which leftist parties, essentially Marxists, could take part in the political process and win elections (Collier & Sater, 1999). Hence one could argue that there was a tacit continuity in the election to succeed Pedro Aguirre Cerda. In turn, this government shows that cabinet formation can be understood as a distribution of power among coalition parties, where the party with the most weight gets the largest number of ministries (Carmignani, 2001). A coalition of radicals, socialists, communists, and the Partido Democrático was formed under the name of the Alianza Democrática to run in the presidential election. It was not easy for the pact to agree on its candidate. Since the Partido Radical was the largest electoral force, the decision revolved around a couple of names from its ranks. The big contenders were Gabriel González Videla and Juan Antonio Ríos. Ríos won the party primary against Videla and Julio Durán. After this result, the communists proposed González Videla’s candidacy though he quickly rejected the nomination (Benavente, 2003). The left’s resistance to Ríos was based on the fact that he was a large landowner from the rightwing of the party (Collier & Sater, 1999). Another problem Ríos had to face was Ibáñez’s reappearance on the political scene as a presidential candidate. His emergence was a problem because it created division in almost all of the parties in the political system, including the radicals. There were Ibáñez supporters in almost all parties who pressured for those parties to support him when their leader appeared (Collier & Sater, 1999). However, it was also an opportunity, given that Ibáñez was a source of polarization and was strongly rejected among his opponents. Ríos capitalized on that and managed to get liberal sectors and the Falange National to support his candidacy. Ultimately Ríos was supported by a broad movement of radicals, socialists, democráticos, Falangists, and liberal groups without a formal agreement existing between them. In line with Amorin Neto (2006), this situation reveals one of the problems of presidential systems, which is the need for pre-electoral agreements to ensure that heads of the executive do not leave political organizations that supported them in achieving their election victories out of the government. Juan Antonio Ríos was sworn in as President of the Republic on 2 April 1942. His victory was a victory for the Alianza Democrática and anti-Ibáñez forces from

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throughout the entire political system who united despite their ideological differences to prevent the former military officer from winning the elections (Benavente, 2003). Since all the endorsements in the election were personal and focused on Ríos, mainly with the objective of blocking Ibáñez, this government’s cabinets depended much more on his will than on the political parties. Ríos showed flexibility in appointments during his administration: he invited members of the Partido Liberal and the Falange Nacional on several occasions. This is theoretically in tune with the arguments of Camerlo (2013), who refers to the unilateral power that presidents have when it comes to picking the ministers who will accompany them during their governments. Ríos’s first cabinet was composed of members of the leftist parties that had accompanied Aguirre Cerda, plus liberals who had supported him in the presidential election. The ministerial configuration included five radicals, two liberals and one from the Partido Democrático. There was also an independent in Justice: Juan Ortúzar, who had been president of the Concepción Court of Appeals. The differences within the government became unsustainable, and the president was forced to reorganize the cabinet 6  months into his government (Benavente, 1984). The liberal ministers were replaced by the independents Joaquín Fernández in Foreign Affairs and Guillermo del Pedregal in Finance. The Partido Democrático member Mariano Bustos was appointed to Labor, without his party’s authorization. There were also changes among radical ministers. He replaced the agriculture minister with Fernando Moller and former deputy Benjamín Claro took over in Education. Former conservative deputy Oscar Gajardo, now independent, was appointed to the Ministry of Justice. Given that the Partido Radical did not authorize one of its members taking the position of minister of the economy, the president appointed a military man, General Frolián Arriagada (Palma Zúñiga, 1967). This was not to be the last time that a president convened the Armed Forces to resolve political problems. In fact, this practice persisted until 1973. The socialist ministers withdrew from the cabinet in February 1943 and were replaced by two radicals. The military minister was also changed for an independent. In June that same year, the problems within the Partido Radical led its ministers to resign (Palma Zúñiga, 1967). Ríos appointed military officers in the ministries of the Interior and Defense to replace them. The cabinet lasted a couple of months, until the liberals joined the government with two ministers in Finance and Lands. In addition, the radical Osvaldo Hiriart was appointed to the Ministry of the Interior and had to leave his position as senator. The independent Sótero del Río was also appointed minister of health. He had been a young minister in the early 1930s and was subsequently minister of the interior in the Jorge Alessandri Rodríguez government (Benavente, 2003). Ríos’s relationship with his party did not improve. The Partido Radical launched a campaign against the Partido Liberal in early 1944. It demanded the formation of a cabinet composed only of the parties from the Alianza Democrática, that is, radicals, socialists, communists, Partido Democrático, or a cabinet of only radicals. They threatened to withdraw the party from the government if this did not happen (Palma Zúñiga, 1967), confirming what Dowding and Dumont (2008) say when

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they point out that a head of government may have an ideal cabinet in mind, but that it may not have a correlation with reality because political parties will not allow it. President Ríos rejected the proposals and for this reason the party ordered its ministers to resign in April 1944 (Benavente, 2003). Since the ministers did not comply with the order, arguing that they only responded to the president, they were expelled from the party (Collier & Sater, 1999). This type of behavior within the executive is discussed in the literature and reveals the great dual agency dilemmas that ministers are subjected to (Andeweg, 2000; Quiroz Flores, 2017). This made Ríos a president without party membership. Relations between the president and the Partido Radical resumed in May 1945 when Ríos appointed Luis Álamos to the Ministry of the Interior. Two ministers who were members of parties that were not part of the Alianza also joined: Enrique Arriagada, an Authentic Socialist in Justice, and Eduardo Frei Montalva of the Falange in the Ministry of Development. President Ríos left office in January 1946 due to sickness and left interim power to Alfredo Duhalde, who as minister of the interior took over as vice president. Shortly after taking office, Duhalde had to face problems with the unions and the Communist Party, which was an active part of the workers’ organization. The distance between the government, the communists, and workers increased after the episode of state repression known as the Plaza Bulnes Massacre, when six people died (Collier & Sater, 1999). These events changed the correlation of forces within the cabinet. Frei resigned and the radicals left the government. In response, Duhalde relied on the Socialists and the military for support. A new cabinet was appointed on 3 February with Admiral Vicente Merino in the Interior, General Arnaldo Carrasco in National Defense, and a third officer to be included in the cabinet was Air Force General Manuel Tovarías in Public Works. The socialists had three ministries and the Partido Democrático one. This latest cabinet change brought the number of ministers appointed throughout the government to 80. These ministers were men and spent an average of 246 days in office. A high percentage corresponded to politicians with prior experience in Congress (57.5%), and those without legislative experience (32.5%). The remaining ministers were technocrats and nonpartisan (5% each). President Ríos died from his illness on 27 June 1946. The presidential race was unleashed with the leader’s death. Though many were interested in replacing Ríos, four candidates were defined after diverse and controversial processes within each political sector: Eduardo Cruz-Coke, endorsed by the Falange and the Partido Conservador, Fernando Alessandri of the Liberal Party; Gabriel González Videla, supported by the Partido Radical and Communist Party; and Bernardo Ibáñez, supported by the Socialist Party. As none of the candidates obtained an absolute majority, in October the Congressional Plenary had to choose between the two candidates with the most votes. Congress was inclined to respect the will of citizens and chose González Videla, who had obtained the largest vote. Gabriel González Videla took office as president of the republic on 3 November 1946. His first cabinet was a clear demonstration of how hybrid his government would be in terms of the coalitions that supported him, as it had four radicals, three communists, three liberals, and one independent: Roberto Waccholtz as dual

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minister of Finance and the Economy. The incorporation of ministers from the Partido Liberal, a party that had not voted for him in September, was in return for the decisive support it gave him in the election held in the Congressional Plenary. At the same time, the liberals agreed to participate in this curious government combination to stop the Communist Party from within (Benavente, 2003). It was the party’s first time in the executive branch. Therefore, decisions on the formation of González Videla’s first cabinet can be read in theoretical code as retribution to parties for the support provided to win the election (De Luca, 2011). The liberals were not comfortable with the communists being in the unions and in the government at the same time, leading them to resign from their cabinet positions. The president asked the communists to temporarily leave their posts to avoid problems with other parties (Collier & Sater, 1999). Both liberals and communists left the executive in April 1947. The communists were also forced to leave all positions in the state (Huneeus, 2009). In July, the president appointed a new cabinet headed by military men in the ministries of the Interior and Defense and a number of independents, among whom Jorge Alessandri Rodríguez in Finance stands out. Three radicals and a member of the Partido Democrático were also included. The communists used all their union force to put pressure on the government. One of the consequences this had was a significant increase in the number of demonstrations throughout the country (Collier & Sater, 1999). In 1948, the government enacted legislation proscribing the Communist Party. This law, called the Permanent Defense of Democracy Act and popularly known as the Damned Act by its opponents, stripped members of the Communist Party of their political rights and sent them to concentration camps. According to Huneeus (2009), the anticommunism associated with this law had a long-term negative effect on the party system, because it laid the foundations for what was to happen after the 1973 coup. This argument is in line with what Moulian (1982) says. For both authors, it is a mistake to think of democracy as a linear progression because the Permanent Defense of Democracy Act inaugurated a period of retreating democracy that lasted until 1958. To think of democracy as a linear process implies forgetting that period, which formally lasted for 10 years, albeit with significant internal variations. According to Moulian (1982), after the period of the Frente Popular, which was characterized by a slow but stable political and social democratization, came this period in which the citizenry was restricted, one of the parties with popular representation and a powerful presence among workers was banned, and laws were passed that allowed the trade union movement to be repressed (Moulian, 1982). In the medium term, the law meant a loss of votes for the Partido Radical, in addition to weakening its presence in society. This is justified by the fact that the party had to bear the responsibility of betraying the communists.5 It also caused a definitive break among conservative sectors, as traditionalists supported the law and social Christian sectors rejected it. There was also division among the socialists: a 5  Another effect of the law was the damage done to the quality of politics. This turned Carlos Ibáñez into the general “of hope.” It paved the way for his return to Chilean politics in the 1952 presidential elections (Huneeus, 2009).

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group that did not support the law separated from the party. The socialist factions made the breakup official in mid-1948, when they created their own respective structures. The sector that had supported the anti-communist law came to be known as the Socialist Party of Chile, led by the former presidential candidate Bernardo Ibáñez. Those who rejected it took the name of the Popular Socialist Party and elected a central committee led by Eugenio González and Salvador Allende. To manage the law’s implementation, on 7 July 1948 the president formed a political cabinet called the Concentración Nacional, which entailed an anticommunist political pact that united conservatives, liberals, radicals, socialists, and the Partido Democrático to guarantee and maintain a protected democracy. For this reason, the cabinet included three radicals, two liberals, two conservators, two from the Partido Democrático, and a military officer and Jorge Alessandri Rodríguez. The organizational reconfiguration of the executive under González Videla highlights what Martínez-Gallardo (2012) says when he argues that cabinet changes are a tool the president has for dealing with crisis in the government. The González Videla government showed significant ideological oscillation, which obviously had an impact on his cabinets. At the beginning, it had a clearly leftist orientation, only attenuated by the presence of liberals in the cabinet. It became a rightwing and anticommunist government in a second period. Lastly it became a government with a center-left logic formed of social Christian, Falangist, and radical sectors. This last cabinet was formed in early 1950 and, except for a few minor changes, lasted until 1952. The president sought to show social sensitivity regarding the economic problems that the country was developing, which is why he changed the entire economic team. One thing that is striking about the González Videla government is the large number of ministers he had (a total of 88). Another distinctive feature is that his last cabinet included Adriana Olguín Büche as minister of justice. This attorney and member of the Partido Radical was the first woman in all Latin America to take office as a minister of state. González Videla’s ministers were politicians mostly without previous experience in Congress (53%). This theoretically reveals this president’s concern about a possible dual agency that his ministers could face (Andeweg, 2000). Nevertheless, one can see that a considerable number of people had previous experience in Congress over the course of the presidential term (30%), Lastly, and in consideration that the government convened members of the military at various times, it also shows a large number of nonpartisan ministers (Table 4.4). The Partido Radical’s governments were characterized by a fairly balanced development of the political and the economic (Moulian, 1982). However, by the 1950s, signs of the economic model’s inefficiency began to emerge. The main problem was that the development strategy failed to overcome the economy’s dependence on natural resources. Inflation varied constantly and at times oscillated by as much as 20 points in a year, reaching a maximum of 30.1% annual inflation in 1946 (Meller, 1996). Carlos Ibáñez del Campo was the main beneficiary of the discontent caused by the economic problems, confirming his intention to run for president in 1951. The announcement of his candidacy sent powerful shock waves through the political

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Table 4.4  Parties in the González Videla government (1946–1952) Party Radical Nonpartisan Democrático Conservador Liberal Conservador social Cristiano Socialist Party of Chile Chilean Communist Party Falange Nacional Demócrata No information Total

Number of ministers 29 22 10 7 5 4 4 3 2 1 1 88

% 33.0 25 11.4 8.0 5.7 4.5 4.5 3.4 2.3 1.1 1.1 100

Source: By author based on ministers’ data

system. Several political parties with different ideological orientations confirmed their support for Ibáñez, who managed to build a heterogeneous support base that included the Partido Agrario Laborista, the Popular Socialist Party and the Partido Femenino de Chile. As Avendaño and Henríquez (2020) note, “his candidacy convened rightwing groups that did not feel interpreted by the more traditional parties (Liberal and Conservador) as well as nationalist organizations and factions that split off from Chilean socialism, as was the case with the Popular Socialist Party (PSP)” (Avendaño & Henríquez, 2020: 345). In the presidential campaign, Ibáñez ran against former radical minister Pedro, Partido Liberal senator and former minister under President Ríos Arturo Matte, and the socialist Salvador Allende. Ibáñez won the election with 46.7% of the vote. Upon taking office, he did so accompanied by a cabinet led by the independent Guillermo del Pedregal as minister of interior. The independents Juan Bautista Rossetti and Waldemar Couttss were also appointed to Finance and Health, respectively. The first cabinet was completed with two ministers from the Partido Agrario Laborista, one from the Popular Socialist Party, a doctrinal radical minister, a minister from the Partido Democrático del Pueblo, a minister from the Partido Nacional Cristiano, a minister from the Partido Femenino, a minister from the Unión Nacional Independiente, and one member of the military. Along with the diversity of parties and movements present in the cabinet, it is important to highlight the appointment of Venancio Coñuepan of the National Christian Party as the first descendant of native peoples to hold a position in the Chilean executive branch. The government’s development was marked by the exhaustion of the import substitution model that was expressed in high inflation throughout the period, with the highest increases in 1954 (71.1%) and 1955 (83.8%). The economic crisis increased the social discontent. This deterioration was reflected in the increase in mass general strikes in 1954 and 1955 (Moulian, 1982). The disastrous economic scenario

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prompted the fluctuating Ibáñez government to hire a group of US advisers known as the Klein Saks Mission in 1956 to draft a stabilization program that contained inflation and reorganized the economy (Moulian, 1982). The Ibáñez government had high cabinet turnover. A total of 136 ministers were appointed, making it the government with the most ministers in recent Chilean history. Ministers lasted an average of 204 days in office, or just over 6 months. The largest number of appointments were in the Ministries of the Interior and of the Economy, with 14 ministers each, as can be seen in Table 4.5. These events merely serve to prove what Camerlo and Pérez-Liñán (2015) discuss on the role economic crises play as a negative incentive for the president to decide to make changes to the cabinet. In turn, according to the literature this behavior could be an indicator of a president’s adverse selection, one who has made bad decisions with his appointments. The political scenario was confusing and fragmented. The international scenario presented a polarized political-ideological context marked by the start of the Cold War and the Defense of Democracy Act. The political system underwent one of the periods of greatest partisan dispersion and the number of parties progressively increased (Moulian, 1993). In line with Dogan (1979), the only thing that this scenario shows is that cabinet instability will gradually increase when the party system lacks institutionalization, as can be seen when analyzing Table 4.5. The political alliances that supported the government underwent major changes during the presidential term. The first 3 years of government were populist in nature. Next a worker-oriented phase stands out, due to the hegemony of corporatist and anti-legislature sectors grouped in the Partido Agrario Laborista and the Table 4.5  Number of ministers per ministry Ministry Economy and trade Interior Lands and colonization Agriculture Justice Labor Public education Foreign relations Finance Public health and social security Mining Defense Public works Mines Public works and means of communication Health and social security and welfare Source: By author based on ministers’ data

Number of ministers 14 14 13 12 12 11 10 10 9 8 7 6 4 3 2 1 136

% 10.3 10.3 9.6 8.8 8.8 8.1 7.4 7.4 6.6 5.9 5.1 4.4 2.9 2.2 1.5 0.7 100

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independent groups that supported Ibáñez (Benavente, 1984). After that, in 1955, the government shifted to the right and opted for a stabilizing program, which it implemented in early 1956 (Moulian, 1982). Given the substantial number of ministerial changes, analyzing them cabinet by cabinet does not make much sense. For this reason, I will only mention a few examples that account for this diversity. Ibáñez formed his second cabinet in April 1953. It was presided by his son-in-­ law, Osvaldo Koch, in the Ministry of the Interior. The Partido Agrario Laborista had three ministries, while the Popular Socialist Party, the Partido Nacional Cristiano, and the Partido Democrático del Pueblo had one each. Several independents also took office. Differences over the presidential style prompted two ministers to resign 14 days after the cabinet was formed (Benavente, 1984). Lastly, the Ministry of Mining was created, which was led by Clodomiro Almeyda of the Popular Socialist Party, who had previously served in the Labor Ministry. Cabinets changed at a frenetic pace, probably conditioned by deterioration of the economy and the presidential style. For example, Ibáñez appointed his fourth cabinet in March 1954, where the Partido Agrario Laborista had a greater presence. Ibáñez formed his ninth cabinet 2 years later, in June 1956, revealing the distance that was created with the political forces that had supported him initially, as it was mostly composed of independents. Numerous active-duty military officers paraded through the ministries, performing government duties as if they were barracks assignments. Ibáñez’s great discretionary criteria in the appointment of ministers explains how his personal physician, Raúl Barrios, was appointed health minister (Benavente, 2003). The events described confirm the differences between parliamentary and presidential systems described by Rodríguez (2011), who argues that ministers last less in the latter and that it is common for people without prior political experience to take office. As can be seen in Table 4.6, there were more independents in Ibáñez’s government than party members. In addition, the party members came from diverse tendencies. For example, there are the personalist ones like the Movimiento Republicano, a party that existed solely to bring together independent Ibáñez supporters, corporativists, socialists, and liberals, in short, almost the entire political spectrum, except the Falange Nacional and the communists, who were outlawed. Toward the end of the government, the traditional political forces tended to reorganize and regain their places in the political system. The results of the 1957 legislative election confirm this. The parties returned to the same axis of competition and structure prior to Ibáñez’s arrival. A multiparty system was recovered whose line of separation was the division between capital and labor, following Scully’s (1992) argument. As Gamboa (2011) points out, the leftist parties are on the side related to labor, especially the Socialist and the Communist Parties, which, thanks to the Damned Act, managed certain approaches that were transformed into political collaboration in the medium term (Huneeus, 2009). The Partido Radical occupied the political center, oscillating between liberal and leftist tendencies. Meanwhile, two parties exercised leadership on the right, on the side of capital: The Partido Conservador and the Partido Liberal. Between them, these parties concentrated over

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Table 4.6  Party membership of Ibáñez’s ministers (1952–1958)

Nonpartisan Movimiento Republicano Agrario Laborista Conservador Democrático de Chile Democrático del Pueblo Femenino de Chile Liberal Radical Popular socialist Socialist Party of Chile Agrario Laborista Recuperacionista Nacional Cristiano No information

Frequency 78 26 6 6 4 3 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 4

% 57.4 19.1 4.4 4.4 2.9 2.2 1.5 1.5 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 2.9

Source: By author based on ministers’ data

70% of the vote in the elections held between 1937 and 1949 (Gamboa, 2011). In short, Ibáñism was unable to consolidate itself and was an electoral failure. The big difference between 1957 and 1952 is the strength of the Falange Nacional, which was consolidated as an important party. An important milestone was Eduardo Frei’s election to the Senate for Santiago as the most-voted candidate nationally. The parties Social Cristiano and Falange Nacional merged in 1958 to create the Christian Democratic Party. The party grew quickly and became one of the most important ones in the political system, electing three presidents: Eduardo Frei Montalva (1964), Patricio Aylwin (1990), and Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle (1994). The late 1950s are remembered as a time when the vices of electoral competition were eliminated, giving way to a process of real democratization of the political system. As Gamboa (2011) notes, different unallied parties sought to increase their electoral possibilities in 1958, which is why they revived an old Single Voter’s Credential bill. Implementing a single and universal ballot paper prevented bribery, as the state began to print the ballots, not the parties. In addition, the ballot started to be handed out at the moment of voting and could not be placed in an envelope. This change sought to make the right lose electoral strength in rural areas, where landowners controlled their workers’ votes. In this context, one can state that the vote has only truly been secret in Chile since 1958. The governments that follow this important change tend to be considered those of global planning or major transformations  (Góngora, 2006). We shall see how the cabinet configuration process developed in this new political scenario in the pages that follow.

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4.3  Cabinets in Periods of Transformation Jorge Alessandri Rodríguez, the former minister of finance under González Videla and the son of former President Arturo Alessandri, in addition to being former president of the Confederation of Production and Commerce (CPC), the main association of the Chilean business class, was elected president of the country in 1958. Alessandri Rodríguez took office after being confirmed by Congress, as he failed to obtain the percentage of votes needed for a direct victory. Salvador Allende came in second place and the Christian Democratic candidate Eduardo Frei came third. Alessandri’s campaign had promised a government of technicians without interference from the parties, despite being elected with the support of the Partido Liberal and the Partido Conservador Unido (Gamboa, 2011). Thus, it comes as no surprise that his first cabinet was known as the government of “managers,” as it was exclusively composed of independents. At the same time, if we follow King and Riddlesperger (2012), the decision to appoint technical people to run ministries is theoretically consistent with the priorities that Alessandri sought to impose in his government and the work style he hoped to develop. This first cabinet lasted for 2 years. The structure was then modified to deal with the legislative elections and two liberals and a conservative were included. The inclusion of these politicians did not alter the eminently technical and nonpartisan composition of the cabinet.6 The right fared poorly in the legislative election. The Christian Democratic Party on the one hand and the socialists and communists on the other continued their electoral rise. The growth of these two sectors was at the expense of the traditional right—conservatives and liberals—and the radicals. The new legislative scenario was not encouraging for the government. As a way out of the problem, Alessandri had to give up his the idea of an independent government and invited the Partido Radical to join the cabinet (Collier & Sater, 1999). Thus, Alessandri organized his first political cabinet, though it was presided by an independent, Sótero del Río. The results of the 1963 local elections intensified the government’s problems. The parties in the Frente Democrático, the name given to the coalition of liberals, conservatives, and radicals, suffered a great defeat. For its part, the Christian Democratic Party became the most-voted party in the country (Collier & Sater, 1999). With these results, the coalitions began the process of selecting presidential candidates for the next year’s election. The rightwing coalition nominated Julio Durán of the Partido Radical as its candidate. The fact that the representative of the right was a radical was a clear sign of the changes in Chilean politics. Thus, the radicals completed their transition from the center to the right. For its part, the traditional right confirmed that it was no longer a competitive option, at least in this configuration of liberals and conservatives separately. The left, organized under the

6  It is interesting to note that many of these nonpartisan people had many political ties and close connections to the parties, creating a sort of “soft partisanship,” or people who are part of a party’s sphere without being members. This is a phenomenon that needs further study (see first chapter of Camerlo & Martínez-Gallardo, 2018) to better define the ways of engaging in politics.

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Frente de Acción Popular, promoted the candidacy of Salvador Allende, and the Christian Democratic Party once again campaigned with Eduardo Frei. The government’s problems continued, and in September, the lack of response to a health workers’ strike prompted the Partido Radical to withdraw its ministers from the government. However, it should be stressed that they only withdrew from the cabinet, as they remained part of the Frente Democrático and continued to support the president from Congress. Alessandri then formed his fourth and last cabinet, relying mainly on independents. Sótero del Río continued in the Ministry of the Interior, Julio Phillippi was appointed to Foreign Relations, Luis Mackenna in Finance, Enrique Ortúzar in Justice, and Ernesto Pinto in Public Works. With these appointments Alessandri named a total of 49 ministers, all men and mostly nonpartisan (69%) with scant congressional experience. Technocrats’ influence spread along with the expansion of the state after the Alessandri government. As Silva (2006) notes, technocrats increased their presence on all levels of the state after the creation of new agencies like the Agrarian Reform Corporation (CORA), the Planning Office (ODEPLAN), and the administrative structure that arose from the nationalization of copper in the late 1960s. This was more evident when the Pinochet dictatorship began transforming the public apparatus. This demonstrates the importance of appointing ministers with technical expertise for state ministries and the government to perform as expected, as described by Huber and Martínez-Gallardo (2008). The result of the 1964 presidential election was marked by the holding of a senatorial by-election to fill the seat left open with the death of the representative from Curicó. Given that it was a traditionally conservative area, the ruling coalition saw this election as a preamble to the presidential election. For this reason, when the leftist candidate won the seat—the son of the late senator—it created a problem for the government. Faced with an eventual presidential election defeat, the Frente Democrático broke up and the Partido Conservador and Partido Liberal withdrew their support for Durán, calling on their members to vote for Frei’s candidacy. Thus, Eduardo Frei won with a historic 56% of the vote. Cabinets were mostly composed of members of the Christian Democratic Party. The few independents were close to the party, for example, Sergio Molina in Finance, Eduardo Simián in Mining, and Ramón Valdivieso Delaunay in Health. The only member of another party was minister of land and colonization Víctor González Maertens of the Partido Democrático Nacional. Six months after coming to power and considering the outcome of the presidential elections, the president and the Christian Democratic Party went into the legislative election under the slogan of “a Congress for Frei.” They obtained 43.6% of the vote, which gave the party a majority in the lower house with 82 deputies (Collier & Sater, 1999). This result meant that the president and his party did not need coalitions to implement their government program. With this, the parties lost their capacity to block the government in Congress and the executive gained autonomy. At the same time, the scenario described is consistent with the literature, which notes the strength that presidents have to unilaterally form their cabinets thanks to the legislative backing of their parties (Amorim Neto, 2006; Camerlo & Martínez-Gallardo,

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2018). With a majority in Congress and a party seeking to develop an ambitious reform program, the Frei government did not face major management problems. His program prioritized four areas: popular promotion, education and welfare, rural sectors, and copper. Only 40 cabinet appointments were made in his 6 years of government. They fell to a total of 30 people, as several of them were dual ministers or held several ministries during the presidential term. Considering the government’s reformist nature, it is striking that there were no women in the cabinets. Frei’s ministers were mostly politicians, with and without experience in Congress. The five cabinet technocrats in the cabinet held technical ministries such as Finance, Public Works, and Housing.7 The most critical areas for the government were run by politicians with congressional experience. For example, Education was run by two academics with experience in the area and a political background: Juan Gómez and Máximo Pacheco. This area constituted one of the pillars of the government and entailed increasing public spending from 15 to 20%, the construction of approximately 3000 new schools and achieving 95% primary school coverage (Collier & Sater, 1999). Something similar happened with issues related to the rural sector and mining. In the latter, the government implemented what became known as the Chilenization of large-scale copper mining. The Ministry of Mining, first under the Christian democratic mine engineer Eduardo Simián and then the experienced attorney and former agrarian minister Alejandro Hales, at the time an independent, negotiated CODELCO’s purchase of 51% of operations of the El Teniente (1967), Chuquicamata, and El Salvador (1969) mines. These purchases were negotiated and developed progressively to avoid upsetting economic balances (Meller, 1996). The Christian Democratic government embarked on a series of reforms that were implemented gradually to avoid harming macroeconomic stability, because there was a generalized perception that the structural reforms could lead to imbalances in the short term (Huneeus & Couso, 2016; Meller, 1996). The gradualism of the reforms created several internal problems in the ruling party, especially discontent among the members8 who longed for deeper reforms, especially the agrarian reform (Moulian, 1993).9 After the legislative election, the situation in the two traditional rightwing parties became exceedingly difficult as they had scant congressional representation. To  The Ministry of Housing was created in 1966, under Modesto Collados.  In 1969, toward the end of the government, these members left the party to form the Movimiento de Acción Popular (MAPU). A second group of members left the party in 1971 and formed the Christian Left. These two movements were important as before leaving the Christian Democratic Party they had led the internal opposition and on various occasions had pressured Frei to remove the more conservative ministers from the cabinet. Frei never yielded to pressure from these sectors, which increased the discontent among dissidents (see Hormazábal, 2003). 9  Regarding agriculture, the agronomist and founder of the Christian Democracy Hugo Trivelli was minister throughout the entire government and led the agrarian reform. This reform, one of the most important in Chilean history, allowed and promoted peasant unionization. The Agrarian Reform Corporation expropriated about 1400 agricultural properties, 3.5 million hectares, and over 400 unions were organized with over 100,000 peasants (Collier & Sater, 1999). 7 8

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deal with the new political reality, the Partido Liberal and Partido Conservador merged in 1966, giving life to the Partido Nacional. As Arellano (2009) notes, the union between the two groups sought to develop a strong position that was able to deal with the transformation processes underway in Chilean society. The new party was led by Sergio Onofre Jarpa and had just five senators and nine deputies. The Chilean left’s ideological positions became more extreme during this period (see Ortega, 2008; Pérez, 2019). Despite the revolutionary rhetoric, the left never ceased to participate in municipal, legislative, and presidential elections. In fact, the electoral path was important to the Chilean left and in this way the government suffered an electoral slump and leftist parties obtained positive results in the 1967 local elections, which the Socialist Party, the Christian Democratic Party, the Partido Radical, the Communist Party, the Partido Nacional, and the Partido Democrático Nacional participated in (Collier & Sater, 1999). This result was the preamble to a complex legislative election for the government, prompting Frei to reshuffle his ministerial cabinet after the local elections. The changes in government did not have major effects on the March 1969 legislative election. The Christian Democratic Party lost a considerable share of its vote and became the second largest political force after the Partido Nacional. The electoral rise of the Partido Nacional came in a context in which they appealed to social order and property rights. Thus they managed to obtain the support of middle class sectors and reached a new electorate (Correa, 2004). On the other hand, the Communist Party installed itself as the foremost electoral force in the left (Collier & Sater, 1999). The election results clearly organized the parties into three sectors: the right, with the Partido Nacional and the Partido Radical; the center, with the Christian Democratic Party; and the left with the Socialist and Communist parties. This context of polarization generated powerful tensions within some parties. For example, the Partido Radical and the Christian Democratic Party suffered splits. This can be interpreted as the end of the coexistence between opposing ideological tendencies. The radicals’ division in 1969 led to the creation of two parties: the rightwing Democracia Radical and the leftist Partido Radical. In the division of the Christian Democracy, the leftist sectors first formed the MAPU (1969) and then the Christian Left (1971). The political system tended toward atomization with the creation of new parties. Each bloc distanced itself ideologically to differentiate itself. These centrifugal movements were reinforced by the existence of organizations that pressured parties and coalitions from outside the system to break relations with the other sectors. The extra-system actors took on an organic operation, such as the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria, or sporadic like the military uprisings that put pressure on the right. The system’s polarization was self-evident in the 1970 presidential election. The political system seemed to have shifted to the left, but unlike in 1964, the right was now in a process of recovery and ready to compete (Yocelevzky, 2002). Three political blocs competed in the 1970 presidential election: the right with Jorge Alessandri, endorsed by the Partido Nacional and the Partido Democracia Radical; Radomiro

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Tomic of the Christian Democracy symbolized the continuation of the process Frei began in 1964, accompanied by a deepening of the structural changes; and lastly was the Unidad Popular with Salvador Allende. This coalition of the Socialist Party, the Partido Radical, the Communist Party, Acción Popular Independiente, the Social Democratic Party, and MAPU sought the implementation of a peaceful and pluralistic socialist revolution. The result of this historic election can be summarized in Allende’s victory by a relative majority. The Congressional Plenary was constitutionally tasked with choosing between the two candidates who obtained the most votes. Many rightwing sectors saw the possibility that the Christian Democracy might support Alessandri to avoid a Marxist government. Alessandri made a public statement affirming that if elected president by the Congressional Plenary he would immediately resign, prompting a new presidential election (Benavente, 2003). The Christian Democracy legislators did not heed Alessandri’s offer and ratified Allende, who together with the Unidad Popular signed an agreement known as the Statute of Constitutional Guarantees. The demand for this agreement was a clear sign of what the complex relationship between the opposition and the Allende government would be like. On 3 November 1970, Salvador Allende was sworn in as President of the Republic with a cabinet where room was made for all parties in the Unidad Popular. The socialists, communists, and the Partido Radical had three ministers each. The Social Democratic Party received two ministries. The party Acción Popular Independiente received just one, as did the MAPU. There was also one independent. One novelty in Allende’s first cabinet was that it included three workers: Zorrilla in Finance, Barraza in Public Works, and Cortés in Housing. Following Amorim Neto’s (2006) arguments, these appointments to state ministries can be read in the code of calculated support, while at the same time representing the president’s hallmark. The municipal elections in April 1971 were positive for the Socialist Party, which obtained 22% of the vote. The Christian Democratic Party and the Partido Nacional stagnated electorally. For its part, the Partido Radical lost about 100,000 votes because of its division in May 1969. This scenario turned the Unidad Popular into a political majority (Collier & Sater, 1999). The government interpreted the municipal election victory as an approval of the government and chose to accelerate its economic program (Collier & Sater, 1999). As Meller (1996) points out, according to the Unidad Popular’s analysis, the Chilean economy had four problems that needed to be resolved: a practically monopolistic market concentration (248 companies controlled all sectors), external dependence on mining resources, and its oligarchic and capitalist characteristics. The Allende administration’s economic policy produced positive results in its first year. The economy experienced an unprecedented boom in 1971 (Meller, 1996). Salaries rose by 22.1%, inflation fell from 36% to 22%, growth reached 8%, and unemployment fell from 5.7% to 3.8% (Meller, 1996). These indicators were supported by price controls and state participation in various levels of productive processes through the expropriation and intervention of companies (Meller, 1996). The government also achieved the nationalization of copper, gaining control over

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large-scale mining. All these measures in the first year were problems that caused a profound economic crisis. For example, productivity fell by 20% after the nationalization of copper due to the lack of specialists, the recruitment of unskilled personnel and union conflicts (Collier & Sater, 1999). After a good first year, the economic situation deteriorated significantly. For example, inflation during the 3 years of the Allende government rose from 36% to 606.10%, revealing a massive crisis. Legal and illegal strikes intensified and totaled 3037  in 1972. In addition, shortages in staple products caused major social and sectoral protests (Arellano et al., 2018). The sectoral stoppages and the Empty Pot Marches called by the right and sectoral leaders reflected a great social upheaval. The social turmoil increased and the economic indicators deteriorated. At the same time, there was an increase in ministerial turnover. Constitutional accusations were the instrument the opposition used to discredit the government, and they entailed a constant change of ministers. Allende appointed 74 ministers in his 3 years in power. As can be seen in Table 4.7, the ministries with the highest turnover were Interior and Mining. Ministers spent an average of 209 days in office, or close to 7 months. Following Best (1981), one point worth highlighting is that cabinet turnover in this government can be theoretically interpreted as Allende’s search to improve management in state ministries. One thing that explains the number of parties in the cabinet (see Table 4.8) was the division of certain ruling coalition parties. For example, the Partido Radical split and a group of leaders started the Partido Izquierda Radical. Something similar happened with the MAPU, which split with the creation of MAPU Obrero y Campesino Table 4.7  Number of ministers per ministry 1970–1973 Ministry Interior Mining Defense Public works and transport Housing and urbanism Agriculture Economy, development, and reconstruction Public education Finance Justice Public health Labor and social security Foreign relations Lands and colonization National Planning Office

Number of ministers 9 8 6 6 6 5 5 5 5 4 4 4 3 3 1

Source: By author based on ministers’ data

% 12.2 10.8 8.1 8.1 8.1 6.8 6.8 6.8 6.8 5.4 5.4 5.4 4.1 4.1 1.4

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Table 4.8  Parties represented in cabinets of the Unidad Popular (1970–1973) Party Frequency Socialist Party of Chile 24 Nonpartisan 14 Radical 12 Chilean Communist Party 10 Christian left 3 Mov. Acción popular Unitaria 3 Social democratic 3 Acción popular Independiente 2 Izquierda radical 2 Mov. Acción popular Unitaria 1 OC 74

% 32.4 18.9 16.2 13.5 4.1 4.1 4.1 2.7 2.7 1.4 100

Source: By author based on ministers’ data

(MAPU OC). As these parties split, the leaders of each one pressured the Unidad Popular leadership and the government to remove dissident ministers. Similarly, when the parties divided, the new organizations also wanted a share of power. For example, the president included the Partido de Izquierda Radical in the cabinet with two ministers in late January 1971. The results of the 1973 legislative election could be considered surprising given the level of political turmoil and mobilization. The Unidad Popular government received 45% of the vote. That is, a sort of tie between the opposition and the government was maintained. The opposition failed to obtain the two-thirds majority needed to dismiss the president and the executive failed to obtain a majority (Benavente, 2003). In sum, the legislative elections did not clarify the political outlook. According to Valenzuela (1995), the result gave renewed drive to the forces that were anxious to accelerate on the process of confrontation. President Allende appointed members of the military to his cabinet to face the electoral process with calm and in consideration of the agitated atmosphere in the country. This was the first of several times that Allende summoned members of the Armed Forces to his cabinet in an attempt to show that the country was united. The number of military officers appointed to run state ministries can be seen from the data in Table 4.9. After the elections, the civic-military cabinet terminated its functions and Allende returned to governing with a civilian cabinet. Thus, the ministerial turnover and diverse partisanship on the part of ministers that can be seen for this government are consistent with some of the arguments in the literature. In this regard, the formateur’s need to maintain the coalition can be pointed out, as according to Indridason and Bowler (2013) the president is expected to be capable of coordinating parties’ aspirations and expected rewards. Another theoretical matter to highlight from the ministerial movements in Allende’s administration is that many of his appointments were made strategically to deal with

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Table 4.9  Professions of Allende’s ministers (1970–1973) Ministers’ profession Attorneys Military officers Engineers Without profession Doctors Teacher (includes university professors) Businesspeople (includes agricultural entrepreneur) Agronomists and veterinarians Economists (includes financial experts) Sociologists and political scientists Journalist (includes reporters) No information

Frequency 24 12 11 9 5 4

% 32.4 16.2 14.9 12.2 6.8 5.4

3

4.1

2 1

2.7 1.4

1

1.4

1 1

1.4 1.4

Source: By author based on ministers’ data

unpredictable external shocks. This is consistent with the studies by Martínez-­ Gallardo (2012) and Camerlo and Pérez-Liñan (2015). President Allende appointed what would be his last cabinet on 28 August. The cabinet was presided by the socialist Carlos Briones in the Ministry of the Interior. The military ministers were Rear Admiral Daniel Arellano in Finance, Air Force General Humberto Magliochetti in Public Works, General Rolando González in Mining, and Carabineros General José Sepúlveda in Lands. The socialist Orlando Letelier took over in Defense and the radical Mario Lagos in Health. All remaining ministers remained in office. The new cabinet was incapable of resolving the generalized sectoral strike. Pressure from political actors for Allende to leave office increased. It was in this climate of instability, amid rumors that Allende would call a plebiscite to consult on his continuity, that the 11 September 1973 coup was staged.

4.4  Cabinets After the Military Regime The Chilean dictatorship between 1973 and 1990 is not part of this book’s analysis. However, the economic and institutional reforms that were implemented during this time are of interest to understand some of the dynamics in the governments that came after the 1988 plebiscite. In this context, it should be noted that the Pinochet regime transformed the economy, implementing the strict application of neoliberal recipes starting in the late 1970s (Maillet, 2015b). In addition, it systematically violated human rights and forcibly introduced structural transformations in the country (see Huneeus, 2000).

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Following the experience of other countries in the region, one of the mechanisms the dictatorship used to validate itself was to draft a constitution. Though a plebiscite was held on 11 September 1980 to ratify the Constitution, the electoral event failed to fulfill the minimum criteria to give credibility to the results. For example, there were no electoral rolls or guarantees to allow the Reject option to express itself freely (see Fuentes (2013). The 1980 Constitution, still in force,10 established a citizen consultation to decide whether the military would remain in power. Thus, a process with minimum guarantees to hold the election was needed to fulfill the consultation. For this reason, the Electoral Service re-registered citizens and once again controlled an important part of the voting process. In this context, the opposition articulated itself under a coalition (Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia) composed of parties and movements that were against Pinochet and his dictatorship. The heterogeneous group ranged from Christian Democrats to socialists. That is, the alliance included political parties and leaders that had been opponents in the 1960s and the 1970s (Dávila, 2021; Olivares et al., 2015). This scenario marked a change in era, as it was the first time since the Christian Democracy was founded in 1958 that it formed a coalition with the left (Garrido & Navia, 2005). The main groups and parties that created the pact were the Christian Democracy, the Almeyda Socialist Party, the Movimiento Acción Popular Unitario (MAPU), the Movimiento Acción Popular Unitario Obrero Campesino (MAPU OC), the Partido Radical Luengo, the Partido Radical Silva Cimma, the Christian Left, the Christian Democracy, the Núñez Socialist Party, the Partido Democrático Nacional (PADENA), the Humanist Party, the Popular Socialist Union (USOPO), the Mandujano Socialist Party, the Historical Socialist Party, and the Partido Acción de Centro (Ortega Frei, 1992).11 In addition, some socialist leaders created an instrumental party to overcome the existing legal restriction against the formation of a socialist party and thus the Partido por la Democracia was created, which was also part of the coalition (Garrido & Navia, 2005). The articulation of all these political organizations was undertaken with the aim of achieving two main objectives: first, to put an end to the authoritarian bureaucratic regime, and second, to offer a stable coalition that offered a political alternative for the democratic transition (Avendaño, 2010b). The first of these objectives was achieved in October 1988 with the No option’s victory in the plebiscite, determining that the military would not continue in power. The second objective was achieved in three stages: first, in negotiations with the military for the constitutional

 This book was completed as the Constitutional Convention elected to replace the 1980 constitution was beginning its work. On the processes that triggered the end of the Constitution, I recommend Navarrete and Tricot (2021). 11  Since many of these parties reorganized in exile, they had different factions operating in different countries. When this happened, each faction was identified by the surname of its leader. 10

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reforms of 1989, next with the selection of a single presidential candidate, and, lastly, with its victory in the presidential and legislative elections. After losing the October 1988 plebiscite, the supporters of the regime that ruled Chile for 17 years had scant chances of winning the 1989 presidential election. For this reason, Renovación Nacional, the heir of the Partido Nacional and a civilian pillar of the Pinochet regime, promoted constitutional reforms to increase political pluralism and adapt certain issues that could be controversial, such as the state of emergency, for example. After months of negotiation between the Concertación and the government, a package of reforms was agreed that eliminated certain authoritarian ingredients in the Constitution. However, several elements remained that would limit democratic governments in the years to come. According to Garretón (Garretón, 1994; see also Garretón & Garretón, 2010), these elements operated as authoritarian enclaves of the institutional type. The institutional enclaves, or mechanisms-enclaves, created an incomplete democracy that has lasted to this day. At the same time, these institutional limitations would make many of the social and economic reforms that were expected of the governments exceedingly difficult once the regime transition was completed (Huneeus, 2014; Huneeus & Cuevas, 2013). The enclaves described included limits to the citizens’ will and included the naming of designated senators and senators for life, the impossibility of making changes to the Constitution, an electoral system that produced a tie between the two largest political forces, and complex quorums difficult to fulfill in Congress to make changes to laws and important institutions (Garretón & Garretón, 2010). The new democracy operated with these limitations for many years and only in 2021 did the process of changing Pinochet’s Constitution begin and, with it, the definitive elimination of all authoritarian legacies (see Navarrete & Tricot, 2021; Luna 2021). Thus, considering this background, in the following pages we will review cabinet formation in the Chilean democratic governments of post-authoritarian regime.

4.5  From the Cabinets of the Concertación to Piñera After the 1988 plebiscite victory, the Concertación decided to maintain the alliance and turn the pact into an electoral coalition to face the 1989 presidential and legislative elections. Thus, this pact of political organizations, now transformed into a coalition, managed to win the elections and extend its governments until 2010, with electoral victories in 1994, 1999, and 2005 (Olivares et al., 2015). As described, it can be considered the most stable political coalition in Chilean history. The Concertación achieved discipline in the coalition during its four governments (Dávila, 2021; González-Bustamante & Olivares, 2016; Quiroga & Ensignia, 2010; Varas, 2012). In contrast to what happened before 1973, none of the parties represented in the cabinet withdrew from the government. For example, the Humanist Party had no ministers and withdrew from the coalition in 1994, once the first coalition government had ended.

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With all the elements described, one cannot fail to ask how the coalition’s stability can be explained. There is consensus in pointing out that much of this is because presidents were capable of maintaining internal balances when it came to making appointments in the state apparatus. Starting in the Aylwin government, the coalition developed a series of informal agreements that ensured balance among its members, respecting the principle of proportionality based on each one’s electoral size. In other words, the assignment of quotas, transversality, and proportionality were the axes of the coalition’s internal stability (Siavelis, 2001, 2006). These rules also applied to cabinet formation (Avendaño & Dávila, 2012; Dávila et al., 2013; González-Bustamante & Olivares, 2015, 2016; Siavelis, 2013; Siavelis & Galván, 2015). In the beginning of democratic governments, the fear of repeating the experience of the Unidad Popular marked the decision-making process (Dávila, 2021). To prevent the president from having problems, the parties in the Concertación acknowledged the existence of a suprapartisan authority that was in the executive branch and to which they subordinated their interests and opinions (Boeninger, 2007). Therefore, the cabinets of this political coalition are in line with the literature that discusses the need for balance between formal and informal structures for cabinets to work (González-Bustamante & Olivares, 2016). According to Altman (2008: 269), the rule the four Concertación governments followed to maintain unity was proportionality, “which at times approached perfect mathematical proportions.” Along similar lines, Rehren (1993) says that the stability achieved by the first Concertación government can be explained by the existence of informal rules in the appointment of ministers. These rules are horizontal integration, or each minister having a “colleague belonging to another party in the Concertación” (Rehren, 1993: 71) and for the most important ministries—that is, the political ones—to be run by members of the of the president’s party (Rehren, 1993). This is why the analysis below takes elements of continuity and change between the four Concertación governments, starting with the first coalition government under the Christian Democrat Patricio Aylwin, before contrasting them with the Coalición por el Cambio government. Due to the characteristics of the transition and the authoritarian enclaves, in addition to the fear that the military might stage another coup, the first Concertación government was an administration that promoted consensus building and stability. This was reflected in the presidential style and leadership. For example, a working group composed of the president, the Ministry General Secretariat of the Presidency (SEGPRES), the Ministry General Secretariat of Government (SEGEGOB), and the Ministry of Finance was created to coordinate political issues—national as well as in the coalition—and the functioning of the economy. This group operated as support for the president, who did not have a team of direct advisers (Egaña & Chateau, 2011). For the reasons already mentioned, Aylwin had the clear intention to create a cross-cutting work team with political experience. In addition, they were expected to be leaders in their respective parties, either in their institutional structures or in the diverse internal factions of those parties. All of this was aimed at achieving high

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levels of governance within the coalition. It worked: the economy performed strongly; there were political stability and a climate of social peace despite the inherent tensions of a transition to democracy. The elements outlined here contributed positively to the institutionalization of the ruling coalition (González-­ Bustamante & Olivares, 2018). Regarding the distribution of ministries during the first Concertación government, only parties that managed to elect representatives in the 1989 legislative election were represented in the cabinet. Aylwin managed to form a homogeneous and pluralistic team that was representative of the entire coalition (Garrido, 2003). The distribution by party was as follows: 41% for the president’s party, the Christian Democracy, 26% for the Socialist Party, 15% for the Partido por la Democracia, 11% nonpartisan and 7% for the radicals. In theoretical terms, the scenario described is in line with the arguments put forth by Indridason and Bowler, who comment on the importance of coordinating relations between parties and ministers. A total of 27 ministers were appointed during the entire Aylwin government, of whom just one was a woman, the head of the National Women’s Service. Ministers spent an average of 1125 days in office or close to 37 months. These are remarkable numbers, as they indicate that the government had almost no turnover. Regarding the ministers’ profiles, it is important to note that 77% were politicians without legislative experience. The rest included one nonpartisan minister, Etchegaray in Public Works, and two persons with technical credentials: Edgardo Boeninger and Carlos Hurtado. Lastly, three ministers had been in Congress before: Julio Montt, Enrique Krauss, and Juan Hamilton. Aylwin’s government set the tone for the administrations that followed. As Farías and Toro point out, “from the beginning of the transition, Concertación governments privileged the combination of stable macroeconomic indicators and poverty reduction” (Farias & Toro, 2020: 249). Economic growth reached 6% per year in this period; unemployment fell to historic lows, reaching 4%, and poverty was drastically reduced from 38.6% in 1990 to 27.5% in 1994 (Navia, 2005). The government’s political stability and the economic growth meant that the coalition’s continuity was practically assured as the end of government approached (Olivares et al., 2015). The election process began with the selection of the presidential candidates for each bloc. In the Concertación, this meant ratifying its two poles. The left, composed of the Partido por la Democracia, the Socialist Party, the Partido Radical, and the Social Democratic Party, supported the candidacy of Ricardo Lagos. On the other hand, the center of the coalition led by the Christian Democracy presented the candidacy of Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, former President Eduardo Frei Montalva’s son. Frei Ruiz-Tagle ultimately won the primary election. He was then elected president with 58% of the vote, while the rightwing candidate Arturo Alessandri Besa, grandson of President Arturo Alessandri Palma and nephew of President Jorge Alessandri Rodríguez, received just 24%. In the congressional elections, the Concertación received 55.4% of the vote, compared to 36.68% for the right. However, the coalition’s electoral success was not homogeneous. For example, the Partido Radical and the Social Democratic Party (SD) received very few votes, which led them to merge into a single party,

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forming the Partido Radical Social Demócrata. The party Alianza del Centro also fared poorly but instead of merging with another party began a process of collecting signatures to re-enroll. It reorganized several times and under different names, including the Partido Liberal. The fact is that this political organization did not gain much traction in the coalition and most of its members relocated to the Christian Democracy and the Partido por la Democracia. Thus, with the creation of the Partido Radical Social Demócrata, the Concertación was consolidated as a four-party coalition. Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle sought to maintain a good relationship with the parties and to prevent the particular interests of each group from prevailing over the interests of the coalition and therefore appointed party leaders to ministries (Otano, 2006). These leaders were Genaro Arriagada (Christian Democracy) as Secretary General of the Presidency and Victor Manuel Rebolledo (Partido por la Democracia) in the General Secretariat of the Government; Germán Correa (Socialist Party) in the Ministry of the Interior, and Luis Maira (Socialist Party) in the Ministry of Development and Planning. The strategy was a failure, and they were replaced 5  months into the government. According to Garretón (2003), the fact that Frei appointed party leaders to ministries caused an excessive politicization of the cabinet, which hindered decision-making. In fact, it only lasted until September (González-Bustamante & Olivares, 2016, 2018). Frei’s new cabinet was made up of a sort of presidential iron circle (Garrido, 2003). This new group of ministers was less cross-cutting, as it was mostly composed of members of the president’s party who also had two very specific traits. On the one hand, the new ministers had a party history alongside Frei or had worked in the government of his father, Eduardo Frei Montalva (Dávila et al., 2013). The strategy followed by the president during this period is theoretically consistent with what Elgie (2020) says regarding the importance presidents assign to surrounding themselves with a close circle to avoid conflicts within the government. When the party membership of the 54 ministers appointed by Frei is analyzed, one finds that 50% were members of the Christian Democracy, 18.5% the Socialist Party, 18.5% the Partido por la Democracia, and 5.6% were from the Partido Radical. Nonpartisan ministers represented 7.4%. As in the government of Frei Montalva, this latter group included the presence of independents who were close to a party, such as ministers Josefina Bilbao and Sergio Henríquez. The data mentioned above only confirms the calculations that, according to Amorim Neto (2006), presidents make to balance the number of ministries with the seats that the coalition members hold in the legislature. Though only three women served as ministers, this could be considered a significant step forward when compared to all the other governments we have analyzed so far. Never before had so many women served in cabinets. Of the three women, two were members of the Christian Democratic party with extensive political background: Soledad Alvear in Justice and Adriana del Piano in National Property. The third was an independent minister close to the Christian Democracy: Josefina Bilbao in the National Women’s Service.

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The Frei government crystallized a discourse focused on the modernization of the state and public administration, which has led some analysts to assume that it was a government with a greater preponderance of technical criteria over political ones (Avendaño, 2010a). However, as Dávila (2021) highlights, Pinochet’s arrest in London helped to leave behind the idea of an exclusively technical government and gave the politicians in his cabinet a key role to play in the agenda. However, the data does not necessarily support these claims when we analyze the cabinet profiles, because political ministers account for 85.2% of the total, technocrats correspond to just 3.7%, and technopols 11.1%. So, if most decision-makers were politicians, how can one explain why the literature focused on the Chilean case, such as Avendaño (2010a) and Dávila (2021), alleges an increase in technocracy during that time? The response could be related to pending lines of research on expert knowledge in Chile, the development of markets, and neoliberal models (Maillet, 2015a, b; Maillet et al., 2016). The excessively technical approach associated with compliance with indicators helped distance citizens from the ruling coalition. As Silva points out (2006), people got tired of the technocratic, cold, colorless discourse, which reached its peak under the government of Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle. According to Hidalgo (2011), the excessive emphasis on modernization over the political agenda was, to some extent, a source of disappointment for the members the Concertación. The debate was between those who were pleased with the alliance’s works and those who engaged in self-flagellation over everything that had not been achieved (Tironi & Agüero, 1999). The internal scenario was complicated by the 1997 legislative elections, in which the Christian Democracy fell sharply from 27.12% to 12.55%. The consequences of the 1998 financial crisis were added to this. In this troubled environment, at the end of Frei’s government the Concertación held open primary elections—that is, not just for party members—to define a single candidate. The primary election confronted two important political actors in this coalition. On the one hand was Andrés Zaldívar, a senator and historical leader of the PDC, as well as being a former minister of Frei Montalva’s, while on the other was Ricardo Lagos, leader of the leftist wing of the Concertación and who was highly popular for his work in the ministries of Education and Public Works during the Aylwin and Frei governments, respectively. The primary election results gave Lagos the nomination with over 70% of the vote (Olivares, 2018). Despite the result against Zaldívar and Lagos’s popularity, the presidential election was unexpectedly close. The distance between the two most voted candidates was just 31,000 votes in Lagos’s favor.12 A presidential runoff election was held for the first time in the country’s history, in which Ricardo Lagos and Joaquín Lavín, the candidate of the right, faced off. Lagos won with 51.3% of preferences. Some academics have argued that the election result was marked by Frei’s difficulties

 The result of the first round was as follows: Arturo Frei Bolívar (0.38%); Sara Larraín (0.44%); Tomás Hirsch 0.51%); Gladys Marín (3.19%); Joaquín Lavín (47.51); Ricardo Lagos (47.95%).

12

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dealing with the economic crisis (Navia & Joignant, 2000). Another alleged factor was the fact that Lagos, as someone from the left, raised fears in some sectors of society (see Funk, 2006). That is why it came as no surprise that Lagos gave the DC 49% of the appointments in his cabinets. The remaining ones were distributed as follows: 20.8% for the Socialist Party and 18.9% for the Partido por la Democracia. Nonpartisan ministers represented 7.5% and radicals just 3.8% (see González-­ Bustamante & Olivares, 2016). Therefore, following the theoretical arguments of Best (1981), Lagos’s strategy when appointing ministers was to generate a climate of greater legitimacy. However, his government had to overcome problems, among which the suspicions of political corruption due to the allegations of bribery against former Transport Undersecretary Patricio Tombolini in 2001 stand out. In addition to this was the formal accusation of Public Works Minister Carlos Cruz in the so-called MOP-Gate case in 2003, and his questioned relations with economic power groups (González-Bustamante & Olivares, 2016). Among other aspects of the Lagos government worth mentioning, the appointment of 12 women to the cabinet stands out. In fact, two of them disputed the presidential succession. On the one hand was Michelle Bachelet, a socialist who was minister of Health and then Defense during the Lagos government. On the other was former Aylwin and Frei minister Soledad Alvear. This prominent PDC member took advantage of her political career and popularity to project herself as Lagos’s possible successor. Thus, during this government the Concertación had two immensely popular female ministers competing to succeed the president. The balance was tipped in Bachelet’s favor when Lagos made his preference for her public. Alvear dropped out of the campaign before the primaries took place and Bachelet became the coalition’s single candidate. The development of the presidential campaign was decisive in the formation of Michelle Bachelet’s first cabinet. The wear and tear of three consecutive terms in power and the internal problems in the coalition had distanced many voters from the Concertación. For this reason, and to reenchant the electorate again, several times Bachelet said that her eventual government would foster renewal within party structures, prioritizing leaders who had not held positions in the previous Concertación governments (Olivares et al., 2015). With the presidential race under way, the candidacy of a major political opponent emerged from Renovación Nacional, Sebastián Piñera, who also competed against Joaquín Lavín of the Unión Demoócrata Independiente for leadership of the rightwing Alianza por Chile coalition. In this scenario of great electoral competition, Bachelet received the support of important leaders of the Concertación and had campaign events with Patricio Aylwin and Eduardo Frei, who had already led the country’s executive. At the same time, she had the advice of politicians with electoral experience, such as Andrés Zaldívar, for example, who played a leading role in the campaign leadership. Though the Bachelet campaign received important support from the coalition’s main male leaders, without doubt the factors that would mark the success of her campaign were to be her charisma and the idea of a shift toward a citizens’ government (Moreno, 2011).

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Bachelet received the most votes in the first round, 45%, and she managed to win the presidency against Piñera in the runoff after receiving 53.5% of the vote, making her the first woman to become president.13 Her figure “expressed a combination of continuity (with the Concertación governments) and change (due to her condition as a woman and her promise to renew the cabinet)” (Navia, 2007: 13). Bachelet took office as president with a discourse focused on the citizenry rather than partisan politics. In her first cabinet, Bachelet tried to displace the traditional core of the Concertación parties from decision-making areas. According to Luna, Bachelet successfully attempted to distance herself from traditional politicians, transmitting a greater closeness to the citizenry. Avendaño (2010a) says that she attempted to impose a fresh style focused on the idea of the citizens’ government early in her administration. In this context, Varas (2010) says that the first Bachelet cabinet was formed without consulting with the parties that supported her. This distanced government administration from Congress, contributing to indiscipline among legislators and resulting in the crisis in the ruling coalition (Varas, 2010). However, according to King and Riddlesperger (2012), this behavior reveals the style that Bachelet wanted to impose with her government. In this context, the literature has discussed the role played by the first ministerial configuration for the president to lend greater legitimacy to objectives from executive leadership (Camerlo and Martínez-Gallardo, 2018). There were major demonstrations and protests by secondary school students during this period, in 2006 and 2008.14 The demonstrations promoted changes to the government agenda as the student issue became a priority, and they also led to changes in the cabinet, especially in the Ministry of Education (Albala & Tricot, 2020; Donoso, 2013; Tricot, 2012; von Bülow & Bidegain, 2015). Education Minister Yasna Provoste even had to leave office after a constitutional accusation against her. This was a heavy political blow to the government, as the education minister became the first minister to be removed by the Senate since the return to democracy. The second stage of the government started with the cabinet change of 2008 and was characterized by good government administration in the face of the international economic crisis. Upon analyzing this administration’s cabinets in perspective, 34% of ministers belonged to the PDC, 28% were from the Partido por la Democracia, 21% from the PS, the president’s party, 7% were from the Partido Radical, and 9% were nonpartisan. Considerable progress was also made in terms of gender: 21 of the 46 ministers were women, or 46%. This reveals an empirical consistency with the theoretical argument on the effect that the arrival of a woman president has increased the number of women in charge of state ministries (Escobar-­ Lemmon & Taylor-Robinson, 2015). Ministers with a more technical profile were privileged in the first part of the government, while a more political profile was promoted in the second part. Some

 On the impact of a woman in the presidency, I recommend Fernández and Oliva (2012); Moreno (2011); Varas (2010). 14  A timeline of the protests can be found in OPECH (2009). 13

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13% of the ministers were technocrats, 78.3% were politicians without congressional experience, 6.5% were politicians with congressional experience, and there was one nonpartisan minister, the actor Paulina Urrutia, head of the National Council for Culture and the Arts. Regardless of the political stability and economic development in the country during the Concertación governments, the coalition suffered the wear and tear of so much time in state administration. Some of its agents, ministers, undersecretaries, and several political operators were implicated in corruption cases that had a major impact on the political system (see González-Bustamante & Olivares, 2016). In this context of discontent with the Concertación and growing social mobilization, the 2009 presidential election was the time for alternation in power. The rightwing candidate Sebastián Piñera won the elections and was in power from 2010 to 2014. When he took office, he became the first democratically elected rightwing president since 1958. Piñera was supported by the Coalición por el Cambio, a political alliance that brought together two parties: the Unión Demócrata Independiente and Renovación Nacional (RN). This bloc, which went by different names (e.g., Democracia y Progreso, Participación y Progreso, Unión por el Progreso de Chile, Unión por Chile, Alianza por Chile), has a certain ideological diversity despite having just two parties.15 While the UDI is a conservative party, RN has a slightly more liberal orientation. The Piñera administration showed a very similar logic to the one the Concertación followed, in the sense of the freedom he had as president to appoint his ministers without consulting the parties (González-Bustamante & Olivares, 2018). In Piñera’s first cabinet, ministers were mostly people with little political experience and long careers in business and academia. Only after almost 2 years of government did the pressures from ruling coalition parties achieve a change of cabinet in which more experienced politicians made their presence felt, partially displacing nonpartisan ones. An analysis of the totality of appointments reveals that most of the minsters were party members without congressional experience (38.5%) and there were very few ministers with legislative experience (13.5%). Nonpartisan ministers were the second largest group in the cabinet, representing 28.8%. This group included people from the world of business, department store chain executives, businesspeople from sectors like health, and Piñera’s investment partners. The remaining ministers had technical credentials, mainly engineers with academic careers and lawyers with ties to private universities. This is consistent with the theory discussed by Castellani and Dulitzky (2018), who give an account of the role that the elites play within the state apparatus. A total of 52 ministers were appointed throughout the Piñera government, of whom 12 were women. Most ministers were not party members (52%). Those who were came mostly from the president’s party (25%). The rest were members of the  Though the bloc has traditionally been composed of just the UDI and RN, there were other small parties and movements that were part of the coalition during the Sebastián Piñera government, but they did not participate in the cabinets.

15

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UDI. The figure of soft partisanship reappeared in this government, something that was mentioned in the discussion of Frei Montalva’s government. Minister Cristián Larroulet is an emblematic case. Though he has never formalized his membership, he is a person with a long history linked to the UDI. An example of this is the fact that he and other former dictatorship officials founded the party think tank Libertad y Desarrollo in 1990, an institution he also presided over. The Piñera administration had to deal with a series of protests by university students that kept the government under constant pressure (Segovia & Gamboa, 2012; Tricot, 2012; von Bülow & Bidegain, 2015). The pressure that the government was under reached its peak in 2013 when the technocrat Harald Beyer, minister of education, faced a constitutional accusation. The accusation passed by the Senate triggered his departure from the cabinet in early 2013. Beyer was accused of failing to exercise his oversight duties against for-profit universities. Beyer’s dismissal, promoted by the Concertación, was a success thanks to the votes of legislators who had given up their membership in the rightwing parties (Castiglioni, 2014). As Castiglioni (2014) describes, 2013 was a very complex year for the government and the ruling coalition. Piñera’s former minister and presidential candidate Laurence Golborne had to give up his presidential aspirations after it was revealed that he had undeclared assets in tax havens. The UDI proposed Pablo Longueira, also a former minister of Piñera’s, to replace him. Longueira defeated Piñera’s former minister Andrés Allamand in the primary election in the middle of the year. Subsequently “the presidential candidate elected in the primaries withdrew over health problems and the process culminated in the defeat of ruling coalition’s candidate” (...) “the year ended with a resounding defeat at the polls that meant Michelle Bachelet’s return to La Moneda” (Castiglioni, 2014: 80).

4.6  General Balance: Cabinets and Ministries in Chile In addition to the institutional transformations that allowed presidents to appoint and remove ministers at will, which put an end to the excessive cabinet turnover, the profile of those who held the office of minister changed in the twentieth century. The first decades of the twentieth century were marked by eminently political cabinets. This can be seen in the previous legislative experience that a large number of ministers had, in their party membership, mostly in traditional parties and, in a large number of cases, their belonging to families with political traditions. One of the elements to be highlighted and which is in line with Besley and Reynal-Querol (2011) is the evidence presented based on the profile of the Chilean minister, where lawyers represented the predominant profession. While the predominance of lawyers was maintained throughout the century, and to this day, in recent decades other professions have begun to play an increasingly significant role in the cabinet. Doctors, engineers, agronomists, and teachers acquired greater prominence, especially in sectoral ministries where their specialist skills proved more useful. This specialization is usually accompanied by a decline in the importance of

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the political career. While membership in a political party was fundamental to enjoying the president’s confidence, with the passing years one can observe an increased presence of independents and/or people who are members of small parties and generally have a limited political trajectory. This situation is particularly noteworthy in the Ibáñez del Campo and Jorge Alessandri governments. The ministerial profile underwent further changes in the late 1960s. In this period the professional training of the individuals, often interpreted as synonymous with their preparation for a position, was replaced by political and/or trade union experience. Thus, it is possible to see workers and tradesmen exercising as ministers of state. The other feature that characterizes the composition of cabinets and the profile of ministers between 1932 and 1973 was the participation by members of the military in the government. The military presence in twentieth-century governments was a regular phenomenon that increased at specific times, either because of the president’s proximity to the Armed Forces, as was the case in both Ibáñez governments, or the need to maintain order, as happened in the González Videla and Allende governments. Once democracy was restored in Chile, the Concertación’s ministers were mostly men, members of coalition parties, with a high presence of lawyers and economists. If we follow the arguments put forth by Dezalay and Garth (2002), this situation is evidence of the struggle between these two professions for control over the state apparatus. Some of this logic was broken during the government of Sebastián Piñera, which had lower proportions of party members in the cabinet and replaced the social link with a corporate one (González-Bustamante & Olivares, 2018). In addition, Piñera’s ministers had scant experience in the executive, as it was the first rightwing coalition government after spending two decades in the opposition. It is important to highlight that the military disappeared from cabinets in this period, thus fulfilling the arguments put forth by Besley and Reynal-Querol (2011), who argue that the military’s presence in cabinets is mostly in autocracies. Table 4.10 shows a data series on the number of ministers in each government. When the makeup of Chilean cabinets for the periods analyzed is observed, the contrasts between the pre- and post-authoritarian periods are self-evident. The first issue is the high turnover in state ministries during the period prior to the democratic transition, a matter that reveals the difficulties that presidential governments face when there is no unity in the coalition (Cheibub, 2007), something that changed in the post-coup period. Another aspect to be highlighted has to do with the growth in the Chilean executive, which went from 11 ministries in the Alessandri government (1932–1938) to 23 state ministries during the first Piñera administration (2010–2014). Now, an analysis of the number of ministerial changes reveals that the Ibáñez government is the one with the highest turnover, appointing an average of 10.5 ministers per ministry. It is also the government with the largest number of interior ministers, which reflects the political problems it faced. For his part, Allende had to face the political pressure of Congress and social pressure from protests, hence so many changes in the Ministry of the Interior, in charge of political negotiations, and internal order in the country. Aguirre Cerda went through an analogous situation

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Table 4.10  Presidents and cabinets in Chile

President Alessandri P Aguirre Ríos González

Days in term 2191 1195 1676 2192

No. appointments (a) 59 44 80 88

No. of ministries (b) 11 12 12 12

(a) / (b) 5.4 3.8 6.8 7.3

Ibáñez Alessandri R. Frei M Allende Aylwin Frei R-T

2191 2192 2191 1043 1491 2192

136 49 40 74 27 54

13 13 15 15 21 21

10.5 3.8 2.7 4.9 1.29 2.57

Lagos Bachelet Piñera

2191 1491 1491

53 46 52

21 22 23

2.52 1.95 2.26

Ministry with the most changes Lands Interior Economy Labor; lands; justice; economy Interior; economy Lands Economy Interior Economy Energy; SEGPRES; SEGEGOB; defense SEGPRES; SEGEGOB SEGEGOB Energy

Source: By author based on ministers’ data

and had to face political pressures throughout his government. The high turnover that began in the Carlos Ibáñez del Campo government, or during the three years of the Unidad Popular with Salvador Allende, reflected the problems in the political system, the economic deterioration, and the social upheaval. Economic management was a concern for all governments, especially in terms of domestic production and the development of a balanced economic growth model. This situation justifies the fact that in several governments the Ministry of the Economy was the one with the highest turnover. It might seem contradictory for the ministry with the most appointees during the Aylwin administration to have been Economy, given that it has been said that this government was very stable and with sound management of the economy. Though it might seem counterintuitive, that success explains the turnover. His first minister, Carlos Ominami, resigned from the cabinet for electoral reasons to accompany Lagos in his primary candidacy. Ominami ran for the Senate after Lagos’s defeat and was elected with one of the highest votes that year. The second minister of the economy was the economist Jorge Marshall, whom the president himself nominated to join the Central Bank board. The third minister of the economy remained in office until the end of the presidential term. The ministry responsible for communications (SEGEGOB) is repeated in the Frei, Lagos, and Bachelet administrations. This is evidence that these governments had problems with how they communicated their views. Bachelet had problems facing the economic crisis and student demonstrations. The Frei government had

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Table 4.11  Ministerial profiles by government

Alessandri P. Aguirre Ríos González Ibáñez Alessandri R. Frei M Allende Aylwin Frei R. Lagos Bachelet Piñera

Politician without exp. in Technocrats Technopols Congress 1 2 22

Politician with exp. in Congress Nonpartisan Total 32 2 59

1 4 6 5 9

0 0 1 1 0

16 47 47 78 16

26 26 26 8 7

1 3 8 44 17

44 80 88 136 49

5 0 1 2 1 3 9 46

0 0 2 6 4 3 1 20

30 42 20 42 39 36 20 455

4 19 3 3 6 3 7 170

1 13 1 1 3 1 15 111

40 74 27 54 53 46 52 802

Source: By author based on ministers’ data

problems due to the economic crisis of 1997 and in energy, after a drought led to programmed rolling electricity blackouts. Lastly, Pinochet’s arrest in London forced changes in Defense. For his part, Lagos had to face problems related to corruption scandals. This led to a complex relationship with Congress that ultimately ended in a series of negotiations with the opposition to put an end to certain authoritarian enclaves and progress was made in implementing a state modernization agenda. Lastly there are unique features to the turnover in the Energy during the Piñera administration. The first to take office was the technocrat Ricardo Raineri, who left his post after an inadequate reaction to a series of acts of protests in southern Chile. He was replaced by the popular minister of public works Laurence Golborne, who held the post for 6 months. Golborne was a dual minister during that time, as he was also head of Mining. When he left the position to take over another ministry, the government appointed Fernando Echeverría, at the time Intendant of the Metropolitan Region, to replace him but the new minister was in office for just 3 days. He resigned after a potential incompatibility with one of his companies was identified. He returned to the world of business after leaving office. It is possible to affirm that cabinets in Chile had a markedly political configuration, both before and after the authoritarian experiences. However, the presence of technocrats, either in their pure form or as technopols, has been a reality since the start of the period analyzed (see Table  4.11). Despite this, there is evidence of a

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primacy of nonpartisan profiles over technical ones, which according to Elgie (2020) can be interpreted as a presidential strategy to avoid conflicts from the dual agency that more political profiles could generate. Thus, the data reveals that Chilean presidents have preferred to form their cabinets with profiles ranked in the following order of preference: (1) politicians without experience, (2) politicians with congressional experience, (3) nonpartisan, (4) technocrats and lastly, (5) technopols. Lastly, one important fact is that several names are repeated in the cabinets of various governments. Prior to the coup, the 573 appointments went to 370 people, after the period under authoritarianism, as the 232 appointments went to 178 people. This is consistent with Gryzmala-Busso (2001), who argues that the objective after the democratic transition is to develop a renewed identity that allows winning over a stable electorate. After applying the HHI, the results show very low concentration as the pre-coup HHI is 37.43 and post-coup it is 68.37. However, the time periods are quite extensive and given the diversity of governments, the effect could be different if the data were grouped differently. For this reason, the calculation was made again, this time grouped by governments. First, the Partido Radical’s governments between 1938 and 1952. The second group included governments from 1952 to 1973. The third group corresponds to the Concertación governments and the Piñera administration. The HHI is unconcentrated for all groups. The radical governments have an HHI of 165.5, slightly higher than the governments between 1952 and 1973, which reported an index of 163.67. For its part, the Concertación has an HHI of 173.75, a number that rises to 251.47 points during the Piñera administration. When we analyze the governments of fathers and sons, the index is higher in the Alessandri governments, at 278.32 points, compared to 135.2 for the Frei administrations. One could say that the Alessandri governments shared more ministers because they were in a similar context, while the Frei administrations were separated by a dictatorship. The data discussed on the Chilean governments in this chapter, and the in-depth analysis of the case of Uruguay in the previous one, allow important theoretical and empirical arguments to be generated on the configuration of ministerial cabinets. At the same time, they provide ways to understand some of the strategies that presidents use when forming governments under different political scenarios. While the findings presented so far are also relevant to understanding key aspects of ministerial turnover, the need to infer the elements that play a role in these actors’ survival in office remains. The next chapter uses comparative logic to analyze these two countries, with the aim of empirically investigating the factors that influence ministers’ survival. The point of this is to exploit the rich statistical data that has been presented, which serves to put the theoretical arguments proposed by the book regarding ministers’ survival to the test.

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Chapter 5

Analysis of Ministers’ Survival in Chile and Uruguay

The preceding chapters state that this research seeks to identify characteristics of cabinet configuration in presidential democracies on the one hand and to prove the effect of personal variables on ministers’ survival in the cabinet on the other. They showed that the countries analyzed here share a series of traits such as stability, coalition governments, and the economy’s influence on decision-making, among others; and they were differentiated according to certain political processes. This chapter provides the main results of the statistical work, presenting results allowing cabinets and their configuration to be characterized by means of a longitudinal analysis of the ministers from both countries, and in that way presents hypotheses for each case. Lastly, the survival analyses for the two countries are presented.

5.1  The Survival of Ministers As noted in the Chap. 1, ministers’ survival is statistically assumed as follows: when people remain in a ministry until the end of the term, regardless of when they took office, they are assigned a value of 1 (survive) in the database. The variable has a value of 0 in all other cases. In the two countries studied (Chile and Uruguay), 1200 agents were appointed to 974 positions. As was seen in the preceding chapters, ministers are agents tasked with fulfilling the objectives that the head of government has entrusted them with; thus, it is common for agents to receive several appointments within the same administration, especially in Chile, and they can even receive several appointments in several governments. However, in this analysis we only include individuals when they are first appointed in each government. Tables 5.1 and 5.2 show how the DV behaves, first in general terms and then broken down by period.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Olivares L., Survival of Ministers and Configuration of Cabinets in Chile and Uruguay, Latin American Societies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92802-5_5

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Table 5.1  Survival by country Leave the cabinet and do not return (0) Survivors (1) Total

Uruguay 185 170 355

Chile 406 213 619

Total 591 383 974

Source: By author based on ministers’ data Table 5.2  Survival by period

Leave the cabinet and do not return (0) Survivors (1) Total

Pre-coup Uruguay 102 100 202

Chile 326 95 421

Post-authoritarianism Uruguay Chile 83 80 70 118 153 198

Source: By author based on ministers’ data

5.2  Their Age and Gender of Ministers In pre-coup Uruguay (i.e., the Amézaga, Barreta, Batlle B., Martínez governments, the four collegiate governments, Gestido, Pacheco, and Bordaberry), the average age upon taking office was 53.26 years, while the median was 52 (with a standard deviation of 9.503). Pre-coup Chilean governments (i.e., Alessandri P., Aguirre, Ríos, González, Ibáñez, Alessandri R., Frei, and Allende) had cabinets averaging 48 years (with a standard deviation of 8.943). In Uruguay post-authoritarian experience (i.e., Sanguinetti I, Lacalle, Sanguinetti II, Batlle I., Vázquez, and Mujica), the average age of ministers was 55.04 and the median was 55 (with a standard deviation of 9.261). For their part in the Chilean governments after the dictatorship (i.e., Aylwin, Frei R.  Lagos, Bachelet, and Piñera), the average age is 50.91 (with a standard deviation of 8.558). Both cases show a similar trend. Data in Fig. 5.1 organized chronologically by country (first Uruguayan governments and then the Chilean ones) gives an account of the evolution in ministers’ age. A statistical analysis was performed to determine whether the variation in age is significant. For this, ages were grouped together (see Table 5.3). In the case of Uruguay, the difference between periods is not statistically significant. In the case of Chile, the difference between the periods is statistically significant according to the Pearson Chi-square (0.002) test. Regarding ministers’ gender, the possibility of a person developing a ministerial career can be associates with certain individual characteristics like gender; in this case, the data confirm what we can see in the previous chapters: inclusion of women in cabinets has been very slow, especially in the case of Uruguay (see Fig.  5.2), where only in the governments of the Frente Amplio does there seem to be any design considering women, who accounted for 19% of the ministers. The first woman to take office as a minister (Alba Roballo) did so for 44 days during the Pacheco administration (1967–1972). There were then two female ministers in the

5.2  Their Age and Gender of Ministers

113

de Amezaga Berreta Batlle Berres Martinez Colegiado I (1952-1955) Colegiado II (1955-1959) Colegiado III (1959-1963) Colegiado IV (1963-1967) Gestido Pacheco Bordaberry A. Sanguinetti I Lacalle Sanguinetti II Batlle Ibannez Vazquez Mujica Alessandri Palma Aguirre Rios Gonzalez Videla Ibañez Alessandri R. Frei Montalva Allende Aylwin Frei Ruiz-Tagle Lagos Bachelet Piñera 30

40

50

edad

60

70

80

Fig. 5.1 Ministers’ ages upon taking office in Chile and Uruguay. (Source: Author’s compilation) Table 5.3  Contingency table age by group in Uruguay and Chile Uruguay Age group 18–29 30–45 46–60 61 and over Total

Pre-coup – 20.5% 55% 24.5% 100%

Chile Post-authoritarianism – 14.6% 56.7% 28.7% 100%

Total – 17.9% 55.7% 26.3% 100%

Pre-coup 1.40% 37.80% 53.70% 7.10% 100%

Postauthoritarianism – 28.00% 59.50% 12.50% 100%

Total 1.00% 35.00% 55.40% 8.60% 100%

Source: By author based on ministers’ data

first Sanguinetti government (1985–1990), three in his second one (1995–2000), five in the Vázquez administration (2005–2010), and four during Mujica’s presidency (2010–2015). In the case of Chile, the governments of the Concertación have shown a sustained increase that peaked in the Michelle Bachelet administration (see Fig. 5.3). However, this trend was broken when the Coalición por el Cambio arrived, which, as the corresponding chapter showed, had fewer women in its cabinets. The first woman (Adriana Olguin) took office as a minister during the González Videla

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5  Analysis of Ministers’ Survival in Chile and Uruguay

100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 2.00%

0%

woman

11.50%

9.10%

18.50% 19.00%

man

Chi-square is statistically significant P< 0.05

Fig. 5.2  Distribution by sex in cabinets, Uruguay. Chi-square is statistically significant P