Latin America's Leaders - Hardcover

Rut Diamint; Laura Tedesco

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1783601035 ISBN 13: 9781783601035

Publisher: Zed Books, 2015

Synopsis

Cult-of-personality or true democracy? The rise of populism worldwide, combined with the overwhelming success of leaders in Latin America, has positioned the region at the forefront of political debate. Conventional wisdom presents this trend as a handful of charismatic individuals leading an ideological challenge to liberal democracy. But can it really be that simple?

Based on exclusive interviews with over three hundred politicians – former presidents, vice presidents, current party officials and hundreds more – Latin America's Leaders exposes what the Pink Tide really thinks of its presidents. Arguing that the political styles of leaders such as Hugo Chávez, Rafael Correa, Álvaro Uribe and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner are far better explained in the context of their respective countries' party systems, the authors examine political stability through the paradoxical relationship between democracy and the concentration of power in charismatic individuals.

This is the definitive guide to the world's most left-wing continent.

About this title

About the Author

Rut Diamint is professor of international relations at Universidad Torcuato di Tella, researcher at the National Council for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICET) and a member of the Advisory Committee of Club de Madrid and the UN Secretary General Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters.

Laura Tedesco is associate professor of political science at Saint Louis University, Madrid Campus, and at Instituto de Empresa, Madrid. She has been a consultant for UNICEF and worked as an analyst for FRIDE, Spain.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Latin America's Leaders

By Rut Diamint, Laura Tedesco

Zed Books Ltd

Copyright © 2015 Rut Diamint and Laura Tedesco
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78360-103-5

Contents

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES, 
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS, 
Introduction, 
CHAPTER 1 How to study leaders, 
CHAPTER 2 Models of democratic leadership, 
CHAPTER 3 Leadership in the context of a stable party system: Uruguay and Colombia, 
CHAPTER 4 Leadership in the context of a crisis: Argentina and Ecuador, 
CHAPTER 5 Leadership in the context of the collapse of a party system: Venezuela, 
CHAPTER 6 Rethinking political leadership, 
LIST OF INTERVIEWS, 
NOTES, 
BIBLIOGRAPHY, 
INDEX, 

CHAPTER 1

How to Study Leaders

Introduction

Our research was motivated by questions about the democratic quality of political leaders in Latin America. How could leaders who had successfully established democracy in their countries take political paths that would lead to a gradual deterioration of the quality of the democratic institutions? What motivates some leaders to employ populist, clientelistic methods to build or strengthen their power? Why are so many young politicians so naive and inefficient that they quickly lose power?

We observed different type of leaders in Latin America. We wanted to discover why in some countries excellent democratic leaders emerge while in others populist, inefficient or corrupt leaders prevail. The literature suggests a combination of elements linked to the historical and cultural context, the strength of state institutions and the extent of democratic practice among the citizens of the country in question. What we did not find were texts that laid out the thinking of politicians themselves. Therefore we decided to interview politicians. We wanted to know their perspective on the democratic quality of political leaders and the political conditions that help the emergence of different types of leader.

We knew, then, what we wanted to do but still had to decide how to carry out the research. Therefore we consulted both books and experts. Before we coordinated the interviews we undertook a literature review. Our first discovery was that there is very little written about leadership in academic texts, especially in Latin American political science. Although one of the classic texts on leadership, The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli, had recognized the importance of leaders in any political project, modern political science had concentrated more on the structure of parliaments, political party systems, elections and the relations between the branches of state power, omitting the subject of leadership.

We also discovered that most of the literature on leadership was in the field of business studies, concentrating on private sector performance. Although some of the ideas in these studies can be applied to our field, we needed a different approach. In studies on business, negotiation and strategy, there are a lot of resources on both the study and training of leaders. But this material cannot really be applied to the study of political leaders. There are major differences between leading businesses and leading countries. Typically studies on leadership focus on an analysis of the personalities of the individuals. However, they tend to be more of a psychological examination of their good and bad points rather than a political discussion. Our interest was shared by other academics who had started to investigate the subject of leadership more systematically (Lord 2003;Kellerman 2004, 2012; Bueno de Mesquita and Smith 2011; Nye 2008; Helms 2012).

In order to establish a line of questioning for future interviews we carried out a series of informal meetings with colleagues in Buenos Aires and Madrid, and ran the questions by opinion poll specialists for their input. Thinking about questions for future interviewees was the first concrete task of this research. The project was taking shape. We wrote it up and submitted it to different foundations. In August 2009 the Foundation Open Society Institute in Washington, DC, approved our project and in October we started work.

The study took four years and covered five different cases, which enabled us to offer comparative analysis. It entailed ten study trips, 319 interviews in six countries, seven seminars organized in Toronto, Buenos Aires, Quito and Madrid, the writing of research reports, work documents and journalistic articles, the editing of a book in Spanish, and finally the writing of this book. It involved a team of seven research assistants in five countries.

Here we intend to discuss how we organized our material and conducted the research. This chapter is not strictly methodological. It is not always easy to implement what methodological texts stipulate. Often the researcher changes their hypothesis, variables and ideas and in many cases this means starting again from scratch. We had to grapple with social science methodological rules, but what we seek to convey stems more from concrete experience than scientific theories.

This chapter also covers the unexpected elements that any social scientist can encounter when they seek to explain political reality.

Defining our hypothesis and case studies

The initial hypothesis of this research holds that the deep-rooted authoritarian tradition in Latin America protected those in power from having to engage in any real deep and meaningful transformation of the democratic system. A consequence of this, we maintain, was the destruction of any new democratic leadership. Our assumption was that the traditional modes of behaviour such as clientelism, caudillismo, authoritarianism, the desire to hold on to power indefinitely, and corruption helped to explain the numerous political crises which have been the scourge of the region throughout the last three decades. Other countries, by contrast, worked to institutionalize political systems that broadened democracy.

Given that this is a rather sweeping assumption, we set out from the beginning to compare different cases in order to be able to reach some generalization, since, as Morlino says, 'comparison makes it possible to control for the hypothesis' (Morlino 1991: 14). In addition, a comparative study helps to construct assumptions and identify trends that we hoped would shed some light on how change could improve the democratic quality of leaders.

The examples we chose adhered to traditional comparative criteria, i.e. cases with similarities as well as differences. We used the Mill difference method (Pérez-Liñán 2007: 8–10) to identify cases in which we assumed that the leadership was democratic and others in which we held that the leadership characteristics were less democratic.

To begin with, we took a series of social phenomena which we considered to be tied to the rise of different types of leadership, as were the crises, the problems of political representation and the fragmentation of political parties. Our dependent variable was initially the democratic quality of the political leaders. As a first step in the research we defined democratic quality by taking as a basis the study by Barreda, which measures this quality as a function of five dimensions: 1) political rights and civil liberties; 2) responsiveness of the government; 3) level of participation; 4) accountability; and 5) rule of law, or rather the validity of the legal system (Barreda 2011: 270).

However, as our research progressed, we modified our initial hypothesis and refocused the study. We argue that the quality of the democracy could be considered as a product of the type of leadership and thus we began to focus more on the different types of leader. What we observed was that many Latin American leaders were elected democratically but once in power they seek to destroy the institutions and democratic processes, establishing legal frameworks to enable them to remain in power. Many of them succeeded, others came up against the power of the institutions themselves or popular discontent. This diversity suggests that the political context could explain the emergence of different types of democratic leaders. One of the factors that seems to have explanatory power was the degree of institutionalization of the political party system.

With these early observations and an extensive bibliographical review we began to formulate a different hypothesis: i.e. the quality of the leaders could be related to the degree of institutionalization of the political parties and of the state. This hypothesis enabled us to focus on the variance of the leaders. Leaders do not rise from a vacuum, so we assumed that the different institutional arrangements promoted the emergence of different types of leaders (the independent variable). In addition, since a leader has to win over supporters so as to become a leader, the second independent variable was the relationship that the leader established with the voters. Hence we began our study of political leaders with the assumption that leadership has three components: the leader, the followers and the context, as per Figure 1.1.

The next step was to define each category. In order to explore different elements of the leadership relationship we took five dimensions: a) how leaders entered politics; b) whether they had a suitable background for holding an executive or legislative position; c) their values and ambitions; d) the relationship with their followers and the media; and e) their readiness to innovate and use new technology (Figure 1.2).

With regard to context, we reviewed the literature on the subject of the institutionalization of political systems, a topic which has been widely covered. In particular, following Mainwaring and Scully (1995), Alcántara (2004) and Ollier (2008, 2013), we used the concepts of high and low institutionalization of political parties. First, a party system is institutionalized when parties have continuity in terms of internal rules and inter-party competition procedures. Secondly, institutionalized parties are well established in society and have ideological consistency. They generate ideas, programmes, proposals and government plans that allow citizens to understand the party's aims. Thirdly, parties are the vehicle for political representation, providing a legitimate way to gain access to government. They are also a vehicle for representing interests; they are channels for interest groups to make their voices heard. Fourthly, the internal organization of institutionalized parties is coherent with efficient instruments for internal discipline to avoid and punish corruption (Mainwaring and Scully 1995; Alcántara 2004). Analysts have concluded that institutionalization does not guarantee high-quality democratic institutions, but that a low degree of institutionalization weakens any type of democracy (Mainwaring and Scully 1995: 21). A non-institutionalized party system increases the chances of arbitrary decisions being taken. If the parties are weak, or the rules are not clear and transparent, force, violence or mass movements become ways to gain power and access to government. If rules and procedures are flexible and change constantly, the system leaves room for manipulation, which in turn benefits parties or leaders, thus ruining the political and legal pillars of a democratic system. Parties can be hijacked by interest groups, which end up gaining privileged access to government posts or influence over the decision-making process. This amplifies the differences between interest groups and citizens, and makes the system unjust rather than democratic. A low degree of institutionalization also increases the likelihood of a personalist, populist leader coming to power, particularly in presidential systems (Mainwaring and Scully 1995: 22). If the system is obscure and party discipline is erratic, the level of autonomy can easily increase. Here we understand politicians' autonomy as their capacity to be isolated from citizens, political parties and/or to 'make decisions at odds with citizen demands' (Fukuyama 2013: 10).

Measurement of followers/supporters was more complicated since we did not want to limit ourselves solely to the relationship between populist leaders and their supporters. In order that we could consider different levels of adherence to leaders, we used concepts tested in interviews. They referred to three aspects which stem from the concept of participation (Hagopian 2005: 41–90): the type of communication (personal, media, only in political campaigns, group, individual); aim of the link (electoral, permanent, intermittent); and the transparency of the management. We also tested the way in which advisers are incorporated as another source of link with supporters (see Figure 1.3).

The second stage was to choose the case studies (Deslauriers 2004: 31). We began by selecting Argentina and Ecuador. Both countries had undergone major political chaos with presidential crisis, exhaustion of the party system and questioning on the part of society. Secondly, we chose Uruguay and Colombia, because they share some characteristics, such as having undergone crisis situations and changes in their two-party systems while maintaining a stable party system and consistent, lasting political careers. Lastly, we chose Venezuela, which was quite unique, with a major political crisis followed by the emergence of a strong leader who was able to secure political stability (see Table 1.1). We would have liked to have included more cases for comparison since broader studies in the field of social sciences enable the formulation of generalized classifications. However, our project had a set amount of financing which forced us to balance academic criteria with concrete reality. We had to discard research on Brazil, Chile and Peru, all of which was very interesting. There was only a limited time to carry out the research and this did not stretch to more than the five cases we chose. As Patton stated, 'having weighed the evidence and considered the alternatives, evaluators and primary stakeholders make their sampling decisions, sometimes painfully, but always with the recognition that there are no perfect designs' (Patton 1990: 181).

All the cases have one common characteristic and lack one of the other attributes (Pérez-Liñán 2007: 9–13). Following qualitatively oriented comparative methods, our aim was to compare the conditions or causes in different historical contexts with a holistic and interpretative approach. Our ultimate purpose was to understand and interpret the differences and similarities in political leadership issues in the region. We believe that by focusing our comparison on the similarities and differences between our case studies, they 'can tell us a great deal about the way governments function' (Peters 1998).

The design of the research and of the sample

The research project posed many methodological questions. From the start we opted to conduct a comparative, qualitative study. We argue that a qualitative study is more relevant for social science (Flick 2012: 15). However, we accept that, gradually, studies in political science have become more embedded in different methods of quantitative research. Despite the dominance of quantitative studies, social scientists tend to consider it more useful to use a qualitative approach when dealing with a limited number of cases (Morlino 1991: 16–17). Moreover, the originality of this research lies in the information produced by the interviews with politicians. We wanted to use the narrative of the interviews, the stories that were told and the impressions that were given rather than limit ourselves to a quantitative approach.

However, the qualitative analysis exhibited some problems as well as benefits. Given especially the nature of the comparative case study, we tried to control 'the sources of variance in the ex-ante selection of the cases, rather than through ex-post manipulation of data' (Peters 1998). In other words, we endeavoured to make the sample as representative as possible, by analysing the political representation of parliaments in each case study. However, we confronted some significant issues about the conceptualization of the sample.

One of the main challenges was to define who would fall into the category of political leader. The choice led to many controversies in the early discussions. One classification which involved a very small margin of error was legislators. They constitute a relatively homogeneous universe and therefore an averagely rigorous sample. In addition it was a reasonably fair sample since their numbers are in proportion to support for their political party.

However, as is often the case in social science, reconciling methodology with reality is not easy. First, there are important differences among the legislators. There are some who have been elected many times and others who are in their first term in Congress. Some are close to the press and their ideas are better known by the general public. Others can be good political operators within their parties but have limited visibility. Being a national deputy who represents a large district with a large electorate is not the same as being a national deputy representing a province with few inhabitants. Some legislators have held important positions in the executive or high-ranking party positions, while others are new to the political game. In fact, a distribution of the interviewees by party membership, reflecting the percentage obtained in elections, does not necessarily ensure a fair distribution in their universe as a function of the objectives we had established.

Secondly, as indicated by Taylor and Bogdan (1987: 36), it was not possible to determine beforehand who would fit into that universe. This means that for each of the five cases we could draw up a table that illustrates representation criteria as a function of the votes obtained by each political party. We could consider those criteria with information from the media to compare legislators with a greater public exposure with those who are either new or less well known. We could also include the degree of involvement in executive power. But we could not guarantee that the legislators we chose were actually prepared to be interviewed, and many of them were not. Although we had identified our universe, many of those selected did not answer our requests for interview. We were therefore concerned that we would end up with an arbitrary sample which would make it difficult to extrapolate results and establish causal relationships (Gerring 2008: 156–7).

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: Zed Books
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1783601035
• ISBN 13: 9781783601035
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 200