Electoral Revolution or Democratic Alternation?

Abstract

Over the past few years, a burgeoning literature on Latin American politics has developed, focusing on explanations for the renewed success of the left in the region. Building on electoral trends and public opinion analysis, we argue that the region is experiencing the normalization of democratic politics rather than a backlash or a revolution. Furthermore, we believe that electoral support for the left reflects the disenchantment of voters with underperforming right-wing governments. Using a unique data set covering eighteen countries in the region, our statistical analyses demonstrate that retrospective voting provides a powerful explanation of the recent electoral success of the left in Latin America. Thus, the central implication of our argument is that electoral accountability is still the primary mechanism of controlling the executive in the region's young democracies.

Remittances and Revenue in Latin America, 1990–2017

“…Several valid measures of government ideologies in Latin America exist including the following: Baker and Greene ( 2011 ), Huber and Stephens ( 2012 ), Debs and Helmke ( 2010 ), and Murillo et al ( 2010 ). I focus on the ideology of the executive, employing the Baker and Greene measure because of its broader temporal coverage.…”

Ideology and Taxation in Latin America

“…The first efforts to characterize Latin American political parties on an ideological scale for a limited number of countries, based on expert surveys, are due to Coppedge (1997). It is only very recently that authors such as Debs andHelmke (2008), andMurillo, Oliveros andVaishnav (2008) have built on Coppedge's early efforts, expanding the coverage of the data both geographically and over time in order to cover most countries in the region. The work on Parliamentary Elites of Latin America (PELA) done by the University of Salamanca, in which legislators place themselves as well as other parties and politicians on an ideological scale, provides the basis for alternative measures of ideology (see Saiegh, 2009, on the use of PELA as a measure of ideology).…”

“…While Hart's data goes through 2006, ours has coverage until 2009, allowing us to include recent cases of left-leaning governments such as Morales in Bolivia, Correa in Ecuador and Ortega in Nicaragua, just to name a few. In addition, we use a wider variety of ideology variables, on both expert surveys (from Debs andHelmke, 2008, andMurillo, Oliveros andVaishnav, 2008) and the Parliamentary Elites of Latin America survey. Finally, unlike Hart, we consider the temporal pattern of revenues around shifts in ideology, which allows us to better identify whether the impact of ideology on taxation is causal.…”

“…10 While Debs and Helmke also code political parties on a 5-point ideological scale (1-left, 2-center-left, 3-center, 4center-right 5-right), for methodological reasons it is more convenient for us to work with the left dummy. To check for robustness, we will use different definitions for this dummy, as well as rely on a different dataset by Murillo et al (2008), an alternative source of ideology data also based on expert surveys. Both the Debs and Helmke and the Murillo, Oliveros and Vaishnav datasets end in 2009.…”

“…We use tax revenue data from a new database on taxation in Latin America put together by the IDB in partnership with the Inter-American Center of Tax Administrations (CIAT). Our ideology variables are taken from expert surveys (Debs and Helmke, 2008;Murillo, Oliveros and Vaishnav, 2008) as well as elite surveys of legislators from the Parliamentary Elites of Latin America (PELA). The details of the data used will be discussed below.…”