The Socio-Economic Determinants of Popular-Authoritarian Electoral Behavior: The Case of Peronism

Abstract

In several highly mobilized Third World societies, rising levels of working-class political activism seem to have encouraged the development of political movements which are both popular and authoritarian. This popular authoritarianism melds intensive political mobilization of previously excluded social sectors with political structures which severely limit these groups' ability to affect public policy. Much of the research on popular authoritarianism has attempted to explain the phenomenon by identifying the socioeconomic determinants of popular-authoritarian electoral behavior. In an effort to clarify the relative merit of contending explanations, this study uses data from the prototypic case of Argentine Peronism to test six common hypotheses and then to construct a model which optimizes the explanatory ability of five major socioeconomic variables. The results indicate that an area's rate of industrial growth and the size of its working-class population account for more than four-fifths of the variation in Peronisi electoral behavior that can be attributed to socioeconomic variables.

Macroeconomic Conditions, Voter Turnout, and the Working-class/Economically Disadvantaged Party Vote in Developing Countries

“…tended to focus on single countries such as Argentina (Snow, 1969;Schoultz, 1975), Chile (Landsberger & McDaniel, 1976), or Botswana (Polhemus, 1983). Many of these studies were descriptive, dealt with a limited number of cases, and focused on short time periods.…”

“…However, Alford Indices of class voting derived from national surveys indicate that there is considerable variation across our developing world sample, with some countries scoring higher than 20 on Alford Indices (e.g., Chile [Langton & Rapoport, 1975], Jamaica [Green, 1981], and Trinidad and Tobago [Selwyn, Greene, & Harwood, 1979]) and other countries scoring lower than 10 (e.g., Ecuador [Rojo, 1984] and India [Ganguly & Ganguly, 1982]). Earlier studies have borne out the importance of class voting in pre-1974 Argentina (Schoultz, 1975;Snow, 1969) and pre-1973 Chile (Langton & Rapoport, 1975). Although the ranks of the industrial working class and organized labor are quite small relative to Western Europe, the ranks of the "informal sector" and the economically disadvantaged at large are considerably broader, encompassing much of the peasantry and impover-998 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / October 2000 vary across time and why.…”

Legitimationsstrategien von Autokratien

“…Zu Unrecht wird dabei das Phänomen des "populären Autoritarismus" noch immer als paradox angesehen. Der Blick auf die enorme Popularität der Diktatoren Juan Perón (Schoultz 1977) in Argentinien in den 1970er-Jahren und Adolf Hitler in Deutschland (Kershaw 2009) in den 1930er-Jahren zeigt, dass das Phänomen des "populären" Autokraten keineswegs neu ist. Während manche Autokratien darauf setzen, einen "Mythos" um den "charismatischen" "Führer" (Kershaw 1980) oder "lider" (Hoffmann 2009) zu kreieren, setzen andere Autokratien aber stärker auf institutionell ausgerichtete Legitimationsstrategien.…”

Political Participation and Civic Engagement in Kathmandu: An Empirical Analysis with Structural Equations

“…Demographic and socioeconomic variables (age, race, gender, marital status, presence of children, income, education, and social class) are useful to identify the specific characteristics of those participating (or not participating) in various civic and political activities (Almond and Verba, 1963;Booth, 1994;Brooks and Brady, 1999;Cohen and Dawson, 1993;Converse, 1974;Ganguly and Ganguly, 1975;Nie and Verba, 1975;Oppenhuis, 1995;Powell, 1986;Schoultz, 1994;Topf, 1995). A complete list of variables used in this analysis is provided in the Appendix with definitions and the relevant coding schemes.…”