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Argentina's Delegative Democracy: a Case Study

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Argentina's Delegative Democracy: a Case Study ARGENTINA’S DELEGATIVE DEMOCRACY: A CASE STUDY A dissertation presented by Florencia Inés Gabriele to The Department of Political Science In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the field of Political Science Northeastern University Boston, Massachusetts December 2013 1 ARGENTINA’S DELEGATIVE DEMOCRACY: A CASE STUDY by Florencia Ines Gabriele ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science in the College of Social Sciences and Humanities of Northeastern University December, 2013 2 ABSTRACT This study analyses why Argentina remained an immature and underdeveloped delegative democracy rather than a fully-liberal democratic polity. Following the work of Guillermo O’Donnell this work explores the quality of, and serious deficiencies in, Argentina’s democracy. This work pays special attention to presidential use and misuse of Decrees of Necessity and Urgency by as a means to govern alone, thus bypassing Congress and how there is no existing check and balances in the government in this regard. Observing delegative democracies, this work also examines the following: the use of economic restrictions, use of policies such as nationalizations, privatizations, management of the federal budget, international relations of the country, restriction on the media, behavior of the judiciary branch, changes in the national constitution, and decreasing role of the Vice President. This work analyzes the relationship between democracy, decrees of necessity and urgency, laws sanctioned by Congress and inflation using transfer function models. Democracy is measured using the Polity IV dataset. There is a causal relationship among the explanatory variables (inputs) —the numbers of laws passed by Congress, inflation, and number of DNU — and Democracy (output). This work finds that the number of laws passed by Congress explain the level of Democracy in Argentina. This study suggests that there is an inverse relationship, where the level of Democracy impacts inflation as well as Number of Decrees of Necessity and Urgency (signed arbitrarily by the President). This study analyses the relationship among these three variables and the dependent variable (output) democracy and offers policy recommendations to deal with these issues. 3 Keywords: Argentina, delegative democracy, decrees of necessity and urgency 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without the support and guidance of many people. Since my arrival at the Department of Political Science I had the privilege of working with Professor William Crotty in several projects. His passion for research in political science was an inspiration for me. Professor Crotty has been a great supporter through my time at Northeastern; without him I would have not been exposed to the complexities of Democratization, and I would have not fallen in love with the field. Professor Amílcar Barreto is an example to follow in my career, both as a researcher as well as a professor. He guided me through this process and corrected many drafts of this work, always with insightful comments and ideas on how to improve it. I will be forever in debt with Professor Barreto for he has been so generous with his time and knowledge. I would also like to thank Dr. Silvia Dominguez for accepting to be a third reader and providing me with her valuable comments. Dr. Denise Horn, Dr. John Portz and Barbara Chin have been very kind and helpful during my time at Northeastern University. I treasure the time I spend at Northeastern. Over the years I made many friends. Chris Chanyasulkit, allowed me write at her house, where she would encourage me, help me get organized and helped me plan this work. Jessica Frost shared her wisdom and spirituality and always had positive thoughts and words to cheer me up. My filos D. G. proved to be a true friend and probably one of the few people that understood what I was going through. My friend Denitza Draganova knew of my intention to pursue a PhD since 5 we met during our undergraduate studies at Emmanuel College and helped me prepare for the GRE at a coffee house. Many people from Argentina were instrumental in supporting me. I have to offer a special thanks to my dearest friend Maria Cristina Giangiobbe, who read drafts of this thesis, corrected my English and was truly there for me. I couldn’t possible imagine doing this without her support. Argentina is home of many of my friends. Among them, Paula Zerda. She spent an entire summer discussing my ideas for impossible thesis models. My friends Nora, Candela and Victoria were always in touch throughout my work and supported me with their wonderful energy. The entire Caldani family was always in touch and with them I shared my progress. Their support meant a lot to me. When my health was failing, Dr. Eduardo Aun and a team of doctors nursed me back to health, over and over again. In Boston, I counted on Marcy White, L. Ac., and Dr. Jonathan Melman who offered me so much support when the pain hampered my writing, Also, Carmen Rojas listened to me and supported me through the hardest time of my life. But the biggest help of all came from my family: my mom, dad and sister who knew how badly I wanted to purse a PhD and made everything possible to help me finish the race. With those three examples of hard work, I could only continue marching forward. I am forever grateful for everything you have done for me. To them I dedicate this work. 6 A papá y mamá, gracias por todo. 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract 2 Acknowledgements 5 Dedication 7 Table of Contents 8 Preface 9 Chapter 1: Introduction 19 Chapter 2: Literature Review 47 Chapter 3: Argentina 104 Chapter 4: the vicious circle of Delegative Democracies 150 Chapter 5: Statistical Analysis 222 Chapter 6: Conclusions 275 Works cited 290 Appendix Chapter 1 294 Appendix Chapter 2 306 Appendix Chapter 3 310 Appendix Chapter 4 314 8 PREFACE “Con la Democracia se come, Con la Democracia se educa, Con la Democracia se cura, No necesitamos nada mas, Que nos dejen de mandonear, Que nos dejen manejar la patria financiera, Que nos dejen de manejar minorías agresivas, totalitarias, inescrupulosas, Que por la falta de votos, buscan las botas para manejar al pueblo Argentino. […] aquí es entonces necesario que comprendamos, la bandera de la libertad sola no sirve, es mentira no existe la libertad sin justicia. Es la libertad de morirse de hambre, es la libertad del zorro libre, en el gallinero, libre para comerse con absoluta libertad las gallinas libres.” “With Democracy we eat, With Democracy we educate, With Democracy we heal, We don’t need anything else, Stop pushing us around [the military], Let us manage our economy, Let us manage aggressive, totalitarian, and unscrupulous minorities, who lacking votes seek their boots in order to govern the Argentine people, […] it is important that we understand here, by itself the banner of liberty is worthless, without justice it is but a lie. It is the freedom to die of hunger, it’s the freedom of the wild lone fox in the henhouse, free to eat free hens with absolute liberty.” Inaugural Speech of President Ricardo Alfonsin, on the reinstallation of democracy in 1983 (“Con la Democracia” 2009) Leading scholars have classified Argentina as an underachiever in terms of economic growth (O’Donnell 1973, Waisman 1987, Adelman 1994, Pzeworksi and Limongi 1997). But Argentina is also an underachiever in terms of democratization. According to Levitsky and Murillo Argentina has been a “persistent failure to build enduring political and economic institutions and its continued propensity toward crisis”(Levitsky and Murillo 2005, 1). In Latin American countries this is typical. “Something resembling liberal democracy has become almost 9 universal in Latin America in the past 15 years, but also … most of these liberal democracies share little more than empty shells” (Smith 2005, 224). Countries in this region have governments elected by their people, but the quality of those democracies is questionable. Any society aims to pursue social progress along with equity and extended periods of economic growth. This cannot be achieved in the absence of healthy and robust institutions that reconcile democracy and development within “a framework that includes greater social cohesion and more gender equality, how to seek after a more strategic relationship between market and State and a more functional one between state and society” (Zovatto 2011, 2). Although Argentina has had a complicated past, alternating between democracy and authoritarian regimes, the country has achieved a stable democracy since 1983. The type of democracy that Argentina has is a Delegative Democracy (Goddard), a popularly-elected regime where presidents rule as they see fit during their tenure in office.1 Delegative presidents are usually product of crises, where the urgency and the necessity of leadership give them the power to act unilaterally. Argentina’s delegative democracy never evolved into a full, liberal representative one. The reason for such poor performance, according to the literature, is its weak institutions, as stated by Levitsky and Murillo (Clarin) and Acemoglu and Robinson (2012). In countries with delegative democracies one usually sees a vicious circle of crises and a never- ending need for delegative authority. “When the crisis starts in these governments, the country already has institutional weaknesses that the delegative leader has deepened” Bearing this in mind it is not surprising to see that the current administration in Argentina is leaning towards authoritarian policies — following in the footsteps of Venezuela — and is thoroughly dismantling Argentina’s democracy. 1 Term coined by Guillermo O’Donnell (1994), a Delegative Democracy is in place of a Representative democracy, which is what is usually studied in Political Science.
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