Parties and Disruption in Bolivia

Jennifer Cyr, "Making or Breaking Politics: Social Conflicts and Party-System Change in Bolivia," Studies in Comparative International Development June 2014 (early online). Gated.

Abstract:

Why do only some social conflicts lead to party-system change? In Bolivia, the recent politicization of the regional autonomy movement represented a stark difference with how conflicts had affected party-system dynamics in the past. This study argues that social conflicts led to party-system change in Bolivia thanks largely to the strategies of ruling party elites. Motivated to preserve their position in power, elites had a menu of strategic options at their disposal to integrate, defer, or disregard demands from below. The study situates the recent regional conflict in Bolivia within the country’s longer history of mobilizational politics. It finds that ruling elites utilized different strategies of exclusion and inclusion to neutralize social conflict and preserve the status quo party system. They appropriated the regional autonomy demands as a last-ditch effort to remain electorally relevant in the face of successful party competition. In so doing, they helped transform the party system. Even from a position of electoral weakness and in the face of overwhelming demands from below, Bolivia’s elites shaped the transformative impact of those demands. This study relies upon a least-likely case design to highlight the impact elite agency can have in making or breaking politics under democracy.

This is an interesting analysis of Bolivian politics, examining in detail how parties dealt with periods of disruption.

This study finds that societal demands in Bolivia became politically transformative thanks in large part to the strategies of ruling party elites. Their responses to mobilizing pressures from below varied according to their coalitional interests and the nature of the electoral competition they faced. The decisions taken by status quo elites shaped the political impact of each disruptive mobilization. After 1952, 1985, and 1994, the ruling party elite undertook strategies of adoption, exclusion, and cooptation and effectively neutralized the mobilization in question. In 2005, they found themselves at an electoral disadvantage. To remain relevant, these politicians chose a strategy of appropriation, taking as their own the regionalist issues that the MAS, through its nationalist project, opposed. In so doing, they helped forge party system realignment. 

The implications of this study are multiple. First, it provides conclusive evidence regarding the theoretical importance of elite agency for party-system change. The case of the Bolivian status quo elite represents a least-likely case of the effect of agency vis-à-vis demands from below. The political system has historically faced mass mobilizations of different kinds. However, ruling party elites consistently enacted strategies that shaped whether those conflicts impacted party-system dynamics. This was true even after they suffered a major electoral loss. Elite actions are vital for explaining how mobilizations from below impact the party system.

Cyr argues that this is a least likely case of agency since it appears that parties get swept away. Instead, she says that agency is apparent as parties adapt and survive. It's crying out for comparative analysis, as I immediately thought of the Venezuelan case, where the opposition famously failed to adapt to disruption in the 1990s. At any rate, there's a lot of food for thought here about how party leaders respond to crisis in a way that keeps them politically relevant.

Kennedy, Congress, and Cuba

Asa McKercher, "Steamed Up: Domestic Politics, Congress, and Cuba, 1959-1963." Diplomatic History 38, 3 (2014): 599-627.

Abstract:

Studies examining the initial response of the United States to Cuba’s revolution largely ignore the role of Congress, an oversight reflecting both a scholarly trend emphasizing the actions of the presidency in regards to American foreign policy making and the separation of powers in the U.S. constitution. Redressing the balance, this article examines how members of Congress reacted to the course of U.S.-Cuban relations throughout the crisis years of 1959–1963. Illuminating Cuba’s place in domestic debates about foreign affairs it also looks at the politics surrounding the American response to the Cuban revolution. Lawmakers quickly emerged at the forefront of those calling for a strong stance toward Cuba. In turn, congressional pressure to confront Fidel Castro both helped and hindered presidents Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy. For Kennedy, in particular, domestic politics and actions by Congress were major concerns that tempered his actions in dealing with the Cuban revolution.

The key argument is that studies of early U.S. policy toward the Cuban revolution focus on the executive, so this is opening that up. The ultimate conclusion is not too surprising.

Thus, the executive found it necessary to look tough in standing up to Castro. However, as President Kennedy’s comments to the press in September 1962 indicate, he was focused not only on avoiding the appearance of appeasing Castro but on resisting congressional pressure to take precipitate action against Cuba.

I enjoy these sorts of studies because even as a political scientist I like diving into archival records. We tend to get stuck on the idea that presidents intervene without providing the context for it. With Kennedy we know very well from the Cuban Missile Crisis that he was not anxious to get involved, so it makes good sense to look more closely at the congressional side.

If you're wondering, the conclusion here is that Congress was committed to sanctioning Cuba as much as possible, a pressure Kennedy had a difficult time resisting. The debate sounds eerily similar to the one going on now with Venezuela, though the stakes of course are far lower so it remains largely peripheral to the public eye.

It would benefit a bit, though, from more attention to work by political scientists. In my graduate U.S.-Latin American Relations course I use Michael Grow's U.S. Presidents and Latin American Interventions, where he looks at domestic opinion--generally driven by congressional leaders--as a main explanatory variable for understanding presidents' decisions to intervene.

Cuban Response to Future U.S. Actions

José Ramón Ponce Solozábal (a psychologist with what looks like a fascinating background, including working in Cuban counterintelligence) just published an article in Military Review on the possibility of a "Cuban spring," which refers to the article I published there in 2012 on the same topic with Erin Fiorey, who at the time was a Latin American Studies graduate student here. Ours was very policy oriented whereas his is more political theory.

Sin embargo, la creciente oposición y la lentitud del avance económico, auguran la inexorable
participación en algún momento, por razones geográficas e históricas de los Estados Unidos
de Norteamérica, como acertadamente apuntan Gregory Weeks y Erin Fiorey. 

No obstante, el artículo de dichos autores, si bien analiza brillantemente la situación cubana,
enfoca mecánicamente la posible actitud de la Cuba futura en lo que respecta a la participación
estadounidense. La secuencia de hechos históricos en la relación Cuba-Estados Unidos narrados, conduce a inferencias como cálculo matemático,pero la constatación práctica, in situ, del sentir de esa población en la actualidad, hace pensar en un salto muy significativo, lo cual pone en duda que se produzca una postura no conveniente para Estados Unidos en el momento de la transición a la democracia; aunque aciertan en considerar que esa relación puede caminar por el “filo de la navaja”

The first part is a nice compliment, and then he makes an interesting (and certainly debatable) point that we're a bit too mechanistic in our assumptions about how Cubans will respond to some eventual U.S. action in Cuba. Especially based on the rest of the article, what I take this to mean is that he believes Cubans may well be more sympathetic to the United States once they have a choice and are no longer so tightly controlled.

My hunch is that the United States will be met with considerable skepticism, but I do have to admit that such an assessment is based on certain assumptions (the punishment of the embargo, historical animosity, among others) that could turn out to be wrong. I would argue that at the very least we should maintain those assumption until the opposite is very clearly evident. I can envision just blundering into a post-Castro context, intent on showing Cubans what they should do next.

Latin American Views of the United States

Laura Silliman, "Bridging Inter-American Divides: Views of the U.S. Across the Americas," AmericasBarometer Insights 105 (2014). Ungated

Abstract:

The United States has long suffered from an image problem across much of the Americas, due in large part to the many cases of U.S. involvement in Latin American and Caribbean affairs. As these legacies of military and economic interventions perhaps begin to recede in the minds of Latin Americans, the question arises asto what factors influence the views of the U.S. among citizens of Latin America and the Caribbean? In this analysis of 2012 AmericasBarometer survey data, I  find that the growing levels of economic and social ties between the U.S. and some countries in the Americas are a source of more positive views of the U.S. Alternatively, citizens living in those countries with fewer direct connections to the U.S. tend to express more negative views of the U.S. This study examines these relationships and the resulting policy implications.

This goes along the lines of an article by Baker and Cupery that I wrote about last year (and which is cited in this one).

Two things come to mind:

First, the distance issue is quite interesting and counter-intuitive because the U.S. has interfered/intervened more with nearby countries, which you would expect to generate some negative feelings (depending on how long ago it was). This is a short article and she doesn't really get into it, but part of the answer may well be ideology, which she does note. At least right now, countries closer to the United States tend to be more conservative while countries further away tend to be more leftist.

Second, we need to stop talking about U.S.-Latin American relations in terms of grand strategy, big plans, bold moves, etc. The daily, consistent and lower level interactions are what really make the relationship tick. She mentions the potential positive impact of free trade, which I would argue is not necessarily clear given that trustworthiness with Chile and Mexico are under 50%. However, engagement in general is a good thing, and it does not need to be "big," which unfortunately seems to be a fad with a lot of the commentariat even in the total absence of supportive evidence.

Celebrations and Voting in Mexico

I think this is a fancy way of saying that if people have a day off to party, they are a bit less likely to vote.

Cambridge Journals Online - British Journal of Political Science 44, 1 (January 2014)

Social Capital and Voter Turnout: Evidence from Saint's Day Fiestas in Mexico

Matthew D. Atkinson and Anthony Fowler

Abstract

Social capital and community activity are thought to increase voter turnout, but reverse causation and omitted variables may bias the results of previous studies. This article exploits saint's day fiestas in Mexico as a natural experiment to test this causal relationship. Saint's day fiestas provide temporary but large shocks to the connectedness and trust within a community, and the timing of these fiestas is quasi-random. For both cross-municipality and within-municipality estimates, saint's day fiestas occurring near an election decrease turnout by 2.5 to 3.5 percentage points. So community activities that generate social capital can inhibit political participation. These findings may give pause to scholars and policy makers who assume that such community activity and social capital will improve the performance of democracy.

If I am sitting around drinking with my friends, I may find it harder to get up and stand in line to vote. Unless, as happens, a political party is providing the drinks and the transportation. It may not be more complicated than that.

Anatomy of a Rejected Academic Article

I just had an article rejected. This happens all the time in academia--I even published an article about it back in 2006. But this particular rejection really highlighted the importance of journal choice when you submit. My work tends to cross any number of disciplinary/thematic boundaries and so I have to think about what journal I want to focus on.

In this case, I thought I had identified an appropriate journal yet that turned out to be completely wrong. The article is about the metamorphosis of the School of the Americas, which became the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) and in particular how it has evolved institutionally within the U.S. Army in unanticipated ways. The journal I chose was not focused on Latin America and the editor is not a Latin Americanist, but I thought the theme fit well.*

Accompanying the reviews (which were of mixed quality, though certainly no worse than anywhere else) was this assessment from the editor.

I am sorry it took so long to get back to you.  We had some very tardy reviewers. The reviewers thought that the topic had merit. But they also found serious flaws. In view of the criticisms of the reviewer(s) found at the bottom of this letter, your manuscript has been denied publication in *********.  Some of my thoughts follow. AFter a lot of reflection on my part, it seemed that given the problems, the paper was just not a particularly good fit for the journal. Just for example, the title of the article included an acronym that I was unaware of.  Now I knew of the school but did not immediately know what WHINSEC was.  If the manuscript is a good fit, the editor of the journal (one with a 13 year tenure) would recognize the acronym. The manuscript actually was written like a chapter in a book that illustrated constructivist IR theory or that examined the school. 

I had not anticipated this. I had put WHINSEC in the title, which called negative attention. My immediate thought was that if the editor deemed this to be a bad fit, then it should have been desk rejected (meaning rejected by the editor without even sending it to reviewers, which is a way for editors to save everyone's time, including their own). Instead, I waited just about five months (I submitted the article in late July).

It's also a lesson about topic. This issue fascinates me and my impression was that people I talked to about it found it interesting at least, but it's niche. I try to show in the article how it has broader implications, but maybe I am not making this clear enough.

So now I sort through the reviews and try to figure out what is useful and what is not, then determine what journal comes next. The delay that accompanies the review process means you don't want to screw up, yet even now after I've been through lots of submissions it's not always easy. But I'll take WHINSEC out of the title!

* I am not going to identify the journal or the editor--my point is not to make a stink but rather to think aloud about the journal submission process.

Guatemala-Chiapas Circular Migration

Here is a really interesting article (in Spanish) by Jéssica Nájera Aguirre from the Colegio de México on circular migration between Guatemala and Chiapas, sometimes on a daily basis, always with the intention of maintaining residence in Guatemala. We're talking 300,000-400,000 people a year.

What I don't get, however, is how there is so much demand for labor when--at least on the surface--we might expect plenty of Mexican supply already to exist.

Given the high levels of poverty in Chiapas, is there not resentment on the part of Mexicans toward Guatemalans who cross the border and sell goods (which is the second largest source of employment)? Further, why is it that agricultural demand is not being met with local supply?

I don't know the answer to those questions, but what we see is a border region that is now transnational to a much greater degree than in the past. I imagine the reasons for this can be in found to a significant degree in Guatemala. The article does not address the issue directly, but clearly Guatemalans cross the border because opportunities at home are too scarce, and in recent years--more or less the last decade--the sense of insecurity has increased. And as we know from the U.S. side, once this type of migratory pattern starts, it does not stop.

Anarchy and War in South America

Ahsan I. Butt, "Anarchy and Hierarchy in International Relations: Examining South America's War-Prone Decade, 1932-1941." International Organization 67, 3 (July 2013): 575-607.

Abstract:

This article questions the validity of anarchy as an assumption in International Relations theory. Powerful states often provide public goods to smaller states in return for their acquiescence on matters of interest. This transactional provision of public goods is analogous to how central governments behave in domestic environments; thus the hierarchic structure of domestic politics is replicated in international politics. The anarchy-hierarchy distinction, which rests on a neat separation of international and domestic structures, is therefore highly contentious. One public good that great powers provide, largely ignored by the literature on hierarchy, is justice. Powerful states can provide a forum for aggrieved parties to settle their disputes, and thus contain conflicts before they escalate to war. If such a forum is no longer provided, the system reverts to anarchy, where escalation—and therefore, war—is more likely. South America's war-prone decade can be explained by the variation in structural conditions on the continent. Due to the Depression, its Good Neighbor policy, and the onset of World War II, the United States was less interested in South American affairs in the 1930s, resulting in a more anarchic structure and a higher propensity for war.

This is an interesting article, which I am immediately drawn to because it makes extensive use of the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series, which is a cool resource, and I love the use of historical cases to test theories.

What seems problematic, though, is the application of this argument to the past decade or so. After 9/11 countless people have argued the U.S. has shifted its attention away from Latin America, focusing more on a shadowy War on Terror and the Middle East. Further, since 2008 the United States has been suffering the worst economic crisis since the Depression. The 2001-2013 period thus appears to be very similar to 1932-1941, which means we would expect war.

But beyond the Colombia bombing over its border with Ecuador to strike at the FARC, which was aggressive but one-time and aimed at a non-state actor, we aren't seeing that. In fact, Hugo Chávez and Alvaro Uribe didn't go to war despite rumblings and a deep mutual hatred. Peru is up in arms about its border, but it took the complaint to the International Court of Justice.