Escaping the zero-sum scenario: Democracy versus technocracy in Latin America

Political Science Quarterly

Volumn 121, Issue 1, 2006, Pages

  Williams, Mark Eric ^a  

^a MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33845386816     PISSN: 00323195     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1002/j.1538-165X.2006.tb00567.x     Document Type: Review

References (104)

1. Jorge I. Domínguez, ed., Technopols: Freeing Politics and Markets in Latin America in the 1990s (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997);
2. Merilee S. Grindle, Challenging the State: Crisis and Innovation in Latin America and Africa (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996);
3. and Ben Ross Schneider, "The Material Bases of Technocracy: Investor Confidence and Neoliberalism in Latin America" in Miguel A. Centeno and Patricio Silva, eds., The Politics of Expertise in Latin America (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998), 77-95.
4. Verónica Montecinos, Economic Policy-Making and Parliamentary Accountability in Chile (New York: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, 2002);
5. and Peter M. Ward, "De clientelismo a tecnocracía: Cambios recientes en la gestión municipal en México," Política y Gobierno 5 (Primer Semester 1998): 95-133.
6. Stephan Haggard and Robert R. Kaufman, The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995);
7. Judith Teichman, "Mexico and Argentina: Economic Reform and Technocratic Decision Making," Studies in Comparative International Development 32 (Spring 1997): 31-55;
8. and Miguel A. Centeno and Patricio Silva, "The Politics of Expertise in Latin America: Introduction" in Centeno and Silva, eds., The Politics of Expertise, 1-12.
9. See, for example, Javier Corrales, "Presidents, Ruling Parties, and Party Rules: A Theory on the Politics of Economic Reform in Latin America," Comparative Politics 32 (January 2000): 127-149;
10. José Piñera, "Chile" in John Williamson, ed., The Political Economy of Policy Reform (Washington DC: Institute for International Economics, 1994), 225-231;
11. William Glade, "Toward Effective Privatization Strategies" in William Glade, ed., Privatization of Public Enterprises in Latin America (San Francisco, CA: ICS Press, 1991), 117-130;
12. and Graham T. Allison, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1971).
13. Joan Nelson, "The Politics of Economic Transformation: Is Third World Experience Relevant to Eastern Europe?" World Politics 45 (April 1993): 433-463;
14. and Mark Eric Williams, "Market Reforms, Technocrats, and Institutional Innovation," World Development 30 (March 2002): 395-412.
15. Guillermo O'Donnell, "Delegative Democracy" in Larry Diamond and Marc Plattner, eds., The Global Resurgence of Democracy (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 94-108;
16. and Guillermo O'Donnell, "Horizontal Accountability in New Democracies," Journal of Democracy 9 (July 1998): 112-126.
17. Lucio Fernando Oliver Costilla, "The Reconstitution of Power and Democracy in the Age of Capital Globalization," Latin American Perspectives 27 (January 2000): 82-104;
18. and Nancy Birdsall, Carol Graham, and Richard H. Sabot, eds., Beyond Trade Offs: Market Reform and Equitable Growth in Latin America (Washington DC: The Inter-American Development Bank, 1998).
19. W. Andrew Moellmer, "Neoliberalism and the Effects of the Economic Reforms on Democratic Consolidation After the Debt Crisis" (paper delivered at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, New Orleans, 24-27 March 2002).
20. "Second-stage reforms" entail market-completing, equity-oriented, and institution-building initiatives designed to ensure competitive markets, reduce inequality, establish the rule of law, and promote good governance. See Carol Graham and Moisés Naim, "The Political Economy of Institutional Reform in Latin America" in Birdsall, Graham, and Sabot, eds., Beyond Trade-Offs, 321-362;
21. Merilee S. Grindle, ed., Getting Good Government: Capacity Building in the Public Sectors of Developing Countries (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997);
22. Moisés Naim, "Latin America: The Second Stage of Reform" in Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner, eds., Economic Reform and Democracy (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 28-44;
23. Manuel Pastor, Jr. and Carol Wise, "The Politics of Second-Generation Reform," Journal of Democracy 10 (July 1999): 34-48.
24. Hugo Eyzaguirre, Institutions and Economic Development: Judicial Reform in Latin America (Washington DC: Inter-American Development Bank, 1996);
25. and Sylvia Maxfield, Gatekeepers of Growth (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997).
26. Jodi Finkel, "Judicial Reform in Latin America: Market Economies, Self-interested Politicians, and Judicial Power" (paper prepared for the Scientific Study of Courts Conference, College Station, TX, October 1999).
27. Carol Wise, "Politics Unhinged: Market Reforms as a Catalyst for Mexico's Democratic Transition" (paper prepared for the Annual Congress of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, CA, September 2001).
28. See, for example, Mark Eric Williams, Market Reforms in Mexico: Coalitions, Institutions, and the Politics of Policy Change (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001);
29. Javier Corrales, Presidents Without Parties: The Politics of Economic Reform in Argentina and Venezuela in the 1990s (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002);
30. and Ana Margheritis, Ajuste y reforma en Argentina (1989-1995): La economía política de las privatizaciones (Buenos Aires: Grupo Editor Latinoamericano, 1999).
31. Judith A. Teichman, The Politics of Freeing Markets in Latin America: Chile, Argentina, and Mexico (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 98.
32. Carlos Huneeus, "Technocrats and Politicians in the Democratic Politics of Argentina (1983-95)" in Centeno and Silva, eds., The Politics of Expertise, 190;
33. and Javier Corrales, "Why Argentines Followed Cavallo: A Technopol Between Democracy and Economic Reform" in Dominguez, ed., Technopols, 64, 65.
34. th annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, CA, 30 August-2 September 2001), 13.
35. Andrés Stambouli, "An Evaluation of the First Year of the Government of Carlos Andrés Pérez" in Joseph S. Tulchin, ed., Venezuela in the Wake of Radical Reform (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1993), 122.
36. Miguel Ángel Centeno, Democracy Within Reason: Technocratic Revolution in Mexico (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994);
37. and Williams, Market Reforms in Mexico.
38. Centeno, Democracy Within Reason, 39-40.
39. Pacific Council on International Policy, Mexico Transforming (Los Angeles, CA: Pacific Council on International Policy, n.d.), 17.
40. Margheritis, Ajuste y reforma;
41. Luigi Manzetti and Scott Morgenstern, "Legislative Oversight: Interests and Institutions in the United States and Latin America" (paper prepared for delivery at Notre Dame Conference on Horizontal Accountability in New Democracy, Kellogg Institute, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, May 2000);
42. and Mariana Llanos and Ana Margheritis, "Liderazgo presidencial y dinámica institucional durante el primer periodo presidencial de Menem: El caso de las privatizaciones," Política y Gobierno 4 (Segundo Semestre 1999): 441-475.
43. See Corrales, "Presidents, Ruling Parties, and Party Rules";
44. and Mariana Llanos, "Understanding Presidential Power in Argentina: A Study of the Policy of Privatisation in the 1990s," Journal of Latin American Studies 33 (February 2001): 67-99.
45. Rubio Ferreira and Matteo Goretti Delia, "Menem's Decretazo (1989-1998): The Inefficiency of the Constitutional Reform to Modify the Practice of the Executive Regarding Need and Urgency Decrees" (paper presented at the 1998 meeting of the Latin American Studies Association, Chicago, IL, 24-26 September, 1998).
46. Teichman, "Mexico and Argentina," 47.
47. A 1990 legal challenge to Menem's rule-by-decree led the new Supreme Court to issue a ruling that essentially sanctioned the executive's ability to promulgate decrees as he saw fit, as long as once he informed Congress of the decrees, Congress did not disapprove. A 1994 ruling reaffirmed the transfer of legislative powers to the executive. See Manzetti and Morgenstern, "Legislative Oversight," 33.
48. Alberto R. González Arzac, "Aerolíneas, ENTel y la Inspección General de Justicia," Realidad Económica 97 (Primer Semestre 1990): 55-63.
49. For example, Argentine, Mexican, and Venezuelan administrations led by Presidents Juan Perón, Luis Echeverría, and Hugo Chávez-all non-technocratic governments-displayed enormous presidential power.
50. Roberts, "Party System Collapse," 12;
51. and Brian F. Crisp, "Lessons From Economic Reform in the Venezuelan Democracy," Latin American Research Review 33 (Winter 1998): 28.
52. Williams, "Market Reforms, Technocrats, and Institutional Innovation," 399-404.
53. Jeffrey Weldon, "The Political Sources of Presidencialismo in Mexico" in Scott Mainwaring and Matthew Soberg Shugart, eds., Presidentialism and Democracy in Latin America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 225-258;
54. and Wayne A. Cornelius, Mexican Politics in Transition: The Breakdown of a One-Party-Dominant Regime (La Jolla: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of California, San Diego, 1996), 36.
55. Grindle, Challenging the State, 81-86;
56. and Williams, Market Reforms in Mexico, 90, 118.
57. Grindle, Challenging the State, 92-93.
58. Williams, Market Reforms in Mexico, 34-36, 112.
59. Teichman, The Politics of Freeing Markets, 160.
60. Teichman, The Politics of Freeing Markets, Ibid., 115.
61. Corrales, Presidents Without Parties, 121.
62. Corrales, Presidents Without Parties, Ibid., 123.
63. Merilee S. Grindle, "Reforming Land Tenure in Mexico: Peasants, the Market, and the State" in Riordan Roett, ed., The Challenge of Institutional Reform (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1996).
64. Corrales, "Presidents, Ruling Parties, and Party Rules," 127-149.
65. Salinas engaged in this "political spending" via the National Solidarity Program, PRONASOL, a giant pork barrel project that helped to assuage the social tensions that the reforms unleashed and to shore up political support, by funneling billions of dollars to grassroots projects in regions where the ruling party faced stiff partisan opposition. See Wayne A. Cornelius, Ann L. Craig, and Jonathan Fox, eds., Transforming State-Society Relations in Mexico: The National Solidarity Strategy (La Jolla: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of California, San Diego, 1994).
66. Leslie Crawford, "Zedillo Under Fire as Peso Wobbles: Political Troubles Add 19 Problems Facing Mexico's President," Financial Times, 31 August 1995.
67. Llanos and Margheritis, "Liderazgo presidencial," 472.
68. See Centeno, Democracy Within Reason, 212.
69. Manzetti and Morgenstern, "Legislative Oversight," 27-30;
70. Finkel, "Judicial Reform in Latin America."
71. Manzetti and Morgenstern, "Legislative Oversight," 39.
72. Manzetti and Morgenstern, "Legislative Oversight," Ibid., 40.
73. In addition to his concern over ensuring that economic reforms were effective, Menem also accepted this measure in order to win opposition parties' support for a constitutional amendment permitting his reelection in 1994. See Gabriel Negretto and Mark Ungar, "Independencia del poder judicial y Estado de Derecho en América Latina: Los casos de Argentina y Venezuela," Política y Gobierno 4 (Primer Semestre 1997): 102.
74. Silvio R. Waisbord, "Knocking on Newsroom Doors: The Press and Political Scandals in Argentina," Political Communication 11 (January-March 1994): 27.
75. Ibid.
76. Javier Corrales, Legislative Oversight of New Technocracies: The Argentine Case, 1983-2001 (New York: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, 2002).
77. Javier Corrales, Legislative Oversight of New Technocracies: The Argentine Case, 1983-2001, Ibid., 31.
78. Javier Corrales, Legislative Oversight of New Technocracies: The Argentine Case, 1983-2001, Ibid., 20.
79. See Pedro Aspe, Iniciativa de reforma constitutional para dotar de autonomía al Banco de México (presented as an address to the Mexican Chamber of Deputies, Mexico City, 24 May 1993);
80. and Delia M. Boylan, "Democratization and Institutional Change in Mexico: The Logic of Partial Insulation," Comparative Political Studies 34 (February 2001): 3-29.
81. Salinas's successor, Ernesto Zedillo, also introduced greater transparency into government finances: where Salinas released information on Mexico's foreign reserves just three times a year, the Zedillo government placed this and other data on various web sites that provided frequent updates.
82. Chappell Lawson, Building the Fourth Estate: Democratization and the Rise of a Free Press in Mexico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).
83. Chappell Lawson, Building the Fourth Estate: Democratization and the Rise of a Free Press in Mexico, Ibid., 6.
84. María Amparo Casar, "Las Relaciones entre el poder ejecutivo y el legislativo: El caso de México," Política y Gobierno 6 (Primer Semestre 1999): 83-128.
85. See Luis Carlos Ugalde, The Mexican Congress: Old Player, New Power (Washington DC: The CSIS Press, 2000), 26-28, 157.
86. Wise, "Politics Unhinged."
87. Pamela K. Starr, "Monetary Mismanagement and Inadvertent Democratization in Technocratic Mexico," Studies in Comparative International Development 33 (Winter 1999): 35-65.
88. See Jorge A. Vargas, "Mexico's Legal Revolution: An Appraisal of Its Recent Constitutional Changes, 1988-1995," The Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law25 (Summer 1996): 497-559;
89. and Hector Fix-Fierro, "Judicial Reform and the Supreme Court of Mexico: The Trajectory of Three Years," United States-Mexico Law Journal 6 (Spring 1998): 1-21.
90. Pilar Domingo, "Judicial Independence: The Politics of the Supreme Court in Mexico," Journal of Latin American Studies 32 (2000): 705-734.
91. Mark Eric Williams, "Traversing the Mexican Odyssey: Reflections on Political Change and the Study of Mexican Politics," Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 18 (Winter 2002): 153-184.
92. Specifically, the reforms gave the bank independence to formulate monetary policy, introduced staggered, six-year non-renewable terms for its governors, and prohibited the bank from financing government debt.
93. Ricardo Hausmann, "Quitting Populism Cold Turkey: The Big Bang Approach to Macroeconomic Balance" in L.W. Goodman, J.M. Forman, et al., eds., Lessons of the Venezuelan Experience (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 275, 277.
94. Luis I. Jácome H., "Legal Central Bank Independence and Inflation in Latin America During the 1990s" (IMF working paper, WP/01/212, International Monetary Fund, Washington DC, December 2001).
95. David M. Gould and Mary S. Rosenbaum, Latin American Central Banking: Have Reforms Made a Difference? (Dallas, TX and Atlanta, GA: Research Departments, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, 11 June 1998), 8.
96. Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, "Halfway to Reform: The World Bank and the Venezuelan Justice System" (August 1996), 4, accessed on the website of Ciaonet at http://www.ciaonet.org/book/lch11/lch11.html, 28 September 2004.
97. See also Implementation Completion Report on a Loan in the Amount of US$30 Million to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela for Judicial Infrastructure Development Project, Report No. 26173 (Washington DC: The World Bank, 28 June 2003), 3.
98. Implementation Completion Report, 15.
99. Michael Coppedge, "Venezuela: Popular Sovereignty Versus Liberal Democracy," The Kellogg Institute Working Paper Series (working paper #294, The Kellogg Institute, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, April 2002), 32.
100. Corrales, "Legislative Oversight of New Technocracies," 13.
101. For example, Salinas placated the PRI's old style, populist "dinosaurs" via PRONASOL-the multibillion dollar pork barrel program that helped the PRI compete politically and provided patronage money to disburse. He also deposed seventeen sitting governors who had fallen out of favor, jailed PRI union leaders who opposed the reforms, and controlled the party's nominations for congressional elections. However, because Salinas also protected the PRI's competitive edge, the upshot was, to some degree, a positive-sum game for the executive, ruling party, and Congress too.
102. Besides acceding to political reforms that created a much more competitive electoral environment, Zedillo also discontinued Salinas's pork barrel PRONASOL initiative.
103. For example, at its raucous 1996 General Assembly, the PRI rank and file revamped the party's candidate selection criteria in ways that made nearly all of Mexico's politically inexperienced technocrats ineligible to run for the presidency, Senate, or governorships. These rule changes stipulated that candidates for these offices must have been party members for at least ten years and have held prior elected office. See Williams, "Traversing the Mexican Odyssey," 178.
104. Corrales, Presidents Without Parties, 57.