The Durability of Pink Tide Era Interest Intermediation Regimes

• In Event: Political Incorporation: Conceptualization, Measurement, and Implications

Abstract

Over the last two decades much has been written about Latin America’s Left Turn, about its origins, its policy agendas, and its relations with societal actors. Now that this first wave of left-wing governments has ebbed and many of them have been replaced by conservative ones, we are in a better position to provide a longer-term assessment of their popular sector incorporation projects, their durability, and their legacy. We focus on the interest intermediation regimes (IIRs) generated by those incorporation projects. We do so because they play an important role in democratic governance, as they articulate the competing interests of diverse social groups to the state, which, in turn, affects political stability. Indeed, the IIRs developed by left governments of the Pink Tide undoubtably delivered a modicum of political stability compared to the previous period. In this paper we address two questions related to these issues. First, what remains of the IIRs that left-wing governments implemented? Second, what explains variation in the durability of those IIRs in the face of conservative rollback? We argue that the success of rollback attempts hinges on the cohesion of the popular-sector coalition, which rests on three main components: (1) the level of fragmentation of popular sector representation in the political sphere (i.e., whether multiple reformist parties compete in the electoral arena), (2) the level of fragmentation of popular sector organization in the associational sphere (i.e., whether multiple social movements seek to represent the same societal interests), and (3) the overlap between reformist political parties and popular sector organizations across spheres. The more cohesive popular sector representation and organization within the two spheres, the more likely are reformist political parties and social movements to coordinate political action, and the more costly it is for the conservative government to rollback Pink Tide incorporation projects. On the contrary, fissures across and within the popular coalition’s political and associational spheres weaken the prospects of popular sector incorporation and undermine political stability in the long term. We use the cases of Bolivia and Ecuador to illustrate our argument.

Authors

• Fabio Resmini, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú

• G. Eduardo Silva, Tulane University