Leslie Anderson

Nicaragua: Progress Amid Regress?

This essay examines Nicaraguas municipal elections of November 2008 against the backdrop of Daniel Ortegas return to the nations presidency in 2006. While Ortega has engaged in authoritarian practices, municipal-level Sandinista politicians have helped foster a vibrant local democracy. Engaging citizens in local problem-solving, they have dominated municipal elections since 2001, winning most major municipalities again in 2008. Sandinista success has pushed Liberals toward a more policy-oriented versus clientelistic approach to local government and generated a more responsive and competitive municipal politics nation-wide. These developments, contrasted with Ortegas behavior, indicate that Nicaragua is experiencing progressive and regressive forces in its democratization process.

Post-socialist democratization: a comparative political economy model of the vote for Hungary and Nicaragua

Abstract For advanced democracies, models of electoral behavior are rather well developed. However, such models may explain only a part of electoral behavior in new democracies. In particular, they seem poorly suited to the emerging, post-socialist democracies, where the vote choice involves fundamental national economic and political variables. While the new democracies of Hungary and Nicaragua are different in certain obvious ways, they share the common experience of profound economic and political system shifts. In this exploratory research, we argue that, in such cases, voters decide largely on the basis of key political and economic system considerations. To support our claim, we formulate a comparative Political Economy model and estimate it by using logistic regression on survey data from the 1990 Nicaraguan election and the 1994 Hungarian election.

Post-Materialism from a Peasant Perspective Political Motivation in Costa Rica and Nicaragua

Although the post-materialist study of political motivation focuses upon affluent political actors in more developed countries, it has important implications for political motivation among the poor and in less developed countries. To date these have not been addressed by students of post-materialism. If the affluent who no longer face economic insecurity take political action for value-oriented and idealistic reasons, the implication is that the economically insecure will act politically mainly for economic reasons. In fact, data collected from the poor in Costa Rica and Nicaragua indicate that the poor are politically motivated for economic reasons primarily in conjunction with noneconomic and value-oriented reasons. The poor as well as the affluent act politically for nonmaterialist reasons such as moral notions of right and wrong, and the need for self-respect and dignity.

Nicaragua Votes: The Elections of 2001

In November 2001, Nicaraguans voted in their country’s fourth national election since the Somoza regime was overthrown in 1979 and the third since the electoral defeat of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in 1990. For the third straight time, they chose a conservative candidate who espoused democratic liberties. In 2001 Nicaraguan voters had three choices for the presidency, one from each of three long-established parties. Outgoing vice-president Enrique Bola~nos, running as the Liberal Party candidate, won with 56 percent of the vote, defeating Sandinista candidate and former president Daniel Ortega, who garnered 42 percent. Coming in a distant third was the Conservative Party’s Alberto Saborio, who got less than 2 percent. The observers who were present for the campaigning and voting, including former U.S. president Jimmy Carter plus Nobel laureate and former Costa Rican president Oscar Arias, were as one in endorsing the process as free and fair. Nicaragua is now more than two decades beyond the overthrow of Anastasio Somoza’s authoritarian dictatorship and well into a period of electoral competition among parties and candidates with recent governing experience. Citizens can and do participate in meaningful ways; elections are regularly scheduled; peaceful parties representing distinctive policy positions boast large followings and contend freely; elections are deemed fair by international observers; and state power is shared out across executive, legislative, and local offices that parties of both the left and the right can hope to fill. In short, democratization is clearly afoot and has been for some time. Yet Nicaragua’s path to fuller democracy is not free of roadblocks. Leslie Anderson is associate professor of political science at the University of Florida. Lawrence C. Dodd holds the Manning J. Dauer Chair in Political Science at the University of Florida. The present essay draws on research for a book they are writing entitled Learning Democracy: Citizen Engagement and Electoral Choice in Nicaragua, 1990–2001.

The Problem of Single-Party Predominance in an Unconsolidated Democracy: The Example of Argentina

Parties can be a crucial to democratic function but not all parties or party systems are democratic. Some parties are fully competitive within a pluralist system while others, notably hegemonic parties, are antithetical to democracy. Between competitive, pluralist party systems and hegemonic party systems lie predominant party systems. These are compatible with democracy where democracy is fully consolidated but inhibit democratic consolidation in settings with an authoritarian history or where the rule of law is incomplete. The effect of predominant parties in unconsolidated democracies has not been fully studied in comparative context. I scrutinize this problem in Argentina, which has followed an electoral calendar for two decades, but lacks a fully pluralist system of power-sharing among two nationally-competitive parties. The authoritarian background of Peronism, of Argentina itself and the limited competitive potential of the Radical Party have curtailed democratic development. The article underscores the seriousness of Argentinas dilemma by contrasting its situation with Democratic Party predominance in the United States Deep South in the 1940s. The comparison of democratic development in an older democracy with that of a newer democracy illustrates that some of the processes of consolidation are similar and that the experience of older democracies may indicate possible solutions for newer democracies.

Agrarian Politics and Revolution

This essay uses three crucial cases to test predictions made in Jeffery Paiges Agrarian Revolution. Relying upon structure to explain political outcome, Paige predicts that peasants will be political conservatives who engage in reformist politics but never radical action, much less revolution. The cases illustrate however, that peasant political behavior varies considerably, being reformist, radical, or revolutionary depending upon the perspectives of the actors and upon the role of the state. The data draw on information from cases in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Colombia. In each of these, respectively, peasants were reformist, revolutionary, or radical. Economic structure, recognizably similar across different political circumstances, determines the broad outlines of rural social relations but does not determine either political action or outcome. The former is more accurately determined by micro perspectives while the latter results from the interaction of political actors with the state.

Surprises and secrets: Lessons from the 1990 Nicaraguan election

This article analyzes one of the first surveys of Nicaraguan electoral opinion prior to the 1990 election in which Daniel Ortega was defeated by Violeta Chamorro. Although this survey, like many others, predicted an Ortega victory, the analysis reveals that the impending FSLN loss was in fact evident had this survey and others been scrutinized more carefully. Moreover, the nature of both FSLN and Chamorro support departs from the traditional division of political loyalties in Nicaragua and shows surprising similarities with electoral trends in more advanced, industrial democracies. The essay suggests that in tense political situations, such as preelectoral Nicaragua, particular survey problems may arise and special tactics may be necessary, including earlier rather than later opinion polls.

Electoral competition and democratic decline in Nicaragua: uncovering an electorally viable platform for the right

ABSTRACT Between the 1980s and 2006 Nicaragua was a competitive democracy where parties of the left and right won national presidential elections and relinquished power when their terms ended. More recently the quality of Nicaragua’s democracy has deteriorated. This change is due partly to autocratic behaviour by the elected leftist president, Daniel Ortega. But democratic decline is also the result of factional divisions and vague, outmoded policy commitments on the right that have crippled its electoral competitiveness, enabling Ortega’s behaviour. Utilizing an experimental research design, this article identifies two modernized policy platforms that could significantly broaden rightist electoral support in presidential campaigns, aiding democratic resurgence in Nicaragua. At a point when opposition parties are struggling to retain strength and coherence in many other democracies, the study presents a research strategy that could help clarify the ways such parties might reinvigorate their electoral competitiveness.

Democratization and Oppositional Consciousness in Argentina

Many countries recently have adopted formal democratic institutions and processes, such as the use of regular elections for national political offices. Many citizens, suffering from poverty and extreme social inequality, nonetheless feel politically excluded and dissatisfied. They sometimes turn to collective action and protest to help correct perceived injustices, yet protest often is rendered ineffective by the long-standing authoritarian habits of politicians, by clientalistic arrangements, and by citizens’ inexperience with collective action. This article draws on Jane Mansbridge and Aldon Morris’s differentiation of oppositional anger and oppositional consciousness to understand the limits to protest in new democracies. Anger, which is necessary for triggering collective action, by itself does not foster effective popular action. Often a full-fledged oppositional consciousness also is needed. This article examines three cases of protest in Argentina to illustrate the roles of oppositional anger, minimal oppositional consciousness, and full-fledged oppositional consciousness in popular politics. The study concludes that, thus far, most groups in Argentina that engage in collective action have not manifested a full-fledged oppositional consciousness. Protesters, to be effective, need to develop a more coherent understanding of the systematic oppression that they face, including the persistence of Peronism.

Fascists or Revolutionaries? Left and Right Politics of the Rural Poor

This article compares rural support for authoritarian populism in the new democracies in western Europe and Latin America. Literature on mass-based peasant revolutions sees the rural poor as revolutionaries, but an earlier, Marxist view saw them as counter-revolutionary. What can we expect of rural people in new democracies? The article examines four cases of rural support for authoritarian populism and contrasts them with patterns of peasant leftism. Two factors explain the difference: (1) background factors (economic and social relations, the nature of land tenure) and (2) foreground factors (political leadership, organizational style, and rhetoric). The article considers these conclusions for the contemporary international context and draws implications for democratization today.