Robert R. Kaufman

Globalization, Domestic Politics, and Social Spending in Latin America: A Time-Series Cross-Section Analysis, 1973-97

This study examines the effects of globalization, democratization, and partisanship on social spending in fourteen Latin American countries from 1973 to 1997, using a pooled time-series error-correction model. The authors examine three sets of issues. First, following debates in the literature on oecd countries, they want to know whether social spending has been encouraged or constrained by integration into global markets. Within this context, they examine the extent to which such outcomes might be influenced by two additional sets of domestic political and institutional factors discussed in work on developed countries: the electoral pressures of democratic institutions and whether or not popularly based governments are in power. The authors show that trade integration has a consistently negative effect on aggregate social spending and that this is compounded by openness to capital markets. This is the strongest and most robust finding in the study. Neither democratic nor popularly based governments consistently affect overall social spending. The authors then disaggregate spending into social security transfers and expenditures on health and education. They find that popularly based governments tend to protect social security transfers, which tend to flow disproportionately to their unionized constituencies; but they have a negative impact on health and education spending. Conversely, a shift to democracy leads to increases in health and education spending, which reaches a larger segment of the population. The authors conclude by emphasizing the contrasting political logics of the different types of social spending.

Inequality and Regime Change: Democratic Transitions and the Stability of Democratic Rule

Recent work by Carles Boix and Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson has focused on the role of inequality and distributive conflict in transitions to and from democratic rule. We assess these claims through causal process observation, using an original qualitative dataset on democratic transitions and reversions during the “third wave” from 1980 to 2000. We show that distributive conflict, a key causal mechanism in these theories, is present in just over half of all transition cases. Against theoretical expectations, a substantial number of these transitions occur in countries with high levels of inequality. Less than a third of all reversions are driven by distributive conflicts between elites and masses. We suggest a variety of alternative causal pathways to both transitions and reversions.

The Patron-Client Concept and Macro-Politics: Prospects and Problems

In order to make sense of the endless complexities of social life, social scientists conceptualize the empirical world in terms of interlocking systems and subsystems of roles and behavior, holding some of these spheres constant so that others can be studied and understood. This is a necessary and desirable aspect of social scientific enterprise. It may well be, however, that too many aspects of human interaction are held constant by the conventional ‘micro’ and ‘macro’ distinctions that dominate the study of developing nations. Although we have a growing body of data about the attitudes, values, and behaviors of the individuals who comprise the mass publics of such nations, we have relatively little systematic information about how this micro-level analysis feeds into and affects the processes and actors that are visible at the national level of political life. Most countrycentered macro-studies, in turn, make few, if any, systematic references to variables extending beyond national boundaries into the international environment. Such criticism seems to call for a more extensive analysis across systems—analysis which not only takes into account the attributes of individuals and of national institutions, but which also links these units to one another and to a variety of other sub- and supra-national structures and processes as well.

The Challenges of Consolidation

As the recent wave of democratization crested in the 1980s, skeptics questioned the capacity of new democratic governments to manage the daunting political challenges of economic reform. It was thought that either reform would undermine democracy by placing undue strains on fragile polities, or democratic politics would undermine the coherence of policy, generating a downward economic spiral. Concerns about democratic breakdown and policy stalemate remain salient in many parts of the world, particularly the new republics of the former Soviet Union. By the 1990s, however, newly established democratic regimes in many developing countries had initiated deep and wide-ranging economic reforms. The early democratizers of Southern Europe are now firmly ensconced in the European Union, having undertaken important economic adjustments required for their admission. In Latin America, longstanding development strategies have been reversed by fundamental shifts in economic policy: deep fiscal and exchange-rate adjustments, reduction of trade barriers, and privatization of state-owned enterprises. The trade-oriented countries of East and Southeast Asia did not experience crises of the same magnitude, but in the Philippines, Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand, the trend toward political liberalization has also coincided with the initiation of a new round of economic policy changes. And, of course, most of the postcommunist democracies of Central Europe have inaugurated massive--and wrenching--market-oriented reforms. The changes in all these regions and countries have been

The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions

Since the 1970s there has been a widespread movement from authoritarian to democratic rule among developing countries, often occuring against a backdrop of severe economic crises and the adoption of market-oriented reforms. The coincidence of these events raises long-standing questions about the relationship between economic and political change. This book analyzes this relationship, addressing a variety of questions: What role have economic crises played in the current wave of political liberalization and democratization? Can new democracies manage the daunting political challenges posed by economic reform? Under what economic and industrial conditions is democracy most likely to be consolidated? Drawing on contemporary political economy and th experiences of 12 Latin American countries, the authors develop a new approach to understanding democractic transitions. The text first analyzes the relationship between economic crisis and authoritarian withdrawal and then examines how the economic and institutional legacies of authoritarian rule affect the capacity of new deomcratic governments to initiate and sustain economic policy reform. Finally, the book analyzes the consolidation of

Attitudes toward Economic Reform in Mexico: The Role of Political Orientations

Since the debt crisis of 1982, Mexico has experienced more than a decade of market-oriented economic reform, but research on public opinion toward reform is limited. Drawing on general findings from opinion research in the United States, this study examines how policy preferences of Mexicans are shaped by social background, judgments about the economy, and political loyalties. The effect of these variables is examined across three national surveys, conducted in 1992, 1994, and 1995. We found that favorable orientations toward the president and the ruling party were consistently the strongest predictors of preferences about reform. Furthermore, as in the United States, sociotropic evaluations of the economy outweigh “pocketbook” concerns; despite many years of reform, both expectations and retrospective judgments are important in shaping preferences, particularly since the 1994 crisis; and social background variables have limited direct influence.

Views of Economic Inequality in Latin America

The authors assess the factors that affect judgments about the fairness of the distribution of wealth with pooled public opinion data from Latinobarometro surveys conducted in 1997, 2001, and 2002. They test hypotheses with a multilevel logit model that allows them not only to examine the effects of the class background and perceptions of individual respondents but also to assess the impact of society-level differences in economic growth, GDP per capita, income concentration, and the availability of information. Examining the direct and conditional effects of these society-level factors, the authors find support for relative deprivation approaches but much more limited evidence for hypotheses derived from distributive conflict and development theories.

Regionalism, Regime Transformation, and PRONASOL: The Politics of the National Solidarity Programme in Four Mexican States

Political change in Mexico since the crisis of 1994 has been characterised by the breakdown of centralised hierarchies and the dispersion of power across geographical regions. We examine the changing relations between regional officials of the National Solidarity Programme (PRONASOL) and local PRI politicians in four Mexican states: Puebla, Nayarit, Tamaulipas, and Baja California. Although PRONASOL was dismantled after 1994, the influence of anti-poverty bureaucrats has varied across geographic regions, depending on whether they had been authorised to engage in grass-roots mobilisation and/or party politics under Salinas. We emphasise the importance of regional politics in transitions from dominant-party regimes, and the impact of conflicts within the political hierarchies of the old regime.

Inequality and Redistribution: Some Continuing Puzzles

unequal distribution of income and wealth is an inherent feature of all complex societies, and up to a point, a desirable one. A highly skewed distribution, however, raises questions of serious moral and practical concern: To what extent does socioeconomic inequality undermine the principle of political equality on which democratic societies are based? Under what conditions does it lead to lead to political polarization that retards economic growth or threatens the stability of democratic institutions? And under what circumstances do distributive struggles become the basis for violent social protest or rebellion? Interest in these questions has grown in recent decades, but answers have diverged quite a lot. The median voter theorem (Meltzer and Richard 1981) has provided an influential basis for explaining why people vote for redistributive policies, but evidence to support its simplified motivational assumptions has been mixed, at best. The American experience shows this quite clearly (Bartels 2008), although it is hardly a unique example (e.g., Wallerstein and Moene 2003; Kenworth and McCall 2008). Research on the effects of economic inequality on broader forms of political protest and rebellion has also yielded apparently contradictory results. Recent landmark studies by Boix (2003) and Acemoglu and Robinson (2006) provide politicaleconomy foundations for the long-standing argument that high concentrations of wealth impede the emergence or consolidation of democracies. In a similar vein, economists have argued that inequality leads to political instability and low levels of investment (e.g., Alesina and Perotti 1993; Birdsall, Graham, and Sabot 1998). On the other hand, influential studies of contentious politics and civil war dismiss inequality as a significant explanatory variable (Collier and Hoeffler 2000; McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2001; Fearon and Laitin 2003). They contend that social grievances are not closely linked to differences in the actual distribution of income and focus

Market Reform and Social Protection: Lessons from the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland

The countries of East Central Europe stand out as examples of the advantages of early and successful transitions to the market. Besides being early reformers, these countries also moved unusually quickly toward the establishment of broad social protection programs intended to cushion the shocks of the transition and to provide some longer-term protection against the uncertainties of the market economy. The success of these strategies has been uneven in terms of their impact on fiscal resources and their overall effect on the distribution of income. However, they must also be assessed in terms of the support they have generated for political and economic system among economically vulnerable but politically influential middle-class, blue-collar, and rural social sectors. In the countries of Central Europe, social transfers directed toward such groups have helped to win their acquiescence to painful adjustments and have facilitated longer-term support for democratic politics.