The Bourgeois Leader: Corruption and Inequality in Argentina and Uruguay

• In Event: The Decay of the Pink Tide and the Rise of the Right in Latin America

Abstract

Since 2015, a new type of political leader has emerged in the Southern Cone: the bourgeois leader. Historically, political leaders in Argentina and Uruguay have been party insiders or members of the military. The election of Mauricio Macri, a multi-millionaire, represented a unique event in Argentina’s storied democracy. He was the first non-Peronist or non-Radical to be elected; he also staffed his cabinet with political outsiders, many high-level corporate executives. Instead of being a disadvantage, his wealth and corporate background was a selling point after the radical populist presidency of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2007-2015). Since 2016, two millionaire presidential candidates have emerged in Uruguay: Edgardo Novick of the new Partido de la Gente (People’s Party), and Juan Sartori, an insurgent candidate vying for the leadership of the venerable Partido Nacional. This paper explores why these countries have seen the appearance of a new type of political leader in the past three years: the bourgeois leader.

I posit the emergence of the bourgeois leader is related to a decline in trust in democracy and party elites, due to perceived and/or actual corruption. Support for the bourgeois leader is higher among the middle class, for whom issues of corruption often figure highly as a concern compared to other sectors in society. The phenomenon of the bourgeois leader is not limited to the Southern Cone, a similar process occurred in the United States with the election of Donald Trump. I show that the bourgeois leader’s advantage is their wealth, which is perceived as a bulwark against corruption. In each case, the bourgeois leader runs on a campaign to prosecute corruption as a major policy plank. I contrast the bourgeois leader phenomenon with the election of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. His election was also due to a middle-class revolt against endemic levels of corruption, but unlike bourgeois leaders he had a military background. The wholesale rejection of political and economic elites in Brazil with the Lavo Jato scandal, along a base of support for the military—lacking in Argentina and Uruguay—differentiates the Brazilian case. The bourgeois leader’s emergence in Argentina and Uruguay and the potential of a dictablanda leader in Brazil highlights the importance long-run institutional and political legacies affect outcomes when similarly situated countries are facing comparable processes simultaneously.

Author

• Anibal Nicolas Saldias, University of Toronto