Welfare Expansion under Weak Presidents: Partisan Redistribution in Argentina

• In Event: Overcoming Uneven Welfare States: The Politics of Welfare Reform in Latin America

Abstract

Latin America’s Left turn in the 2000s entailed the largest expansion of the Welfare State since the mid 1950s. Social policies varied along two dimensions: the extent of income redistribution –how generous were social policies targeted at popular sectors individuals-, and the degree of power redistribution towards popular sectors organizations-how much they were empowered vis-à-vis economic and political elites. In this regard, Argentina under the Kirchners (2003-2015) is an interesting case study because its redistributive strategy cannot be explained by existing theories of Welfare State expansion. The Kirchners adopted one of the most generous redistributive strategies in Latin America, but one that also made some social organizations politically dependent on the incumbent party. Political ideology cannot explain this outcome: despite neither the Kirchners nor the Peronist leadership had credentials as Lefitst, income redistribution was among the highest in Latin America. The power resources of the Left cannot explain this outcome either: although unions and social movements were the most powerful in the region, the Kirchners refused to politically empower social organizations and even made some of them more dependent on the incumbent party.
This paper tries to explain this outcome by making two theoretical contributions. First, it innovates conceptually by identifying a new, ideal type of redistributive strategy labeled ‘Partisan Redistribution’. This strategy entails generous and broad income redistribution, but its power redistribution strategy is ambiguous: while popular sectors organizations are empowered vis-à-vis their societal antagonists (business and subnational state elites), they are not empowered vis-à-vis the incumbent party. Organizations are excluded from top executive positions and social policies have a discretional component that makes some organizations more dependent on the incumbent party. This ideal type travels beyond Argentina and accounts for other strategies of redistribution adopted by the Latin American Left.
Second, this paper advances a novel explanation of Welfare State expansion based on the internal structure of Left movements. It argues that Argentina’s strategy of redistribution is explained by the extreme weakness of Left presidents within the Left movement. The Left movement is composed of three types of actors: the president’s party, other political parties on the Left, and social organizations representing the popular sectors (unions and social movements). Competition from neo-Peronist parties in elections, as well as lack of control over unions and social movements, forced presidents to adopt generous income and power redistribution strategies to neutralize electoral competitors on the Left and forge new coalitions with social organizations. However, presidents’ lack of internal control over their party organization also limited the extent of power redistribution by: (1) making political inclusion difficult in the absence of a party organization with strong ties to social organizations, and (2) giving presidents incentives to build a new organizational support base from scratch through the use of discretional policies.
My study employs process-tracing, drawing evidence from interviews with political and social leaders, descriptive statistics and archival research. It uses comparisons both across three policy-areas (labor-market regulations, pension policies and conditional cash transfers), as well as across time, to substantiate its hypothesis.

Author

• Andres Schipani, UC Berkeley