One of the more important tasks of modern political science is to understand the function and development of democracy, widely considered to be the most humane form of governing human societies. Within that task—comprehension of parties and party systems—the main institutional channel connecting people with their government is a key element and one pertinent to old democracies and new, as well as to non-democratic systems. A rich literature has addressed the subject of parties and party systems. Scholars have looked closely at pluralist systems where parties enhance democracy by being fully competitive within consolidated democratic settings and at non-democratic systems where a single hegemonic party helps eradicate competition and enforce dictatorship, as with the communist parties of the Soviet Union and China and the PRI (Institutionalized Revolutionary Party) in Mexico prior to 2000.Footnote 1 This literature has illustrated that parties facilitate democracy best when they are competitive within a pluralist setting. But it has also shown that nations may develop a strong single-party system which is utterly antithetical to democracy. The health of party competition is, therefore, a crucial part of understanding whether parties help or hinder democracy.
Since competition is so important, the fate of democracy is of concern where party competition has severely declined and one party dominates. We know that hegemonic parties and party systems are anti-democratic. But predominant parties that fall short of being fully hegemonic may be compatible with democracy in consolidated democratic settings. In-depth study of several “uncommon” Western European nations and other strong, established democracies reveals that, in unusual circumstances, a single predominant party may win and keep power for several decades without undermining democracy itself.Footnote 2 This situation, however, is confined to societies where the rule of law is firmly established and to parties that have long histories of democratic function internally and respect for human rights and democratic rules in the society at large.
A predominant party is much more problematic, however, in an unconsolidated, new democracy before the rule of law is fully established, particularly when the predominant party itself has an authoritarian history.Footnote 3 This unmapped territory between fully pluralist party systems within consolidated democracies and single-party dictatorships describes the party systems of most new and developing democracies worldwide but is less articulated theoretically because it has been less than fully explored in comparative context. This omission matters because parties do not leap from being purely hegemonic and dictatorial to being fully competitive and pluralist. Nor do democracies consolidate overnight. Rather, parties and party systems move through a process of gradually decreasing authoritarianism and gradually increasing competition. The rule of law establishes itself slowly. Such is the nature of democratic development in old democracies and new. If we are to understand the relationship between parties and democracy we must pay some attention to this unmapped territory, scrutinizing cases within it, surmising whether democracy can develop in such a context, and learning what positive or negative role parties play in an unconsolidated democratic setting.
I examine the case of a predominant party in a new democracy: Argentina. I examine the Argentine party system, focusing upon the two major national parties, the Peronists and the Radicals, and upon the systemic context they have created as democracy develops. To place this developing democracy in a comparative and more fully informative perspective, I take the unusual approach of comparing Argentina's party system today with that of the Deep South in the United States in the 1940s when the Democratic Party was predominant in the region. I choose this comparative design because Argentina's current party system resembles the system that predominated in the US South. Both are or were systems with limited competition where the aspiration is or was to give a democratic veneer to a less than fully pluralist system. Within both systems some individuals and party leaders do not (did not) desire competition, do not (did not) respect the rule of law, and do not (did not) wish to tolerate a fully competitive party system or a fully pluralist, inclusive society. By illustrating that two similar systems exist or existed in such different circumstances, I hope to alert students of democracy to the consequences of a predominant party in an unconsolidated democratic system and to show that these consequences are similar in geographically distinct places. These consequences are much more severe and much more non-democratic than would appear to be the case with predominant parties in the established democracies of Western Europe, Israel, and Japan.
The United States comparison brings another benefit as well. The predominance of the Democratic Party in the US South and its non-democratic consequences are today part of the past, having been largely resolved in favor of a more competitive electoral system in these states. But Argentina's single-party predominant system continues. Accordingly, the comparison with the United States gives some inkling of how a nation or region might exit out of single-party predominance and why it is desirable to do so. The fact that the US South was able to move away from single-party predominance toward competitive pluralism is no guarantee that Argentina can or will do the same. But the US example shows what possibilities exist for Argentina, should the nation wish to become more democratic. By making this comparison, I suggest that we can learn a great deal about new and developing democracies through studying the histories of more established and consolidated democracies. Since each has gone or (hopefully) will go through the gradual process of democratization, we can learn more about nations that are later in that process by looking at nations that have gone through that process earlier.
An Overview of Argentina's Party System
At the national level, two distinct parties have evolved in Argentina over the last century, the Peronists and the Radicals, both claiming power through electoral mandate. Yet it is difficult to consider Argentina a fully competitive electoral democracy. In the 25 years since Argentina's return to democracy in 1983, the Peronist party has held the presidency for all but six and a half years, having won presidential elections in 1989, 1995, 2003, and 2007.Footnote 4 Even in the years when the Peronists did not control the presidency, they have never lost control of the two-chamber Congress. They have held control of the lower chamber for all but four years since 1983 and have dominated the Senate continuously since that year. Control of the Senate is due to Peronist control of local politics inside most provinces. Since 1983, the number of provinces where Radicals predominate or provide strong electoral competition has steadily declined. In every national legislative and presidential election, the Radical Party has challenged the Peronists, either single-handedly or in alliance with other parties, but the Radicals have rarely won. In the two instances where the Radicals did win (1983 and 1999), the second of those two victories was in Alliance with FREPASO (Frente Para un Pais Solidario; Front for a Country in Solidarity).Footnote 5 In both cases, the Radical president resigned before his term in office was finished and turned the reins of power back to the Peronists. This level of long-term control has allowed the Peronist party to impose its own regime upon Argentina's newly-developing democracy and Peronism has largely determined economic, labor, and social policy in the nation. The situation has deprived the electorate of a fully competitive two-party system characterized by strong party competition, alternation in power, and real electoral choice between two parties that can govern.
Peronism's predominance in Argentine national politics is made worse by the anti-democratic nature of the party itself. Peronism has a long-term antithetical relationship to democracy which began with Perón himself. Anti-democratic attributes of the Peronist party include a closed primary system, strong clientelistic control by the party leadership of internal party decisions, bossism within the labor unions that are Peronism's main support base, the undermining of an independent judiciary, and the use of a extensive clientelistic favors to achieve popular electoral support within poor neighborhoods.Footnote 6 These mechanisms undermine electoral competition and deprive voters of free vote choice.Footnote 7
Since single parties have held control in established democracies for more years than have the Peronists, it is possible to underestimate the consequences of Peronist predominance in Argentina. The Swedish Worker's Party (SAP), for example, held control for nearly forty years without undermining democracy and a similar situation characterized both Israel and Japan. Moreover, the Peronists have never been able to achieve hegemonic control comparable to the PRI in Mexico or the communist parties in Russia and China. For over seventy years the PRI kept opposition parties crippled so that they could not win a presidential election and Peronism has never succeeded in marginalizing the Radicals to that extent. The communist parties had the power to outlaw other political parties and Peronism has never done that.
Peronist predominance falls in between being a fully hegemonic party and fully competitive pluralism. This is precisely the kind of case we need to examine closely if we are to understand how parties of different kinds help or hinder democracy and democratic development. Moreover, such examination must include close attention to context, both the nature and history of the predominant party itself, and the level of democratic consolidation within which it operates. Taking account of those concerns makes Peronist predominance more problematic and precludes complacency. Peronism is a party with an authoritarian history and a potential for contemporary lawlessness operating within an unconsolidated democratic context with a long-standing history of dictatorship.
The origins of Peronism are at odds with pluralism, both internally and in its relationship with other parties. Peronism began as an authoritarian, verticalist party tied to a single charismatic military leader. In fact, Juan Perón sought to keep Peronism a movement and to avoid its developing into a party at all. He saw political parties as potential sources of alternative leadership that might compete with his own. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Perón returned Argentina to elections because he could see that he would win any national election and that electoral victory would legitimate his rule in the anti-fascist aftermath of World War II. He then won two national elections in 1946 and 1952. However, apart from those elections, Peronists engaged in many anti-democratic activities during Perón's first nine years in power. For example, Peronist legislators ousted opposition legislators from the Peronist-dominated Congress and Perón had Radical presidential candidate Ricardo Balbín thrown in jail when he tried to campaign in 1952. Peronists violently attacked the press and tried to curtail press freedom. Perón fired tenured university professors and ousted students when they disagreed with Peronist policies.
Although this level of anti-democratic activity no longer characterizes modern-day Peronism, the authoritarian roots of the party still emerge periodically in the involvement of individual Peronist leaders in various illegal or semi-legal acts. For example, in the northwestern province of Catamarca, the son of a provincial Peronist party leader and his friends were involved in the rape and murder of a fifteen-year-old girl. Subsequently, the Peronist-controlled judiciary attempted to get the defendants off the charges by means of a mock trial. Additionally, Peronist president Carlos Menem conducted his ten-year presidency through the use of extensive presidential decrees that many observers felt demonstrated an autocratic personal style and little respect for institutional processes within a democracy.Footnote 8 Where Peronist leaders do not operate outside the law, some show scant regard for the law and this is true at the highest levels of the party.
The consequences of Peronist predominance are negative for Argentine democracy for two separate reasons. One is the party's authoritarian history and the contemporary behavior of Peronist leaders. The other is the unconsolidated nature of Argentina's developing democracy and its authoritarian past that have undermined party competition. Peronism is a predominant party with aspirations to being a hegemonic party. It originally sought to govern based on charismatic, authoritarian leadership; corporate control; and multiple alliances across the political spectrum. Peronism has historically offered an inclusive policy agenda that served both the poor and the wealthy, eliminating the need for any other party. The party has such broad and deep partisan roots throughout the nation that, once in power, it incorporates within itself most of the contending forces that might otherwise foster genuine party competition at local, provincial, and national levels of government. It therefore faces a potential loss of power only as its authoritarian and corrupt tendencies engulf national politics and generate momentary support for cleansing. That cleansing, ironically, can be generated through internal oppositional candidates from among its many factions, eliminating the need for opposition parties. Internally induced cleansing instead of electoral defeat then sets the stage for further institutionalization of the party's control on politics through its ability to sidestep alternation in power, thereby maintaining control over patronage and pork. This setting is thus a recipe for heightened corruption, patronage, and corporate control and for the further withering of oppositional parties that might flourish through attacks on Peronism.
Peronist authoritarianism is rendered more anti-democratic by the weakness of the Radical Party in the electoral challenge it offers to Peronism. The origins and evolution of the Radical Party—an elitist, oppositional party designed to challenge authoritarian rules and push for the institution or re-institution of elections—positioned it to face and replace authoritarianism but limited its capacity to adapt to freewheeling electoral politics. The Radical party has failed to build a mass support base and a responsive policy agenda supported by a network of organized groups and party identifiers at the local, provincial, and national levels of government. This failure is attributable to the very leadership characteristics and organizational dynamics that have allowed the Radicals to succeed in opposition to authoritarianism. Thus Argentina's authoritarian history has undermined electoral competition while Peronism's authoritarian characteristics take advantage of the weak electoral competition in an interactive context that weakens democracy and undermines democratic consolidation.
As Argentine democracy has aged, the Radicals have become less able to mount a serious electoral challenge, while the Peronists have become increasingly predominant, constrained only by internal factional divisions.Footnote 9 The Peronists retain strong support among labor whether or not they hold national power, while the Radicals lack a mass base to which they can turn when they do not hold national power. In the face of weakening Radical competition, the Peronists are becoming remarkably free of the power-sharing constraints associated with constitutional and competitive democracies. Peronists have proven prone to forms of corruption, coercion, patronage, nepotism, and strong-man leadership that work against the responsible functioning and evolution of competitive democratic politics. After more than two decades of two-party partisanship, Argentina still falls considerably short of being a consolidated democracy characterized by competition between two or more parties wherein each party has a realistic chance to win and citizen choice can be based upon distinct policy differences.Footnote 10
The remainder of this article develops these arguments in greater detail. I first trace the origins and development of the Radical Party in Argentina and the constraints this history imposes on its present effort to compete for national power. These constraints, I argue, are not unique to Argentina but are very similar to those detailed by the historian Michael Holt in his study of the American Whig party of the mid-nineteenth-century South.Footnote 11 That study describes the demise of the Whigs and the rise of a predominant Democratic Party in the American South. I next look at the dilemmas associated with the rise of a predominant single-party system and how such a system can cripple democratic politics particularly where the rule of law is not fully developed. I trace the ways in which such patterns—detailed by political scientist V.O. Key in his study of US Southern politics in the mid-twentieth centuryFootnote 12—also characterize contemporary Peronism in Argentina. Finally, I explore possible exits from the current quandary. The example of the American South underscores the need to take seriously the dilemmas of contemporary Argentina. If the Radicals prove unable to adapt, what can foster democracy? Extraregional intervention worked in the United States, after eighty years, but no such option exists in Argentina. Concerns about democracy in a major South American nation may require that international actors look to the issues that Argentina now faces. Possible international attention could help address the need to make Argentina's party system more competitive.
Radical Party History, Leadership Dynamics, and the Failure to Establish a Popular Base
The Radical Party entered Argentine politics in 1890 on the basis of a demand for universal male suffrage and a regular electoral calendar. But beyond its response to these issues, the party has failed to develop a more modern agenda or to expand its popular support base. As a result, it has remained an elitist, oppositional party that plays the heroic part of opponent to tyranny but has proven less able to compromise on a broadly-supported policy agenda or to do the grassroots work required to build an electoral base.Footnote 13 As the electoral calendar has aged, the Radical Party has declined and appears to be becoming less able to offer Peronism any electoral competition. Three factors account for the decline of Radicalism: (1 a historical context in which the party developed mostly in nonelectoral circumstances with political traits peculiar to such circumstances; (2 patterns within the party itself and the habits of party leadership, including elitism and the failure to create a base of popular support nationwide; and (3 specifics of the national electoral context within which the party competes.
Party Formation in a Non-electoral Context: The Early Twentieth Century
The Radical Party is Argentina's oldest mass political party.Footnote 14 Its 1890 demand for universal male suffrage and open mass elections appealed to minimal democratic procedures written into Argentina's constitution in 1853 but never practiced. Instead, late nineteenth-century Argentine politics was characterized by competition between parties of notables whose governing future was determined by meetings behind closed doors rather than by national primaries, open electoral competition, and issue-based appeals to voters. The political interests represented were primarily those of conservative cattle ranchers, industrialists, and mine owners. Conservative parties placed their own men in the presidency, occupied nearly all seats in both chambers of Congress, and sustained their closed system through restricted-suffrage elections that excluded most immigrants and many ordinary citizens.
Radicalism appeared as the first party to demand real elections and mandatory male suffrage. Since this demand appeared radical at a time when many feared and opposed electoral democracy, the party called itself the Radical Civic Union. Guided by the determined and visionary leadership of the party's founder, Leandro Alèm, Radicalism launched its campaign for these goals.Footnote 15 The political circumstances in which Radicalism developed prevented it from defining itself as an electoral party. Instead, it assumed the role of an unwelcome, persecuted, and even illegal social movement, and it used mass mobilization and charismatic stump speeches to pressure for elections. The party agitated for twenty-six years before it ever gained its first chance to compete in real elections.Footnote 16 The political characteristics that the early Radical Party developed and used to its advantage included the practical ability to survive repression, an idealistic faith in the correctness of the party's purpose, even in the face of overwhelming opposition; steadfast determination against superior odds; and a willingness to stand on principle.Footnote 17 The Radicals achieved mandatory suffrage in 1912Footnote 18 and a first national election, which the Radicals won, in 1916.Footnote 19 Their candidate was Hipolito Yrigoyen.
Yrigoyen served a first term from 1916 to 1922. The problems of his presidency illustrate both the strengths of early Radicalism and its limits. On the one hand, the party was the first political entity to take office on the basis of mass appeal and as the result of citizen support at the polls. In this sense, its victory represented a step forward for Argentine democracy. At another level, the twenty-six-year battle that the party had been forced to wage against nondemocratic forces opposed to elections in Argentina had shaped the new party in ways that compromised its ability to function in and strengthen the new democracy. The start of the electoral calendar meant that Radicalism now faced a different competitive context—one that required compromise and coalitions. Now that Radicalism had achieved its goal of universal manhood suffrage and the beginning of an electoral calendar, the new party needed to broaden its political appeal and build political alliances so as to increase support for democracy in Argentina.
Yet Radicalism as a party and Yrigoyen as its principal leader had no experience with and little inclination toward compromise and coalitions. As president, Yrigoyen continued to pursue a rigid, idealistic agenda of reform that set him on a collision course with the conservative political interests around him. Unbending in his sense of purpose, he was dismissive of all those outside his ring of immediate supporters. As the executive in a presidential system, he faced two chambers of Congress, both controlled by opposition parties. Yrigoyen proved unable and unwilling to work with the Congress. Instead, his first presidency was marked by repeated conflict with Congress and by congressional opposition to many of his reforms.Footnote 20 Congress challenged his reforms and, on key issues, voted them down altogether. Yrigoyen instructed Congress to follow his orders, not to challenge his program.Footnote 21
Yrigoyen appeared to be a very early example of a delegative president who used mass support to rise to power but wanted to control the agenda personally after winning the presidency.Footnote 22 During his presidency he did almost nothing to build a broad base of popular support beyond the simple, temporary appeal of mass suffrage. Such a base would have strengthened both Yrigoyen and the Radical Party because it would have helped the party win control of Congress in subsequent elections. It would also have extended the party's base-level support beyond the immigrant classes of Buenos Aires who were Yrigoyen's original and only base of popular support. Instead, Yrigoyen actually turned against popular groups such as the railroad workers who had supported him and crushed popular strikes during his presidency.Footnote 23 This left the impression that the Radical Party would use popular support to gain power but return nothing to the popular base after having taken office. Radicalism began to look like an elitist party despite its original rise to power on the basis of a demand for male suffrage.
The next Radical president, who won in 1922, Marcelo T. de Alvear had a greater understanding of the need to compromise and proved able to work with the Conservatives in Congress.Footnote 24 The price of Alvear's negotiation, however, was a decrease in the pace of reforms that Radicalism was able to pursue during his presidency.Footnote 25 Rather than appreciating Alvear's greater rapport with the Conservatives, Yrigoyen grew impatient with the slow pace of reforms. When a third election approached in 1928, the party rejected both Alvear and any other candidate more willing to compromise and brought back Yrigoyen as their presidential candidate. Yrigoyen won in 1928 and returned to office with the same reformist idealism he had exhibited between 1916 and 1922.Footnote 26 By this time the conservative interests with whom he had failed to build alliances moved against both Yrigoyen and democracy. The lack of a nation-wide support base, particularly in the provinces, left Radicalism vulnerable to being defeated simply by eliminating the party's hold on the presidency. In 1930, a military coup ousted Yrigoyen and ended Argentina's first period of democracy. The uncompromising idealism that had brought Radicalism its first political success had also contributed to its downfall. Democracy might have survived if Yrigoyen and Radicalism had been willing to pursue their agenda in a gradual, compromising fashion and to work toward building a mass base outside of the capital city.Footnote 27
In contexts of sustained electoral democracy, parties gradually develop a set of electoral skills and build a popular support base. Parties that learn to launch viable national campaigns and to sustain themselves beyond a single election do so through repeated electoral experience. Such experience comes when parties begin a national electoral campaign, field a candidate or candidates, appeal to the voters throughout the campaign months, and submit themselves to the electoral decision. Whether they win or lose, parties learn from such electoral experiences. Through electoral campaigns, parties learn to identify which tactics have been successful in gaining a national electoral following and which tactics have been less useful. In the next election, they can build upon that learning experience to wage a better campaign or field a better candidate, thus offering the opposition more viable competition. Such learning experiences will benefit parties in both national presidential elections and mid-term congressional elections, although the specifics of the learning experience differ somewhat between these two.Footnote 28 The early Radical Party might have developed these electoral skills had the electoral calendar been allowed to continue. The 1930 coup, however, thrust Radicalism back into its former role as an illegal opposition party, depriving it of electoral learning opportunities.
One of the problems in Argentine electoral politics is that the electoral calendar has repeatedly been terminated by military coupes, often after only one or two elections. Such circumstances force parties into the difficult position of needing to alternate between opposing tyrants in non-electoral conditions and opposing each other in electoral contexts. The first situation requires cooperation between parties while the second requires competition.Footnote 29 The dynamics that allow a party to survive under tyranny and oppose tyrants are different from those needed to survive electoral competition.Footnote 30
Radicalism and Peronism
Radicalism's early failure to develop a strong support base left a vacuum at the level of grassroots politics that was soon filled by a new social movement with more grassroots energy than Radicalism had ever had, but with far less commitment to democratic institutions and procedures. In 1946, a new political party under the leadership of Juan Perón entered the political scene representing the interests of low-income citizens.Footnote 31 Unlike Radicalism, Peronism did not agitate for democracy for its own sake, and, once in power, Perón violated many fundamental aspects of democratic procedure.Footnote 32 He relied on personalism, charisma, the power of a social movement, clientelism, and a hierarchical corporatist bond between the state and the workers rather than on parties and an independent labor movement.Footnote 33 Peronism emphasized “economic rights” rather than civil liberties or electoral democracy and put its energy into ensuring a minimum level of income for Argentine workers.Footnote 34 But Juan Perón understood that elections represented his best chance to attain national power and that, in the post-World War II era, they provided him legitimacy he would otherwise lack.Footnote 35 His commitment to elections was strategic rather than ideological, but it was no less real for that difference. Argentina initiated a second period of an electoral calendar between 1946 and 1955, holding elections in 1946 and 1952; Perón won both.
During these nine years, two presidential elections and several legislative elections in districts nationwide offered Radicalism electoral learning opportunities. The Radical legislators who won in legislative elections allowed the party to maintain a presence in the national Congress, where they protested repeatedly but ineffectively against Peronist policies that curtailed civil liberties, repressed opposition, and crushed both religious and academic freedom. Yet these protests still exemplified the politics of opposition, with the Radicals playing the part of the heroic underdog challenging the repressive hegemon. The Radicals never became an effective electoral opposition party between 1946 and 1955. They still lacked a clear, forward-looking policy agenda and still held only a very limited popular appeal.
Peronism's antidemocratic behavior was another factor in Radicalism's failure to learn electoral politics. In Congress, Peronist deputies were reluctant to tolerate dissent, ousting opposition legislators and arresting them for their political views.Footnote 36 Perón persecuted his 1952 electoral challenger, Ricardo Balbín, issuing a warrant for his arrest on false charges. Eventually Balbín was arrested and spent several months in jail. These early efforts by Peronism to undermine party competition would again become a defining characteristic of the party when the current electoral calendar returned in the 1980s.
In 1955, Perón was ousted by a military coup. He spent eighteen years in exile in Spain. His party was proscribed from elections in Argentina. When the military allowed elections at all, only the Radicals were permitted to offer a candidate. Despite these handicaps, Peronists remaining in Argentina worked tirelessly during these years to retain the party's mass support base.Footnote 37 They were quite successful in keeping a strong popular following. This base would be available to support the party when Peronism returned to electoral politics in the early 1970s.
In contrast with the Peronist experience, in the late 1950s and 1960s the Radical Party was the only major party officially recognized in Argentina. With Perón himself in exile and Peronism proscribed, it should have been possible for the Radicals to develop a true citizen following and to offer realistic policy proposals. Yet, even with the playing field tipped in their favor, the Radical Party still failed to build a mass support base during these fifteen years.Footnote 38 Instead, since they had no real competition in elections, the Radicals did not seriously campaign and continued to be an elite party lacking either a broad popular base or a specific policy agenda.
In the late 1950s and 1960s, Radicalism split into two factions: the UCRI or Radical Intransigent faction, which followed Frondizi, and the larger faction of the UCR, which followed Ricardo Balbín and Arturo Illia. The agenda of the main faction of the Radical Party focused more on denouncing Peronism than on offering a new policy direction of their own. In the end, Radicalism's failure to compromise or to support a compromising leader left both Frondizi and Illia without an adequate popular support base and both were overthrown by military coup. Again, even in the absence of Peronist electoral competition, Radical intransigence contributed to Radical downfall and to the end of democracy.Footnote 39
The military permitted the Peronist Party to return to electoral politics in Argentina in 1972. In the face of Radicalism's continued lack of popular support, the Peronist party won easily, and Perón was finally allowed to return to Argentina in 1973. Perón died shortly thereafter, and his vice president and wife, Isabel Perón, proved unable to manage the chaos that prevailed. She was overthrown by military coup in 1976.
Peronism's antidemocratic behavior limited Radicalism's chances to learn democratic and electoral skills during the first nine years of Peronism, but that accounts for only part of the problem. More fundamentally, the Radical Party was debilitated by its rigid, idealistic positions and by its lack of a grassroots national following. Many Radical leaders were condescending toward Peronism and unwilling to compromise with the new party, despite the fact that it genuinely represented a significant portion of public opinion.Footnote 40 As it had been in the 1920s, Radicalism was primarily oriented toward national policy rather than local conditions and issues. While competing with Peronism at the mass level was difficult between 1946 and 1955, Perón's ouster and exile created an opportunity for Radicals to create a mass following. Yet after Perón's ouster they never developed a policy program. Though their party remained anti-Peronist, they never achieved a set of alternative policy positions or a mass following. When Perón returned to Argentina for another brief effort at electoral democracy in 1973, the failure of both parties to use democracy to resolve conflict ended with a breakdown of democracy.Footnote 41
Radicalism against Dictatorship
In an ironic way, the complete breakdown of the electoral calendar in 1976 resuscitated Radicalism and restored its raison d'etre. The Radicals had always championed elections, and the return of dictatorship allowed them once again to take up the fight around which their party had been built. The Radical Party—far more than the Peronist Party—associated itself with opposition to the dictatorship and support for human rights. As the Argentine dictatorship appeared likely to end in 1983, the Radical Party returned to its 1916 position of demanding elections and refusing to compromise with dictatorial power. Radicalism's uncompromising position contrasted with that of Peronism, which sought back-room accommodation with the military government in hopes of maneuvering toward political power once the military stepped aside.Footnote 42 If the Radicals showed insufficient ability to compromise, the Peronists were overly eager to compromise, even with one of Argentina's most brutal governments.Footnote 43 As elections approached, rumors swirled about a Peronist pardon of the generals.Footnote 44 One Radical leader, Raul Alfonsín, distinguished himself as possessing the characteristics most useful in opposing repression: idealism, a strong sense of ethics and morality, a rigidity of purpose, determination, and an unyielding commitment to democracy and respect for human rights.Footnote 45 In 1983, Alfonsín parlayed these characteristics into a successful electoral bid.
At the same time, the struggle against another dictatorship also reinforced Radicalism's weaknesses, discouraging it from building any mass base. Of course, conducting mass politics at a time when organizing was illegal was difficult. Peronism managed to retain its support base during the dictatorship, particularly among the labor unions, whereas no analogous mass organized group undergirded the Radical Party–not the business community, nor local level politicians, nor a large middle class. When electoral politics returned, Radicalism entered the new electoral era with its age-old liability of having no mass base. It won in 1983, at a moment of national struggle against tyranny, on the basis of its moral stance as an opposition party. It had achieved victory without a specific set of policies and without a wide, loyal electoral base to which it could turn when presidential leadership became difficult.
Radicalism in the 1980s and Today
The Radical Party held office from 1983 to 1989. In the early years post-dictatorship, its characteristics of idealism and uncompromising determination led the nation toward the judicial trial and punishment of the military generals on a scale unequaled anywhere in Latin America.Footnote 46 And yet the government of 1983–89 was so deeply problematic that Alfonsín resigned six months early. Despite a momentary unity of purpose between Radicalism and the Argentine electorate, the party still lacked a mass support base and a specific policy agenda beyond democracy itself. It was still unable to compromise. During Alfonsín's presidency, Argentina had problems beyond the return of democracy. These included inflation, repeated labor strikes, and several attempted military coups. The Radicals lost the presidential elections of 1989 and began a gradual decline from which they have not recovered.
In 1989, Argentina initiated a ten-year period characterized by two Peronist administrations, both under the control of President Carlos Menem. Throughout the 1990s, Peronism's tendencies toward authoritarianism and corruption emerged ever more clearly in the behavior of Menem and his supporters.Footnote 47 By 1989, the Argentine electorate was ready for a cleansing removal of Peronism. They turned again to the Radicals, this time in alliance with FREPASO, and elected Fernando De la Rua in 1999. But even during the campaign the UCR-FREPASO Alliance had no specific governing program and limited its campaign, to questions about morality and corruption. In office, De la Rua proved unable to resolve the economic problems left by Menem. He resigned from the presidency in December 2001, fleeing widespread popular protests over economic problems. His resignation has likely delivered the final blow to Radicalism as a competitive electoral party and has made the party seem unable or unwilling to govern, even when granted national power.Footnote 48 The Radicals have not regained power since De la Rua's resignation. From the 1990s until today, they have remained an oppositional party, rejecting specific Peronist policies but failing to offer a significant alternative policy agenda of their own. They still have not developed a mass support base of party identifiers at the local, provincial, and national levels.
The political events of the period from 1989 to the De la Rua resignation soon after 1999 make evident the value of a party base. The support from labor that Peronism enjoys means that Peronism has an active group that can strike at the heart of any Radical presidency when Peronists are out of power and support a Peronist president when Peronism is in power.Footnote 49 Without a mass base, however, the Radicals have no comparable group either to undermine a Peronist administration when the Radicals are out of power or to support the Radical Party during difficult times when it is in power. As a result, Peronists are better able to weather crisis and remain in leadership while the Radicals are severely buffeted as soon as governance becomes difficult.Footnote 50
Radicals, Whigs, and Republicans
Despite the advent of an electoral calendar—or perhaps because of it—the years 1916–30, 1946–55, and the post-1983 period have represented points of crisis for the Radical Party. With the establishment of an electoral calendar and mass suffrage, the Radicals have gradually lost the key issues around which they built their political struggle: the end of dictatorship, suffrage, and the establishment of a regular electoral cycle. Since 1983, they have not been able to define themselves in terms of their opposition to dictatorship and their support for elections.
Their position resembles that of the Whig party of the early nineteenth century in the United States. The Whigs were a relatively elitist party that was the political heir to the Federalists of the eighteenth century, as seen in the presidency of John Quincy Adams, a Whig, who was the son of John Adams, a Federalist. The Whigs had agitated for decades about economic and social policies like temperance, government's role in the economy, and constitutional reform at the state level. But these issues were mostly resolved by 1830, and the Whigs no longer had key positions upon which to stand. The resolution of these issues left the Whig party without an issue agenda upon which to base its popular appeal or a mass party support network upon which to rely. Simultaneously, the Democrats, the heirs of the Jeffersonian Party, found renewal in the leadership of Andrew Jackson and his push for mass-based participatory democracy and westward expansion. By the 1850s, the Whigs had largely disappeared, leaving the Democratic Party dominant.Footnote 51
As the Whigs disappeared, a new party, the Republicans, proved more successful in defining new policy positions and developing a popular base. They developed a popular following where the Whigs had failed because they found a new issue around which to frame conflict: slavery.Footnote 52 Slavery was of great concern to some voters, particularly in the North, but others, particularly in the Midwest, were equally worried about related issues, such as the right of local populations to determine their own state's political positions, including whether new states would be slave or free. On the issue of slavery and various related concerns, the Republican Party succeeded in challenging the Democratic Party in the North, while the Democrats split over the issue of slavery and states' rights. No counterpart to the Republicans has yet emerged in Argentina, and the Radicals themselves still lack specific policies on most issues. Like the Whig Party, the Radicals have won their main political battles, but they have thereby lost their key political issues. And unlike the Republicans, the Radicals have not found either new issues around which to construct a specific policy agenda or a new electoral base.
Party competition works best when stoked by conflict. In his study of the 1850s and the decades immediately preceding, Holt uses the demise of the Whigs to illustrate that parties fare best when they have conflicts around which to develop positions. The Whigs were deprived of conflict when many of their original issues were resolved. The Republicans then found a new way to frame the conflict over slavery along sectional lines. Similarly, the arrival of elections and of Peronism deprived Radicalism of its two main points of conflict: agitation for an electoral calendar and representation of the masses. Now both major parties agree that elections are desirable and that Peronism represents the masses. Radicalism's key issues of conflict have disappeared.
Radicalism needs to respond to the situation with the same energy that the Republicans brought to US politics in the 1850s. They need to find new positions, new points of conflict, new issues, and a popular base.Footnote 53 The result of their failure to do so is that Peronism is increasingly assuming the role of a predominant party that faces no real electoral competition. The situation now resembles that of the Democratic Party in the US South after World War II.
Single-Party Predominance in an Unconsolidated Setting
The Single-Party Electoral System in the US South
In his study of the South, V.O. Key suggested that the region of the former Confederacy was not democratic or was democratic in only a very limited sense of the word.Footnote 54 In their loyalty to the Democrats and their rejection of the Republicans, white southern voters undermined democracy itself. The Democratic Party functioned in a nondemocratic manner, even while continuing with a regular electoral calendar. White southern voters rejected the Republicans because they were the party of Lincoln and abolition. Black voters were effectively disenfranchised.Footnote 55 The Democrats took advantage of the situation. Rather than having two parties who represented left and right on the political spectrum, the southern Democratic Party split into two or more factions.Footnote 56 Within the one-party system, the Republican Party could not get a toehold on public opinion and could not define a political position separate from the Democrats. Holt shows us that, in their opposition to slavery, the Republicans had only limited southern support in the 1850s. After the Civil War and into the early twentieth century, the Republican Party had no following in the South, except in remote municipalities where citizens had not supported the Confederate cause.Footnote 57
As a single-party region, the South demonstrated multiple manifestations of authoritarianism. According to Key's careful study of the various southern states, this authoritarianism included patronage, personalism, corruption, strong-man politics, oppression of the opposition, muffling protest within the Democratic Party, and periodic violence or threats thereof. The picture Key drew was one of nondemocratic political control of all aspects of society by one party that was not accountable to its electorate and that faced no real competition for power.
Single-party predominance is troubling for any democracy and counterproductive for democratic development in new democracies, just as it was in the US South. If the strong party not only enjoys broad popular support but also works deliberately to undermine electoral competition and keep the electoral playing field uneven, then that party is undermining the quality of democracy even while participating in elections. The strong party, already the incumbent from the previous election, uses its incumbency to dole out patronage and political favors while also using its control of office to intimidate opponents and muffle dissent within the party. In response, voters and groups of voters find it in their best interest to continue to vote for the dominant party. Voters may be given to understand that if they do not vote for the incumbent, those favors and patronage will end. Lacking patronage to dispense places opposition parties at an electoral disadvantage. In this manner, the Democratic Party used its strong regional support base to undermine the ability of the Republican Party to compete electorally. Any electoral win, coming as the result of an apparently open election against another party, looked as if it had taken place in a legitimately open democracy, but, in fact, no real competition had occurred. In describing the many ways in which the Democrats controlled electoral competition in multiple states of the South, Key illustrates that Democratic control extended far beyond the simple disenfranchisement of African Americans and encompassed deliberate manipulation of many aspects of power.
Key suggested that single-party control of power and patronage attracts those who enter politics for personal gain. Such individuals will gravitate toward that party while leaders of superior ability will find politics distasteful. Key's description fits both the Southern Democrats of the 1940s and Argentine Peronism today. A lack of electoral competition breeds corruption and muffles protest. A party controlled by those who are in politics for personal gain will also be a party effectively without vision, ideals, or moral authority. Such a party may be able to problem-solve in the immediate political context, but it will be unable to provide true leadership or a political agenda that works toward the common good. This is particularly true when short-term interests and long-term vision are at odds, a circumstance that is likely during periods of early political development.
The Single-Party Electoral System in Argentina
Like the Southern Democrats, Peronism today splits itself into factions, with different Peronist groups positioned on both sides of most issues. The 2003 election revolved fully around two Peronist factions, with the Radical Party playing no real part in the electoral competition at all. Former President Nestor Kirchner represented a progressive Peronism that opposed the traditional caudillista Peronism of former President Menem. But there is every indication that Kirchner's presidency continued to draw upon the strong Peronist Party machine. With the support of that machine, Perón appointed his third wife, Isabel, as his Vice President. She assumed the presidency upon his death. With the support of that machine, Nestor Kirchner placed his wife as Peronist party candidate and, in the absence of electoral competition, she won.Footnote 58 While Cristina Kirchner assumed the presidency as a progressive Peronist, the Argentina presidency nonetheless continues not only within the Peronist Party but now within the same family.Footnote 59 This is the kind of result we can expect from party predominance in an unconsolidated democracy. Moreover, contemporary observers remark that Cristina's control of the Peronist Party and her effort to bypass the Congress are even more extreme than Menem's efforts in a similar direction.Footnote 60 Her faction of Peronism lost the midterm elections in 2009.
Similarly, when the southern Democrats had factions on both sides of the same issue the party found means other than electoral competition to resolve the choice between the two factions. These means were always effective because all factions were ultimately connected to the same national party. The means of choice among factions varied among southern states: they included leaving the choice to the party machine in Virginia and Tennessee; strong-man rule and personalism in Georgia; corruption in Louisiana; and chaotic individual competition in Florida.Footnote 61 Similarly, competition among Peronist factions in Argentina is often resolved in some nonelectoral way, with further negative consequences for the quality of Argentine democracy. Peronist leaders have engaged in personalism at the national and presidential level; corruption in Buenos Aires province; strong-man rule and intimidation in the province of Tucuman; and human rights violations in Catamarca, to name but a few examples of Peronist abuse of power.
Like the southern Democrats, Peronism uses means other than electoral competition to resolve choice among different party factions. Peronism is well known for its party machine, its corruption, its personalism, and for competition among individual leaders.Footnote 62 These methods are repeatedly used to determine winners and losers within Peronism. But in each case, the decision is made by some mechanism other than popular choice and accountability. In 2003, the personal decision by Menem to withdraw from presidential competition determined the electoral outcome; popular choice did not. In Argentina, as in the southern United States, such mechanisms may render a factional winner but they do not enhance democracy. By Key's standards, they are not even democratic. These methods allow decisions between party positions or among party leaders to be made within the party and not by the voters.
Peronism's deliberate efforts to undermine electoral competition work in interaction with Radicalism's multiple internal deficiencies. Together the actions of both parties have severely undermined party competition in Argentina. Argentine Radicalism has tried to respond to the dilemma of left and right Peronism by taking up the political center and especially by appealing to the middle class, leaving both the workers and the wealthy to the Peronists. This electoral following, however, is dangerously small. But even if Radicalism were to make the needed changes, it still faces an uneven playing field deliberately manipulated by Peronism. The interaction between Radicalism's failures and Peronism's predominance resembles the proverbial chicken-and-egg situation. Causality runs in both directions. On the one hand, extensive public loyalty to Peronism in Argentina, like white loyalty to the Democratic Party in the South, leaves little ground upon which an opposition party can build an electoral following. On the other hand, Radicalism's deficiencies have made the party unattractive to the Argentine electorate and less competitive at election time.Footnote 63
Is There a Way Out?
Possible Exits for Argentina: Solutions from Within the National Party System
The problem the Radicals face is even more severe than the one once faced by the southern Republicans in the United States. The southern Democratic choice to represent both progressive and conservative sides of various issues flew in the face of the traditional position of the Democratic Party at the national level. There the Democrats had consistently stood left of center on most issues. The conservatism of most southern Democrats made it difficult for the southern wing of the party to work successfully with the national party. By the same token, southern Republicans also had an electorally competitive national party to which they were attached. Eventually Democratic hegemony in the South was ended by nationally-induced reform such as the Voting Rights Act of the 1960s that pushed the nation toward competitive two-party democracy regionally and nationally.
Argentina lacks a competitive two-party system at the national level that could bring pressure to bear on a noncompetitive party system, as occurred in the US South. First, the national Peronist Party historically has positioned itself on both the right and the left of many issues. This pattern dates back to Perón himself, who, for example, tried to represent labor while also accommodating Argentina's business classes. Dual positions within Peronism are not confined to one region in Argentina. Unlike the southern Democrats, Peronism faces no pressure from a national party to maintain politically consistent positions. Second, no national influence reaches toward Radicalism with pressures that might enhance democracy. Unlike southern Republicans, the Radical party has no strong national party to which it can turn for help in electoral competition, and no national party insists that the Radicals develop a base, present clear policy positions, or become more flexible.Footnote 64
Argentina cannot become more democratic while also running what is virtually a single-party state. Argentine political, economic, and social development will be restricted as long as the democracy does not benefit from at least two nationally competitive parties. While Peronists might temporarily delight in the demise of Radicalism, a longer-term perspective that values democracy would understand that opposition is essential to democracy.Footnote 65 Radicalism constitutes the most obvious source of opposition to Peronism. One hope for Argentine democracy is that Radicalism can overcome its various dilemmas to present itself as a more powerful electoral contender.
There are also several alternative scenarios. In one scenario, Peronism itself could divide. The 2003 election and party rhetoric since then show that a split in Peronism is possible. Kirchner's policies contrast with Menem's in many ways, pointing toward division within Peronism. To have a truly divided Peronist party—particularly if the division were along left/right lines instead of following individual personalities—would constitute a step toward a two-party competitive system. But such a metamorphosis would take time, and Peronists are working to avoid it.Footnote 66 It is far from being a foregone conclusion.Footnote 67 In a second scenario, one of the small provincial parties could develop a national support base. In the contemporary scene, no provincial party appears likely to do that any time soon, if ever. In a third scenario a small, national party could grow to become a large party, although no such party yet appears.Footnote 68
Other Types of Exits
The early decades of a new democracy are often years of general shakedown among parties. Those parties that have the internal strength and the electoral following to sustain long-term electoral competition will survive; those that don't will gradually disappear. Parties that can convert themselves from social movements against tyranny into electoral competitors will survive; those that cannot will disappear. Argentina may simply be within this general period of shakedown. If so, the poor quality of Argentine democracy may gradually improve, as it did in the US South. Either way, however, the quality of Argentine democracy will improve and become more competitive only if there is movement toward a competitive electoral system based on two or more mass parties capable of sustained governance. Because of this basic fact, the decline of the Radicals is not only a problem for the Radical Party. It is also a problem for the Peronists, for Argentine democracy, and for all those concerned with the long-term survival of democracy in South America.
The international community may need to consider this situation if it wishes to support democratic consolidation in new democracies. International pressure has successfully aided democratic transition, as, for example, in South Africa and El Salvador.Footnote 69 But international pressure has not previously insisted upon democratic consolidation. Thus far, the international community has focused upon the establishment or return of the electoral calendar and upon free and fair elections. It has also underscored the need for civil liberties and human rights. Argentina meets all of these criteria and yet falls far short of a being a competitive electoral democracy. In light of circumstances like Argentina's, supporters of democracy in the international community may need to look more closely at issues of patronage, corruption, and questions of transparency in the party system in between elections. There is no international precedent that exactly parallels the political intervention in the US South that was accomplished by the US federal government. And yet the example of the South shows the extreme debilitation of democracy that can occur when party predominance continues. The failure of democratic consolidation in Argentina may require new international policies by which outside actors assume some responsibility where the electoral system itself has not caused consolidation to emerge.
Conclusion
Parties are a crucial part of democratic function but not all parties are democratic. Some 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 may be compatible with democracy where democracy is fully consolidated and the rule of law is respected. But predominant party systems inhibit democracy in an unconsolidated democratic setting and can even undermine democratic consolidation.Footnote 70 The danger that party predominance poses in an unconsolidated democracy requires us to attend to democratic function beyond the minimum requirements of regular elections, civil and human rights, and outward procedures. Instead we need to look at party rotation in office and ask whether unconsolidated settings offer party alternatives or whether a predominant party has undermined choice.
This article has illustrated the dangers of party predominance in an unconsolidated setting by scrutinizing modern Argentina and comparing it with the United States Deep South in the 1940s. In both examples, party predominance limited rotation in office and precluded democratic development, with negative results for civil and human rights. All democracies, old and new, pass through a process of gradual consolidation during which nations move from being less democratic to becoming more so. The democratization process can be recognizably similar and comparing old democracies to new ones illustrates that similarity and indicates what the future may hold for nations that are earlier in the consolidation process. A US–Argentine comparison helps anticipate what the future could bring for Argentina.
The experience of Southern politics in the United States suggests that party politics has its limits as a vehicle for ensuring the sustenance of democracy, especially when one party loses its programmatic basis for existence. In such a setting, an emergent predominant party, once in power, can prove corruptive and difficult to dislodge, becoming part of the problem for democracy rather than part of the solution. The consolidation of competitive democracy in Argentina and other contemporary nations requires more than a regular electoral calendar, two or more parties with governing experience, and some basic civil liberties. Argentine voters need a choice between at least two distinct parties with broad policy agendae, not just between an authoritarian mass party and a constitutionalist elite party or between factions of the former. Yet the emergence of mass, policy-based party competition may be one of the great challenges Argentina faces and one that, like new democracies elsewhere, is partly the result of an authoritarian past. Short of full and transparent party competition, Argentina will continue to fall into one of the categories of “defective democracies” where significant brown zones of non-democratic function co-exist with regular elections.Footnote 71
