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Boundary Control: Subnational Authoritarianism in Democratic Countries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Edward L. Gibson
Edward L. Gibson
Affiliation:
Northwestern University
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This article considers the political situation of an authoritarian province in a nationally democratic country. The objective is to uncover strategies that incumbents (in this article, governors) pursue to perpetuate provincial authoritarian regimes, as well as dynamics that can undermine such regimes. A central insight is that controlling the scope of provincial conflict (that is, the extent to which it is localized or nationalized) is a major objective of incumbents and oppositions in struggles over local democratization. Authoritarian incumbents will thus pursue “boundary control” strategies, which are played out in multiple arenas of a national territorial system. The articlefleshesout these processes via comparative analysis of two conflicts over subnational democratization in 2004: the state of Oaxaca in Mexico and the province of Santiago del Estero in Argentina.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 58 , Issue 1 , October 2005 , pp. 101 - 132
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 2005

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References

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3 I use the term “province” in general discussions. When discussing country-specific politics I employ the term (“state” or “province”) used in that country.

4 Subnational authoritarian regimes can exist at other jurisdictional levels. City governments or rural municipalities are two nonprovincial examples.

5 This fact has been discussed in a number of studies, including Guillermo O'Donnell, “On the State, Democratization, and Some Conceptual Problems (A Latin American View with Glances at Some Post-Communist Countries),” Working Paper, no. 193 (Notre Dame: Kellogg Institute, April 1993); Fox, Jonathan, “Latin America's Emerging Local Politics,” Journal of Democracy 5 (April 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hagopian, Frances, Traditional Politics and Regime Change in Brazil (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Abrucio, Fernando Luis, Os Baroes da Federacao: Opoder dosgovernadores no Brasil pós-autoritário (São Paulo: Editora Hucitec/Universidade de São Paulo, 1998)Google Scholar; Cornelius, Wayne, Eisenstadt, Todd A., and Hindley, Jane, eds., Subnational Politics and Democratization in Mexico (La Jolla: University of California Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Chavez, Rebecca Bill, The Rule of Law in Nascent Democracies:Judicial Politics in Argentina (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 2004)Google Scholar; and McMann, Kelly, Economic Autonomy and Democracy: Hybrid Regimes in Russia and Kyrgyzstan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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7 To avoid mission creep in this article, I do not classify the national regimes as diminished subtypes of democracy. I simply analyze subnational authoritarianism as a problem of governance in national democratic regimes. For a critique of the trend toward creating typologies, see Armony, Ariel and Schamis, Hector, “Babel in Democratization Studies,” Journal of Democracy 16 (October 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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11 “Territorial politics” is an interdisciplinary field that has risen and fallen in popularity in political science. Some of the more notable works in comparative politics, which swam against the tide of “whole nation” political economy studies of the 1970s and 1980s, include Rokkan, Stein and Urwin, Derek, Economy, Territory, Identity: Politics of West European Peripheries (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1983)Google Scholar; and Tarrow, Katzenstein, and Graziano (fn. 9). Recent works include Snyder, Richard, Politics after Neoliberalism: Reregulation in Mexico (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Anderson, Jeffrey, The Territorial Imperative: Pluralism, Corporatism, and Economic Crisis (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gibson, Edward L., “The Populist Road to Market Reform: Policy and Electoral Coalitions in Mexico and Argentina,” World Politics 49 (April 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Eaton, Kent, Politics beyond the Capital: The Design of Subnational Institutions in Latin America (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Herbst, Jeffrey, States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Falleti, Tulia, “A Sequential Theory of Decentralization: Latin American Cases in Comparative Perspective,” American Political Science Review 99 (August 2004)Google Scholar; Boone (fn. 10); and Caramani, Daniele, The Nationalization of Politics: The Formation of National Electorates and Party Systems in Western Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Sack, Robert, Human Territorially: Its Theory and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 1Google Scholar.

13 Tarrow (fn. 9), 2.

14 Rokkan and Urwin (fn. 11), 4.

15 Thus, Cornelius characterizes Mexico as a “mosaic” of democratic and authoritarian states. Wayne Cornelius, “Subnational Politics and Democratization: Tensions between Center and Periphery in the Mexican Political System,” in Cornelius, Eisenstadt, and Hindley (fn. 5).

16 , Schattschneider, The Semisovereign People: A Realist's View of Democracy in America (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960)Google Scholar.

17 I borrow this concept from Rokkan and Urwin's (fn. 11) study of center-periphery politics, which examined “boundary control” primarily as a peripheral defensive strategy against cultural encroachments from the center.

18 Key (fn. 6), 16, 71–72.

19 Where national party institutionalization is weak, however, the parochialization of power could include such institutional alternatives as bureaucratic control. See Stoner-Weiss, Kathryn, Local Heroes: The Political Economy of Russian Regional Governance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

20 V. O. Key employed the “single party” concept in his study, but as Giovanni Sartori suggests, it is problematic for subnational contexts where national party competition exists. Sartori distinguishes between “predominant parties” and “hegemonic parties”; , Sartori, Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis (Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976)Google Scholar. In the predominant party system one party wins majorities on a regular basis, but as a result of free competition. In hegemonic party systems, hegemonic parties win by design—power holders, through legal and illegal means, ensure the Víctory of the dominant party; see, in particular, his discussion of Mexico's PRI (pp. 232—35). This power scenario is closer to the subnational cases referred to in this article than the predominant party system scenario. Hence, the term “subnational hegemonic party” will be employed in this article in relation to subnational authoritarian contexts.

21 One of the most dramatic examples of such leverage was revealed in a remark made by U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt to black leaders seeking his support for federal anti-lynching legislation in the 1930s. Southern legislators, he noted, “are chairmen or occupy strategic places on most of the Senate and House committees. If I come out for the antilynching bill now, they will block every bill I ask Congress to pass. … I just can't take that risk.” Quoted in Frederickson, Kari, The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South: 1932–1968 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001)Google Scholar. Richard F. Bensel provides extensive documentation of Southern national legislative strategies after 1880 in Sectionalism and American Political Development, 1880–1980 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984)Google Scholar.

22 A few quick examples: Fernando Collor de Melo, ex-governor of the peripheral northeastern state of Alagõas in Brazil, served as president of Brazil from 1989 until his impeachment in 1992. Carlos Menem, longtime governor of the peripheral province of La Rioja, became president of Argentina in 1989. In Mexico, Roberto Madrazo, the authoritarian governor of Tabasco that President Zedillo unsuccessfully attempted to remove in 1995, became president of the PRI and a presidential contender in 2000 and 2006.

23 Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001)Google Scholar, s.v. “linkage,” emphasis added.

24 Tarrow (fn. 9) describes these links as “networks of exchange” between center and periphery (p. 3).

25 Rokkan and Urwin (fn. 11), 4.

26 A reverse scenario is where national actors intervene unilaterally. However, odds for success are low without mobilized or institutionally capable local interlocutors. The contrast between the nineteenth-century “Reconstruction” in the U.S. and the twentieth-century “Second Reconstruction” provides telling evidence. See Valelly, Richard M., The Two Reconstructions: The Struggle for Black Enfranchisement (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 This local authoritarian situation was confirmed prior to field research as a basis for case selection (based on close examination of the cases and local expert knowledge). As a selection rule, I considered the restriction of either of Robert Dahl's “polyarchy” dimensions, “contestation” or “inclusion,” to distinguish authoritarian from democratic regimes. See , Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971)Google Scholar. I also considered observance of the rule of law as an additional criterion for classification. Systematic restriction of any of these conditions was considered sufficient to classify a provincial regime as nondemocratic. In Oaxaca and Santiago del Estero clear restrictions on political contestation sufficed to render a classification (the widespread violation of the rule of law and civil liberties also applied to these cases, as will be demonstrated below).

28 See Snyder (fn. 11) for Oaxacan politics under Governor Ramirez. For earlier periods, see Montes, Fausto Díaz, Los Municipios: La Disputa por el Poder en Oaxaca (Oaxaca: Institute de Investigaciones Sociológicas, 1980)Google Scholar; Vázquez, Víctor Raúl Martínez, Movimiento Populary Política en Oaxaca, 1968–1986 (Mexico City: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1990)Google Scholar; Zenteno, Raúl Benitez, ed., Sociedad y Politica en Oaxaca, 1980 (Oaxaca: Instituto de Estudios Sociológicos, 1980)Google Scholar; and Clarke, Colin, Class, Ethnicity, and Community in Southern Mexico: Oaxaca's Peasantries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

29 PRI hegemony nevertheless characterized Oaxacan politics. In the municipal elections of 1995, the PRI received 60 percent more votes than its nearest competitor and won the mayoralties of 111 of the 160 municipalities where party elections were held. For municipal election trends between 1980 and 1998, see Vázquez, Víctor Raúl Martínez and Díaz Montes, Fausto, eds., Elecciones Municipals en Oaxaca (Oaxaca: Instituto de Investigaciones Sociológicas, 2001)Google Scholar.

30 This version was confirmed by former governor Diódoro Carrasco, who asserted that “the designation of José Murat as PRI nominee was a decision by President Zedillo. He would regret it later.” Author interview with Diódoro Carrasco, Mexico City, April 4, 2005. Shortly before Murat's threat, Ricardo Monreal, a PRI leader in the state of Zacatecas, defected to the PRD and went on to win the 1998 gubernatorial election. His defection sent shock waves throughout the national PRI.

31 Early on Murat secured the election of Juan Díaz Pimentel as president of the Oaxacan legislature. Díaz was also co-owner of El Tiempo, a local newspaper acquired by Murat and other partners early in his term.

32 Author interview with Vicente de la Cruz, national congressman for Oaxaca, 1997–2000, Mexico City, February 14, 2004.

33 Ibid. Another local observer stated that “this period of party turnover in the national government has greatly favored Murat”; author interview with Víctor Raúl Martinez Vazquez, political scientist, Oaxaca, February 16, 2004.

34 Author interview with Juan Manuel Cruz Acevedo, former president of the Oaxacan legislature, Oaxaca, February 17, 2004.

35 “Murat: retrato de un cacique,” Reforma, October 19, 2003, 15.

36 Convergencia has become a vehicle of choice across Mexico for lapsed state PRI leaders to run against the PRI.

37 In fact, the president of the state supreme court, Raúl Bolanos, was a prominent contender for Murat's nomination as PRI gubernatorial candidate in 2004.

38 Reforma (fn. 35).

39 INEGI, Finanzas Públicas Estatales y Municipals de México (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Estadistica, Geografla, e Informàtica, 1998)Google Scholar.

40 As captured by the abject statement by the federal secretary for natural resources after Murat removed one of his delegates: “We need federal delegates in the states that have a good working relationship with the governors, and this relationship was already very deteriorated.” Quoted in “Aclaran Destitution en Oaxaca,” Reforma, August 22, 2002, available at http://www.reforma.com/.

41 The main budgetary lines of federal transfers to the states are known as “ramo 33” and “ramo 28.” In a colorful display of local political culture, Margarita Ramos, a Murat operative in the city of Juchitan was known by locals as “Margarita Ramos 33,” for her freewheeling distribution of federal funds to party loyalists.

42 Reforma (fn. 35), 17.

43 “Murat, un rostro del nuevo PRI,” La Jornada, April 21, 2002, available at http://www.jornada. unam.mx/.

44 Author interview with Víctor Raúl Martinez Vazquez, Oaxaca, February 16, 2004.

45 Madrazo himself publicly recognized the national stakes of the 2004 gubernatorial contest in Oaxaca: “Oaxaca is strategic because whatever party wants to win the presidency of México has to win the state.… In Oaxaca the next presidential administration is being defined.” Quoted in Mica Rosenberg, “Power Politics: Oaxacan Style,” SIPA NEWS (December 2004), 23.

46 See, for example, “El PRD está en bancarrota,” El Impartial, February 18, 2004, 3.

47 Author interview with Jorge Castillo Díaz, manager of Gabino Cue Monteaguo's gubernatorial campaign, México City, April 4, 2005.

48 Héctor Sánchez's independent campaign siphoned off four percentage points from Cué's campaign. The PRl won by a 3.2 percent margin. Local press reported that Murat financed pro-Sanchez publicity in the local media. See “Renuncia Héctor Sánchez a sus cargos en el PRD,” Noticias de Oaxaca, February 20, 2004, 15.

49 One opposition supporter wrote the following: “For the first time in Oaxaca's history the elections for governor were genuinely competitive and provided the element of uncertainty that makes democracy real.” Víctor Raúl Martínez Vázquez, “La contienda electoral en Oaxaca,” Noticias de Oaxaca, August 4, 2004, available at http://www.noticias-oax.com.mx/.

50 And possibly with a more compliant press. Oaxaca's independent newspaper, Noticias de Oaxaca, was repeatedly shut down as a result of government pressure during much of 2005; New York Times, July 18, 2005, 4.

51 “El fin de un poder caudillista que duro más de medio siglo,” La Nación, April 2, 2004, 10.

52 “La interventión a Santiago del Estero,” La Nación, April 2, 2004, 20.

53 See Eaton (fn. 11).

54 During this period such Peronist chieftains as the Rodriguez Sáa brothers in San Luis, the Me-nem brothers in La Rioja, the Sáadi brothers in Catamarca, and the Romeros in Salta consolidated hegemonic party rule on clientelistic networks similar to those in Santiago del Estero. In other provinces non-Peronist leaders, such as the Sapag family in Neuquén, the Romero Feris family in Corrientes, and the Bravo family in San Juan, reestablished local hegemonic party rule.

55 The 1997 reform created two new districting formulas for electing the legislature's fifty representatives. The first formula made the province the electoral district and elected twenty-two representatives. Two-thirds of those were allotted to the first-place party, regardless of its vote total. The remaining third was distributed proportionally to the minority parties. This created a strong majoritarian bias that favored the Peronist Party. The second formula divided the province into six districts and elected twenty-eight representatives. Five largely rural districts were allotted four representatives, regardless of population. The one urban district that included the Santiago-La Banda twin cities (with over 60 percent of the province's population) was allotted five representatives. The underrepresentation of Santiago-La Banda, which tended to give a majority to the opposition Radical Party was compounded by the formula for allocating seats. In rural districts dominated by Peronists the formula gave 75 percent of the seats to the majority party. In the more contested urban district the formula gave 66 percent of the seats to the majority party. See Constitución de la Provincia de Santiago del Estero, and Ricardo Gomez Diez, “La oportunidad de una Constitución para el bienestar y el crecimiento” (Lecture delivered in Santiago del Estero, August 2004), www.gomezdiez.com.ar/files/seminarios/SantiagoEst.pdf (accessed November 15, 2005).

56 Ministerio de Justicia, Seguridad, y Derechos Humanos, Informe Santiago del Estero (República Argentina, 2003), 8.

57 “Un régimen de miedo y terror manda en Santiago del Estero,” La Nación, November 28, 2002, 8.

58 One notable case involved El Liberal, the largest-circulation newspaper in the province. After the paper reprinted articles critical of Governor Aragonés that had appeared in national newspapers in 2002, government followers launched hundreds of lawsuits that were duly processed by local judges. Facing financial ruin, the newspaper stopped reprinting national reports about provincial politics. A key boundary-opening agent in the province was neutralized. Author interview with Oscar Jeréz, correspondent for El Liberal, Santiago del Estero, September 6, 2004. See also Carreras, Sergio, Elreino de los Juárez: Media sigh de miseria, terror, y desmesura en Santiago delEstero (Buenos Aires: Aguilar, Taurus, Alfaguara, S.A., 2004)Google Scholar.

59 For how this percentage was calculated, see “Un poder de casi 40 años,” La Nación, February 2, 2005, 6.

60 Ministerio de Justicia (fn. 56).

61 For a discussion of the prototypical “provincial party boss” in Argentina, see Jones, Mark and Hwang, Wonjae, “Provincial Party Bosses: Keystone of the Argentine Congress,” in Levitsky, Steven and Murillo, María Víctoria, eds., Argentine Democracy: The Politics of Institutional Weakness (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

62 Most provinces work with closed-list candidate slates (as did Santiago del Estero). The power to put together such slates is an indicator of subnational control over provincial party politics.

63 Carreras (fn. 58), 56.

64 Gibson, Edward L. and Calvo, Ernesto, “Federalism and Low-Maintenance Constituencies: Territorial Dimensions of Economic Reform in Argentina,” Studies in Comparative InternationalDevelop-ment 35 (Winter 2001), 42Google Scholar.

65 For a description of personal and economic ties between the chief federal judge in the province, Angel Jesus Toledo, and Juarista political and economic elites, see Carreras (fn. 58), 216–20

66 For an account of the Santiagazo, see Auyero, Javier, Contentious Lives: TwoArgentine Women, Two Protests, and the Questfor Recognition (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2002)Google Scholar.

67 Juárez had close ties to the governor of Buenos Aires, Eduardo Duhalde, Menem's chief party rival.

68 This was probably not for lack of trying. The previous bishop of Santiago, an articulate Juárez opponent, died mysteriously in a 1998 car accident on a rural road. The cause of the accident was never determined by local authorities, although the federal government reopened the case in 2004. For essays on opposition struggles against the Juárez-dominated regime, see Dargoltz, Raúl, Jeréz, Horacio Cao, Oscar, and Vaca, Joséfina, Santiago: El ala que brota (Buenos Aires: Editoríal Utopias, 2005)Google Scholar.

69 “Tiemblan los caudillos,” La Voz del Interior, June 15, 2003, available at http://www.lavozdelin-terior.com/.

70 For a discussion of Juárez's missteps in the national presidential intrigues of 2002–3, see “Los malos pasos en la interna del PJ,” El Liberal, April 1, 2004, available at http://www.elliberal.com.ar/.

71 See, for example, Ministerio de Justicia (fn. 56).

72 “Analizan prorrogar la intervención en Santiago,” La Nación, May 29, 2004, 10.

73 Confirmed in several interviews with intervention officials, including Pablo Fontdevilla, chief of staff for the intervention, Santiago, February 14, 2005.

74 Party leader Eduardo Duhalde called the intervention “a debacle for the party.” “El Gobierno de Kirchner Respondió a las críticas de Duhalde,” El Liberal, March 2, 2005.

75 Similar patterns of subnational institutional manipulation for partisan gain in several Argentine provinces are documented and analyzed in Calvo, Ernesto and Micozzi, Juan Pablo, “The Governor's Backyard: A Seat-Vote Model of Electoral Reform for Subnational Multi-Party Races,” Journal of Politics 67 (November 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.