The Turns to the Left in Argentina and Uruguay: Presidential Campaigns since 2003

Abstract

From the beginning of this century Argentina and Uruguay, as many Latin American countries, underwent a turn to the left. These turns to the left may be called “the Kirchner cycle” (or “K cycle”) in Argentina, after presidents Néstor Kirchner and his wife, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, and the “Frente Amplio cycle” (FA, Broad Front) in Uruguay, for its leading political party. Argentina’s turn to the left ended in the presidential election of 2015 in which the Kirchnerist candidate was defeated; Uruguay’s FA cycle will run at least until the 2019 presidential election. Since Argentina and Uruguay’s turns are part of a simultaneous regional turn to the left, their respective national leaderships were not the absolute creators of each country’s “turn”. What they did was to give national shape to strong regional waves. These processes were conditioned by national circumstances, which in some respects were clearly different in each of them. Despite deep social similarities, Argentina and Uruguay have different political cultures and histories that shape their electoral campaigns. Thus, this paper probes into the similarities and differences between the two “turns” to the left focusing on their victorious presidential campaigns (2003, 2007 and 2011 in Argentina, and 2004, 2009 and 2014 in Uruguay). This analysis leads to (i) an assessment of the relative importance of historical accidents in the two cycles (high in Argentina, low in Uruguay) and of enduring and different political traditions (high in both countries); (ii) an exploration of the differing nature of the two cycles, and finally, (iii) to some implications regarding the broader, regional turn to the left. Do these stories suggest we should expect continuity or new cycles (e.g. to the right) in Latin America? Or should we rather expect the Latin American turn to the left to dissolve into diverging stories? The paper concludes that the most likely scenario is the latter, “diverging stories”.
  • Referencias
  • Cómo citar
  • Del mismo autor
  • Métricas
Amadeo, Belén (2014) “Comunicación pública y comunicación política”. In Adriana Amado (ed.), La comunicación pública como espectáculo: relatos de la Argentina del siglo XXI, 1st ed. Buenos Aires: Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, 345-371.

Amadeo, Belén, Adriana Amado, and Natalia Aruguete (2013) “La comunicación K o el relato del modelo. Argentina 2005-2011”. In Omar Rincón and Matías Ponce (coords.), Estrategias de Comunicación de Gobierno en América Latina: Entre el caudillismo, la e-política y la tele-democracia. Montevideo: Fin de Siglo.

Amado, Adriana (ed.) (2014) La comunicación pública como espectáculo: relatos de la Argentina del siglo XXI, 1st ed. Buenos Aires: Konrad Adenauer Stiftung.

Amado, Adriana and Belén Amadeo (2014) “Las relaciones públicas al poder: el caso de la Argentina en el siglo XX”. In Adriana Amado (ed.), La comunicación pública como espectáculo: relatos de la Argentina del siglo XXI, 1st ed. Buenos Aires: Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, 97-207.

Amado, Adriana and Belén Amadeo (2012) “Cristina al gobierno. Las relaciones públicas al poder”. Paper presented to the XI Congreso de la Asociación Latinoamericana de Investigadores en Comunicación (ALAIC), Montevideo, May 9-12 2012, available at: http://www.catedraa.com.ar/investigacion/ponenciasjornadas

Arditi, Benjamin (2008) “Arguments about the left turn(s) in Latin America: A post liberal politics?” Latin American Research Review 43:3.

Baker, Andy and Kenneth F. Greene (2011) “The Latin American Left’s mandate: Free-Market Policies and Issue Voting in New Democracies”, World Politics 63: 43-77.

Cleary, Matthew R. (2006) “Explaining the Left’s Resurgence”. Journal of Democracy 17: 35-49.

Contartese, Victoria (2014) Estrategias de campaña en Uruguay: el Frente Amplio de 2009. Saarbrucken: Dictus Publishing. Crespo, Ismael and Javier del Rey (eds.) (2013) Comunicación política y campañas electorales en América Latina. Buenos Aires: Biblos/Politeia.

D’Adamo Orlando, and Virginia García Beaudoux (2013) “Storytelling y comunicación política: el valor de un relato bien contado.” In Crespo and del Rey (eds), Comunicación política y campañas electorales en América Latina. Buenos Aires: Biblos/Politeia.

Domenach, Jean-Marie (1986) La propaganda política. Buenos Aires: Eudeba.

Domínguez, Jorge I. (1998) Democratic Politics in Latin America and the Caribbean. Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

East Asia Institute, Seoul Broadcasting System, Joong Ang llbo, and Hankook Research Company (2013) South Korean Local Election Panel Study: Regional Three Waves, 2010. ICPSR34350-v1. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2013-12-05, available at http://doi. org/10.3886/ICPSR34350.v1.

González, Luis E. (2015) “Uruguay en las dos primeras décadas del siglo XXI: partidos cambiantes, sistema estable”. In Pablo Mieres (ed.), La campaña electoral 2014 en Uruguay. Montevideo: Universidad Católica – Fundación Konrad Adenauer.

González, Luis E. (1999) “Los partidos establecidos y sus desafiantes”. In L. E. González (ed.), Los partidos políticos uruguayos en tiempos de cambio. Montevideo: Universidad Católica - Fundación BankBoston.

González, Luis E. and Rosario Queirolo (2013) “Izquierda y derecha: Formas de definirlas, el caso latinoamericano y sus implicaciones”. América Latina Hoy, 65: 79-105, Universidad de Salamanca.

González, Luis E. and Rosario Queirolo (2000) “Las elecciones nacionales del 2004: posibles escenarios”. In Instituto de Ciencia Política, Universidad de la República, Elecciones 1999-2000. Montevideo: ICP - Ediciones de la Banda Oriental.

Huntington, Samuel P. (1991) The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press.

Levitsky, Steve and Kenneth Roberts, (eds.) (2011) The Resurgence of the Latin American Left. Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Luna, Juan Pablo (2014) Segmented Representation: Political Party Strategies in Unequal Democracies. New York: Oxford University Press.

Mainwaring, Scott and Timothy Scully (1995) “Introduction: Party Systems in Latin America”. In Mainwaring and Scully (eds.), Building Democratic Institutions: Party Systems in Latin America. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.

Mancuello, Ana Lucía (2010) ¿Qué ves cuando me ves? Estrategias partidarias y profesionalización de campañas en las elecciones presidenciales de Uruguay 2009. Paper presented to the V Congreso Latinoamericano de Ciencia Política, Asociación Latinoamericana de Ciencia Política, Buenos Aires, July 28-30.

Mercado, Silvia (2013) El inventor del peronismo. Buenos Aires: Planeta.

Payne, J. Mark (2006) “Sistemas de partidos y gobernabilidad”. In J. Mark Payne, Daniel Zovatto G., Mercedes Mateo Díaz et al., La política importa: Democracia y desarrollo en América Latina. Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank and IDEA.

Queirolo, Rosario (2013) The Success of the Left in Latin America. Notre Dame, Indiana: The University of Notre Dame Press. Rodríguez Garavito, César A., Patrick S. Barrett, and Daniel Chávez, (eds.) (2005) La nueva izquierda en América Latina: Sus orígenes y trayectoria futura. Bogotá: Grupo Editorial Norma.

Slavinsky, Gabriel (2013) “Argentina: orquestación audiovisual en la campaña electoral de Cristina Fernández”. In Crespo and del Rey (eds.), Comunicación política y campañas electorales en América Latina. Buenos Aires: Biblos/Politeia, 237-245.

Sotelo Rico, Mariana (1999) “La longevidad de los partidos tradicionales uruguayos desde una perspectiva comparada”. In L. E. González (ed.), Los partidos políticos uruguayos en tiempos de cambio. Montevideo: Universidad Católica - Fundación Bank- Boston.

Verba, Sydney (1989 [1980]) “On Revisiting the Civic Culture: A Personal Postcript”. In G. Almond and S. Verba (eds.), The Civic Culture Revisited. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.

Vonderschmitt, Kaitlin (2012) “The Growing Use of Social Media in Political Campaigns: How to use Facebook, Twitter and You88 Tube to Create an Effective Social Media Campaign” (2012). Mimeo, Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects, Paper 360, available at http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/cgi/ viewcontent.cgi?article=1366&context=stu_hon_theses

Wang, Ming Igay Gabay and Dhavan V. Shah (2012) “The Civic Consequences of ‘Going Negative’: Attack Ads and Adolescents’ Knowledge, Consumption and Participation”. In The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol 644 (Communication, Consumers, and Citizens: Revisiting the Politics of Consumption), 256-271.

Wiesehomeier, Nina (2010) “The meaning of left-right in Latin America: A comparative view”. Working Paper 370, Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies, The University of Notre Dame.
González, L. E., & Amadeo, B. (2019). The Turns to the Left in Argentina and Uruguay: Presidential Campaigns since 2003. Revista Latinoamericana De Opinión Pública, 6, 51–88. https://doi.org/10.14201/rlop.22318

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.
+