Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0016/00169.txt

Text File | 1991-06-24 | 29KB | 476 lines

$Unique_ID{COW00169}
$Pretitle{273}
$Title{Argentina
Chapter 4C.   Institutional Actors}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Craig H. Robinson}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{party
parties
elections
government
union
formed
alliance
political
popular
ucr}
$Date{1987}
$Log{}
Country:     Argentina
Book:        Argentina, A Country Study
Author:      Craig H. Robinson
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1987

Chapter 4C.   Institutional Actors

Political Parties

     The political party system was unstable and unable to serve as a major
support for the consolidation of liberal democracy. The dominant
characteristics of most parties were factionalism and personalism. Cohesion
and effectiveness depended on a strong leader, in the absence of which local
and personal political organizations were often stronger than the national
party. Individual parties almost always had the province, not the nation, as
their fundamental reference point. By and large, the major parties did not
have distinctive policies, and divisions between the parties and among
intraparty factions were based on personalities as much as or more than on
ideology.

     The organizational instability of the party system was reflected in the
fact that although some seven to 10 parties typically contested national
elections prior to the early 1950s, at least 150 separate parties took part in
the elections held between 1955 and 1965. At the time of the 1966 coup, there
were three separate Radical parties, four Socialist parties, at least a dozen
Peronist and neo-Peronist parties, and perhaps 20 Conservative parties.
Although nine parties and coalitions contested the 1972 elections, only the
UCR and the PJ had a formal organization in every province. Fifteen parties
contested the 1983 elections, 13 of which ran presidential candidates.

     The fluid nature of the political parties contributed to the weakness of
liberal democratic institutions. Most parties were little more than electoral
machines designed to further the political ambitions of their leaders. Their
goal was to gain control of the executive branch; once that was accomplished,
parties, served little purpose. Only rarely did a government party plan an
important role in policy formation. There was little incentive for opposition
parties to support the government because patronage and participation in
policymaking came solely from control of the executive branch. Therefore,
weakening the president as much as possible was the major preoccupation of
opposition parties. By impeding the president's program, opposition parties
could hope to precipitate a political crisis, which might increase their
chances of acquiring the presidency either in new elections or perhaps as the
result of military intervention. Even the strongest parties, the UCR and
the PJ, were sufficiently strong to win elections but not strong enough to
find solutions to political crises such as those of 1930, 1943, 1955, 1962,
1966, and 1975-76, all of which were resolved through military intervention.

     Parties were suspended and party activity banned after the 1976 military
coup. After President Videla announced in 1979 that political parties would
soon be allowed to function again, the parties gradually reconstituted
themselves. In 1982 the Bignone government promulgated the Organic Law of
the Political Parties, which still governed the organization and
recognition of political parties in 1985 (see Elections, this ch.).

The Right

     Although they uniformly referred to themselves as centrist parties, a
large number of small parties representing traditional Conservative views
were clearly on the right of the party system (see Conservatism, this ch.).
In the 1983 elections the right was grouped in two coalitions: the Union of
the Democratic Center (Union del Centro Democratico-UCD) and the Federal
Alliance (Alianza Federal-AF).

     The UCD was formed in 1982, bringing together the two old-line
Conservative parties, the Democratic Party (Partido Democrata-PD) and the
Federalist Party of the Center (Partido Federalista del Centro-PFC), with the
Republican Union (Union Republicana-UR), a personal vehicle for Alvaro
Alsogaray that had been formed earlier in 1982. Alsogaray became the
presidential candidate of the UCD in the 1983 elections.

     The UCD was tiny, not having officially registered members, but was
disproportionately powerful, particularly in international banking circles. It
attracted the support of many among the upper middle-class and Conservative
intellectuals and functioned primarily as a vehicle for spreading Alsogaray's
monetarist views. It was committed to dismantling state intervention in the
economy, preferring the free market as the best mechanism for distributing
resources.

     The AF was an electoral alliance formed in 1983 among the Federal Party
of Francisco Manrique, the Autonomist Party, the Popular Line movement, the
Popular Federalist Force, and the Democratic Concentration, a Tucuman-based
group that was itself a coalition of nine other parties. Most of the leaders
of these parties had also been involved in an attempt to unite the large
number of federalist parties into a coalition called the Federal Popular
Alliance (Alianza Popular Federalista-APF, which had run Manrique for
president in 1973.

     The AF shared the UCD's antistate bias but was considerably less
doctrinaire in its commitment to the free market, wanting government aid to
the provinces to assist in increasing the living standard of the provincial
middle class. Its hallmark, however, was its call for an increase in the
autonomy of the provinces in relation to the federal government.

     Winning only 80,000 votes in the 1983 elections, the AF virtually
disappeared from public view after the defection of the Democratic
Concentration. Many of its constituent parties, however, remained important
in several interior provinces.

The Center

     Five main parties composed the center of the party system-the Movement
for Integration and Development (Movimiento de Integracion y Desarrollo-MID),
the Democratic Socialist Alliance (Alianza Democrata Socialista-ADS), the
Radical Civic Union (Union Civica Radical-UCR), the Justicialist Party
(Partido Justicialista-PJ), and the Christian Democratic Party (Partido
Democrata Cristiano-PDC). The MID and the ADS were generally more conservative
than either the UCR or the PJ. By accepting an activist state in the economy,
however, both were clearly closer to the centrist parties than to the
Conservative right. The PDC occupied a position slightly to the left of both
the UCD and the PJ.

     The ADS was the product of an alliance between the Progressive Democratic
Party (Partido Democrata Progresista-PDP) and the Democratic Socialist Party
(Partido Socialista Democratica-PSD). The PDP was a moderate, somewhat
anticlerical party that had long sought to represent the interests of small
farmers in the interior provinces and was strongest among intellectuals and
professionals in Santa Fe Province. The PSD was a 1959 offshoot of the
Socialist Party (Partido Socialista-PS). Despite its origins, the PSD was a
comparatively conservative party. Both the PDP and the PSD had participated
in several coalitions with the right during their history, and several of
their leaders occupied positions in the 1976-83 military governments. The ADS
polled some 92,000 votes in the 1983 elections.

     The MID was largely a personalist party devoted to the ambitions of
former President Arturo Frondizi, originally a member of the UCR. When the
UCR nominated Frondizi for president in 1956, a faction led by Ricardo
Balbin, objecting to Frondizi's desire to form an alliance with the Peronists,
broke away from the UCR and formed the UCRP. Frondizi reconstituted the
remaining Radicals as the UCRI and went on to win the 1958 elections. After
his overthrow in 1962, Frondizi continued his alliance with the Peronists,
but when Peron designated a mediocre candidate for the alliance i