Partha-Chatterjee-The Politics of The Governed Reflections On Popular Politics in Most of The World - 2006

Introduction: A Thin Democracy
Author(s): Ronaldo Munck

Source: Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 24, No. 6, Argentina Under Menem (Nov., 1997),
pp. 5-21
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Introduction
A Thin Democracy
by
Ronaldo Munck
Argentina has often seemed a paradigmatic case in Latin America, whether

in relation to the history of Peronist nationalist populism, the military
dictatorships of 1966 and 1976, or the democratic renaissance since 1983.
President Carlos Menem, who came to office in 1989, has been one of the
clearest examples of the nationalist-populist-statist politician now turned
uncritical United States supporter/free marketeer. The economic "revolution"
is being carried out, however, by a still populist if not Peronist politician.
Often seen by political scientists as a paradoxical case, Argentina now seems
to provide a clear case study that may illuminate regional trends. In a broad
review article included in this issue I survey a dozen books in English and
Spanish that provide the necessary background; here I examine the thin,
anemic, distorted democracy now being consolidated in Argentina, which
may well be the face of the future for other countries.
M. A. Garreton (1994: 232) has argued that "in the wake of economic,
social, political and cultural transformations in the international context, a
new sociopolitical matrix appears to be emerging in Latin America." In
Argentina, where we have become used to history as cycles, we now seem
indeed to be witnessing the emergence of a new social regime of accumula-
tion and political matrix. If the cycle, the "impossible game" of Argentine
politics, has been broken, then the implications for a new critical Latin
American sociology (see Osorio, 1993) will indeed be significant. If we are
witnessing a democratic consolidation "of a special type," we are also now
seeing increasing disenchantment with democracy. Exploring the anatomy of
Menemism may lead us to a clearer understanding of the limits of the new
mood of democratic (read capitalist) triumphalism so prevalent in politics
Ronaldo Munck is a contributing editor of Latin American Perspectives and book reviews editor
of the Bulletin of Latin American Research. He is the author of Argentina: From Anarchism to
Peronism (London: Zed Books, 1987) and Latin America: The Transition to Democracy and is
currently studying labor flexibilization and capital restructuring in the Southern Cone. He thanks
Gerardo Munck for help with the editing of this article.
LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 97, Vol. 24 No. 6, November 1997 5-21
? 1997 Latin American Perspectives
6 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
and what passes for political analysis. The "transition to democracy" debates
have now been superseded in practice, and we need to examine the nature
and contradictions of the democratic consolidation and the new democratic
discourse.
Norberto Lechner, in a wide-ranging review of the "democratic decade,"
has suggested that "the reinstatement of democracy reflects above all the
yearning for a restored sense of community" (Lechner, 1991: 548). This
analysis springs from a belief that the 1980s represented a crisis similar to
that of the 1930s, when intense socioeconomic transformations led to radical
political change, whether in the form of Stalinism, Keynesianism, or fascism.
Yet the intense capitalist restructuring of Latin America has led to social
disintegration with little sign of the new institutions and new mode of
political activity that were promised at the start of the democratic decade.
Political reform has been hindered by a system in which decrees prevail over
consultation and competition overrides cooperation. The new democratic
legitimacy that should have been built around political institutions that
furthered the deeply felt desire for citizenship has instead led to a shortcut
populism creating a fragile and false sense of cohesion and identity on the
basis of emotional appeals. This ultimately is the story of the transition from
Alfonsin to Menem that I will now trace.
FROM ALFONSIN TO MENEM
The "decompression" of the military dictatorships of the 1970s began in

Brazil toward the end of that decade, but it was in Argentina in 1983 that the
first and most precipitate transition to democratic rule took place. When
President Rautl Alfonsin took office in 1983-after defeating the Peronists,
who had been discredited by the chaotic governments of 1973-1976-there
was a great flourishing (even inflation) of democratic discourse in Argentina.
The constitution and the due process of law became, once again, important
symbols of political legitimacy. In a country where powerful nationalist
political movements (such as Peronism) and social corporations (such as the
trade unions and the military) held sway, the new mood imposed the primacy
of parliament and the rule of law. There was a virtual cultural pact between
the people and the political parties, or at least sections of them, centered
around the requirement of democratic institutions. As Isidoro Cheresky notes,
the year 1983, with the revalorization of the democratic ideal and the rejection
of authoritarian projects and personalized powers, "seemed to provide ex-
ceptionally favorable circumstances for the establishment of a new political
Munck / INTRODUCTION 7
regime" (Cheresky, 1992: 10). But Alfonsin's regime was not to prove
foundational for a bold new democratic era.
This is not the place for a review of the Alfonsin period (see Epstein, 1992;
Nun and Portantiero, 1987). Alfonsin's campaign had stressed the negative
role of the "corporations," primarily those representing the military and labor,
which he accused of an unholy alliance. The novel (for Argentina) message
was that social demands should be articulated and mediated through the
political system. Governability in Argentina required a neutralization of
corporatism. However, the labor movement was divided and seemed unable
to assume the risks entailed by a non-Peronist government, and employers'
associations were loath to move beyond a zero-sum conception of economic
life. It was therefore impossible to move toward Alfonsin's and much of the
progressive intelligentsia's goal of a social and economic compromise to
consolidate democracy and prevent the recurrence of cyclical instability. The
emphasis on the political moment of the transition led to an underestimation
of the economic moment that was soon to dominate the scene.
The Plan Austral, launched in 1987, was designed to cut the inflationary
spiral with a price and wage freeze and a monetary reform that included a
new currency (see Canitrot, 1992). However, the very success, albeit ephem-
eral, of the economic plan reduced the government's reformist will. Adolfo
Canitrot, himself involved in developing the plan, admits that the govern-
ment's policy in this regard "had the negative effect of gradually weakening
its capabilities and reducing public confidence in the efficiency of the
institutions of representative democracy, in particular that of Congress and
the political parties" (1991: 129). From 1985 on, the gap between rhetoric
and reality could only grow, and the possibility of a coherent set of structural
reforms faded. The corporations set to defending their interests. The orga-
nized labor movement carried out 13 general strikes under Alfonsin, in some
ways reminiscent of the period leading to the fall of the Illia government in
1966. For their part, the so-called captains of industry precipitated a virtual
economic coup in 1989 through frenetic financial speculations that led to the
collapse of the Plan Primavera. The state was bankrupt, inflation had reached
a staggering 4,000 percent, and Alfonsin's government had virtually
collapsed.
Carlos Menem took office in July 1989 promising a productive revolution
and a wage hike. His supporters called for a "crusade to construct a strong,
dynamic, modern, just Argentina with an educated, healthy, and happy
people" (Movimiento Nacional Justicialista, 1991: 24). This signaled more
than just a return to the populism of old-a simple repackaging of the Peronist
message for the 1990s. As Oscar Landi (1991: 2) noted, "Menem signified
the replacement of the centrality of the word by that of the gesture and the
image." Whereas Alfonsin came from within the party political system and
represented a flourishing of constitutional politics, Menem presented himself
as above politics. Governor of a poor province, Menem came as an outsider
to defeat Antonio Cafiero in the Peronist primaries, thus eliminating the
option of a "renewed" democratic Peronism. Menem's victory in the 1989
election represented a significant shift from the political coordinates and
discourse that had produced Alfonsin's victory in 1983. Menem's campaign
took him to the poor districts of Argentina in ways that recalled the original
Peronist period, with vague promises, an appeal to "follow me," and the aura
of something new and different. In the years to come, Menem's political
discourse would constantly stress his "transformative will."
With the accession of Menem to the presidency in 1989, the phase of
consolidation of democracy began. This was not, of course, the democracy
dreamt of in 1983, but it did at least represent a smooth transition from one
freely elected regime to another. The transition-consolidation continuum,
however, should not be conceived in straightforward chronological terms.
Rather, as J. C. Portantiero (1993: 19) argues, the process has diverse
moments concerned with state politics, the economic dimension, and civil
society and their interrelationships. It is a complex process with different
temporalities for the different aspects or moments of the whole. Alfonsin's
regime had effectively consolidated the institutional dimensions of democ-
racy and tried but ultimately failed to deal with the economic crisis. The
ethical dimensions essential to the democratic reconstruction of society had
also been strengthened but perhaps not consolidated sufficiently to withstand
the Menemist drive for conservative modernization behind a populist mask.
It is the economic, political, and social dimensions or moments of democratic
consolidation to which we now turn.
ECONOMIC REVOLUTION
Faced with economic collapse, President Menem felt that he had no opti
but to forsake his campaign promises and seek the advice of the leading
Argentine multinational Bunge and Born and his longtime liberal guru Alvaro
Alsogaray. If Alfonsin had neglected the economy to his cost, with Menem
it moved center-stage and became the linchpin of his political project.
Although he had a broader political base than Alfonsin, Menem had less
choice of economic policy options. The initial Bunge and Born stabilization
was only partly successful, but the project was consolidated under Domingo
Cavallo's economic czarship from 1991 on.. Vicente Palermo, in his detailed
and well-informed article,* shows the intricacies of the politics of economic

adjustment in Argentina, including the fraught process leading to the Cavallo
plan.
In brief, the elements of the Cavallo plan include radical privatization, a
dramatic reduction of public employment and government spending, the
opening of substantial sectors of the economy to foreign competition, and the
parity of the peso with the dollar. The results, at first and on the surface,
were positive. By 1993 the government's chronic deficit in its fiscal accounts
had become a surplus; by 1995 inflation had dropped to an annual 3.5 percent.
Low inflation and a favorable investment climate made Argentina the third-
largest recipient of foreign investment among developing countries, after
China and Mexico, in the early 1990s. Most dramatic, an economy that had
grown at an annual average of 1 percent between 1976 and 1989 achieved a
spectacular 30 percent cumulative growth between 1990 and 1994.
It was not surprising, in the light of this "economic miracle," that Menem
won a second term of office in 1995, achieving 49.5 percent of the vote
compared with 47 percent in 1989. Whatever the contradictions of "Men-
economics," the opposition from the Radicals to the leftist Frente Grande
essentially supported it at the cost of much of the credibility of the political
option they might offer. Yet even at the moment of maximum euphoria the
storm clouds were gathering, accelerated by the negative effects of Mexico's
stock market crash at the end of 1994 (the so-called Tequila effect). Luigi
Manzetti (1995: 2) writes that "by mid-1995, problems in the banking system,
riots in several provinces as a result of the fiscal crises of local governments,
declining revenues, and record levels of unemployment torpedoed the opti-
mism displayed by many Argentine officials only a year before." Clearly the
infusions of capital were not sustainable, the income from privatization was
necessarily a one-off, and portfolio investment by foreign and returning local
capital was notoriously fickle. The virtuous economic circle that had charac-
terized the period from 1990 to 1994 was no more; the gross domestic product
(GDP) contracted, and so did the volume of credit and the risk status of
Argentina as the international-league tables moved upward again.
Cavallo, who had always had an ambivalent relationship with the presi-
dent, was eventually sacked in mid-1996. He was succeeded by the grey
former Central Bank governor Roque Fernaindez, who promised continuity
*The editors regret that the article by Vicente Palermo could not be included in this issue. It is
an interesting and informative piece whose translation did not reach us in time due to its being
lost in the mails from Brazil. We extended deadlines with the hope of its inclusion but to no avail.
Palermo's analysis will appear in an ensuing issue, together with a piece on Che Guevara and a
review of books on Guevara. We apologize to Vicente Palermo for these circumstances beyond
our control.
with the Cavallo era. After some official disarray with regard to fiscal policy,
growth rates began to recover in 1996. Vulnerability remained in terms of the
external financial situation and, in particular, developments in Brazil that
would have a direct effect because of the economic integration process. As
for Cavallo, he went on to become a considerable political embarrassment to
the government, with well-founded accusations of official corruption and
such things as judicially protected smuggling keeping him in the headlines.
As with any exercise in capitalist restructuring, there are winners and
losers. The prestigious Economist's (November 26, 1994) survey of Argen-
tina refers unambiguously to "the plunderers' ball" created by Menem's
policies. Income distribution in Greater Buenos Aires shows a clear evolu-
tion: only the top decile of the population increased its share of income
between 1985 and 1994, from 31.6 percent to 37.3 percent. Below that top
layer all sectors of the population lost out under democracy. However, we
must also note that the percentage of the population living below the poverty
line in the Greater Buenos Aires area fell from 56.5 percent in 1989 to 26.5
percent in 1991 (IDEP, 1994). With the benchmark being the hyperinflation-
ary peak of 1989, this evolution is not surprising, but it does help account for
why Menem is equated with economic stability even among the popular
classes. For the unemployed, nearly 20 percent by 1996, this stability was of
course ambiguous. The article by Peter Lloyd-Sherlock in this issue provides
a more detailed account of income disribution under Menem and undercuts
the optimistic message of regime supporters.
Within the capitalist sectors we have witnessed a restructuring every bit
as comprehensive as that affecting the popular classes. Some Argentine
companies, such as Perez Companiia and the Sociedad Comercial del Plata,
have benefited immensely from the sale of state assets. The MERCOSUR
(examined in detail in Donald Richards's insightful contribution in this issue)
is a crucial component of this upbeat sector, with the free-trade zone provid-
ing Argentina's capitalists access to 200 million consumers and a region with
a GDP of close to US$800 billion. The only complaint of this sector is that
the government has not gone far enough in providing "labor flexibility."
Small businesses, particularly in the retail sector, are, however, being
squeezed out by the large corporations as the economy becomes far more
concentrated. Bernardo Kosacoff (1993: 28) notes the inevitable "increase in
concentration and structural heterogeneity" as a result of Menem's policies.
As with the capitalist reconversion process of another era, the Ongania
dictatorship after 1966, it is the poorer provinces that are the losers. As the
Economist (November 26, 1994, 8) notes, "If the 550,000 inhabitants of Jujuy
province have gained anything from Menemism, it is hard to detect. The
province's economy, which mustered a GDP of $1.65 million in 1993, has
contracted by around 30 percent in real terms since 1990. In the capital, San
Salvador de Jujuy, the only growth industry appears to be video arcades for
unemployed school-leavers." It is ironic that it is the former governor of
another poor province, La Rioja, who is implementing the policies leading
to this situation.
From a critical perspective it is necessary to ask whether there is an
alternative to the neoliberal economic consensus whose original importation
into Argentina is recounted in Eduardo Rosenzvaig's polemical account in
this issue. Certainly we can agree with Vuskovik Bravo (1992: 51) on the
need for an alternative social project, the success of which will probably
determine the ultimate destiny of democracy in the region. A new social
regime of accumulation will need to be economically viable, thus discounting
the old statist-populist nationalism, and also capable of assembling the social
and political backing to allow its implementation. In this regard we could do
worse than consider carefully the conclusions drawn by Osvaldo Sunkel
(1993) in seeking a synthesis for a neostructuralist paradigm that he calls
"development from within." Such a synthesis would, among other things,
recover, in the new phase of global transformation, the original perspectives
of structuralist development and social justice; recognize the limits of the
1960s structuralist development policies, along with the defects of the 1980s
adjustment programs; and build on the consensus around the urgency of
reincorporating the region into the international economy and taking steps to
reduce poverty and inequality, necessary conditions for the consolidation of
democracy (Sunkel, 1993: 18-19).
POLITICAL CENTRALIZATION
Hand in hand with the "economic revolution" orchestrated by Menem has

gone a decisive reversal of the democratic promise of Alfonsin's first years.
From the start of his term Menem began tinkering with the constitution in
ways that were-and were widely perceived as being-nakedly self-interested.
His disdain for parliament and its procedures has been blatant. To avoid the
inconvenience of parliamentary scrutiny, it would appear, he has imposed
hundreds of executive orders, simply bypassing Congress. James McGuire
(1994: 31) notes that "Menem's main legal adviser acknowledged in 1993
that the government had already enacted more than 100 such decrees, more
than four times as many as during the previous 140 years combined." These
executive orders are legally reserved for exceptional circumstances, but
Menem has routinized their use and thus reinforced Argentina's already
strong presidentialism. This is not, however, to say that there is any flourish-
ing parliamentary culture eager to make democracy work and ensure that the
'will of the people" is properly represented.
In fact, Argentina has been characterized since 1989 by an increase in
political disenchantment. The conclusion drawn by Etchegaray and Rai-
mondo (1987: 107) in their study of disenchantment during the transition to
democracy is that it "leads to a loss of legitimacy of the government and of
the regime (and in the last instance of the system)." Although disenchantment
has not led to increased tolerance of authoritarianism and militarism, the
demobilized civil society it has created and the withdrawal from the public
arena to the private constitute a poor basis for the development of a demo-
cratic citizenry. Manzetti (1993: 161) notes on the basis of survey data that
it is the fragmentation of the political culture of Argentina that "explains such
contradictory attitudes as strong support for participatory democracy but not
for political tolerance and civil rights." A symptom of this political pathology
has been the open development of a "cleptocracy" under Menem with a
succession of scandals involving narcodollars, bribery (Swiftgate), and many
other things. Reaction has been muted because of the overwhelming desire
for stability, but the damage to the body politic is undoubted.
A major area in which Menem's regime represents a retreat from Alfon-
sin's is in relation to the military, as J. Patrice McSherry shows in some detail
in her article in this issue. Alfonsin had moved boldly after 1983 to commit
to trial not only the military commanders but also many of the perpetrators
of the dirty war. This stance was weakened in 1987 in dealing with the Holy
Week military revolt and the subsequent laws of Punto Final (Full Stop) and
Obediencia Debida (Due Obedience). But Alfonsin's pragmatism, even
weakness, cannot compare with Menem's wholehearted endorsement of
military grievances and the widely resented amnesty he signed for those
accused of military crimes against the people. Although posed as a move
toward national reconciliation, the 1989 and 1990 amnesties of Menem
weakened the judiciary's credibility and that of the democratic institutions as
a whole. As Frank Graziano (1992: 225) puts it, "Beyond endorsing argu-
ments for 'dirty war' repression and dismantling Alfonsin's gains on human
rights terrain, Menem's pardon reestablished the context in which military
violence claims credibility as a 'judicial act.' " In 1995, when the former
naval officer Scilingo provided horrifying firsthand accounts of prisoners'
being dropped from helicopters, Menem joined in the military hierarchy's
fevered condemnation of the officer without disputing the veracity of his
account. It is episodes like this that confirm Toma's Eloy Martinez's (1993:
18) view that Menem may be trying "to prove that in contemporary Argentina
civilization has made its peace with barbarism."
From a broader perspective, we can note a fundamental shift in political

identity and in the whole political matrix in Argentina. Peronism has always
had a multiplicity of meanings, but under Menem the significance of ideology
has stretched beyond the point where it can still function as a unifying force.
Of course, Peron himself was capable of changing tacks on fundamental
issues, and Menem's economics has its Peronist antecedents. Yet we cannot
neglect the extent to which Menem has caused a sea change in Argentine
politics, particularly for the popular sectors. Carlos Acufia (1995: 16) argues
persuasively that, taken as a whole, the variations in the political matrix in
terms of class, structure, political norms, the military question, labor rela-
tions, and the notion of democracy itself are virtually revolutionary. Yet in
"saving" Peronism by modernizing it Menem has probably also destroyed it.
The appeal to the people to halt Argentina's decline and ensure stability
cannot be based on national-popular interpellations. Menemism is literally
rootless; as a governmental project it may succeed, but, following Vicente
Palermo (1994: 345), I would say that "it is far less certain that it may lay the
basis for a new [Peronist political] identity."
As for the left, things have changed somewhat since Cavarozzi and Grossi
(1992: 198) declared at the start of the Menem period that "in addition to its
poor electoral performance, the most significant phenomenon with respect to
the left is its almost total loss of ideological influence in Argentine society."
Democracy has certainly been revalorized by the left, although its vision of
society and economic alternatives is still problematic. Nevertheless, the
center-left Frente Grande coalition increased its proportion of the vote in
the federal capital elections from 3 percent in 1991 to 6 percent in the 1992
Senate elections, 13 percent in the 1993 elections, and a resonating 36 percent
in its 1994 federal capital victory. We should not, however, see this as a simple
vote for the left, and the Frente has avoided explicit criticism of the Menem
economic model. Essentially, it is still a Buenos Aires phenomenon, and its
1994 result was due mainly to middle-class voters discontented with the
Peronists and, in particular, the Radicals. Gerardo Androgue (1995: 56) notes
perceptively that "the heterogeneity of its electoral appeal and the fact that it
has generated in general a censure and protest vote makes us think of the
Frente Grande more as a consequence of a volatile vote-of an uncertain
future-than as the creation of a new political identity in Argentina." Whether
a counterhegemonic strategy can be developed in Argentina is the subject of
Paul Buchanan's contribution in this issue.
For the 1995 presidential elections, the left put together a broader front
called the Frente del Pais Solidario (Solidary National Front-FREPASO),
taking in dissident Peronists such as Jose Bordon, who obtained a very
creditable 29 percent of the vote, second to Menem. In the first-ever election

for mayor of Buenos Aires in mid-1996, FREPASO obtained 26 percent of
the vote but was beaten by the Radical party candidate in a severe rebuff to
Menem's party. However, in this election, dominated by the issue of corrup-
tion, FREPASO also obtained a majority in the constituent assembly called
to establish the basis of the capital city's government. The FREPASO
coalition broke up and Bordon left, but it will undoubtedly play a pivotal role
in the 1999 elections either in alliance with the Radicals in an anti-Menem
coalition or independently.
SOCIAL DISINTEGRATION
If, historically, Peronism served to ensure the social integration of the

subaltern classes, under Menem an intense process of social disintegration
has been consolidated. The aperturista (opening) economic strategy
launched by the military state in 1976 was deepened under Menem. As
Susana Torrado (1992: 445) notes, "as well as being 'concentrative,' this
strategy is also violently and explicitly 'exclusionary.' " This has affected not
only the popular classes and the provinces but also the middle class, giving
rise to a "new poor." The percentage of poor households in Greater Buenos
Aires rose from 5 percent in 1970 to 8 percent in 1980 to 27 percent in 1990
(Beccaria, 1993: 316). For those who worked, the average industrial wage in
comparison with an index of 100 in 1980 had been 109 in 1970 and dropped
to 85 in 1990. Increasing poverty has led to increasing social heterogeneity
reflected in, according to Beccaria (1993: 317), an increase in the proportion
of marginal occupations and the relevance of so-called refuge activities.
Economic restructuring is taking place in conditions of increasing social
heterogeneity and declining equity. Reversing of the historical balance of
class forces achieved under Peronism and consolidated in the resistance
against military and authoritarian rule has necessitated a frontal attack on
the trade unions as the main defensive organization of the working class (see
Munck, 1993). Unlike Alfonsin, who never sought to limit the right to strike
in spite of repeated general strikes, Menem moved rapidly in 1990 to restrict
the right to strike for public-sector unions. When Congress resisted, Menem
simply signed an executive order on, of all days, Peronist Loyalty Day,
October 17. More fundamental, however, as Steven Levitsky (1995: 12)
notes, "the sum of the government's labor reforms-particularly the deregu-
lation of collective bargaining, flexibilization of shop floor regimes, and the
privatization of the pension scheme-amounts to the dismantling of the
corporatist model of labor relations that had been in place since the 1940s."
The power of organized labor to resist these measures was further weakened
by Menem's ability to divide the Confederacion General de los Trabajadores
(General Confederation of Labor-CGT). As the Buenos Aires Herald (Au-
gust 14, 1994) put it, "Oblivious to rising unemployment, the CGT devoted
its energies to sucking up to Menem to regain clout in Congress."
Though economically and politically fragmented, the labor movement has
mounted some resistance to Menem's project. In March 1990 some of the
public-sector unions held a strike and rally against Menem's privatization
plans. However, a general strike was impossible, given the pro-Menem stance
of many union leaders. In November 1992 there was a large march led by the
CGT, but in 1993, as the Peronist gains for labor were being eroded, the CGT
announced and then "postponed" a general strike in protest. This pusillanim-
ity led Saul Ubaldini, a popular leader of the CGT under the military regime,
to break away to form the Movimiento de Trabajadores Argentinos (Argen-
tine Workers' Movement-MTA). This new body mounted a protest action
in 1993, but it was essentially marginal given the control of the "big
battalions" of the labor movement by the pro-Menem sector. In July 1994
there was a successful strike by transport workers, teachers, and state em-
ployees that, significantly, achieved CGT backing in Cordoba. In the prov-
inces, in fact, there have been a number of multisectoral uprisings against the
social effects of adjustment, and Greater Buenos Aires has seen a rise in new
social movements, including a vibrant housing and squatter movement.
By mid-1996 many sectors of the organized labor movement, even those
prepared to give Menem political space for his economic policies, were ready
for action. A general strike in July was a qualified success, and this was
followed by amass caceroleo (pots-and-pans demonstration) in Buenos Aires
called by the Radicals and FREPASO. Then in August a trade-union move-
ment called a 36-hour strike, and although Menem mocked its leaders, most
observers considered this action highly successful. Even if late in the day, the
trade unions now realize that their very existence is at stake under Menem's
liberal economic project. The joint approach developed with the opposition
political parties in mid-1996 showed at least the potential for reconstructing
a sociopolitical opposition to the liberal project.
Moving beyond the political surface of events, we need to understand just
how deep the legacy of the military has been and how it has promoted social
and political demobilization. Jerry Knudson's contribution in this issue
shows that the mainstream press in Argentina was silent while the atrocities
of the dirty war were being perpetrated by the state. As Juan Corradi (1992:
284) puts it, "The legacy of fear shows in the emotional investment in crucial
political concepts. Order is one such concept." The chaos of late Peronism in
1975-1976, the terror of the disappearances, and the trauma of the Malvinas
War have produced 20 years of accumulated anxiety. That Menem has

allowed the perpetrators of this violence to walk is cause for more anxiety.
In coping with the disenchantment with a routinized democracy, settling
accounts with the past would have been crucial. Yet, as Carina Perelli (1993:
58) writes: "Nobody dared propose a deviolentization of Argentine life....
It would have meant discussing what Argentina is today, where it wants to
go, and by what means, as opposed to dreaming of what Argentina has been."
In the thin democracy that has emerged since the euphoria of the transition
in 1983, we still have fragile political institutions, weak political norms, and
a military that is as arrogant as ever, with the added impetus of feeling
wronged by a civil society that cannot accept its role in the dirty war.
There is still much fear and denial in Argentine society, and the Menem
phenomenon cannot be understood without it. Vicente Palermo discusses the
basis on which the popular sectors have continued to support Menem and
argues that this support is "motivated not by the captivating conviction of a
more prosperous future but by the necessity to flee from an intolerable present
or the fear of return to a situation whose extreme harshness had already been
experienced" (1994: 325). This is, I believe, a recipe for disenchantment and
support for utopian or authoritarian options rather than for democratic
consolidation. The social groups paying for the Menem project seemed
resigned to this role. What we see here is not a positive social or political
project but fear of an alternative. It is really an issue now of what type of
democracy has emerged from the transition. A disarticulated society and a
demotivated population are not the best ingredients for a stable and flourish-
ing democratic order.
BEYOND THE "IMPOSSIBLE GAME"?
Menem sprang from Peronism, but he now seems to be the agent of

historical Peronism's demise (see Zorilla, 1994). It may be, however, that he
has finally broken the cycle of political instability in Argentina. For Davide
Erro, "Both the political and economic causes of the cyclical crises of
Argentine political economy have been resolved for the foreseeable future"
(Erro, 1993: 223). Following this optimistic scenario, we might expect the
dominant classes to have decisively accepted democratic means to attain their
objectives, and we might, equally, suppose that the military coup was a thing
of the past. To assess its validity we need first to reexamine the nature of the
Argentine "stalemate."
It was Guillermo O'Donnell (1978) who most clearly laid out the basis of
Argentina's politico-economic cycles. Essentially, up to 1976 one could posit
a cycle in which an alliance between the weaker fractions of the urban

bourgeoisie and the popular sector in defense of the internal market was
followed by a return to its alliance with the Pampas bourgeoisie oriented
toward the international market. As O'Donnell (1978: 11) notes, "in each
phase of the cycle, the large bourgeoisie has played on the winner's side" and
did "what all bourgeoisies do in the absence of a tutelary state to induce them
to adapt longer-term strategies: they looked to their short-term economic
interests." Social blocks had thus emerged that could effectively create a
stalemate. It has been argued (Cavarozzi, 1986: 221) that this interpretive
framework is inherently economistic and underestimates political factors.
Certainly that is a danger to be avoided, but O'Donnell's "impossible game"
was certainly real. Jorge Sabato and Jorge Schvarzer (1990) add fundamen-
tally to this interpretation, showing clearly why economic chaos and political
instability could benefit the dominant classes in Argentina for a whole
historical phase. Far from being "paradoxical" or in some way an aberration,
political instability in Argentina, highlighted in extreme hyperinflationary
episodes, actually benefited the dominant classes, given their particular role
in the economic system and their commitment to short-term goals.
To what extent, then, has the Menem project overcome this "impossible
game"? First, we need to understand that Menem has achieved a fundamental
modernization of Peronist discourse to suit the current international situation.
His project entails a fundamental socioeconomic and political reordering of
Argentina, a "cultural revolution" of a sort. Jorge Triaca, one-time union
leader, wealthy socialite, and labor minister under Menem, declared in 1989:
"Nothing of what is coming in Argentina can be understood unless we realize
that a new block of social, political, economic and perhaps military power is
being born, and that [the new Menem government] is ready to take all
necessary steps to cut in one swathe all the evils of the past and begin the task
of the reconstruction of Argentine capitalism" (quoted in Teubal, 1992: 37).
Under Menem a new pact of bourgeois domination has crystallized, with a
reconstruction of hegemony on a more stable basis precisely because it has
been carried out under the auspices of Peronism. Peronism was and is a fluid,
even labile, discourse that is now guiding a decisive conservative modern-
ization of Argentina.
The other major change precipitated by Menem's modernization project
concerns the behavior of the dominant classes. Carlos Acufia (1995b), draw-
ing on survey data as well as political analysis, has concluded that democracy
now offers a more functional and less risky environment for the dominant
classes than the authoritarian option. On the assumption that previous mili-
tary interventions required dominant-class backing, they become unlikely
even if the socioeconomic situation worsens. For Acufia (1995b: 232), "the
bourgeoisie's commitment to the stability of the democratic regime is lon

term, as are its effects." A fundamental sea change would, indeed, have
occurred in Argentine politics if the right had become committed to electoral
means. Angell, D'Alva Kinzo, and Urbaneja (1996: 188) point in a similar
direction, arguing that a reason for the increasing importance of elections in
Latin America is that "the right is presently committed to seeking power
through elections." While accepting the validity of these trends, which we
should certainly not underestimate or dismiss, caution dictates recalling that
the changes are recent and, one can only assume, dependent on beneficial
results.
Democratic consolidation, according to Phillipe Schmitter, involves "con-
verting patterns into structures, . . . endorsing what are initially fortuitous
interactions, episodic arrangements, ad hoc solutions, temporary pacts, etc.,
with sufficient autonomy and value to stand some chance of persisting"
(1995: 550). There are signs, 13 years on from the collapse of the military
regime, that the constitutional order in Argentina has been consolidated, in
spite of Menem's cavalier attitude toward democratic principles. We are now
entering, I believe, a phase of "Mexicanization" of Argentine politics. There
will be two and a half parties, the conservative Peronists and Radicals in their
current configurations and a center-left that can make sporadic advances but
has as yet no viable national alternative project. This is a consolidation of a
certain type of democracy, and in this sense Menemism has, indeed, been
foundational. Yet we can also understand democratic consolidation in a
broader fashion, as Garreton (1994: 229) does for Chile and Unger (1995)
does for Brazil, as a dual process of democratization and modernization that
must include the elimination of poverty through structural reforms, a new
development strategy not simply subordinated to international pressure, and
a fundamental reform of the state.
When presidential elections are held in 1999, the balance sheet of the
Menem decade will be a mixed one. On the one hand, the success of the
convertibility plan has acted as a solid platform for the consolidation of
governability in Argentina. Menem's ability to reconcile Peronism and
liberalism, whose polarization had dominated the country's politics for 50
years, will also serve to stabilize the political process. Only a strong Peronist
government could have delivered this "historic compromise." On the other
hand, this thin democracy is hardly creating a flourishing citizenry in Argen-
tina. In Peronizing democracy Menem has created a democracy by default.
Yet for all the lack of horizontal accountability, for example, in the poor
relations of the executive with parliament and the judiciary, Menem has
developed considerable vertical accountability in terms of the relationship of
representation between the governed and the government. For all his caudi-
Ilismo he will in 1999 be subject to the political game as jockeying for the
presidency begins and he begins to lose his preeminent role.
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Introduction: A Thin Democracy

Author(s): Ronaldo Munck

Argentina has often seemed a paradigmatic case in Latin America, whether

FROM ALFONSIN TO MENEM

The "decompression" of the military dictatorships of the 1970s began in

and well-informed article,* shows the intricacies of the politics of economic

Hand in hand with the "economic revolution" orchestrated by Menem has

From a broader perspective, we can note a fundamental shift in political

creditable 29 percent of the vote, second to Menem. In the first-ever election

If, historically, Peronism served to ensure the social integration of the

War have produced 20 years of accumulated anxiety. That Menem has

BEYOND THE "IMPOSSIBLE GAME"?

Menem sprang from Peronism, but he now seems to be the agent of

a cycle in which an alliance between the weaker fractions of the urban

bourgeoisie's commitment to the stability of the democratic regime is lon

Etchegaray, Francisco and Eduardo Raimondo

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