2023-11-25 06:22:07
The result of the 19N runoff was overwhelming: 55.6% of voters voted for Javier Milei. Such electoral support does not have a single motivation and, consequently, is not explained by a single variable. It seems like a comfortable place, but no less true: motivationally diverse. And that same thing, if the new rulers do not make the correct reading, will have very strong institutional consequences.
Motivations for the vote. The reasons for the vote are multiple. Anger with the current situation that comes from an accumulation of years is the first factor. From the pandemic to now, despite the surge of approval that health care decisions in quarantine implied at the beginning, they generated a first context where psychological, social and economic discomfort accumulated. Politics contributed and fed back to that, of course. The open-air internments, which everyone remembers and never tires of remembering, amplified the boredom. Coming out of that labyrinth, the Russia-Ukraine war had an impact on the cost of energy and transportation, which had to be addressed. And the internal ones continued. And at the beginning of 2023, the impact of the drought reduced all the resources available to meet lagging demands. The cocktail was explosive. Anger, frustration, inflation, evaluation of poor government performance (always below 20% approval). It should not be ruled out, either, that a proportion of voters also share the political, social and economic agenda of the elected president. But many fed up and angry, perhaps they did not notice that. Or, rather, if they did, it did not weigh as much as the desire to change the government. Whatever it is and then we see, let’s have faith. A good part of the electorate, which took Milei from 30% to 55%, may be reflected in these symptoms. They are not comfortable with the assumptions that maintain that “social justice is an aberration, and equal opportunities are theft,” but they feel something that mobilizes them in the leitmotif: “long live freedom, damn it”; the empty signifier that managed to produce the chain of equivalence of unsatisfied demands, à la Laclau.
Second round and legislative power. One of the arguments for introducing the ballot in Latin America, back in the 90s, was to give the elected president greater electoral support/legitimacy. It was believed that, with this, governance conditions would improve, in view of the institutional crises of previous decades. But, as Aníbal Pérez Liñán pointed out, the problem is that the ballots, although neutral in design, tend to generate a false impression of programmatic support for the winner. That is, assuming that all of these give him the democratic legitimacy to implement his agenda, his government program. The truth is that the Legislative Power, especially in proportional presentation systems, which a president will have to count on or not, is distributed among the different actors according to the proportion of votes they obtained in the first round. Proportion of votes that is lower, and which consequently results in a smaller legislative contingent for the winner. This is even more contrasting in cases where there is a reversal of the result, from the first to the second round. That is, where the one who came second in the first wins in the second. Thus, the elected president Javier Milei will have 38 deputies out of a total of 257 and seven senators out of a total of 72. To give a more complete idea of what this means, Javier Milei will have his own legislative contingent of less than 15% in the Chamber of Deputies and 9% in the Senate. He will need the deputies and senators of the faction that responds to Macri and Bullrich, his necessary allies now in the Legislature. But even so, he will not be enough, given the imminent breakup of the Together for Change bloc.
Executive-Legislative Relations. Under this scenario we will have a President who, although he obtained 55.6% of the votes in the second round, his legislative contingent is only 30% of the support he received in the first round. Which, furthermore, given the election by halves of deputies and thirds of the Senate, is institutionally quite minor. Let’s also take into account that he arrives without having won a single governorship and something similar at the municipal level. This mix of electoral support and institutional weakness leads us directly to a situation very well studied by comparative politics.
Gary Cox and Scott Morgenstern wrote an influential work on the different types of relationships between Executives and Legislatures in Latin America. For each Legislature strategy there is a dominant response from the Executive; and, for each Executive strategy, there is a dominant response from the Legislature. In short, what in game theory is recognized as an equilibrium.
A type of relationship, less common than is assumed, is that of dominant presidents who are in balance with subordinate legislatures, cases in which the president commands and Congress obeys because the former is the head of the party that has large majorities in both. chambers, and they accept the presidential initiatives. A second type of relationship is one where the chambers, due to their fragmented composition and diverse territorial origin, demand remuneration to accompany the president and he decides to reward in diverse ways: from public policies to promotion of personal careers. A third type of relationship, different from the previous ones, occurs where there are national parties structured with clear programmatic agendas, willing to negotiate agenda, policies and power, to which in balance the Executive responds by forming coalition governments and running its agenda to achieve consensus. Finally, a fourth pattern of relationship occurs where there is a Legislature that does not have the president’s agenda and is not willing to follow the president’s agenda, which usually involves either impotent presidents, institutional resources, or supporters to modify the situation. ; or, imperial presidents, who in the absence of institutional and party resources, choose to try to govern unilaterally. A situation that is further aggravated when, additionally, the president believes he has the support of an electorate that blessed him in the second round.
Future scenarios. The speech of the president-elect on 19N addressed to “the good Argentines” who announced that he will be “ruthless with those who resist” his agenda of “drastic changes” gives us a starting point for the strategy, and hints at the methods, which at least for now claims to have the next president of the Argentines (good). But we must not lose sight of the overwhelming electoral support that he received in the second round. It is not clear that it is due exclusively to his policy agenda. The motivations for the vote were varied, as we highlight. Even, with a certain naivety, of voters who voted hoping that he would not execute his proclaimed proposals, trusting that they were only a campaign strategy. The president-elect will have to make an adequate reading of the state of the climate of public opinion and the institutional and party resources that he has. An imperial president, he generates undesirable institutional conflicts; and an impotent president, he does not keep the support of public opinion aligned.
*Conicet researcher. Director of the Political Satisfaction and Public Opinion Survey of the University of San Andrés. @dgreynoso.
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