Abstracts Political Science

Twenty-First Century Protection: The Politics of Redistribution, Class, and Insecurity in Contemporary Latin America

by Matthew Spearly

The twenty-first century in Latin America was, and remains, a period of dramatic changes. The economic crises and austerity policies of the 1980s and 1990s were replaced in the early 2000s by a "Pink Tide" of left-wing governments, windfall revenues from commodities exports, and expansions of social programs that reduced poverty and inequality. However, the commodity boom ended, the political right reemerged, and now right-wing populism along with democratic dissatisfaction are increasingly prevalent. In this dissertation, across a series of three papers, I analyze these nuances of contemporary Latin American politics, with a thematic focus on protection. I examine: why governments of different partisan varieties expand or retrench, in contrasting economic environments, social assistance programs that protect against poverty; why the political left's commitment to social assistance precipitated a class-based political backlash that led to the resurgence of the political right; and why individuals experiencing various types of insecurity aim to protect themselves from these threats by supporting attitudes and actors aligned with the authoritarian populist political right. To accomplish this, I utilize a variety of data—at the country and individual levels, as well as varying over time—and empirical approaches, including causal inference strategies. First, I find that the political left, rather than the political right, retrenched social assistance following the end of the commodity boom, due to—I argue—the pressures the left faces from investors to reduce spending during economic downturns, whereas the right is more restricted by domestic opposition to welfare retrenchment. Second, despite these empirical patterns, the left's perceived ideological commitment to redistribution and the lower socioeconomic classes alienated its former, more-privileged constituencies, who supported the political right in greater numbers throughout the 2010s. Third, people experiencing greater levels of insecurity—in reality or perception—from economic circumstances, crime, or COVID-19 illness are more likely to embrace authoritarian populism in order to psychologically restore order and mitigate these threats. Together, these findings illuminate the political economy dynamics of social protection before and after the commodity boom, the class-based political realignments that facilitated the resurgence of the political right during the 2010s, and the more recent growth of authoritarian populism fueled by increases in various types of insecurity. In Latin America, the twenty-first century began with democratizing forces in the forms of the widespread enfranchisement of the lower classes and the expansion of programmatic, progressive social protection. Nearly a quarter of the way through this century, people are in many cases embracing authoritarianism to seek protection from threat, insecurity, and uncertainty. This research analyzes and connects the political developments central to these transformations in contemporary Latin America.