Why Latin America's Left Keeps Winning

A few months ago I ran into an
economist who was formerly head of the Bolivian Central Bank in the La
Paz airport. He had been reading Nouriel Roubini, the New York University economist whom the media has nicknamed "Dr Doom", and was predicting a very gloomy economic future for the hemisphere, the region and especially his own country.

I didn't agree about Bolivia,
which has more international reserves relative to its economy than
China. But it was striking to see the same thing in all the countries
that I visited: opposition economists and political leaders everywhere
reminded me of communists in the 1930s, praying for the collapse of the
capitalist system - in this case, somewhat ironically, so that they
could rid themselves of the left governments that the voters had chosen
in Bolivia, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Ecuador and elsewhere.

In
all of these countries the vast majority of the mass media, to varying
degrees, shares the opposition's agenda and in many cases appears
willing to present an overly pessimistic or even catastrophic scenario
in order to help advance the cause.

But despite the worsening
of the world and regional economy, the left keeps winning in Latin
America. The latest left victory was that of President Rafael Correa of Ecuador, an economist who was first elected at the end of 2006 and was re-elected last Sunday
under a new constitution. This gives the charismatic 46 year-old four
more years, and he can be re-elected once more for another term.

There
are a number of reasons that most Ecuadorians might stick with their
president, despite what they hear on the TV news. Some 1.3 million of
Ecuador's poor households (in a country of 14 million) now get a
stipend of $30 a month, which is a significant improvement. Social
spending as a share of the economy has increased by more than 50% in
Correa's two years in office. Last year the government also invested
heavily in public works, with capital spending more than doubling.

Correa
has delivered on other promises that were important to his
constituents, not least of which was a referendum allowing for a
constituent assembly to draft a new constitution, which voters approved
by a nearly two-thirds majority. It is seen as one of the most
progressive constitutions in the world, with advances in the rights of
indigenous people, civil unions for gay couples and a novel provision
of rights for nature. The latter would apparently allow for lawsuits on
the basis of damage to an ecosystem.

Many thought Correa was joking when he said during his presidential campaign that he would be willing to keep the US military base at Manta
if Washington would allow Ecuadorian troops to be stationed in Florida.
But he wasn't, and the base is scheduled to close later this year.

He
also resisted pressure from the US Congress and others in a
multi-billion-dollar lawsuit that Ecuadorian courts will decide, in
which Chevron is accused of dumping billions of gallons of toxic oil waste that polluted rivers and streams.

And in an unprecedented move last November, Correa stopped payment on $4bn of foreign debt
when an independent Public Debt Audit Commission, long demanded by
civil society organisations in Ecuador, determined that this debt was
illegally and illegitimately contracted.

In the United States, these policies have mostly been dismissed as "populism" or worse. A New York Times editorial in November 2007 entitled "Authoritarians in the Andes"
summed up the foreign policy establishment view that Correa, Bolivia's
President Evo Morales and President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela were
"increasingly interested in grabbing power for themselves." For Correa
and Morales, wrote the Times editorial board, "their confrontational
approach is also threatening to rend Bolivia and Ecuador's fragile
social and political stability."

The Times (and Washington's
foreign policy establishment) have proven to be wrong, as Ecuador and
Bolivia are now more politically stable than they have been for
decades. (Ecuador has had nine presidents over the last 15 years). They
are also more democratic than they have ever been.

In fact, most
of Latin America is going through a democratic transition that is
likely to prove every bit as important as the one that brought an end
to the dictatorships that plagued many countries through the first four
decades of the post-second world war era. Ironically, the region's
economic performance was vastly better in the era of the dictatorships,
because the governments of that era generally had more effective
economic policies than the formally democratic but neoliberal
governments that replaced them.

A few years ago there were
fears, backed by polling data, that people would become nostalgic for
the days of real (not imagined) authoritarian governments because of
the much greater improvements in living standards during that era.
Instead, they chose to vote for left governments who extended democracy
from politics to economic and social policy.

The left
governments have mostly succeeded where their neoliberal predecessors
failed. Partly they have benefited from an acceleration in world
economic growth during most of the last five years. But they have also
changed their economic policies in ways that increased economic growth.

Argentina's
economy grew more than 60% in six years and Venezuela's by 95%. These
are enormous growth rates even taking into account these countries'
prior recessions, and allowed for large reductions in poverty. Left
governments have also taken greater control over their natural
resources (Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela) and delivered on their promises
to share the income from these resources with the poor.

This is
the way democracy is supposed to work: people voted for change and got
quite a bit of what they voted for, with reasonable expectations of
more to come. We should not be surprised if most Latin American voters
stick with the left through hard times. Who else is going to defend
their interests?