Policy Legacies, Sociopolitical Coalitions, and the Limits of the Right Turn in Latin America: The Argentine Case in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

After more than a decade of leftist governments in Latin America, the left turn began to reverse course, giving way to the rise of rightist political forces. Even moderate right-wing governments undertook reforms to reduce public spending. This agenda, however, encountered important obstacles. Focusing on the 2017 Argentine pension reform and based on extensive qualitative research, including in-depth interviews with key players, the findings here uphold previous work on the strength of policy legacies in opposition to promarket reforms. This study contributes to the existing theory by showing that protests against retrenchment favor the formation of opposition coalitions only in places where left-leaning governments had established inroads with organized popular sectors, maintaining relationships of coordination and collaboration. In these cases, the cost of specific reforms can jeopardize the broader project of retrenchment.