Steven Levitsky, director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and the co-author of How Democracies Die, discusses what the election of leftist Gabriel Boric means for Chile and democracy.
June Carolyn Erlick:
Hello. This is Faculty Voices from The David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. Steven Levitsky is The David Rockefeller Professor of Latin American Studies and Professor of Government. He's Director of The David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University and also the co-author of How Democracies Die. Today we'll be talking about the Chilean elections. Welcome, Steve.
Steven Levitsky:
Hi, June. Thanks for having me.
June Carolyn Erlick:
Gabriel Boric was elected president of Chile by a 56 to 45% margin on Sunday. He's a leftist who was facing off against conservative José Antonio Kast. What's your take on the outcome?
Steven Levitsky:
It wasn't an entirely surprising outcome. The polls had narrowed, but Boric had been ahead for most of the second round. Kast represents a pretty extreme right position that has never, at least public opinion polls suggest, has never garnered the support of a majority of Chileans. Chilean society, although it's very mixed and quite polarized, has exhibited a bit of a leftward, progressive tilt in recent years. And I think Boric represented that a bit better than Kast. Unlike Kast, Boric came from a more moderate wing of his left-wing coalition. He won a primary against a communist who is much more radical than he was.
June Carolyn Erlick:
Kast conceded graciously to Boric. How do you interpret that in a day and age when concessions, let alone gracious ones, are sometimes sorely lacking?
Steven Levitsky:
I thought it was wonderful to see. And it was a model for the entire region, including the United States. There is a troubling movement towards a more illiberal right in much of the world from Israel, to India, to Hungary, Poland, to the United States and much of Latin America. And particularly, since Trump's failed presidential coup last year, within that transnational illiberal right, there has been a tendency to kind of mimic Trump and refuse to accept an election. So [Cayco Fumordi 00:02:47] behaved quite similarly after losing a very, very close election this summer. And Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil in anticipation of the 2022 elections is beginning to talk about fraud. And Kast swims in the same circles as these folks.
Steven Levitsky:
And so there was some concern, I had some concern, particularly as the polls narrowed, that he would behave similarly. So it was very important and it was very positive thing to see him not only accept defeat, but accept defeat so gracefully, because democracy cannot survive unless losers accept defeat.
June Carolyn Erlick:
Could you tell our listeners about Boric's [inaudible 00:03:27] coalition, which sought a more pragmatic approach to gaining power, including coalition building. Do you think he can keep it together? And what are the principle obstacle?
Steven Levitsky:
Well, look, there has been a dramatic reconfiguration of the Chilean left or Chilean center left over the last decade or so, 10 or 15 years. For many, many years, at least during the democratic period, the center left was represented by the Socialist Party and the Party for Democracy, PPD. These are two parties, particularly the socialists, go way back and have a radical past, but moderated and became pretty moderate social Democrats in the 1980s and 1990s. Governed the country. The Socialist Party had three presidencies in the post-Pinochet period, but really governed quite solidly in the center. And when Chile's politics fell into crisis in the last decade, the old socialists had become part of the establishment. And when a generation, particularly of young people, took to the streets and began to call for change, they threw the Socialist Party in the same bag as the conservatives.
Steven Levitsky:
The socialists had ceased to be an option for younger progressive. Boric comes out of the Student Protest Movement as an alternative to the old socialists. But that was a very, very heterogeneous, very diverse, very fluid stew of individual leaders, and groups and political tendencies that ranged from very radical, quite anarchists, to actually the Communist Party, which is very old, but which has gotten more radical in recent years to more moderate and pragmatic places. And all of this really peaks in the 2019, 2020 protests, which at times, grew very violent. At times grew very anarchic. Really had no serious political leadership. And sectors of the protest movement rejected all political parties, rejected all political leaders and was very openly anarchistic.
Steven Levitsky:
Boric decides to participate in the Constitutional Assembly. He was a Congress person. He participates in the decision to pursue a new constitution, which was, in some sense, change in the constitution is a radical set of reforms, but he was working through existing institutions and negotiating, talking with, dialoguing with the establishment. And that earned him the animosity of many on his left. And he became, within this new "radical left" that emerged over the last decade, he was very solidly in the moderate, more pragmatically leaning. And I think he has crystallized that position over the last year or two, to the point where, I mean, he would hate me to call him this, but he's basically, established himself as a social Democrat.
June Carolyn Erlick:
Do you think he'll be able to maintain the coalition?
Steven Levitsky:
I think it's a huge challenge. And if I had to bet a dollar, I would bet probably not. We're talking about a very fragile coalition, very diverse, not very institutionalized. It's going to be a bag of cats. And I think it's going to be extremely difficult for him to govern with that coalition. This is not the first time in history that someone has come from the ideological polls, particularly from the left, and made it into power and realized that governing's hard, and it involves a lot of trade offs, and compels leaders to be pragmatic. Allende went through this. Lula went through this. [Defrendeapri 00:07:06] of Uruguay went through this. This is something the left has gone through time and time and time again. Boric is going to have to do that. And he's going to have to, in some respect, move towards a more pragmatic center. That's what presidents have to do.
Steven Levitsky:
And he will inevitably, inevitably take heat from his allies. And the groups and parties on the left are new. They're fluid. They're very, very sort of grassroots and bottom up. There's nobody out there who's going to be able to sort of get them in line and get them to be patient and to cooperate with a center-leaning Boric presidency. I think he's in for a lot of difficulty.
June Carolyn Erlick:
So is that the biggest challenge of governability or do you see other major challenges?
Steven Levitsky:
That's a great question. I mean, Chile obviously, is a very, very difficult place to govern right now, because the level of public disaffection, the level of public distrust of the political elite is extraordinarily high. And it's not just on the left. It really spans the political spectrum. It says something that Kast crushed the other, majorly the establishment option on the right in the first round of the election, right? The establishment conservative parties put forward, nominated this guy, a much more moderate figure, Sichel and he was destroyed by a much, much more radical bolsonarista-like figure Kast. So there is anger and there's an anti-system mood on left, center and right. And so anybody, whether it's a centrist, whether it's Kast, whether it's Boric, anybody's going to have a hard time governing Chile going forward.
Steven Levitsky:
I think that Boric is probably the best, or at least the least bad, positioned person to do it. He comes out of the protest movement. He has a certain amount of, at least relative to the candidates he was competing against, a certain amount of legitimacy or street cred among most of the protestors or many of the protesters. And he's young. He's from outside the system. In a context in which very few politicians have even an ounce of legitimacy, he's got a few ounces. So I think he's better positioned than others to govern, but it's a huge challenge. I think his greatest challenge will come from the left. People draw parallels to Allende and how that ended in a right-wing military coup. I don't think that that's a great threat.
Steven Levitsky:
There are some on the right who see a sort of communist threat in Boric, but I think that was mostly just hot air. Boric is clearly, clearly not a threat to democracy or to Chile's capitalist economy. And so I don't think you'll see efforts on the right, like we're seeing in Peru, to overthrow the Boric government. I think the governability challenges will be on the left.
June Carolyn Erlick:
In terms of the constitutional reform process that Chile has undertaken, what does Boric's presence, what does his election mean for that?
Steven Levitsky:
I think it's positive, because Boric is a strong supporter of the constitutional reform process. The Constituent Assembly is a left-leaning body. Constituent Assembly elections gave rise to a fairly left-leaning and somewhat anti-system body. And so Kast, who opposed the writing of a new constitution and who comes from the far right, which does not have much representation in the assembly, would've had a very difficult time. And I think there was a potential for a constitutional crisis had Kast become president. Boric is sympathetic to the process. And his own position is somewhat close to the center of the Constituent Assembly. And so I think if there's anybody, if there's any president who's going to be able to con vivir, get along with, work with this Constituent Assembly, it's probably Boric.
June Carolyn Erlick:
He has promised to bury Chile's neoliberal legacy and envisions the need for a stronger government role in areas from education and healthcare to the environment. The Miami Herald's Andres Oppenheimer reports that Chileans are already investing heavily in Miami in the wake of the elections. Do you anticipate heavy capital flight? Why or why not?
Steven Levitsky:
I'm not an economist. So I can't predict the level of capital flight. The word neoliberal is almost meaningless at this point. Nobody quite knows what it means. Chile has inherited from Pinochet an extreme free-market economy. That political economy has been formed over the last 30 years, such that there's a much, much more developed welfare state and greater regulation and greater redistribution than there was under Pinochet. But it is still one of the most free-market economies in Latin America. For good or for bad, Chileans, a large number of Chileans, have grown discontented with that. Inequality is extremely high. Social mobility is low in Chile. Whether that's the fault of the free-market economy is a matter for debate and not something I'm equipped to weigh in on. But there is frustration with what Chileans perceive to be neoliberalism in Chile.
Steven Levitsky:
So it makes sense in a democracy that if there's a lot of public frustration with the contemporary economic model, that a critic of that model would win an election. That's what happens in a democracy. Boric says this is the end of neoliberalism. Given that nobody really knows exactly what neoliberalism means or what it means to end neoliberalism, that could mean a lot of different things. My guess is you'll see an expansion, a modest expansion, of state regulation of the economy, which would be not communism, but actually more in line with other OECD economies, capitalist economies. Chile is an outlier in how free market it is. So moving towards greater regulation would make Chile more like Spain or Uruguay. We're talking about a movement into the mainstream of OECD economies, not to Eastern Europe in the 1970s. That's what I expect.
Steven Levitsky:
I'm not sure he's got the political strength to really redistribute a lot of wealth, but you'll see an effort to do that. You'll see an effort to move in a more redistributive direction and an effort to provide greater regulation in areas where most Chileans believe there hasn't been enough regulation, particularly education and health. Chile has a, first of all, a very powerful private sector. It has a strong political right. It has very strong political institutions. Congress and the courts are meaningful actors. So the president of Chile cannot, overnight, turn a heavily free-market economy into Sweden.
June Carolyn Erlick:
Well, in that context, Steve, are there perhaps a problem from the left in terms of failed expectations?
Steven Levitsky:
Oh, without question. I think if there's one prediction that's safe to make, it's that Boric will fail to meet the expectations on his left, which is why I think his biggest headaches are going to come from his left and not his right.
June Carolyn Erlick:
So does this mean more protests? Does this mean more disorder? What does this mean?
Steven Levitsky:
You don't know. Boric is young. He's obviously a talented politician. For a 35 year old, he's pretty experienced. He's spent the last 10 years in the political trenches. But he's 35. He's never governed anything. And he's got a big test. The range of outcomes ranges from a neophyte Pedro Castillo, who's clearly over matched in Peru to someone like Lula, who also disappointed his left wing, but had the political capacity, the political experience, the political skills to sort of pull it off and keep his base in line. Boric will probably fall somewhere in between Pedro Castillo and Lula. And I'm just hoping he's got the political skills to end up closer to Lula.
June Carolyn Erlick:
Well, talking about Castillo and Lula, do you have a sense of how his election might or might not change the regional balance of power?
Steven Levitsky:
I don't think it's going to have a huge impact. People have been trying to identify over the last, almost a decade now, a sort of a new wave to the right or a new left wave, a pink tide. And I think neither of those things are happening. I think what we're mostly seeing is a lot of public frustration with the status quo and people, for the most part, voting out the incumbent. In Chile, the incumbent was on the right. It's not a shocker that Chileans turned to someone left of center. In Argentina, we may see the opposite. I think mostly we're seeing anti-incumbent sentiment and mixed outcome, the right getting elected in Ecuador. The left getting elected in Mexico recently. The right getting elected in Uruguay. The left getting elected in Chile.
Steven Levitsky:
I don't see a huge change in either direction, regionally and particularly, because I think Boric, ultimately, is not going to be a radical presence. Chileans expect a lot of change. Boric will try to provide some of that change. But Boric is not a Chavista. Boric is not trying to transform the world. And I don't think he'll try to shake up the regional balance of power either.
June Carolyn Erlick:
What about internationally? Already Chile's trade with the People's Republic of China has grown 17 fold since 2017. China purchases half of all Chile's copper. Do you see that relationship as increasing under Boric? Do you foresee any problems between the United States in Chile because of that?
Steven Levitsky:
That would've happened with or without Boric. Trade with China, that increase occurs under Panera, not under a left-wing government. China is a major, major source of demand for commodities produced in South America. And that's a pretty inevitable process of growing trade with China. As long as the Chinese economy continues to grow, at least for the time being, they're going to be purchasing commodities produced in South America. So I don't see a huge change. That was going to happen anyway, whether it was Kast or whether it was Boric, you're going to see growing trade with China.
June Carolyn Erlick:
Do you think that might provoke a reaction from the United States?
Steven Levitsky:
The United States has many, many more things to worry about than Boric's relationship with China or Chile's relationship with China. The United States hasn't shown the capacity, or even an interest, really, in many years now in seriously responding to China's growing role in South America. Boric is not going to do anything radical. I don't think he's going to attempt a major sort of geopolitical realignment. He's not going to bring Chinese nuclear weapons to Chile. And so I don't think he would do anything that would pose a security threat to the United States. He's simply going to continue an inevitable process of growing economic relations, which the United States has not shown the will or the capacity to really contest.
June Carolyn Erlick:
You've mentioned Boric's age several times. Do you think that's an advantage or a disadvantage?
Steven Levitsky:
Probably both. There is an interesting trend in Latin America would be, I think, it's maybe a trend. In El Salvador, Nayib Bukele is also very young. He was also very young, in his 30s, I believe, when he was elected president. And I think it is primarily a product of this extraordinarily high levels of public discontent with political elites, with establishment political parties and politicians. And voters are, really, across much of the world, not just in Latin America, but are looking for alternatives to standard, established politicians. And young people almost by definition, they can't have been in politics forever and ever, because they're in their 30. And so young politicians are new. And they're very often from outside the political establishment and that is appealing.
Steven Levitsky:
So it, again, in a context in which levels of legitimacy are dangerously low, levels of public discontent and distrust with the political system are dangerously high, the fact that he's got a little bit more street cred, a little more legitimacy is a real positive. I think there are also limits to inexperience. So inexperience can get you elected these days in Latin America, as Pedro Castillo showed. But Pedro Castillo is also showing that inexperience can lead to really, really poor governance, right? Pedro Castillo does not know how to govern. He's learning on the job. But inexperience can take a real toll. And I think Boric is much more experienced than Castillo, but there are advantages to having spent 20, 25, 30 years in the trenches of politics. You learn stuff.
June Carolyn Erlick:
Finally, for many, Chile has been poster child for democracy in the post-Pinochet era. Would you say this election reinforces Chile's democratic values or not?
Steven Levitsky:
Well, I think, the last few years should lead us to reevaluate, at least put an asterisk on our claims that Chile was a model democracy. It was, in many respects, a model democracy, to be sure. But Chileans didn't feel that way. Chileans didn't perceive that. And they didn't perceive it in part, because it was a pretty elite-centered democracy. The Chilean political class, the political elite that guided Chile's democratization after Pinochet, most of them lived the experience of the 1973 coup. They lived the experience of the dictatorship. And they tried very hard to learn the lessons of the failed democracy of 1973. And they didn't want to polarize. They didn't want to encourage mass mobilization, because they associated that with the crisis that brought down democracy in 1973. So you had a very, very cautious, very careful, very consensus-oriented, political elite in the post-Pinochet era.
Steven Levitsky:
That elite, which negotiated everything, left, center and right, would come together and negotiate everything, achieved governability, achieved a consensus-based democracy, all of which was quite good, but was not perceived to really be listening to people. It was perceived as aloof, distant, unrepresentative and unresponsive to popular demand. And we observers need to listen to that, right? If Chileans are really, at this point, screaming at the top of their lungs, that the old political elite was not responding to their demands. It was not responsive. That's a real deficit in democracy. That's not made up. That's not invented by Chileans. And that's the big challenge for democracy going forward.
Steven Levitsky:
All of that said, despite an extraordinary crisis, despite the massive protests in 2019, 2020, despite widespread public discontent, despite an extremely polarizing election where you've a candidate that comes from a fairly radical left and an illiberal, potentially authoritarian candidate on the right, the fact that Chile got through this election, the election was accepted by all sides, there were no claims of fraud, it was not contested, yeah, that's a pretty model outcome.
June Carolyn Erlick:
Steve Levitsky is the David Rockefeller Professor of Latin American Studies and Professor of Government. He's the Director of the David Rockefeller Center of Latin American Studies at Harvard University and the co-author of How Democracies Die. Thank you for being here with us on Faculty Voices.
Steven Levitsky:
Thanks, June. It's always a pleasure.