Polarización y conflicto político en América Latina

GABRIE KESSLER; GABRIEL VOMMARO

Seminario; Autoritarismo en Democracia. Perspectivas transregionales e históricas sobre espacios en disputa; 2022

Calas-Uiniversitat Bielefield Alemania

Beyond political cycles and ideological turns, in recent decades Latin American societies have experienced two central processes that have shaped political preferences. On the one hand, a constant process of secularization. On the other hand, a persistent distributive conflict. Each of these processes has a different dynamic. The secularization process, with its ups and downs, maintains a positive slope in the medium term. The distributive conflict has more fixed positions, although with a slight tendency towards moderation of the most anti-state positions. At the same time, both processes have variations between countries and within each country between different groups and regions.The relationship between these two processes is not linear. Secularization is a broad process that encompasses even formerly conservative sectors. The positions regarding the distributive conflict maintain the traditional axis between left and right and/or pro-State and pro-market. This leads to finding people with pro-state and pro-distribution but culturally conservative positions and, conversely, people that are culturally liberal and economically conservative, and anti-egalitarian.In this paper, we first describe these two processes at a general level. Then, we develop the common features and particularities of each of the countries and of the groups within each country. Finally, we consider how these processes and their characteristics influence the configuration of political preferences. We mobilize empirical evidence from qualitative-quantitative research (focus groups and regional survey processing) in five countries: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, and Mexico. The dimensions analyzed in our work also allow us to dialogue with the findings of other papers to be presented at the conference, especially those that study gender issues, generational issues, and the relationship between the labor market and political attitudes.