Businesspeople Mobilization in Conservative Parties During the Left Turn. The Political Effects of the "Venezuela Model" Threat

GABRIEL VOMMARO; LAURA WILLS OTERO

Congreso; REPAL Conference; 2021

REPAL

During the left turn, businesspeople adopted different strategies in the face ofgovernments with redistributive programs or in the face of scenarios of electoral growthof leftist parties. In some countries, the threat of an anti-business shift and an illiberaldrift in institutional terms grew among economic elites towards the end of the firstdecade of the 21st century, in contexts of high levels of polarization. This threat wasassociated with the "Venezuela model". The importance of threats as an incentive forcollective action by business elites, has been confirmed by different investigations.However, we know little about the "party solution" to fear. Both in Argentina andColombia, the new right-wing parties were successful in showing themselves as a viablepolitical way out to the threats that businessmen perceived in other political actors. Inthis paper we show under what conditions, and through which mechanisms members ofthe business sector have got involved into/with the political parties. We argue that: 1)only when the "Venezuela model" threat remained in times it produced incentives forbusinesspeople to participate in the partisan arena. 2) This businesspeople’s politicalparticipation is more likely to occur when conservative competitive political partiespromote programmatic agendas aligned with their interests, and when these partiesrecruit businesspeople as candidates for public posts. 3) Business sectors more affectedby the threat - land-bound entrepreneurs in the case of Colombia, and agribusiness inArgentina- will be more active within the parties. We compare these two cases makinguse of both quantitative and qualitative information such as electoral data, interviewswith key informants, special surveys to argentinian legislators, observations of partymeetings, newspapers, among others.