Alternância ideológica ou reação? : a dinâmica presidencial no Chile entre 2006 e 2017

Abstract

This thesis aims to analyze the effects of ideological alternations and reactionto external schoks on the Presidency of the Republic in Chile between 2006 and 2017. More specifically, we intend to evaluate two hypotheses - ideological alternation and reaction to external shocks on presidential dynamics. Presidential dynamics is understood here in terms of changes in the budget, organization chart and staff of the institutional structure directly linked to the Presidency. There is a set of studies that analyze the recent ideological alternation in Latin America, which gave rise to the so-called left turns. There is also a literature on presidencies of the republic, well developed for the North American case, which will be reported here as a comparative theoretical scope, which analyzes the decision-making processes in the presidencies. There is, however, no theoretical or empirical dialogue between such literatures. The thesis proposal is to innovate in the sense of combining these two literatures of political science. The left turns literature highlights the elements of voter dissatisfaction with pro-market reforms adopted in the 1990s. Such dissatisfaction was associated with leaders and parties who represented the status quo, whether they were right-wing or center-right. Left-wing and center-left parties and leaders sought to introduce policies that would reduce social and economic inequalities in their countries, even though, particularly in the Southern Cone, they moderated their discourse and sought to adapt to the context of fiscal and monetary austerity. The presidency literature, on the other hand, discusses evidence on how presidents govern and how they structure presidential advisory bodies and networks as a way to gain gains and influence in other arenas. Chapter 1 discusses presidential studies and their application to the context of Latin American presidentialism. Chapter 2 analyzes presidential dynamics in Chile and analyzes data related to the organization, staff and budget of the Chilean presidency under the governments Bachelet I, Piñera I and Bachelet II. Chapter 3 is devoted to systematic procedural analysis with two main focuses, the first dedicated to show, through a statistical analysis that there is a difference between presidential disapproval inside and outside the period of the so-called presidential honeymoon. The second analysis is devoted to the external shocks that have occurred throughout the three governments. This analysis shows that the external shocks hypothesis is more adequate to understand the changes in presidential dynamics. In this sense, the thesis shows that in the governments analyzed there are greater incentives to change the presidential dynamics in terms of the presidential staff, the budget and the presidential organization during the mandate that within the period of the socalled honeymoon. The methodology to be used in this study is characterized as a qualitative tool that seeks to make valid causal inferences. The conclusion is that the dynamics of the presidency change over the term more intensively than during the period of the so-called honeymoon.