Political Realignment and Democratic Breakdown in Argentina, 1916-1930

Abstract

There is a rich literature in comparative politics discussing what makes democracies fragile and more likely to break down. The question has stimulated a substantial amount of research focusing on the fate of specific countries as well as on large cross-national comparisons over long periods of time. In the last decade several important works in political economy have advanced our understanding of some of the forces that systematically influence regime stability across countries. However, closer examination of the processes at work at the country-level indicates that some this literature’s claims are at odds with the historical evidence. In this paper, we revisit one historical event that has been repeatedly discussed by the literature on democratic breakdown: the rise and fall of Argentine democracy between 1916 and 1930. First, we demonstrate that socioeconomic factors do not furnish a convincing explanation for the 1930 coup. Next, we present an alternative explanation: we argue that the coup was the product of a polarizing political realignment that led to a legitimacy crisis. We examine our argument using estimates of Argentine legislators' latent preferences (ideal points) between 1916 and 1930. The roll call data analysis suggests that disputes over socioeconomic issues did not precipitate the breakdown of the regime. What mattered was the allocation of political power. These findings support the view that stable democracy requires that all major groups in society have a sufficiently large chance of being in power.