Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Studies Belén Fernández Milmanda discussed the findings of her new book, Agrarian Elites and Democracy in Latin America (Cambridge University Press, 2024.)
Agrarian elites influence policymaking to their advantage in Latin America and have a history of doing so since the ’70s and ’80s. How did you first discover this?
I started thinking about this issue in 2008, when I was an undergraduate in Argentina studying sociology at the University of Buenos Aires. There were intense, four-month-long protests, blocking roads throughout the country while I was a student. Some of the wealthiest and most connected individuals from the business world were a part of the protests. You typically think of protesting as a tool for the dispossessed to use to influence policy. I was intrigued by the question of why the elites were using protests when they might have access to other methods of influencing policy. The question stuck with me.
When did you decide you would investigate this question as a research topic?
When I was taking a course on Brazilian politics as part of my graduate work at Harvard University, I was reminded of the question when there was mention of an agrarian group of council members who were legislating to their own advantage as growers.
I decided that looking at the elites’ different approaches to influencing policy in Brazil and my home country of Argentina would be interesting. My adviser suggested adding Chile because they had a more institutionalized party system, with programmatic parties absent in the other cases.
Why did this trend develop in Latin America?
During the third wave of democracy across Latin America, elites understood that democracy was “the only game in town,” and the military was no longer an option to influence politics. In Brazil and Chile, because of social mobilization pushing for agrarian reform in the former and the memory of a previous redistributive agrarian reform in the latter, agrarian elites perceived an existential threat that caused them to organize in the electoral arena. In Argentina, this existential threat was absent during the democratic transition, so agrarian elites stayed out of politics. In Argentina, the party system had already crystallized before the elites realized that they needed to act, so the only way they could effect change was through protesting.
Do you see this dynamic happening in other parts of the world, in other democratic nations?
Yes, there are many countries where democratic institutions are being captured by the elites. You can see this play out just about everywhere with climate policy. Everyone would be better off if we acted quickly on climate change. But it’s hard to make progress on policies when you have organized interests like oil companies and the meat industry lobbying Congress and trying to shape legislation in a way that’s not costly for them. Recently, you may remember seeing farmers on tractors protesting climate policy in Athens, across Germany and in Brussels. They were able to delay or block European Union provisions that were very progressive.
In the United States, elite interests are shaping tax policies that are beneficial to them, through lobbying and supporting candidates who promise favorable tax policies.
How is this affecting equality in democratic nations?
Political scientists have long thought that democracy would bring more equality because people of all classes vote, and voting makes change. But research shows that this is not the case. In fact, income inequality has increased in many consolidated democracies across the world in the last few decades. Elites have more resources to organize, and, in many countries, there are no limits on how much money you can put into elections. This advantages the wealthy, of course.
In general, there is a regression happening in democratic indices, and an erosion of democratic values and democratic processes. For example, Venezuela, El Salvador, Nicaragua—none of these are democracies anymore. We used to only see this erosion in developing countries alone, but now we’re seeing this happen in the global north.
Are there any democratic nations that are escaping this pattern?
Though there are no perfect democracies, some of the Northern European countries do a better job balancing these special interests.
What are you working on now?
I have two projects:
The first is on democracy and climate change. Most literature has studied whether democracies are better on climate policy, but this is not necessarily the case. In fact, there are some authoritarian governments that have taken more action. I am interested in the opposite relation, studying how climate change affects democracies. Democracies, I believe, are not well prepared to deal with climate change.
The second project is on an international agreement by Latin American countries to protect the human rights of environmental activists. Most of the murders of environmental activists—80 percent—happen in Latin America. The question I’m researching is why some countries ratified this agreement while others didn’t.
Three Trinity students are my research assistants on these projects, one of whom has a related thesis they are working on.
