Guy Burton - Presidential Leadership in the Americas since Independence

Presidential Leadership in
the Americas since Independence

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available

ISBN 978-1-4985-2656-2 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-1-4985-2658-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-1-4985-2657-9 (electronic)

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

No book is ever written and published without the help and support of others. Ted first had the idea for this project back in the summer of 2012 when he sent out an invitation for collaborators on the Brazilian Studies Association newsletter. Eventually Guy was invited to take a more active role in organizing and coordinating the offerings and looking for a publisher. Initially the project was going to focus on the Brazilian experience but over time it broadened into the comparative study of the Western Hemisphere that you have before you today.

During the books long gestation, several individuals played important roles in its development. In 2014 Guy and Ted organized a panel on Presidents, Protestors and Social Change at the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) congress in 2014 where Joo Paulo Peixoto and Paulo Roberto Almeida contributed by presenting papers and adding to the debate on presidentialism, after which the project moved away from having a specific focus on Brazil. At the 2015 LASA congress, Guy presented a summary of the findings from the book at the panel on Leadership, Political Institutions and Parties and is grateful for one suggestion in particular: namely, a historical survey of the great presidents where the suggestion of a survey was madeand which eventually morphed into the list of leaders cited, which is presented in chapter 3. Ted also presented some of the ideas in this book at a meeting of the Middle Atlantic Council of Latin American Studies, which proved helpful.

We would like to extend a big thank you to Nicolette Amstutz at Lexington Books. She approached Guy about a different topic but was sufficiently interested in the idea of the manuscript to entertain a formal proposal. She believed enough in the project not only to offer a contract, but also to seek an additional review when Ted and Guy werent sure whether to continue with it. We therefore thank the independent (and at the time, anonymous) reviewer, Mariana Llanos, for her feedback, comments, and suggestions. Her contribution was invaluable and we feel that our responses to them have greatly improved the final product. Kasey Beduhn and Jimmy Hamill, also of Lexington Books, provided timely communications throughout.

Guy would like to thank his former classmates from the LSE, Ignazio de Ferrari and Lila Caballero-Sosa, who took time out from their own work to read the chapters relating to Argentina, Peru and Mexico. Their comments and feedback were extremely helpful and ensured that our facts and dates were correct. He would also like to dedicate this book to his niece and nephew, Eva and Marshall.

Two of the most important presidents of the Americas were George Washington and Simn Bolvar. Washington is revered as the father of his country, Bolvar as the father of five countries. Washington was a brave but mediocre general, far from the most brilliant of his contemporaries, chosen for leadership in part because of his firm commitment not to aspire to a lifetime in power. Bolvar was a brave and brilliant general and a writer of some interest. But, despite his republican principles, he believed his compatriots needed him in power for as long as he lived. He was a failure as a politician and was driven from his homeland in disgrace. He was the father of five countries only because the colonies he liberated were unable to stick together as he desperately wanted them to.

How much does this difference in leadership matter? If Latin America had more heroes and fewer villains among its early presidents, how much better would things have been? Was Abraham Lincoln truly the second-greatest American president, as many would argue, or might another leader have avoided civil war and freed the slaves nonviolently? Why did the Brazilians accomplish nonviolent abolition when the Americans could not? Were the many tragedies that mar the history of the Americas due to misjudgment and incompetence, or were the leaders faced with impossible situations?

There is never a definitive answer to these hypothetical questions, and political scientists often prefer to stick to questions that can be addressed with statistical rigor. They examine the structures of government that are independent of the decisions made by any one leader. Valuable as these studies are for some purposes, they seldom help us think about the big questions that motivate interest in politics. People care very much about who their leaders are. They fight hard, sometimes in elections and sometimes in revolutions, to replace one leader with another because they think it matters. Nations everywhere put their leaders images on coins and currency, erect monuments to them and dedicate holidays to them because they believe they deserve credit for their accomplishments.

Historians have given more attention than social scientists to the role of leaders. They study and teach history on the assumption that we can learn from it. Does the fact that George Washington was the founding father of the United States help to explain why it became a much wealthier and more powerful country than the republics led by Simn Bolvar, Jos de San Martn and Antonio Lpez de Santa Anna? Historians have published a treasure trove of information about these leaders and their times, but they sometimes hesitate to venture answers to the broader questions raised by social scientists. Our goal is to use this historical information to address some more general questions that are more often raised by political scientists and sociologists.

A good deal of scholarship, both in history and political science, has focused on the presidents of the United States. And that makes sense, since the presidency of the United States is arguably the most powerful leadership position in the world. But one leadership role in one country is a small sample upon which to base general conclusions about the role of presidential leadership.

To the south of the United States, in Latin America, are around 20 (depending on how you define Latin America) republics which gained independence soon after it was won in the north. These countries have over 200 years of independent history, including struggling against their colonial masters, consolidating as nation-states and responding to the growing demands of their people. Throughout that time political leadersespecially presidentshave played a central role, but the systematic study of presidentialism is just beginning in Latin America (Peixoto 2015, Neto 2016). In this book, we contrast and compare the role of presidential leadership in seven of those countriesBrazil, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Peru, Venezuela and Chilewith that in the United States.