Left Populism, State Building, Class Compromise, and Social Conflict in Ecuador’s Citizens’ Revolution

• Date: 01 January 2019
• Published date: 01 January 2019
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X18807723
• Subject Matter: Articles

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 224, Vol. 46 No. 1, January 2019, 230–246

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X18807723

© 2018 Latin American Perspectives

230

Left Populism, State Building, Class Compromise,

and Social Conflict in Ecuador’s Citizens’ Revolution

by

Patrick Clark and Jacobo García

After Rafael Correa’s 2006 presidential election in Ecuador the governing party of

Correa’s Citizens’ Revolution, Alianza PAIS, consolidated political power by undertaking

an unprecedented process of state building in the country’s chronically fragmented polity.

An analysis of the political and economic strategies it employed emphasizes their mutually

reinforcing dynamic. The Alianza PAIS was a “big-tent” party with a vanguard of figures

from the traditional political left that relied on brokerage with traditional political bosses

at the regional and local levels to achieve political party nationalization. The Correa gov-

ernment was able to consolidate political power because it upheld its initial electoral com-

mitment to abandon orthodox neoliberalism, rebuild the state, and advance social

citizenship. The division between Correa and Lenín Moreno after the April 2017 elections

and the subsequent implosion of Alianza PAIS put the legacy of the Citizens’ Revolution

at risk.

Después de la elección de Rafael Correa como presidente de Ecuador en 2006, Alianza

PAIS, el partido gobernante de su Revolución Ciudadana, consolidó el poder político

emprendiendo un proceso sin precedentes de construcción del estado en el sistema político

crónicamente fragmentado. Un análisis de las estrategias políticas y económicas que

empleó enfatiza su dinámica de refuerzo mutuo. La Alianza PAIS era un partido de “gran

carpa” con una vanguardia de figuras de la izquierda política tradicional que dependía de

la intermediación con jefes políticos tradicionales a nivel regional y local para lograr la

nacionalización del partido político. El gobierno de Correa pudo consolidar el poder

político porque cumplió su compromiso electoral inicial de abandonar el neoliberalismo

ortodoxo, reconstruir el estado y avanzar en la ciudadanía social. La división entre Correa

y Lenín Moreno después de las elecciones de abril de 2017 y la posterior implosión de

Alianza PAIS ponen en tela de juicio el legado de la Revolución Ciudadana.

Keywords: Ecuador, Political parties, Post-neoliberalism, Citizens’ Revolution, State

building

In 2006 the left populist candidate and political novice Rafael Correa was

elected president of Ecuador, ending a decade of chronic political instability. He

created the political movement Alianza PAIS (Proud and Sovereign Fatherland

Alliance—AP) to run for the presidency while running no candidates for

Congress, a move meant to signal rejection of the existing political parties and

Patrick Clark is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada,

and a former researcher at FLACSO-Ecuador in Quito. Jacobo García is a consultant and researcher

specializing in electoral behavior and political campaigns. He has a Master’s in political science

from the University of Salamanca in Spain and is based in Quito.

807723LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X18807723Latin American PerspectivesClark and García / Left Populism And State Building In Ecuador

research-article2018

Clark and García / LEFT POPULISM AND STATE BUILDING IN ECUADOR 231

system (Becker, 2011; Collins, 2014). His election was part of the “pink tide” that

brought with it the election of left-wing1 governments throughout the conti-

nent (Cameron and Hershberg, 2010; Levitsky and Roberts, 2011), also referred

to as the turn toward post-neoliberalism (Grugel and Rigirozzi, 2012; Macdonald

and Ruckert, 2009). The Citizens’ Revolution proposed by Correa sought to

refound the political system by sweeping away the established political parties

or partidocracia2 and transcend orthodox neoliberalism by rebuilding the public

sector. He adopted the demand of anti-neoliberal popular social movements

for a constituent assembly to rewrite the country’s constitution, and after the

new constitution was approved he went on to win another two elections and

AP became the largest political party in the country.

Governments with the political capital to pursue state-building projects

have been rare in Ecuadorian history, and the Correa government arguably

achieved more than any other in terms of state consolidation (Silva, 2016: 94).

In this article we analyze the political and economic strategies it employed to

do so. Parsing the paradox suggested by “technocratic populism” (de la Torre,

2013a), we argue that the technocratic state-building process under Correa was

both a cause and an effect of the “nationalization”3 of party politics through AP

(see Polga-Hecimovich, 2013). Despite the fact that the party apparatus or van-

guard of AP was made up of leaders from different sectors of the Ecuadorian

left (Ramírez, 2016: 146), AP was also deeply pragmatic and adopted long-

standing practices in Ecuadorian politics of incorporating “floating politicians”

(Conaghan, 1995), local political bosses or caciques, to achieve party national-

ization. This strategy provided the political stability required to implement the

post-neoliberal policy agenda and the political “recentralization” (Eaton, 2014)

that laid the groundwork for the state-building process. However, it ultimately

allowed only for the construction of an ephemeral counterhegemony that was

highly dependent on Correa’s leadership. The implosion of AP with the rift

between Lenín Moreno and Correa after the 2017 elections is evidence of this.

A secondary objective of this article is more polemic. We critique the ultraiz-

quierdista (ultraleft) (see Beverley, 2013) critics,4 Trotskyite or postmodernist/

postmaterialist, of the Correa government and pink-tide governments more

broadly. Despite the rhetoric of buen vivir,5 the Citizens’ Revolution largely fits

the mold of “classical radical populism” (Ellner, 2013: 15) or “national-popu-

lar” political movements (Di Tella, 1965; Munck, 2016: 434) and, in Ecuador

particularly, remains faithful to the radical liberal tradition of Eloy Alfaro.

While critics on the left argue that the Correa government betrayed its original

mission of establishing a political and economic model based on buen vivir, we

argue that the government remained popular, especially among the lower

classes, because it kept its original promise to reverse neoliberalism and insti-

tute “a broad process of state transformation” (Errejón and Guijarro, 2016: 36).

We highlight the achievements of the government in social citizenship,

improvements in public infrastructure, tax system strengthening, and regula-

tion of the financial sector to argue that it was consistent with its original leftist

political project, although ultimately one of reformism and “class compromise”

(Sandbrook, 2007: 25). Its strategy consisted of explicit or implicit class compro-

mise punctuated by episodes of class polarization and social conflict that

appeared to deepen with the political polarization during the 2017 elections.