Are right wing governments bad for a country?
Data on left-center governments taking over Latin America — an interpretation
Recently came across this interesting visualisation on a data set of governments in Latin America and their political leanings (red = liberal, blue = conservative).
Based on the visualisation, there seem to be a trend towards liberal governments in Latin America.
Following Lula’s victory over Bolsonaro in the Brazilian election, 9/12 countries in South America and 4/7 countries in Central America will have left-wing governments in 2023
At first sight this seemed to be in contrast with what is portrayed by the media — right from US (Donald Trump) to India to Israel to Italy right now, we keep hearing how right wing parties are taking over the world!
While people from the right have constantly accused digital media outlets and aggregators of being biased against them, we do hear the ominous bells ringing in the media whenever right wing parties win elections.
Now, before we get to the bottom of the left-right trends across the world, let’s identify and define some of these terms that are interchangeably used in the context of politics —
Conservative as a word has been identified with right wing politics where the primary focus are majoritarianism, free enterprise, private ownership, and socially traditional ideas.
Liberal on the other hand is identified as left that is supposed to focus on inclusion, equality, egalitarianism, government regulation, and so forth.
While these definitions hold good across the world, how specific countries apply these philosophies(yes they are!) can be different. For example, while abortion has been a major right wing trigger word in the US, it’s not such a big issue for India’s right wing.
In this context, the so-called “pink tide” in Latin America where a number of countries have chosen left-wing or liberal governments, is very interesting.
What does this shift mean?
Is Latin America an indication of an early trend where rest of the world will follow or is it a laggard? Or is there a deeper trend here that misses the eye?
One of the things we commonly assume when it comes to governments changing is that this movement — left to right or right to left is an evolution (or devolution based on whom you support). But, what if it’s not a shift but a circular movement from one thing to another and back?
Since we are mostly discussing democracies here and democracies being the power of majority, then the most pressing question is —
What if being liberal and conservative are two sides of the some coin that nations flip through from time to time based on what the majority needs?
Since there are a lot of interpretations whether right wing politics is good or bad, or what damages left wing politics have done to countries, we have to go into the core of these definitions themselves, to unearth the underlying need for a specific type of politics and governance.
Liberals, as the term explains itself, is about being outward-looking. It is about keeping our eyes and ears open, to keep looking for opportunities in the outside world, find ways to collaborate. Its about seizing all that we can from what the world has to offer.
Being conservative in a way is about looking inwards. It’s looking into ourselves as a nation and understanding our core. It’s feeling safe in what we know and being rooted. Yes, it could lead us to be egoistic, racist, discriminatory, and even self-isolationist, but it can also lead us to identify with our past and have strong convictions on what’s good and bad for the current generation.
This is the thing. Countries have consistently moved from inward to outward looking and vice versa based on the evolution of needs of the country’s majority.
Case Study — India
India, for example, going by the choice of its’ federal governments, might look left-leaning for almost 50 years before it supposedly started leaning right in the last decade. But if you dig deeper, you could see signs of right-wing politics 20 years before the current right wing BJP government got into power.
For a long time, as Indians, we have been looking to the world for opportunities and help. We had humongous problems like famine, drought, joblessness etc.
Policies, especially after the economic reforms of 1990’s were mostly left. The focus was building a bridge between the country and the world, there by increasing opportunities for growth for the country.
But once we achieved momentum, especially in the later part of 2000's, our economy grew rapidly, and we got confident about our survival capabilities. We had a stronger need to reinforce a certain identity. We started looking inward and chose right wing federal governments.
While some of the bigger trends in economy could be perceived only in the last few years, the ground work was done long ago and rightly needs to be credited to the policies of the previous left-center governments.
In comparison, USA, in the last few decades, can be seen as moving from left to right and back every 10 years. And for the last decade or so, the shift is happening far more often.
What does all this mean in the context of Latin America?
The pink tide trend could mean that people overwhelmingly voted for outward-looking parties, parties that focus on economic growth, social justice, and egalitarian policies over those that focus on identity, free trade, and reducing governmental regulation.
The trend does not necessarily mean that these countries have become “better” in voting good governments, just that their priorities have shifted .
This trend could also mean that the current generation of voters have found the previous “inward looking” approach as not-so-needed for the current geo political situation.
Questions worthy of pursuit
Extending on the analysis of the trend in Latin America, we can ask further questions that delve into the nature of governments in place —
What length of terms is good for a conservative or liberal government to make a positive impact on the country?
Is there a such a thing as too much change from right to left and vice versa?
What happens to countries with extended terms of left or right wing politics?
What non-democratic historic factors are at play that favour one philosophy over another?
All these are questions worth chasing.
P.S — When we talk about right and left wing as a broad categorisation, we tend to miss the finer points and nuances — where there could be an interplay of conservatism and liberalness in the same governments.
Harry Ven builds extended cognition tech for Konvos and is a freelance writer at Productstory.
