Partidos políticos, ideologia e política social na América Latina: 1980-1999

Abstract

The objective of this article was to investigate whether the ideology of governing parties in Latin America affects social policies, in a context of globalization under which, according to the literature, national states have lost their decision-making autonomy. The article's main hypothesis is that - all else remaining equal - governments with a leftist majority invest more in social policies than other governments, especially those with a rightist majority. The methodology used to test the hypothesis was econometric analysis of panel data, also known as pooled time series/cross-section analysis. Estimation of the model's parameters used the "panel corrected standard error" method suggested by Beck and Katz for the analysis of panels with similar dimensions to those of the current study. The principal findings of the econometric analyses corroborated the article's main hypothesis, according to which governments with a leftist majority invest more in the social area.