Europe, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

LATIN AMERICA: The Ups And Downs of Democracy

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Sep 29 2006 (IPS) - A private research study released in the Argentine capital on Friday reports that in Latin America, governments of different political tendencies are resorting ever more frequently to a new form of populism that is undermining the growth of democracy in the region.

The warning about the danger of “neopopulism” is the main conclusion of the study of 18 of the region’s countries by Polilat, a consultancy, for the “Democratic Development Index for Latin America – 2006” presented on Friday in Buenos Aires and Berlin by the German Konrad Adenauer Foundation, linked to Germany’s conservative Christian Democratic Union party.

The new Latin American populism is defined by the researchers as a model based on strong personal leadership, which assumes that democracy is possible without political parties, and which overrides or quashes the democratic capabilities of institutions and citizens in the service of supposedly higher interests.

“Although the first thought that comes to mind for most of us when we hear the word neopopulism is Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez, none of the governments we analysed in the entire region escapes this danger, they all resort to neopopulist instruments,” said the director of the research team, Jorge Arias.

The annual Index has been published since 2002, and measures democratic development in the region. The researchers analyse a set of variables and establish a ranking of the countries. According to this list, democracy has made gains in the region since 2005, but even so only 17 percent of countries can be said to have attained a “high level of democratic development.”

The ranking is headed by Chile, Costa Rica and Uruguay in that order. Panama and Mexico follow, and in sixth place Argentina. These countries are the only ones whose democratic development is above the average score of five on a scale of 0 to 10.

Next ranked are El Salvador, Brazil, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Paraguay, Guatemala, Perú, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia, and in last place Ecuador.

The only countries with a “high level of democratic development” are the first three, with scores above 7.5. Panama, Mexico, Argentina and El Salvador have “medium” levels of democratic development and the rest – from Brazil onwards – have a “low level of development,” in spite of important advances in some of them, for example Guatemala and Colombia.

The researchers arrived at the scores by measuring four dimensions of democratic development. First, the basic conditions (free and regular elections, without restrictions), then respect for political rights and civil liberties, and thirdly the quality of institutions and political efficiency.

Finally, they examined the governments’ capability to generate policies that promoted social well-being (their record on health, education, poverty and unemployment), and policies that ensured economic efficiency (gross domestic product per capita, income inequalities, indebtedness and investment).

At the launch of the report, the director of the research team explained that within each dimension, several different indicators are studied, such as voter turnout, women’s participation in politics, or restrictions on freedom and rights caused by increased insecurity.

“Clearly, insecurity has become a regional problem that limits people’s freedom, and the state does not appear to have the answers,” Arias said.

Speaking about destabilising factors, he mentioned not only armed groups such as those in Colombia, but also social movements that do not accept the country’s government and undermine freedoms, giving as examples Brazil’s landless rural workers movement, indigenous people in Ecuador, or Argentina’s unemployed picketers.

“They demand respect for their rights without respecting democracy,” he said.

According to the report, there are problems in every one of the dimensions analysed in Latin America, and even where the trend is to import democratic institutions from more advanced countries, this does not guarantee efficiency or fulfilment of their roles.

“There’s been a historic deficiency in building citizenship, and a serious institutional deficiency, arising from the behaviour of the region’s political leaders, and these continue to be the main weaknesses in our democracies,” Arias summed up.

The report states that the exceptional economic windfalls due to strong price hikes in Latin American commodities such as oil, copper, soya or bananas have swollen the public coffers, allowing political leaders to “extend patronage networks” and “widen the income gaps” in the region.

“With plenty of cash available, presidents are in a good position to advance hegemonic political projects, and so political systems come to bear an increasing resemblance to military regimes,” Arias warned. The question, he said, is if “There is a political élite in the region that is fonder of totalitarianism than democracy.”

IPS asked the authors about the high placement of Chile in the report’s ranking, despite the fact that it is one of the countries in the region with the highest levels of inequality and greatest gaps between rich and poor, and that it has not yet been able to sweep away all the authoritarian political reforms introduced by former dictator Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), nor bring him to justice for his crimes.

“Chile developed democratically with harmony between its government and its citizens, and has maintained this over time, whether or not Pinochet is still at large,” Arias explained. “Putting the past aside, it can be said that Chile is working harmoniously,” he concluded. As for the persistent inequality, the research coordinator, Fabiana Cianfanelli, told IPS that Chile’s poor performance is attenuated by the regional context, in which income inequality is almost a “natural” condition. “If we compared it with a European country, the Chilean model would leak at the seams,” she said.