what has been the major obstacle to democracy in mexico?

Opponents of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez stage a protest over a drawing of a gagged confront during a march to commemorate the 53rd anniversary of the return of commonwealth afterward the 1958 coup in Caracas January 23, 2011. (Jorge Silvas/Reuters)

Around the turn of the millennium, prominent Latin America special­ist Scott Mainwaring highlighted the surprising endurance of democracy in that region afterwards the transition wave of the tardily 1970s and 1980s.Dur­ing that interval, no democracy had permanently succumbed to a mili­tary insurrection or slid back into authoritarian rule. Later decades marked by instability in numerous countries, especially Argentina, Republic of bolivia, and Ec­uador, this newfound democratic resilience came as a welcome surprise.

Only at about the fourth dimension Mainwaring was writing, onetime coupmaker Hugo Chávez was winning election to the Venezuelan presidency and beginning to move his country abroad from democratic rule. Venezuela had survived the rash of military machine coups that swept the region in the 1960s and 1970s to become a byword for democratic stability in Latin America. Economic deterioration, political ossification, and rampant corruption had brought sustained disuse, notwithstanding, and paved the style for this radical populist, former army officer, and would-be golpista (he had led a violent putsch that failed in February 1992) to decisively win the free and fair Dec 1998 balloting. Using plebiscitarian strategies to transform the country's liberal institutional framework, concentrate power, and entrench himself, Chávez ready near strangling democracy and putting competitive absolutism in its identify. He remained as president till he died of cancer on 5 March 2013.

The Chávez miracle has had strong demonstration and conta­gion effects beyond Venezuela. Eager to overcome instability and ce­ment their own supremacy, Presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia (2006-) and Rafael Correa of Ecuador (2007-) have emulated Chávez's script. As did their political ally and financial distributor, they have used con­stituent assemblies to augment executive powers, let for presidential reelection, and weaken institutional checks and balances. From that po­sition of strength, they take made discretionary use of the law for politi­cal purposes. With this discriminatory legalism, they have attacked, un­dermined, and intimidated the opposition in their corresponding countries, moving toward competititve authoritarianism equally well.

Similarly, stiff informal pressures and disrespect for constitutional principles accept enabled Daniel Ortega (2007-) to establish his hege­mony in Nicaragua. President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras (2006-2009) also sought to follow in the footsteps of Chávez, Morales, and Correa by convoking a constituent associates and preparing his own perpetuation in power; yet coordinated opposition from Congress, the courts, and the military aborted this endeavor through a controversial June 2009 insurrection. Fifty-fifty President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of Argentine republic (2007-), whose fervent supporters take inspiration from Chávez, is eyeing ramble changes and renewed reelection (she is now in her second term). Given Argentina'southward weak and disunited opposition, this push for entrenchment, combined with standing attacks on the printing and the president's per­sonalistic command over the state, has created alarm in ceremonious society about looming threats to the country'south hard-won democracy.

That Venezuela had already fallen under nondemocratic rule was confirmed in Oct 2012 past Chávez's unfair reelection, achieved with the help of intimidation tactics, tight restrictions on the opposition, and the massive misuse of the state apparatus. Since the third wave reached Latin America in 1978, the region had seen just occasional threats and temporary interruptions of democracy in individual nations. The contempo suffocation of political pluralism in a whole group of countries is with­out precedent. For the first time in decades, democracy in Latin America is facing a sustained, coordinated threat. The regional tendency toward de­mocracy, which had prevailed since the late 1970s, has suffered a partial reversal. Unexpectedly, democracy is now on the defensive in parts of the region.

With its electoral façade and progressive rhetoric near helping the excluded, the soft authoritarianism that is taking concord in parts of Latin America has an attractive face. It exerts an entreatment on regional and global public opinion to which academics are non immune. The military dicta­tors of the 1960s and 1970s were ogres with no legitimacy who depicted themselves as stopgaps--firm cleaners putting politics in club so de­mocracy could return. By contrast, Chávez and friends have claimed to found a new participatory--and hence qualitatively improve--course of democracy and to promote social equity and national independence. Rather than a brusque-lived detour, they seek to carve out a distinct devel­opment path purportedly leading to what Chávez called "socialism for the twenty-first century." Their competitive absolutism appears not as a express interruption but a permanent alternative to pluralist, representative democracy. This appeal is unusual among contemporary nondemocracies; it contrasts with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin'south more bluntly unsavory brand of autocracy, for instance. These "pro­gressive" claims aggravate the risks emanating from the recent turn to authoritarian rule.

The electric current authoritarian trend in Latin America is not regionwide: Major countries such as Brazil, Republic of chile, Mexico, and now Republic of colombia seem safely consolidated as democracies; Costa Rica and Uruguay avowal espe­cially high democratic functioning. But the unexpected ease with which a coordinated nucleus of competitive authoritarianism has emerged must give intermission. To see even Argentina, with its tragic history, beingness lured by the siren song of personalistic plebiscitarianism is worrisome indeed.

As Steven Levitsky and James Loxton and Raúl Madrid take em­phasized, Chávez and his friends used populism to entrench their pre­dominance and install competitive authoritarian regimes.⁴ Populism, understood as a strategy for winning and exerting state power,⁵ inher­ently stands in tension with republic and the value that it places upon pluralism, open debate, and off-white competition. Populism revolves around personalistic leadership that feeds on quasi-directly links to a loosely or­ganized mass of heterogenous followers. Bypassing or subjugating in­termediate institutions such as firmly organized parties, the leader-- often a charismatic effigy--establishes face-to-face contact with big numbers of citizens. In before decades, mass rallies were crucial; nowa­days, television allows populists to reach their followers "in person." Chávez hosted a regular Sunday talk show. The leader in turn ascertains "the people'due south volition" through frequent popular votes and opinion polls. To show vigorous leadership, seem indispensable, and boost followers' loyalty, populist politicians are addicted of constantly attacking enemies, at to the lowest degree rhetorically. In this manner, the leader blames others for the issues that have allowed the leader to accept power and act as the savior of the fa­therland. The leader is the star of a drama in which "the people" struggle heroically under the leader's management against selfish, corrupt enemies at home and abroad.

Every bit a political strategy, populism can have variegated and shifting ideological orientations and pursue various economic and social poli­cies. Contemporary Latin America has seen populist presidents from the right, such as Argentine republic's Carlos Saúl Menem (1989-99) and Peru'southward Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), and populists of the left such as Chávez, Morales, and Correa. Many populist leaders have embraced economic nationalism and land interventionism, even so others have imposed free­market reforms. In a particular twist, the Peronist Menem dismantled the protectionism-based developmental model that his own party'south populist founder, Juan Perón (president from 1946 to 1955, and then once again from 1973 to 1974), had installed.

Populism will ever stand in tension with democracy. The logic of personalism drives populist politicians to widen their powers and discre­tion. Because these leaders sustain their influence via personal appeals rather than intermediary organizations, they run across whatever institutions exterior their control equally obstacles to be bypassed or overcome. Determined and politically compelled to boost their personal predominance, populist leaders strive to weaken constitutional checks and balances and to sub­ordinate independent agencies to their will. They undermine establishment­al protections against the corruption of power and seek political hegemony.

Correspondingly, populist leaders treat opponents non as adversaries in a fair and equal competition, just every bit profound threats. Branding rivals "enemies of the people," they seek all means to defeat and marginalize them. Turning politics into a struggle of "us confronting them," populists un­dermine pluralism and curve or bruise institutional safeguards. Populist leaders as well put stiff pressure on independent forces in civil lodge and strive to control the media, specially television. All these attacks, depicted as a defense of the people against rapacious elites, are also meant to strengthen leader-follower bonds and thus to compensate for the lack of organizational mediation. The absence of institutional disci­pline in the populist movement prompts the leader to recharge the base's loyalty through heroic activism. In all these ways, the populist notion of politics every bit an "all or nothing" struggle amercement democracy.

Populism, whether of the left or the right, is a threat to democracy. Still in Latin America today, the graver and more than sustained danger is coming from the leftist variant. Chávez set the model. Every bit shortly as he was elected president of Venezuela, he set about revamping the country's institutional framework. First, he called a constituent assembly. Then, to dislodge the established political course that he charged with selfish­ness and corruption, he successfully pushed to close the recently elected bicameral Congress, where his followers held only about a 3rd of the seats. Cheers to a reengineered balloter organization, Chávez dominated the constituent assembly that boosted his powers, ended the ban on consecu­tive terms, and created a new unicameral (and hence easier to control) national legislature. These institutional victories--plus the promise of socioeconomic change--lifted Chávez and his camp to victory in the 2000 elections. Moreover, he took control of the courts and other in­dependent institutions, such every bit Venezuela's electoral committee, and soon had a stranglehold on all branches of regime.

Chávez and his supporters, along with some academics and intellec­tuals, claimed that Venezuela had get a participatory republic. Common citizens, so long neglected by traditional politicians, could at last take a directly say in their own governance. In that location is some truth to these claims when information technology comes to local decision making and social-programme implementation, just they are unconvincing equally applied to the crucial loonshit of national policy making.

At that place should exist no mistaking that Hugo Chávez fabricated every im­portant decision and thoroughly adamant his country'due south political course. No aide could rein him in, and the people lacked the capacity to advance their collective volition independently. The absence of firm popular organisation and of transparent decision-making procedures precluded effective bottom-upward influence. Political initiative emanated from the leader, non the citizens. Chávez never changed any signifi­cant plan due to popular resistance. Even when he lost, equally in the 2007 constitutional plebiscite, he simply redoubled his efforts and pushed through to his goals. Rather than driving decisions, the populace was the object of Chávez's populist strategies and tactics, equally can be seen from the rapid rise and refuse of chavista movements such as the Bolivarian Circles. Talk about direct democracy cannot change con­temporary Venezuela's condition as a prototypical case of personalistic populism. Chávez's handpicked successor Nicolás Maduro, who won an April 2013 special election to the presidency, is perpetuating this tiptop-down style--witness the strikingly opaque machinations that sur­rounded Maduro'southward supposition of presidential powers during the afterwards stages of Chávez's disease.

Chávez'south success in revamping Venezuelan politics and fortifying his personal dominance turned his strategy of constitutional reform into a script that other populist-leaning left-fly leaders followed. The core of the Chávez method is to apply plebiscitarian mass support in order to transform established institutions, dismantle checks and balances, con­centrate power in the hands of the president, and promote firsthand reelection. Like their Venezuelan role model and generous patron, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, and Manuel Zelaya in Honduras (till he was stopped) called for constituent assemblies with the aim of boosting the presidency'due south powers and paving the mode toward indefinite reelection to that office. Republic of bolivia and Ecuador's respective histories of acute instability--including interrupted presidencies--and consequent hopes for "a fresh get-go" guaranteed strong popular support for the new principal executives. With this majoritarian backing, personalis­tic leaders undermined liberal, pluralist institutions.

In Bolivia, the Morales government shut the opposition out of deci­sive stages of the constitution-drafting process. The charismatic leader then won his foes' agreement to a referendum on the tailor-fabricated char­ter by promising not to run in 2014. But he soon went back on this vow; a typical populist, he is determined to cling to ability. In Republic of ecuador, Rafael Correa got his constituent-assembly election by engineering the irregular removal of more than than one-half the members of Congress. Past in­voking popular sovereignty, this populist leader managed to defeat his adversaries and rewrite the rules via a new charter that greatly increased presidential powers.

***

In one case these populists of the left established predominance, they used their unfettered control over all branches of authorities to limit debate, strike at opponents, and drastically tilt the electoral playing field. These maneuvers dismantled autonomous accountability and eliminated safe­guards against arbitrariness. Hegemonic presidents called frequent ref­erenda to garner plebiscitarian acclaim, just e'er with arrangements in place to ensure that these ballot-box exercises never gave the opposition a off-white hazard to win. When adversaries did manage to merits a victory, equally happened occasionally from 2007 to 2010 in Venezuela, Chávez em­ployed all kinds of shenanigans to render it meaningless. In late 2010, for case, he crippled a newly elected parliament with pregnant opposi­tion representation by having the outgoing assembly, where his supporters had sectional control, consul extensive legislative powers to him.

In these ways, left-wing populists take slowly but surely smothered commonwealth and entrenched competitive authoritarian rule in several Latin American states. Their brand of soft authoritarianism violates basic prin­ciples of democracy by placing controls on the media and the opposi­tion while the authorities electioneers using country resources. Even when presidents command loftier popularity, every bit left-fly populists often take, contests held under such profoundly unfair conditions cannot authorize as democratic. Where the parameters of political choice are and then badly dis­torted, bulk support cannot compensate for serious infringements of pluralism and competitiveness.

While justifying their undemocratic moves with progressive claims, left populists have eagerly availed themselves of timeworn tactics of Latin American politics. Presidents in the region have long been known for efforts to misconstrue balloter competition and unfairly perpetuate them­selves in power. In particular, they have applied discriminatory legal­ism and its maxim "For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the police!" As populist main executives have commandeered all major in­stitutions including the courts, they have used formally legal say-so in discretionary ways to promote their cronies and allies while punish­ing or intimidating critics and opponents in politics and society. With the government controlling all avenues of entreatment and fugitive breathy violations of formal rules, those targeted find few chances for domestic recourse or the gathering of international back up.

Hither once more, Chávez proved himself a trendsetter: He showed how skill­fully an elected incumbent can employ discriminatory legalism to stifle argue and push critics and opponents to the wall. With comprehensive control over Venezuela's political institutions, Chávez closed a number of independent television stations and threatened the remaining ones; used trumped-up charges to jail or drive into exile recalcitrant judges and opposition leaders; and exploited oil rents and the land appliance for campaigning. In these ways, he sapped the opposition'southward chances of suc­cess and ensured himself frequent victories at the polls. If his adversaries did win against all odds, he used various ploys to limit the effects. Later on the opposition managed to win the mayoralty of Caracas in 2008, for in­stance, Chávez folded much of the city into a new Capital Commune nether a handpicked commissioner who was given most of the ability and fund­ing that had previously been under the mayor's command. With such unfair tactics, this populist leader undermined commonwealth and skewed political competition.

Seeing how discriminatory legalism has served to entrench competi­tive authoritarian rule in Venezuela, the leftist presidents of Bolivia, Ec­uador, and Nicaragua take followed suit and imitated Chávez. In Latin America today, the strangling of pluralism and competitiveness is not confined to a unmarried instance. Instead, formally legal means to control the media, attack the opposition, and massively apply the land for electioneer­ing are communicable on in a whole set of countries as handy expedients for incumbents intent upon securing a lock on power.

In Republic of bolivia, Evo Morales and his Motility Toward Socialism have used trumped-upwardly charges of administrative irregularities, corruption, ter­rorism, and genocide against numerous opposition politicians, imprison­ing some, driving many others out of the country, and intimidating the rest. The competitiveness that is essential to democracy cannot survive in such a hostile setting. Ecuador'south Rafael Correa has applied similar tactics, for example confronting the politician who challenged him in the 2006 election. Correa besides seized on a 2010 police rebellion--painted by him equally a coup attempt--every bit a pretext for cracking down on independent social and political forces. And he has intimidated the media by suing for exorbitant damages and strong prison sentences over an opinion piece. Daniel Ortega has decreed many paralegal measures in Nicaragua's weakly institutionalized polity and has put persistent pressure on inde­pendent NGOs. Later extracting concessions from an opposition leader who had been bedevilled of corruption charges, Ortega packed the courts and then had his appointees on the bench exempt him from the constitu­tion's ban on immediate reelection. Furthermore, Ortega's supporters relied on manipulation and fraud in the 2008 municipal elections. In Ni­caragua, discriminatory legalism has shaded into systematic illegalism.

Fifty-fifty in Argentina, where democracy has so far survived populist pressures, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (often known as CFK) has started to follow a Chávez-like script. Businesspeople who publicly criticize her accept found themselves targets of special tax au­dits. Media outlets that depict her ire--the newspaper Clarín is a particu­lar thorn in her side--have faced everything from antitrust investiga­tions to mob violence. Even as it has been bullying critics, the ruling group around Kirchner has been floating the idea of calling a constituent assembly to pave the manner for a third CFK term. Argentine civil society, however, has pushed dorsum harder confronting this scheme than ceremonious club in a "Bolivarian" country would probable exist able to exercise. Mass protests in belatedly 2012 noisily opposed the extension of CFK'due south rule, suggesting that Argentina will not easily exist led down the Chávez path.

***

The populist wing of Latin America's contemporary left poses a sig­nificantly stronger challenge to republic than did the wave of right-wing populist presidents who rose to prominence in the 1990s (or in Co­lombia's case, the 2000s). Carlos Menem and Alberto Fujimori, along with Brazil's Fernando Collor de Mello (1990-92) and Colombia's Al­varo Uribe (2002-10), as well employed populist strategies, but on behalf of neoliberal economic policies and, in Republic of peru and Colombia, the demand to defeat violent leftist guerrillas. Despite differing from the current crop of left-wing populists on credo and policy, these rightist presidents all the same favored a similar personalistic leadership mode and mobi­lized amorphous, heterogeneous mass followings in a quasi-direct fash­ion. Each president cast himself as the people's champion in a struggle confronting malign forces such as established politicians and left-wing insur­gents. In these means, neoliberal populists garnered wide popular support that they sought to sustain with plebiscitarian tactics.

In typical populist fashion, these neoliberal politicians sought to boost presidential powers, weaken checks and balances, and extend their control over the government while preparing their own reelections. Me­nem, for example, bent constitutional rules by issuing an unprecedent­ed number of "emergency" decrees and packed Argentina's Supreme Court in club to protect his arrogations of power. Collor steamrolled Brazil's Congress, forcing legislators to take desperate macroeconomic-stabilization measures past using his decree powers to confront the police force­makers with a fait accompli. Menem and Uribe pushed constitutional changes designed to help them go reelected. Nigh blatantly, Fujimori airtight Congress and took control of the courts with his 1992 autogolpe (self-coup). Faced with strong international protests, he sought to tack away from naked authoritarianism past calling a elective assembly that augmented presidential prerogatives and allowed for his reelection. The new lease also weakened the legislative co-operative by replacing Peru'south bicameral Congress with a unicameral assembly. In these ways, right-wing populists damaged Latin American democracy, destroying it alto­gether for a time in Peru.

But this deterioration was express in severity in Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia, and in duration in Peru. Collor did non keep his promise to "impale inflation" and was defeated past Brazil's political course, which forced him to resign amid a abuse scandal. Menem and Uribe did achieve policy success and parlayed the resulting popularity into convincing re­election victories. Simply the desire of each to win a third consecutive term ran afoul of intraparty opposition in Argentina and a powerful indepen­dent Ramble Court in Colombia. When Menem and Uribe stepped downwards, democracy in Argentina and Colombia recovered. Even Fujimori, who in 2000 managed to win a second reelection, fell soon thereafter as his ever more farthermost personalism complanate under its self-subversive logic. One time the president had pulverized the party system and subjugated the Peruvian state, his rule was thoroughly actress-institutional, resting on shady personal connections sustained by widespread abuse. When evidence of this crass bribery surfaced, Fujimori'south hold on power van­ished. The political demise of Fujimori--who is now serving jail fourth dimension for corruption and human-rights abuses--brought dorsum full democracy, with aplenty public debate and costless and fair elections. Thus, right-wing popu­lism did not ruin democracy in Argentina, Brazil, or Republic of colombia, and in Peru commonwealth's devastation and temporary replacement were followed by a quick resurrection.

By contrast, left-wing populism has a more than negative rest sheet. Chávez dominated Venezuelan politics for 14 years, stopped only past his decease. His underlings accept good chances of retaining control, aided by the emotional bear upon of Chávez's "martyrdom." Morales, Correa, and Ortega accept as well cemented their corresponding hegemonies and prepared their own continuations in power. Bolivia'southward president, as mentioned, has gone back on his hope non to run again in 2014. With Correa'southward Feb 2013 reelection to a 3rd term at present backside him, he is poised to tighten his ain political stranglehold. Given these leaders' unfettered control over state resources and their willingness to employ discriminatory legalism, opposition forces face steep uphill battles in a context of heavily rigged electoral competition. Incumbent governments have jailed opposition politicians or driven them out of the country in Bolivia, and take attacked and intimidated civil society in Ecuador and Nicaragua. These tightening constraints on political pluralism give the nondemocratic leaders of left-wing populism e'er firmer foundations for their dominion.

***

Why has left-wing populism been doing more damage to democracy in Latin America than right-wing populism did? This disproportion re­flects differences not in intention, simply in chapters. Today's populists of the left command greater political strength and take more than policy tools. They can push further downwards the road toward full-bodied power than could their neoliberal cousins of a few years ago.

First, correct-wing populism has a temporary (usually crisis-driven) sup­port base, while leftist populism has more lasting roots, particularly in the "informal" sectors that figure then largely in the economies of many Latin American countries. Second, by reducing the ability of the state over markets and private economic actors, neoliberalism diminishes the ability of right-fly leaders. The growing state interventionism favored by left-wing populists, by dissimilarity, gives them additional means of influence. Third, neoliberalism exposes right-wing populists to international pres­sures for republic; economic nationalism, past dissimilarity, insulates left­ist presidents from such exhortations. Finally, right-fly populists acted separately, while today's left-wing leaders form a coordinated group. This cohesion further disarms international pressures to maintain democracy. For all these reasons, Bolivarian leaders have managed to strangle democ­racy much more effectively than neoliberal populists ever could.

The populists of the right e'er stood on shakier political ground than that of Chávez and his friends. Neoliberal populists won part past vowing to solve crises. Success fabricated these leaders dispensable. By dissimilarity, left-fly populists invoke structural issues--poverty, in­equality, marginalization--that allow simply for slow progress and resist definitive resolution. Stubborn problems thus justify ane reelection of "the leader" subsequently another. Moreover, these presidents take relied not only on operation-based legitimacy, but also on durable identity-based appeals that bandage them as champions of, for case, informal workers, barrio residents, or indigenous people.

The right-wing populist presidents Menem, Fujimori, and Collor rose to ability amid bouts of hyperinflation. These economic catastrophes dis­credited the existing parties in Argentina, Peru, and Brazil, respectively, opening space in each land for an outsider who pledged to finish the pain. Simply the political weakness that followed Collor'southward failure to end in­flation contributed to his downfall on corruption charges. Menem and Fu­jimori somewhen brought skyrocketing prices under control and received massive popular support in render. But the backing did not suffer: One time these presidents had restored economic stability, voters switched to wor­rying most poverty and unemployment--problems that executives com­mitted to neoliberal austerity, budget subject field, and privatization found much harder to solve. Inside Menem's own Peronist party, for instance, a rival running to Menem's left cut him off from his hopes for a tertiary term.

Fujimori and Uribe also won popular support with their success in fight­ing guerrillas. An improving security situation boosted each president'southward popularity for a while. Simply every bit the danger receded, especially in Peru, citi­zens' priorities shifted, exposing the two chief executives to a paradox of success. Their very accomplishments hamstrung their efforts to perpetuate themselves in office. Fujimori fell in 2000, the victim of his achievements every bit well as his considerable excesses, and Uribe failed to parlay his 2008 victories over leftist insurgents into some other reelection in 2010.

Left-wing populists, past dissimilarity, base their appeal on structural prob­lems. They highlight Latin America's longstanding social deficits, espe­cially widespread poverty and inequality. While the established political course looks self-serving and beholden to privileged elites, left-wing popu­lists project concern for common citizens and start generous social pro­grams that--despite frequent authoritative problems stemming from po­liticization--significantly increment benefits, alleviate destitution, and bring symbolic recognition besides. This deliberate identification with ordinary people and their plight is reinforced by the leaders' affiliations with the popular sectors from which they spring (or with which they identify them­selves). Left-populist identity politics is especially important in Bolivia, where the supporters of Morales like to avowal that he is the first indigenous president that this bulk-ethnic country has always had. Similarly, Chávez dwelt ofttimes on his apprehensive upbringing and spoke in a popular (and vulgar) idiom not previously associated with presidents of Venezuela.

Left-wing populists claim to exist the get-go master executives to embrace a preferential option for the poor. Their social programs embody this commitment, but cannot chop-chop overcome longstanding structural defi­cits. This ho-hum progress with no end in sight yields more durable politi­cal payoffs than neoliberal populists' success in solving dramatic crises. Left-wing populists testify their social orientation and performance, and and so signal to the difficulty of the task in order to explicate why they must stay in office. Thus, activist social policies farther cement identity-based loyalties. These bonds give left-wing populism more reliable political sustenance than neoliberal leaders tin can command and allow left-wing populists to do graver damage to democracy.

The neoliberal economic science to which contempo right-wing populists were de­voted, far from fortifying their political hegemony, ended up diminishing their control over economical matters and hence weakening them politically. Certainly, in the short run market-based reforms tin can augment presidential influence. Privatization programs, in which the government decides who may buy public enterprises, offer obvious opportunities for extracting fa­vors. But in one case firms pass into private hands, the government loses command. Thus neoliberalism's end product is reduced presidential clout.

Neoliberal orthodoxy limits leaders in other means. Upkeep disci­pline restrains patronage spending. Personnel cuts shrink the leeway for hiring cronies. Reliance on market forces precludes big-scale employment programs. Moreover, business and international financial institutions insist on firm, transparent legal parameters and thus reduce leaders' autonomy and discretion. In sum, neoliberalism constrains populist master executives and hinders their connected reelections.

By dissimilarity, left-leaning populists boost country interventionism. They add to the public payroll, increase regulation, and nationalize enterprises. This yields growing patronage resources, so presidents can buy support and printing their opponents. As always more people come up to depend on the state, they become possible targets for discriminatory legalism. Citizens have an incentive to toe the line and dorsum the incumbent, nonetheless grudg­ingly, as in the 2012 election that returned a dying Hugo Chávez to the presidency of Venezuela. Businesspeople need to think twice earlier fund­ing oppositionists lest the government discover a pretext to revoke business li­censes, deny access to foreign exchange, or impose other sanctions. Once a populist president has established hegemony and defanged accountabili­ty mechanisms, extensive state interventionism offers untold new chances to reward friends, punish foes, and tilt the playing field.

In the years since the Cold State of war'southward end, international pressures in favor of commonwealth have come to the fore. Neoliberal economic-policy com­mitments exposed right-wing populists to these in ways that left-wing populists have seldom if ever experienced. After Fujimori's self-insurrection, he rapidly backed away from open absolutism lest economical sanc­tions foil his market reforms. To preserve his difficult-won economic suc­cess, Fujimori called elections for a elective assembly and restored room for political contest. Neoliberalism trumped authoritarianism. Like external pressures later express Fujimori'due south efforts to dispense the 2000 presidential election; they also hindered Menem'due south and Uribe'due south attempts to stay in office.

Left-fly populists, by dissimilarity, can huddle behind economic nation­alism. Reduced reliance on global market forces and rise statism build walls against international efforts to promote democracy. Under burn down for blatant uses of discriminatory legalism, Chávez pulled out of hemi­spheric institutions such as the Inter-American Committee on Human Rights. He also kept international election observers out of Venezuela, which helped him to hibernate how badly he had warped the competitive arena in his own favor. With the standing boom in oil and natural-gas prices, commodity-rich Republic of bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela accept been able to ignore global market place pressures (every bit has Nicaragua, which receives Venezuelan subsidies).

Yesterday'southward correct-fly populists differed from today's left-fly popu­lists, finally, in being less organized every bit a grouping. Neoliberal presidents may have banded together to establish the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) just they never did much to support one another diplomatically. For instance, neither Menem nor Collor backed Fujimori after his self-insurrection, and neither always came close to trying to shutter Congress. When Chávez put democracy to expiry by elective assemblies, he inspired imitators. Fujimori'south more direct attack on democracy had no such effect on his neoliberal peers.

Left-wing populists act in coordinated ways. Morales, Correa, and Zelaya (who was stopped early in the process) sought to retrace Chávez'southward path through ramble change to political hegemony and discrimi­natory legalism. Daniel Ortega took advantage of Nicaragua'south depression level of institutionalization to button his changes through by informal means. They all benefited from Chávez's petrodollars, political advice, dip­lomatic support, and security protection. This comprehensive backing from Caracas strengthened left-wing populists both at home and abroad. Thus did Chávez help to smother republic in several countries.

The trend of left-wing populists to close ranks also serves to pro­tect their assaults on political competition from international rescue ef­forts. The hemispheric community can force the president of Republic of peru to retreat from open up authoritarianism, but has no such leverage on a cohe­sive group of countries that aid one another and wield something akin to a veto within regional institutions. Among their tacit allies have been more than moderate countries, such every bit Brazil, which run into Bolivarian radical­ism equally a handy foil that raises their bargaining ability vis-`a-vis Washing­ton. The diplomatic cocky-interests of Latin American democracies have thus played a office in hampering international efforts to forestall authori­tarian backsliding in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua.

In fact, left-wing populists accept skillfully used the region's democra­cy-defense arrangements to abet their own internal assaults on democra­cy. International mechanisms to protect competitive rule were designed with dramatic threats, such equally coups against elected presidents, in listen. When Chávez faced an irresolute attempted coup in 2002, these mecha­nisms helped him, just as they helped Evo Morales when he had to deal with mass protests in 2008. Information technology is no small-scale matter that chief executives, who naturally display solidarity with their counterparts elsewhere, are typically the ones who must apply these measures.

Discriminatory legalism has so far proved a democracy-strangling tactic that the international community has establish hard to rein in. Outsid­ers to a country must first pierce the veil of formal legality, and and so de­cide when discrimination has get bad enough and broad enough to count as a violation of democracy. Left-fly populists typically move gradually to undermine democracy; where is the threshold that calls for international intervention? The nearly visible victims are usually legis­lators, high-court judges, and party politicians--non types that strange presidents will feel near eager to rescue. As elected populist presidents squeeze and manipulate their opponents, diplomatic backing against the onslaught can evidence deficient.

Because they tin so easily exist made to shield perpetrators more than than victims, current democracy-protection protocols in the region are serv­ing to undermine commonwealth and--yet unintentionally--to further tilt the playing field in several countries. Like discriminatory legalism at dwelling house, the asymmetrical internationalism that informs regional coun­cils helps to spread and entrench nondemocracy. The new competitive disciplinarian regimes of Latin American leftist populism lack the harsh­ness of one-time-school dictatorships, only they accept achieved a degree of "perfection" (to borrow Mario Vargas Llosa'south ironic term) that even Mexico's long-ruling PRI in its heyday could not rival.

***

Historically, it has been the right that has washed the most damage to competitive civilian rule in Latin America, so when a new threat from the left emerged during a time of what appeared to exist democratic con­solidation, many observers were surprised. For decades, oligarchs had stifled mass participation while soldiers mouthing anticommunist slo­gans had all too often intervened to crush pop empowerment and democracy. Leftists bore the burden of the repression, learning to cease calling commonwealth a "conservative farce" and to comprehend human-rights safeguards and checks on state power. Much of Latin America's left has thus come to take strong democratic credentials.

Populist politicians, however, lack firm commitment to ideologies and principles and concentrate on the quest for personal ability. The urge to boost the leader's clout, the dislike of constitutional limits, and the harsh treatment of rivals make populism an inherent threat to democracy. Popu­lists both right and left take displayed these tendencies, simply the latter have done more damage to democracy with their greater staying power and more than skillful efforts to hoard power, knock down institutional safeguards, squeeze opponents, and skew competition. Beneath a veneer of formal legality, these populists have blunted and even exploited the hemisphere's methods for guarding against reversals of democracy.

With its claims to brand democracy more direct and to be peculiarly mindful of the poor, left-wing populism has crafted an attractive message. Information technology has spread from Venezuela to several other countries and has stimulated involvement elsewhere, especially Argentina. The temptations that information technology spawns make Chávez-style populism a particular threat to democracy.

This threat also seems to have clear limits, all the same. Brazil, Republic of chile, Costa Rica, Mexico, Uruguay, and now Republic of colombia boast stable democra­cies. Steady institutions, pluralist party systems, and respectable gov­ernment performance leave less room for populists. The downsides of Bolivarian populism, which include raging inflation, abuse, and tearing crime, are well known and act equally a deterrent. Left-wing populism and soft authoritarianism are unlikely to infect those countries.

Where leftists have achieved political success in those nations, they differ greatly from Chávez. With coherent organizations and agen­das, the Brazilian Workers' Party, Republic of chile's Concertación, and Uruguay'due south Wide Front have eschewed personalism and populism. Committed to existing institutions and gradual change, they have preserved and en­riched democracy. Thus the authoritarian turn in Latin America today comes non from the left in general, but from a populist left that in certain countries is even more unsafe than its rightist forebear. The scrim of "progressive" rhetoric around this undemocratic mode of politics but makes things worse.

Chávez'due south death may abate this threat a scrap, but competitive authoritari­anism will likely persist and go along to agree entreatment. The original Boli­varian leader is at present gone, and Venezuelan subsidies may compress, weak­ening especially Ortega in resource-poor Nicaragua. But the lessons of Chávez'south remarkable "success" alive on and may inspire more imitators, particularly in Argentina. The undemocratic incumbents in Bolivia, Ec­uador, and Venezuela have entrenched their rule and wield many tools for extending information technology, aided by the commodities boom. Moreover, neither the domestic opposition nor the international community has establish a way to stop discriminatory legalism. For these reasons, the end of the authoritar­ian trend in Latin America is not in sight.

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This mail originally appeared in the July 2013 issue of the Periodical of Democracy.

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Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/07/why-latin-america-is-becoming-less-democratic/277803/

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