The Dynamics of Erosion of Democracy in Latin America

The 1970s and 1980s saw the end of most single party and military dictatorships across the world. Unfortunately democracy was not here to stay. Faced with economic and security crisis, in the last decade, new and old democracies have slipped into a democratic recession. Democratically elected presidents have tried to use their popularity to advance their agenda, slowly destroying the system of checks and balances until they effectively erode democracy. Some have succeeded; others have not. Why? I argue that low economic development, a weak state and weak institutions increase the likelihood that presidents will try to enhance his powers and extend their stay in office, but they cannot explain why some succeed and others fail in these attempts. In vulnerable countries a president’s ability to uncheck the executive and stay in power depends on his military or civilian support and the opposition’s response to the first set of reforms. Unlike classic breakdowns democratic erosion happens over time giving the opposition time to respond. If it responds within institutions (courts, congress, elections), the opposition will keep some presence in the political arena and will be better able to oppose more aggressive reforms. On the contrary, if it retaliates outside institutions, the president will have legitimate reasons to remove opposition leaders from office, prosecute and jail them. It will give the president more leverage to successfully introduce reforms that will allow him to manipulate electoral laws, campaign finance and media access until it becomes extremely difficult for the opposition to defeat him. In order to evaluate this argument, I use a mixed methods research design. I use medium N analysis to evaluate the factors that determine a country’s vulnerability to erosion and a small-N (cross-case and within-case) analysis to reconstruct the dynamics of erosion itself in Colombia and Venezuela.