The Ambiguous Relationship between Populism and the Use of Direct Democracy in Latin America

Analyses on direct democratic mechanisms (MDD) provide contradictory results when it comes to judge their effects on modern representative democracy. On the one hand, some researchers associate MDDs with the deepening of democracy, others however, highlight problems of political manipulation and the potential concentration of power in the hands of individual actors. This paper contributes to this debate by investigating the relationship between populism in power and the use of mechanisms of direct democracy (MDDs) in Latin America. In line with the ideational approach to populism we argue that the use of MDDs should be more likely under populist than under non-populist rule due to populism’s people centrism and the affinity to direct accountability mechanisms. We contrast this general statement with more nuanced arguments building on the concept of delegative democracy as well as theories of interbranch relationships in presidential systems. In line with these theories we expect the use of top down MDDs - initiated either by the government or other actors in parliament - to be more likely than the use of bottom up MDDs - initiated by citizens. We test these hypotheses by means of multivariate regression analyses using a newly compiled data set covering information on both the intended and actual use of non-mandatory MDDs in 18 Latin American countries from 1978-2018.