The Populist Model of Direct Democracy in Ecuador: Between Citizens’ Demand and Populist Promotion

The existence of populist leaders who govern countries like Ecuador has been persistent since the 1930s. Their appearance has occurred at intervals of institutional, economic, social, as well as a political crisis. Populist leaderships have revealed the ability to make a direct appeal to less interested citizens to participate in political affairs (Lowi, 1985; Weyland 1997; Conaghan, 2008). This direct contact between political leaders and citizens has been key to maintain populist regimes, and the constitutional appearance of mechanisms of direct democracy (MDDs) (since the 1980s, amended and extended in the 1990s) has offered an opportunity to facilitate this direct connection through a formal and institutionalized way. In this article, the research question aims to answer whether MDDs (popular consultation, referendum, and recall referendum) contribute to citizens’ demand to directly participate in the political-public decision-making; or on the contrary, MDDs contribute to stimulating its offer of activation from populist leaders that want to circumvent the intervention of the other state powers in the political-public decision-making process. The hypothesis of this research suggests that MDDs are mechanisms that are recurrently offered to be activated from above, especially from populist leaders in office to connect directly with citizens. The method of analysis includes the practice of MDDs in the Ecuadorian political context from 2006 to 2018. From a comparative perspective of the dynamics, the political context of activation and practice of MDDs, and the electoral results of these mechanisms, it explores whether the trend to trigger MDDs has been top-down or bottom-up in the country. For the particular case study of Ecuador, this research concludes that the progressive idea of the MDDs to include citizens as political actors with decision-making power is an idea that in practice in Ecuador has demonstrated an imbalance between supply and demand. These mechanisms have been politicized by leaders as a short-term strategy for political-public decision-making. This research suggests that this kind of MDDs dynamics of activation promotes a populist model of direct democracy that is giving rise to the legitimation of these types of leaderships. This research contributes to the academic debate on the inappropriate use of MDDs. In countries like Ecuador, where representative and public institutions are unstable, populist political leaderships are popular (or repetitive). MDDs despite being innovative democratic mechanisms that promote direct citizen participation in the political-public decision-making process has been used as a political legitimation strategy.