Opposing Correísmo: Opposition Strategies to Counter Democratic Erosion in Ecuador

Most scholarship on democratic backsliding under populist leaders focuses on executive strategies of institutional dismantling. Far less attention has been paid to the opposition side of this strategic interaction: how and with what democratic consequences rival actors choose to contest or accommodate executive aggrandizement. This paper addresses this gap by examining opposition strategies during Rafael Correa’s presidency in Ecuador (2007-2017) and the subsequent transition under Lenín Moreno (2017-2018). Drawing on Somer, McCoy, and Luke’s (2021) framework of opposition repertoires during democratic erosion, I argue that Ecuadorian opposition actors passed through four distinct strategic phases, each with measurably different effects on polarization severity and democratic quality. Between 2007 and 2010, traditional parties, business federations, media outlets, and indigenous movements adopted passive depolarization, i.e., a reactive posture of “lying low” that avoided mass confrontation but facilitated Correa’s constitutional overhaul and executive aggrandizement. From 2011 to 2016, opposition strategy shifted to reciprocal polarization: high profile defamation lawsuits, media battles, and mirror-image delegitimization that intensified mutual hostility and entrenched zero-sum perceptions. The 2017 presidential runoff marked a crucial turning point, as challenger Guillermo Lasso pursued transformative repolarization, deliberately reframing the electoral contest from redistributive populism to a choice between democratic rules and authoritarian drift. Though Lasso narrowly lost, his coalition-building around institutional accountability split the governing alliance and set the stage for democratic reopening. Finally, President Lenín Moreno’s unexpected break with Correa initiated a phase of active depolarization (2017-2018), featuring cross-party dialogue, journalist pardons, constitutional reforms reinstating term limits, and corruption prosecutions that plateaued polarization and produced measurable liberal gains. Methodologically, the study employs process tracing of key events, such as constitutional referendums, defamation trials, electoral coalitions, and national dialogues, triangulated with opposition statements, legislative behavior, protest data, and annual indices from V-Dem and Freedom House. This multi-method approach enables causal inference about how specific strategic choices influenced both polarization trajectories and institutional outcomes. The findings carry three important theoretical implications. First, they validate Somer et al.’s claim that proactive strategies can arrest or partially reverse democratic erosion, but only when paired with alternative political cleavages and inclusive governance benefits. Ecuador’s case demonstrates that reactive tactics, i.e., whether passive accommodation or confrontational mirroring, consistently deepened backsliding, while proactive reframing opened democratic space even after severe polarization had set in. Second, the Ecuadorian sequence reveals path dependent effects: early opposition passivity enabled constitutional capture, making subsequent resistance costlier and more polarizing. Third, the study underscores the fragility of elite-level depolarization when underlying distributive grievances remain unaddressed, as evidenced by renewed conflict after 2019 austerity measures. By foregrounding opposition agency, this paper shifts analytical focus from what populists do to how democrats respond. It demonstrates empirically that opposition choices matter decisively for whether erosion accelerates, stalls, or reverses. The Ecuadorian experience thus extends polarization theory beyond its original postcommunist and advanced-industrial contexts, offering practical lessons for opposition actors confronting dominant populist incumbents in resource-dependent, highly unequal democracies across the Global South.