Illiberalism in Latin America: Public Claims in Presidential Discourses (2000–2025)

How have presidential leaders in Latin America articulated illiberalism in public discourse over the past twenty-five years? Drawing on theories of democratic erosion and delegative democracy, this study conceptualizes illiberalism as a discursive strategy through which political leaders publicly legitimize the weakening of liberal democratic norms while preserving the formal appearance of democracy. These practices include the concentration of executive authority, the political delegitimization of opposition actors, and moralized appeals to popular sovereignty that redefine “the people” against institutional constraints. The study analyzes a comparative corpus of 25,000 everyday presidential speeches and public statements from eight Latin American countries between 2000 and 2025, spanning key political periods from the post-Washington Consensus era to the post-Pink Tide and pandemic years. To capture the degrees, types, and varieties of illiberal rhetoric, we employ synthetic training data and context-sensitive coding strategies that allow us to identify recurring discursive patterns across heterogeneous political and ideological contexts. This approach reveals consistent illiberal tropes, such as polarizing language, institutional delegitimization, and moralizing narratives of popular sovereignty, deployed by presidents across both left and right governments. Our findings contribute to the literature on illiberal democracy by demonstrating that illiberalism in Latin America is not limited to institutional backsliding or executive overreach but is also embedded in public claims that normalize illiberal logics and lower the threshold for future democratic violations. By shifting the analytical focus from illiberal behavior to illiberal intentions expressed through discourse, the article shows how presidential rhetoric operates as a symbolic shield for “paper democracies,” enabling democratic erosion to advance incrementally and legitimately. More broadly, the study contributes a Global South-centered perspective to debates on illiberal democracy and highlighting discourse as a crucial early warning indicator of democratic decay. Keywords: Illiberalism, presidential discourse, democratic erosion, Latin America, computational social science