Regime betterment or regime change? A critical review of recent debates on liberal democracy and populism in Latin America

Abstract

In the past three decades, debates in Latin American political theory have shifted from struggles over competing regime-types to a discussion about the meaning and potential of democracy. After the region-wide consolidation of democracy, a new political consensus was reached: democracy became the only acceptable form of legitimate rule. The latter was no small accomplishment for a region like Latin America where political struggles often entailed not only a clash over different political programmes but frequently about alternative forms of regime as well. Regime change consequently was an ingrained aspect of political dynamics. In a scenario of political and institutional instability, authoritarian, semi-authoritarian, and democratic regimes frequently succeeded one another without being able to establish the ground for the consolidation of a stable political order. The emergence of a democratic consensus throughout the continent marked the end of the era of institutional instability, inaugurating the most prolonged period of democratic rule in the region. The calls for regime change were consequently abandoned in favor of an agenda that sought to consolidate and improve the workings of the novel democratic regimes. Such novel concerns were reflected in the academic field with the creation of a vibrant field of democratization studies and in the axis that organized the two central subfields of analysis: ´consolidology´ and the ´quality of democracy´ approaches. The first one dominated the agenda in the initial post-transition years; its main concern being how to how to stabilize existing regimes to prevent an authoritarian reversal. Once it become clear that democratic rule had developed strong roots in most of the region, the ´quality of democracy´ subfield gained prominence.The quality of democracy approach focused on what it considered was a selective pattern of democratic institutionalization that gave birth to a peculiar form of polyarchy. The outcome of democratization in Latin America resulted in a delegative form of polyarchy that while adopting the basic features of democratic rule, exhibited notorious rule of law deficits that set these regimes apart from the Western model of representative polyarchy. Delegative democracy was the term that gained prominence to denominate this subtype of polyarchy. Delegative democracy´s distinguishing feature was the absence of effective checks on Executive power due to the poor functioning of the principle of separation of powers and the system of checks and balances. To overcome such deficits, O´Donnell and others argue, it was imperative to strengthen and further develop the network of state agencies responsible for enforcing governmental accountability. As it is clear from the previous description, political debates were channeled into a common concern: how to preserve and strengthen existing institutional structures. The previously described democratic consensus found a major political and conceptual contender in the works of proponents of populism as radical democracy. Pro-populism arguments introduce a normative and epistemological break, questioning not only the prevailing understanding of democracy upon which the field of democratization was predicated but also their diagnosis about what are the current political ills of Latin America. In the first place, for the populist paradigm openly questions the notion of polyarchy that served as the normative framework of the quality of democracy approach for it considers that the institutions of representative government are designed to render the principle of popular sovereignty impotent. The ideal of limited government is privileges the interest of powerful minorities over those of popular majorities. In the second place, for they propose a completely opposite political strategy towards democratization than the one of QDA. A political agenda, which fundamentally seeks to channel political energies into the perfection of the institutional machinery of representative government, is a misleading one and only serves the interests of conservative forces. The goal of a truly democratizing intervention should not be the emulation of the representative model prevalent in the West but to transcend such form of democracy altogether. Far from seeking the reinforcement of the institutional arrangements of polyarchy, a radical politics should break loose of them: the value of populist interventions lies precisely in their disruptive potential, that is, in the capacity they exhibit at challenging the prevalent institutional order. In this way, the current populist revival. The paradigm of populism as radical democracy breaks with what has been a central presupposition of democratizing studies: that processes of democratization and institutionalization largely overlap, reopening the question of regime change. In brief, the Latin American field of democratization finds itself in a conceptual deadlock: on the one hand, the QDA approach privileges an institutional understanding of democracy while those that side with the cause of populism as radical democracy seek to transcend existing institutional arrangements altogether. In brief, we are left with a drastic choice between constituted and constituent power. The article seeks to review the main tenets of current debates to propose in the concluding remarks an alternative conceptual democratizing strategy than the ones on which the reviewed approaches respectively predicate.