Reflections on the Application of Democratic Theory to Latin America

In both of the books under review here, Joe Foweraker points to the shortcomings of long-standing theories on the democratic experience in Latin America and elsewhere. He sees their main flaw as their focus on government, which in Latin America is dominated by the executive branch, at the expense of the entire state apparatus, in which oligarchies exercise a major influence. Foweraker argues that in failing to conceptualize the state, U.S.-European-based democratic theory generally overestimates the quality of democracy, particularly in developed nations, and exaggerates the disparity between the performance of democratic systems of developed nations and that of developing ones. His critique can be summarized as follows: “Modern democratic theory of Latin America . . . fails to take sufficient account of the immanence of oligarchy and takes democratic politics to be the whole of the political system . . . [which] is neither democratic nor oligarchic but is composed of both” (Polity, 123).

Indeed, any analysis that focuses on electoral democracy while ignoring the inner workings of the state will lead to superficial explanations and misleading conclusions. It will overlook informal relations— the “deep state” or what Nicos Poulantzas called “power centers” and “networks.” Foweraker takes special aim at Robert Dahl, the founder of the U.S. school of pluralism in the 1950s and 1960s. According to Foweraker, although Dahl recognized the limitations of U.S. democracy, he only scratched the surface because he failed to examine power centers and informal flows of influence. Foweraker has a more pessimistic view of the performance of U.S. democracy and denies that it is much superior to its counterparts in the developed world. By way of example, he points to the 2000 presidential election, which was “compromised in some degree by the pathologies of peripheral democracy, namely patrimonialism, elitism, nepotism, electoral corruption, and a dubious judicial impartiality” (Polity, 19). According to Foweraker, Dahl created a skewed checklist of “institutional attributes,” a system subsequently adopted by Freedom House that tended to “award almost all the highest scores to the established democracies of the West” (18). He suggests that these criteria contain “cultural bias” and sides with skeptics who claim that comparing the democratic credentials of developed and developing nations amounts to comparing “apples and oranges” (18). He adds that whereas popular and academic views perceive a direct relationship between inequality and the limitations of democracy in the developing world, they tend to view inequality in the developed nations “in a more abstract sense . . . that finds no direct translation into political power” ( 23–24). Furthermore, they consider the shortcomings of “advanced democracies . . . self-adjusting and perfectible” (30).

Foweraker argues that democratic nations in both developed and developing worlds are characterized by the uneasy coexistence of “two distinct systems of political power, one oligarchic, one democratic” (31). This formulation is translated into “the idea of mixed or balanced government” (101) and a sustainable relationship between the oligarchy and the popular sectors in the public sphere. For Foweraker the principal historical challenge for the champions of democracy once the rights of private property had been embraced by Madison and others was to create mechanisms to control the oligarchy, not eliminate it. At the same time, he rejects “the culturally embedded view of the [Latin American] oligarchy as always everywhere the enemy of democracy” and instead points to the viability of “limited democratic rule and oligarchic power” serving “as mutual constraints” (102) in the context of liberal institutions. Not only is oligarchic power not an aberration but its relations with popular power are complex, contradictory, and interconnected. Indeed, “all successful democracies have had to find effective ways of accommodating their oligarchies” (Democracy, 23). Thus, in effect, he opts for reform over revolution and rules out war waged by popular sectors against oligarchic ones. Nevertheless, Foweraker (along with coeditor Dolores Trevizo) hardly plays down the importance of a robust, well-organized popular movement. Indeed, he shows more support for Aristotle, who envisioned a “sovereign authority” that was “present and visible” (Polity, 31) alongside the elites, than for Dahl, who dismissed the nonelite sectors as mostly passive players except at election time.

Although the developed and developing worlds are not as far apart as is generally claimed by democratic theory, certain historical aspects of Latin American society and politics point to limitations to the quality of the continent’s democracies. In the first place, the formative years of Latin American democracy were characterized by limited participation; nineteenth-century political parties were “the vehicles of particular politicians . . . [while] much of the citizenry remained effectively disenfranchised” (Polity, 73). The emerging patrimonial state blurred the “separation between the public and private spheres” and was lacking in autonomy and the horizontal accountability “embodied in Madison’s model of the separation of powers” (74). These differences in state formation are important for Foweraker even though the contrasts with the United States have been “overdrawn” and are “more a matter of degree than kind” (75).

In the second place, Latin America’s populist movements, both in the classical phase represented by Juan Domingo Perón and in more recent years, tended to begin as antioligarchic but ended up reverting to elitist control and clientelistic practices, thus holding back the democratic cause. Foweraker argues that “the recurrent resurgence of populist politics” (Polity, 184) in Latin America is due to the fact that the “political party system” (117)—not just political parties, as elsewhere in the world—has been discredited. In a separate chapter on Latin American populism Foweraker writes that “the elite-dominated party systems of Latin America provide the common institutional ground for the region’s contemporary populisms” (116) because populist movements emerged against the backdrop of the loss of party support. Foweraker’s pejorative characterization of Latin American populist movements contrasts not only with the positive definition of populism associated with Ernesto Laclau but also with the nuanced view put forward by Francisco Panizza and others emphasizing both positive and negative aspects.

A third feature particularly pronounced in Latin America but also characteristic of other regions of the world (and increasingly so) is economic inequality. Foweraker devotes a chapter to the topic in Polity, where he notes that in “social and economic terms” Latin America is the most unequal region in the world “bar none” (89). Foweraker is quick to point to the relationship between inequality and the quality of democracy: “The primary political expression of structured inequality is a consistent but variable pattern of entrenched oligarchic interests that have proved highly resistant to democratic control and accountability” (92). In his introductory chapter in Democracy and Its Discontents he maintains that “oligarchic and corporate interests” that are part of the state “resist accountability wherever possible” (4).

Foweraker is the author of the first two chapters of the volume, which he ends on a note of cautious optimism: with “political struggles for a more democratic regime” under the banner of constitutional reform, “the quality of democracy in Latin America is likely to continue to improve, so making the democratic glass . . . half full rather than unhappily half empty” (29). In her concluding chapter, Trevizo adds to Foweraker’s assertion with the following summary of the book’s main contribution: “Latin America’s democratic projects are works in progress precisely because democratization is a long-term process contingent on the outcome of . . . social struggles” (269). Various chapters reinforce the coeditors’ mild optimism by arguing that democratic progress outweighs setbacks and impediments. David Doyle writes on “brown areas,” spaces untouched by the rule of law; Melissa Ziegler Rogers on the relationship between interregional inequality and state policy, specifically with regard to redistributive programs; David Pion-Berlin on civilian control of defense ministries in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay; Todd Landman on human rights; and Jennifer Piscopo on gender-based quota and parity laws. Of all these areas of alleged advances, the observation regarding the armed forces is perhaps the most conclusive, as indicated by Trevizo’s statement that the military “has been placed in its proper institutional place” (267),

Foweraker’s theoretical and empirical positions on Latin American democracy can be described as akin to social democratic thinking, which supports reform and evolutionary change in the absence of intense irreconcilable class conflict. Even while Foweraker underscores the importance of popular input in politics, he accepts powerful economic groups as permanent fixtures of and not necessarily antagonistic to the democratic system. His negative view of populism reinforces his social democratic preferences. According to Foweraker, regardless of the original intentions of radical Latin American populist leaders, Latin American democracy is worse off as a result of their rise to power. Finally, in accordance with the social democratic outlook, he expresses faith in Latin America’s evolutionary progress.

Foweraker and Trevizo, however, are on shaky ground when they defend the feasibility of the reformist and evolutionary road to change in Latin America. It is not at all clear, for instance, what criteria they (and some of the contributors) use to claim that the democratic advances in Latin America in past years outweigh the setbacks and negative features. The issue is especially thorny given the gravity of the problems of income inequality, corruption, clientelism, criminality, drug trafficking, and manipulation by elites that Foweraker and Trevizo emphatically raise. How can the progress that they point to be measured against the pressing problems that show no signs of improvement? It is not enough to point out, as Trevizo does, that the gains “are regularly obscured by persistent crises” (267).

By way of demonstrating that popular consciousness over the issue of corruption has matured as “democratization in Latin America inches forward,” Trevizo points to protests demanding the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff that “expressed a sense of betrayal and a loss of faith in the Workers’ Party” (269). Events in Brazil, however, hardly merit an optimistic reading, particularly because Rousseff’s removal from office blatantly violated the nation’s constitution. While most of Democracy and Its Discontents is mildly optimistic about the prospects of Latin American democracy, Will Barndt’s “The Changing Profile of Party Systems,” on conservative electoralist political parties, undercuts this forecast. Barndt argues that electoralist parties, which have become “the model form of party organization in Latin America” (207), tend to be conservative and are more dependent on financing from powerful economic groups than those with greater input from social organizations.

It may be argued that the jury is out as to what strategies are the most feasible for achieving necessary change in Latin America including the deepening of democracy. One key issue is whether change will require zero-sum struggles with elites employing a range of legal, semilegal, and illegal tactics to preserve the old order or whether transformation may come about in a less conflictive way. Both coeditors view struggle as essential, but they leave out of the discussion the possibility that disruptions and resistance on the part of the “oligarchy,” which they recognize as a key player, may rule out best-case, nonconfrontational scenarios for change. If the achievement of socialism in a stable environment has invariably been blocked by the enemies of change with immense resources at their disposal, then transformation may be possible only when those forces are politically and economically weakened.

Foweraker, in his negative assessment of leftist-style populism (discussed in detail in the chapter by Javier Corrales), makes no mention of the fact that the aggression faced by the Venezuelan Chavista governments for nearly two decades has no equivalent in the history of electoral democracy. The Venezuelan opposition, which has received backing from the United States and other foreign governments, has participated in repeated street violence and the continuous blocking of traffic with barricades, electoral boycotts, a coup attempt, and general strikes designed to remove the president from office. In their discussion of challenges to democracy, the contributors to the volume leave this dimension completely out of the picture.

In spite of these shortcomings, the merits of the two books under review cannot be denied. Taken as a whole, they present a consistent argument that fills gaps and questions the validity of precepts related to traditional Western-based democratic theory. Thus, for instance, the focus on the advances and downsides of democracies dispels the notion of a clear-cut divide between "advanced" democratic regimes and those alleged to be aberrations, such as the Latin American ones. Foweraker’s discussion of political practices in the United States that border on patrimonialism and of theories of democracy that overlook the complexities of the state points in a similar direction.