Democratic Survival and Weakness

Steven Levitsky

Journal of Democracy, Volume 29, Number 4, October 2018, pp. 102-113 (Article)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2018.0066

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/705721

Access provided by The University of Texas at El Paso (29 Oct 2018 19:23 GMT)
 Latin America’s Shifting Politics

Democratic Survival
and Weakness
Steven Levitsky

Steven Levitsky is David Rockefeller Professor of Latin American Stud-

ies and professor of government at Harvard University. His books in-
clude (with Lucan Way) Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes
After the Cold War (2010) and (with Daniel Ziblatt) How Democracies
Die (2018).

The last three decades have been the most democratic in Latin Ameri-
can history. Never before has so much of the region been so democratic,
for so long. Thirteen of 19 Latin American regimes can be classified as
democracies today, while three others (Bolivia, Ecuador, and Hondu-
ras) are near-democracies. Only Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela are
fully authoritarian. Moreover, most countries in the region, including
Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador,
Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, and Peru, are experiencing the
longest uninterrupted period of democracy in their respective histories.
Latin American democracies have also improved in quality. With the
signing of the Colombian peace accords in 2016, the region is now free
of violent insurgency or civil war for the first time in seventy years.
Militaries have exited the political stage in most countries, and civil
and human rights (including those of vulnerable minorities) are better
protected today than ever before. In Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, and Uru-
guay, leftist or former guerrilla movements won elections and governed
without provoking a coup—an outcome that would have been unthink-
able a few decades earlier. In Colombia, the end of the 52-year civil war
brought a marked decline in political violence and human-rights abuses.
And in 2018, for the first time, a leftist candidate (Gustavo Petro) was
able to make a serious bid for the presidency without being assassinated.
Indeed, most Latin American regimes have never before been as demo-
cratic as they have been over the last two decades.
Yet all is not well. Latin American democracies may be surviving,
but few are thriving. According to the 2017 Latinobarometer survey,

Journal of Democracy Volume 29, Number 4 October 2018

© 2018 National Endowment for Democracy and Johns Hopkins University Press
Steven Levitsky 103

only 30 percent of Latin Americans say that they feel satisfied with
their country’s democracy, down from 44 percent in 2010.1 Only 25
percent of Latin Americans say that they trust their government, and
even fewer trust their national legislature or political parties.2 Public
disaffection may be eroding support for democracy. According to a re-
cent LAPOP survey, the percentage of Latin Americans who agree with
the Churchillian statement that “democracy may have problems, but it is
better than any other form of government” fell from 69 percent in 2010
to 58 percent in 2016–17.3 At the same time, nearly 40 percent of Brazil-
ians and Chileans, nearly 50 percent of Guatemalans and Mexicans, and
a stunning 55 percent of Peruvians say that a military coup is justified
where there is “a lot of crime” or “a lot of corruption.”4
Latin Americans have made their discontent known by voting against
the political establishment. Throughout the region, recent elections have
seen traditional parties take a beating. The foregoing essays in this issue
of the Journal of Democracy make this clear. In Colombia, candidates
backed by the Liberal and Conservative parties failed to qualify for the
second round of the 2018 presidential election. Likewise, in Costa Rica,
the once-dominant National Liberation Party and Social Christian Unity
Party finished third and fourth, respectively, in the 2018 presidential
election, as two political newcomers qualified for the runoff. In Mexico,
the two dominant parties, the PRI and the PAN, were dealt a crush-
ing defeat by left-leaning candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador
(AMLO). In Peru, establishment insider Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (PPK)
won the 2016 presidential election after electoral authorities barred two
of his rivals, but he quickly grew isolated and was forced to resign in
2018. And in Brazil, whose presidential election is scheduled for Octo-
ber 2018, precluding its inclusion in this set of articles,5 trust in politi-
cal parties has fallen to just 7 percent in the wake of the massive Lava
Jato (Car Wash) and Odebrecht corruption scandals. At the time of this
writing in August 2018, authoritarian populist Jair Bolsonaro was lead-
ing the polls among candidates legally eligible to run, though trailing
former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who is in prison after a con-
troversial July 2017 bribery conviction.
In some cases, public anger at established parties is easy to under-
stand, as the established parties have governed badly. In Mexico, the
government of Enrique Pe~na Nieto not only failed to curb the criminal
violence that had plagued the country for nearly a decade (Mexico’s
number of homicides reached a record high in 2017) but was respon-
sible for widespread corruption and abuse (see the article by Greene
and Sánchez-Talanquer). In Brazil, the Lava Jato affair—which might
be history’s largest bribery scandal—implicated hundreds of politicians
from all major parties. Worse yet, the scandal coincided with a severe
economic recession. Peru’s political elite has been similarly corrupted.
Odebrecht, the Brazilian construction firm at the center of Car Wash,
104 Journal of Democracy

has admitted paying US$29 million in bribes in Peru. The Odebrecht

scandal tarred not only President Kuczynski but also his three predeces-
sors (Alejandro Toledo, Alan García, and Ollanta Humala), and opposi-
tion leader Keiko Fujimori.
But public discontent is soaring even where governments appear to
have performed well. In Colombia, President Juan Manuel Santos re-
ceived much international praise—and a Nobel Peace Prize—for his
statesmanship in negotiating the end of the country’s civil war. Yet ac-
cording to Latinobarometer, only 17 percent of Colombians were satis-
fied with democracy in 2017,6 and Santos’s vice-president won just 7
percent of the vote when in 2018 he ran to succeed Santos. In Costa
Rica, long known for combining a strong democratic and human-rights
record with important advances in economic and social development,
only one in four citizens avows trust in the government, while only 45
percent report satisfaction with democracy. Even in Chile, often cited as
a model democratic performer, only 28 percent of citizens say that they
trust the government and only little more than a third (36 percent) are
satisfied with democracy.7

Structural Causes of Discontent

Why is public disaffection so high even in relatively well-functioning
Latin American democracies? Three structural factors are worth consid-
ering. One is the persistence of extreme social inequality. Notwithstand-
ing growing economies and declining poverty, levels of inequality in
Latin America remained the highest in the world in the early twenty-
first century. Although the 2002–13 commodities boom enabled Latin
American governments to increase social spending, often dramatically,
most of them did little to redistribute wealth.
Inequality coexists uneasily with democracy.8 Although extreme in-
equality may not be fatal for democratic regimes,9 it inevitably takes
its toll on their quality, and this can eventually threaten their stability.
Inequality widens the perceived gap between citizens and the political
elite, creating the perception that elected officials are not responsive
to—and do not effectively represent—ordinary citizens. Inequality also
skews access to the centers of power and, in many cases, the law. Where
the rule of law is enforced unevenly, such that only a wealthy and well-
connected minority appears to enjoy its protections (against violent
crime, for instance) or escape its enforcement (for everything from tax
evasion to illegal abortions), democracy is imperiled.10
Uneven access to the law generates perceptions of unfairness. Accord-
ing to the 2017 Latinobarometer survey, 75 percent of Latin Americans
believe that their elected leaders govern on behalf of “a few powerful
groups” rather than for “the people as a whole.”11 In Brazil and Mexico,
Latin America’s two biggest democracies, the figure reached 97 and 90
Steven Levitsky 105

percent, respectively. In Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, El

Salvador, Panama, Paraguay, and Peru, it surpassed 80 percent. Even
in Costa Rica, where levels of social inequality have historically been
lower, Colburn and Cruz report that a “shocking” 79 percent of citi-
zens believe their elected leaders govern on behalf of a powerful few.
Inequality can thus easily erode the legitimacy of democratic regimes.
Democratic disaffection also flows from a second factor: state weak-
ness. Weak states undermine democratic performance in several ways.12
For one, weak states’ failure to uphold the rule of law contributes di-
rectly to problems of corruption and public insecurity—two of the most
serious issues facing contemporary Latin American governments. Weak
states also fail to tax effectively, which limits governments’ capacity to
redistribute wealth. In much of Latin America, tax revenue as a percent-
age of GDP is less than half that collected in the advanced industrialized
democracies.
More broadly, state weakness undermines government performance,
which can easily fuel public discontent.13 In the absence of minimally
effective state agencies, even honest and well-intentioned governments
routinely fail to deliver the (public) goods. Where bureaucrats and lo-
cal officials are poorly trained and paid, or where they are embedded in
networks of corruption, patronage, or clientelism, even well-designed
policies tend to be poorly implemented. Essential services such as pub-
lic security, education, healthcare, infrastructure, and justice are thus
underprovided—or distributed so unevenly that there arises a broad
perception of government ineffectiveness, corruption, unfairness, and
neglect. In such a context, it is difficult for any party—whether leftist or
rightist, clean or corrupt—to govern well. Over time, poor governmental
performance erodes public trust in politicians, parties, and, eventually,
democratic institutions themselves. When governments consistently fail
to deliver on their promises, voters eventually conclude that all parties
are the same, that all politicians are corrupt, and that no one in the po-
litical system represents ordinary voters. This is a recipe for populism.
State weakness and poor government performance contribute, in
turn, to a third problem: party weakness. Contrary to expectations that
democracy and regular elections would foster party-system institu-
tionalization in Latin America, established parties and party systems
have continued to weaken across much of the region.14 Severe crises
and policy failures erode partisan identities and encourage voting not
only against incumbents, but against the whole political establish-
ment, as voters abandon all established parties in favor of outsiders. 15
In Mexico, for instance, successive PAN and PRI governments failed
to deliver on a variety of fronts, but especially on the critical issue of
criminal violence. These bipartisan failures, combined with a wide-
spread perception of corruption and abuse under Pe~ n a Nieto, deepened
the Mexican electorate’s disenchantment with the political elite and
106 Journal of Democracy

strengthened AMLO’s anti-establishment appeal. A similar pattern of

party weakening is in evidence in Costa Rica.
The collapse of established parties has exacerbated problems of dem-
ocratic governance in Peru. That country’s parties collapsed in the 1990s
and were never rebuilt. In the absence of viable partisan organizations or
enduring partisan identities, politics becomes extraordinarily fluid and
atomistic. When parties collapse after one or two election cycles, as they
routinely have done in Ecuador, Guatemala, and Peru, it becomes very
difficult to sustain a political career. Politicians are forced either to go
down with their sinking partisan ships or to jump opportunistically from
party to party at each election. Either way, political careers resemble
life in a Hobbesian state of nature: They are nasty, brutish, and short. In
Peru, few politicians at any level are reelected. As a result, most politi-
cal careers span less than a decade. Given the difficulty of sustaining a
political career, professional politicians have begun to disappear. Peru-
vians are thus increasingly governed at all levels by political amateurs—
entrepreneurs, retired military officers, television and radio personali-
ties, former athletes, and other individuals who make their fortune and
fame in another career and use it to jump, usually briefly, into politics.
The amateurization of Peruvian politics has further undermined the
quality of democracy. Because professional politicians expect to sustain
their careers over time, they operate with longer time horizons. They are
more likely to invest in developing good reputations (to win future elec-
tions) and in strengthening institutions. Career legislators, for example,
have an incentive to enhance Congress’s power and prestige. Amateur
politicians, by contrast, tend to operate with short time horizons. Because
they do not expect to remain in politics, they have little incentive to invest
in stronger institutions—or even their own reputations. Indeed, in Peru,
elected offices are increasingly filled by outside entrepreneurs who pur-
chase positions on parties’ candidate lists in anticipation of using public
office to generate a healthy return on their investment (via bribes, kick-
backs, and other forms of corruption).16 The result, not surprisingly, has
been a strikingly high rate of scandal,17 which has only deepened public
distrust toward politicians. A mid-2018 survey found that only 8 percent
of Peruvians believed that Congress worked for the public good.18 Ac-
cording to another survey, 73 percent of Peruvians believe their mayor is
corrupt.19
Amateur politics can inflict considerable damage on democratic insti-
tutions. In Peru, the opposition fujimoristas, who won control of Congress
in 2016, showed almost no interest in shaping policy, representing voters,
or improving their tarnished reputation. Rather, they pursued a reckless
and shortsighted strategy of trying to bring down the PPK government.
Contemporary Latin America thus demonstrates how hard it is for
established parties and politicians to maintain legitimacy in a context
of state weakness and extreme social inequality. The problem is that de-
Steven Levitsky 107

mocracy needs parties and politicians. Indeed, the alternative is almost

invariably worse.

Emerging Challenges
The articles in this cluster point to several other, more immediate chal-
lenges to democracy in Latin America. One is the resurgence of the illib-
eral right. Not long ago, observers pointed to the dangers that the illiberal
left posed to Latin American democracies.20 Indeed, illiberal leftist gov-
ernments undermined democratic institutions in Nicaragua, Venezuela
and, to a lesser degree, Bolivia and Ecuador. Today, however, forces on
the illiberal right may pose a greater threat. Perceptions of rising crime
and corruption create constituencies for mano dura (iron fist) politicians
who trample on liberal rights and constitutional norms in order (they
claim) to solve these problems. Rather than Chávez-like figures, then,
we may see Latin American presidents who resemble Rodrigo Duterte of
the Philippines. In recent years, much of the region’s illiberal right has
aligned with emerging evangelical Christian movements that have mo-
bilized in reaction to the expansion of LGBT, women’s, and other rights.
Illiberal right-wing forces have gained strength in much of the region.
In Peru, fujimorismo, which rejects regional human-rights norms and
casts leftists and human-rights advocates as terrorists, won control of
Congress (and nearly captured the presidency) in 2016. The fujimorista-
led Congress behaved in a strikingly antidemocratic manner between
2016 and 2018, devoting itself to bringing down the administration of
the person who had narrowly defeated Keiko Fujimori in the presiden-
tial race. Unfortunately, PPK’s political failure decimated Peru’s al-
ready weak liberal right, leaving the right side of the political spectrum
almost entirely in illiberal hands.
A similar process unfolded in Colombia, where an alliance of evan-
gelical Christians and followers of former president Alvaro Uribe mo-
bilized to defeat the Santos government’s original peace plan in a 2016
referendum. During its years in power (2002–10), Uribe’s government
had shown a troubling disregard for human rights and the rule of law.
The defeat of the peace plan in the 2016 referendum, followed by Iván
Duque’s victory in the 2018 presidential election, represented a stun-
ning political comeback for uribista forces, displacing the more liberal
center-right forces represented by the Santos government.
Perhaps the most openly authoritarian right-wing figure to emerge in the
region in recent years is Jair Bolsonaro, a congressional backbencher and
former army captain who has repeatedly praised Brazil’s 1964–85 military
dictatorship; endorsed torture, extrajudicial police killings, and paramilitary
death squads; pledged to pack the supreme court; and selected as his run-
ning mate a recently retired general who has spoken publicly of the possible
need for a military coup.21 Bolsonaro has also suggested that he would roll
108 Journal of Democracy

back rights secured in recent years by women, Afro-Brazilians, landless

farmworkers, LGBT citizens, and other historically excluded groups.22 The
most authoritarian presidential candidate that Brazil has seen in decades,
Bolsonaro currently leads in the polls—a status that was reinforced after he
suffered a near-fatal stabbing during a September 6 campaign rally.
The success of illiberal right-wing politicians such as Keiko Fujimori,
Alvaro Uribe, and Bolsonaro poses a direct threat to democratic institu-
tions. Equally worrisome, though, is the demise of democratic center-right
parties. The decline or collapse of parties such as the Social Christian Uni-
ty Party in Costa Rica, the Popular Christian Party in Peru, the Liberal and
Conservative parties in Colombia, and possibly the center-right Brazilian
Social Democratic Party in Brazil could leave economic elites in those
countries without a viable and democratic conservative party to represent
them in the electoral arena. As scholars such as Edward Gibson and Daniel
Ziblatt have shown, the absence of viable conservative parties increases
the likelihood that wealthy elites, fearing that they cannot defend their in-
terests in the electoral arena, will opt for authoritarian alternatives.23
A second challenge to contemporary Latin American democracies
is polarization. Although some polarization is healthy—indeed, neces-
sary—for democracy, extreme polarization can threaten it.24 As Daniel
Ziblatt and I have argued,25 democracy requires “mutual toleration,” or
parties’ acceptance of one another as legitimate rivals. When parties
view their rivals as enemies or existential threats, they grow tempted
to use “any means necessary”—including violence, election fraud, and
military coups—to defeat them. Extreme polarization erodes mutual tol-
eration, increasing the likelihood that parties will view their rivals as an
existential threat—and take extraordinary, even antidemocratic, mea-
sures against them. This is how democracies died in Spain in the 1930s,
Brazil in the 1960s, and Chile in the 1970s.
With a few exceptions such as Bolivia and Venezuela, levels of par-
tisan polarization were modest in Latin America during the 1990s and
early 2000s. Even in countries with strong left-wing parties, such as Bra-
zil, Chile, El Salvador, and Uruguay, mutual toleration was reasonably
strong. But this may be changing, at least in parts of the region. Brazilian
politics, in particular, has grown deeply polarized since President Dilma
Rousseff of the Workers’ Party (PT) won reelection in 2014. The PT’s
four consecutive presidential election victories—the last of which was
achieved via reckless spending and a nasty, hardball campaign—terrified
the right. And with Lula leading the 2018 presidential polls, the conserva-
tive elite began to fear that the PT was becoming a chavista-like force that
would entrench itself in power for decades. These fears drove the 2016
impeachment and ouster of Rousseff, as well as the elite’s celebration of
Lula’s imprisonment and exclusion from the 2018 presidential race. Al-
though entirely constitutional, these actions had troubling consequences
for democracy, as they convinced PT leaders that the right is playing dirty,
Steven Levitsky 109

and that the PT is falling victim to a “right-wing coup.”26 Brazilian poli-

tics has thus become polarized to the point where the PT views its rightist
opponents as coupmongers while the right views the PT as chavista and
even totalitarian. It was in this climate that Bolsonaro suffered a near-fatal
stabbing. With one presidential front-runner in prison and another nearly
assassinated, Brazilian democracy is imperiled.
Polarization has also deepened in Colombia, where the country divided
over the 2016 peace accord. In the 2018 presidential race, the center col-
lapsed, leaving voters to choose between a leftist candidate (Gustavo Pet-
ro) who was accused of castrochavismo and a right-wing candidate (Iván
Duque) whose uribista allies were linked to large-scale rights violations.
There are now signs of growing polarization in other Latin American de-
mocracies, including in Chile, El Salvador, Mexico, and Peru.
Finally, the changing international environment, especially with respect
to U.S. foreign policy, poses a third challenge to Latin American democra-
cies. Following the Cold War’s end, U.S. governments had maintained a
broadly prodemocratic orientation in the Americas. Washington toppled
dictators in Haiti and Panama, helped to stop an authoritarian power grab
in Guatemala (1993) and a stolen election in the Dominican Republic
(1994), and worked behind the scenes to prevent coups in Ecuador, Guate-
mala, Paraguay, and Peru. Although the U.S. record was far from perfect
(U.S. officials did little to promote democracy in Mexico and endorsed a
failed 2002 coup attempt in Venezuela), its overall impact on democracy in
post–Cold War Latin America was almost certainly positive.27
That may now be changing. The least prodemocratic U.S. adminis-
tration in decades, the Trump administration has done little to advance
the cause of democracy in the Americas. Perhaps the most telling case
is that of Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, a U.S. ally who
assaulted democratic institutions in 2017. After a packed Supreme Court
dubiously ruled that the country’s constitutional ban on presidential
reelection was “unconstitutional,” Hernández won a second term in a
flawed vote with disputed results. Although the Organization of Ameri-
can States called for new elections, the Trump administration endorsed
Hernández’s reelection—a move that was likely decisive in his ability
to prevail in the dispute over the results.
The Trump administration’s indifference to democracy has sent a
powerful signal to existing and potential autocrats in the Americas: Au-
thoritarian power grabs, especially by U.S. allies, are unlikely to trigger
a strong external reaction. The external cost of illegally seizing power or
stealing elections is lower today than it has been for decades.

Reasons for Optimism

There are, nevertheless, some real reasons for optimism. Core demo-
cratic institutions remain strikingly robust in Latin America. Despite
110 Journal of Democracy

severe economic crises, painful periods of economic adjustment, and an

increasingly unfavorable international environment, Latin America has
not—or at least not yet—fallen into “democratic recession.” The inci-
dence of democracy in the region has remained stable since 2000, and it
is higher today than at any time during the 1990s.
One reason for optimism is that aside from Cuba, the region’s nondem-
ocracies are even weaker than its democracies. Far from the consolidated
dictatorships of postrevolutionary Mexico, Alfredo Stroessner’s Paraguay,
or Fidel Castro’s Cuba, the competitive authoritarian regimes that emerged
in post–Cold War Latin America suffered from many of the same vulner-
abilities as their democratic counterparts. These include state weakness.
Although the commodities boom may have temporarily masked it effects,
especially in Venezuela, state weakness undermines government perfor-
mance and eventually erodes public support—for autocratic and demo-
cratic governments alike. Contemporary autocrats also govern through
weak parties, which, among other things, heightens problems of leadership
succession. Post–Cold War autocracies in the Dominican Republic (under
Joaquín Balaguer), Peru (Alberto Fujimori), and Ecuador (Rafael Correa)
were all hobbled by problems of succession. Finally, no contemporary
Latin American autocrat has been able to eliminate elections. As Chilean
dictator Augusto Pinochet learned in 1988 and Nicaragua’s Sandinistas
learned in 1990, even unfair elections can be a source of autocratic vul-
nerability. Governments may attempt to steal elections, but as President
Balaguer learned in 1994, such strategies are also fraught with risk.
The vulnerability of Latin American autocrats is clearly seen in the fall
of Correa in Ecuador. Correa took office in 2007, and had a long run of
success—his approval rating never fell below 50 percent, and he managed
to change the constitution to permit his indefinite reelection as president.
But falling oil prices and a weakening economy eroded his support, and
when opinion polls suggested that winning a third term in 2017 would be
difficult, he opted not to run. Instead, he tried to follow the Putin model:
Impose a weak successor and then return to power later (in Correa’s case,
that meant in 2021). The strategy backfired, however. Correa’s handpicked
candidate, Lenín Moreno, narrowly won the 2017 election, but he quickly
moved against his patron. Moreno launched a corruption investigation that
landed Vice-President (and longtime Correa ally) Jorge Glas in prison, and
called a referendum that in February 2018 restored presidential term limits,
blocking Correa’s return to power. Needing allies in his struggle against
Correa, Moreno adopted a liberalizing agenda, abandoning his predeces-
sor’s attacks on NGOs and the media. Correa’s authoritarianism was thus
largely dismantled, moving Ecuador back toward democracy.
Latin America’s two remaining post–Cold War autocracies, Nicara-
gua and Venezuela, are under heavy siege. Facing massive domestic op-
position, the governments of Daniel Ortega and Nicolás Maduro turned
to repression. Both regimes appear to be in a death spiral. Even if they
Steven Levitsky 111

survive, however, they are now unambiguous failures. Once viewed as

a viable alternative to liberal democracy in the region, the “Bolivarian”
model is nearly dead: Few Latin American politicians wish to replicate
it. Even Bolivia’s Evo Morales, the most successful of the Bolivarian
presidents (due, in part, to a healthy economy rooted in prudent mac-
roeconomic management) is vulnerable. In 2016, Morales lost a refer-
endum that would have enabled him to run for a fourth term. Although
Bolivia’s packed Plurinational Constitutional Tribunal later cleared the
way for a reelection bid, Morales may now be beatable. His approval
rating dropped below 50 percent in 2018, and early polls show him in a
statistical tie with ex-president Carlos Mesa in the 2019 presidential race.
The instability and failure of post–Cold War autocracies in Peru, Ec-
uador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela means that for now, democracy re-
mains the only game in town in Latin America. Indeed, most of the
region’s disaffected citizens have continued to seek alternatives within
the democratic system. In Argentina, for example, rising discontent with
President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner led to the 2015 election of
Mauricio Macri, whose center-right party, Republican Proposal (PRO),
was fully committed to democratic rules of the game. In Chile two years
later, a disgruntled electorate turned against the governing center-left
coalition but chose an established center-right alternative, ex-president
Sebastián Pi~nera. Likewise, in Costa Rica, voters turned on the estab-
lished parties in 2014 and 2018, but the one they turned to, the Citizens’
Action Party, was thoroughly democratic.
Even in Mexico, which has been depicted as a case of radical populism,
the 2018 election is more likely a case of democratic realignment. Far
from a Chávez-like outsider, AMLO is a career politician whose program
and initial appointments suggest pragmatic reformism rather than radi-
cal populism. His MORENA is a new party, but as Greene and Sánchez-
Talanquer argue in their contribution to this set of essays, it seems more
likely to replace the fading Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) on
the party system’s center-left than to topple the system. Mexicans clearly
voted for change in 2018, but they did not necessarily vote for regime
change, much less for authoritarianism.
The big question remains Brazil, where an openly authoritarian fig-
ure sits atop the presidential polls. Latin America’s largest country
has experienced a political perfect storm: a corruption scandal of un-
precedented scope combined with a severe economic recession. Not
surprisingly, public discontent has soared. The 2017 Latinobarometer
survey found that only 13 percent of Brazilians were satisfied with de-
mocracy—the lowest figure in Latin America.28 Other surveys found
more than 40 percent support for a military coup.29 Brazil’s fragmented
field of presidential candidates includes democratic alternatives on the
center-right (Geraldo Alckmin) and the center-left (Ciro Gomes, Ma-
rina Silva, and Fernando Haddad, who is now the PT’s official candi-
112 Journal of Democracy

date), but the specter of Bolsonaro’s authoritarianism looms large. This

should worry democrats across the region. Brazil has developed robust
democratic institutions, and it may well survive the current storm. But if
Brazilian democracy fails, the consequences could be disastrous for the
entire region. Brazil’s 1964 military coup and subsequent dictatorship
encouraged a wave of military takeovers across Latin America. That
tragic history is unlikely to be repeated, but the region’s democrats must
be vigilant. The warning signs are there.

NOTES

1. Latinobarómetro, Informe 2017, 30 January 2018, 17. This annual report is available
at www.latinobarometro.org.

2. Latinobarómetro, Informe 2017, 25–27.

3. Mollie J. Cohen, Noam Lupu, and Elizabeth J. Zechmeister, eds., The Political
Culture of Democracy in the Americas, 2016/17: A Comparative Study of Democracy and
Governance (Nashville: LAPOP, 2017), 5–6.

4. Cohen, Lupu, and Zechmeister, Political Culture of Democracy in the Americas, 7–8.

5. The Journal of Democracy plans to cover the Brazilian presidential election in its
January 2019 issue.

6. Latinobarómetro, Informe 2017, 17.

7. Latinobarómetro, Informe 2017, 17, 25.

8. Carles Boix, Democracy and Redistribution (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2003); Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Economic Origins of Dictatorship
and Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

9. Stephan Haggard and Robert R. Kaufman, “Inequality and Regime Change: Demo-
cratic Transitions and the Stability of Democratic Rule,” American Political Science Re-
view 106 (August 2012): 495–516.

10. Juan E. Méndez, Guillermo O’Donnell, and Paulo Sérgio de Pinheiro, eds., The (Un)
Rule of Law and the Underprivileged in Latin America (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1999); Daniel M. Brinks, The Judicial Response to Police Killings in Lat-
in America: Inequality and the Rule of Law (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

11. Latinobarómetro, Informe 2017, 18.

12. For a classic account, see Guillermo O’Donnell, “On the State, Democratization
and Some Conceptual Problems: A Latin American View with Glances at Some Postcom-
munist Countries,” World Development 21 (August 1993): 1355–69.

13. Scott Mainwaring, “The Crisis of Representation in the Andes,” Journal of Democ-
racy 17 (July 2006): 13–27.

14. Scott Mainwaring, ed., Party Systems in Latin America: Institutionalization, De-
cay, and Collapse (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

15. Jason Seawright, Party-System Collapse: The Roots of Crisis in Peru and Ven-
ezuela (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012); Jana Morgan, Bankrupt Represen-
Steven Levitsky 113

tation and Party System Collapse (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University
Press, 2011); Noam Lupu, Party Brands in Crisis: Partisanship, Brand Dilution, and the
Breakdown of Political Parties in Latin America (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2017); and Samuel Handlin, State Crisis in Fragile Democracies: Polarization and Politi-
cal Regimes in South America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017).

16. See Mauricio Zavaleta, Coaliciones de Independientes: Las reglas no escritas de

la política electoral (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2014); and Paula Mu~noz, Buy-
ing Audiences: Clientelism and Electoral Campaigns When Parties Are Weak (New York:
Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

17. See Paula Mu~noz Chirinos, “Clientelismo de campa~na, obrismo y corrupción: Baja
accountability democrática en Perú,” in Jorge Aragón, ed., Participación, competencia y
representación política: Contribuciones para el debate (Lima: IEP/JNE/Escuela Electoral
y de Gobernabilidad, 2016), 159–78. 

18. GFK June 2018 survey, cited in La República (Lima), 1 July, 2018, https://larepublica.
pe/politica/1270699-encuesta-gfk-82-dice-congreso-vela-intereses-particulares-ciudadanos.

19. GFK July 2018 survey, cited in La República, 23 July 2018, https://larepublica.pe/
politica/1283474-encuesta-gfk-73-cree-alcalde-involucrado-actos-corrupcion.

20. See, for example, Kurt Weyland, “Latin America’s Authoritarian Drift: The Threat
from the Populist Left,” Journal of Democracy 24 (July 2013): 18–32.

21. See Leonencio Nossa, “Em churrascaria, Bolsonaro pergunta: ‘O que acham do
Mour~ao?’” O Estado de S. Paulo, 20 July 2018; Leonencio Nossa, “Bolsonaro defende PM
por massacre em Carajás,” O Estado de S. Paulo, 14 July 2018; Ana Pompeu, “As frases
pol^emicas de Jair Bolsonaro,” Congresso em Foco (Brasilia), 5 August 2017; Juliana, Cipri-
ana, “Veja 10 frases pol^emicas de Bolsonaro que o deputado considerou ‘brincadeira,’”
Estado de Minas (Belo Horizonte), 14 April 2018; “No Pará, Bolsonaro diz que homicídios
devem ser respondidos com ‘bala,’” Poder360, 13 July 2018; Ranier Bragon, “Em 2003,
Bolsonaro parabenizou grupos de extermínio por substituir pena de morte no país,” Folha
de S. Paulo, 24 June 2018; Eduardo Bresciani, “Bolsonaro prop~oe aumentar número de
ministros do Supremo,” O Globo (Rio de Janeiro), 29 June 2018; Diego Toledo, “Vice de
Bolsonaro, general exalta legado de ditadura e ataca ‘ativismo gay,’” UOL, 8 August 2018.

22. “As frases pol^emicas”; “Veja 10 frases pol^emicas.”

23. Edward Gibson, Class and Conservative Parties: Argentina in Comparative Per-
spective (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); Daniel Ziblatt, Conservative
Parties and the Birth of Democracy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017).

24. For a classic account of how polarization can undermine a democracy, see Arturo
Valenzuela, The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Chile (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1978).

25. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die (New York: Crown, 2018).

26. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, “Lula: There Is a Right-Wing Coup Underway in Bra-
zil,” New York Times, 14 August 2018.

27. Scott Mainwaring and Aníbal Pérez-Li~nán, Democracies and Dictatorships in Latin
America: Emergence, Survival, and Fall (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

28. Latinobarómetro, Informe 2017, 9.

29. Douglas Rodrigues, “43,1% dizem apoiar intervenç~ao militar provisória no Bra-
sil,” Poder360, 28 September 2017, www.poder360.com.br/brasil/431-dizem-apoiar-in-
tervencao-militar-provisoria-no-brasil.