Peter H. Smith "Illiberal Democracy in Latin America" October 18, 2004

Peter H. Smith is Professor of Political Science and Simón Bolívar Professor of Latin American Studies at UC San Diego. He is a specialist on comparative politics, Latin American politics, and U.S.–Latin American relations. Professor Smith has been an affiliate of CLAS since 2003.

-CLAS Working Paper "Cycles of Electoral Democracy in Latin America, 1900-2000" by Peter H. Smith (.pdf file)
-Download paper "The Rise of Illiberal Democracy in Latin America" on which talk is based (.pdf file)

The Rise and Persistence of Illiberal Democracy in Latin America
By Fernando Hidalgo

The free and fair election of political leaders is now the norm in Latin America. Yet democracy has failed to live up to its promise in most of the region. As a result, Latin American democracies today are less ambitious but more durable than earlier experiments in democratic rule, Peter Smith, Professor of Political Science at UC San Diego, explained during his CLAS presentation.

The Development of Democracy in Latin America

Professor Smith’s findings, drawn from his new book, Democracy in Latin America: Political Change in Comparative Perspective, show that the region underwent three broad “cycles” of democratic change in the 20th Century. The first period lasted from 1900 to about 1934, during which time most governments were ruled by oligarchs that won power through severely restricted elections. The second cycle endured from roughly 1940 to 1977, during which democracy first emerged throughout much of the region, but ended under a wave of reactionary military coups. The region’s political situation today is a product of the third cycle, which began in the late 1970s. By the year 2000, 80 percent of all Latin Americans enjoyed the limited fruits of democratic electoral regimes

Professor Smith’s discussion of the historical development of democracy illuminates the dramatic evolution of politics throughout the region. From 1900 to 2000, 47 percent of the time, Latin American countries were ruled by authoritarian regimes. This compares with 26 percent for electoral democracy, 10 percent for semidemocracy, and 18 percent for competitive oligarchic regimes. Clearly, authoritarianism has been the most frequent form of government in the region. On average, nine coups occurred per decade, though this dropped off significantly at the end of the century. Oligarchic regimes made up 40 percent of the regime types in the first cycle, but almost completely disappeared thereafter. Once democracy arrives on the scene, oligarchies become an endangered species.

Regional differences also exist. Almost every country in South America had a prior experience with democracy that they could draw upon when making the democratic transition in the third cycle. Most South American countries re-democratized in the 1980s. Central America and the Caribbean, on the other hand, are democratic neophytes, with the exception of Costa Rica, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic. Perhaps as a consequence, the transitions in this sub-region were later than those in South America, as the Central American and Caribbean transitions coincided with the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s.

Is there anything different about the democracies of the third cycle? According to Smith’s analysis, democracies of the newest wave are more resilient than in earlier periods. Electoral democracies that emerged in the period from 1940 to 1977 lasted an average of 14.2 years. By 2000, democratic governments of the latest cycle have already lasted an average of 14.9 years and no reversal of the trend is apparent. Economic performance in the newest crop of democracies has been unimpressive. Electoral democracies of the second cycle enjoyed, on average, 5 percent annual GDP growth. Third cycle democracies, however, have experienced a substantially smaller average growth rate of 3.3 percent.

The Rise of Illiberal Democracy

After highlighting the positive trend of region-wide democratization, Peter Smith next turned to a troubling development: the rise of “illiberal” democracy. According to Smith, illiberal democracies are regimes that combine free and fair elections with systematic constraints on rights and liberties. Using measurements drawn from the organization, Freedom House, Smith finds that new democracies in Latin America overwhelmingly tend to be illiberal ones.

Illiberal democracies are marked by problems such as serious constraints on freedom of the press and the weak rule of law. Throughout the region, journalists have been killed at the hands of paramilitaries, landowners, the business class, local and provincial political leaders and even military officers. Other constraints include “gag laws,” strict antidefamation laws, and other forms of censorship. In addition, Latin American governments often fail to provide even-handed and effective rule of law. Especially common are arbitrary violations of civil rights by official security forces. Throughout much of the region, police can kill with impunity and judicial systems are weak and ineffective.

In the 1970s, democracies failed to fully respect civil liberties 26 percent of the time (measured by “country years”). In the 1980s, this proportion rose to 51 percent and in the 1990s it rose to nearly 75 percent! During the 1990s, only three countries were consistently rated as liberal democracies: Chile, Costa Rica, and Uruguay. Less than 5 percent of Latin Americans lived with adequate protections of their civil rights in the most democratic decade of the twentieth century.

Illiberal democracy has been both pervasive and durable. Of the 15 illiberal democracies in existence in the 1990s, eight remained at the end of the century. Only Panama in 1999 and Argentina and the Dominican Republic in 2000 transitioned from illiberal to liberal democracies in the decade. Peru, Ecuador and Venezuela all retrogressed to semidemocratic regimes. Although it is too early to say definitively, illiberal democracy in Latin America does not appear to be a “stepping stone” to liberal democracy.

The Disappearance of “Dangerous” Democracies?

Professor Smith ended his talk with speculation over a link between the rise of illiberal democracy and the surprising resilience of democratic governments throughout the region. In his view, the democratic governments in today’s Latin America are much less ambitious than their counterparts in the second cycle (1940-77). Democracies in the second cycle were likely to end in military coups precisely because they were likely to pursue policies that directly confronted the deep social inequalities of the region and challenged privileged social actors. Democracies in the current period, Smith argues, are “tamed”, and less “dangerous” than their predecessors. Because they are unlikely to challenge beneficiaries of the current unequal order, democratically elected governments survive and remained unthreatened by a restless military.

Peter H. Smith is Professor of Political Science and Simón Bolívar Professor of Latin American Studies at UC San Diego. He presented his paper on “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy in Latin America” at CLAS on October 18, 2004.

Fernando Hidalgo is a graduate student in the Department of Political Science.

Professor Smith speaking in the CLAS Conference Room on October 18.