Populist Redemption and the Unfinished Democratization of Latin America

Abstract

The re-elections of Carlos Menem in Argentina and Alberto Fujimori in Peru, and the unstable and corrupt presidencies of Fernando Collor in Brazil and Abdala Bucaram in Ecuador, have brought back the discussion on Latin American populism. Contrary to the dominant views of populism as a phase in the region’s history, understood either as a transitory stage towards modernization, or as a political phenomenon linked to import substitution industrialization, the re-emergence of populist leaders poses again fundamental political problems. Continuing the unresolved issues raised by debates on classical populism, the questions that need to be addressed from an empirical and normative standpoint are: What is the relationship between Latin American populism and democracy? What is the pattern of incorporation of the popular sectors into the national political community, and how do they differ from the Western experience? And what are the specificities of really existing Latin American democracies? Differently from the Western pattern of inclusion through the progressive extension and deepening of citizenship rights, the Latin American masses were incorporated by populist appeals to “el pueblo” and weak citizenship rights. Citizenship is not the only, or the main, relationship between individuals and the state. The poor and the excluded have been incorporated through charismatic political movements. These movements have used clientelism and corporatism to give resources to the poor, not as citizenship rights, but as personal favors of politicians, or as corporatist concessions to privileged groups. The institutionalization of these two mediations between state and society – weak and incomplete citizenship and strong appeals to el pueblo – have produced a specific version of democracy. Guillermo O’Donnell has characterized these electoral regimes, which transform electoral winners into the nation’s savior, and which do not respect democratic procedures and civil rights, as “delegative democracies.” This essay is divided into two sections. The first reviews existent theories of Latin American populism, and presents a new approach to its study. This research strategy analyzes the institutionalization of different mediations between the state and society at the time of the transition from “the politics of notables” to “mass politics.” The second section studies recently re-established democracies in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru. These democracies do not respect civil rights, and/or liberal democratic procedures. Differently from the West,