Separating the Chaff from the Wheat: An Exploration of Latin American Political Regimes

Abstract

This article seeks to characterize the predominant political regimes in Latin America in the 21^st century, their relative stability and endurance. It points out that even if the differences between them are less clear than in the 20^th century, the main regimes are authoritarian (autocratic), more or less liberal democracies, and populism. It goes on arguing that in contrast to the 20^th century, the role and presence of the military current authoritarian regimes is less direct, which may have created confusion. Of the three regimes, authoritarian are the more stable ones. Regarding liberal democracy, despite ups and downs, democracy has remained as the dominant regime in the region. As established in mainstream political science findings about the region, the sources of this continuity do not depend overall on the economy or social trends such as inequality or poverty levels but on political factors (the normative preferences of political actors over democracy, and on their political moderation or radicalism). Also, Latin American democracies have weathered several storms of widespread protests deriving from inner discontent. In order to make sense of the sources of instability one has to look into strictly political factors such as fragmentation, volatility, acute polarization, coalition breakdowns, rejection of critical government policies, and impeachment of presidents. The third regime type is populism, which has had a strong revival during this century, with important differences with its earlier 20^th century versions. Several scholarly works point out that present populist regimes’ most prominent features are strictly political, which they characterize as a “moment” or a movement to attain power, which may end up giving birth to more stable regimes like competitive authoritarism. I prefer to delve into populism as a regime in its own right, which has emerged frequently in the region, in some cases deriving into fully authoritarian ones (Venezuela) or moving back to liberal democracy (Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru). The paper ends calling for the need to deepen research regarding both differences between the three regimes and the specific factors affecting stability of democracies in the region.