Delegative Democracy Research Articles

Counting on the Past or Investing in the Future? Economic and Political Accountability in Fujimori's Peru

This article strengthens and extends economic theories of presidential approval, assesses accountability in Peru's “delegative democracy,” and explores the political feasibility of economic policies. The analysis finds that prospective evaluations shape presidential approval in Peru, demonstrating the utility of economic theories in the developing world. Peruvians hold politicians accountable not only for the economic past, but also for future implications of past actions, which suggests that vertical accountability exists and that this type of accountability encourages forward-looking policy choices. Finally, the analysis indicates that important political events, including the capture of the Sendero Luminoso guerrillas and Fujimori's autogolpe, influence Peruvians' approval of the president.

The Politics of Freeing Markets in Latin America: Chile, Argentina, and Mexico. By Judith A. Teichman. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. 288p. $55.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.

The politics of neoliberal reform in Latin America has produced a number of impressions that are more or less widely held, but not necessarily entirely accurate. For example, many critics of the neoliberal reform process see it as a creature of Washington and Wall Street—views of economic development imposed on vulnerable, debt-ridden Latin American governments. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank play crucial roles as carriers of the “Washington Consensus” and enforcers of its policy prescriptions. In this view, insulated technocrats—often with U.S. economics degrees—implement these essentially unpopular programs without consultation, oversight, or any societal participation. “Delegative democracy” and populations battered by a decade or more of debt and inflation help explain the extent to which these unelected and unaccountable technocrats have been able to promote this agenda. A narrow electoral coalition, anchored by wealth holders and conservative ideologues, has maintained the political space for these insulated technocrats to continue, despite deep opposition from societal groups such as labor.

Productive but Not Valued: The Russian State Duma, 1994-2001

(2002). Productive but Not Valued: The Russian State Duma, 1994-2001. Europe-Asia Studies: Vol. 54, No. 5, pp. 701-724.

Privatization South American Style. By Luigi Manzetti. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. 373p. $74.00.

Luigi Manzetti fills an important gap in the literature on market reforms in Latin America by providing a comparative analysis of privatization in Argentina, Brazil, and Peru. He engages the literature on economic reform in developing countries by focusing on the implementation of this single policy and complements a burgeoning scholarship on the economics of privatization in the region. The main contribu- tion lies in underlining the relevance of political factors for explaining the success of privatization policies. The "South American" style, he suggests, reinforces the view of those who, like John Williamson and Stephen Haggard ("The Political Conditions of Economic Reform," in Williamson, ed. The Political Economy of Reform, 1994) and Guillermo O'Donnell ("Delegative Democracy," Journal of Democracy 5 [January 1994]: 53­69), associate the rapid implementation of market reforms with the concentration of executive au- thority at the expense of the checks and balances of liberal democracies.

The Nature of the New Argentine Democracy. The Delegative Democracy Argument Revisited

O'Donnell's diagnosis regarding the delegative nature of the new Latin American democracies has won wide acceptance in current debates on institutional consolidation. Through the analysis of the Argentine case this commentary challenges the delegative democracy argument as one-sided. The delegativeness hypothesis, it will be argued, turns a blind eye to the truly innovative processes that have taken place within Argentine society and make this democratising wave distinctive.

Federalism and democratization in Russia

The scholarly literature on democratic transitions has largely ignored developments at the local level and the relationship between federalism and democracy. In this work I examine the development of federalism in Russia and I assess the impact of Russia's highly asymmetrical form of federalism on democratisation. The study shows that federalism far from promoting democracy has allowed authoritarianism to flourish in many of Russia's eighty nine regions and republics. Federalism and democratization in Russia exist in contradiction rather than harmony. In a vicious circle, authoritarianism at the centre has been nourished by authoritarianism in the region and vice versa. “Elective dictatorships” and “delegative democracies” are now well entrenched in many republics, and mini-presidential systems are firmly established in a majority of the regions.

Beyond ‘Delegative Democracy’: ‘Old Politics’ and ‘New Economics’ in Latin America

For around 15 years Latin America has been undergoing an unprecedented conjunction of political and economic change, from authoritarianism to democracy and from a state-centred matrix of economic development towards free-market economies. This article takes up the theme of the links between politics and economic change in contemporary Latin America. More specifically, it examines the relation between ‘old politics’ and ‘new economics’. It has two main purposes: The first is to re-examine some of modernisation theory's assumptions about the relations between political and economic modernisation. The second, more specific to the Latin American debate, is to question some of the dominant views about the nature of democracy in the region, particularly Guillermo O'Donnell's influential ‘delegative democracy’ model.

Delegative Democracy in Peru? Fujimori’s 1995 Landslide and the Prospects for 2000

The decisive victory of Alberto Fujimori and his congressional list in 1995 did not reflect a delegative view of democracy among the Peruvian electorate. Instead of uncritically supporting their reelected president, as a delegative model would predict, Peruvians have rejected the illiberal and possibly unconstitutional policies of his second administration. Relying on public opinion poll data, this study argues that the same issues that facilitated Fujimori’s 1995 landslide will probably work against him in 2000.

Democratization and Changes in the Pattern of Association in Brazil

The results of a survey of 311 members of voluntary associations in São Paulo and Belo Horizonte suggest that members of voluntary associations incorporate the values introduced by social movements during the democratization process: they claim organizational autonomy from the state, and they defend more participatory forms of decisionmaking. These findings are important for the debate between democratic consolidation and delegative democracy. Democratization might benefit from the incorporation of these actors into new participatory designs.

From decisionism to consensus? the politics of the second‐generation reforms in Argentina

This article focuses on the institutional and political constraints to the adoption and implementation of second‐generation economic reforms in democratizing countries, specifically Argentina. The principal hypothesis is that these reforms require a different set of political conditions from those that enabled the successful adoption and implementation of first generation economic reforms. Institutional constraints hamper the adoption of second‐generation reforms, due both to their intrinsic characteristics and the context of stability in which the attempts arise. This contrasts with first‐generation reforms, whose nature and the surrounding context of crisis allows governments to overcome the constraints to change by pursuing a decisionist strategy. The separation of powers and purposes embodied in the Argentine institutional structure increases the number of veto points through which a plethora of discordant voices is reproduced. Rather than facilitating consensus on change, the outcome is more likely to be stalemate or lengthy negotiations, in which actors ensure that their private interests prevail. The politics of labour and fiscal reforms in Argentina illustrate the argument. The study has implications for the stereotype of ‘delegative democracy’, of which Argentina is often said to be an example.

Manifestations of delegative democracy in Russian local politics: what does it mean for the future of Russia?

In attempts to describe post-communist politics adequately, this paper employs the concept of delegative democracy for analyzing Russia's local politics. It argues that the election rather than appointment by the President of local governors in Russia has facilitated the establishment of a system which can be generally described as delegative democracy. This regime inherits free and contested elections from the democratic system and non-democratic methods of power consolidation from the authoritarian system. As a mixture of those two hardly reconcilable types of political system, delegative democracy in Russia has gained a shape and reached a certain degree of stability during 1993–95. This gain may delay the consolidation of representative democracy in Russia for an indefinite time and eventually lead to a new level of economic stagnation and a return to authoritarianism.

Private investment response to neoliberal reforms in a delegative democracy: Reflections on Argentina

Private investment response to neoliberal reforms in a delegative democracy: Reflections on Argentina

The Judiciary and Delegative Democracy in Argentina

In 1983 Argentina began a promising transition from authoritarian rule toward democracy with the election of President Raid Alfonsin. Since then, much progress has been made: large-scale human rights violations are a thing of the past, several smooth elections for various offices have been held, and a competitive political system operates fairly well.1 Nevertheless, Argentina's experience has demonstrated that the road to effective democratic governance is not smooth or direct.2 Instead, one might argue that over the past several years a variant type of democratic regime, what Guillermo O'Donnell calls a delegative democracy, has emerged and begun to consolidate.3

Populist Redemption and the Unfinished Democratization of Latin America

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,

Menemismo y reforma: revisando el modelo de democracia delegativa

Against Guillermo O'Donnells well-known analysis centered on the idea of a delegative democracy the author holds that the political style of Carlos Menem is to be seen in its novelty rather than as an outcome of Argentine's populist tradition. Menem's style should be understood as an answer to the economic crisis at the end of Alfonsinas presidential rule.

Delegative democracy in Russia and Ukraine

This paper applies the concept of delegative democracy to contemporary developments in Russia and Ukraine. They qualify as examples of this phenomenon insofar as leaders in these states are elected by the people but use their democratic legitimacy to justify authoritarian behavior. Factors which contribute to this trend are a deep socio-economic crisis, existent political culture, and a lack of institutions to safeguard democratic norms. While recognizing the various arguments endorsing this solution, this paper concludes that this form of rule is unlikely to live up to its promises and ultimately undermines the emergence of a representative, pluralist democracy.

Mercosur, Democracy, and Labor

Political scientists have recently begun to evaluate the outcome of the past decade's transitions in Latin America. Most recognize that the optimism that initially accompanied the restorations was excessive, that the results, aside from the restoration of constitutional rule, have ended up being limited, and that authoritarianism persists in the political culture of Latin American nations. Guillermo O'Donnell (1991, 1992) insists that it is necessary to identify the difficulties of a second phase of the process of democratization that he calls democratic Attuned as always to both institutional and cultural dimensions of analysis, he points to the importance of the preexisting political culture for the success or failure of consolidation. As fortunate cases he points to Uruguay and Chile, which until 1973 were famous exemplars of political culture. In other countries, such as Carlos Menem's Argentina or Fernando Collor's Brazil, the process of transition led to delegative democracies in which the elected president was granted the capacity to govern as the savior of the nation, above parliamentary, judicial, or party, much less societal, controls. O'Donnell links this process also to the sociocultural impact of economic adjustment-the disruption of political identities, the fragmentation of the state apparatus and the dissolution of its regulatory power, and the consolidation of a short-term, individualist, and amoral social perspective (O'Donnell, 1993). A comparative study of the cases of Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Peru (Ducatenzeiler et al., 1992) develops a similar analysis, but these researchers prefer to characterize these regimes as representing a new populism. Apart from the difficulty of resuscitating a problematic concept, this approach has the drawback that the social, political, and economic objectives of this new populism are entirely opposed to those of classical populism, marked by the question of the integration of the masses and industrial capitalism directed

Delegative Democracy

Delegative Democracy

On the state, democratization and some conceptual problems: A Latin American view with glances at some postcommunist countries

The article argues that for proper understanding of many processes of democratization, current conceptions of the state must be revised, especially with reference to its legal dimension. On this basis several contrasts are drawn between representative, consolidated democracies and the democratic (i.e., polyarchical) forms that are emerging in most newly democratized countries, East and South. From this perspective, various phenomena not presently theorized (except as deviations from a presumed modal pattern of democratization) are discussed. Concepts such as delegative democracy, low-intensity citizenship and a state which combines strong democratic and authoritarian features are introduced for the purpose of that discussion.