Book review: 21st Century Democracy Promotion in the Americas: Standing up for the polity. By Jorge Heine and Brigitte Weiffen. Routledge Global Institutions, 2014. 186 pages. R$ 50,73 (kindle, amazon.com.br)
Almost exactly 14 years ago, in September 2001, in a special session of the Organization of American States (OAS) General Assembly, the foreign ministers of the Americas approved in Lima the Inter-American Democratic Charter (IADC). What role has the promotion and defense of democracy played since then?
The decade that followed was marked not only by remarkable economic prosperity that saw a massive reduction of poverty in Latin America, but also unprecedented democratic stability. With the exception of Cuba, multiparty elections have become the norm, and old-fashioned military coups are extremely rare — quite an achievement considering that as recently as 1979, only three elected governments were in place in all of South America. While in the past, military coup d’états were the greatest threat to democracy, the major problem since the late 1990s are incumbent presidents who overreach in their efforts to accumulate political power.
That has made defending democracy more difficult. While outright illegal strategies elicit a clear response (such as the coup in Venezuela in 2002), it is much more complicated for neighboring countries or regional institutions to react correctly when a democratic regime is challenged by legal or quasi-legal means. Ambiguity or uncertainty about the nature and scope of violations — as seen in Venezuela or Ecuador today — are an obstacle to enforcement. In a way, that can be seen as progress: Unambiguous crises tend to occur in the early stages of democratization, when the functioning of democratic institutions is still heavily constrained by the legacies of autocracy — a stage most Latin American countries seem to have overcome, despite continuous shortcomings of their democratic systems.
In a short and engaging book on the subject, Jorge Heine, a scholar-diplomat, and Brigitte Weiffen, a Visiting Professor at the University of São Paulo (USP), recount the importance of the Organization of American States (OAS) in the history of democracy defense and promotion in the hemisphere, from the OAS Charter in 1948 to the Santiago Commitment in 1991 and the Washington Protocol a year later, which established an “anti-coup norm”. They rightly argue that the OAS was at the forefront in terms of international mechanisms for the promotion of democracy, while recognizing that those were secondary to US national security doctrine during the Cold War. Still, the organization is one of the few that formally endorsed democracy already in its founding document, and it is, along with the Andean Community, the only one that before the end of the Cold War already included a more far-reaching commitment stipulating democracy as an objective of the organization.
The authors emphasize the importance of the Inter-American Democratic Charger (IADC), while recognizing its limitations for day-to-day policy making. Called an “aspirational document” by Peter Hakim, its major problem is perhaps the lack of a clear threshold determining precisely at what point the OAS should intervene according to the main action clauses in Articles 17-21. The first time the OAS acted in defense of democracy under the IADC framework was in response to the coup in Venezuela in April 2002, when Resolution 811 condemned the alteration of constitutional order. While the OAS may not have been decisive to solve the solution, it was certainly helpful, so it is notable that Venezuela’s current government routinely demonizes the organization and called its new Secretary General “anti-Venezuelan” and a “traitor of South America” after the recently appointed Uruguayan had asked to send an electoral observer mission to Venezuela ahead of parliamentary elections in December. Ironically, high-ranking US officials often privately complain that the OAS is useless as it is dominated by anti-US populists, so the OAS is confronted by skepticism from both sides.
The authors provide a detailed historical overview of constitutional crises in the region and patiently describe how they classify each episode, makes the book ideal for courses on Latin American politics and history. The book’s broad title, however, is somewhat misleading, as the analysis largely focuses on the OAS, and not on other regional organizations that have played an important role in times of crisis, such as Mercosur and UNASUR, dealt with in the final chapter. This is particularly relevant as the OAS plays virtually no role in today’s most challenging crisis — in Venezuela. Leading governments in the region seem to have decided, at least for now, to leave the OAS on the sidelines. What has caused the decline of the OAS in the region? Heine and Weiffen write that “regional and sub-regional advances in cooperation that assert their distinct Latin American or South American identity have become not the exception, but the rule.” The big question is whether this trend can be explained by structural factors (e.g. reduced dependence on the United States) or an ideological alignment between South America’s leading governments. Would Presidents Capriles and Neves continue to opt for UNASUR, and leave the United States aside, as current leaders do, or would be refocus on the OAS?
As I argued earlier this year in a debate on the future of the OAS, organized by Americas Quarterly, no one disputes past OAS contributions to political stability in the Americas—for example during the crises in Peru in 2000 and in Venezuela in 2002. But in an increasingly crowded institutional landscape and subsequent “forum-shopping” by Latin American governments, the oldest regional organization is going to have to adapt to a less central and less visible role in the hemisphere for now.
Looking at the way regional leaders dealt with crises in the past years, the authors argue that Brazil and Argentina have “exhibited a biased assessment of democratic crises. Outright attacks on left-wing governments are likely to be targeted within the defense of democracy framework, whereas slow-motion democratic decline under leftist regimes is widely tolerated.” That may be true, but it must also be taken into account that tackling the slow decline in countries like Venezuela and Ecuador is far more difficult to deal with than with classic coup d’états.
21st Century Democracy Promotion in the Americas ends on a pessimistic note:
There is no longer a single project under the rubric of democracy that unites the countries of the region. Rather, at least two rival visions of democracy — representative versus participatory — vie for support. The lack of a shared understanding of what constitutes democracy makes the collective defense of democracy more problematic (….) leaving it, if not in tatters, (…) seriously weakened.
As the end of chavismo becomes a real possibility and left-of-center governments are weakened in Argentina and Brazil, it remains unclear to what extent the authors’ assessment describes an ephemeral phenomenon or a long-term trend. Elections both in Argentina and Venezuela, along with a temporarily handicapped Brazil, may fundamentally change regional dynamics and notions about the future of democracy defense.
Read also:
Brazil at the Eye of the Storm: Lula, Zelaya and Democracy in Central America
