Can Democracy Survive This Fragile Moment? A View From Latin America

-OpEd-

BUENOS AIRES — For over a decade now, the social sciences have been peering into what is being termed the “democratic erosion” of Western-style, constitutional systems.

The idea of democratic erosion received a boost in 2017, with the election of Donald J. Trump as U.S. president, but we might cite other examples of democracies being worn out from inside, in countries like Brazil under Jair Bolsonaro, Hungary under Prime Minister Viktor Orbàn or Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

We are facing a phenomenon as worrying as it is novel, for the death of democracies is no longer as clear or dramatic as it was in the 20th century, when they were typically killed off in a coup. Today, they die after bleeding a while from a thousand little cuts.

We may have moved on from the drama of tanks on the streets or an assault on the presidential palace that marked modern Latin American history, but face an equally tragic process of elected leaders degrading lawful, institutional government, specifically by undermining its checks and balances. The primary targets of this sabotage are the courts of law and the oversight bodies that may be left unmanned, without funds or in disuse.

People’s distrust of politics

Thus, academics, activists and politicians have been considering how to face off this gradual subversion of the republic.

A first response would be to reinforce the traditional system of checks and revive entities created to oversee and limit power. The reparative response is relevant and possibly a matter of urgency, but flawed in this context. The difficulty I see is that it mixes up constitutionalism and democracy. They are both important, but separate.

Democraces require different responses to constitutional glitches like executive branch encroachment on the judiciary, or the dismantling of oversight bodies, etc. These strictly constitute an erosion of constitutional government, even if they are seen as threats to democracy.

Democracy must not be reduced to voting.

Terms aside (for this is not a matter of confusion over terminology), how can we define the democratic problem today? Nowadays it consists of a phenomenon that is frequently observed and commented on: people’s distrust of their representatives and a generalized sense of exhaustion, alienation, and frustrated impotence whenever we consider politics and politicians.

This generalized malaise — which can turn to wrath — is not resolved by tightening checks and balances. People, in principle, do not rush to protest because the country’s chief prosecutor or members of the supreme court were not yet appointed.

Beyond the ballot: democracy

Certainly, we must stop shoddy rulers disemboweling institutions, prevent the inactivity of oversight bodies and protect the independence of the courts. But a (miraculous) resolution of all constitutional — or institutional — dysfunctionalities will not dispel our democratic problem. People will still think, with good reason no doubt, that politicians and big business are “in it together,” tricking us out of our rights and thwarting our full and proper participation in decision-making.

Since the 1990s at least, all our leaders have sought to reduce the idea of democracy to the electoral moment. They want us to vote, then quietly sit back and let them rule as they please. But democracy is something else and it must not be reduced to voting. It is precisely what happens between elections, which should make the democratic problem an immediate priority.

Resolving constitutional problems only to find ourselves facing an ailing democracy is rather like The Dinosaur, the minuscule short story by the late Honduran-born Guatemalan writer Augusto Monterroso: “When he woke up, the dinosaur was still there.”

*Gargarella is a professor of constitutional law and researcher at Argentina’s CONICET institute.