Populism and Democracy: Lessons from the Andes

• In Event: Panel II on Democratic Backsliding/Erosion

Abstract

The twin global processes of populism and democratic backsliding has led to a vibrant debate on the relationship between the two. One view sees populism as a much-needed corrective for the elitist tendencies of liberal democracy (Arditi 2005; Canovan 1999; Mény and Surel 2002). This view harks back to early Latin American scholarship that saw populism as a fundamental democratizing force confronting oligarchical governments (Quijano 1998; Weffort 1998 [1967]). By contrast, a second view sees populism as inherently antidemocratic (Pappas 2016; Pappas 2019; Weyland 2013). A third view, perhaps best represented by Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser (2012, 20), sees populism as both a corrective and threat to democracy, because populism strengthens political participation, on one hand, but weakens public contestation, on the other.
This paper advances this debate by looking at the empirical relationship between populism in power and democracy, using the Andean cases as backdrop. Does populism in power always lead to the demise of democracy? The answer is no. I show that in some cases, such as Colombia under Álvaro Uribe and Argentina under Carlos Menen, the rise of the superpresidency and the erosion of democracy it entails was prevented by the forceful intervention of political actors and the courts. When, then, does populism in power lead to the demise of democracy? How does it happen? And why does it happen? This paper offers a theory to explain this variance.
I argue that the different impact of populism on democracy depends on how populist leaders handle the moment of acute political conflict they confront when they push for accumulation of power. Given the zero-sum character of this confrontation, the victorious party faces almost no opposition to influence subsequent developments. A victorious opposition will gain the ability to constrain or contain the populist leader, and secure the continuation of free and fair elections. A victorious populist president, by contrast, will continue to accumulate power, and they will create the conditions to reproduce their regimes by tilting the electoral playing field. Why does this happen? Why do populist leaders can overcome opposition and be able to transfer political resources to themselves? To answer these questions, I rely on the conceptual framework of Comparative-Historical Analysis. I identify the critical antecedents for populism and how they combine in a causal fashion with permissive conditions that allow populist leaders to prevail against the opposition. The depth of mass political dissatisfaction and the degree of elite disarray, the critical antecedents for populism, causally combine with mass support for radical institutional change, a permissive condition, to create favorable situations for a populist president to prevail. Where populist presidents enjoy strong support for institutional change, expressed through referendums or public opinion polls, and political elites are severely weakened, a strong permissive condition for authoritarian populist rule will congeal. If mass support for change is not that strong, and elites retain a significant amount of political influence, either in the legislature or in the judiciary, then the permissive condition will be much weaker and populist presidents would have greater difficulties in overcoming their moment of acute conflict.
The permissive condition of mass support for radical institutional change is a necessary but not sufficient condition for populist supremacy. A productive condition is necessary and that is the populist leader’s decision to use the repressive apparatus of the state to defeat the opposition. A second productive condition is sometimes employed, and that is party and societal organization supporting the populist president. This societal organization is mobilized to confront the opposition. In a quantitative study of the impact of populism on the quality of democracy, Ruth-Lovell, Lührman, and Grahn (2019, 9) offer an important finding: out of 30 cases of populist governments in Europe and Latin America, 20 did not substantially see any change in their Electoral Democracy Index (EDI), as measured by the Varieties of Democracy Project. In the other 10, however, the EDI dropped significantly over time, and in none the EDI increased substantially. This study confirms a central finding of this paper, which is that the impact of populism on democracy is not consistently negative. In some cases, the erosion of democracy under populism can be avoided. What Ruth-Lovell and colleagues do not show is how this erosion happens and why it happens. A major contribution of this paper is to offer such explanation by opening up the black box of populism in power, using the cases of the Andes in Latin America. I develop a theory to explain how we go from the election of a populist leader to the demise of electoral democracy.

Author

• Julio F. Carrion, University of Delaware