Ecuador After Rafael Correa’s Decade in Power

• In Event: The Survival of Defective Democracies in the Andes

Abstract

A second paper, by Grace Jaramillo, examines “Ecuador After Rafael Correa’s Decade in Power.” Under Correa, Ecuador was, in her view, on the path to becoming an electoral authoritarian regime in which the integrity of electoral institutions was undermined and basic rights and freedoms were violated. The 2016 election appears to have dramatically halted this process. The newly elected president, Lenin Moreno, has ended many of the authoritarian practices of his predecessor. The central puzzle remains: whether the systematic abuses of power under Correa so degraded democracy as to prevent the possibility of alternation of power even after Moreno’s term in office. In addition to an assessment of the Correa period, the paper examines the erosion of rights and freedoms in Ecuador, including constitutional checks and balances, and the spread of corruption. It argues that Ecuador remains a low quality democracy in which authoritarian habits and dispositions remain deeply entrenched, such that the path to electoral authoritarianism has not yet been definitively abandoned.

Author

• Grace M Jaramillo, University of British Columbia