By Charo Quesada
Since 1997, eight presidents in six Latin American countries have been forced to resign from office prematurely by popular protests.
It is impossible to generalize about these “popular coups,” as they have been labeled in some of the region’s newspapers, because the causes vary widely from one country to another. But it is clear that they point to a pervasive weakness in the region’s political systems. Although several countries have made great progress in this area, in others the rules and institutions that are supposed to ensure the orderly transfer and exercise of political power no longer seem to be working.
These repeated breakdowns in political machinery “have chipped away at democratic institutions and shown that these institutions are not respected because they often violate constitutional provisions, and because the rule of law is absent,” said Osvaldo Hurtado, a former president of Ecuador and a scholar of political reform in Latin America. Hurtado recently came to IDB headquarters to present a paper entitled “Elementos para una Reforma Política en América Latina” (Building Blocks for Political Reform in Latin America), which was commissioned by the Bank.
Hurtado’s paper begins by noting that with the exception of Cuba, all countries in Latin America today are democracies. On the positive side, he notes that “democracy has been strong enough to confront and resolve economic crises and natural disasters, and to overcome its enemies’ attempts to do away with it, including guerrilla violence and armed uprisings.”
Hurtado also acknowledges that some progress has been made in modernizing public institutions and undertaking structural reforms required to adapt to the global, free-market economy. Virtually every country in the region has made clear progress in the areas of inflation, illiteracy, civil liberties, human rights and political participation.
What has not been successfully addressed, according to Hurtado, are the governance problems that have robbed institutions of their social legitimacy. “Democracy in Latin America is still far from having achieved good governance, which is based on State bodies being able to function at an optimum level,” Hurtado said at the presentation meeting. “In other words, institutions that truly begin to function as they become a part of everyday life.”
Hurtado paper starts with the premise that “where politics is working well, so is the economy,” and blames the region’s slow growth on discredited institutions that are incapable of maintaining the two critical pillars of progress: stability and continuity. Then he draws two lessons from modern-day development processes. One is that it is possible to turn a developing country into a developed country within a forty-year period.
The second is that in order to do this, countries must stick to a specific economic policy over the long term. As an example, he points to the important achievements made by democracies in Asia and Central Europe that “accepted their national responsibilities and followed their strategies in a disciplined way,” in contrast to Latin America, which-with a few notable exceptions-is still facing “relative economic and social collapse,” even with two decades of democracy behind it.
Weak institutions. Power struggles between the executive and legislative branches are an ongoing problem in most of the region’s countries, according to Hurtado, and these conflicts are often resolved in unconstitutional ways. Though he acknowledges that some presidents do indeed rule in an authoritarian manner and attempt to concentrate too much power, Hurtado is dismayed by ease with which many congresses have been able to get rid of a president.
“Many congresses have not evolved since they were established two hundred years ago,” Hurtado writes. “They are not prepared to make laws, they cannot negotiate with the government, and they do not have the kind of specialized offices needed to function in today’s world.” The judicial branch has similar problems.
Above all, however, Hurtado points to the appalling condition of the region’s political parties as the root reason for political instability. He argues that parties are “the most important institution, because everything depends on it: selection of presidential candidates, legislatures, city and provincial or state governments; preparation of the government’s master plan; definition of the constitutional and legal system; creation of conditions under which public policies can be approved and carried out, and providing a supply of public officials for the highest ministerial, supervisory and financial positions.”
Given the extraordinary power of political parties, one would think that they would attract the brightest and most ambitious people. But Hurtado claims that the opposite is true. After researching the issue, Hurtado says, he’s come to the conclusion that “the best and most honest” tend to go into business instead. “Political parties have been discredited, and the surveys bear this out,” he writes. “They are looked down upon by business associations, civil society and the citizenry in general.” And he complains that the media have helped magnify the flaws in political parties. “Young people today aren’t interested in politics, they don’t see a cost/benefit relationship. Politics is in the hands of the people who are least qualified.”
This phenomenon is especially dangerous, according to Hurtado, because the ideological conflicts of the past (communism vs. capitalism, right vs. left, etc.) are now giving way to struggle for power led by personal, regional and corporate interests. Traditional political parties are ill-suited to rise above these parochial interests because “many parties never succeed in establishing themselves on a national or popular level because they are ephemeral, they are born and die within short periods,” Hurtado writes. This makes most people very suspicious of election platforms and “gets in the way of being able to establish lasting relationships, or being able to predict public policy or whether a society has a reliable economic and political future.”
New reforms. Since Latin America’s republics were founded, “numerous, ongoing and varied” constitutional reforms have been enacted in the hope that they would perfect the system. Yet despite these changes, “the essence of politics did not change, or has changed little,” Hurtado writes. In fact, they have had the opposite effect. “As more reforms have been instituted, instability has increased,” he notes.
Today, the emphasis is more on legal reforms designed to create or improve party systems and make the electoral systems more representative. But developing a political system takes time. Hurtado points to two cultural deficiencies that Latin America must overcome and that have not received sufficient attention. One is the generalized lack of respect for the rule of law. The second is the persistence of authoritarian political practices that lead to confrontation rather than compromise, to putting personal interests ahead of the public interest, and to emphasizing personal relationships at the expense of institutions.
Faced with these multiple challenges, Hurtado suggests that the region’s countries should focus on simplifying the political party systems in order to make parties representative and competent. He supports the use of public financing for political campaigns as a means of promoting transparency and giving politicians greater freedom. He also suggests reducing the number of parties in cases where there are too many, and setting up majority-rule systems to replace those based on proportional representation. Institutions such as the IDB should offer support for political party leaders to receive technical training, he suggests. “Many parties take positions that are not based on their ideology, but on their lack of technical understanding of public finance,” he says. This problem is repeated when unqualified legislators take their seats in congresses.
Hurtado argues that many of Latin America’s economic crises grew out of the disorder in public finances, which was originally caused by a tendency toward fiscal populism in a country’s congress. A political system with strong parties gives the president’s political organization a greater number of seats, which facilitates both a constructive relationship and cooperation between the executive and legislative branches.
Another important reform that Hurtado suggests is to protect the presidency itself, spelling out and restricting the grounds under which a congress may remove a president from office. “Political and economic stability is often linked to how long a president stays in office,” he says. Hurtado’s report emphasizes the importance of creating political conditions that do not disrupt good economic management but foster it. Other suggestions with the same goal include an independent Central Bank and the ability of the president to issue expedited legislation in exceptional cases.
All this will not be accomplished overnight, of course. Hurtado believes it will take several generations.