Comparing the role that international forces have played in Latin America vis a vis democratization.
Across Latin American history, US Foreign Policy (USFP) has had a strong impact upon processes of democratization, but global economic trends and inter-governmental organizations (IGO) have also played important roles. The Guatemala coup in 1954 and the Peruvian transition to democracy in 2000-2002 will be used to elucidate the positive and negative roles these factors can have on democratizations.
The US renounced the right to intervention in the 1934 “Good Neighbour” policy, but then willingly supported authoritarian regimes during the Cold War. Whether through outright military intervention or by CIA-supported coups, independent-minded democratic governments were repeatedly overthrown during this period. In 1954, General Jacobo Arbenz’s Guatemala became the archetypal case of a state whose democratization was obstructed by USFP. Spurred by fears of a growing Communist influence in the western hemisphere, Guatemala’s government was overthrown by a CIA-orchestrated coup d’état after Arbenz expropriated land from the United Fruit Company as part his agrarian reform policy. At the head of a reformist centre-left electoral coalition, he wanted to break the ‘chains of semi-colonial economic dependency’ by breaking up large and unproductive land holdings on the path to turning Guatemala into an independent capitalist state. However, UNFC had close ties with US government officials, whom were able to convince President Eisenhower of the dubious ‘communist’ threat in Guatemala. When the OAS denied approval for an intervention, the CIA mobilized a rebel army under Carlos Castillo Armas, who then deposed Arbenz. Guatemala became intensely polarized between Right and Left, and the ensuring civil war spanned five decades and killed hundreds of thousands people. In Guatemala, IGOs were unable to prevent a democratization process from falling to the realpolitik of USFP.
The democratization of Fujimori’s Peru elucidates the positive role that international factors can have on these processes. Since the end of the Cold War, economic integration and democracy promotion have become the defining features of USFP and IGOs in the region. The US had helped to establish democratic institutions by arbitrating several peace treaties in Central America, but took little action in response to Fujimori’s autogolpe. Democratization had occurred elsewhere because of the effect the Debt Crisis on supplanting many authoritarian regimes. Democratic governance was then enshrined in many treaties emanating from IGOs. It became a prerequisite for inclusion in multilateral trading blocs like MERCOSUR and the proposed Free Trade Agreement of the Americas. The OAS further protected democratic governance by strengthening its own requirements for membership and its collective security mechanisms in Resolution 1080, the Washington Protocol, and the Managua Protocol. Despite these international developments, the incumbent democratic regime in Peru fell in 1992. While initially unable to reverse it, the OAS provided crucial assistance to restore Peru to democracy in 2000 after video evidence of the regime’s widespread corruption led to Fujimori’s hasty resignation in 2000. The incumbent Congress was still so discredited by the corruption that any document emanating from this body would have been illegitimate in the eyes of Peruvian citizens. So, the OAS stepped in and provided credible forums for discussion between politicians and civil society, from which emerged an agreement to hold OAS-supervised elections in 2002. In this case, the OAS proved its potential usefulness in the modern context, although other events have likewise demonstrated its limits.
Comparisons of the Guatemalan and Peruvian cases reveal several insights into the role of the international system. First, IGOs are effective only when USFP consents to their objectives, or at least abstains from acting contrarily. In 1954, the US was happy to ignore the OAS and subvert Arbenz’s government, while in Peru they were relatively uninterested in the outcome. In order to ensure consolidated democratization across the region, the US needs to remain convinced of democratization’s supreme importance over geopolitical interests that have resurfaced since 9/11. Alternatively, the US cannot be content to believe economic liberalism will strengthen democratic governance. While Armas came to power in Guatemala contingent on his support for free(r)-market economics, these policies existed before, during, and after Fujimori’s regime. They are not causal factors propelling democratization. Instead, citizens seem to be willing to support whichever form of government delivers material benefits. These facts liberate discussions about development strategies, permitting the consideration of options which might differ from market orthodoxy but are more amenable to local circumstances. Therefore it seems that democratization in Latin America will only prosper so long as the US takes a principled stand in favour of democracy while permitting nations to taking independent courses of action.
A salient feature of Latin America’s experiences with democratic governance has been the regularity with which these regimes have been the targets of coups by disgruntled members of society. Scholars have differed in assigning blame to the region’s militaries, to the meddlesome imperialism of the Americans, or to socioeconomic crises that put stress on institutions. A new argument emerged in the context of the latest period of pacted transitions to democracy that contended that the recurrent problem of democratic instability might be a derivative of the widespread use of presidentialist constitutions amongst the region’s democracies. The criticisms levied against this form of democratic regime will be evaluated against Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori’s ‘autogolpe’. However, it will be found that the trio of an internal security threat posed by the Sendero Luminoso (SL), a continued decline in economic performance, and the disillusionment of traditional political institutions, provided the additional context within which Peruvians were permissive about a concentration of power into Fujimori’s office.
Some scholars argue that coup d’états are much more likely in presidentialist versus parliamentarian regimes because of the former’s tendency to experience deadlock between the two branches of government. The separation of powers causes the legislative and executive branches to have different electoral bases, thereby making a divergence in policy preference possible. As the only branch of government that is directly popularly elected, executives often feel that they have a more important mandate to enact policy which ought not to be hindered by the other two branches. Without the ability to dissolve government and call new elections because of their fixed electoral term, executives in a presidential system face the choice of lasting out an ignominious ‘lame duck’ presidency or to pursue extra-institutional antidemocratic actions to force through their platforms. Defenders of presidentialist regime-types have argued that they only become prone to deadlock with the further addition of a multi-party system. With regards to Fujimori’s autogolpe, this pro-presidentialist position is the most compelling institutionalist argument.
Although Peru had a four party system throughout the 1980s, the top presidential candidates in the 1990 elections were party independents. Alberto Fujimori ran as an anti-political establishment candidate, winning the election by successfully depicting his rival Mario Vargas Llosa as a radical neoliberal allied with domestic and international elites. Fujimori won widespread popular support, but once in office a corresponding power over Congress was found to be lacking, despite very high levels of domestic approval ratings that routinely ranged around 60%. By 1992, Congressional deadlock blocked Fujimori’s proposed macroeconomic reforms, facing him with the archetypal presidentialist crisis. However, this institutional quagmire was insufficient by itself to produce the autogolpe. Instead, the coup can only be understood within the broader Peruvian political context
Psychological hysteria induced by persistent hyperinflation and SL terrorism greatly exacerbated the likelihood of, and tolerance for, an authoritarian coup. Market reforms during the García and Belaúnde presidencies in the 1980s were unable to abate rampant hyperinflation. Rapid urbanization, spurred by economic collapse, saw large numbers of rural peasants move to urban shanty-towns while SL car bombings become more prevalent in urban areas. The urban middle- and upper-classes began to feel as though they were under siege, and became predisposed towards an authoritarian solution. Furthermore, the informal urban workforce was a large class of voters unattached to the traditional party system, giving an outsider like Fujimori another bastion of support. In this disintegrating economic and physical security situation, disillusionment with the political parties, labour unions, and other state institutions set in, leading the military to conspire against the divided government. Internal Security Chief Vladimir Montesino made Fujimori aware of the plan. The president positioned himself as the coup’s leader by promising the military whatever they desired. With widespread popular support, and further backed by the armed forces, Fujimori issued a decree in April 1992 that declared a state of emergency, dissolved Congress, politicized the judiciary, and gave the executive branch control over all legislative processes. He then called a Constituent Assembly in 1993 and rewrote the constitution to heavily centralize power in his office.
In conclusion, the autogolpe presidentialist institutional deadlock only became possible with the further addition of economic and physical insecurity and a weak multiparty system.
