WHAT ARE THE SOURCES OF DEMOCRATIC ENDURANCE IN NEW
REGIMES? COLLECTIVE LEARNING AND THE BUILDING OF DEMOCRATIC LEGITIMACY IN LATIN AMERICA
ENRIQUE PERUZZOTTI Department of Political Science and International Relations
Universidad Torcuato Di Tella [email protected]
Paper prepared for Session “Why and How do Democratic Regimes Endure?” (327) of the 20th IPSA World Congress, Fukuoka, Japan, July 9-13, 2006
In the past decades, Latin American countries have made a crucial transition to
democracy. Democratic regimes in the region were able to endure severe military,
political, economic, and social crises. What are the sources of democratic stability in
Latin America? How to account for the unusual strength exhibited by democracy in a
region that had been historically marked by recurrent military intervention and chronic
institutional instability? The questioning about the variables that might contribute to the
institutionalization of democratic regimes in the region has produced a large corpus of
studies and arguments. The academic production about political institutionalization in
Latin America can be divided into two halves: a) the works produced before the last
continental democratizing wave, a period where most of the academic production hoped
to account for the chronic problem of institutional instability and authoritarianism that
affected most of the region, b) the constitution after the transitions from authoritarianism
of a field of democratization studies interested in the analysis of the recently consolidated
democracies and their chances for survival.
The first group of studies attempted to explain the reasons behind the historical
inability exhibited by the region at stabilizing a democratic-representative regime. The
agenda of the second group focused, instead, on the specific challenges, obstacles and
problems that the current process of building, strengthening and perfecting democratic-
representatives regimes poses for the different countries of the region. Both periods
generated important works and arguments that contribute to the building of a significant
body of work about the factors that are behind democratic institutionalization. The early
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works of modernization theory inaugurated a rich debate about the correlations between
economic development and democracy. The more recent literature on transitions and
democratic consolidation rapidly built an impressive corpus of studies of different aspects
of the institutional and political dynamics of the new regimes. Yet, none of them
provided a plausible explanation that could fully account for the processes that contribute
to generate democratic endurance.
In this article I hope to contribute to such debate by developing a theory of collective
learning that might help to account for the major novelty of this last democratizing wave:
the emergence of a normative consensus on democracy. It is my argument that the
surprising endurance that democracy has displayed in the region, despite poor economic
performance and the presence of serious institutional and political crisis is related to that
novel commitment to democracy values in significant sectors of the population. To fully
understand the reasons behind democratic endurance, it is necessary to develop a theory
of collective learning that will account for such cultural and normative shift. The article
divides as follows: section I review the different arguments that tried to explain the
challenges that were preventing the stabilization of a representative type of democracy in
Latin America. Sections II and III analyze the production of democratization theory,
arguing that while contributing to shed light into many aspects of democratic life, it failed
to provide a convincing answer to the question of democratic endurance. Section III
attempts to develop an answer to the former question.
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I. Explaining Institutional Instability: Modernization Theory
The debates of the first period were initially framed in the language and models of
classical modernization theory. Modernization theory postulated certain correlation
between socioeconomic development and political institutionalization. In this literature, it
was assumed that the problems of political instability and of authoritarianism that
affected Latin American societies lay in the socioeconomic backwardness of those
societies. Rapid development was seen as the cure to most of the ills affecting the region.
Authors such as Seymour Martin Lipset and Daniel Lerner, for example, postulated a
linear correlation between economic development and democracy. The process of
economic development, they argued, would eventually create the appropriate cultural and
social environment for the consolidation of a representative democratic regime similar to
the ones in Western societies.1
More sophisticated modernization theorists already posed some doubts about the
inevitability of a representative form of democracy in developing societies. The
assumption of early theories of modernization that the final stage of the developmental
process would be the consolidation of a Western type of democracy was challenged by
the works of Gino Germani, Samuel Huntington and Guillermo O’Donnell. Taking as
their point of departure those Latin American countries that had already attained a
considerable degree of socioeconomic development and the political incorporation of the
citizenship into the political system, their analyses argued that the modernizing process
far from generating institutional stability and representative government, tended to
generate novel and disquieting forms of political instability and/or authoritarianism.
Rapid socioeconomic modernization produced problems and challenges that were absent
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at lower levels of development: “transitional” modernizing societies were subject to new
strains and problems that posed serious threats to their polities, producing political
phenomena that openly challenged the optimistic correlation between modernization and
democratic political institutionalization of classical modernization theory.
Gino Germani, for example, analyzed the completion of the process of political
incorporation in Argentina. Under Peronism, he argued, Argentina attained the full
incorporation of the masses into the political system. Such accomplishment, however, did
not result in the consolidation of a representative form of democracy but rather on the
establishment of an authoritarian version of populist democracy2. Samuel P. Huntington,
instead, called attention on the notorious inability of most societies of the region at
developing a stable structure of political mediations. In Political Order in Changing
Societies, Huntington considered such shortage of mediating representative structures the
main bottleneck to institutional modernization. In his view, the process of modernization
resulted in the mobilization of new social groups without the simultaneous building of
political institutions that could articulate and aggregate their demands. In the absence of
mediating institutional mechanisms, social and political forces confronted each other
'nakedly', i.e., their politicization is not channeled through institutional mechanisms of
political aggregation and intermediation but consists on unmediated war of all against
all3. For Huntington, mass praetorianism and political ungobernability --not democracy--
is the most likely future scenario of developing societies.
Guillermo O’Donnell’s influential book Modernization and Bureaucratic-
Authoritarianism represents the final chapter of the debate opened by classical
modernization theory. In his view, the most advanced countries of the region had already
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completed the easy stage of import-substitution industrialization. The demands of the
new stage of industrialization made the survival of democracy in the region unlikely.
O’Donnell postulated an elective affinity between the new economic period and a novel
form of military intervention in politics: the bureaucratic-authoritarian state. The aim of
the authoritarian state was to carry out the particular demands that the exhaustion of the
easy face of the import-substitution process of industrialization posed to policy-makers,
mainly, the demobilization of a politically activated popular sector4. The theory about
bureaucratic-authoritarianism reverses Lerner and Lipset’s linear correlation between
socioeconomic and political modernization. In O’Donnell’s opinion, military
authoritarianism, not democracy, is “the more likely concomitant of the highest levels of
modernization.5”
II. Democratization Theory and Democratic Endurance
The breakdown of authoritarian regimes and the subsequent establishment and
consolidation of democratic regimes throughout the region posed a theoretical challenge
to previous theories and diagnoses. The fact that the transitions resulted in the
consolidation of stable democracies without the region experiencing any significant
transformation of its socioeconomic variables redirected academic attention away from
structural approaches to the analysis of short term political interactions. The literature
about transitions to democracy stressed the uncertainty and disorder that characterized
such extraordinary moments and the determining influence that the short-term strategic
dynamics and choices of democratizing and authoritarian elites had on the political
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outcome of the process6. Political democracy, Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe
Schmitter concluded in their influential four volume study of transitions from
authoritarianism, emerges from a “nonlinear, highly uncertain and imminently reversible
process” that takes place in a context “which encourages strategic interaction among
wary and weary actors.7”
As time passed by and the democratic regimes move towards consolidation, new
questions arose concerning the nature and challenges that the former confronted. A
copious literature on institutional issues rapidly developed. The latter imported the
institutional methods that were applied to the study of consolidated Western democracies
to the analysis of the new Latin American regimes. An important body of studies
developed in a relatively short time span that dealt with manifold aspects of institutional
analysis: from constitutional design to the specific dynamics of the different institutions
of representative government. The relationship between executive, legislative and
judicial powers8, the peculiarities of Latin American presidentialism9, the various
configurations of party systems that were found in the region10, the strength or weakness
of accountability mechanisms11, the problems of federalism12, were some of the central
questions that caught the attention of institutional analysis. Those analyses represented a
significant contribution to the understanding of the new democracies and served to shed
important light over different aspects of the institutional structure of the novel regimes.
In general, the institutionalist approach tended to converge on a similar diagnosis:
that democracy in the region was assuming characteristics and dynamics that set it apart
from the established model of representative government that predominates in Western
societies. The Latin American regimes seem to combine the formal structure of
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representative democracy with authoritarian or discretional behaviors on the part of
political elites. Such peculiar combination resulted in a political hybrid that the literature
categorized with adjectives such as delegative, illiberal, unconsolidated, fragile or
unstable democracy.
While the political science approach served to specify the institutional distinctiveness
of current democracies, it was unable to provide a plausible explanation to two crucial
questions: a) what were the reasons for such a peculiar outcome? and b) what explained
the unusual endurance of democracy in the region? The search for answers to the first
question led to a focus on the role of cultural and political legacies while the attempt to
provide a plausible explanation to the question of democratic endurance reopened some
of the debates of the modernization studies period.
The outcome of the transitions being different than the model of representative
democracy (that served as the comparative yardstick) triggered a historically-informed
search about the ways past legacies are shaping the actual process of political
institutionalization. The debate centered on the weight of different “legacies” and the
imprint they are leaving on current political life.13 In this debate, political culture
appears as a crucial variable of the institutionalizing equation. Guillermo O’Donnell’s
delegative democracy argument, for example, focuses on the problematic legacy of
populist traditions in Argentina, Brazil and Peru. In his view, the endurance of
problematic features of the political culture of populism is negatively shaping the
political and institutional dynamics of present democracies14. The whole debate about
neopopulism follows a similar line of argument.15 Finally, other authors concentrate on
the more immediate legacies of military authoritarianism, such as the devastating effects
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on civil society of the culture of fear and repressive legacy of the military dictatorships16,
or on the endurance of traditional oligarchic power structures and their disruptive effects
on democratic governability and political representation17.
The literature on authoritarian legacies stresses the incompatibility of the region's
political culture and traditions with democratic institutionalization. What for these
authors seems to be preventing representative democracy from taking roots in the
continent is the survival of an authoritarian political culture, be it populist, military or of
a more traditional-oligarchic type. The strength and endurance of such problematic
heritage conspires against the actualization of formal representative institutions. The
focus on cultural legacies, while might serve to partially answer the question about the
distinctiveness exhibited by current democratic regimes, can not provide, however, a
convincing response to the issue of democratic endurance. If the last democratizing wave
has been characterized by cultural continuity rather than rupture, how to account for the
stabilization of democratic regimes in the region? If there is continuity at the cultural
level, where is the source of innovation?
In their search for an adequate answer to the question of endurance, many authors
returned to the question initially raised by modernization theory: whether there is a
correlation between socioeconomic development and democracy. Such debate was
recently reopened by Adam Przeworski, et al. who wondered about the factors that are
behind the endurance of democratic regimes18. The authors not only reopened the debate
about modernization and democracy but returned to some of the earlier postulates of
classical modernization theory. According to these authors, Seymour Martin Lipset was
right in asserting that
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“…`the more well-to-do a nation, the greater the chances that it will sustain democracy’. Once established in a developed country, --Przeworski et al. argue-- democracy endures regardless of how it performs and regardless of all the exogenous conditions to which it is exposed.19” In their view, affluence is a sufficient condition for democratic survival. In this way, the
modernization debate comes into full circle. This last reformulation of the problem
returns to the initial argument of classical modernization theorists: it is modernization
what breeds democracy. What about non affluent countries? Democracy, Przeworski et
al. argue, might be able to survive in a non-affluent country as long as there is
governmental effectiveness concerning economic and social policies: “…the secret of
democratic durability seems to lie in economic development”20. Economic performance
appears as the crucial variable in explaining the endurance of certain democratic regime.
The authors recognize that theirs is not an optimistic conclusion considering the poor
economic performance of many third wave democracies.
The problem with the previous statements is that they are inadequate to explain the
recent experience of most Latin American democratizing countries where democracy was
stabilized in a hostile socioeconomic environment and by administrations characterized
by a dreadful economic performance21. A quick look at the landscape in which the new
democracies developed raises serious doubts about any correlation between economic
performance or development and democratization. Poor economic performance,
extensive poverty, and high rates of inequality are established features of the region. In
fact, the process of democratization coincided with a period of economic stagnation and
in some individual cases, with some of the most dramatic economic crisis of those
countries´ histories. Yet, and in spite of distressing socioeconomic conditions, the region
has achieved its longest period of democratic stability, putting an end to the praetorian
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period that for decades marked the political history of several countries of the continent.
The puzzle, as Karen Remmer argues, is how to account for such an unexpected outcome,
“Despite the persistence of dismal economic conditions, the process of political transformation that began in Latin America during the late 1970s maintained its momentum through the early 1990s, producing the broadest, longest, and deepest wave of democratization in the region’s history”22
In her view, rather than reviving previous debates about whether there is a correlation or
not between socioeconomic development and democracy, it is necessary to pay attention
to issues such as the legitimacy of political power. For Remmer, what explains the
resilience of democracy in the region independently of economic performance is the
development of a normative commitment to the principles and procedures of democracy.
Legitimacy insulates democracy from performance failures for it detaches support for
democracy from substantive outcomes23. What makes democracy endure in the region
even under hostile socioeconomic conditions, Remmer argues, is the emergence of a
novel belief in the legitimacy of democratic arrangements. Such thesis seems to indicate
that the legacy arguments about cultural continuity need to be tempered with the
recognition that the region has experienced some significant processes of political
learning as well.
III. The Building of Democratic Legitimacy in Latin America: How to Account for Political Change?
If what makes democracy endure even in the midst of a hostile socioeconomic
environment is a novel belief in the value of democratic procedures and institutions, then
it is necessary to explain what generated such process of cultural change. How does
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collective learning take place? How to account for cultural change? Surprisingly, given
the pessimistic diagnosis about the cultural and political heritage of the region that
informed great part of the debate about the dilemmas of democratic consolidation, the
issue of collective learning did not received much attention. The argument about the role
of legacies views political culture as the crucial variable of the institutionalizing equation:
what seems to be preventing democratic institutionalization in the region is the
uncoupling between the formal structures of constitutional democracy and the
predominant political culture of each society. Assuming that such diagnosis is right, then
cultural innovation emerges as a crucial precondition for institutional strengthening. In
societies where authoritarian legacies are alive, only the reshaping of collective identities
in a democratic direction can guarantee the success of current efforts at democratic
consolidation. While tacitly suggesting the need for cultural change, democratization
literature has seldom engaged in a serious and systematic effort to analyze the dynamics
of cultural innovation.
Democracy requires for its institutionalization of the development of certain values,
attitudes and behaviors from its citizens. How such political culture comes about? It was
generally assumed that democratic practices and values would be the product of a gradual
political development that would unfold over a long period of time. Robert Dahl’s classic
description of the British path to democracy serve as a paradigmatic example of the way
a democratic political culture develops over time. For Dahl, the success of the British
model lies in the incremental way that characterized the process of institutionalization of
a culture of competitive politics. Attitudes amenable to democracy, the author argue,
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initially develop within elite circles and only after a long period of habituation the former
are extended to a broader constituency24.
Gradualism and elitism is usually coupled with a naturalistic theory of cultural
change. The consolidation of collective identities and of democratic forms of self-
understanding does not appear as a conscious undertaking but is described in terms of an
uncritical naturalization of practices that initially derives out of strategic considerations.
For instance, Dahl argues that the choice for democracy is frequently the product of a
contingent and instrumental decision of elites that is largely based on strategic choices25.
There is a change of strategies, not necessarily of forms of political self-understanding.
Only after a long period of habituation, do the new practices became incorporated into
the political culture of society at large. The process of learning therefore does not
consist on a reflexive appropriation (and transformation) of certain values and practices
but is described as the routinization of strategic equilibriums: political culture is not the
product of a reflexive undertaking but is the outcome of a long and uncritical process of
naturalization of social identities26.
Such gradualist approach is unfit to account for processes of regime change that take
place in a relatively short span such as the ones that are the focus of the literature on
democratization. A major emphasis of the transitions literature was on the
unpredictability that characterizes such extraordinary moments of political change. As
O’Donnell and Schmitter stated, in transitional periods major transformations occur in a
context where “there are insufficient structural or behavioral parameters to guide and
predict the outcome.27” Analysts of processes of democratic transition and consolidation
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were thus forced to adapt the previous theory of cultural change to a context were radical
political and institutional changes occur in a compressed time frame.
Severe crisis and traumatic experiences, some authors argue, provide a unique
opportunity for sudden political change, forcing political elites to reevaluate their tactics
and goals28. Political transitions are a fruitful terrain for a redefinition of strategic
equilibriums that might be conducive to democratization. The previous gradualist
approach is replaced by an understanding of learning that places great emphasis on the
presence of crisis or traumas as triggers of political change. Learning is thus associated
with exceptional and foundational moments. It does not seem to be a regular feature of
political life29. It appears more as a reactive process spawn by unexpected developments
than a conscious deliberate process that takes place both in normal as well as in
exceptional times.
The conception of political learning that informs democratization literature rests on
two assumptions. On the one hand, political learning is fundamentally understood as
strategic learning. Political learning does not necessarily entail the development of a
normative commitment to democratic principles; it rather refers to a process of tactical
reorientation30. The open and unpredictable nature of transitions provides a rich ground
for the development of new strategic games and coalitions: during transitions, new
coalitions might develop that could lead to a new strategic equilibrium conducive to the
establishment of a democratic political compromise. Such compromise is not seen as a
substantive one but is merely based in strategic considerations31. Laurence Whitehead,
for instance, described the regimes that emerged as a result of the last democratizing
wave as democracies by default. In his view, the new democracies are a product of a
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situation of political stalemate based on the failure of the alternative political and
institutional options that dominated the Latin American political scenario for decades
(populism, desarrollismo, bureaucratic-authoritarianism, socialism, etc.). Unable to
advance their normatively preferred alternatives, Latin American elites agreed upon
democracy as a 'second-best' outcome32.
On the other hand, political learning is narrowly understood as learning by political
actors and other related elites33. While some authors acknowledge the role that a
mobilized civil society plays at destabilizing authoritarian rule34, the stabilization and
consolidation of a democratic regime is seen fundamentally as the product of elite
bargaining and accords. As Nancy Bermeo argues,
“…for better or for worse, the construction of democracy is an occasion where ‘the beliefs of some are more important than those of others’… the design of formal democratic institutions is, of necessity, the work of a political elite35”
Adam Przeworski will attempt to turn the premises of the democracy by default
argument into a more general theory about regime legitimacy. “What matters for the
stability of any regime, he argues, is not the legitimacy of this particular system of
domination but the presence or absence of preferable alternatives.36” Przeworski
proceeds to strip Max Weber’s conception of legitimacy of its normative content: a
regime might be viewed as illegitimate for most groups, he continues, yet, if there is no
visible alternative, it will remain stable.
For Weber, always at the core of any legitimate structure of domination there is some
sort of normative consensus between rulers and ruled. The hallmark of a legitimate authority
relationship is the recognition by the ruled of the normative claim of validity made by the
rulers37. This feature endows legitimate regimes with a stability that is absent in other
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forms of power relationships. Weber acknowledges that while any system of domination
presupposes the presence to a relevant degree such normative attitude, there might also be
persons who relate to the political order on purely opportunistic grounds38. Adam
Przeworski generalizes this last observation into a conception of legitimacy that lacks any
reference about a normative content. “Acquiescing behavior, he argues, do not
necessarily originate from beliefs in the legitimacy of a system of domination” but might
be hypocritically simulated on purely opportunistic grounds or for reasons of self-interest.
In this way, Przeworski attempts to build a theory of institutionalization organized around
the notion of democratization by default: democratic endurance does not require, in his
opinion, legitimacy in the strong Weberian sense but only acquiescent behavior on the
part of self-interest actors39.
The previously reviewed approach to collective learning rests a very “thin” theory of
institutions. “Custom, personal advantage, purely affectual or ideal motives of solidarity
–Max Weber argues-- do not form a sufficiently reliable basis for a given domination. In
addition there is normally a further element, the belief in legitimacy.40” An order that is
purely based on reasons of expediency such as the one envisioned by Przeworski and the
democratization by default argument is much less stable than one that has develop a
normative commitment to its legitimating principles. Democratization’s theory of
political institutionalization leaves aside the fundamental question of how a regime’s
validity principles are anchored in the political culture of a society. To argue that the
recent process of democratic institutionalization in Latin America largely rests on
strategic equilibriums born out of purely tactical considerations is to assume that the
whole edifice of democracy in the region is built upon very precarious foundations. The
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severity of the military, social, political and economic crises that many Latin American
polities encountered in recent years without those societies reverting into authoritarianism
suggest that there has been more than merely strategic learning on behalf of elites.
Irrespectively of its policy failures and persistent socioeconomic inequalities, public
support for democracy has shown surprising resilience: citizens support democracy as a
regime despite being dissatisfied with the performance of democratic administrations41.
Democratic endurance seems to be rooted on a normative commitment to democratic
values on behalf of significant sectors of society. The task is how to account for the
processes that have allowed such a significant shift of values to take place. It is necessary
to go beyond the argument of democratization by default to develop a more solid
approach to collective learning and cultural change that could account for the conditions
under which democratic normative orientations and validity principles are embedded into
a particular political culture.
IV. Towards an Alternative Theory of Cultural Innovation: Democracy, Collective Learning and the Development of a Public Sphere
A first step toward the building of a theory of collective learning that could
explain the surprising resilience that democracy has exhibited in the region is to see
learning processes as a reflexive undertaking that is rooted in discursive communication.
“Cultural change in modern society, Klaus Eder argues, is produced by a collective
learning process whose logic is defined by the logic of discursive communication.”42
Modern civic associations organized around the principles of equal and discursive
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handling of disputes are the main locus of collective learning processes. The discursive
practices of civic associations, social movements and independent publics are crucial
sites for the developing of collective learning processes. Through the emergence of actors
who have become self-reflective regarding social processes of identity formation,
existing norms and values are challenged43. In this theoretical approach, learning is not
described as an unconscious process of “habituation” of norms or a “reactive” attitude
triggered by traumatic events or crisis but consists on a dynamic and regular process of
production of normative structures within processes of communication44. A reflexive
form communication based on the principle of free and equal exchange of arguments is
the starting point for the social production of the modern political order. Legal-rational
legitimacy rests upon the assumption that norms are intentionally made (and unmade).
Through the questioning of ingrained political traditions and institutional structures,
social movements, publics and civic associations play a decisive role at cultural change.
Cultural innovation presupposes a clash between the predominant norms, identities and
values and the alternative forms of self-understanding embodied by new social actors. In
this rendering of culture and cultural change, actors at not at the mercy of the cultural
legacy or heritage of a society as some of the distinctive tradition arguments suggest45.
The analysis of the cultural impact of social movements on processes of political
institutionalization in Latin America has been developed by several authors, who focused
on the contribution of identity politics to democratization46. The emergence of novel
civic actors in several of the democratizing societies introduced innovative discourses
and practices that eventually contributed to collective learning. New forms of self-
understanding and of politicization succeed in questioning specific aspects of the
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predominant political culture of each society. As Alvarez, Dagnino and Escobar argue,
“the cultural politics of social movements often attempt to challenge or unsettle dominant
political cultures.”47 In this rendering, political culture is always “the effect of continuing
struggles at the level of the political field48” where opposing political cultures confront
each other. The achievements of a politics of identity will be measured by the extent to
which those social actors were able to reshape the self-understanding of certain society.
In this way, social movements and other civic actors can contribute to undermine and
transform the questionable authoritarian legacies that concerned consolidation analysis.
Broadening the scope of analysis to include non elite actors might lead to a redefinition
of predominant diagnosis about the obstacles at democratic institutionalization49.
For instance, the emergence of human rights movements in societies that underwent
the traumatic experience of state terrorism served not only to delegitimize military
authoritarianism but to also question some problematic features of the populist
democratic tradition that are the main concern of the delegative and neopopulism
arguments. To experience a traumatic event such of state terrorism does not automatically
trigger learning as some of the previously theories seem to presuppose. Such experience
needs to be first thematized as being problematic. That was the contribution of the human
rights networks. The politics and discourse on human rights called attention upon the
normative dimension of constitutional democracy, introducing into the existing political
culture a healthy concern for the rule of law and for governmental accountability.50 In
this way, their struggle served to anchor the validity principles of a constitutional form of
democracy into the local political culture51.
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Collective learning in modern societies is intimately linked with the
institutionalization of a public sphere where processes of deliberation and learning can
unfold52. It is in the communicative networks of the public sphere where self-reflection
over existing norms and institutions can take place. This is not to say that identity
politics cannot take place under authoritarian situations, in fact, the Latin American
human rights movement was born and developed under highly repressive conditions that
make the existence of a public sphere impossible. Representative democracy, however,
establishes protective institutional conditions for such public space that are absent not
only under authoritarianism but also under other forms of democracy, such as
populism53.
What differentiates representative government from other types of regime is precisely
the establishment of an institutional setting that allows for the formation of active and
independent publics between elections as well as for the fluid channels of communication
between those publics and the institutionalized mechanisms of will formation. The
institutionalization of procedures and conditions of communication as well as the
interplay between formal political decision-making bodies and informally constituted
publics is distinctive of representative democratic regimes54. It is that feature what
prevents representative democracy from falling into an empty ritual of acclamation or on
the passive authorization of elitist rule.55
A crucial contribution of many of the new actors and forms of politics that emerged
in the last democratizing wave was to carve in a public space that would provide a
fundamental arena for contestation and learning56. This is no small accomplishment in a
region were political traditions were openly hostile to such project57. Such
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accomplishment, however, is being constantly threatened by delegative behaviors on the
part of governing elites. The existence of collective learning processes in some societal
sectors does not automatically translate into a betterment of formal democratic
arrangements and political practices. To affect the process of democratic
institutionalization, collective learning has to make an indent at the institutional level.
The renewal of political culture is certainly a crucial first step towards institutional
innovation, yet the problem that still remains is how to transfer those new elements of the
political culture into the political system. This is a problem that has been addressed by
some recent work on social accountability and on institutional innovation.
In his analysis of participatory budgeting in Brazil, Leonardo Avritzer employs the
concept of participatory publics to call attention to the establishment of institutional
forms that articulate and incorporate elements of political innovation into the decision-
making structure of municipal political systems in Brazil. The institutions of
participatory budgeting, Avritzer argues, establishes a formalized sphere of public
deliberation and negotiation that results in a more fair, accountable, and public form of
articulation of citizens with political authorities58. Similarly, the work on social
accountability focuses on the emergence of novel forms of civic initiatives that are
organized around a common effort at modifying institutional behaviors to increase the
accountability of public agencies and officials59. Both types of initiatives are undoubtedly
important steps in the direction toward institutional betterment. Participatory budgeting
or social watchdog’s organizations add new sites and actors to that can establish a
positive feedback with representative institutions, increasing their political and legal
accountability. There is, however, a more fundamental process of collective learning that
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democracies need to undertake to assure its institutional survival and durability: it
consists in institutionalizing public learning processes into the broader structure of
representative democracy. Democratic regimes need to establish certain threshold of
institutionalization to achieve this stage. Once public deliberation and contestation are
openly embraced and constitutionally guaranteed by a democratic regime, can we say that
representative democracy has been able to reach a degree of institutionalization that
incorporates the notion of learning into the political process.
Most of the Latin American democracies have certainly not reached such stage of
political institutionalization. While some democracies seem to be heading into such
promising direction, there are some troublesome clouds in the political horizon of the
continent that might threaten to undermine the accomplishments of this last
democratizing wave. Neopopulism is one of them. Poor economic performance is the
other one. While normative commitment to democracy has prevented democratic
breakdown despite poor economic performance, the persistence and/or worsening of
economic and social variables could eventually led to a reversal of such process of
learning and endanger the legitimacy of the Latin American democracies. Seymour
Lipset was right in stressing that the stability of democratic political systems depends on
a relative combination between legitimacy and effectiveness. Legitimacy, he argued, is
crucial is preserving the stability of a regime despite crisis of effectiveness. Yet, if a
democracy aspires to endure in the long run, a minimum degree of effectiveness need to
be created. The recent political crises that shocked several countries of the region are
early warnings about the imperative need to reach such difficult equilibrium.
Enrique Peruzzotti 21 IPSA
Delegative or populist behaviors on the part of political elites are the other major
obstacle to institutional strengthening. The resort to populist styles and behaviors by
political elites provides a tempting alternative to reconstitute political authority in those
countries where representative institutions are being questioned due to their inability to
steer the economy and the political system into the path of economic growth, social
justice and political accountability. While such course of action might appear as an easy
shortcut to political reconstruction, its short terms gains are overshadowed by the
negative consequences it poses to political institutionalization. Populism can provide
temporarily relief to crisis ridden societies yet the road that to institutional betterment and
sustained economic growth is more likely to emerge in a type of regime that has built in
reflexive mechanisms of collective learning and solid mechanisms of accountability.
Deliberation and accountability increase the intelligence of policy makers, contributing to
the coherence of policies. The present challenge is to solidify the processes of societal
learning through the establishment of a form of democracy that institutionalizes
deliberative forms of democratic opinion and will formation. If successful, the region will
finally reach the eluding goal of political institutionalization.
Enrique Peruzzotti 22 IPSA
1 Seymour Martin Lipset. 1959. Political Man. The Social Basis of Politics. Garden City, N.J.,
Doubleday & Company, chapter II, pp. 45-76; Daniel Lerner, The Passing of Traditional Society,
Glencoe, Ill., The Free Pres, 1958.
2 Gino Germani, “La Transición Hacia un Régimen Político de Participación Total en la
Argentina,” in Gino Germani, Política y Sociedad en una Época de Transición, Buenos Aires,
Editorial Paidós, pp.300-325.
3 Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies, New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1968, p. 80.
4 O’Donnell, Modernization and Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism; David Collier. 1979. The New
Authoritarianism in Latin America, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
5 Guillermo O’Donnell, Modernization and Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism. Studies in South
American Politics, Berkeley, Ca, Institute of International Studies, 1979, p.8.
6 Guillermo O'Donnell and Philippe C. Schmitter. 1986. Transitions from Authoritarian Rule.
Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press,
pp. 3-5; Philippe Schmitter. 1985. "Transitology: the Art or Science of Democratization?” en
Joseph Tulchin (ed.), The Consolidation of Democracy in Latin America, Boulder: Lynne
Rienner.
7 O'Donnell and Schmitter. Transitions from Authoritarian Rule, p. 72
8 Matthew Shugart and John M. Carey. 1992. Presidents and Assemblies. Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press; S. Morgenstern and B. Nacif (Eds.). 2002. Legislative Politics in Latin America.
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press
9 Dieter Nohlen y Mario Fernández. 1998. El Presidencialismo Latinoamericano: Evolución y
Perspectivas, Caracas, Nueva Sociedad; Scout Mainwaring y Matthew S. Shugart (Eds.). 202.
Presidencialismo y Democracia en América Latina, Buenos Aires, Paidós Editorial; Juan J. Linz
Enrique Peruzzotti 23 IPSA
and Arturo Valenzuela (Editors). 1994. The Failure of Presidential Democracy. Comparative
Perspectives, Baltimore, The John Hopkins University Press.
10 Scott Mainwaring and Timothy Scully (eds.). 1995. Building Democratic Institutions: Party
Systems in Latin America, Stanford, Stanford University Press; Michael Coppedge. 1998. “The
dynamic diversity of Latin American party systems.” Party Politics, #4; Marcelo Cavarozzi y
Juan Manuel Abal Medina (comps.). 2002. El Asedio a la Política. Los Partidos
Latinoamericanos en la Era Neoliberal. Rosario, Homo Sapiens.
11 Guillermo O’Donnell, “Horizontal Accountability: The Legal Institutionalization of Mistrust”;
Andreas Schedler, Larry Diamond, and Marc Plattner (eds.), The Self-Restraining State: Power
and Accountability in New Democracies, Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1999; Adam
Przeworksi, Susan C. Stokes, and Bernard Manin (eds.), Democracy, Accountability, and
Representation, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999; Susan S. Stokes, Mandates and
Democracy. Neoliberalism by Surprise in Latin America, Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press, 2001.
12 Edward Gibson and Ernesto Calvo. 2001. “Federalism and Low Maintenance Constituencies:
Territorial Dimensions of Economic Reform in Argentina.” Studies in Comparative International
Development 35; Edward Gibson. 2004. Federalism and Democracy in Latin America. Baltimore,
The John Hopkins University Press.
13 Katherine Hite and Paola Cesarini (Comps.) Authoritarian Legacies and Democracy in Latin
America and Southern Europe, Notre Dame, Indiana, University of Notre Dame Press, 2004;
Frances Hagopian, “Traditional Power Structures and Democratic Governance in Latin
America”, in Jorge I. Dominguez and Abraham F. Lowenthal, Eds., Constructing Democratic
Governance: Latin America and the Caribbean in the 1990s, Baltimore, John Hopkins University
Press, 1996; Frances Hagopian, “After Regime Change. Authoritarian Legacies, Political
Representation, and the Democratic Future of South America”, World Politics; Guillermo
Enrique Peruzzotti 24 IPSA
O'Donnell, "Illusions about Consolidation", Journal of Democracy, vol.7, #2, 1995; Guillermo
O’Donnell, "Delegative Democracy", Journal of Democracy vol.5, #1, 1994
14 O'Donnell, "Illusions about Consolidation" and "Delegative Democracy". For a very insightful
discussion about the reasons behind the staying power of the populist persuasion in Latin
America, see Carlos de la Torre, Populist Seduction in Latin America. The Ecuadorian
Experience, Ohio, Ohio University Center for International Studies, 2000, chapter 4.
15 Alberti, Giorgio. 1991. "Democracy by Default: Economic Crisis, Movimentismo, and Social
Anomie," paper presented at the XVth World Congress of the International Political Science
Association, Buenos Aires, July 1991; José Nun,"Populismo, Representación y Menemismo"
Sociedad. Revista de Ciencias Sociales, #5, October 1994; Francisco Weffort, Francisco, "What
is a New Democracy?" International Social Science Journal #136, 1993; Graciela
Ducantenzeiler, Philippe Faucher, and Julian Castro-Rea, “Back to Populism: Latin America’s
alternative to Democracy,” paper presented at the American Political Science Association
Meeting, San Francisco, August 30-September 2 1990.
16 Juan E. Corradi, Patricia Weiss Fagen and Manuel Antonio Garretón (eds.), Fear at the Edge.
State Terror and Resistance in Latin America, O'Donnell and Schmitter. Transitions from
Authoritarian Rule, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1992; Karen L. Remmer, Military
Rule in Latin America, Boston, Unwin Hyman, 1989; Frances Hagopian, “After Regime Change.
Authoritarian Legacies, Political Representation, and the Democratic Future of South America,”
World Politics, vol.
17 Hagopian, “Traditional Power Structures and Democratic Governance in Latin America” and
Traditional Politics and Regime Change in Brazil, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,
1996.
18 Adam Przeworski, Michael E. Alvarez, José Antonio Cheibub and Fernando Limongi,
Democracy and Development. Political Institutions and Well-Being in the World, 1950-1990,
Enrique Peruzzotti 25 IPSA
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000; Adam Przeworski, Michael Alvarez, Jose
Antonio Cheibub & Fernando Limongi, “What Makes Democracy Endure?,” Journal of
Democracy, Volume 7, Number 1, January 1996.
19 Przeworski, et. al. “What Makes Democracy Endure?” p. 41.
20 Przeworski, et al., “What Makes Democracy Endure?” p. 49.
21 The authors also recognized that their claim that democracies are more likely to survive in
intermediate levels of development does not reflect the Southern Cone experience that had been
the focus of analysis of Germani, Huntington and O’Donnell. Przeworski, et al., “What Makes
Democracy Endure?” p.41.
22 Karen L. Remmer, “The Sustainability of Political Democracy. Lessons from South America,”
Comparative Political Studies, Volume 29, Number 6, December 1996, p. 612.
23 The importance of a legitimating political culture for the stabilization of democracy had already
been highlighted by Seymour Martin Lipset. Following the steps of Max Weber, Lipset’s analysis
underscored the cultural basis of any process of institutional stabilization. See Lipset, Political
Man, p. 81.
24 Robert Dahl, Polyarchy. Participation and Opposition. New Haven, Yale University Press,
1971, chapter 3. Other paths to democratization, Dahl argues, are less likely to succeed, p.37.
25 Dahl, Polyarchy, p.
26 See Larry Diamond’s excellent review of the different approaches to political culture and
cultural change. Larry Diamond (Ed.), Political Culture and Democracy in Developing
Countries, Boulder and London, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1993.
27 O'Donnell and Schmitter. Transitions from Authoritarian Rule, p. 3.
28 Nancy Bermeo, “Democracy and the Lessons of Dictatorship,” Comparative Politics, volume
24, April 1992, p. 274. “Crisis or trauma, Jennifer Mc Coy argues, is more likely to produce
learning than a gradual accumulation of knowledge.” Jennifer L. McCoy, “The Learning Process”
Enrique Peruzzotti 26 IPSA
in Jennifer L. McCoy (ed.), Political Learning and Redemocratization in Latin America: Do
Politicians Learn from Political Crises? Miami, North South Center Press, p. 5.
29 According to Nancy Bermeo, political learning is relevant in the foundational moment when a
democratic regime is being established. Whether learning affects other phases of the
democratization processes, she argues, is an open question. Bermeo, “Democracy and the Lessons
of Dictatorship,” p.273
30 Bermeo, “Democracy and the Lessons of Dictatorship,” p. 276.
31 Adam Przeworksi, “Some Problems in the Study of Transitions to Democracy,” in Guillermo
O'Donnell, Philippe C. Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead (eds.). Transitions from Authoritarian
Rule. Comparative Perspectives, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1986, p. 59.
32 For Whitehead, the depoliticization that followed from the dramatic failure of past mobilizing
political projects is the main source of democratic stability. The alignment of the population
behind totalizing projects represented, in this interpretation, a key source of ungovernability and
institutional instability. The lowering of popular expectations of what can be achieved through
politics has consequently contributed to political governability. Societal depolitization and
privatization are seen as key variables for understanding the unusual endurance exhibited by the
new South American democracies. See Laurence Whitehead, "The Alternative to 'Liberal
Democracy': A Latin American Perspective", in David Held (ed.) Prospects for Democracy,
Cambridge, Polity Press, 1993. Giorgio Alberti also develops a similar argument about
democratization by default. See Giorgio Alberti, "Democracy by Default: Economic Crisis,
Movimentismo, and Social Anomie," paper presented at the XVth World Congress of the
International Political Science Association, Buenos Aires, July 1991.
33 McCoy, “The Learning Process,” p. 4; Bermeo, “Democracy and the Lessons of Dictatorship,”
p. 276
34 See O'Donnell and Schmitter. Transitions from Authoritarian Rule, chapter 5.
Enrique Peruzzotti 27 IPSA
35 Bermeo, ibid.
36 Przeworski, “Some problems in the Study of Transitions to Democracy,” p. 51.
37 Anthony T. Kronman, Max Weber, Stanford, Ca, Stanford University Press, 1983, p.39.
38 Max Weber, Economy and Society. An Outline of Interpretative Sociology, Berkeley, Ca,
University of California Press, 1978, volume 1, p. 214.
39 Przeworski, “Some problems in the Study of Transitions to Democracy,” pp. 50-1. See also,
Adam Przeworski, “Democracy as Equilibrium,” paper presented at the New School of Social
Research, March 27, 1996.
40 Weber, Economy and Society, p 213.
41 See the data compiled by Latinobarómetro regarding popular attitudes toward democracy in the
region: Marta Lagos, “Latin America’s Lost Illusions. A Road with no Return?” Journal of
Democracy, Volume 14, Number 2, April 2003.
42 Klaus Eder, The New Politics of Class. Social Movements and Cultural Dynamics in Advanced
Societies. London, Sage Publications, 1993.
43 Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory, Cambridge, Ma, Cambridge
University Press 1992; Alberto Melucci, Challenging Codes, Cambridge, Ma, Cambridge
University Press 1996
44 Klaus Eder, “Learning and the Evolution of Social Systems” in M. Schmid and F. M. Wuketits
(eds.), Evolutionary Theory in Social Science, Reidel Publishing Company, 1987, p. 104
45 This is the case of the analyses of Howard Wiarda in which Latin America seems to be
condemned due to its peculiar cultural heritage to authoritarianism. See, Howard Wiarda, “”Law
and Political Development in Latin America: Toward a framework of analysis,” in H. Wiarda
(eds.), Politics and Social Change in Latin America, Massachusets, University of Massachusets
Press, 1982.
Enrique Peruzzotti 28 IPSA
46 An important contribution was the collective volume of Sonia E. Alvarez, Evelina Dagnino,
and Arturo Escobar (eds.), Culture of Politics, Politics of Culture. Re-visioning Latin American
Social Movements, Boulder, Colorado, Westview Press, 1998. Also, Leonardo Avritzer,
Sociedade Civile e Democratizacao, Belo Horizonte, Livraria Del Rey Editora, 1995; Leonardo
Avritzer, “The Conflict between Civil and Political Society in Post-Authoritarian Brazil”
Constellations. An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory, number 3, 1995;
Sergio Costa, As Cores de Ercìlia. Esfera Pública, Democracia, Configuracoes Pòs-Nacionais,
Belo Horizonte, Editora UFMG, 2002; Enrique Peruzzotti, “Towards a New Politics. Citizenship
and Rights in Postdictatorial Argentina,” Citizenship Studies, vol.6, number 1, 2002
47 Sonia E. Alvarez, Evelina Dagnino, and Arturo Escobar, “Introduction: The Cultural and the
Political In Latin American Social Movements,” in Alvarez, Dagnino, and Escobar, Culture of
Politics, Politics of Culture, p. 8
48 Eder 1992a
49 Enrique Peruzzotti, “The Nature of the New Argentine Democracy. The Delegative Democracy
Argument Revisited,” Journal of Latin American Studies, volume 33, part 1, February 2001
50 Peruzzotti, “Towards a New Politics.”
51 The “democracy by default” argument fails to perceive how collective learning has led to a
revaluation of the normative validity claims of a constitutional form of democracy, placing
democracy as the only legitimate option. Democracy is not the unwilled product of a stalemate
generated by the failure of more appealing political alternatives, as argued by Whitehead; support
for democracy spawns out of a conscious collective decision of significant sectors of society that
was triggered by processes of normative (and not merely strategic) learning. Peruzzotti,
“Towards a New Politics”
52 Eder 1993, Jurgen Habermas 1981
Enrique Peruzzotti 29 IPSA
53 Historically, the institutional and cultural conditions for the flourishing of a public sphere were
threatened not only by military authoritarianism but also by the democratic traditions that
prevailed in large part of the region. Populist forms of democratic self-understanding endorsed a
plesbicitarian form of democracy opposed to a model of democracy built on the notion of public
deliberation. What are the elements of populist democracy that conspire against the idea of public
sphere? In the first place, a plesbicitarian reinterpretation of democratic institutions that replaces
deliberation by acclamation. To the discursive parliamentary mediation of interests and opinions
from below, populism counterpoises direct forms of communication between leader and mass that
bypass institutional and informal channels of opinion formation and interest aggregation. In the
second place, populism rests a form of identity-building organized around a friend-foe axis that
inevitably leads to overpoliticization and to political polarization. Being the leader and the
movement the incarnation of the popular will, the process of democratization is conceived as a
process of homogeneization of the political landscape whose final point is the untenable fiction of
a unanimous will. Such a fundamentalist form of political self-understanding necessarily leads to
political polarization and to the fragmentation of society into two irreconcilable (and over
politicized) camps. Both plesbicitarianism and polarization block communication and collective
learning. Populism destroys the constitutive conditions that allow for the establishment of a
vivid public sphere in which an autonomous public opinion can emerge. Enrique Peruzzotti,
“Cultura Política, Esfera Pública y Aprendizaje Colectivo en la Argentina Post-dictatorial”, in
Isidoro Cheresky and Inés Pousadela (eds.), Instituciones Políticas y Ciudadanía en las Nuevas
Democracias Latinoamericanas, Buenos Aires, Paidós Editorial, 2001; Enrique Peruzzotti, “Civil
Society and the Modern Constitutional Complex: The Argentine Experience,” Constellations. An
International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory, volume 4, number 1, April 1997.
54 Jurgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms. Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and
Democracy, Cambridge, Ma, The MIT Press, p. 298.
Enrique Peruzzotti 30 IPSA
55 I have developed this argument in Enrique Peruzzotti, “Two Approaches to Representation,”
paper presented at the XXVI International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association,
San Juan, Puerto Rico, March 15-18, 2006.
56 To stress the relevance of such civic actors and association does not imply that such actors are
the most conspicuous element of the public sphere, or even of civil society. The mass media,
political parties and interest groups organizations play in all cases a dominant position in such
space.
57 Leonardo Avritzer, Democracy and the Public Space in Latin America, Princeton, Princeton
University Press, 2002; Peruzzotti, “Cultura Política, Esfera Pública y Aprendizaje Colectivo,”
2001
58 Avritzer, Democracy and the Public Space. See also, Vera Schattan P. Coelho e Marcos Nobre
(orgs.), Participacao e Deliberacao. Teoría Democrática e Experiencias Institutcionais no Brasil
Contemporáneo, Sao Paulo, Editora 34, 2004; Evelina Dagnino (ed.), Sociedad Civil, Esfera
Pública y Democratización en América Latina, Brasil, México, Fondo de Cultura Económica,
2003, Enrique Peruzzotti and Andrew Seele, “Democratic Innovation at the Local Level in Latin
America,” Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, unpublished manuscript, 2006.
59 Enrique Peruzzotti and Catalina Smulovitz (eds.), Enforcing the Rule of Law. Social
Accountability in Latin America, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh University Press, 2006.
Enrique Peruzzotti 31 IPSA
