The Making of Flawed Democracies in the Americas

The United States, Chile, Argentina, and Peru

Alex Roberto Hybel

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9783030211776
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030211783
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book strives to answer two interrelated questions: Why have certain states in the Americas been more successful than others at creating stable democratic regimes? Why have certain states in the Americas failed to create stable democratic regimes? To answer both questions, the author focuses on four states – the United States, Argentina, Chile, and Peru.  Throughout the analysis, he isolates and evaluates the conditions that helped or hindered the development of each state and of its political regime.  He presents his conclusions in the form of time-related explanatory hypotheses. By identifying and examining the conditions that brought about the transformation of each states and of its political regimes, this study ultimately facilitates a discussion of the future of democracy in each of these countries as well as in the world.

© The Author(s) 2020

Alex Roberto HybelThe Making of Flawed Democracies in the Americashttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21178-3_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: State Creation and Democratization in Four American States—The Nature of the Problem

Alex Roberto Hybel¹

(1)

Marina del Rey, CA, USA

Alex Roberto Hybel

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

This book’s principal objectives are to address two interrelated questions: Why have certain states in the Americas been more successful than others at creating stable democratic regimes? Why have certain states in the Americas failed to create stable democratic regimes? To answer both questions, analyses are provided of the formation of four American states and the creation of their respective political regimes from the moment they attained independence to the present. Such analyses enable the investigator to isolate and evaluate the conditions that helped or hindered the development of each state and of its political regime. The detailed analyses are then presented in the form of explanatory hypotheses, which in turn facilitate a discussion of the future of democracy, both in general and in each of the states studied throughout the book. To answer the two aforementioned questions, four cases are investigated: The United States, Argentina, Chile, and Peru.

Rationale

It is feared that democracy is in peril. Just a few decades ago, political scientists would not have voiced such a concern. They would have stated that people throughout the world were steadily recognizing that democracy was, in Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan’s words, the “only game in town.”¹ They would have concurred with the two scholars that in places where democracy had been consolidated, the return to authoritarianism had become an unacceptable alternative.² Today, few analysts accept such bold assertions. The data seem to justify their apprehension.

In the 1920s, only a very small number of sovereign states were led by regimes that had the basic components necessary for them to qualify as democratic. By 1990, that number had increased to 69, and by 2012 to 117. Between the years 2005 and 2013, however, more countries experienced a decline in political rights and civil liberties than an increase.³ Equally disturbing are the figures representing the percentage of millennials in developed democracies who actually support democracy. In the United States, the number of millennials who believe it is “essential to live in a democracy” is only 30 percent. In Australia, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and New Zealand, the percentage is at 40 percent or lower. Ironically, the last four states are among the 16 most developed democracies in the world. The numbers remain troubling as the analysis focuses on those who believe that it is preferable to have a “strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament and elections.” As could be expected, the percentages in places such as Russia, Romania, Ukraine, and Turkey oscillate between the high 50s to the high 70s. But sadly, though the percentages are much lower, they have increased in the United States and Germany, as well as in Mexico, Argentina, Peru, and Uruguay, four South American countries that seemed to have finally embraced democracy some two to three decades ago.⁴

Does the information just presented indicate that the world is beginning to witness the steady downfall of democracy and that the decline will not stop? Will a modified form of authoritarianism arise, one in which autocratic leaders limit the access to multiple sources of information in order to mold the preferences of the public?

The questions beg another question: Should democracy be desired? Any serious attempt to answer the question forces analysts to recognize that despite its present allure among many people in various corners of the world, for much of history political leaders and philosophers did not view democracy favorably. Plato was among its earliest critics. He posited that oligarchies turn into democracies when elites overindulge, become idle and wasteful, and develop interests separate from those they rule. Then it is democracy’s turn to falter. A democracy becomes a tyranny when mob passion overtakes political reason and an autocrat becomes the darling of the masses. Machiavelli was no less critical. Democracies, he argued, cater to the whims of the people, who too often accept false ideas, misuse their resources, and fail to take into consideration potential threats until it is too late. The founders of the United States also feared democracy. John Adams warned that democracy never lasts long. Every democracy throughout history self-destructed. James Madison was equally troubled. But then came Winston Churchill, who told the world to keep in mind that “many forms of government had been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”⁵

Churchill’s implicit warning must not be taken lightly. As any student of history knows, democracy has not always enabled the wisest to lead it, and too often has become victim of the whims of uninformed populists. But it should not be forgotten that though possession of an open and competitive political system has not always shielded democracy from grave errors, it has enhanced the chances to correct them before they become unbearably costly. Other political systems lack such safety measures. Moreover, no other type of political system has empowered the voices of those persons who throughout history have been forced to remain quiet to finally be heard and counted.

Unsurprisingly, however, to this day, democracy remains afflicted by a major internal contradiction. Its survival, integrity, and welfare depend entirely on its capacity to remain open and competitive. The moment those two conditions are removed, a democracy is no longer a democracy. And yet, the common practice for those in power within a democracy has been and continues to be to try to retain power indefinitely. In a sense, thus, every democracy contains the seeds of its own destruction. It is that peculiar contradiction that inspired the writing of this work. It is the need to understand why and how political regimes that were not democratic and were led by political figures who did not aspire to create a democratic regime became democratic while others did not. Such an understanding can be attained only via the deliberate unfolding of their state-creation and political regime–formation processes from their birth to the present.

The study of how democracies are formed is an old enterprise. Some analysts have focused on single cases, and others have compared cases from different regions. Based on their works, analysts have derived a multitude of arguments, often in the form of theories, in which they propose the conditions that have either facilitated or obstructed the creation of stable and effective democracies. Because democracies have emerged in every region of the world, and at different times, it would be futile to attempt to develop a theory of democratization applicable to states worldwide without first acquiring a clear understanding of the struggles that states in particular regions endured as they strove to consolidate and legitimize their power and establish democratic regimes. Hence the rationale for focusing solely on the Americas, and specifically on the United States, Peru, Chile, and Argentina.

Methodology

Process tracing is an analytical tool utilized to draw “descriptive and causal pieces from diagnostic pieces of evidence—often understood as part of temporal sequence of events or phenomena.”⁶ Stated differently, the investigator tries to identify the intervening steps or cause-and-effect links that might exist between the dependent and independent variables in different cases.⁷ As David Collier explains, process tracing helps (a) identify and describe political and social phenomena, (b) evaluate prior explanatory hypotheses, discover new ones, and assess the new causal claims, (c) gain insights into causal mechanisms, and (d) provide alternative ways of addressing challenging problems such as reciprocal causation, spuriousness, and selection bias. In short, process tracing strives to build a theoretical argument step by step by paying close attention to the sequential relationships between independent, intervening, and dependent variables that exist in one case, and ascertaining the extent to which those sequential relationships are reproduced in other cases.⁸ In cases where a similar sequential relationship does not emerge, the investigator attempts to find out whether different independent or intervening variables generated a different causal sequence.

Case Selection

The decision to study the United States, Peru, Chile, and Argentina demands answers to two questions: Since the history and culture of the United States was so different from that of the Spanish American states, why incorporate the former in the comparison? Additionally, why compare Argentina, Chile, and Peru, but not other Spanish American states?

The analysis presented in this book questions the contention that the inclusion of the United States in the comparison would elicit arguments of limited theoretical value.

The United States’ pathway to democracy was neither predetermined nor intentional. Much of its evolution was defined by a combination of domestic and external factors that compelled US leaders to steadily transform their political system. As is demonstrated in this study, though differences existed between the ways the United States and the Spanish American colonies evolved into states and formed their respective political regimes, many similarities were present. The identification of the differences and similarities helps develop a better understanding of the types of obstacles and opportunities newly independent entities in the Americas encountered as they created their respective states and political regimes and, as a result, helps determine what enabled or prevented the development of democratic regimes. In short, despite the fact that the founders of the United States feared democracy, unintentionally they helped set up its foundation, which in turn served in a number of cases as a model for the Spanish American leaders who were determined to create their own sovereign states after gaining independence from Spain.

With regard to the second question—Why study those particular Spanish American states?—it is evident that the comparison of other cases could also help elicit some valuable explanatory hypotheses. In a separate book, the state-creation and regime-formation experience of the United States is compared with those of Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Guatemala. Needless to say, there are many other cases that could also be studied, and it is the hope of this analyst that other investigators will assume such responsibility and compare their conclusions with those arrived at in the two volumes.

There are several distinct rationales for selecting Chile, Peru, and Argentina. The processes of state creation and regime formation throughout Spanish America are bounded by paradoxes. Despite their geographical proximity and their invasion and settlement by the Spaniards at approximately the same time, Peru and Chile traversed different paths toward statehood and democracy. Chile was markedly more effective than Peru in both endeavors. Hence the question: Why? More specifically, what factors enabled the descendants of Chile’s colonizers to create a state and a democratic regime faster and more stable than Peru’s progenies?

The quandary becomes more complex when Argentina is added to the comparison. A...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: State Creation and Democratization in Four American States—The Nature of the Problem
• 2. Theories of State Creation and Democratization
• 3. Processes of State Creation and Democratization in the United States
• 4. Processes of State Creation and Democratization in Peru, Chile, and Argentina
• 5. Exploratory Hypotheses: Chile, Peru, and Argentina
• 6. An Exploratory Theory of State Creation and Democratization in the United States, Chile, Argentina, and Peru
• Back Matter