Dissonances: Democratic Critiques of Democracy

Chapter 5. Polyarchies and the (Un)Rule of Law in Latin America: A Partial Conclusion

c h a p t e r 5 Polyarchies and the (Un)Rule of Law in Latin America A Partial Conclusion Aos meus amigos, tudo; aos meus inimigos, a lei. (For my friends, whatever they want; for my enemies, the law.) — Getúlio Vargas Introduction Impressed by the ineVectiveness, if not the recurrent violations, of many basic rights in Latin America, several authors in The (Un)Rule of LawandtheUnderprivilegedinLatinAmerica(Méndez,O’Donnell, This essay was originally published in The (Un)Rule of Law and the Underprivileged in Latin America, edited by Juan E. Méndez, Guillermo O’Donnell, and Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999). I appreciate the comments of David Collier, Ernesto Funes, Gabriela IppolitoO ’Donnell, Marcelo Leiras, Scott Mainwaring, Sebastián Mazzuca, Juan Méndez , Gerardo Munck, Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Héctor Schamis, and Ruth Zimmerling, as well as the participants in the academic workshop and the public policy forum that were at the origin of the above volume. I also appreciate the comments of the participants in the panel “The Quality of Democracy and Democratic Consolidation,” Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC, August 28–31, 1997. 111 112 DISSONANCES and Pinheiro 1999) challenge the appropriateness of attaching the label “democracy” to most countries in this region. At the very least, as Juan Méndez puts it in his introduction to the section on lawless violence, these failures indicate a “clear abdication of democratic authority.” The doubts and challenges to the democratic condition of these countries spring, on one hand, from justified outrage in view of the dismal situation that, in terms of basic rights of the vulnerable and the poor, most of the chapters in this volume document. On the other hand, these same doubts and challenges reflect the vague and fluctuating meanings attached to the term “democracy,” not only in common but also in academic usage. The problem has become more acute since the number of countries from the South and East which claim to be democratic has greatly expanded in the last two decades. This expansion has forced democratic theory to become more broadly comparative than it used to be when its empirical referent was almost exclusively limited to countries situated in the Northwestern quadrant of the world. However, I have argued in recent publications1 that in broadening its geographical scope, democratic theory has carried too many unexamined assumptions,2 reflecting in so doing the conditions prevailing during the emergence and institutionalization of democracy in the highly developed world. I also argued that, given the present range of variation among pertinent cases, some of these assumptions need to be made explicit and submitted to critical examination if we are going to achieve a theory of adequate scope and empirical grounding. In the present text, based on a discussion of the rule of law and its ramifications in terms of the conceptualization of democracy, citizenship, and the state, I attempt to advance in this direction. Polyarchy Country X is a political democracy, or a polyarchy (terms that I will use indistinctly): it holds regularly scheduled competitive elections, individuals can freely create or join organizations, including political parties, there is freedom of expression, including a reasonably free press, and the like.3 Country X, however, is marred by extensive poverty and deep inequality. Authors who agree with a strictly political, Polyarchies and the (Un)Rule of Law in Latin America 113 basically Schumpeterian, definition of democracy would argue that, even though the socioeconomic characteristics of X may be regrettable , this country undoubtedly belongs to the set of democracies. This is a view of democracy as a type of political regime, independent of the characteristics of state and society. In contrast, other authors see democracy as a systemic attribute, dependent on the existence of a signi ficant degree of socioeconomic equality, and/or as an overall social and political arrangement oriented toward the achievement of such equality. These authors would dismiss country X as “not truly” democratic , or as a “facade” version of democracy. Contemporary literature has generated plenty of definitions of democracy .4 If the options were limited to the two just sketched, I would opt for the first. The definition that conflates democracy with a substantial degree of social justice or equality is not analytically useful. Furthermore, it is dangerous: it tends...