Fujimori's Coup and the Breakdown of Democracy in Latin America (review)

Charles Kenney's book is an important contribution to an emergent body of work analyzing the Fujimori years in Peru. Unlike most recent scholarship, which tends to focus on Fujimori's eventual demise, Kenney provides a glimpse into the years leading up to Fujimori's 1992 autogolpe, both explaining the event and discussing its consequences for democratic governance in Peru. The book is not only aimed at scholars interested in Peru, however. Kenney's work stresses institutional variables as holding explanatory power in the breakdown of democracy, and thus has broader theoretical implications. It builds on prevalent institutional theories by carefully demonstrating the importance of executive-legislative relations for democratic stability in the region.

The book explores several questions, including, why did democracy break down in Peru in 1992? and what can Peru's experience tell us about the breakdown of new democracies in general? (p. 1). For Kenney, because the coup went on to become a model for less democratic leaders around the world, the autogolpe emerges as a class of events that merits analytical attention.

The book's central argument lies in the important and often overlooked role that institutional variables played in explaining the coup. To demonstrate this, the book expertly combines qualitative and quantitative data to examine systematically the events that led up to the coup. Each argument is supported by information gathered from a variety of news reports, interviews, and secondary sources, as well as survey results, electoral data, and economic indicators. In terms of his interviewing methodology, one aspect that merits praise is Kenney's "great care to include representatives of each of the three major opinion groups that formed in the wake of the coup" (p. 4), thereby ensuring diversity of opinion and greater accuracy. One way to improve the qualitative data would be to adjudicate news sources for the reader. Is coverage in news sources such as Caretas and La República equally reliable as the accounts reported in Oiga and Expresso, for example?

Chapters 2 and 3 provide the historical context on the democratic period between 1980 and 1992, including the rise of Shining Path and the economic crisis, as well as detailed information on Peru's party, electoral, and legislative systems. Chapter 2 carefully traces Peruvian history from the Belaunde government (1980–85), which witnessed Shining Path's first appearance in 1980, through the end of the García presidency (1985–90). During the García years, rumors of a military coup in response to the terrorist threat and hyperinflation (both of which directly affected the armed forces) first emerged. One of the most crucial aspects of this period in retrospect is the development of the Green Plan in 1988; this was the armed forces' plan to take over the government should events become unmanageable or should APRA continue to govern during the next presidential term. Kenney's discussion of this coup plan proves one of the best to date.

The book then moves on to the rise of Fujimori and the simultaneous demise of the party system. Kenney first documents the rise of Peru's most prominent political parties before 1990, including APRA, Popular Action, the Popular Christian Party, and the United Left. He correctly reminds us, however, that the party system that emerged in post-1980 Peru was never truly institutionalized, and it weakened even further by the end of the 1980s. He attributes the party system collapse to Peruvian political elites' inability to lead the country out of crisis and the severe distrust among Peruvians that this engendered. Parties were unable to respond to the crisis or to the Peruvian electorate's needs. This opened the path for an outsider to emerge during the 1990 presidential elections.

Chapter 4 begins to outline Kenney's main causal argument, the importance of legislative-executive relations in explaining the downfall of Peruvian democracy in 1992. While the...