Enforcing peoples’ right to democracy: transnational activism and regional powers in contemporary Inter-American relations
| Published date | 01 September 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13540661221135049 |
| Author | Stefano Palestini,Erica Martinelli |
| Date | 01 September 2023 |
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https://doi.org/10.1177/13540661221135049
European Journal of
International Relations
2023, Vol. 29(3) 780 –805
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/13540661221135049
journals.sagepub.com/home/ejt
Enforcing peoples’ right to
democracy: transnational
activism and regional powers in
contemporary Inter-American
relations
Stefano Palestini
and Erica Martinelli
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Chile
Abstract
The Inter-American Democratic Charter (IADC) is the most comprehensive multilateral
framework for dealing with democratic breakdowns and backslidings in the Western
Hemisphere. In such cases, the Organisation of American States (OAS) is supposed to
defend democracy by suspending states, imposing sanctions or taking other multilateral
measures. Oftentimes, however, the OAS has looked the other way. The question,
then, is what makes the difference. In this comparative case study, we use cross-cases
comparisons and process-tracing to identify the actors and causal mechanisms that
determine when and whether the IADC is actually enforced. We explain inconsistent
enforcement by analysing interactions among three sets of actors – the governments
of powerful member states, OAS secretaries general and civil society organisations
– during coups, executive takeovers and electoral frauds in OAS member states
between 2001 and 2020. Our analysis reveals that cooperation between an activist
secretary general and civil society actors was neither sufficient nor necessary for IADC
enforcement. By contrast, US support for enforcement was a necessary but insufficient
condition for the OAS to act. To get it to do so, the United States required the support
of two leading regional powers: Mexico and Brazil. These findings suggest that the
‘right to democracy’ enshrined in the IADC hinges upon the volatile preferences of
the executives of the OAS’s three most powerful member states. The resulting lack of
institutional autonomy leads to inconsistent enforcement of the IADC, jeopardising the
credibility of the region’s formally declared right to democracy.
Corresponding author:
Stefano Palestini, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Avenida Vicuña Mackenna 4860, Santiago,
7820436, Chile.
Email: stefano.palestini@uc.cl
1135049EJT0010.1177/13540661221135049European Journal of International RelationsPalestini and Martinelli
research-article2022
Article
Palestini and Martinelli 781
Keywords
Democracy, democratic backsliding, transnational civil society, international organisations,
democratisation, Organisation of American States
The people of the Americas have a right to democracy and their governments have an obligation
to promote and defend it.
Article 1, Inter-American Democratic Charter
The Inter-American Democratic Charter (IADC) was adopted by the Organisation of
American States (OAS) on 11 September 2001. Echoing the ideas of Thomas Franck
(1992), the IADC conceives democracy as a right of citizens that governments have the
responsibility to defend. While several international organisations have adopted legal
provisions and clauses requiring democracy for membership (Closa, 2013), the IADC
stands out for its precise definition of democracy and strong rights-based language.
Moreover, the IADC calls for punishing not only coups d’état, but also violations of
democratic institutions by elected authorities (Heine and Weiffen, 2014; Legler, 2012).
While it does not qualify as an international treaty, the IADC is more than a purely
declaratory document and it has been enforced frequently, though inconsistently in the
two decades since its adoption1 (Arrighi, 2015; McCoy, 2012; Perina, 2015). This article
explains the inconsistent enforcement of the IADC during its first two decades of exist-
ence, from 2001 to 2020.
The IADC is part of a family of multilateral democracy-protection frameworks –
sometimes referred as ‘democracy clauses’ – that infringe on member states’ domes-
tic affairs but lack a supranational authority responsible for enforcement (Coe, 2019;
Duxbury, 2011). Although this article focuses on the OAS and the IADC, our argu-
ment and approach could also apply to other IOs that have adopted similar democ-
racy-protection frameworks. In the case of the OAS, the lack of a supranational
enforcement authority means that the judicial bodies of the Inter-American System
– the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of
Human Rights – play no role in the enforcement of the IADC. Enforcement is left to
OAS member states, which are often reluctant to enforce norms that could likewise
be invoked against them in the future. The fact that the United States and Latin
American states have presidential systems also leaves IADC enforcement prone to
executive bias, as those taking decisions within the OAS are ambassadors who are
chosen by and represent the executive power (Legler et al., 2012). Furthermore, the
coexistence of liberal electoral democracies and authoritarian electoral regimes
within the region has rendered protection of the ‘right to democracy’ more cumber-
some than drafters of the IADC expected. In short, the enforcement of the IADC
hinges on the emergence of a coalition of governments willing to monitor, assist or
even sanction a fellow member state where democratic breakdown or backsliding is
taking place. This article seeks to determine what enables or obstructs the emergence
of such a pro-enforcement coalition within the OAS when a violation of the IADC
occurs.
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