Populism and the Erosion of Horizontal Accountability in Latin America
| Published date | 01 May 2018 |
| Date | 01 May 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321717723511 |
| Author | Saskia Pauline Ruth |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
research-article2017
Article
Political Studies
2018, Vol. 66(2) 356 –375
Populism and the Erosion of
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Latin America
Saskia Pauline Ruth
Abstract
This article explores which factors enable or hinder populist presidents in Latin America to pursue
a radical strategy of institutional change and induce the erosion of horizontal checks and balances.
Applying an actor-centred approach, the article focuses on specific constellations in the political
arena that shape populist presidents’ incentives and their ability to engage in institutional change.
Three conditions are considered to be most decisive: the absence of unified government between
the executive and the legislature, the existence of a ‘power vacuum’ in the political arena and the
distribution of public support. Using configurational analyses, different causal paths explaining the
presence or absence of the erosion of horizontal accountability are identified.
Keywords
populism, Latin America, horizontal accountability, liberal democracy
Accepted: 18 May 2017
Comparative research on the consequences of populism in public office only recently
arose (Levitsky and Loxton, 2013: 1042; Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, 2012b; Rovira
Kaltwasser and Taggart, 2016). This was long overdue since the ambiguity of the rela-
tionship between populism and democracy has been one of the most recurring and debated
aspects in the normative literature on populism across its entire history (see Canovan,
1999; Laclau, 2005; Laclau and Mouffe, 1985). Until recently, this relationship has
mainly been investigated through in-depth case studies and small-N research (e.g.
Hawkins, 2010; Levitsky and Loxton, 2013), resulting in a tentative consensus that pop-
ulism may serve as a corrective to democracy through addressing the underprivileged and
incorporating citizens who were not (or did not feel) represented by established elites and
at the same time threaten institutions of liberal democracy (de la Torre, 2000; Mudde and
Department of Political Science, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Corresponding author:
Saskia Pauline Ruth, Department of Political Science, University of Zurich, Affolternstrasse 56, 8050 Zurich,
Switzerland.
Email: saskia.ruth@zda.uzh.ch
Ruth
357
Rovira Kaltwasser, 2012b). Prominent examples in Latin America that follow this pattern
are Evo Morales in Bolivia and Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. But are populists in power
always as consequential to democracy as these prominent cases imply? Looking at other
populist presidents in Latin America, we can also find examples where the threat to
democracy did not materialise, for example, Alan García in Peru or Fernando Collor de
Mello in Brazil.
Recently, comparative researchers have begun to test this relationship in large-N stud-
ies as well, especially in the Latin American context (see Houle and Kenny, 2016; Huber
and Schimpf, 2016). While these studies are a step forward in unpacking the ambiguous
relationship between populism and democracy in highlighting how populist governments
differ from non-populist governments, they focus on the average effect of populism and
hence are not able to explain why some (very prominent) populists erode democratic
institutions and others do not. None of these recent studies systematically analyse under
which conditions populists in power pose a threat to democracy and which conditions
might hinder them to do so. To answer this question, however, is impervious, since only
if we know when and how populists engage in eroding liberal democratic institutions, can
we begin to design strategies to countervail their impact (Rovira Kaltwasser and Taggart,
2016).
Hence, to learn more about populism as regimes in power, the aim of this article is to
compare and explain the different behaviour of populist presidents towards institutions
of liberal democracy in Latin America over time. The study focuses on Latin America
since populism has a long history in this region and many cases figure prominently in the
scholarly literature on the phenomenon (e.g. Conniff, 1999; Mudde and Kaltwasser,
2012b). The research question centres on the conduct of populist presidents towards
democratic institutions of horizontal accountability, defined here as the capacity of dif-
ferent branches of government to mutually check each other against power abuse
(Diamond et al., 1999: 3).
To answer this question, I take an actor-centred approach focusing on specific constel-
lations in the political arena that shape populist presidents’ incentives and their ability to
engage in institutional change. Therefore, I compiled a genuine data set covering all pop-
ulist presidents elected under democratic rule in the Latin American region from 1979
until 2014. Merging both qualitative information and expert judgements, I identified 16
populist presidents during this time frame. The hypotheses developed in this article will
be tested by means of a Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) which is specifically
suited for research designs with a low or medium number of cases (Ragin, 1987).
Consequently, this article employs an analytical strategy that takes a middle ground
between small-N and large-N studies.
Populism and (Liberal) Democracy
The phenomenon of populism poses many challenges to comparative researchers.
Especially in the Latin American context it has been defined along the lines of feature
lists or narrow core characteristics which led to many versions of populism with adjec-
tives (Weyland, 2001). Instead of using such a narrow definition, a minimalist ideational
conceptualisation that focuses on the underlying set of ideas common to all these
approaches will be deployed here (Aslanidis, 2016; Hawkins and Rovira Kaltwasser, in
press). Therefore, populism is defined as ‘a Manichean discourse that identifies the Good
with a unified will of the people and the Evil with a conspiring elite’ (Hawkins, 2009:
358
Political Studies 66(2)
1042).1 This definition has several advantages over traditional definitions. First, it is bet-
ter equipped for the comparative analysis of populism across time and space – for exam-
ple, it permits the comparison of populism in Latin America with populism in Europe (see
Hawkins, 2010; Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, 2012b; van Kessel, 2015) or the compari-
son of historical examples with contemporary populism (Hawkins and Rovira Kaltwasser,
in press). Second, it does not preclude the specification of subtypes of populism by add-
ing attributes to the core definition. Beyond the recurrence to an anti-elite rhetoric and the
statement to be the true party or person to represent ‘the good people’ in terms of their
general will that unites all populists (Aslanidis, 2016; Rooduijn, 2014), other elements
help to distinguish different forms of populism – such as left- or right-wing populism,
neo-populism or indigenous populism (e.g. Madrid, 2008; Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser,
2013).
The relationship between populism and democracy has been studied intensively.
Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser (2012) and Cas Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser (2012b) have
recently advanced the debate about the ambivalence between these two concepts and
proposed an analytical framework to study the consequences of populism. Building on
Robert Dahl’s (1971) definition of democracy, they theorise potential positive and nega-
tive effects of populism alongside the dimensions of public contestation and political
participation. In line with other studies, they argue that the corrective to democracy
becomes manifest through the emergence and rise of populists, while the threat to democ-
racy usually relates to them being in power (see Canovan, 1999; Laclau and Mouffe,
1985).
Hence, the emergence of populism can be seen as a symptom of the lack of responsive-
ness of traditional political elites. In such contexts, populists offer dissatisfied citizens an
option to hold incumbent elites (vertically) accountable. The threat to democracy, in con-
trast, is closely related to the presence of populism in power. While a populist strategy
may be perfectly suited to gain public office playing by the rules of the game, once in
power the same populists may turn against core representative institutions to maintain
power over time. To grasp these differences, de la Torre (2000: 10) distinguishes between
‘populism as regimes in power … [and] populism as wider social and political move-
ments seeking power’. This article follows the first analytical perspective by focusing on
the potential threat populism in power poses to democracy.
But what constitutes the threat of populism in power to democracy? I argue that the
ideational approach helps us to answer this question and that populist ideas are the moti-
vating force behind the illiberal behaviour of populist leaders (see Rooduijn, 2014; Ruth
and Hawkins, 2017). The antagonistic nature and the moralistic style of the populist dis-
course are often directed against liberal democracy, which is based on political pluralism
and the constitutional protection of minorities. Through the anchorage of populism in the
imaginary concept of ‘the good people’, populism excludes those parts of society that do
not fit into the (however defined) picture...
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