Georgetown Americas Institute

The event brought together a panel featuring Azul America Aguiar Aguilar, an expert on judicial politics in Mexico, Fernando Bizzarro, who researches democracy and political parties in Latin America, Claudio Fuentes, a specialist in institutional change and police dynamics in Chile, and David Landau, a scholar of constitutional design and comparative constitutional law, to address the crucial questions surrounding the parallel crises of democracy and the rule of law in the Americas, and what this regression means for the region's political, economic, and social futures. The discussion was moderated by Michael Shifter, Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University.

The State of Democracy in the Americas

The panelists explored the nature of democratic backsliding in countries ranging from Mexico and Brazil to Chile and El Salvador, highlighting common tactics used by elected leaders with authoritarian tendencies to erode democratic structures from within. These include tactics such as the undermining of institutions, when leaders utilize attacks to discredit independent institutions designed to check their power, such as constitutional courts and transparency bodies, thereby preparing the path for institutional reforms.

Leaders have also used legal mechanisms to degrade democracy from within, making it a difficult challenge to address both domestically and internationally, while also eroding checks and balances by abusing popular support to undermine constitutional limits and checks on the exercise of power.

"What is paradigmatic of the moment, but not exactly new right is the use of law instead of military force right to kind of degrade or erode democracy." - David Landau

The speakers also debated whether backsliding is a result of democracies failing to deliver social and economic results or if it is because of the rise of a new style of leadership. Public frustration with traditional leadership is high because of a lack of tangible progress. Others have suggested that leadership and external factors are equally critical. The rise of these leaders is fueled by the organized spread of populist ideologies across the region and more widely around the world.

"The past 10 years have been in economic terms kind of a lost decade to Latin America." - Fernando Bizzarro

Sources of Resilience

Nevertheless, and despite the widespread trend of democratic backsliding, the discussion also identified sources of resilience for the region’s democracies. These include most notably a judicial commitment with democracy, with the recent example of the Supreme Court and Electoral Court in Brazil, which are strong examples of institutional resistance, demonstrating a critical commitment to democratic principles that successfully checked executive overreach.

“The supreme court and the electoral court in Brazil have shown a strong commitment with democratic principles, and this is a very important achievement that not many courts have demonstrated.” - Azul America Aguiar Aguilar

At the same time, social mobilization, that is, the ability of civil society and social mobilization to successfully produce tangible change, has succeeded to challenge authoritarian-leaning governments, as seen in Poland. This proves that a bottom-up defense of democracy is a viable path to democratic resilience.

During the Q&A portion of the event, students asked questions related to the state of democracy in several Latin American countries, echoing their own personal experiences and connections to the region. The event, sponsored by the Georgetown Americas Institute and the Center for Latin American Studies in collaboration with the Americas Forum, the Georgetown Democracy Initiative, and the Center for the Advancement of the Rule of Law in the Americas, underscored the urgent need to understand and defend democracy in the hemisphere.