2021 was a year with an intense electoral agenda for Latin America, but the region’s democratic institutions have never been so fragile. “Around 80% of the region’s population lives under a democratic regime, but only 1.3% (the inhabitants of Uruguay and Costa Rica) do so under a complete democracy,” says the Index. produced annually by the magazine The Economistpublished this Tuesday.
Latin America has experienced historic changes of government in Chile and Honduras in recent months. There have also been elections in Peru or Ecuador, but, according to the British weekly, “voters were presented with candidates representing very different agendas, unleashing the collapse of centrist politics and growing polarization.” Between skepticism about the effectiveness of governments, authoritarianism with free rein thanks to the pandemic and the erosion of institutions by “illiberal populists”, the classification of the health of democracies around the world of The Economist affirms that Latin America suffered the “greatest reduction” recorded in its index since it began to be published in 2006 (you can consult the complete list at the end of the article).
Chile, for example, went from being classified as a “complete democracy” to a “defective one.” The start of the constitutional reform process or the victory of Gabriel Boric, the youngest president in the history of a country pushed by his student movements, did not matter, but rather the context of these events. In Chile, still one of the healthiest regional democracies on the index, only 55% of those eligible voted in an election that The Economist defines as that of the “collapse of the powerful coalitions of the center” in which Boric and the far-right José Antonio Kast ended up competing, “who occupy diametrically opposed visions in economics and social policies.” The same yardstick was used to measure the victories of Pedro Castillo in Peru or Xiomara Castro in Honduras.
The magazine index The Economist judges the quality of democracy around the world based on five criteria: electoral pluralism and the existence of democratic processes; the functioning of the government; the political participation of citizens; the political culture of the country; and respect for civil liberties. From these, it gives a rating to each country in an index that in 2021 was led by Sweden, with a score of 9.88, and which placed Afghanistan at the bottom of the table, with a 0.32.
Latin American countries registered a decrease in all criteria. Under these standards, Ecuador, Mexico and Paraguay lost their status as “flawed democracies” and are now designated as “hybrid regimes”; while Haiti joined the list of “authoritarian regimes” along with Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. In a context in which populist attacks on institutions are on the rise – the British publication points out with particular concern the governments of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico and Nayib Bukele in El Salvador – Uruguay and Costa Rica are the only countries that maintain a sufficient score to be considered “full democracies”.
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