Vol. 22 No. 45 (2020): Dossier: Political process in Latin America. Four years of convulsive democracies (may to august)

The 45^th edition of the journal Reflexión Política is dedicated to the analysis of the contemporary political processes in Latin America, based on case studies of the political systems of Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, El Salvador, Mexico, and Paraguay. In this edition you will find studies on the operation of the democracies, the role of the presidents, relations between the executive and legislative branches and other political institutions, in a context marked by political instability, economic crisis and the COVID-19 health crisis.

            In particular, in connection with the pandemic, Professor Manuel Alcántara opens the dossier with the article Latin American Politics in the New Normal, in which he reflects on six aspects to understand the situation and the challenges faced by the democracies and politics in the region: the importance of the State, democratic legitimacy and authority, leadership, the reassessment of nation based on patriotic rhetoric, and citizens who are increasingly individualistic and distrustful.

            In the national case studies, Nicolás Liendo and Camilo González assess the factors that enabled the return of Peronismo to power in Argentina, highlighting the poor economic performance of the previous government, an aspect that is currently one of the main challenges for President Alberto Fernández. On Bolivia, Rocío Estremadoiro provides an analysis of the democratic instability in the country and some of the aspects that enable understanding the fall of the government of Evo Morales. Among others, she identifies as main factors the loss of dominance by the MAS party, the extraction-based economic model, the alliance with conservative sectors and therefore the persistence of conservative ideas and principles, as well as an autocratic chieftain-centered leadership. The author concludes the analysis with a reflection of the interim government of Bolivia that has failed to escape from the ghost of authoritarianism.

Michele Fernandez, Humberto Dantas and Graziella Testa assess the government of Jair Bolsonaro based on the make-up of his administration and the political conflicts within his organization, and the relations, also conflictive, with the legislative branch. They conclude that Brazil is experiencing a leadership crisis that affects the development of public policies, the most noteworthy of which is the economic crisis and mismanagement of the COVID-19 health emergency.  Also on Brazil, the article by Felipe Alves da Silva, based on a theoretical-constitutional analysis, critically discusses the re-democratization process of the country, highlighting that the State of Exception has been the mechanism most used by the executive to face crises, which has in turn undermined citizens’ political rights, maintaining authoritarian structures from the past, which is all fertile ground for a politician of the tenor of Jair Bolsonaro.     

El Salvador is reviewed by Mónica Tobar, who addresses the relationship between the executive and legislative branches during the government of Nayib Bukele, who is well known for his peculiar leadership style and for breaking away from almost 30 years of alternating administrations between the right-wing ARENA party and the left-wing FMLN party. The author explains that the Salvadoran economic crisis and the difficulty in achieving a legislative majority have generated a climate of ungovernability in the Central American country, which combined with the president’s style of leadership makes Salvadoran institutional and democratic performance even more difficult. The current crisis produced by COVID-19 has led President Bukele to further strengthen his authoritarian nature.

Two articles review the Mexican case. The first focuses on the government of President López Obrador in the context of the democratic crisis affecting the country. Juan Mario Solís and Fernando Barrientos identify several elements or hazards that help explain the weakness of Mexico’s democracy: weak representation, corruption, government inefficiency, organized crime, and the government’s slipping into authoritarianism. All these problems are reflected in the ambiguous relationship of Mexican citizens with their democracy and in the ineffectiveness of institutional reforms, in which the arrival of a president such as López Obrador has not brought about any substantial change in Mexican democracy. In the same vein, Germán Pérez Verduzco analyzes the reduction in citizen confidence in the National Elections Institute as the Mexican electoral authority, compared to trust in political institutions in Latin America.

This edition closes with the analysis by Sarah Cerna and Rodrigo Manuel Ibarrola on the case of Paraguay which, unlike the other Latin American cases, displays continuity of the right wing in power, represented by the President Mario Abdo Benítez of the Colorado Party. In their article, the authors analyze the distribution of power in the legislative branch, in which the right wing of the political spectrum is also entrenched, and in a manner consistent with such ideology, the economic and tax measures that have been adopted, as well as initiatives extolling the military forces, the Stroessner dictatorship and “traditional family” values. 

We wish to thank the authors who accepted our invitation to participate in this dossier and who made possible the publication of this edition with the required high standards of analysis and quality. We also thank the peer reviewers who assessed the submitted articles. Their work enables the discussions and feedback that strengthen our journal and the discipline. 

Nadia Pérez Guevara

Editor