Chile, Crisis in Venezuela, and the Fragility of Democracy
Winston Churchill once stated in a speech that “democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” Almost eight decades later, democracy remains the primary tool we have to peacefully resolve our legitimate political differences.
By Yasna Provoste and Rodrigo Matamoros (El Mostrador)
HAVANA TIMES – The severe crisis shaking Venezuela reminds me once again of the intrinsic value of democracy as a political system. In a democratic regime, citizens have a method to process the conflicts that emerge in society, collectively deciding who will govern them for a limited period of years. This is the defining characteristic of democracy: a system is democratic only if the people are free to choose who will govern them.
For the democratic process to be legitimate, it requires some prerequisites: institutions that guarantee free and impartial elections, freedom of association and expression, as well as pluralism in sources of information. Likewise, citizens must have the opportunity to run for and be elected to positions of representation, among other things.
These are minimal conditions that we take for granted in today’s Chile, but it is always good to remember that for 17 years, our democracy was interrupted, and we were deprived of these rights. Thirty-five years after the end of the dictatorship, we now have a robust and consolidated democracy, whose legitimacy is primarily guaranteed by a world-class Electoral Service.
However, our recent history and the current experience of countries like Venezuela should serve as a reminder that democracy is not inherent to the nation-state. Democracy as a political system is a choice made daily by the represented and their representatives, and just as it is built and consolidated over the years, it can also deteriorate and be destroyed.
How can this be prevented?
As Levitsky and Ziblatt argue in How Democracies Die, democracies no longer fail at the hands of generals through coups, but rather by elected populist leaders who slowly erode the democratic institutions that brought them to power. It is not an attack from the outside, but through the use of the system’s own procedures. Once elected, these autocrats continue to appeal to democracy as they gradually strip it of its defining characteristics.
Where do these populist leaders come from? Populist threats find their opportunity when they observe citizens’ disaffection with representative democratic institutions, which often encourages the fragmentation of the party system. At these times, when the population does not see responses to their demands and is tired of unfulfilled promises by traditional political forces, they are willing to take risks and vote for alternative solutions. Democracy fails when the democrats who sustain it fail.
In a recent article by political scientist Adam Przeworski (Who Decides What is Democratic?), he argues that the first evidence of the malfunctioning of representative institutions is persistent inequality. Voters have the legitimate right to expect that elected representatives will design and implement actions to advance greater social equality. When this doesn’t happen, it is a symptom that representative institutions are not functioning well, creating fertile ground for the success of populist leaders and the subsequent erosion of democracy.
With a preventive approach, while condemning the dictatorships that repress their people today, it would be prudent to evaluate what we are not doing well “internally.” The numbers from multiple surveys show us a significant disaffection among citizens towards our democratic institutions. Without overlooking the progress we have made as a country we must ask ourselves if persistent inequality in Chile is one of the causes of this poor evaluation. We had a social outburst in 2019, and its causes have not been addressed as they should be, and ignoring this will not solve anything.
Certainly, there is some truth to this: when people from low-income municipalities mostly suffer from insecurity; when we have not solved the problem of low pensions for our elderly, with the aggravating factor that women are the most affected; when out of the 100 best schools, according to the PAES 2023, only two are public establishments, we cannot look the other way and pass the blame from one to another. On the contrary, we have a duty to take responsibility, because later we won’t be able to say “we didn’t see it coming.” Only by doing so can we be consistent, to prevent the rise of populist leaderships that degrade the democracy we have fought so hard to build.
In 1947, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill stated in a speech that “democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” Almost eight decades later, democracy remains the primary tool we have to peacefully resolve our legitimate political differences. Let’s take care of it.
Published first in Spanish by El Mostrador and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.