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Democracy and Economic Crisis: The Latin American Experience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Karen L. Remmer
Karen L. Remmer
Affiliation:
The University of New Mexico
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Abstract

The debt crisis has raised serious concerns about the future of democratic governance in Latin America. The prevailing assumption is not merely that economic decline undercuts prospects for democratic consolidation; because of their vulnerability to popular political pressures, democracies—particularly new democracies—have been seen as incapable of mounting effective policy responses to critical economic challenges. A comparative study of policy outcomes in Latin America since the outbreak of the debt crisis challenges this assumption. If we control for the magnitude of the debt burden at the outbreak of the crisis, no statistically significant differences emerge between democratic and authoritarian regimes, or between new democracies and more established regimes. The findings suggest that the conventional wisdom about democracy and economic crisis exaggerates the relationship between political regime characteristics and policy choice, and fundamentally misconstrues the strengths and weaknesses of liberal democratic forms of governance.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , April 1990 , pp. 315 - 335
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1990

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21 These criteria are utilized solely because they pose few classificatory problems for the time period and the set of countries in question. The only ambiguous case is that of Brazil, which made less than a complete transition to democracy during the period under consideration. For other purposes, a more complex set of operational indicators might be preferable in order to separate inclusionary and exclusionary forms of competitive rule and to differentiate between limited and open competition. For recent efforts along these lines, see John A. Booth, “Elections and Democracy in Central America: A Framework for Evaluation,” paper prepared for the Southwestern Political Science Association meeting, Little Rock, AR, March 30-April 1, 1989; Remmer, Karen L., “Exclusionary Democracy,” Studies in Comparative International Development 20 (Winter 1985–1986), 64–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Evelyne Huber Stephens, “Capitalist Development and Democracy in South America,” paper presented at the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, April 1988.

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