Michael Albertus

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MundoAmérica,

La Cumbre de las Américas que se desarrolla en Los Ángeles trae a primer plano los muchos cambios que se han producido desde la última vez que el presidente estadounidense Joe Biden había estado en la Casa Blanca. Después de enero de 2017 Venezuela se convirtió en un estado fallido, y las migraciones desde Centroamérica han sido causa de polarización política en los Estados Unidos. Brasil eligió como presidente a una versión tropical de Donald Trump, y México a un populista de izquierda.

Pero hay algo que no cambió: Cuba sigue siendo un estado de partido único, y una espina en el costado de la política exterior y de promoción de la democracia en la región de los Estados Unidos.…  Seguir leyendo »

Chilean presidential candidates José Antonio Kast, left, and Gabriel Boric during a live radio debate on Dec. 10 in Santiago. (Ivan Alvarado/Reuters)

MundoAmérica,

Chile’s presidential runoff election on Dec. 19 is the country’s most important election since its return to democracy in 1990. The bruising campaign has polarized the country and cemented a new identity politics. Mimicking trends in other Latin American countries and the United States, the struggle over national identity and what it means to be Chilean now overshadows traditional bread-and-butter issues.

Chile’s election pits José Antonio Kast, a bombastic far-right politician whom many liken to Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, against Gabriel Boric, a far-left lawmaker and former student organizer. Kast speaks fondly of Chile’s last episode of dictatorship under Gen.…  Seguir leyendo »

Supporters of Pedro Castillo, who narrowly defeated right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori in Peru's presidential election last month, protest in Lima on July 6 over the delay in announcing the final outcome of the vote. (Sebastian Castaneda/Reuters)

MundoAmérica

In recent months, Chile rejected its political establishment as it convenes a constituent assembly for a new constitution. Anti-government protests and organizing continue to roil Colombia and put its conservative president on the defensive. And a presidential election in Peru delivered a win for a leftist outsider of the likes the country has not seen in 40 years.

Latin America is undergoing a resurgence of leftism. Some analysts are calling it a revival of the “pink tide” of the early 2000s, when many Latin American countries elected leftist leaders. But rather than run-of-the-mill instability or political flip-flopping, recent events reflect the region’s continued struggle with its authoritarian past.…  Seguir leyendo »

Una protesta en noviembre de 2019 en Santiago, la capital de Chile. Credit Javier Torres/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

MundoAméricaReflexionesDemocracia

El 25 de octubre, los chilenos votarán para rechazar o aprobar el comienzo de la creación de una nueva constitución. Los ciudadanos de más países deberían hacer lo mismo. La actual Constitución chilena, escrita durante el régimen autoritario del dictador Augusto Pinochet, ha protegido intereses conservadores y al ejército, y ha reprimido la disidencia política durante 40 años.

La lucha de Chile con su pasado autoritario no es única. Los países con democracias recientes, como Birmania, Corea del Sur y Turquía, se han regido por constituciones autoritarias durante años o incluso décadas. Mi investigación indica que más de dos terceras partes de las transiciones políticas a la democracia desde la Segunda Guerra Mundial —en más de 50 países— han ocurrido bajo constituciones escritas por el régimen autoritario saliente.…  Seguir leyendo »

Members of the Bolivarian National Guard stand guard outside a gas station in Caracas, Venezuela, on April 6. (Carlos Becerra/Bloomberg)

InternacionalOrden Mundial, ,

The covid-19 pandemic poses enormous threats not only to public health but also to government. Democracies around the world face unprecedented challenges. But turmoil among dictatorships may be one of the pandemic’s most enduring legacies.

Democracies face critical challenges

Democracies have to figure out how to maintain checks and balances when legislatures can’t meet in person, how to uphold civil liberties amid quarantines and how to ensure the government does not overstep its bounds while intervening in private enterprise for the public good. The prospect of mass tracking and surveillance to monitor the spread of the virus also poses unprecedented threats to privacy.…  Seguir leyendo »

Venezuela’s Best Path to Democracy? Pay Off the Military

MundoAmérica,

It was surely no accident that on Jan. 23, the Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó declared himself the country’s legitimate president. That challenge to President Nicolás Maduro occurred on the anniversary of a military coup in 1958 that ended a decade of dictatorship and ushered in an era of Venezuelan democracy and economic progress.

Venezuela’s military has long been a kingmaker at defining democratic moments. In addition to the 1958 coup, it helped to install a lion of Venezuelan democracy, Rómulo Betancourt, in the presidency in 1945 and was central to returning Hugo Chávez to office after he was displaced in a coup in 2002.…  Seguir leyendo »

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi met with Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing after a meeting in 2015. Credit Hyo Hein Kyaw/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

ReflexionesDemocracia

Italy, Poland, Hungary and even Spain: European democracy is in shambles. Critical threats to democracy have also surfaced in countries like Turkey, Brazil and the Philippines. Under President Trump’s “America First” orientation, leaders with authoritarian tendencies in places as disparate as Egypt, Honduras, Russia and Venezuela have trampled their political opponents without concern for anything more harmful than a tongue lashing from the United States.

Why do democracies backslide toward authoritarianism? Many scholars point to the worrisome erosion of democratic norms rooted in a social consensus about the rules of the game and civility toward fellow citizens.

But this erosion of democratic norms is ultimately driven by deeper factors.…  Seguir leyendo »

A replica of the Liberty Bell stands in front of Union Station in the District in 2013. (Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post)

ReflexionesDemocracia

Many scholars and pundits have recently declared that democracy is in crisis. According to analyses that draw on data from the Varieties of Democracy Project, the average level of democracy across the world has not necessary declined. But over the past five years, the quality of democracy has declined in more countries than the number in which it has increased.

Ukraine, Hungary, Turkey, Poland and Venezuela are flirting with authoritarianism. The current U.S. president regularly violates democratic norms: attacking the media, the Justice Department and the FBI when they push back against him. With Donald Trump in office, leaders with authoritarian tendencies in countries such as Egypt and Russia are crushing their political opponents, aware that the U.S.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo

The recent assassination of a leading secular opposition figure in Tunisia has cast a dark cloud on what many had hoped would serve as a model for democratic transition in countries swept by the Arab Spring. The sad fact is that many revolutions lead to renewed dictatorships. But the good news is that even a rocky and prolonged transition can produce stable democracy.

Sparked in Tunisia in 2010, the revolutions and popular protests that have come to define the Arab Spring spread rapidly across the Middle East and North Africa, challenging entrenched autocratic regimes and conjuring comparisons to the fall of the Berlin Wall.…  Seguir leyendo »