Populism as Democratization’s Nemesis: The Politics of Regime Hybridization

Abstract

The global ascendancy that populism has gained in recent years resulted in two major developments: (a) the geographical spread of populism to an increasing number of countries, to the extent that in regions such as the Americas and Europe populism appears as the main contender of mainstream politics; (b) populism shifting from the margins to the center stage of politics, a development that resulted in the passage of populism as a movement to populism as government. A central hypothesis guiding this article is that populism in government is likely to promote a specific path to regime change: one consisting of the gradual hybridization of the structure of liberal democracy through the selective removal of some of the latter's defining features. The contemporary proliferation of populist administrations in Europe and the Americas should consequently not be taken lightly: they might be announcing political processes that can ultimately result in a drastic redefinition of the landscape of current democratic politics in an illiberal direction.

Do international rents bolster democratic backsliding under populist governments? Evidence from Latin America

“…The narrative above purports that populism leads to democratic backsliding, which for this study's purposes refers to enacting illiberal policies by governments that undermine the executive's horizontal and vertical checks and balances. Some examples of these illiberal policies are packing the judiciary with judges loyal to the executive, ruling by decree to bypass the legislature, harassing the opposition and creating electoral obstacles for them to win elections, amending the constitution to aggrandize executive powers or eliminate term limits, and curtailing media freedom (Bauer and Becker, 2020;Bermeo, 2016;Blandino López, 2021;Peruzzotti, 2017;Przeworski, 2005;Przeworski et al, 2015;Ruth, 2018;Waisbord, 2018). Hence, the literature posits that populist governments give way to democratic backsliding as these political operators seek to censor the plurality of political participation and thus punish nonconformity to the people's "general will" that they allegedly represent (Mendes and Dennison, 2021;Mudde and Rovira-Kaltwasser, 2017;Norris and Inglehart, 2019).…”

“…However, many of these transitions to democracy resulted in aggrandized and unbalanced executive powers compared to the legislative and judicial powers (O'Donnell, 1994;Pérez-liñán and Mainwaring, 2013). Adding to the complexity of these political transitions has been the piecemeal undermining of checks and balances on national executive powers in several Latin American countries, which the political science literature refers to as democratic backsliding conditioned by populist governance (Bauer and Becker, 2020;Bermeo, 2016;Corrales, 2020;López Maya, 2018;Peruzzotti, 2017). Since the 1990s, populist parties and leaders reaching national executive office in Latin America, North America, Europe, and elsewhere have unraveled meaningful electoral democracy in only a handful of cases, such as Nicaragua and Venezuela.…”

Untitled

“…No hay región del mundo que haya sido inmune a la insurgencia populista. El populismo se convirtió en uno de los desafíos más claros para la democracia en tanto es un fenómeno político masivo, que alcanzo poder y notable influencia política en distintas regiones, cuyos principios están en conflicto y contradicción con la democracia liberal (Peruzzotti, 2017).…”

Regime betterment or regime change? A critical review of recent debates on liberal democracy and populism in Latin America

“…But far from solving the democratic deficit, populism reproduces it, for its interventions usually further undermine the system of political mediations due to its privileging an unmediated form of politics. If truly successful in promoting an antagonistic process of identification, populism in government opens up a process of regime change from a weak democracy to authoritarianism (Peruzzotti, ); a process clearly exemplified by the case that represents the text book case of Laclaunian populism: Hugo Chavez's Venezuela…”