The Permanent Campaign of Rafael Correa: Making Ecuador's Plebiscitary Presidency

Abstract

Analysts developed the notion of the permanent campaign to describe how presidents and prime ministers employ political marketing techniques in their quest to mobilize public support. To date, most scholarly studies of the phenomenon have focused on its features and consequences in advanced democracies. This study expands the analysis of the permanent campaign by examining its relationship to the rise of an extreme version of the plebiscitary presidency in the Andean region of Latin America. Through an examination of the administration of Rafael Correa in Ecuador, we show how the permanent campaign has been used as part of a strategy to secure the president's stay in office and effect far-reaching constitutional change. In countries where mechanisms of accountability are already weak, we conclude that conjoining of the plebiscitary presidency and the permanent campaign is likely to exacerbate the accountability deficit and generate problematic consequences for democratic political development.

Analysis of the literature on political marketing using a bibliometric approach

“…The article “The permanent campaign of Rafael Correa: Making Ecuador's plebiscitary presidency,” by Conaghan and De la Torre (), demonstrates the mechanism through which the combination of permanent campaign and plebiscitary presidency debilitate a government's societal accountability by undermining the checks and balances kept for safeguarding democracy. The article also explores the conditions that led to the restructuring of the existing political system in Ecuador, a developing country with vulnerable political mechanisms, thereby giving more authority to politicians in power and leading to the emergence of an extreme form of plebiscitary presidency.…”

Populism in South America: Democratic Panacea or Pitfall?

“…Specifically, the new constitution tilted the balance of political power very much in the executive's favor. The president can now subjugate the legislative branch and restrict its oversight powers; exert additional control over local governments due to the centralization of fiscal resources; intervene in the economy via the executive's control over strategic sectors; and establish control over the functioning of various civil society organizations (Conaghan ; Conaghan and de la Torre ; Montúfar : 313).…”

Making the ‘Fifth Region’ a real place? Emigrant policies and the emigration-nation nexus in Ecuador

“…Building on a discursive agenda which intermingles socialist, civic, and populist stances (Conaghan & de la Torre, 2008;de la Torre, 2009), Correa promoted several groundbreaking reforms, which made emigration gain an unprecedented political visibility. 4 The novel centrality of overseas nationals, as I will show, has been asserted as a matter of state sovereignty to be re-established, national belonging to be enhanced, and citizenship rights to be ensured -rather than only by appealing to their economic contribution to the homeland (in fact a relatively declining one, due also to the global recession).…”