The Alternatives to ‘Liberal Democracy’: A Latin American Perspective

Although some conventional liberal democratic regimes are likely to become consolidated in Latin America, the dominant pattern is better understood as ‘democracy by default’, and in a few cases little more than ‘facade democracy’ is to be expected. This paper reviews the major factors accounting for the fragility, instability and policy ineffectiveness of many of these new regimes. Although current fiscal crises lend some plausibility to the ‘neo-liberal’ analyses of democratization, the paper argues that in the longer run consolidated democracies will tend to develop a range of ‘social democratic’, participatory and interventionist features that are at variance with the neo-liberal model. Latin American nation-states are relatively well integrated and contain a stock of human and social resources that should favour constitutional outcomes, so that although many of these new democracies will remain provisional and incomplete for the time being, they possess the potential for subsequent extension and entrenchment.