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Almost 25 years have passed since it began in Latin America what came to be the most complete and longest lasting experience of institutional democracy. Although dictatorships were the rule in the sixties and seventies, only Colombia, Costa Rica and Venezuela avoided the totalitarian regime during those decades, today there is a government of choice in all Latin American countries, with the exception of Cuba and Haiti. As David Scott Palmer notes, the 37 countries which constitute Latin America have suffered 277 government changes between 1930 and 1980, 104 of which (namely the 37,5%) were caused by a military coup. On the contrary, since 1980 to 1990 only seven from the 37 changes of government occurred by military interventions, of which only two could be described as clearly anti – democratic. The total number of military coups was lower than any other decade in Latin America since the Independence, at the beginning of the 19th century.


The military coups of the eighties were restricted in four countries only: Bolivia, Haiti, Guatemala and Paraguay. Since 1990, only Haiti and Peru lived a successful violent replacement of governments that were elected constitutionally. In 1989, Argentina witnessed the first transition of power in the country from a Chief of the Executive citizen to another after 60 years. In 2000, Mexico signaled its entrance as a multi party democracy after more than seven decades of government by one single party. The majority of Latin American countries never had in power so many successfully elected governments that had not suffered totalitarian changes. However, the euphoria that accompanied the emergence of democracy has started to become decadent. The public opinion polls show that the majority of Latin Americans, with a margin of four to one, continues to support democracy and prefers it to dictatorship. These polls though reveal an increasing discontent and a tendency to doubt the benefits and fulfillment of the obligation of democratic governments. It turns out to be exceptionally disturbing to foresee a permanent instability pattern that affects negatively administration at higher levels. In each country, the presidents have witnessed the percentages of approval of fulfilment fall vertically, whereas those of the legislators and party leaders have fallen even more abruptly. Many presidents have resigned from the burden, leaving behind them broken hopes and weakened institutions, but at least they did it during their ruling period. However, this was not the case for 14 presidents. This group has suffered the insult of deprivation of rights that was expected through the reaction or forced renunciation, in some cases under circumstances of instability that have threatened institutional democracy itself. Another leader of the Executive interrupted his constitutional mandate by dissolving the legislative body.


In the past the military were in the center of this problem. The generals, driven by ambition, could remove an elected president or obstruct the practice of politics that that weren’t approved by military people and allies. The new forms and powers could be accepted in the “game” of politics that was under the control of military people if they promised not to support any measure that would sound too radical or populist. The clerks were negotiating with the different cliques and decided when to announce new elections with the aim to restore the political government: the military coups always enjoyed the complicity of the elites. After Fidel Castro assumed power in Cuba, he installed a revolutionary regimen in the island in 1959, polarization became more intense in the area and the military coups (junta) begun to leave behind them more frequently the political negotiations in favor of “bureaucratic – totalitarian” dictatorships in full development.


Latin American democracy no longer has to face the threats of local elites which are supported by the United States that were afraid of any kind of reform as a possible soviet front. The military governments were hugely unsuccessful in their attempts to resolve financial and social crises during the decades of seventies and eighties. Towards the end of this era, the foreign affairs of the USA reacted to the weakening of the Cold War changing its support to totalitarian regimens, as unpleasant but necessary bastions against communism, recognizing that totalitarianism was obstructing the consolidation of legal governments. The USA were united with other nations of the Western hemisphere in order to create mechanisms which were supposed to obstruct violent interruptions of institutional democracy. What has been a drastic change since the Cold War is that military powers of Latin America have ceased to participate openly in politics.


Does the answer lie in parliamentarianism?


Those observations suggest that the problem of administration in Latin America could be indebted mainly to incidental weakness of parties, leaders of particular institutions. Is it possible that the presidential system by its own nature makes confrontations more intense, collaboration more evasive, discipline of the parties more difficult to accomplish and its disruption easier to occur and obviously logical? Has the moment arrived when reformers in the area should rethink the wise option to pass from the presidential system to parliamentary government?


If the presidential system and the parliamentary government accept an important internal differentiation, and although there are mixed types of government that combine elements from both, for reasons of exposure the two systems could be clearly differentiated in key dimensions. The presidential regimens present “competition features”.


The Executive and the Legislative can, each one for itself, claim their own electoral vote to practice their powers, the different ones, although in some cases they coincide. The presidents or the parliaments can decide between cooperation and conflict: the rules of the system (formal or informal) do not require from any of them to adopt such a decision. In the parliamentary government, on the contrary, legislation activates the Executive, which then functions under legislative majority, although it might be a government of minority or majority. The government of ministers means the members of the parliament have executive posts. This does not only require that basic leaders and future ministers should organize campaigns for legislative matters, but it also provides legislators a means to acquire a solid executive experience and a participation that the people conceive better in the way they handle matters of the state, encouraging thus a more proper and moderate leadership.


On the other hand, in the presidential system the leader of the Executive is also leader of the State as well as leader of the government. One of the primary responsibilities of a President is to receive ambassadors and personalities of power, to be present at funerals of officials and also represents the State in times of triumph or tragedy. As leader of the government, the President enjoys multiple functions in appointing secretaries and vice secretaries of the cabinet, even though some of those require the approval of the legislative body or are subjected to a vote of the parliament. In parliamentary regimens the “ritual” and “executive” functions are separated, with the leader of the State (either being a constitutional monarch or the President) playing a symbolic part or perhaps act as a moderate power in times of crisis. Prime ministers, as leaders of the Executive, manage governments that reflect the commands of parties and coalitions. If in our restricted era, prime ministers have become much more visible as leaders of the government and enjoy an important power and a prominent role, their position continues to require, by its own nature, to govern keeping the trust of their parties and at the end a majority in the parliament.


Third, the direct election of presidents means that someone can reach the country’s higher office without some possible experience or support from the party or the government, prompted by the media, to guaranteed responsibilities of candidates. In order to cope, the President has to work with the Parliament (despite, in some cases, the unrestrained urge to dissolute it) and has to manage this cooperation mainly through political powers, as opposed to legal or institutional ones. The leadership of the chief’s party is divided among the parliament, the higher levels of the executive branch and what is bestowed to the organization of the party. Each of these groups very often has its own aims and motives, because its different members make their own calculations on how to appoint themselves better for the future political success. Prime ministers in cabinet governments are not in general devoted politicians prompted by the media, but veteran leaders of the party, with a vast ministerial experience and with every motive to, instead of “opposing”, stay close to their own parties and united in coalitions in the legislative body.


Fourth and last, presidents and the parliaments are elected for definite periods, and often enough they confront situations that provoke wobbles which could make the majority of the legislative body to change hands, when the president still has years ahead of him to perform his duty. In the parliamentary systems, the government can change, either because the prime minister’s party is losing the majority (from a general defeat in the elections of because of a split of the coalition), or even when the prime minister’s party revolts and convokes a new leadership.


In other words, any crisis in the leadership or the government activates “safety valves” automatic institutions, like the renunciation of ministers, the dissolution of the parliament or new elections. However, government crises very seldom transform into regimen crises. This kind of flexibility that parliamentarianism has is opposed to the innate rigidity of the presidential system, under which a mistake in a leadership or in a policy could easily turn to be institutional conflicts even mass ones, with a frightening potential of violent instability and with all human and political costs this entails.


In summary, the parliamentary regimens are based on a political sense that requires cooperation and consent in the context of politics that are devised. The unification of legislative and executive powers represents a reward for collective work in order to increase success and avoid new elections. The logic that is subject to the presidential system is far more connected to conflicts, which means that wrong calculations or other personal mistakes in leadership can set off the perverse logic that makes legislators wait for the President’s failure, especially at the end of his administration or at a moment of serious problems when citizens very easily long for a savior to appear, or if this doesn’t work, a scapegoat.


What impedes parliamentarianism?


If the adoption of parliamentarianism can be fully appealing to political scientists, the idea of this change is simply a curse for the majority of Latin American citizens. The hard to bear symbolic power that is attributed to the presidential system emerges from the pages of history of the area and rides like a colossus on its politics. Even democratic presidents have been very few and scattered in time, there are some examples, like the one of Benito Juarez, in Mexico (1861- 1863, 1867 – 1872), in order for Latin America to be considered as an exclusive continent of the presidential system. In the case of Brazil – the only one in the area that has kept the regimen of monarchy since its Independence, in 1822, until 1889 – , in a referendum that took place in 1993 the transition to parliamentarianism was rejected. It seems that the most convincing reason was the fear that if they abolished the presidential system the citizens would be deprived of a vital representation.


Apart from the strong call of tradition, the argument against abolition of the presidential system that is mostly heard around the area is that a parliamentary government would fail exactly because of weak leaders, parties and legislative bodies, which would provoke a bigger instability. This argument ignores the way in which the structure of political motives that depends on the dissociation of powers makes the disunion and lack of discipline of the parties worse and encourages weak leaderships. It equally ignores the substantial evolution of parliamentary governments that emerges from its more disastrous days, in the Third and Fourth French Democracy (1870-1940, 1946-1958), or the cabinet meetings with the “musical chairs” in Italy, the years after the 2nd World War.


It is noteworthy that in Eastern Europe the great majority of democracies that followed the soviet period has evolved either in parliamentary systems or in semi-presidential ones (based on the Fifth French Democracy). The power of the President would be confined in a role of intervention in cases of crisis, when the governments would need to be formed or when facing the dissolution of parliaments. However, a parliamentary government in Latin America would have to adopt two measures that the Portuguese voters still have to approve: 1) the constructive no – trust vote, with which any vote in favor to overthrow the government requires to propose another government, 2) the choice to authorize the president to announce a legal proposition as a case of trust in order to be immediately approved, unless the parliament votes for the dissolution of the government.


If the presidential system cannot be replaced, can we enumerate elements that at least promote stability and provide safety valves for wrong presidents?


Such measures could include competitive elections for all legislative and executive posts, closed electoral systems, as well as presidential privileges to dissolve Parliament and convoke a new one. An additional step could be for the President to be obliged to resign if he hadn’t managed to achieve leadership of the majority in the Parliament, which in its turn would presuppose to appoint a new president in order to complete the period. However, these measures will not change the basic logic of conflict that prevails in presidential regimens, neither would they favor the creation of united kinds of government based on strong parties and with a different type of leadership of the government.


The record of the presidential system in Latin America that has been summarized here is grave and disconcerting. It is not an exaggeration to declare that this sad array of failures is one of the reasons that the fruit of democracy in the west hemisphere hangs from the balance. Which could be a better moment for the Latin Americans to ask themselves if their presidential traditions cost them so much that they would have to spare the expenses even for the consolidation of democracy? The visionaries who redacted the Constitution of the United States, the model of all pure presidential regimens since then, had a higher sense of the particularities and the idiosyncrasies even of the special case for which they were writing a prescription. In their own varied circumstances, more than two centuries later, the Latin Americans should be wise enough to imitate the spirit of consent that inspired the constitutionalists of the USA, instead of clinging to the detail of the laws that those men had created. If Latin Americans were to chose this path they could as well reflect on then fact that Europe in 1787, a bastion of autocracy, today happens to have models of democratic and dominantly parliamentary governments that are at least worth an examination, and not ruling them out, in advance, just out of pure habit.


This article has first appeared in Spanish in the pages of the Mexican reviewCONFLUENCIA XXI, and is published, here, in the context of the cooperation of the two journals

Special issue: latin america
Tags: Arturo Valenzuela, democracy, Latin America, political system

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