The crisis of Paraguayan democracy: popular legitimacy (I)

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By Mar­cos Pérez Talia

There is a cer­tain con­sen­sus in the aca­d­e­mic world that some­thing is hap­pen­ing to democ­ra­cies in all lat­i­tudes. Dif­fer­ent au­thors, from dif­fer­ent ar­eas of the so­cial sci­ences, have been warn­ing about a cri­sis of democ­racy, whether in terms of an even­tual de­mo­c­ra­tic re­gres­sion, or even a process of de­mo­c­ra­tic mu­ta­tion. An au­thor­i­ta­tive voice on the sub­ject is the French so­ci­ol­o­gist Pierre Rosan­val­lon, who in his book en­ti­tled “De­mo­c­ra­tic Le­git­i­macy” ex­plores the pos­si­ble causes of the cri­sis. This ar­ti­cle ad­dresses the phe­nom­e­non of Paraguay’s (weak) democ­racy based on Pierre Rosan­val­lon’s an­a­lyt­i­cal pro­posal.

In his acute book, Rosan­val­lon sets out to ex­am­ine the prin­ci­ples of le­git­i­macy of de­mo­c­ra­tic gov­ern­ments with the aim of in­ter­pret­ing the root causes of their mul­ti­ple crises. Be­tween the nine­teenth and twen­ti­eth cen­turies, the au­thor in­di­cates that two ma­jor le­git­i­ma­cies de­vel­oped: one, pop­u­lar elec­tion, and the other, pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion. Re­gard­ing the first, the in­stal­la­tion of de­mo­c­ra­tic gov­ern­ments be­tween the end of the 20th cen­tury and the be­gin­ning of the 20th cen­tury (es­pe­cially in the USA and France) was es­sen­tially based on the elec­toral pro­ce­dure as the only means of ac­cess to rep­re­sen­ta­tive po­si­tions and, to a cer­tain ex­tent, as a nat­ural ex­pres­sion of pop­u­lar sov­er­eignty. The cir­cum­stan­tial ma­jor­ity that elected au­thor­i­ties was even equated with pop­u­lar sov­er­eignty it­self, even though it was only a pro­vi­sional ma­jor­ity that could even­tu­ally be mod­i­fied in the fol­low­ing elec­tions.

At the be­gin­ning of the 20th cen­tury, ac­cord­ing to Rosan­val­lon, the first great cri­sis of democ­racy ap­peared with the signs of es­trange­ment be­tween the rep­re­sen­ta­tives and the peo­ple. Con­se­quently, the sec­ond source of le­git­i­macy emerges: pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion. This led to the trans­for­ma­tion of the state from a mere guardian of pub­lic free­doms and pri­vate prop­erty to one that of­fered ba­sic pub­lic ser­vices such as health, ed­u­ca­tion, hous­ing and higher lev­els of in­fra­struc­ture.

Thus, a de­mo­c­ra­tic sys­tem of dual le­git­i­macy was es­tab­lished, one of en­try or es­tab­lish­ment (elec­toral), and the other of re­sults (pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion). This sys­tem of dual le­git­i­macy will sus­tain a large part of the democ­ra­cies through­out the 20th cen­tury.

Re­gard­ing dual le­git­i­macy, in this pa­per I hy­poth­e­size that Paraguayan democ­racy has se­vere prob­lems with the le­git­i­macy of re­sults (pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion) and, con­sid­er­ing the 2018 gen­eral elec­tions, the le­git­i­macy of in­put (elec­toral) may also be ag­gra­vated. As a mat­ter of space, we will briefly dis­cuss here the ten­sions of elec­toral le­git­i­macy, leav­ing for a sec­ond ar­ti­cle the le­git­i­macy of re­sults.

Paraguayan his­tory prior to 1989 is not rich in de­mo­c­ra­tic elec­toral processes. The only rel­a­tively free, clean, and com­pet­i­tive elec­tion was in 1928, dur­ing the gov­ern­ment of Eli­gio Ay­ala. The strik­ing thing about this case is that we are fac­ing one of the old­est and most per­sis­tent two-party sys­tems in Latin Amer­ica, which, how­ever, did not have the ca­pac­ity to or­ga­nize de­mo­c­ra­tic elec­tions within the frame­work of its in­ter-party com­pe­ti­tion.

With the be­gin­ning of the tran­si­tion to democ­racy in 1989, the elec­toral di­men­sion be­came cen­tral in the de­moc­ra­tiz­ing agenda of the po­lit­i­cal elite, rel­e­gat­ing al­most to os­tracism any de­bate re­gard­ing the democ­racy of re­sults. The 1992 Con­sti­tu­tion cre­ated the Su­pe­rior Tri­bunal of Elec­toral Jus­tice (TSJE) and a few years later, by means of the well-re­mem­bered “gov­ern­abil­ity pact”, its au­thor­i­ties were con­sti­tuted not only with col­orado mem­bers but also with the par­lia­men­tary op­po­si­tion. In 1996 the sec­ond mu­nic­i­pal elec­tions of the de­mo­c­ra­tic era were held, with two im­por­tant nov­el­ties: the plural in­cor­po­ra­tion of the high­est elec­toral au­thor­ity and the en­force­ment of a new elec­toral code (law 834/​96). This new pol­icy of shared re­spon­si­bil­ity and mu­tual con­trol be­tween par­ties soon yielded re­sults. Elec­tions be­came free, clean, and com­pet­i­tive, which, in a way, en­sured the con­sol­i­da­tion of the po­lit­i­cal sys­tem.

While rec­og­niz­ing the chronic anom­alies that af­fect our elec­toral processes, such as vote buy­ing, un­equal com­po­si­tion of the vot­ing ta­bles and oc­ca­sional prob­lems with the elec­toral rolls, in gen­eral, the most re­mark­able as­pect of the Paraguayan de­mo­c­ra­tic sys­tem was its elec­toral di­men­sion, which was fully in line with Robert Dahl‘s pos­tu­lates of pro­ce­dural (or pol­yarchic) democ­racy. In a well-known aca­d­e­mic work, pub­lished more than two decades ago, it was pointed out that Paraguayan democ­racy was of very low qual­ity, of­fer­ing poor re­sults in al­most all the di­men­sions of qual­ity con­sid­ered in the study, ex­cept in one: that of elec­toral processes, which pre­sented sat­is­fac­tory re­sults com­pa­ra­ble to the rest of the coun­tries in the re­gion.

The point is that this min­i­mal or pro­ce­dural democ­racy, solved based on free and com­pet­i­tive elec­tions, de­te­ri­o­rated over time. The turn­ing point came in the 2018 gen­eral elec­tions, whose re­sults left a blan­ket of doubts and un­cer­tain­ties. In fact, the whole elec­toral process was a strongly flawed prod­uct of fraud­u­lent polls that staged a res­olute sce­nario, added to the high elec­toral of­fi­cial promis­ing to in­crease votes in ex­change for money. This nat­u­rally ends up hav­ing an im­pact on the cit­i­zen’s own per­cep­tion and trust to­wards the high­est elec­toral au­thor­ity (TSJE), as shown in the fol­low­ing graph.

Graph I. Con­fi­dence in Elec­toral Jus­tice (TSJE)

Source: Own cre­ation, based on Lati­no­barómetro data­base.

Lati­no­barómetro data show that, start­ing in 2018, the trend to­wards dis­ap­proval of the TSJE was in crescendo. And in 2020 (the last mea­sure­ment), there was a sharp in­crease to­wards lit­tle and no con­fi­dence, reach­ing a calami­tous per­cent­age of 84.5%.

From an­other an­gle, LAPOP of­fers us sta­tis­ti­cal data on how much con­fi­dence Paraguayan cit­i­zens have in the elec­tions, the re­sults of which seem to con­firm the trend.

Graph II. Con­fi­dence in elec­tions

Source: Own elab­o­ra­tion based on LAPOP data­base.

The ero­sion of con­fi­dence in elec­tions is ob­served year af­ter year. For ex­am­ple, the “none” re­sponse al­most dou­bled from 2012 (23.5%) to 2021 (42.6%). The same de­cline oc­curs with the re­sponse “a lot”, where in 2012 it was 19.9% and in 2021 only 13.8%.

The point is that this minimal or procedural democracy, solved based on free and competitive elections, deteriorated over time. The turning point came in the 2018 general elections, whose results left a blanket of doubts and uncertainties. In fact, the whole electoral process was a strongly flawed product of fraudulent polls that staged a resolute scenario, added to the high electoral official promising to increase votes in exchange for money. This naturally ends up having an impact on the citizen’s own perception and trust towards the highest electoral authority (TSJE)

This dou­ble sta­tis­ti­cal an­gle is in­ter­est­ing be­cause, when we ob­serve con­fi­dence in the Elec­toral Jus­tice (graph I), the fo­cus of at­ten­tion is strictly on the in­sti­tu­tional au­thor­ity. On the other hand, when we cal­cu­late con­fi­dence in elec­tions (graph II), it goes be­yond the strictly in­sti­tu­tional (the TSJE) and other ac­tors in the de­mo­c­ra­tic game, such as po­lit­i­cal par­ties, can­di­dates, elec­torate, etc., en­ter the eval­u­a­tion. Both data show that our once vir­tu­ous pro­ce­dural (or elec­toral) democ­racy is los­ing ground. It is ur­gent to re­gain con­fi­dence in the le­git­i­macy of ori­gin as a pre­con­di­tion to then give greater mean­ing and vigor to the le­git­i­macy of re­sults.

In the fol­low­ing ar­ti­cle we will dis­cuss the (bad) re­sults of the le­git­i­macy of the re­sults of Paraguayan democ­racy.

Cover im­age: ABC Color