The crisis of Paraguayan democracy: the legitimacy of results (II)

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By Mar­cos Pérez Talia

In a re­cent ar­ti­cle, we re­cov­ered the ar­gu­ment of Pierre Rosan­val­lon who ex­am­ined the prin­ci­ples of le­git­i­macy of de­mo­c­ra­tic gov­ern­ments. Ac­cord­ing to the French so­ci­ol­o­gist, through­out the twen­ti­eth cen­tury a de­mo­c­ra­tic sys­tem of dual le­git­i­macy was es­tab­lished, one of in­put (elec­toral) and an­other of re­sults (pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion). In this ar­ti­cle, af­ter a brief the­o­ret­i­cal de­bate, we ex­plore elec­toral le­git­i­macy in Paraguay and show data sug­gest­ing that, at least since 2018, there has been an ero­sion of trust in elec­toral democ­racy. In the pre­sent ar­ti­cle we will in­ves­ti­gate the sec­ond le­git­i­macy, that of re­sults.

Rosan­val­lon’s main the­o­ret­i­cal ar­gu­ment is that, at the end of the 19th cen­tury, pop­u­lar elec­tion be­came the only means of ac­cess to rep­re­sen­ta­tive of­fice and, to a cer­tain ex­tent, the nat­ural ex­pres­sion of pop­u­lar sov­er­eignty. Sub­se­quently, faced with the cri­sis of rep­re­sen­ta­tion at the be­gin­ning of the 20th cen­tury, be­cause of the dis­tanc­ing be­tween the rep­re­sen­ta­tives and the peo­ple, pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion was con­sol­i­dated. The State had to trans­form it­self from a mere guardian of lib­er­ties and prop­erty to one that of­fered ba­sic pub­lic ser­vices such as health, ed­u­ca­tion, hous­ing and higher lev­els of in­fra­struc­ture.

Fo­cus­ing on the Paraguayan case, the most re­mark­able fea­ture of its de­mo­c­ra­tic sys­tem was the elec­toral di­men­sion, which since the 1996 mu­nic­i­pal elec­tions fully con­formed to Robert Dahl‘s pos­tu­lates of pro­ce­dural (or pol­yarchic) democ­racy. Un­for­tu­nately, a de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of elec­toral le­git­i­macy emerged af­ter the mis­han­dling of the 2018 gen­eral elec­tions. In turn, the le­git­i­macy of re­sults never man­aged to reach de­sir­able lev­els in Paraguayan democ­racy, whose short­com­ings date back a long time, as we will see be­low.

Sev­eral aca­d­e­mic pa­pers have pre­vi­ously stud­ied Paraguay’s state re­spon­sive­ness. Mikel Barreda and Marc Bou pub­lished, in 2010, an aca­d­e­mic ar­ti­cle that mea­sured the qual­ity of Paraguayan democ­racy. One of its an­a­lyt­i­cal di­men­sions was re­spon­sive­ness, that is, the gov­ern­men­t’s ca­pac­ity to re­spond to the pref­er­ences of its cit­i­zens, whose re­sult was per­ceived as very weak, with scores that place the coun­try in the last po­si­tions in Latin Amer­ica. In an­other aca­d­e­mic text, Diego Abente Brun also an­a­lyzed the qual­ity of Paraguayan democ­racy, al­though in line with (low) state­hood. His find­ings re­vealed the per­sis­tence of a weak State not only as an ap­pa­ra­tus but also as a State-for-the-na­tion. On the one hand, he ob­served a con­stant growth in the size of the State (also in rev­enue and ex­pen­di­ture) but, on the other hand, it con­tin­ues to have an as­set like (pat­ri­mony) com­po­nent (in Max We­ber‘s terms), gov­erned by busi­ness­men and politi­cians who col­o­nize the State. All this, ul­ti­mately, causes the poor per­for­mance of the sys­tem.

Re­spon­sive­ness is a fun­da­men­tal char­ac­ter­is­tic of any democ­racy. The process is some­what com­plex since, ide­ally, it sug­gests a three-step path where cit­i­zens struc­ture and or­der their pref­er­ences, which are then in­sti­tu­tion­ally ag­gre­gated by par­ties into the po­lit­i­cal sys­tem and fi­nally be­come pub­lic pol­icy. The com­plex­ity is even more acute when it comes to eval­u­at­ing the per­for­mance of re­spon­sive­ness, since there are no clear and pre­cise in­di­ca­tors, nor is there a con­sen­sus in the aca­d­e­mic world. To mea­sure the Paraguayan case, we will opt for three tra­di­tional in­di­ca­tors whose sta­tis­ti­cal data are avail­able in the LAPOP and Lati­no­barómetro data­bases.

The first clas­sic in­di­ca­tor is the level of “sat­is­fac­tion with democ­racy”. Al­though it may have lim­i­ta­tions, since the opin­ion ex­pressed therein could be as­so­ci­ated, rather than with democ­racy, with the func­tion­ing of cer­tain in­sti­tu­tions, or even with the ap­proval (or re­jec­tion) of the gov­ern­men­t’s per­for­mance. De­spite these risks, the in­di­ca­tor “sat­is­fac­tion with democ­racy” is ca­pa­ble of pro­vid­ing an ini­tial overview of the func­tion­ing of the po­lit­i­cal sys­tem.

Fig­ure I. Sat­is­fac­tion with democ­racy 

Source: LAPOP data­bases

The data show a wor­ry­ing re­sult of dis­sat­is­fac­tion with democ­racy, ex­cept in 2010 when the Pa­tri­otic Al­liance for Change gov­erned, with Fer­nando Lugo in the pres­i­dency. The last mea­sure­ment of 2021, which gave only 30.5% sat­is­fac­tion, is well be­low the av­er­age for Latin Amer­ica that year, which stood at 43%.

The sec­ond vari­able that can shed light is whether “ba­sic rights are pro­tected”, with re­sponses rang­ing from 1 to 7, where 1 means less pro­tec­tion and 7 means more pro­tec­tion. Fig­ure II be­low shows the mean num­ber of re­sponses for each pres­i­den­tial term.

Fig­ure II. Are ba­sic rights pro­tected?

Source: LAPOP data­bases

Once again, the re­sults show a down­ward trend. With 7 be­ing the high­est re­sponse, the av­er­age for each gov­ern­ment is less than half of the high­est re­sponse. Ex­cept, once again, dur­ing the gov­ern­ment of the Pa­tri­otic Al­liance for Change (2008-13), where the re­sult was slightly above half (3.55%).

Fi­nally, Fig­ure III shows the re­sponses on the per­cep­tion of “the func­tion­ing of the econ­omy” dur­ing the last five pres­i­den­tial ad­min­is­tra­tions.

Graph III. Sat­is­fac­tion with the func­tion­ing of the econ­omy

Source: Lati­no­barómetro data­bases

Dis­sat­is­fac­tion is very high and sus­tained over time, while sat­is­fac­tion is very low. Dur­ing the gov­ern­ments of Luis González Machi (1999-2003), Nicanor Duarte Fru­tos (2003-08) and Mario Abdo Benítez (2018-23) sat­is­fac­tion did not even ex­ceed 10%. The best re­sults were ob­tained in the gov­ern­ment of Fer­nando Lugo, with 27.6%, and that of Ho­ra­cio Cartes, with 15.9%.

Responsiveness is a fundamental characteristic of any democracy. The process is somewhat complex since, ideally, it suggests a three-step path where citizens structure and order their preferences, which are then institutionally aggregated by parties into the political system and finally become public policy.

The two sources of de­mo­c­ra­tic le­git­i­macy in Paraguay are un­der ques­tion. But this is no longer a mere tran­si­tory sit­u­a­tion that can be over­come by means of some sim­ple in­sti­tu­tional surgery. A pro­found struc­tural in­no­va­tion of the po­lit­i­cal sys­tem is also re­quired.

It is ur­gent to re­cover con­fi­dence in elec­toral democ­racy, but it is even more ur­gent to strengthen the democ­racy of re­sults. For a long time, all mea­sure­ments of po­lit­i­cal cul­ture (both LAPOP and Lati­no­barómetro) have been call­ing at­ten­tion to the dis­sat­is­fac­tion of Paraguayan cit­i­zens with democ­racy and the per­for­mance of its in­sti­tu­tions.

The gen­eral elec­tions of 2023 could be a com­mon place to start, once and for all, the changes that can­not be post­poned.

Cover im­age: Marce.af / www.re­vista­cien­di­ascinep.com