Ecuador: A Generous Land for Political Science

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By Juan Fran­cisco Camino.*

In re­cent weeks, Ecuador has cap­tured the at­ten­tion of in­ter­na­tional me­dia, re­gional politi­cians and, of course, so­cial sci­en­tists, es­pe­cially those ded­i­cated to the un­der ex­plored and mis­un­der­stood po­lit­i­cal sci­ence.

As part of those in­sti­tu­tional ex­per­i­ments in­cluded in the Mon­te­cristi Con­sti­tu­tion, the so-called “Cross Death” was ap­plied by Pres­i­dent Guillermo Lasso on 17 May 2023. This con­sists of the dis­so­lu­tion of the Ecuado­rian par­lia­ment and the call for early elec­tions of both leg­is­la­tors and the pres­i­dent and vice-pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic for the re­main­der of the man­date, i.e. un­til 24 May 2025.

This is un­prece­dented in Latin Amer­i­can pres­i­den­tial­ism, which has been char­ac­ter­ized by be­ing highly un­sta­ble and by gen­er­at­ing a con­tin­u­ous dis­pute be­tween the leg­isla­tive and ex­ec­u­tive pow­ers. Juan Linz had al­ready warned of this some years ago, and the Ecuado­rian po­lit­i­cal elite has not found the way to live in democ­racy, in­de­pen­dence of pow­ers and re­spect for in­sti­tu­tions, which are ma­nip­u­lated ac­cord­ing to their in­ter­ests and not to guar­an­tee peace­ful co­ex­is­tence. Only the po­lit­i­cal sys­tems of Uruguay, Chile and Costa Rica could be con­sid­ered ex­cep­tional in this con­text.

But Ecuador is a par­tic­u­lar case, and al­though many com­pare the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion to Pe­ru­vian po­lit­i­cal in­sta­bil­ity, the dif­fer­ences are no­to­ri­ous. On the one hand, ar­ti­cle 134 of the Pe­ru­vian con­sti­tu­tion es­tab­lishes only the dis­so­lu­tion of par­lia­ment and the sub­se­quent elec­tion of mem­bers of the house, and on the other, the dis­so­lu­tion of par­lia­ment in Ecuador did not mean the es­tab­lish­ment of an emer­gency gov­ern­ment or de­c­la­ra­tions out­side the law. The Ecuado­rian pres­i­den­t’s ac­tions were an in­sti­tu­tional tool to un­block the po­lit­i­cal con­flict, and this im­poses lim­its on the ac­tions of the pres­i­dent, who, al­though he main­tains the lead­er­ship of the coun­try’s gov­ern­ment, his leg­isla­tive ca­pac­ity is lim­ited to de­crees – eco­nomic emer­gency laws, sub­ject to con­trol by the Con­sti­tu­tional Court (the coun­try’s high­est court of con­sti­tu­tional in­ter­pre­ta­tion).

Although the cross-death unblocked the political conflict and was the last option for the national government to avoid impeachment in a controversial impeachment trial, it is possible that the elections will bring us a more uncertain political scenario. However, political science will have fertile ground in Ecuador to continue developing its work in order to understand our Latin American political systems.

For those on the po­lit­i­cal an­tipodes of the gov­ern­ment, this mea­sure meant the de­c­la­ra­tion of a “dic­ta­tor­ship”, just as you read it. They be­lieve that the con­sti­tu­tion en­dorses a coup d’é­tat, just be­cause the per­son who ap­plied it is not part of their po­lit­i­cal or­ga­ni­za­tion or is close to them. On the other hand, those who ap­proved the mea­sure, but have not opened the con­sti­tu­tion, have claimed that the pres­i­dent can re­form the ju­di­cial sys­tem with a “sin­gle stroke of a pen”, or can ban po­lit­i­cal par­ties.  Non­sense of this na­ture can only be an en­cour­age­ment to re­think the use­ful­ness of in-depth in­ter­views as a data col­lec­tion tool for re­search on this topic.

To this we add that there is no spe­cific pro­ce­dure for the Court to carry out prior con­trol of pres­i­den­tial de­crees. What is cer­tain is that we can in­fer that there is am­ple room for re­search into how an in­sti­tu­tion, typ­i­cal of the par­lia­men­tary sys­tem, has been ap­plied in a pres­i­den­tial­ist sys­tem, in a po­lit­i­cal sys­tem char­ac­ter­ized by a weak de­mo­c­ra­tic cul­ture, with a ten­dency to­wards caudil­lismo, and with po­lit­i­cal par­ties that have ceased to be par­ties and have be­come “place­ment agen­cies” for can­di­dates.

And in the process of call­ing for early elec­tions, Ecuador’s po­lit­i­cal class has once again shown signs of the poor prepa­ra­tion of its po­lit­i­cal cadres and an ab­sence of po­lit­i­cal ca­reers. Some po­lit­i­cal par­ties and move­ments have shown their des­per­a­tion by sup­port­ing cit­i­zens who have not been mem­bers of their or­ga­ni­za­tions and who, in some cases, do not have the slight­est idea of what state ad­min­is­tra­tion is all about.

Like­wise, some can­di­dates with lit­tle po­lit­i­cal ex­pe­ri­ence, a lot of ego and lit­tle in­ter­est in avoid­ing a deeper at­om­iza­tion of our party “sys­tem” have de­cided to par­tic­i­pate in these elec­tions, look­ing for a party to pro­tect them. The par­ties seem to have taken on the role of plac­ing can­di­dates, re­view­ing fold­ers, the can­di­date’s im­age and, per­haps, some po­lit­i­cal or aca­d­e­mic cre­den­tials that al­low them to as­sume a can­di­dacy. But the par­ties have failed to con­sider three es­sen­tial el­e­ments in con­sid­er­ing peo­ple for the ex­ec­u­tive func­tion: un­der­stand­ing how the state is ad­min­is­tered, how the po­lit­i­cal sys­tem works and how to build bridges in a coun­try with a high de­gree of po­lit­i­cal frag­men­ta­tion.

We are seem­ingly cre­at­ing a new cat­e­gory in the study of po­lit­i­cal par­ties as “place­ment agents” for can­di­dates. Who knows, we might add them, soon, to the ty­pol­ogy of par­ties such as the “Catch All”, the “car­tel” party, the mass party, or the party of elites. Or who knows, we may be fac­ing a new de­f­i­n­i­tion of “elec­toral ma­chines”. In short, Ecuador is a chal­lenge for those who study pol­i­tics with the­o­ret­i­cal, con­cep­tual, and method­olog­i­cal rigid­ity.

What is clear to all of us is that po­lit­i­cal or­ga­ni­za­tions are short-sighted in the face of their al­most in­evitable im­plo­sion, sim­i­lar to the one the coun­try ex­pe­ri­enced in 2005 and which in 2007 led to an ad­ven­ture that brought us to a hy­brid regime, closer to au­thor­i­tar­i­an­ism than democ­racy, and which re­mained in power for 10 years.

The only thing the politi­cians are in­ter­ested in is to sur­vive, to drag as­sem­bly mem­bers in the par­lia­men­tary elec­tion and to sat­isfy their per­sonal pre­ten­sions. They only want to see their name in the his­tory books and not make his­tory as re­spon­si­ble lead­ers, who seek a gen­eral agree­ment in their re­spec­tive po­lit­i­cal ten­den­cies and reach a gov­er­nance agree­ment for the next two years.

No po­lit­i­cal or­ga­ni­za­tion con­sid­ers that the next Na­tional As­sem­bly will have a sim­i­lar com­po­si­tion to the last one, and we will have a set of mi­nori­ties vy­ing for power in the stand­ing com­mit­tees and putting pres­sure on the ex­ec­u­tive. I would even go so far as to say that a greater frag­men­ta­tion of the par­lia­ment awaits us, with more or­ga­ni­za­tions rep­re­sented try­ing to fill the vac­uum left by po­lit­i­cal or­ga­ni­za­tions that in 2021 had the ad­van­tage of the elec­toral pull of Yaku Pérez and Xavier Hervás and the provin­cial struc­ture of the So­cial Chris­t­ian Party.

Al­though the cross-death un­blocked the po­lit­i­cal con­flict and was the last op­tion for the na­tional gov­ern­ment to avoid im­peach­ment in a con­tro­ver­sial im­peach­ment trial, it is pos­si­ble that the elec­tions will bring us a more un­cer­tain po­lit­i­cal sce­nario. How­ever, po­lit­i­cal sci­ence will have fer­tile ground in Ecuador to con­tinue de­vel­op­ing its work in or­der to un­der­stand our Latin Amer­i­can po­lit­i­cal sys­tems.

* Uni­ver­sity lec­turer (Quito). PhD stu­dent at the Uni­ver­sity of Sala­manca (Spain). Mas­ter’s de­gree in in­ter­na­tional re­la­tions from the In­sti­tuto de Al­tos Es­tu­dios Na­cionales (Ecuador) and in Po­lit­i­cal Sci­ence from the Uni­ver­sity of Sala­manca.

Cover im­age: De Ver­dad Dig­i­tal