Democracy Beleaguered Michael J. Abramowitz, Sarah Repucci

Democracy Beleaguered
Michael J. Abramowitz, Sarah Repucci
Journal of Democracy, Volume 29, Number 2, April 2018, pp.
128-142 (Article)
Published by Johns Hopkins University Press
DOI:
For additional information about this article
[ Access provided for user 'samijo1' at 31 Jan 2021 22:16 GMT
from Florida International University ]
https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2018.0032
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/690081
https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2018.0032
democracy beleaguered
Michael J. Abramowitz and Sarah Repucci
Michael J. Abramowitz is president of Freedom House. From
2014 to
2017, he was director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Museum’s Levine
Institute for Holocaust Education. He was formerly national
editor and

White House correspondent for the Washington Post. Sarah
Repucci is
senior director for global publications at Freedom House. For
country
rankings in 2017, see the Table on pp. 132–33.
In 2017, political rights and civil liberties around the worl d
deterio-
rated to their lowest point in more than a decade, extending a
period
characterized by emboldened autocrats, beleaguered
democracies, and
the withdrawal of the United States from its leadership role in
the global
struggle for human freedom. Democracy is in crisis. The values
it em-
bodies—particularly the right to choose leaders in free and fair
elec-
tions, freedom of the press, and the rule of law—are under
assault and
in retreat globally.
A quarter-century ago, at the end of the Cold War, it appeared
that to-
talitarianism had at last been vanquished and liberal democracy
had won
the great ideological battle of the twentieth century. Today, it is
democracy
that finds itself battered and weakened. For the twelfth
consecutive year,
according to Freedom House’s annual Freedom in the World
survey, coun-
tries that suffered democratic setbacks outnumbered those that
registered
gains. In the survey covering 2017, twice as many countries saw
a decline

(71) as experienced an improvement (35) in their raw scores on
the ag-
gregate 100-point scale measuring political rights and civil
liberties. (For
more on Freedom in the World methodology, see the Box on p.
130.) If
we look at major changes of 3 points or more in aggregate
scores, the ratio
is even more unfavorable, with the number of countries that
declined (20)
exceeding those that gained (6) by more than three to one.
Freedom House translates the aggregate scores on the 100-point
scale
into the more familiar seven-point scale that rates each
country’s politi-
cal rights and civil liberties, with 1 as the highest score and 7 as
the low-
est. These rankings in turn are combined to determine whether a
country
Journal of Democracy Volume 28, Number 2 April 2018
© 2018 National Endowment for Democracy and Johns Hopkins
University Press
The Freedom House Survey for 2017
129Michael J. Abramowitz and Sarah Repucci
is classified as Free, Partly Free, or Not Free. Since these three
classifi-
cations are much broader than ratings on the 100-point scale,
however,
movement from one class to another is relatively rare.

In the Freedom in the World survey for 2017, the number of
coun-
tries designated as Free stands at 88. This represents 45 percent
of the
world’s 195 polities and more than 2.9 billion people—or 39
percent of
the global population. The number of Free countries increased
by one
from our survey covering 2016.
The number of countries qualifying as Partly Free stands at 58,
or
30 percent of all countries assessed; Partly Free countries were
home to
nearly 1.8 billion people, or 24 percent of the world’s total. The
number
of countries in this category decreased by one from the previous
year.
A total of 49 countries are deemed Not Free, representing 25
per-
cent of the world’s polities. The number of people living under
Not
Free conditions stood at nearly 2.7 billion people, or 37 percent
of the
global population (though it is important to note that more than
half of
the people included in this figure live in just one country:
China). The
number of Not Free countries stayed the same as in the previous
year.
Five countries saw a change in their classification from the
previ-
ous year’s survey: The Gambia and Uganda both rose from Not

Free to
Partly Free, while Timor-Leste rose from Partly Free to Free.
Turkey
and Zimbabwe both fell from Partly Free to Not Free.
The number of “electoral democracies” stood at 116. For this
edition
of Freedom in the World, the criteria for designation as an
electoral de-
mocracy were made slightly more stringent. Partly as a result,
this year
Bangladesh, Bhutan, Kenya, Kosovo, Nigeria, and Pakistan are
no lon-
ger listed as electoral democracies. Côte d’Ivoire also lost its
standing
as an electoral democracy, while Nepal improved enough to
qualify as
an electoral democracy under the new more rigorous rules. Our
survey
for 2016, following the old rules, had listed 123 electoral
democracies.
If the new criteria had been applied to that year as well,
however, the
number of electoral democracies would have been constant at
116 for
both 2016 and 2017.
If we consider the historical trajectory and geopolitical
importance of
some of the countries where freedom is in decline, the situation
appears
even graver than the numbers alone might indicate. States that a
decade
ago seemed like promising success stories—Hungary, Poland,
Serbia,
and Turkey, for example—are sliding into authoritarian rule.

The mili-
tary in Burma, where a limited democratic opening began in
2010, ex-
ecuted a shocking campaign of ethnic cleansing in 2017 and
rebuffed
international criticism of its actions. Meanwhile, the world’s
most pow-
erful democracies are mired in seemingly intractable problems
at home,
including social and economic disparities, partisan
fragmentation, and
terrorist attacks, as well as an influx of refugees that has
heightened
fears of the “other” and strained relations among allies.
130 Journal of Democracy
Freedom in the World methodology
Freedom in the World 2018 evaluates the state of freedom in
195
countries during calendar year 2017. Its methodology, which is
derived from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is ap-
plied to all countries, irrespective of geographic location, ethnic
or
religious composition, or level of economic development.
Freedom
in the World assesses the real-world rights and freedoms
enjoyed by
individuals, rather than governments or government
performance per
se. Political rights and civil liberties can be affected by both
state
and nonstate actors, including insurgents and other armed

groups.
Each country is assigned between 0 and 4 points on a series of
25
indicators, for an aggregate score of up to 100. These scores are
used to determine two numerical ratings, one for political rights
and one for civil liberties, with a rating of 1 representing the
most
free conditions and 7 the least free. A country’s political rights
and
civil liberties ratings then determine whether it has an overall
sta-
tus of Free (1.0 to 2.5), Partly Free (3.0 to 5.0), or Not Free (5.5
to
7.0). For the first time in 2018, aggregate and subcategory
scores
from the current year’s report, as well as earlier reports dating
back
to 2003, can be viewed at https://freedomhouse.org/report-
types/
freedom-world.
In addition to categorization as Free, Party Free, or Not Free,
Freedom in the World classifies countries meeting certain
criteria
as electoral democracies. For this edition of the survey, the
criteria
for designation as an electoral democracy were made more
stringent.
While the designation previously required a score of 7 or better
in the
Electoral Process subcategory and an overall political -rights
score
of 20 or better, a country must now earn an overall civil -
liberties
score of 30 or better as well.

For complete information on the methodology, visit https://
freedomhouse.org/report/methodology-freedom-world-2018.
The challenges within democratic states have fueled the rise of
popu-
list leaders who appeal to anti-immigrant sentiment and give
short shrift
to fundamental civil and political liberties. Right-wing populists
gained
votes and parliamentary seats in elections in France, the
Netherlands,
Germany, and Austria during 2017, and scored an impressive
victory in
Italy in 2018. While these politicians and parties were kept out
of gov-
ernment in all these cases but Austria, their success at the polls
helped to
weaken established parties on both the center-right and center-
left. Cen-
trist newcomer Emmanuel Macron handily won the French
presidency,
but in Germany and the Netherlands, mainstream parties
struggled to
create stable governing coalitions.
Perhaps most worrisome as we look to the future, young people,
who
https://freedomhouse.org/report-types/freedom-world
https://freedomhouse.org/report-types/freedom-world
https://freedomhouse.org/report/methodology-freedom-world-
2018
https://freedomhouse.org/report/methodology-freedom-world-
2018

have little memory of the long struggles against fascism and
commu-
nism, may be losing faith and interest in the democratic project.
The
very idea of democracy and its promotion has been tarnished in
the eyes
of many, contributing to a dangerous apathy.
The retreat of democracies is troubling enough. Yet at the same
time,
the world’s leading autocracies, China and Russia, have seized
the op-
portunity not only to step up internal repression but also to
export their
malign influence to other countries, which are increasingly
copying these
powers’ behavior and adopting their disdain for democracy. A
confident
Chinese president Xi Jinping recently proclaimed that China is
“blazing
a new trail” for developing countries to follow. It is a path that
includes
politicized courts, intolerance of dissent, and predetermined
elections.
The spread of antidemocratic practices around the world is not
merely
a setback for fundamental freedoms. It also poses economic and
security
risks for democracies. When more countries are free, all
countries are
safer and more prosperous. When more countries are autocratic
and re-

pressive, treaties and alliances crumble, nations and entire
regions grow
unstable, and violent extremists have greater room to operate.
Democratic governments allow people to help set the rules to
which
all must adhere, and to have a say in the direction of their lives
and
work. This fosters a broader respect for peace, fair play, and
compro-
mise. Autocrats impose arbitrary rules on their citizens while
them-
selves ignoring all constraints, setting off a vici ous circle of
abuse and
radicalization.
The United States Accelerates Its Withdrawal
A long list of troubling developments around the world
contributed
to the global democratic decline in 2017, but perhaps most
striking was
the accelerating withdrawal of the United States from its
historical com-
mitment to supporting and promoting democracy. This
abdication of the
traditional U.S. role was all the more significant in light of the
potent
challenge posed by authoritarian regimes.
Despite the U.S. government’s mistakes—and there have been
many—the American people and their leaders have generally
under-
stood that standing up for the rights of others is both a moral
imperative
and beneficial to Americans themselves. But two long wars in

Afghani-
stan and Iraq and a global recession have soured the public on
extensive
international engagement, and the perceived link between
democracy
promotion on the one hand and costly military interventions on
the other
has had a lasting impact.
The Obama administration continued to defend democratic
ideals in
its foreign-policy statements, but its actions often fell short,
reflecting a
reduced estimation of U.S. ability to influence world events and
of the
American public’s willingness to back such efforts. In 2017,
however,
Table—Freedom in The World 2017:
independenT CounTries
CounTry pr Cl sCore sTaTus
afghanistan 5▲ 6 26 NF
albania* 3 3 68 PF
algeria 6 5 35 NF
andorra* 1 1 96 F
angola 6 6 26 NF
antigua & barb.* 2 2 83 F
argentina* 2 2 83 F
armenia 5 4 45 PF
australia* 1 1 98 F
austria* 1 1 94 F

azerbaijan 7 6 12 NF
bahamas* 1 1 91 F
bahrain 7 6 12 NF
bangladesh 4 4 45 PF
barbados* 1 1 96 F
belarus 6▲ 6 21 NF
belgium* 1 1 95 F
belize* 1 2 86 F
benin* 2 2 82 F
bhutan 3 4 55 PF
bolivia* 3 3 67 PF
bosnia-Herzegovina* 4 4 55 PF
botswana* 3 2 72 F
brazil* 2 2 78 F
brunei 6 5 28 NF
bulgaria* 2 2 80 F
burkina Faso* 4 3 60 PF
burma 5 5 31 PF
burundi 7 6 18 NF
cambodia 6 5 30 NF
cameroon 6 6 22 NF
canada* 1 1 99 F
cape Verde* 1 1 90 F
central african rep. 7 7 9 NF
chad 7 6 18 NF
chile* 1 1 94 F
china 7 6 14 NF
colombia* 3 3 65 PF
comoros* 3 4 55 PF
congo (brazzaville) 7 5 21 NF
congo (Kinshasa) 7 6 17 NF
costa rica* 1 1 91 F
côte d'Ivoire 4 4 51 PF
croatia* 1 2 86 F
cuba 7 6 14 NF
cyprus* 1 1 94 F

czech republic* 1 1 93 F
denmark* 1 1 97 F
djibouti 6 5 26 NF
dominica* 1 1 93 F
dominican rep.* 3 3 67 PF
ecuador* 3 3▲ 60 PF
egypt 6 6▼ 26 NF
el Salvador* 2 3 70 F
equatorial guinea 7 7 7 NF
eritrea 7 7 3 NF
estonia* 1 1 94 F
ethiopia 7 6 12 NF
Fiji* 3 3▲ 59 PF
Finland* 1 1 100 F
France* 1 2 90 F
gabon 7▼ 5 23 NF
The gambia 4▲ 5▲ 41 PF▲
georgia* 3 3 64 PF
germany* 1 1 94 F
ghana* 1 2 83 F
greece* 2 2 85 F
grenada* 1 2 88 F
guatemala* 4 4 56 PF
guinea 5 5 41 PF
guinea-bissau 5 5 41 PF
guyana* 2 3 74 F
Haiti 5 5 41 PF
Honduras 4 4 46 PF
Hungary* 3 2 72 F
Iceland* 1 1 95 F
India* 2 3 77 F
Indonesia* 2 4 64 PF
Iran 6 6 18 NF
Iraq 5 6 31 NF
Ireland* 1 1 96 F

Israel* 1 3▼ 79 F
Italy* 1 1 89 F
Jamaica* 2 3 77 F
Japan* 1 1 96 F
Jordan 5 5 37 PF
Kazakhstan 7 5 22 NF
Kenya 4 4 48 PF
Kiribati* 1 1 93 F
Kosovo 3 4 52 PF
Kuwait 5 5 36 PF
Kyrgyzstan 5 5 37 PF
laos 7 6 12 NF
latvia* 2▼ 2 87 F
lebanon 6▼ 4 43 PF
lesotho* 3 3 64 PF
liberia* 3 3▲ 62 PF
libya 7 6 9 NF
liechtenstein* 2 1 90 F
lithuania* 1 1 91 F
luxembourg* 1 1 98 F
macedonia 4 3 58 PF
madagascar* 3 4 56 PF
malawi* 3 3 63 PF
malaysia 4 4 45 PF
maldives 5 5 35 PF
CounTry pr Cl sCore sTaTus
mali 5 4 44 PF
malta* 1 1 92 F
marshall Islands* 1 1 92 F
mauritania 6 5 30 NF

mauritius* 1 2 89 F
mexico* 3 3 62 PF
micronesia* 1 1 93 F
moldova* 3 3 61 PF
monaco* 3 1 82 F
mongolia* 1 2 85 F
montenegro* 3 3 67 PF
morocco 5 5▼ 39 PF
mozambique 4 4 52 PF
Namibia* 2 2 77 F
Nauru* 2 2 81 F
Nepal* 3 4 55 PF
Netherlands* 1 1 99 F
New Zealand* 1 1 98 F
Nicaragua 5 4 44 PF
Niger 4 4 49 PF
Nigeria 3 5 50 PF
North Korea 7 7 3 NF
Norway* 1 1 100 F
oman 6 5 23 NF
Pakistan 4 5 43 PF
Palau* 1 1 92 F
Panama* 2 2 83 F
Papua New guinea* 3 3 63 PF
Paraguay* 3 3 64 PF
Peru* 2 3 73 F
Philippines* 3 3 62 PF
Poland* 1 2 85 F
Portugal* 1 1 97 F
Qatar 6 5 24 NF
romania* 2 2 84 F
russia 7 6 20 NF
rwanda 6 6 23 NF
Samoa* 2 2 80 F
San marino* 1 1 97 F
S~ao Tomé & Prín.* 2 2 82 F

Saudi arabia 7 7 7 NF
Senegal* 2 2 75 F
Serbia* 3 2 73 F
Seychelles* 3 3 71 PF
Sierra leone* 3 3 66 PF
Singapore 4 4 52 PF
Slovakia* 1 1 89 F
Slovenia* 1 1 93 F
Solomon Islands* 3 2 72 F
Somalia 7 7 7 NF
South africa* 2 2 78 F
South Korea* 2 2 84 F
South Sudan 7 7 2 NF
Spain* 1 1 94 F
Sri lanka* 3 4 55 PF
St. Kitts & Nevis* 1 1 89 F
St. lucia* 1 1 91 F
St. Vincent & gren.* 1 1 90 F
Sudan 7 7 8 NF
Suriname* 2 2▲ 78 F
Swaziland 7 6▼ 16 NF
Sweden* 1 1 100 F
Switzerland* 1 1 96 F
Syria 7 7 -1 NF
Taiwan* 1 1 93 F
Tajikistan 7 6 11 NF
Tanzania* 4▼ 4 52 PF
Thailand 6 5 31 NF
Timor-leste* 2▲ 3 69 F▲
Togo 4 4 47 PF
Tonga* 2 2 75 F
Trinidad & Tob.* 2 2 81 F
Tunisia* 2▼ 3 70 F
Turkey 5▼ 6▼ 32 NF▼
Turkmenistan 7 7 4 NF

Tuvalu* 1 1 94 F
uganda 6 4▲ 37 PF▲
ukraine* 3 3 62 PF
u.a.e. 7▼ 6 17 NF
united Kingdom* 1 1 94 F
united States* 2▼ 1 86 F
uruguay* 1 1 98 F
uzbekistan 7 7 7 NF
Vanuatu* 2 2 81 F
Venezuela 6 5 26 NF
Vietnam 7 5 20 NF
yemen 7 6 13 NF
Zambia 4 4 55 PF
Zimbabwe 6▼ 5 30 NF▼
* indicates a country’s status as an elec-
toral democracy.
PR and CL stand for Political rights and
civil liberties, respectively; 1 represents
the most-free and 7 the least-free rating.
-
provement or decline in ratings or status
since the last survey.
Score: country score on Freedom House’s
100-point scale.
Status: Freedom House’s Freedom rat-
ing, an overall judgment based on survey
results (F = Free, PF = Partly Free, NF =
Not Free).
See the box on p. 130 for more details on
the survey. The ratings in this table re-
flect global events from 1 January 2017
through 31 december 2017.
CounTry pr Cl sCore sTaTus CounTry pr Cl sCore sTaTus

the Trump administration made explicit—in both words and
actions—its
intention to cast off principles that have guided U.S. policy and
formed
the basis for American leadership over the past seven decades.
President Trump’s “America First” slogan, once the motto of
early-
1940s isolationists who sought to block U.S. involvement in the
war
against fascism, took aim at traditional notions of collecti ve
global se-
curity and mutually beneficial trade. The administration’s
hostility and
skepticism toward binding international agreements on the
environment,
arms control, and other topics further signaled a reorientation in
U.S.
policy.
Even when President Trump chose to acknowledge U.S. treaty
al-
liances with fellow democracies, he spoke of cultural or
civilizational
ties rather than shared recognition of universal rights. His trips
abroad
rarely featured any mention of the word “democracy.” Indeed,
the
American leader has expressed feelings of admiration and even
per-
sonal friendship for some of the world’s most loathsome
strongmen

and dictators.
This marks a sharp break from other American presidents in the
post-
war period, who may have cooperated with certain authoritarian
regimes
for strategic reasons but never wavered from a commitment to
democracy
as the best form of government and the animating force behind
U.S. for-
eign policy. It also reflects an inability—or unwillingness—on
the part
of the United States to lead the democracies in effectively
confronting
the growing threat from Russia, China, and other states that
have come to
emulate their authoritarian approach.
The past year brought further, faster erosion of the United
States’
own democratic standards than at any other time in memory,
damag-
ing the country’s international credibility as a champion of good
gover-
nance and human rights.
Under leadership from both major political parties, the United
States
has experienced a series of setbacks in the conduct of elections
and
criminal justice over the past decade. In 2017, however, core
U.S. insti-
tutions were attacked by an administration that rejects
established norms
of ethical conduct across many fields of activity. President
Trump him-

self has mingled the concerns of his business empire with his
role as
president and refused to abide by disclosure and transparency
practices
observed by his predecessors.
The president has also lambasted and threatened the media for
chal-
lenging his many false statements, spoken disdainfully of judges
who
blocked his decisions, and attacked the professional staffs of
intelligence
and law-enforcement agencies. At a time when millions around
the world
have been forced to flee war, terrorism, and ethnic cleansing,
President
Trump moved to implement major reductions in the number of
legal im-
migrants and refugees that the United States would accept.
The president’s behavior reflects, in part, a frustration with the
coun-
try’s democratic checks and balances, including independent
courts,
a coequal legislative branch, a free press, and an active civil
society.
These institutions remained fairly resilient in 2017, but the
administra-
tion’s statements and actions could ultimately leave them
weakened,
with serious consequences for the health of U.S. democracy and

for
America’s role in the world.
The International Consequences of Authoritarian Rule
While the United States and other democratic powers grappled
with domestic problems and argued about foreign-policy
priorities,
the world’s leading autocracies—Russia and China—remained
single-
minded in their identification of democracy as a threat to their
oppres-
sive regimes. In 2017 they continued to work relentlessly, and
with
increasing sophistication, to undermine democratic institutions
and
cripple democracy’s principal advocates.
The eventual outcome of these trends, if unchecked, is obvious.
The replacement of global democratic norms with authoritarian
prac-
tices would mean more elections in which the incumbent’s
victory is a
foregone conclusion. It would mean more media landscapes
dominated
by propaganda mouthpieces that marginalize the opposition
while pre-
senting the ruler as omniscient, strong, and devoted to the glory
of
the nation. It would mean state control over the internet and
social
media through both censorship and active manipulation that
pushes
proregime messages while confusing users with lies and fakery.
And
it will mean more corruption, more injustice, and more impunity

for
government abuses.
Already, Vladimir Putin’s Russia has carried out disinformation
cam-
paigns during elections in the United States, France, Germany,
and other
countries; cultivated ties to xenophobic political parties across
Europe;
threatened or invaded its closest neighbors; and provided
military aid
to Syria and other Middle Eastern dictatorships. Its chief goals
are to
disrupt democratic states and to fracture the European Union
and other
institutions that bind them together.
Beijing has even greater ambitions —and the resources to
achieve
them. It has built up a propaganda and censorship apparatus
with glob-
al reach, used economic and other ties to influence democracies
such
as Australia and New Zealand, compelled various countries to
repatri-
ate Chinese citizens seeking refuge abroad, and provided
diplomatic
and material support to repressive governments from Southeast
Asia
to Africa. While Moscow often plays the role of spoiler,
bolstering its
position by undercutting its adversaries, the scope and depth of
Bei-
jing’s activities show that the Chinese regime aspires to truly
global
leadership.

Beyond the destabilizing actions of Moscow and Beijing, the
past
year provided ample evidence that undemocratic rule itself can
be cata-
strophic for regional and global stability.
In Burma, the politically dominant military conducted a brutal
cam-
paign of ethnic cleansing against the Muslim Rohingya
minority, en-
abled by diplomatic cover from China and an impotent response
from
the rest of the international community. Some 600,000 people
have been
pushed out, while thousands of others are thought to have been
killed.
The refugees have strained the resources of an already fragile
Bangla-
desh, and Islamist militants have sought to use the Rohingya
cause as a
new rallying point for violent struggle.
In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdo¢gan broadened and
inten-
sified the crackdown on his perceived opponents that began
after a
failed July 2016 coup attempt. This chaotic purge has had dire
con-
sequences for detained Turkish citizens, shuttered media
outlets, and

seized businesses; it also has become intertwined with an
offensive
against the country’s Kurdish minority. This offensive has
spilled
across borders and fueled Turkish diplomatic and military
interven-
tions in neighboring Syria and Iraq, which are home to their
own
Kurdish populations.
Elsewhere in the Middle East, authoritarian rulers in Egypt,
Saudi
Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates asserted their interests in
reckless
ways, perpetuating long-running conflicts in Libya and Yemen
and ini-
tiating a sudden attempt to blockade Qatar, a hub of
international trade
and transportation. Their similarly repressive archrival Iran
played its
own part in the region’s conflicts, overseeing militia networks
stretch-
ing from Lebanon to Afghanistan. Promises of reform from a
powerful
new crown prince in Saudi Arabia added an unexpected variable
in a
region that has long resisted greater openness, though his
nascent social
and economic changes were accompanied by hundreds of
arbitrary ar-
rests and aggressive moves against potential rivals, and he
showed no
inclination to open the political system.
The humanitarian crisis produced in Venezuela by President
Nico-

lás Maduro’s determination to stay in power continued to drive
resi-
dents to seek refuge in neighboring countries. Meanwhile,
Brazil’s
sprawling corruption investigations implicated leaders across
Latin
America, and Mexico’s embattled government resisted reforms
that
would help to address rampant graft, organized crime, and a
crumbling
justice system.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo and in Burundi,
incumbent rul-
ers’ ongoing use of violence to flout term limits helped to
generate inter-
nal displacement and refugee flows. A deeply flawed electoral
process
in Kenya contributed to political violence there, while South
Sudan’s
leaders chose to press on with a bloody civil war rather than
make peace
and face a long-overdue reckoning with voters.
North Korea presented one of the most glaring threats to world
peace,
aggressively building up its nuclear arsenal in an attempt to
fortify an
exceptionally oppressive and criminal regime.
Regional Trends

Americas. Despite the decline in democracy worldwide in
2017—and
Venezuela’s continued descent into dictatorship and
humanitarian cri-
sis—the Americas region displayed some signs of resilience.
Under new president Lenín Moreno, elected in April, Ecuador
turned
away from the personalized and often repressive rule of his
predecessor
Rafael Correa. Moreno has eased pressure on the media,
promoted greater
engagement with civil society, spearheaded the restoration of
term lim-
its, and supported anticorruption efforts, including a case
against his own
vice-president. Moreno had been Correa’s chosen successor, but
his unex-
pectedly reformist stance once again demonstrated the potential
of regular
elections and transfers of power to disrupt authoritarian
entrenchment.
Meanwhile in Argentina, where former president Cristina
Fernández
de Kirchner had shown authoritarian leanings, citizens benefited
from
a freer press under a new administration that took office in late
2015.
In Colombia, more citizens were able to enjoy basic due process
rights
as the government implemented reforms to limit pretrial
detention and
continued to expand its territorial control under a 2016 peace
agreement

with left-wing rebels.
Nevertheless, declines in freedom outpaced gains in the region
as a
whole. In Honduras, after an early presidential vote count
favored the
opposition candidate, a belatedly updated total handed victory
to the
incumbent, prompting protests, curfews, and calls for a new
election.
In Bolivia, the constitutional court, whose members had been
elected
through a highly politicized process, struck down term limits
that would
have prevented incumbent leader Evo Morales from seeking
reelec-
tion—even though voters in a 2016 referendum had rejected the
lifting
of term limits. International observers called the court’s
reasoning a dis-
tortion of human-rights law.
In November, Nicaragua carried out deeply flawed municipal
elec-
tions that favored the party of President Daniel Ortega.
Nicaragua’s
government also enacted judicial reforms that further
centralized state
authority and shifted power from juries to judges. Mexico was
shaken
by new revelations of extensive state surveillance aimed at
journalists
and civil society activists who threatened to expose government
corrup-
tion and other wrongdoing.

Asia-Pacific. Repressive regimes in Asia continued to
consolidate
their power in 2017, while marginalized communities faced dir e
new
threats.
Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen oversaw a decisive
crackdown
on the country’s beleaguered opposition and press corps as his
Cam-
bodian People’s Party prepared for national elections in 2018.
The po-
liticized Supreme Court dissolved the opposition Cambodia
National
Rescue Party, and party leader Kem Sokha was charged with
treason. In
a series of blows to free expression, the authorities shuttered
the inde-
pendent Cambodia Daily, pushed several radio stations off the
air, and
announced that sharing criticism of the government on social
media was
a crime.
The Communist Party leadership in Beijing exercised ever-
greater in-
fluence in Hong Kong as it attempted to stamp out growing
public support
for local self-determination. Four prodemocracy lawmakers
were expelled
from the legislature on the grounds that their oaths of office

were “insin-
cere,” making it easier for progovernment forces to pass major
legislation
and rules changes. In addition, the government obtained harsher
sentences
against three prominent protest leaders, and China’s legislature
attached a
law criminalizing disrespect of the national anthem (often
booed by Hong
Kong soccer fans) to the territory’s Basic Law, effectively
compelling the
local legislature to draft a matching measure.
In Burma, the military’s brutal campaign of rape, mutilation,
and
slaughter aimed at the Rohingya minority forced more than
600,000
Rohingya to flee the country. The crisis, and the civilian
leadership’s
failure to stop it, underscored severe flaws in the country’s
hybrid politi-
cal system, which grants the military enormous autonomy and
political
power.
The Maldives suffered from acute pressure on freedom of
speech and
dissent in 2017. The murder of prominent liberal blogger
Yameen Ra-
sheed had a chilling effect, encouraging people to self-censor
rather than
speak out against religious extremism. Moreover, the military
was used
to block opposition efforts to remove the speaker of parliament,
and a
number of lawmakers were ousted for defecting from the ruling

Progres-
sive Party of the Maldives.
In a bright spot for the region, Timor-Leste, one of Southeast
Asia’s
poorest nations, conducted fair elections that led to a smooth
transfer
of power. The process helped to consolidate the country’s
democratic
development and allowed new parties and younger politicians to
gain
seats in the parliament.
Eurasia. Observers have long speculated about the possible con-
sequences of presidential successions in Central Asia, where a
number
of entrenched rulers have held office for decades. In 2017,
speculation
turned into cautious optimism in Uzbekistan, as the country’s
new gov-
ernment—formed following the 2016 death of longtime
president Islam
Karimov—took steps toward reform. Among other moves, it
ended forced
labor in the annual cotton harvest for some segments of the
population,
and announced plans to lift the draconian exit-visa regime and
to make
the national currency fully convertible. The new administration
has also
granted more breathing room to civil society: Some local groups

reported
a decrease in state harassment, and a Human Rights Watch
delegation was
allowed to enter Uzbekistan for the first time since 2010.
In other Eurasian countries, however, governments sought to
stave off
change. In Armenia and Kyrgyzstan, heavily flawed voting
highlighted
the continuing erosion of democratic norms surrounding
elections. The
dominant parties in both countries relied on harassment of the
opposi-
tion, voter intimidation, and the misuse of administrative
resources to
maintain a grip on power. In Armenia’s case, this blatant
electoral mis-
conduct stands at odds with the country’s pursuit of a closer
relationship
with the European Union, with which it signed a Comprehensive
and
Enhanced Partnership Agreement in November.
Perhaps the most alarming threats to democracy in the region
in-
volved authoritarian forces reaching across borders to punish
their crit-
ics. Exiled Azerbaijani journalist Afgan Mukhtarli was
transported back
to Azerbaijan after being kidnapped in Tbilisi by men who
allegedly
spoke Georgian, raising concerns that Georgian authorities were
com-
plicit in the abduction. In Ukraine, a prominent Chechen couple
who
were fierce opponents of Vladimir Putin and supported Ukraine

in the
Donbas conflict fell victim to an assassination attempt that
killed one
and injured the other. Numerous plots against politicians were
also re-
ported during the year, with Ukrainian authorities mostly
pointing the
finger at Russian security services.
Europe. Reverberations from the 2015–16 refugee crisis
continued
to fuel the rise of xenophobic, far-right parties, which gained
ground in
elections in France, Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands.
With pledges to suspend immigration and hold a referendum on
France’s EU membership, Marine Le Pen of the far-right
National Front
outperformed several mainstream candidates in France’s first
round of
presidential voting in April, though she lost in the May second
round
to centrist newcomer Emmanuel Macron. The Euroskeptic, anti -
immi-
grant Alternative for Germany became the first far-right party to
enter
the German legislature since 1945, following a campaign in
which the
party’s leaders demanded the deportation of “large numbers of
refu-
gees” and characterized Islam as incompatible with German
identity.
In Austria, the similarly Islamophobic Freedom Party finished
third in
parliamentary elections and entered a governing coalition
headed by the

conservative People’s Party. In the Netherlands, the notoriously
xeno-
phobic Party for Freedom chipped away enough votes from
mainstream
parties to finish second in the general election in March,
becoming the
parliament’s primary opposition group.
In Hungary and Poland, populist leaders continued to
consolidate
power by uprooting democratic institutions and intimidating
critics in
civil society. Smears against the opposition appeared in public
media
outlets in both countries, and both passed laws designed to curb
the
activities of NGOs. Poland’s ruling party also pressed ahead
with an
effort to assert political control over the judiciary, adopting
laws that
will affect the Supreme Court, local courts, and a council
responsible
for judicial appointments.
Events in the Western Balkans demonstrated a need for
continued
engagement in the region by major democracies. In Macedonia,
media-
tion by Washington and Brussels helped to resolve a years-long
political
crisis, paving the way for the formation in May of a new,

democrati-
cally elected government. But in Serbia, EU leaders’ tolerance
of the
authoritarian tendencies of Aleksandar Vuèiæ, prime minister
from 2014
through mid-2017, allowed him to further sideline the
opposition and to
undermine what remains of the independent media after winning
elec-
tion to the country’s presidency in April.
Middle East and North Africa. In a region ravaged by war and
dic-
tatorship, Tunisia has stood out for its successful transition to
demo-
cratic rule after experiencing the first Arab Spring uprising in
2011.
In 2017, however, signs of backsliding that had appeared earlier
took
clearer shape: Municipal elections were once again postponed,
leaving
unelected councils in place seven years after the revolution.
Meanwhile,
figures associated with the old regime increased their influence
over
the vulnerable political system, securing passage of a new
amnesty law
despite strong public opposition. The extension of a two-year-
old state
of emergency also signaled the erosion of democratic order.
Tunisia’s security situation has been undermined by lawlessness
in
neighboring Libya, where disputes between rival authorities in
the east
and the west have led to political paralysis. Refugees and

migrants face
abuses in militia-run detention camps, and there have even been
reports
of modern-day slave markets. These dire conditions stem in part
from an
EU-led campaign to curb human trafficking across the
Mediterranean,
an effort that encourages local Libyan officials to detain large
numbers
of migrants in a dangerous environment.
Libya’s problems also pose a threat to Egypt. In order to
buttress
its own floundering efforts to combat the extremist violence that
has
extended from the Sinai Peninsula to touch all corners of Egypt,
the
authoritarian government of President Abdel Fattah al -Sisi has
alleg-
edly supported the anti-Islamist campaign of the de facto
government in
eastern Libya. Rather than reforming its abusive security
services and
enlisting support from all segments of Egyptian society, Sisi’s
regime
continued its repression of dissent in 2017. It also adopted a
restrictive
new law designed to choke off international funding for NGOs
and to
provide legal cover for their arbitrary closure.
Elsewhere in the region, Iraqi forces declared victory over the
Islam-

ic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in December, and improved
security has
helped to create space for competition among newly registered
parties
and candidates ahead of Iraq’s 2018 elections. ISIS also lost
territory
in Syria, but the repressive regime of President Bashar al -Assad
gained
ground, and civilians in areas captured from ISIS by U.S.-
backed fight-
ers faced widespread devastation and danger from concealed
explosives.
Yemen’s civil war churned on despite a late-year rift in the
rebel alli-
ance, leaving some three-quarters of the population in need of
humanitarian
aid. Small groups of war-weary protesters in Sana’a repeatedly
turned out
to demand the release of political prisoners and an international
response
aimed at ending the violence. The Saudi-led coalition
supporting Yemen’s
ousted government continued its indiscriminate bombing
campaign.
In Saudi Arabia itself, Mohammed bin Salman worked to
consolidate
power after replacing the previous crown prince in June. Among
other
rapid and opaque decisions during the year, he arbitrarily
detained hun-
dreds of princes, officials, and businessmen under the pretense
of an

anticorruption campaign.
Sub-Saharan Africa. New presidents replaced longtime
incumbents
in Angola and Zimbabwe in 2017, but the incoming leaders’
back-
grounds in the ruling elites raised doubts about their promises
of change.
The dramatic exit of President Robert Mugabe in late 2017 left
the
future of democracy in Zimbabwe uncertain. While his
departure after
nearly four decades in office was widely welcomed, he resigned
under
pressure from the military and was succeeded by former vice-
president
and ruling-party stalwart Emmerson Mnangagwa, a key member
of
Mugabe’s repressive regime.
In Angola, newly elected president Jo~ao Lourenço began to
dismantle
the family-based power structure set up by his predecessor, José
Edu-
ardo dos Santos, who served as president for 38 years and
remained head
of the ruling party after leaving office. In one of his first moves
as head
of state, Lourenço, a ruling-party member who had served as
dos San-
tos’s defense minister, fired the former leader’s daughter as
chairwoman
of the national oil company. It remained unclear, however,
whether Lou-
renço would tackle corruption comprehensively or simply

consolidate
his own control over the levers of power and public wealth.
Leaders in several other countries clung to power, often at the
ex-
pense of their citizens’ basic rights. Kenya’s Supreme Court
initially
won broad praise for annulling in early September the results of
what
it deemed to be a flawed presidential election. The period
before the
court-mandated rerun in October, however, was marred by a
lack of
substantive reforms, incidents of political violence, and a
boycott by
main opposition candidate Raila Odinga. These factors
undermined the
credibility of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s victory in the October
rerun,
in which he claimed 98 percent of the vote amid low turnout.
In neighboring Tanzania, the government of President John
Magu-
fuli, who took office in 2015 as a member of the only ruling
party the
country has ever known, stepped up its repression of dissent,
detaining
opposition politicians, shuttering media outlets, and arresting
citizens
for posting critical views on social media. And in Uganda, 73-
year-old
president Yoweri Museveni, in power since 1986, sought to do

away
with the presidential age limit of 75, which would permit him to
run
again in 2021. Museveni had just won reelection in 2016, in a
process
that featured police violence, internet shutdowns, and treason
charges
against his main challenger.
Even in South Africa, a relatively strong democratic performer,
the
corrosive effect of perpetual incumbency on leaders and parties
was ap-
parent. A major corruption scandal continued to plague
President Jacob
Zuma, with additional revelations about the wealthy Gupta
family’s vast
influence over his government. Against this backdrop, Deputy
President
Cyril Ramaphosa defeated Zuma’s ex-wife and ally, Nkosazana
Dlam-
ini-Zuma, in the December leadership election of the ruling
African
National Congress (ANC). (In February 2018, having lost the
ANC’s
support, Zuma stepped down as president.)
Freedom in One Country Depends on Freedom for All
Democracies generally remain the world’s wealthiest societies.
They are the most open to new ideas and opportunities, the least
corrupt, and the best at protecting individual liberties. When
people
around the globe are asked about their preferred political
conditions,
they embrace democracy’s ideals: honest elections, free speech,

ac-
countable government, and effective legal constraints on the
police,
military, and other institutions of authority.
In the twenty-first century, however, it is increasingly difficult
to
create and sustain these conditions in one country while
ignoring their
absence in others. The autocratic regimes in Russia and China
clearly
recognize that, in order to maintain power at home, they must
squelch
open debate, pursue dissidents, and compromise rules-based
institutions
beyond their borders. The citizens and leaders of democracies
must now
recognize that the reverse is also true: To maintain their own
freedoms,
they must defend the rights of their counterparts in all
countries. The
reality of globalization is that our fates are interlinked.
In August 1968, when Soviet tanks entered Czechoslovakia to
force
out a reformist leadership and put an end to the Prague Spring, a
small
group of dissidents gathered in Red Square in Moscow and
unfurled a
banner with the old Polish slogan, “For your freedom and ours.”
Almost
fifty years later, it is this spirit of transnational democratic
solidarity
and defiance in the face of autocracy that we must summon and
revive.

Social Media Disruption: Messaging Mistrust in Latin America
Noam Lupu, Mariana V. Ramírez Bustamante, Elizabeth J.
Zechmeister
Journal of Democracy, Volume 31, Number 3, July 2020, pp.
160-171 (Article)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2020.0038
https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2020.0038
Messaging Mistrust
in Latin aMerica
Noam Lupu, Mariana V. Ramírez Bustamante,
and Elizabeth J. Zechmeister
Noam Lupu is associate professor of political science and
associate
director of LAPOP Lab. Mariana V. Ramírez Bustamante is a
gradu-

ate student in political science. Elizabeth J. Zechmeister is
Cornelius
Vanderbilt Professor of Political Science and director of LAPOP
Lab.
All three are at Vanderbilt University.
Politics is playing out on social media as never before.
Governments
rely on these platforms to put out their messages and energize
support-
ers. Their political opponents rally their ranks with a
technology that
levels the playing field in a way traditional media failed to do.
Move-
ments catch fire, organize, and outwit with posts that go viral.
In turn,
growing numbers of citizens turn to social media as a bridge to,
and a
source of, political news, sharing it within their networks and
fueling the
political engine further.1
The implications for democracy are a growing concern for
observ-
ers, scholars, and ordinary citizens alike. According to one 2019
study,
85 percent of Brazilians worried about distinguishing real news
from
fake on the internet. Similar concerns were voiced by 70 percent
of
survey respondents in the United Kingdom and 67 percent in the
Unit-
ed States, while sizeable majorities in the latter saw social
media as
dividing the nation and spreading falsehoods. A Pew study of
eleven

developing countries found that large majorities believed social
media
and related technologies made people more informed, yet
similar ma-
jorities also felt that these same tools left people more
susceptible to
manipulation.2
While most studies have focused on social media’s effects in
the ad-
vanced democracies of North America and Western Europe,
social-media
usage is skyrocketing in the developing world, where
democracy may be
more fragile. The notion that social media are a largely
democratizing
force that would help citizens around the world hold their
political lead-
ers to account now seems quaint, as it is clear that these
technologies also
Journal of Democracy Volume 31, Number 3 July 2020
University Press
Social Media Disruption
161Noam Lupu, Mariana V. Ramírez Bustamante, and Elizabeth
J. Zechmeister
offer a platform for viral misinformation, hate speech, and the
stoking of
violent emotions and divisive politics. In the developing world,
there is

an added wrinkle: In these countries, larger shares of the
population have
limited access to political information, and political competition
is often
less structured and institutionalized. As social media become a
key source
of political information in developing countries, are they
fulfilling their
democratizing promise or instead hastening democracy’s
undoing?
To assess how social media—especially Facebook, Twitter, and
WhatsApp—are shaping democratic attitudes and electoral
politics in
Latin America, we examine recent national campaigns in
Argentina,
Brazil, El Salvador, and Mexico. We also analyze new
regionwide sur-
vey data from the AmericasBarometer for insights into the
attitudes of
those Latin Americans who make the most frequent use of social
me-
dia. Across the region, as Latin Americans increasingly
campaign—and
spread misinformation—on social media, it appears greater
exposure to
these platforms is simultaneously fostering prodemocratic
attitudes and
heightening mistrust in democratic institutions. If politicians
and of-
ficials fail to address the underlying political conditions that are
the
fodder for social media’s ill effects, this failure could lead to
mounting
cynicism from Latin American citizens toward their
governments.

The Rise of Social Media in Latin America
Social media are now one of the primary channels for political
en-
gagement in Latin America. This reflects in part the rapid
spread of
internet access, which AmericasBarometer data show nearly
doubled in
the region between 2008 and 2017. Today, many Latin
American politi-
cians use social media both as an integral part of their
campaigns and as
a tool for communicating with constituents once elected.
To see this rapid growth, consider Argentina and Brazil. In
Argenti-
na, social media took on a major role in the electoral campaigns
of 2011
and 2015, with these platforms used with particular intensity by
right-
leaning politicians such as former president Mauricio Macri
(2015–19)
and former Buenos Aires governor María Eugenia Vidal.3 From
2011
to 2015, the share of Argentine national politicians with a
Twitter ac-
count rose sharply from slightly above 60 percent to 95 percent.
During
the 2019 general election, nearly every congressperson and
presidential
candidate used Twitter.
The rise of Facebook in Brazilian politics tells a similar story.
Dur-
ing the 2010 elections, when Google’s social-networking site

Orkut was
still popular in Brazil, only a small proportion of the country’s
politi-
cians used Facebook. But by the 2018 election, Facebook had
become
part of the political toolkit for nearly all presidential candidates
and
congressional incumbents. These figures are easier to measure
for Twit-
ter and Facebook, where posts are publicly accessible. Evidence
from
recent election cycles, however, also suggests that WhatsApp
(which
is encrypted and therefore more difficult to study) has become
an even
more prominent platform for politics in Latin America.
Although WhatsApp is primarily a messaging service, usable
since
2016 on both smartphones and desktops, in Latin America and
other
developing contexts it commonly serves as a social-media
platform.
People join WhatsApp groups to share news and information,
coordinate
activities, and discuss issues. These groups are often quite
large, com-
prising extended families, neighborhoods, schools or clubs;
moreover,
individuals are regularly added to groups without their
knowledge and

interact through group messages with individuals whom they do
not per-
sonally know. Political candidates regularly push campaign
messages
via these WhatsApp groups.
WhatsApp appeals to Latin America’s politicians because public
us-
age in the region has soared. The platform, which first appeared
in 2009,
took off after it was acquired by Facebook in 2014. In the 2018–
19
AmericasBarometer survey,4 nearly two in three Latin
American adults
reported using WhatsApp, making it the most popular social -
media plat-
form. Facebook, used by 56 percent of adults, comes in a close
second.
Twitter is far less popular in the region, with only one in ten
adults re-
porting using it.5 The platforms overlap considerably in their
user base:
51 percent of Latin American adults use both Facebook and
WhatsApp.
Meanwhile only 30 percent of Latin American adults report
either not
having or never using social-media accounts.
Within Latin America, the share of citizens who use social
media
varies considerably across countries. For instance, 80 percent of
Uru-
guayans use WhatsApp compared to only 47 percent of
Hondurans. In
general, social-media usage is substantially above the regional
average

in the wealthier Southern Cone countries and significantly
below aver-
age in less affluent Central America, a difference that reflects
higher
rates of cellphone ownership and, particularly, home-internet
access in
the former group (as measured by AmericasBarometer data).6
Of course, not everyone with a social-media account logs into
their
network of choice with the same frequency. In Latin America,
82 per-
cent of those who use WhatsApp do so daily, while another 15
percent
report accessing the app a few times a week. Facebook users
visit the
social network somewhat less frequently, with 57 percent saying
they
see content daily and another 33 percent a few times a week. In
contrast,
a mere 37 percent of Twitter’s users view content on the social
network
daily, and another 34 percent do so a few times a week.
By itself, all this social-media usage does not necessarily mean
that
people are seeking or engaging with political information.
Indeed, social
media are considered by communications scholars to be “soft
news” sourc-
es, where political content is an ancillary interest for users.7
Still, in Latin
America, majorities of social-media users report seeing political
content

J. Zechmeister
very often. The share of AmericasBarometer respondents who
report see-
ing political information a few times a week or more is 61
percent among
Facebook users, 57 percent among Twitter users, and 32 percent
among
users of WhatsApp. All this represents dramatic growth in
social media’s
political relevance since 2012, when only 11 percent of Latin
Americans
reported receiving or sharing political information on social
networks.8
Who uses social media in Latin America? Perhaps
unsurprisingly,
AmericasBarometer data show that the average social-media
user is
younger, urban, more affluent, and more educated than the
average citi-
zen in the region. These same traits distinguish the most
frequent gen-
eral users and those who most frequently view political content.
There
does not seem to be a substantial gender divide in WhatsApp
and Face-
book usage, although Twitter users are more likely to be men.
Women
and rural users are marginally less likely to report frequently
seeing
political information on social media. While social-media usage
predict-
ably varies across and within countries, the upward trend is

abundantly
clear: Social media are here to stay.
Lessons from Recent Elections
What does this mean for Latin American politics? On the one
hand, by
making it easy for people to create their own content and to
share their
views, social media change the dynamics of information
exchange: Rath-
er than just passively absorbing information from authorities,
citizens are
more able to engage in discussion among their peers.9 This is
the democra-
tizing promise of social media. On the other hand, in the
absence of content
control, the rapid pace of information-sharing on social media
can facilitate
the spread of misleading stories, fake news, and
disinformation.10 These dy-
namics were evident in four recent presidential elections in
Latin America:
Mexico (2018), Brazil (2018), El Salvador (2019), and
Argentina (2019).
Mexico’s 1 July 2018 general election centered around the
presiden-
tial race, in which leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador was the
con-
sistent frontrunner and eventual winner. The election cycle
witnessed
extensive efforts to disseminate misinformation and
disinformation on
social media using a combination of contracted human accounts,
auto-

mated accounts (or “bots”), and “cyborg” accounts (which are
partly
automated and partly managed by a person).11 Specious claims
were
constant and plentiful, including that López Obrador’s campaign
was
being financed by Venezuela’s authoritarian president Nicolás
Maduro
or supported by Russia’s Vladimir Putin, that Pope Francis had
spoken
out against López Obrador, and that Ricardo Anaya, one of
López Ob-
rador’s challengers, backed Donald Trump’s border wall. Bots
saturat-
ing social media with messages supporting particular candidates
had
appeared in prior Mexican elections,12 but the misinformation
cam-
paigns—which now unfolded not only on Twitter, but also on
Facebook
and WhatsApp—reached further and took on a new intensity in
2018.
Commercial groups also sold their services coordinating large -
scale and
often misleading responses to Facebook posts about candidates.
Brazil’s October 2018 general elec-
tion cemented WhatsApp as the domi-
nant platform for misinformation cam-
paigns.13 Some observers believe that
as many as a million WhatsApp groups

aimed at boosting various candidates
emerged during the contest.14 Other so-
cial-media platforms played a reinforc-
ing role, with some misinformation dis-
seminated further after being shared by
influencers on Twitter and Facebook.
Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right, largely
unknown congressional deputy who
came from behind to win the presi-
dency, regularly used social media to
issue provocative statements that would then draw attention
from tra-
ditional media outlets—the same strategy used by Trump in the
2016
Republican primaries. But reports also surfaced that outfits
contracted
by Bolsonaro’s financial backers may have used illegal lists of
phone
numbers to create WhatsApp groups and distribute
inflammatory dis-
information about his chief rival, Fernando Haddad of the
Workers’
Party (PT). These messages included outrageous claims that
Brazil’s
electronic voting system had been hacked by Venezuela and
rigged to
favor Haddad, and that the PT candidate had given out baby
bottles
with penis-shaped tops in an effort to fight homophobia.15
Another
item displayed the name of the highly popular former PT
president
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who was closely associated with
Haddad,

next to the number 17. Brazilians vote by selecting the number
of their
preferred party or candidate, but 17 was the number of
Bolsonaro’s
party, not the PT.16
Social media also upended El Salvador’s February 2019 general
election, but in a different way. For three decades, two parties
had al-
ternated control of the presidency. In 2019, however, Nayib
Bukele,
the independent right-wing mayor of San Salvador, became the
instant
frontrunner. The 37-year-old Bukele railed against the
corruption of the
traditional parties and was known for communicating directly
with con-
stituents through social media.17 As mayor, he used Twitter,
Facebook,
and Instagram to announce policies and inform citizens about
events in
the capital. As a presidential candidate, he used social media to
hammer
home his provocative campaign messages to his 1.3 million
followers
(in a country of 6.4 million). Lacking a party or campaign
organization,
Bukele made social media his path to a landslide victory.
If politicians and offi-
cials fail to address the
underlying political con-
ditions that are the fod-
der for social media�s ill
effects, this failure could
lead to mounting cyni-

cism from Latin Ameri-
can citizens toward their
governments.
J. Zechmeister
In the final months of the election cycle, misinformation spread
wide-
ly on the social platforms: doctored images of Bukele’s
competitors on
the campaign trail, unsubstantiated claims that German airline
Lufthansa
would build a new state-of-the-art international airport if
Bukele won,
and a photo collage that misleadingly suggested there were
large crowds
at a speech Bukele gave by incorporating images from a
different rally.18
The El Salvadoran election demonstrated that even in a country
where
social-media usage is comparatively low, these networks can
have an
enormous impact in the hands of an adept political personality.
In Argentina, WhatsApp had become a major campaign platform
and
a major source of misinformation by the time citizens went to
the polls in
October 2019. Already in 2015, social media were an important
resource
for presidential contenders. But by 2019, the campaigns were
utilizing
these platforms on a massive scale. Incumbent Mauricio Macri’s

team
reportedly managed a network of 300,000 activists via
WhatsApp groups,
with parents’ groups being a particular object of attention since
users were
less likely to personally know everyone else in the group.19
Supporters
developed and spread texts, memes, and audio and video clips.
More so
than in 2015, activists used microtargeting to direct these
messages to the
particular types of users they were most likely to persuade.
Along with these campaign initiatives came a flood of
misinforma-
tion directed against both sides of the political spectrum. This
mislead-
ing content ranged from false claims about huge numbers of
immigrants
receiving social-welfare benefits to doctored videos of
candidates mak-
ing embarrassing statements or appearing drunk.20 The
Argentine fact-
checking website Chequeado lists hundreds of false claims that
spread
across social networks and sometimes made their way into
traditional
media outlets during the campaign.
As these four elections illustrate, social media have both
become in-
tegral to campaigning and emerged as useful platforms for those
seeking
to undermine the legitimacy of elections. Misinformation
campaigns are
growing more sophisticated, and their center of gravity is

shifting away
from the more public platforms to WhatsApp, where encryption
makes
them harder to detect and obstruct.
At the same time, these elections also saw increasing efforts by
govern-
ments and civil society to combat misinformation. In Mexico, a
group of
more than eighty media outlets set up a joint initiative called
Verificado
2018 with financial support from civil society, foundations,
universities, and
the social-media platforms themselves. Over the course of that
year’s elec-
tion campaign, Verificado debunked hundreds of false stories
and memes
that were spreading on social and traditional media. This
initiative is to date
the most extensive effort to counter misinformation that Latin
America has
seen, although similar efforts emerged in Brazil (Projeto
Comprova) and
Argentina (Chequeado and Reverso). In 2019, the Argentine
government
went a step further and set up a fact-checking body within the
agency that
manages elections. Government and civil society actors are
innovating and
learning from experience how best to combat misinformation.

In poorer parts of the region, such as El Salvador, civil society
and
election agencies are weaker and so poorly funded that they
have not tried
to launch similar initiatives. In these countries, governments are
relying
much more heavily on self-regulation by the social-media
companies,
which have made mostly limited efforts to contract out fact-
checking and
to inform users if content they encounter is deemed to be
false.21
Social-Media Use and Political Attitudes
Yet even if the veracity of every claim spread on social media
could
be communicated quickly and convincingly, being barraged with
false
information, incivility, and provocative messages would still
affect
people’s political attitudes, “reinforcing and radicalizing . . .
partisan
beliefs and values.”22 Social-media messages, whether true or
false,
are often designed to evoke negative emotions such as anger and
fear,
breeding doubt and distrust even when users know that certain
claims
they encounter are false. As a result, even a careful social -
media user
may become more cynical or apathetic.23
To assess how much of this dynamic has taken root in Latin
America,
we again turn to data from the 2018–19 AmericasBarometer. We

clas-
sify the survey respondents into three different groups
according to the
frequency with which they view content on social media: those
who do
not use social media, those who use them relatively infrequently
(either
a few times a month or a few times a year), and those who use
them
frequently (either a few times a week or daily).
Figure 1 compares these groups along three dimensions: level of
politi-
cal tolerance, support for democracy in the abstract, and
satisfaction with
democracy in their country.24 Across the region, people who
use social
media more frequently appear on average to be more politically
tolerant
and more supportive of democracy in the abstract. But they also
tend to be
less satisfied with the workings of their own country’s
democracy. These
results hold even when we account for the fact that people who
use social
media frequently tend to be younger, more urban, more affluent,
and more
educated than the average citizen in their country.25
The evidence is even starker in suggesting that social -media use
breeds
distrust. For each of our three groups, Figure 2 shows the
proportion of
survey respondents who reported high levels of trust in
democratic insti-
tutions: the president, congress, the supreme court, local

governments,
elections, and the media. Overall, trust in democratic
institutions is quite
low in the region, a situation that reflects years of poor
governance and
high-profile corruption scandals. But people who use social
media more
frequently are more distrustful of each institution (even when
we account
for demographic characteristics). The groups differ most starkly
in their
J. Zechmeister
levels of trust in the executive and in traditional media.26
These findings illustrate that there are two sides to the social -
media
coin. On the one hand, frequent social-media users are more
committed to
political diversity and democratic politics, at least as abstract
principles.
On the other hand, the evidence suggests that frequent exposure
to the
false claims and emotive, often hateful, messages spread on
social me-
dia can indeed breed dissatisfaction with political systems and
distrust of
democratic institutions. These effects might well persist to some
degree
even if fact-checkers could effectively inform and persuade
each citizen
about whether the content they see on social media is true or

false. And
cynicism and distrust are detrimental to well-functioning
democracies,
which rely on citizens being invested in the political process
and confident
in the legitimacy of their institutions, regardless of political
outcomes.
Social media offer a mixed fortune for Latin American
democracies,
but the bad seems to be outweighing the good. As more people
join
the ranks of social-media users—and especially as citizens who
are
less digitally savvy come online—the pernicious effects of
social me-
dia may intensify more quickly than the beneficial ones.
Already, each
new election in the region seems to bring more sophisticated,
more
sustained, and less detectable campaigns aimed at misinforming
and
manipulating the public.
Fact-checking is an important tool in the fight against
misinforma-
tion, especially during election campaigns. Efforts in Argentina,
Brazil,
and Mexico demonstrate one way forward: building robust
consortia of
news outlets with the capacity to review and, where necessary,
debunk
stories, images, and videos that circulate on social media. But
to effec-
tively check the large volumes of misinformation that circulate,
these

initiatives need to be well staffed and amply funded, and they
need the
support of government election agencies. When resources are
more lim-
ited, there will inevitably be gaps: For instance, although fact-
checking
initiatives may review many false claims made at the national
level,
stories about local candidates and politics receive almost no
attention.
43.3%
47.9%
51.8%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
Non-User Low-Freq.
User

High-Freq.
User
54.8% 54.2%
59.2%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
Non-User Low-Freq.
User
High-Freq.
User
43.8%
39.2% 37.7%
0%
10%

20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
Non-User Low-Freq.
User
High-Freq.
User
Figure 1—Political attitudes,
by Frequency oF social-Media usage
High Political Tolerance Support for Democracy Satisfaction
with Democracy
Source: AmericasBarometer 2018-19.
At the same time, such efforts work only if the public trusts
these
assessments of what is fact and what is fiction. Skepticism is
likely to
rise if citizens have reason to doubt fact-checkers’ objectivity—

as, for
instance, with Argentina’s Chequeado, which was headed by the
spouse
of a mayor with political ties to the incumbent president.
Even under better conditions, fact-checking cannot be the last
word
in fighting misinformation. There is mixed evidence regarding
its ef-
fectiveness, and repeating false claims in order to debunk them
can also
help to spread them.27 In the best circumstances, fact-checkers
are con-
tracted by social-media companies themselves, and their
assessments
not only accompany a post but also affect how likely people are
to see
it: Platforms can “demote” false items, reducing their
prominence in
users’ feeds. More often, fact-checking organizations simply
post their
assessment online or disseminate it via traditional media
outlets. In ei-
ther case, it takes time to assess a post, and by the time the
evaluation
is completed, tens of thousands of users might have viewed the
false
information. And even a well-resourced fact-checking operation
cannot
review every story and claim shared on social media.
Finally, this approach to fact-checking only works for social-
media
platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, where posts are either
public
or at least available to the company itself. Developments in

Argentina
and Brazil suggest that efforts to check misinformation on these
networks
have pushed purveyors of falsehoods to turn instead to
WhatsApp. Since
43.7%
39.1%
33.4%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
Non-User Low-Freq.
User
High-Freq.
User
44.7%
42.2%

36.7%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
Non-User Low-Freq.
User
High-Freq.
User
35.2%
33.0%
26.5%
0%
10%
20%
30%

40%
50%
60%
Non-User Low-Freq.
User
High-Freq.
User
41.0%
37.2% 36.6%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
Non-User Low-Freq.
User
High-Freq.
User

38.8%
36.8%
30.4%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
Non-User Low-Freq.
User
High-Freq.
User
56.2%
52.8%
44.4%
0%
10%

20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
Non-User Low-Freq.
User
High-Freq.
User
Executive
Local Government
Congress
Elections
Supreme Court
Media
Figure 2—trust in institutions,
by Frequency oF social-Media usage
Source: AmericasBarometer 2018–19.

J. Zechmeister
WhatsApp messages are visible only to the users, there is no
way for the
platform itself to incorporate a fact-checking assessment. In
order to find
out whether a WhatsApp post is false, users need to look
outside the app
itself—but this too may be difficult since more and more
WhatsApp users,
particularly poorer ones, rely on cellphone plans that provide
WhatsApp
for free but charge for other internet data.
Social-media companies are not helpless in this fight. They
could
invest more in reliable fact-checking initiatives in every
country, es-
pecially those, such as El Salvador, that have little local
infrastructure.
Since fact-checkers have a hard time keeping up with
misinformation,
social-media companies could also take steps to limit the speed
with
which it spreads. WhatsApp has already done this in some
countries
through measures that make it harder to rapidly disseminate
messages
en masse: allowing users to restrict who can add them to
groups, reduc-
ing the maximum number of users in a group, and limiting the
number
of times a post can be forwarded. More of these kinds of limits
could be
implemented, especially during election periods. In addition,
the plat-

forms themselves might regularly remind users to report content
they
believe to be false.
It is also well past time for government agencies to enter the
fray.
Although many governments enforce rules about campaign
advertis-
ing and regulate traditional media, they have been slow and
under-
resourced in regulating and investigating campaign messaging
on
social-media platforms. Rather than relying on self-regulation
by so-
cial-media companies themselves, political leaders must act to
protect
the public interest. They should work more closely with social -
media
companies to identify misinformation campaigns and the people
be-
hind them. They should also invest in inoculating the public
against
misinformation, through widely distributed warnings and
campaigns
to teach digital literacy.
Perhaps most important, though, is that the spread of
misinformation
and the ill effects of social media on political attitudes do not
exist in a
vacuum. Research shows that people are more likely to believe
misin-
formation when they already have less trust in their political
system and
when political polarization is high.28 This may be one reason
we saw so

much more misinformation in the more polarized contexts of
Argentina,
Brazil, and Mexico than in El Salvador.
These are underlying conditions that policy makers must
address. The
task is not easy, but also not impossible. Political leaders need
to em-
phasize building coalitions, and governments ought to
encourage and
spotlight examples of compromise rather than confrontation.
Government
agencies, with the help of international actors, should put
resources into
winning back trust by rooting out corruption and more
efficiently provid-
ing services to the public. And then they should publicize these
successes
as widely as possible—perhaps via social media.
NOTES
1. See for instance Pablo Barberá and Thomas Zeitzoff, “The
New Public Address System:
Why Do World Leaders Adopt Social Media?” International
Studies Quarterly 62 (March
2018): 121–30; Nic Newman et al., Reuters Institute Digital
News Report 2019 (Reuters
Institute for the Study of Journalism, 2019),
https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/
default/files/2019-06/DNR_2019_FINAL_0.pdf; Joshua A.
Tucker et al., “From Liberation to

Turmoil: Social Media And Democracy,” Journal of Democracy
28 (October 2017): 46–59.
2. Newman et al., Reuters Institute Digital News Report; Mark
Murray, “Poll: Ameri-
cans Give Social Media a Clear Thumbs-Down,” NBC News, 5
April 2019; Pew Research
Center, “Publics in Emerging Economies Worry Social Media
Sow Division, Even as
They Offer New Chances for Political Engagement,” 13 May
2019, www.pewresearch.
org/internet/2019/05/13/publics-in-emerging-economies-worry-
social-media-sow-divi-
sion-even-as-they-offer-new-chances-for-political-engagement.
3. Rocío Annunziata, Andrea Fernanda Ariza, and Valeria
Romina March, “‘Gobernar es
estar cerca’: Las estrategias de proximidad en el uso de las
redes sociales de Mauricio Macri y
María Eugenia Vidal,” Revista Mexicana de Opinión Pública 24
(January-June 2018): 71–93.
4. Our regional analyses weight each country equally,
regardless of sample size. For
more analysis of the AmericasBarometer data, see Noam Lupu,
Elizabeth J. Zechmeister,
and Mariana V. Ramírez Bustamante, “Social Media and
Political Attitudes,” in Noam Lupu
and Elizabeth J. Zechmeister, eds., Pulse of Democracy
(Nashville: LAPOP, 2019), 52–65.
5. For each platform, we identify users based on a combination
of two survey ques-
tions. The survey first asked, “Do you have a
Facebook/Twitter/WhatsApp account?”
Those who answered yes were then asked, “How often do you

see content on Facebook/
Twitter/WhatsApp?” We identify users as those who both said
that they have an account
and reported seeing content more frequently than “never” (one
of the response options for
the follow-up question).
6. For instance, there are strong correlations between WhatsApp
usage in a country
and home internet access (0.93), cellphones in the home (0.86),
and smartphone ownership
(0.83). These data are drawn from AmericasBarometer 2018/19
and Pew Research Center.
See Jacob Poushter, Caldwell Bishop, and Hanyu Chwe, “Social
Media Use Continues
to Rise in Developing Countries but Plateaus Across Developed
Ones,” Pew Research
Center, 19 June 2018.
7. Jody C. Baumgartner and Jonathan S. Morris, “MyFaceTube
Politics: Social Net-
working Web Sites and Political Engagement of Young Adults,”
Social Science Computer
Review 28 (February 2010): 28–9.
8. AmericasBarometer 2012.
9. Andrea Ceron, “Internet, News, and Political Trust: The
Difference Between So-
cial Media and Online Media Outlets,” Journal of Computer-
Mediated Communication 20
(September 2015): 487–503; Tucker et al., “From Liberation to
Turmoil.”
10. David M. J. Lazer et al., “The Science of Fake News,”
Science, 9 March 2018: 1094–96.

11. Samantha Bradshaw and Philip N. Howard, Challenging
Truth and Trust: A Global
Inventory of Organized Social Media Manipulation (Oxford
Internet Institute, 2018); Ma-
ria Fernanda Pérez Argüello and Donara Barojan,
“Disinformation in the 2018 Elections.
Mexico,” in Luiza Bandeira et al. Disinformation in
Democracies: Strengthening Digital
Resilience in Latin America (Washington, D.C.: Atlantic
Council, 2019), 20–29.
12. Marcos Martínez, “México: los ‘bots’, ‘trolls’ y otros trucos
de manipulación en
internet que amenazan las próximas elecciones presidenciales,”
BBC News, 30 May 2018.
https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2019 -
06/DNR_2019_FINAL_0.pdf
https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2019 -
06/DNR_2019_FINAL_0.pdf
www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/05/13/publics-in-emerging-
economies-worry-social-media-sow-division-even-as-they-offer-
new-chances-for-political-engagement
J. Zechmeister
13. See Luiza Bandeira and Roberta Braga, “Disinformation in

the 2018 Elections.
Brazil,” in Bandeira et al. Disinformation in Democracies, 8.
14. Newman et al., Reuters Institute Digital News Report, 121.
15. See Tai Nalon, “Did WhatsApp Help Bolsonaro Win the
Brazilian Presidency?”
Washington Post, 1 November 2018.
16. Mike Isaac and Kevin Roose, “Disinformation Spreads on
WhatsApp Ahead of
Brazilian Election,” New York Times, 19 October 2018.
17. Kate Linthicum and Emily Green, “Social Media Star from
Far-Right Party Declares
Victory in El Salvador’s Presidential Election,” Los Angeles
Times, 3 February 2019.
18. Rodrigo Baires, “Las Noticias Falsas de la Campa~na
Presidencial,” América Latína
en Movimiento, 13 February 2019.
19. Hugo Alconada Mon, “¿Cómo combatir las noticias falsas
durante las elecciones
en Argentina?” New York Times, 1 April 2019; Federico Mayol,
“El macrismo busca llevar
la campa~na electoral a los grupos de WhatsApp,” Infobae, 2
May 2019.
20. Lucas Robinson, “Fake News Persists in Argentina as
Election Draws Near,” Bue-
nos Aires Times, 14 September 2019.
21. Daniel Funke, “Facebook Announces Sweeping Changes to
Its Anti-Misinforma-
tion Policies,” Poynter, 10 April 2019.

22. Ben Raderstorf and Michael J. Camilleri, Online
Disinformation in the United States:
Implications for Latin America (Washington, D.C.: Inter-
American Dialogue, 2019). See
also Shanto Iyengar, Gaurav Sood, and Yphtach Lelkes, “Affect,
Not Ideology: A Social
Identity Perspective on Polarization,” Public Opinion Quarterly
76 (2012): 405–31.
23. Lazer et al., “Science of Fake News;” Kai Shu et al. “Fake
News Detection on Social
Media: A Data Mining Perspective,”
www.kdd.org/exploration_files/19-1-Article2.pdf.
24. Political tolerance is an index based on the degree to which
respondents approve or
disapprove of the right for regime critics to exercise the right to
vote, the right to partici-
pate in peaceful demonstrations, the right to run for office, and
the right to make speeches.
Support for democracy is measured by the question,
“Democracy may have problems, but
it is better than any other form of government. To what extent
do you agree or disagree
with this statement?” Satisfaction with democracy is measured
by asking, “In general,
would you say that you are very satisfied, satisfied, dissatisfied
or very dissatisfied with
the way democracy works in (country)?”
25. The differences between non-users and high-frequency users
are all statistically
significant and robust to regression analysis with demographic
controls.

26. Other studies have also found that social media users are
less trusting of traditional
media. See Ryan Salzman, “Understanding Social Media Use in
Latin America,” Palabra
Clave 18, no. 3 (2015): 842–58.
27. Adam J. Berinsky, “Rumors and Health Care Reform:
Experiments in Political
Misinformation,” British Journal of Political Science 47 (April
2017): 241–62.
28. See for instance, Stephan Lewandowsky, Ullrich K.H.
Ecker, and John Cook, “Be-
yond Misinformation: Understanding and Coping with the ‘Post-
Truth’ Era,” Journal of
Applied Research in Memory and Cognition 6 (December 2017):
353–69; Brian E. Weeks
and R. Kelly Garrett, “Electoral Consequences of Political
Rumors: Motivated Reasoning,
Candidate Rumors, and Vote Choice During the 2008 U.S.
Presidential Election,” Interna-
tional Journal of Public Opinion Research 26 (Winter 2014):
401–22.
www.kdd.org/exploration_files/19-1-Article2.pdf
The Return of the Latin American Military?
David Pion-Berlin, Igor Acácio
Journal of Democracy, Volume 31, Number 4, October 2020,
pp. 151-165
(Article)

DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2020.0062
https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2020.0062
the RetuRn of the Latin
ameRican miLitaRy?
David Pion-Berlin and Igor Acácio
David Pion-Berlin is professor of political science at the
University
of California, Riverside. His books include Soldiers,
Politicians, and
Citizens: Reforming Civil-Military Relations in Latin America
(with
Rafael Martínez, 2017). Igor Acácio is a University of
California
Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation Dissertation
Fellow
and a Visiting Researcher at the Center for the Research and
Docu-
mentation of Contemporary Brazilian History at the Getúlio
Vargas
Foundation.

Are Latin American militaries back? In country after country,
troops
now appear front and center, carrying out missions both armed
and un-
armed: They patrol city streets and chase drug traffickers while
also
building or fixing infrastructure, teaching literacy, handing out
food,
water, and clothing to the poor, and responding to natural and
medical
disasters. That last mission is especially salient at present. In
nearly
every Latin American country, the military has been asked to
provide
emergency help in fighting the covid-19 pandemic and has
everywhere
stepped forward. Military establishments have been producing
and dis-
tributing medical equipment, setting up mobile hospitals, and
enforcing
curfews and health regulations. The range of roles is
impressive, as are
the thousands of operations conducted annually.
The high-profile return of Latin American armed forces does
not nec-
essarily represent a return to the days of the Cold War, when
militaries
intervened repeatedly in the name of national security,
development,
and crisis alleviation. Back then, the region was in the grip of
dictator-
ships, suffering at the hands of anticommunist military autocrats
with
no regard for individual liberties, political rights, or the rule of
law.

Military juntas replaced congressional districts w ith security
zones, and
the leaders of unions, parties, and local governments with
military of-
ficers. In more than one country, generals ruthlessly imposed
their will,
arresting, torturing, and �disappearing� tens of thousands of
citizens
Journal of Democracy Volume 31, Number 4 October 2020
University Press
across Latin America in bloodthirsty campaigns designed to
wipe out
perceived enemies of the state.
The end of the Cold War and the return of democracy in the late
1980s did not instantly end military in-
volvement in politics. Generals left of-
fice but clung to “reserved powers” and
occasionally rattled sabers to intimidate
newly installed democratic leaders. Af-
ter a period of democratic vulnerability
to military pressures, however, such
pressures waned. Elected civilian gov-
ernments asserted their authority and
shrank the domains of reserved pow-
ers. Interactions between militaries and
the world of politics became far more
low-key, receding from the minds of

citizens and the front pages of newspapers.
Yet even as new or restored democracies overcame the problems
of
political transitions, new security challenges emerged. To meet
them,
Latin American militaries have taken on a widening array of
missions.
Today, the region’s armed forces seem to be more active than
before
on many fronts. This concerns some scholars. They point to
troops
acting as law enforcers in Central America and Mexico;
propping up
incumbents in Brazil and Venezuela; and nudging another
incumbent
out of power in Bolivia.1 Scholars have asked whether a new
form
of militarism is taking shape, and have worried that greater
military
assertiveness could hamper civilian control and weaken
democratic
institutions.2
One prominent scholar goes so far as to say that Latin America
is at
risk of becoming a region of “militarized democracies.”3 If that
is true,
it must be taken as a dire sign for Latin American democracies
that are
already beset by economic decline and a loss of public
confidence in key
public institutions. Brazil may be a particularly acute case:
President
Jair Bolsonaro, a former army captain, has a vice-president, a
retired

general, who once mused publicly about a return to military
rule. Bolso-
naro has seven current or former military officers in his cabinet.
While today’s wider military presence might stir troubling
echoes
of days gone by, the current wave of military activism is, in
fact, not
a return to the past. There is a range of military behaviors, most
of
which occur at the behest of democratically elected executives.
The
motive is no longer national-security ideology or the soldiers’
quest for
political power. Civilian control and democracy’s survival are
by and
large not under threat. This is not to say that these actions are
wise or
cannot have deleterious consequences; the point is simply that
we are
not talking about autonomous military decisions. Mexican
troops pur-
While today’s wider
military presence might
stir troubling echoes
of days gone by, the
current wave of military
activism in Latin
America is, in fact, not a
return to the past.
153David Pion-Berlin and Igor Acácio

suing drug cartels, Brazilian soldiers venturing into favelas to
suppress
gangs, or the repression aimed at protesters in Chile: Each of
these has
been a case of a national military following rather than defying
orders
from a civilian democratic government. In other words, more
often than
not, the current wave of military activity has been happening
because
of civilian control rather than in spite of it.
Civilian control of the military is a cherished principle of
democracy
and a necessary condition for consolidated democratic rule. We
expect
armies to be subordinate to political authorities, and usually this
is the
case. Armies are being deployed by legitimate, democratically
elected
presidents who are themselves acting in response to voter
demands.
Publics want to see the military help in the fight to quell crime
and make
neighborhoods safer. When floods, earthquakes, or pandemics
strike,
the military’s rapid, large-scale organizational and logistical
capacities
are called on to succor ravaged communities. The orders to
intervene are
usually legal, often flowing from constitutional articles
allowing presi-
dents to declare temporary states of siege or emergency.
At the same time, there have been occasions in Latin America
when

the armed forces have stepped out of line. They may have
rejected presi-
dential orders, reinterpreted rules of engagement in their own
favor, bar-
gained for better terms of deployment, or otherwise put
presidents under
undue pressure. The results of such behavior need not always be
bad. A
military that, for instance, ignores lawful orders to suppress
street dem-
onstrations is waving off civilian control in favor of its own
“judgment
call.” And yet, this disobedience might forestall human-rights
abuses
and even save lives. There is a tradeoff here that cannot be
weighed
purely in the abstract.
Civilian Control or Human Rights?
Domestic deployments of the military bring to light a
conundrum of
security governance in Latin America: Civilian control may
clash with
the need to protect citizens’ human rights. Latin American
states often
find themselves caught between these cardinal principles of
democracy.
Missions such as subduing mass protests or chasing down
criminals
in densely populated areas are tasks of civil policing on which
militaries
typically do not focus. When a president orders an army that is
poorly
trained and equipped for the job to quell protests or fight crime,

innocent
civilians are likely to be harmed. Ignoring such orders would
therefore
seem to be the moral course.
Yet how can it be legitimate for the soldiers of a democratic
state
to disobey lawful orders from that state’s democratically elected
chief
executive? If soldiers do so, they are shirking their obligations,
under-
mining the commander-in-chief whom the voters have chosen,
and (on
a personal level) risking punishment. Democratic governments
are often
within their legal rights to use force, militaries must normally
comply
with commands, and yet individual rights and freedoms must be
respect-
ed. This is a difficult balancing act to pull off.
This tension between democratic duties—to respect civilian
suprem-
acy and to respect human rights—that can pull militaries in
opposite di-
rections is one we must grasp if we are to understand a r ange of
actions
carried out by the armed forces. The Figure is meant to help
clarify by
ranking four possible outcomes.

In Box 1, at upper left, we see the best outcome: The
government
has other and more mission-capable security forces (perhaps a
national
gendarmerie) to deploy, so the military remains garrisoned
while more
suitable agents of state power deal with protests and crime. The
mili-
tary obeys, grateful to avoid confrontations that could leave
troops
blamed for excesses. Rights abuses are lessened. In Box 2, the
second-
best outcome, the military shows more regard for human rights
but less
for civilian supremacy. In this scenario, troops opt not to deploy
into a
situation that seems too fraught with risks of harm to civilians.
Lives
may be saved, but military disobedience will cost the president
com-
mand credibility and could even drive an administration from
power.
If the president survives, the military could pay a price as the
enraged
incumbent seeks to punish those who defied orders. Box 3
shows the
situation where civilian control wins out and the military
complies, but
with the deployment harming citizens. Where militaries are
untrained
in minimal-force crowd control or lack basic policing skills and
ignore
rules of proportionality and restraint, obeying a presidential
order to hit
the streets will lead to rights being violated.

The scenarios depicted in Boxes 2 and 3 have been the most
common
in Latin America since the beginning of this century. One or the
other
M
il
it
a
ry
A
v
er
si
o
n
t
o
V
io
la
ti
n
g
H
u

m
a
n
R
ig
h
ts
Military Compliance with Government Orders
High Low
H
ig
h
Box 1: Best
Democratic government orders
military garrisoned, despite
protests or crime. military
obeys. alternative well-trained
security forces used instead,
and abuses are lessened.
Box 2: Second Best
military strategically defies civil-
ian orders to suppress protests
or counter crime. human-rights
abuses are reduced.
L

ow
Box 3: Second Worst
civilian control is respected,
and military deployment
results predictably in human-
rights abuses.
Box 4: Worst
autonomous military defies
civilian control and intervenes
for national-security purposes.
human-rights abuses follow.
Figure—The MiliTary, Civilian ConTrol, and huMan righTs
cherished principle is violated. Box 4 shows the worst-case
scenario.
This one was all too typical of predemocratic Latin America,
where
militaries mainly answered to themselves and readily trampled
human
rights when deployed domestically.
What the Figure fails to capture are borderline cases that do not
fit
neatly into a single box. In such a case the armed forces might
try to
hedge their bets, partly obeying (and thus partly defying) a
president in

hopes of avoiding both complete insubordination and, say,
bloody street
clashes with protesters or shootouts with gangs that catch
civilians in the
crossfire. When faced with risky and unwelcome obligations,
resource-
ful militaries have a number of creative ways to equivocate
between
shirking a duty and fulfilling it.
While some of the less-conventional operations that Latin
Ameri-
can militaries have recently undertaken have been fruitless or
even
harmful, there is scant reason to blame the soldiers for this. If
the re-
gion’s governments are too ready to send the military on public-
order
or crime-control missions, it does not follow that the armed
forces
have exploited this habit to slip free of civilian authority. Cases
differ.
In Venezuela (the least-democratic country in the region save
Cuba),
President Nicolás Maduro has invited the military to accumulate
po-
litical (and economic) clout as part of his plan for staying in
power.4 In
Chile, President Sebastián Pi~nera called in the army to help
keep order
during huge public protests, but this happened without
compromise of
civilian control.
Assuming that officers are always out for political gain is not
re-

alistic. They may instead be trying to avert undesirable
outcomes for
themselves personally and for the military as an institution.
Research
on military responses to mass protests in Latin America and
elsewhere
shows that officers are often driven by powerful instincts for
self-pro-
tection rather than a desire for political power.5 Difficult orders
from
the government force them to calculate how to respond based on
their
own self-interests, the perceived professional costs of
undertaking
certain operations, and the risks to individual careers. Human-
rights
concerns figure prominently in those calculations: Soldiers
know that
if abuses occur, they may find themselves in legal trouble. Also
weigh-
ing in the balance are thoughts of loyalty to the service, one’s
superi-
ors, and the constitution. In mulling their options, military
officers as
people and the military as an institution must weigh the
expected risks
and rewards of each.
As suggested above, a concern for institutional self-preservation
need not result in perfect compliance; it can also motivate
conditional
compliance with or even outright disobedience of executive
orders seen
as too costly to follow. Today’s democratic Latin America
reveals a
range of military responses whose common thread is not a drive

for po-
litical power, but rather a desire to safeguard personal and
institutional
well-being as civilian leaders send soldiers on sensitive and
difficult
domestic missions.
A Range of Military Behavior
Faced with difficult assignments from elected political leaders,
mili-
taries can choose among several possible responses. Briefly
considering
a few cases can help to illuminate the approaches that militaries
might
adopt.
Compliance with Civilian Orders: Chile 2019. The most
common
response in Latin America recently has been straightforward
compli-
ance. The bulk of military operations in the region—which has
not seen
an armed conflict between nation-states since Argentina fought
Britain
for control of the Falkland Islands in 1982 and Ecuador
skirmished with
Peru near the Cenepa River in 1995—are undertaken according
to the
directives of democratically elected presidents who cite
constitutional

provisions, executive decrees, or laws on internal security.
Military respect for civilian control cannot suffice to shield
democ-
racy against the bad consequences of unwise or poorly executed
deploy-
ments, of course. Troops sent to reinforce police officers facing
large
public demonstrations have been known to overreact and use
excessive
force, though there have been cases when the civilians give the
soldiers
rules of engagement that keep them out of head-on collisions
with pro-
testors, and thus cause troops to inflict less harm than do the
police.
Chile in 2019 was such a case. Sparked by a transit-fare hike
but
reflecting a deeper malaise over the neoliberal economic model
and the
profound inequalities it had generated, mass protests broke out
in early
October. Huge demonstrations occurred nationwide. One in
Santiago,
the capital and largest city, drew more than a million people, or
about
one of every eighteen Chileans. The mostly nonviolent protests
were
punctuated by violence, arson, and looting. Train stations and
buses
were among the things burned. Taken by surprise, President
Pi~nera re-
acted to the mass outpouring of grievances by declaring that
Chile was
“at war with a potent and implacable foe who respects nothing

and no
one and is disposed to use violence and delinquency without
limits.”6 He
ordered tens of thousands of police officers and soldiers into the
streets.
Under constitutional state-of-emergency provisions, military
command-
ers imposed curfews on major cities.
Rhetoric that harsh had not been heard since the days of General
Augusto Pinochet, who ruled Chile as a military dictator,
complete
with “disappearances” and torture, between 1973 and 1990.
Frightening
memories of Pinochet-era state terror began to stir. Major-
General Ja-
vier Iturriaga del Campo, who had been tasked with securing
Santiago,
sounded a note of calm on October 21 by insisting that “I am
not at war
with anyone.”7 There had indeed been no orders to use
violence, and
Defense Minister Alberto Espina had instructed commanders to
remain
calm and not fire on protesters.8 The armed forces had little
human-
rights training and were ill prepared to deal with demonstrations
of such
size. Yet while there were cases of soldiers harming civilians,
especially
detainees, the army committed considerably fewer abuses than

did the
Carabineros, Chile’s national police force. The decades since
Pinochet
lost a plebiscite and left power had seen military officers
prosecuted
for offenses such as torture and murder; the Chilean armed
forces were
anxious not to return to the dock.
While Chile’s National Institute for Human Rights (INDH) does
not
classify rights violations by the perpetrating agency, it does
provide in-
direct evidence via its recording of lawsuits filed on behalf of
victims.
The total number of victims represented in lawsuits is 1,631. Of
those,
1,544 (94.7 percent) allege suffering at the hands of the
Carabineros,
with only 87 people (or 5.3 percent) charging that military
personnel
abused them. Four suits relating to charges of homicide or
attempted
homicide were lodged against members of the army or navy,
while Cara-
bineros faced twenty such suits.9 In short, military excesses
appear to
have been sporadic, in contrast to a pattern of abuses by the
Carabineros.
For the most part, soldiers adhered to the minister’s orders to
avoid in-
flicting physical harm on protesters. From its deployment, the
Chilean
military gained no political leverage. On the contrary, the mere
fact of
its presence in the streets damaged its public image.10

Democracy Beleaguered Michael J. Abramowitz, Sarah Repucci

Democracy Beleaguered Michael J. Abramowitz, Sarah Repucci

Recomendados

Recomendados

Más contenido relacionado

Similar a Democracy Beleaguered Michael J. Abramowitz, Sarah Repucci

Similar a Democracy Beleaguered Michael J. Abramowitz, Sarah Repucci (16)

Más de LinaCovington707

Más de LinaCovington707 (20)

Último

Último (20)

Democracy Beleaguered Michael J. Abramowitz, Sarah Repucci