Enforcing peoples’ right to democracy: transnational activism and regional powers in contemporary Inter-American relations

Abstract

The Inter-American Democratic Charter (IADC) is the most comprehensive multilateral framework for dealing with democratic breakdowns and backslidings in the Western Hemisphere. In such cases, the Organisation of American States (OAS) is supposed to defend democracy by suspending states, imposing sanctions or taking other multilateral measures. Oftentimes, however, the OAS has looked the other way. The question, then, is what makes the difference. In this comparative case study, we use cross-cases comparisons and process-tracing to identify the actors and causal mechanisms that determine when and whether the IADC is actually enforced. We explain inconsistent enforcement by analysing interactions among three sets of actors – the governments of powerful member states, OAS secretaries general and civil society organisations – during coups, executive takeovers and electoral frauds in OAS member states between 2001 and 2020. Our analysis reveals that cooperation between an activist secretary general and civil society actors was neither sufficient nor necessary for IADC enforcement. By contrast, US support for enforcement was a necessary but insufficient condition for the OAS to act. To get it to do so, the United States required the support of two leading regional powers: Mexico and Brazil. These findings suggest that the ‘right to democracy’ enshrined in the IADC hinges upon the volatile preferences of the executives of the OAS’s three most powerful member states. The resulting lack of institutional autonomy leads to inconsistent enforcement of the IADC, jeopardising the credibility of the region’s formally declared right to democracy.

Regional democracy protection

“…Perhaps the most crucial aspect of the IADC is that it defines procedures for the management of democracy crises, including a suspension clause and the possibility of sanctions. The IADC goes beyond previous instruments as it is not only applicable to cases of democracy breakdown (i.e., coups), but also to 'unconstitutional alterations of the constitutional regime', a concept that includes actions perpetrated by elected authorities, executive takeovers, and self-coups (Palestini and Martinelli, 2023;Heine and Weiffen, 2014;Perina, 2015;Legler, 2012). This is an innovation in the democracy-protection regime in the Americas and it was a response to the authoritarian practices adopted by democratically elected presidents such as Alberto Fujimori in Peru and Jorge Serrano in Guatemala.…”

“…Second, the African Charter entails an enforcement authority -the Peace and Security Council -that the IADC lacks; furthermore, it allows UCG perpetrators to be brought before courts, a competency that is also absent in the IADC. Finally, AU member states have delegated more authority to the AU Commission in the field of democracy, peace, and security than American states have done with the OAS General Secretariat, which remains a largely administrative body (Palestini and Martinelli, 2023;Leininger, 2015). According to Legler and Tieku (2010), the reasons for these variations lie in the differentiated evolutions of the American and African democracy-protection regimes.…”

“…Certainly, enforcement authorities have different degrees of authority. For instance, in the OAS the enforcement of the IADC must be decided by the entire General Assembly (although some crucial decisions, such as suspension, are decided through a qualified majority), while in the AU these decisions are taken by a subset of 15 member states that compose the Peace and Security Council and that are supposed to represent not their national interests but the region as a whole (Hellquist, 2020;Palestini and Martinelli, 2023). Yet, even in the EU -the most supranational RO -the decision to activate Article 7 hinges on the Council, its intergovernmental body (Closa, 2020).…”

“…Any such relationship of tutelage among states is more likely to happen when enforcement is left to governments than where there is legal enforcement by an international tribunal or dispute-settlement mechanism. Tutelage has serious implications for the legitimacy of the norm as it normalises power asymmetries and informal hierarchies, rendering enforcement dependent on the contingent interests of the most powerful member states (Palestini and Martinelli, 2023).…”

Handbook of Regional Cooperation and Integration

“…Perhaps the most crucial aspect of the IADC is that it defines procedures for the management of democracy crises, including a suspension clause and the possibility of sanctions. The IADC goes beyond previous instruments as it is not only applicable to cases of democracy breakdown (i.e., coups), but also to 'unconstitutional alterations of the constitutional regime', a concept that includes actions perpetrated by elected authorities, executive takeovers, and self-coups (Palestini and Martinelli, 2023;Heine and Weiffen, 2014;Perina, 2015;Legler, 2012). This is an innovation in the democracy-protection regime in the Americas and it was a response to the authoritarian practices adopted by democratically elected presidents such as Alberto Fujimori in Peru and Jorge Serrano in Guatemala.…”