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Leaders of the Hemisphere Held Debate on Democracy in the Americas at OAS

Political leaders, legislators and experts from the hemisphere analyzed the state of democracy in the continent at the headquarters of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Washington, DC, during the XXVIII OAS Policy Round Table: “Representative Democracy or Participatory Democracy?”

OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza highlighted the relevance of the debate in the year of the tenth anniversary of the signing of the Inter-American Democratic Charter in Lima on September 11, 2001. “This discussion is important because we have a Charter that says that democracy is the right of citizens in the region, something that did not exist in any instrument in the world before; and there is no doubt that the form in which that right is exercised, the way in which the majority expresses itself, the way in which minorities express themselves, is fundamental.”

The head of the hemispheric Organization recalled that the Charter emphasizes key issues such as the practice of democracy according to the rule of law, the respect for institutions and minorities. “It is fundamental to analyze in what way those rights are exercised, in what way those divergent opinions are respected, and what functions the inputs of the different stakeholders in society play.”

Offering the floor to the panelists, Secretary General Insulza challenged them to “help us make these two concepts compatible, that of representative democracy and participatory democracy.”

The panel was moderated by Víctor Rico, OAS Secretary for Political Affairs, with the participation of Jorge Castañeda, former Minister of Foreign Relations of Mexico; Eduardo Vio Grossi, Judge of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights; María Paula Romo, Member of the National Legislative Assembly of the Republic of Ecuador for “Alianza País”; and Dante Caputo, Special Advisor to the OAS Secretary General and Director of the Democracy Project.

Much of the dialogue focused around the question of, “What must be understood by democracy in the Inter-American Charter: representative or participatory democracy?” Addressing the subject, Judge Vio Grossi said that “the great virtue of the Democratic Charter is to have established the essential elements and fundamental components of democracy.” These elements, he said, “are those of representative democracy” and therefore “here we may conclude that the Democratic Charter understands by democracy, representative democracy.” Democratic participation is considered by the Charter to be “merely a component, a factor that conditions democracy but is not part of its essence.”

To the Ecuadorian politician María Paula Romo, on the other hand, comparing the two concepts is “a false dilemma.” “I still believe that, fortunately, the concept of democracy can and does acquire new meaning every day,” she said, “not without denying there are certain principles that we should consider nonnegotiable.”

Romo did not deny, however, that there is a “tension” present between representative and participatory democracy that presents various challenges, one of which is “how to reconstruct and reinvent the logics of representation.” According to her, “those of us tasked with representation are representing societies that are much more complex than before, with much more complex interests that go beyond identity, that go beyond occupation, that go beyond the territory in which we live.”

Nevertheless, she concluded that “just as there are times of tension and situations in which the international community itself has felt impotent faced with attacks on democracy, I believe there are also examples of how construction is possible, that democracy depends on personal leadership” and on “institutions that have the strength to make decisions even when they are unpopular.”

Dante Caputo highlighted the importance of the debate at a time when “we are rethinking democracy” and we live a “new transition” of democracy in the continent. “We left behind dictatorship, but Latin American democracy has not been born yet.”

Later, he emphasized that, in Latin America, to determine what democracy is desired “is not an academic question, but a central political question.” The former Argentine foreign minister added that the kind of democracy that must attract interest is “that which achieves greater participation so that representation is strengthened.” “We need greater participation to achieve better representation,” he concluded.

Former Mexican foreign minister Castañeda, for his part, recalled the negotiations that surrounded the signing of the Democratic Charter, which “in some way tried to go a little bit beyond the dilemma posed by this question,” though during the discussions “there was in some cases an attempt to give further content, a better finish, greater precision to the term democracy,” while in other cases the intention was rather “to push aside, weaken, drown, dilute” that meaning, coming up with “a definition so broad that it remains empty of content.”

The former diplomat also mentioned the possibility of modifying the Charter, something he considers open, though with caution. “The first thing that must be said, at least in my opinion, is that if the intent is to add to or broaden the traditional cannons of representative democracy, then congratulations.” However, he continued, “if, on the other hand, the intent is to undermine, weaken or dilute the traditional cannons of representative democracy to substitute it with something strange, I believe this is something that must be fought against, and must be countered directly, because it could transform itself into the new version of the same Latin American authoritarianism.”

In his analysis, Castañeda traced the origins of this dilemma, between representative or “bourgeois” and participatory or “popular” democracy, referring to Vladimir Lenin before describing the existence of the “old Latin American populism” in various parts of the continent. “Democracy of the masses or direct democracy are in my opinion forms of diluting, undermining or eliminating what are effectively the traditional forms of representative democracy, with all the defects we know them to have and that aren’t exactly new.”

Víctor Rico summarized the debate around the concept of democracy by indicating that it “reflects that there is a process under construction in Latin America and a process under construction of a democracy that I’m not sure will be formed as a hegemonic idea.” Nevertheless, he concluded, “there is no doubt it will culminate in the consolidation and enrichment of democracy in our region.”

A gallery of photos of the event is available here.

For more information, please visit the OAS Website at www.oas.org.

Reference: E-515/11