The study of democracy in Latin America has been extensive since much of the region transitioned from authoritarian regimes to democracy in the 1980s and 1990s. Much of the debate focused on giving a definition to the form of democracy that was being implemented by governments across Latin American countries. The purpose of this paper is to extend the research of democracy in Latin America in its attempt of determining the challenges to democracy in the region. This article uses Colombia as a case study to identify the three most significant challenges to democracy in this specific country. The paper argues that political exclusion, political violence, and socioeconomic inequality are the three most significant challenges to Colombian democracy. Introduction To properly approach the concept of democracy in Latin America, the term must first be defined. Schmitter and Karl (1991:76) define democracy as: “a system of governance in which rulers are held accountable for their actions in the public realm by citizens, acting indirectly through the competition and cooperation of their elected representatives.”[1]In addition, Robert Dahl (1982:11) identifies a series of political institutions that are needed in a democracy: elected officials, free, fair, and frequent elections, extended suffrage to practically all adults, almost all adults have the right to run for office, freedom of expression without the fear of being punished, freedom of access of alternative sources of information, and freedom of association.[2] As Gerardo Munk (2015:371) notes, the Latin American political context of democracy has generally relied on the minimalist concept of electoral democracy in which elections are the only means of access to government offices, elections are based on the universal right to vote and the right to run for office without proscriptions, and elections are devoid of violence or fraud. Moreover, Guillermo O’Donnel (1994:55-56) argues that historical factors, along with the sever socioeconomic problems of Latin American countries, has resulted in democratic regimes that are not institutionally consolidated and that are characterized by practices and conceptions about the practice of political authority that lead to “delegative” democracies.[3] The first section of this case study examines how political exclusion has led to a regime predominated by the traditional elite and the persecution or extermination of alternative political actors legitimized by the use of the “state of exception”. The second section argues that continued political exclusion has generated political violence and resulted in a state of “violent pluralism” in which human, civil, and political rights have been repeatedly violated. The third section looks at how Colombia’s socioeconomic inequality, fuelled by the global integration of the Colombian economy, has led to the reduction of political representation and the rise of a transnational state that weakens the legitimacy of the democratic system. Political Exclusion in Colombia Political exclusion has been a prevalent characteristic of the Colombian regime.[4]The traditional governing elite has repeatedly excluded opposing political actors by establishing political pacts between the two traditional political parties. In instances when a political pact has proven insufficient to silence and exclude opposition, the government has resolved to exterminate the opposition. This has been done through the use of the “state of exception”. Political exclusion in Colombia is best exemplified through two historical events: the “Frente Nacional” and the extermination of the “Union Patriotica” (UP). Since the consolidation of the Colombian Conservative and Liberal parties in the mid-19thcentury, Colombian democracy has been limited to a duopoly of the monopoly of power (Ramirez 2010:85). The best representation of the exclusive two-party regime in Colombia is the 16-year political pact that lasted from 1958-74, better known as the “Frente Nacional”. During this period, the Conservative and Liberal parties agreed on a power sharing governing pact in which power would alternate every four years between the two parties through elections. During the “Frente Nacional” all governing positions were equally divided amongst the two parties while no other political actors were allowed to contest the power structure. The “Frente Nacional” also served as a strategy to repress, silence, and alienate all radical liberal “gaitanistas” and self-defence left-winged groups. These groups had mobilized against the Conservative and Liberal oligarchy after the assassination of populist Liberal Jorge Eliecer Gaitan in 1948 (Guzman Campos: 1962). It was this era of high political exclusion that resulted in the birth of left-winged guerrillas such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Although the “Frente Nacional” opened up a democratic space for the participation of the two traditional parties, this political pact excluded alternative actors and relied on the use of “state of exception” to maintain political order (Pizarro Leongómez, 1991:159).[5]Between 1949 and 1991, when the current constitution was enacted, Colombia was under a state of siege for a cumulative total of thirty years. It was during this period that the government developed sophisticated mechanisms of repression and terror to defeat all of those individuals or groups considered as adversaries. One of the state’s mechanisms to repress and silence adversaries was the use of political assassins by both Liberal and Conservatives in their efforts of ensuring electoral victory as well as protecting their economic interests (Palacios 2006:164). In 1968, it became legal to create civil defense groups to privately confront guerillas and to support the army’s counterinsurgency efforts. Many right-wing landowners and drug traffickers formed such groups “in order to protect themselves and help the government retake and secure rural land being surrendered to the guerilla groups” (Holmes et al 2006:168). In 1984, after escalating violence and deteriorating civil-military relations, president Belisario Betancourt Cuartas decided to sign an amnesty agreement with a big block of the FARC, M-19, and EPL guerrilla forces in efforts to broaden political participation and avert greater armed conflict (Watson 2000: 533). [6]As Watson notes, the disarmed groups often decided to participate in the electoral system and the FARC remnants formed the UP, while the M-19formed the Accion Democratica-Movimiento 19 (ADM-19). However, Colombian military and paramilitary forces continued to view these groups as subversive and a threat to the state. The UP had been formed from amnestied elements of the FARC and had been particularly successful in North-western Colombia at the local electoral level. UP supporters and alleged supporters increasingly became targets of massacres, with violence ascribed to the paramilitaries, whose rhetoric increasingly focused on the need to cleanse society of anti-Colombian elements. Between 1984 and 1990, more than 1000 members of the UP were assassinated. Political exclusion has been an enduring characteristic of Colombian politics; one that has limited the participation of alternative political actors and given birth to various armed guerilla movements. The government has devised mechanisms that allow for the use of repression and violence to eliminate all opposition that pose a threat the traditional structure of power. Through the use of the “state of exception”, military actions against civilians have been legitimized in the government’s efforts to achieve long-term institutional stability. Political Violence The state’s use of military forces and counter-insurgent paramilitary groups has led to high levels of political violence and a state of “violent pluralism” in which human, civil, and political rights have been repeatedly violated. As aptly pointed out by Brubaker and Laitin (1998), one should not conceive of political violence as a higher degree of conflict, but as a process following its own logic, whose episodes follow a volatile trajectory, largely endogenous and highly contingent. Political violence and illegality in the periphery is intrinsic to the maintenance of Colombia’s model of democracy, where a counterinsurgency metanarrative legitimizes the dirty war carried out by the armed forces against political alternatives portrayed as leftists, at times with paramilitary proxies or in alliance with paramilitaries (Ramirez 2010:85-86). This type of political violence has resulted in a state of “violent pluralism”.[7]This behaviour has led to numerous human rights violations, and has directly limited civil and political rights.[8] In response to trade union violence, political protest, and other forms of political and social resistance, military forces throughout the 1980s were responsible for the detention of over 8,000 individuals, numerous forced disappearances, and allegations of torture (Aviles 2006:386). Throughout the 1980-90s, paramilitaries expanded their participation to the rural regions of the country. Since much of the rural territory was ignored by the state, these self-defence groups served as the protection forces for the rural elite against any threats from left-winged guerrillas. As Aviles (2006:384-385) notes, paramilitary groups became even more crucial to military forces and the state as increased international pressure, especially from the US, called upon the Colombian government to consolidate a less violent and more democratic regime in the transition to a neoliberal globalized capitalist state. The overt use of repression and violence was thus transferred over to paramilitary forces. By the 1990s, the paramilitary groups had replaced the armed forces as the leading perpetrators of human right violations, accounting for about 70 per cent of political assassinations (Aviles 2006: 384). In 1989, paramilitary groups were banned and a series of anti-paramilitary policies where established after it was proven that paramilitaries were responsible for more civilian deaths than guerrillas (Kline 1999: 75-76). However, this was not the end of the participation of paramilitaries in Colombian politics. Throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s, various presidents, including Ernesto Samper (1994-98) and Alvaro Uribe Velez (2002-2010), have supported the creation of new civilian militias in counter insurgency strategies, most famously known as CONVIVIR (Aviles 2006: 397).[9]Only after two years of their existence, these new private self-defence groups displaced over 200,000 peasants (Hylton 2003: 88). Most recently, ex-president Alvaro Uribe Velez and many of the members of his government are being investigated for what has come to be known as “para-politics”. As Vanden & Prevost (2017:452) note, in 2006 sixty-eight members of Congress were being investigated on allegations that they connections with paramilitaries. The long history of tension, confrontation, and violence has led to the construction of a culture of violence in Colombia. As Pécaut (2001:91) argues, coercion and violence are now fixed components of the social and political machinery of Colombia and any attempt to change this must include sincere and arduous efforts. Social Inequality The underlying causes of Colombia’s political violence revolve around broad factors such as unequal access to economic power, especially land and resources, and unequal access to political power, which ultimately, are institutional factors related to the creation of guerrilla and paramilitary violence (World Bank 2000:6). Colombia’s socioeconomic inequality, fuelled by the global integration of the Colombian economy, has led to the reduction of political representation and the rise of a transnational state that weakens the legitimacy of the democratic system. The conflict in Colombia has mainly been a rural phenomenon where the vast majority of victims have been the rural poor (Rojas & Tubb 2013:132).In the early stages of the conflict in Colombia, intense violence resulted in a high number of forcefully displaced individuals, landless peasants, and increased levels of poverty in the rural areas. It was in these regions that guerilla forces recruited the majority of their combatants (Palacios 1995:167). The isolation of these communities has led to an increased influence of insurgent groups. Moreover, the 1980s and early 1990s saw the introduction of a series of political and economic reforms that sought to further democratize the country and integrate the Colombian economy to the global system. As Bejarano & Pizarro (2005:14) argue, these reforms contributed to the “extreme atomization of political representation” and weakened the legitimacy of the democratic system. These reforms consists not only of the decentralization of capitalist production and introduction of neoliberal economic policies, they also result in the transformation of the state into a “transnational state” (Robinson 2001: 18).[10]Robinson also argues that this transformation is linked with a process of democratization that is limited by capitalist globalization and the interest of transnational corporations and the emergence of the transnational elite (Robinson 2000: 90). Aviles (2006: 384) argues that this process of transformation in Colombia has promoted a regime that has co-opted and repressed opposition while globally integrating the economy. External pressures to create a welcoming environment for international business and transnational corporations accompany this process, resulting in an increased paramilitary repression against guerrilla insurgency in the efforts to further exclude them from the political process. Aviles argues that this process results in a “Low-Intensity Democracy”.[11] In order to foster neoliberalism and transnational corporations, the Colombian government and the state’s armed forces tolerated and promoted paramilitary repression of political and social opposition to the globalization of the economy. Individuals who opposed this transition into neoliberalism righteously did so as the burden of neoliberalism fell on the rural and urban poor. The opening of the economy led to an unemployment rate of 20 percent by 1999, the elimination of jobs in the agrarian sector, and the weakening role of the state. This worsened the state of violence by forcing agrarian workers to substitute their traditional crops for drug production or to join either the guerilla or paramilitary forces (Ahumada & Andrews 1998: 462). The economic transformation has also resulted in the exacerbation of rural poverty in particular, the extreme levels of land ownership, and increased levels of income inequality.[12]. Conclusion Political exclusion, political violence, and social inequality are factors deeply rooted in Colombia’s long history of conflict and confrontation. It has been through the use of coercion, repression, and exclusion that the traditional elite has monopolized political and economic power. Political exclusion and political violence have thus become practices engrained in the political behavior of the regime and has shaped the interaction between the state and civilians. Social inequality has led to the decrease of political representation and the increased tensions. These are all challenges that jeopardize the future of Colombian democracy. There has been a spark of hope with the recent signing of the peace agreement in 2016 between the government and the FARC guerilla forces. However, the 2018 congressional and presidential elections have demonstrated that tensions remain high and that polarization has once again put Colombians at odd. If Colombia is to become an inclusive and prosperous democracy, all Colombians must be made part of the decision-making process and the government must demonstrate a sincere effort towards harmonizing the interest of all Colombians. Further research on the topic should focus on examining the ways in which a state facing similar challenges can consolidate a strong and stable democracy. NOTES [1]Schmitter & Karl’s definition builds onJoseph Schumpeter’s (1943:269) minimalist definition of democracy: “the democratic method is that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisionswhich realizes the common good by making the people itself decide issues through the election of individuals who are to assemble in order to carry out its will. [2]Schmitter & Karl (1991:81) complement Dahl’s initial work by stating that in a democracy “elected officials must be able to exercise their constitutional powers without being subjected to overriding opposition from unelected officials” and that “the polity must be self-governing; it must be able to act independently of constraints imposed by some other overarching political system.” [3]“Delegative democracies rest on the premise that whoever wins election to the presidency is thereby entitled to govern as he or she sees fit constrained only by the hard facts of existing power relations and by a constitutionally limited term of office” (O’Donnel 1994:59). [4]Hedstrom & Smith (2013:11) refer to political exclusion as the process in which an individual or group is excluded from participation in political processes. This exclusion may stem from law, custom, intimidation or discrimination. [5]Andrés Dávila Ladrón de Guevara (1998) has called attention to the use of the ‘‘state of exception’’ as a government mechanism to legitimize military actions against civilians and thereby achieve long-term institutional stability. In Colombia, the “state of exception” meant that civil rights were restricted and the powers of the armed forces to arrest, interrogate, and try civilians for crimes of subversion, and to govern large regions of the country were expanded (NCOS 1995: 53). [6]The M-19th (Movimiento 19 de abril) center-left insurgent group was established by university students after the fraudulent elections of 1970. The EPL (Ejercito Popular de Liberacon) is a Marxist-Leninist armed guerrilla group that was established in 1967. Finally, the Marxist-Leninist FARC guerilla forces (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) were established in 1964. [7]Arias & Goldstein (2010:5) define this term “as a way to think about violence in Latin American society as not merely concentrated in the state or in ‘‘deviant’’ groups and individuals who contravene otherwise accepted norms of comportment in a consensual democratic society.” [8]In the Colombian context, violent pluralism can be understood as “the situation that ensues when demands for democratic, nonviolent alternatives to conflict resolution that can bring into dialogue multiple, divergent voices are met with resistance by the state, while the civilians who embrace a nonviolent approach are treated as potential enemies threatening the integrity of Colombian democracy” (Roldan 2010:64). [9]Asociasiones Comunitarias de Vigilencia Rural (CONVIVIR) were authorized by the Samper administration in 1994 to provide special vigilant services and private security and were limited to a defense function, supporting the armed forces with intelligence about local communities. [10]A transnational state is a set of institutions that operates in order to advance the interests of transnational corporations, with national states becoming components of a larger economic and political project (Aviles 2006: 383). [11] Giles et al (1993) define Low-Intensity Democracy as a largely procedural democracy that allows political opposition, greater individual freedoms, and a more permeable environment for the investments of transnational capital. Giles and Rocamora (1992: 505) also argue that the paradox of low intensity democracy is that a civilianized conservative regime can pursue painful and even repressive social and economic policies with more impunity and with less popular resistance than can an openly authoritarian regime. [12]Between 1997 and 2000 the Gini Coefficient for income distribution increased from 0.54 to 0.59: the income of the richest 10 percent of the population increased by over 20 percent to reach 58 percent of total national income between 1992 and 1997 (Yepes Palacio:2000). Bibliography Ahumada, C., & Andrews, C. W. (1998). The Impact of Globalization on Latin American States: The cases of Brazil and Colombia. Administrative Theory & Praxis, 20(4), 452-467. Arias, E. D., & Goldstein, D. M. (2010). Violent Democracies in Latin America. Durham [NC]: Duke University Press. Aviles, W. (2006). Paramilitarism and Colombia's Low-Intensity Democracy. Journal of Latin American Studies, 38(2), 379-408. Bejarano, Ana María and Eduardo Pizarro, “From ‘Restricted’ to ‘Besieged’: The Changing Nature of the Limits to Democracy in Colombia.” In Hagopian, Frances and Scott P. Mainwaring, eds.,The Third Wave of Democratization in Latin America - Advances and Setbacks. 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S., Sheila Amin Gutiérrez de Piñeres, & Curtin, K. M. (2006). Drugs, Violence, and Development in Colombia: A department-Level Analysis. Latin American Politics and Society. 48(3). 157-184. Hylton, F. (2003). An evil hour: Uribe's Colombia in Historical Perspective. New Left Review. (23). 51. Kline, H.F. (1999). State Building and Conflict Resolution in Colombia, 1986-1994. Tuscaloosa/London: The University of Alabama Press. Munck, G. L. (2015). Building Democracy . . . which Democracy? Ideology and Models of Democracy in Post-transition Latin America. Government and Opposition, 50(3), 364-393. NCOS. (1995). Tras los pasos perdidos de la guerra sucia : paramilitarismo y operaciones encubiertas en Colombia. Bruselas: NCOS. O'Donell, G. A. (1994). Delegative democracy. Journal of Democracy, 5(1), 55-69. Palacios, M. (2006). Between Legitimacy and Violence: A History of Colombia, 1875-2002. Durham: Duke University Press. Pécaut, D. (2001). Guerra contra la sociedad. Bogota: Editorial Planeta Colombia. Pizarro Leongómez, Eduardo. (1991). Las Farc (1949–1966): De la autodefensa a la combinación de todas las formas de lucha, 1949–1966. Bogotá: Tercer Mundo Editores and Instituto de Estudios Políticos y Relaciones Internacionales de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Ramírez, M.C. (2010). “Maintaining Democracy in Colombia Through Political Exclusion, States of Exception, Counterinsurgency, and Dirty War” in Arias, E. D., & Goldstein, D. M. Violent Democracies in Latin America. Durham [NC]: Duke University Press. Robinson, W. I. (2000). Neoliberalism, the Global Elite, and the Guatemalan Transition: A Critical Macrosocial Analysis. Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, 42(4), 89-107. (2001). Social theory and globalization: The rise of a transnational state. Theory and Society. 30(2). 157-200. Rojas, C., & Tubb, D. (2013). “La Violencia in Colombia Through Stories of the Body.” Bulletin of Latin American Research. 32(s1). 126-150. 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(2000) 'Five Years of Constant Reversals,' Social Watch Annual Report: Colombia (2000), http://www.socialwatch.org/en/informelmpreso/pdfs/colombia2000_ eng.pdf.
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