Thursday, June 28, 2012

Weakness of democracy

Latinobarómetro has a really cool "Informe Flash" about Paraguay with polling data. What you see is a sense of impossibly high expectations for Fernando Lugo. A sharp spike in confidence dropped very quickly. By 2011 popular confidence in all institutions went back to previous low levels.

Further, since 2000 there have been 14 presidential crises involving a change of president. That is a depressingly high number, underlining what I told Adam Isacson earlier today in a Washington Office on Latin America podcast.

2 comments:

Unknown 11:33 AM  

Read "Why Nations Fail" by Daren Acemoglu and James Robinson for some good macro-ideas on why countries such as Paraguay (and, unfortunately, most Latin American countries) have a hard time reshaping existing government institutions. On a micro-scale, seems Lugo just wasn't an effective enough leader/politician to initiate real change and keep the people's momentum behind him.

Unknown 11:38 AM  

Also, found it interesting that Chile ranked near the bottom on nearly every measure after it's government has been touted for so long as the ideal template for the rest of Latin America.

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