From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng (Original Message) Sent: 4/23/2007 1:53 AM Friday, April 20, 2007 Authoritarians Or Populists?
By Alvaro Vargas Llosa
I am fascinated by the similarities between Russia and Latin America. The latest wave of repression against critics of President Vladimir Putin and the victory obtained by Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa in last Sunday’s referendum, which provides a green light toward setting up a constituent assembly that will give him authoritarian powers, remind us that despotic populism is alive and kicking.
Last weekend’s detentions in Moscow and St. Petersburg of members of opposition organization The Other Russia are a reminder that Russia is a ruthless autocracy.
With the exception of Venezuela, the authoritarian institutions in Latin America are not as bad as Russia’s. Power is more decentralized as governments have not been able to wrest back economic influence from the private interests that surfaced during the reforms of the 1990s. Mexico was also dominated by a party-state for much of the 20th century and underwent a process of reform in the 1990s. Despite its many flaws, reform improved the political and economic environment. In Russia, liberal democracy never quite surfaced. Putin reacted against the oligarchy of the 1990s by establishing his own oligarchy. Although there was much crony capitalism, Mexico’s system is freer.
With the return of populism to various parts of Latin America, a number of countries are headed in the same direction as Russia. The formula usually combines democratic beginnings, the dismantling of republican institutions from within and reliance on natural resources that are in high demand on the international market. Last Sunday, Ecuadorians voted in large numbers to essentially rewrite their constitution. In this, Correa, who wants to replace democracy with an authoritarian regime, is following the example of his friend Hugo Chavez and of Bolivia’s Evo Morales.
Russia and Latin America emerged from histories dominated by the absence of civil and property rights. In Russia, the absence of a liberal tradition doomed the transition to democracy in the 1990s. In Latin America, the republics of the 19th century preserved their oligarchic colonial structures.
The populist republic in Latin America — the combination of democratic appearances and autocratic controls, sustained by the sale of oil and minerals — has much in common with Putin’s Russia.
Alvaro Vargas Llosa is a columnist for The Washington Post. This comment appeared in The Wall Street Journal.
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