Populism, Illiberalism, and Popular Sovereignty in Latin America

Abstract

There is a contested relationship between populism and democracy. Defenders of populism argue that populism enhances the democratic dimension of liberal democracy (popular sovereignty), even if its liberal component (checks and balances) may suffer as a result. The present paper rejects this claim on two counts: conceptual and empirical. The paper shows that the liberal and democratic dimensions of democracy are deeply interwoven in practice. Effective checks and balances (a central component of the liberal dimension) are necessary for the full exercise of popular sovereignty (the preeminent component of the democratic dimension). This paper shows that populism in power moderates the relationship between checks and balances (measured as horizontal accountability) and popular sovereignty (measured as free and fair elections). Therefore, the paper concludes that when checks and balances are eroded by populist chief executives, so too is the exercise of popular sovereignty. Empirically and conceptually, the liberal dimension of liberal democracy cannot be diminished significantly to enhance the democratic component, as theorists of populism claim, because the weakening of the first leads to the erosion of the second. The modeling strategy is based on a fixed-effect panel design of 19 Latin American countries in the period 1979-2021.