 Good afternoon, good morning, good evening, depending on where you are. And thank you all for joining this webinar, where we'll be discussing the fate, the life and times of democracy in Latin America. I'm Kevin Casasamora, I'm the Secretary General of International Idea and I'm speaking from Stockholm. I'm also a proud Costa Rican and Latin American. And I have witnessed the enormous political transformation of Latin America in the course of my lifetime. When I was a child, back in the 70s, the region was a black hole for democracy, which could only be found in my own country, Costa Rica, and a couple of others. And then all of a sudden, in a period of roughly 20 years, from the late 70s up until the 2000 election in Mexico, democracy conquered the region in its entirety with the stubborn exception of Cuba. Not everything that followed was pretty and it soon became evident that many of the democracies that emerged from this huge wave were of low quality. Afflicted to the core by the multi-fold pathologies that Latin America has carried along, like a curse, for centuries, pervasive inequality, violence, impunity, institutional weakness, the merging of the public and the private spheres and the resulting corruption, and so on and so forth. This made for unsteady progress, but to a large extent, this was to be expected. A huge political transformation, such as this one, is never bound to be linear or smooth. Nonetheless, there was plenty of progress. I mean, think, for instance, about the very fact that free and fair elections came to be accepted as the only legitimate way to access power in Latin America. That's a massive transformation in a region where until recently, and for the longest time, power was settled either in the military barracks or the mountain. The science that Latin America was full of low quality democracies where the protection of rights was discontinuous, to use the term of the great Argentine political scientist Guillermo Lonell. Those signs were already there a long time ago. But all in all, there was the perception that Latin America was leaving behind a tumultuous political past, and certainly compared to other regions in the developing world, was doing reasonably well, also socially and economically. Latin America is more or less the middle class of the world, so to speak. And as such, it had until recently a certain appearance of stability tinged by a big dose of vulnerability, just like the middle class. And now that vulnerability has become painfully evident, the veneer of political stability and of democratic health is fast disappearing. Today, we are seeing the largest street protests in Colombia in a long time. We are seeing a huge political polarization as seen, for instance, in last week's election in Peru, but also in countries like Brazil and Argentina. We are seeing the obliteration of party systems all over the place, including in countries that had until very recently very stable party systems, the likes of El Salvador and Chile. We are witnessing the irresistible rise of charismatic political leaders on the left and the right of the political spectrum that promised to torch the establishment, the likes of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Jair Bolsonaro, and Najib Bukeli. Of course, we are seeing the descent into an authoritarian nightmare of countries like Venezuela and most recently Nicaragua, a nightmare that most of us thought long gone in Latin America. And all of this is happening in the context of a pandemic that has affected the region as no other region in the world, arguably, just to give you a fact to it, a region that has 8% of the world's population has nearly 30% of COVID deaths in the world, as well as in the context of the worst economic downturn in a century, with the region's economy contracting to the tune of 8% of GDP in 2020. Given the previous perception of the region, the recent events have generated a lot of perplexity and we had an idea, thought, that it would be a good idea to convene a discussion to try and shed some light over all of this. We will be discussing why the region, after having made real democratic strides, all of a sudden appears mired in political uncertainty. What are the roots and the triggers of the current spike in political tension? What would be the lasting political impact of the pandemic? And what are the lessons that the trajectory of democracy in Latin America holds, if any, for democracy writ large globally? And we will try and have a general discussion about the region, but also zero in on some of the cases that have been in the news over the past few weeks, such as Mexico, which held important midterm elections a few days ago, and Chile, where a constitutional assembly is about to go on the way, a constitutional assembly that almost certainly will have implications for the countries across the region and even the world. We have a very good panel, which I will be joining shortly. You see, every panel has a weak link, but I couldn't resist participating in a conversation that matters a lot to me. I will be joined by Sergio Vitar. Sergio has served as a member of International ideas Board of Advisors since 2015, and as vice chair of the board from 2019 until recently. His previous positions in Chile, where he has had a long and distinguished political career include minister of public works, a minister of education, senator, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, I could spend a lot of time giving all the accolades that define Sergio's distinguished career. And we will also be joined by Denise Dressen. Dr. Denise Dressen is a Mexican political analyst, columnist, and academic. She's a professor of political science at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México, ITAM, but she's also the author of numerous publications on Mexican politics and US-Mexico relations, and she's the very definition of a public intellectual, in her own country and beyond. And finally, we will also be joined by my colleague and friend, Daniel Sobat, ideas regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean, and a bright starting his own right. Daniel, again, is another public intellectual in the region with a long trajectory. He's also a fellow of the Wilson Center, a non-resident fellow of the Berkins Institution, and so on and so forth. Daniel will be moderating the session and sharing his knowledge with all of us. With a heavy heart, I must report, however, two last minute cancellations. Neither former president of Costa Rica, Laura Chinchilla, nor former Colombian minister of foreign affairs, Maria Ema Mejia, will be able to join us. In both cases, they experienced last minute emergencies, in one case related to health. In both cases, they asked me to convey their sincere regret for not being able to join this discussion. All the same, we have enough material experience and knowledge here to have a very good conversation about the unsteady life and times of democracy in Latin America. I thank you all for joining this discussion, which I hope will leave you enlightened. And if not hopeful, at least cognizant of the enormous challenges facing democracy in Latin America and everywhere, and therefore of the urgency of putting the health of democracy at the center of agendas in the post-pandemic world. I will now yield the floor to my colleague, Daniel Soato, who will guide us through the panel discussion, which will then lead to hopefully a vigorous Q&A session with the participation of the audience. Thank you. Daniel, over to you. Thank you very much, Secretary General. A warm welcome to our panelists and audience. Many thanks for joining us for a conversation about the state of democracy in Latin America that I expect will be very timely and at the same time very rewarding. Precisely to discuss this issue, we have with us a stellar lineup of three experts as was mentioned by our Secretary General, Dr. Kevin Casa-Samora, former Minister Sergio Vitar and Mexican scholar, Denise Dresser. Thank you very much, Sergio Vitar and Denise, for being with us today. Before starting, please allow me to lay down the guidelines for our conversation. To begin with, our distinguished guests will have around 10 minutes each to make their opening remarks about what each one considers to be the most pressing issues for democracy today in Latin America, as well, which are the trends that they see as more prominent taking place in the region. After this first round of three initial presentations, each of our guests will have an opportunity to further elaborate on their own reflections or also to have the opportunity to comment what has been shared by the other distinguished experts. In the third part, we will move on the Q&A section. And finally, in the last part, each experts will have around three minutes to make a final comment. Let's start. Mr. Vitar, it's my pleasure to invite you to share your initial views. The floor is yours. Thank you very much, Daniel and Kevin. Thank you for inviting me. I'm very happy to share with the lots of people that are friends that are listening to this session. And I would like to reinforce first the idea that our institution, Institute for Democracy, analyzes region by region. We have been suggesting that in the Board of Advisors and the Secretary has taken this idea in order to see what is the evolution of the world. Are there common features? Are there common trends? And what Latin America can add to this view? I think that's a very important aspect. I also wanted to say that I hope a prompt recuperation for Minister Mejia and my friend, former President Laura Chinchilla. Now, my feeling is that we are leaving the most complex period after, as you said before, the 80s, the transitions to democracy and in Central America, all the fighting and revolutions and military interventions. So at that point, we prepared four idea report that I would like to remember, a document, a book that has come out in several languages together with Abraham Lowenthal on democratic transitions. So what did we learn from that? And now in the 20s, 40 years later, we are facing a much more complex period of different characteristics that can lead to a further deepening of democracy. We don't know exactly how to do it. And so how to do transformations within democratic governance. And in that sense, also I just wanted to mention that we just produced a book that it's in a digital version called in Spanish, El Gran Hero de América Latina, that takes all of those issues that we are living now. And I want to refer to three of them. First is that in spite of the, how the pandemic has been weakening the democratic system, I feel that democracy has become part of the Latin American culture and has been strengthening democratic commitment and democratic behavior. In spite of all protests, demands, frustration, ire, poor governments, elections have taken place in the midst of the pandemic. And those cases where populism and authoritarianism, like the cases of Nicaragua, are now appears to be El Salvador or Venezuela and populism in Brazil that appear to be expanding have not been born with the pandemic. They existed before. In many cases, they have profited from the stage of emergency. Now, under these conditions, therefore, and we will discuss later what to do in order to reduce risks for this trend that I think is in the midst of the difficulties, positive, the cultural conviction of democracy in Latin America. I think that among those risks, one of them, as we saw in Peru, is having a hysteric reaction when democracy gives us results that the elite doesn't like. And the idea that communists would follow over the country that the country, the Peruvians, are moving to Venezuela and that kind of information can be also an obstacle for democracy. So if you play the rules of democracy, respect democracy. The results that come out. And the other major risk on this is the manipulation of the pandemic in order to concentrate political power such as the cases of Nicaragua and El Salvador, among others, and the abuse of state of emergency. In my own country, state of emergency is already more than one year, and there is a debate if we should continue that only for sanitary reasons or health reasons or also the consequence on the control of the society. Fortunately, Mike, in our case, that has not happened. That's the first point that I want to reinforce. The second one, what we are living now is that the major demand to sustain democracy in the future is the fulfillment of socioeconomic rights together with political rights. So in Latin America in general, we have been champions of political rights, but losers in terms of economic and social rights. So the logic of building a system that is stronger in terms of a welfare system in health, education, housing, pensions, and security would be the central aspect of the new phase that we have to confront, add to that new rights, the rights for human rights for water, human rights for digital access, and that will be with the center of the action that we should push on in order to strengthen democracy, institutions, and governability. So the fight against inequality, that's the second point, of course, in all its forms has been fortified in the consciousness of the Latin American citizens. And also on that, the role of women has been become in our region in very central aspect and as a strong force for change, a very strong trend. I just mentioned the case of Chile, as you know, and most of the people that are listening probably know that we stole the idea of a parity between men and women within the conventional convention that we have just elected. But what's the surprise on that? That the ones that were favored with the parity were men, not women. Women won more seats than men. So that's a very interesting thing and a process that is growing. So I would say that the trend will push for a new concept of a social contract, a reform of the state to achieve the social contract and the definition of the role of the state in the new stage of the complexity of the societies and the world. And of course resources and tax reform and economic reforms at the world level or financing those processes. And the third point that I wanted to share at this in this first 10 minutes is that the Latin American traditional cleavage between right and left is overlapped now with the new conflict between elite and the people. So we have seen lots of push and pressures in order to favor the renewal of ideas and of leaders, not only the message, but the messenger. And that I think it has to be taken into account. It's not just an issue of right and left. So the elite has to be defined that it has been used of corruption, manipulation of power, unable to represent and protect the quality of life of the vast majority. So in that sense, the political participation in the design of the new institutions of Latin America to my understanding will be in the forefront. I would like to stay here now as first statement of the points I think are more relevant, Daniel. Thank you very much. Thank you very much Sergio for your stimulating reflections and especially for providing us with a very comprehensive overview about the main regional trends regarding democracy today. I would like now to invite to make the initial presentation to Denise Dresser. Please Denise, the floor is yours. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be with you. And I'm going to speak about the specific situation of Mexico, but trying to draw some broader trends that are applicable to the rest of the region. For the past two and a half years, there have been growing concerns about Mexico's democratic erosion. After what was viewed by many as a successful transition to electoral democracy in the year 2000, alternancia and power between the former ruling party and the national action party and finally the victory of a leftist government led by Andes Manuel Lopez Obrador in 2018. However, this successful transition to democracy had many caveats, including the fact that the transition did not focus on, and I read here with Sergio Vita on issues pertaining to inequality to social and economic rights. The transition was largely centered on creating conditions for competitive party rule and for creating a level playing field among parties. And the things that Mexico did not take into account and that explained to a large extent why Andes Manuel Lopez Obrador won in 2018 in what was an electoral tsunami was the growing level of inequality, the exacerbation of poverty, institutions that did not deal with corruption or accountability or transparency and a growing disconnect between parties and citizens. And what I think was a crisis of representation were severe problems of representation. And Lopez Obrador as other leaders in the region took advantage of this context and created a social movement that was built on a recrimination of elites, the narrative that democracy was not working for the people, that liberal democracy had failed to fulfill its commitments to Mexico's permanent underclass. And he rode this wave of indignation, of ranker, of legitimate resentment with what was perceived as an elitist form of democracy that had left behind the concerns of at least 50 million of Mexico's poor. And he was elected because he galvanized this sense of democracy not working for the vast majority of people. Now, given that and that he won with such a large margin of victory and had a mandate for what he called Mexico's fourth transformation, he has proceeded very quickly over the past two and a half years to push forward a series of policies designed to centralize power in the presidency and to weaken the checks and balances that electoral democracy had tried to put into place because we came from a tradition of dominant party rule of hyper-presidentialism, of a president that as Jeffrey Weldon has argued, exercised his power with meta-constitutional means. And behind López Rador's narrative was this sense that because democracy wasn't working through conventional institutions and had failed to deliver on its promises, he could do so. And therefore he explicitly set forth a program that is based on discretionary control of the economy and the political system largely in hands of the president, which led to a growing sense of de-institutionalization and a president who governed largely through the morning press conference, through Twitter in a combative style, constantly taking on the institutions of democracy, taking on the media, decrying feminism and so on. And so this has led to an increasing level of polarization in Mexico that is similar to what we're seeing in other countries of elites versus the people with López Rador as the voice of the people. And also in the Mexican case, there's been a very troubling trend, which is unprecedented for my country and which I think should lead us to reflect on where Mexico is headed in the context of comparative experiences with granting the military a great deal of power. Because as you know, Mexico never suffered the kind of authoritarian rule that we saw in the 1970s in Latin America precisely because the military had always been under civilian control. But in the context of increasing violence that has turned Mexico into one of the most dangerous countries in the western hemisphere due to drug trafficking, organized crime, et cetera, López Rador came into office promising to return the military that Felipe Calderón, one of his predecessors, had unleashed to take on public insecurity issues. López Rador is now effectively co-governing with the military. He has provided the military with a level of political power and freedom to dispose of the budget to carry out a series of tasks including control of airports, of the ports, social programs, and so on that the Mexican military had never had. The president announced even yesterday that he was going to seek a constitutional reform so that the Guardia Nacional, this allegedly military force but under civilian control now be firmly under the control of the National Ministry of Defense. So this is the context in which our midterm elections were held. And I'd say that Mexicans who are concerned about the state of democracy, we breathe a collective sigh of relief because after what were many warning signs that democracy seemed to be dying or weakening very rapidly in Mexico, the election showed that at least in terms of electoral democracy of the functioning of electoral institutions of the National Electoral Institute and citizens participating in order to express their preferences that that still is working in Mexico and that there is an opposition that formed a partisan, a party coalition ideologically pragmatic that included both the left and the right and that that opposition has survived the last two and a half years of López Obrador's very strong rule and has managed to create some barriers to his power. It's an opposition that managed to win significant parts of the country and also particularly Mexico City. So it's an election in which the government cannot claim that it won everything and the opposition cannot claim that it won everything as well. So electoral democracy in Mexico seems to be alive and vibrant despite López Obrador's best efforts to dismantle it over the past two and a half years. It was a very competitive election. As I said, Mexico City proved to be that showed that it was no longer a bastion of the left. It is a city now firmly divided. Half of it went to López Obrador and his party and the other half went to the opposition coalition which was a major blow to López Obrador and his aspirations of majority rule which were also dashed by the fact that he did not win what we call a Majoria Calificada in Congress which means he will not be able to pass constitutional reforms unless he does something that he didn't really have to do over the past two years which is negotiate which is try to bring other parties on board and he will do so and he's shown that he is willing to do so even resorting to blackmail to using the judicial apparatus to force opposition politicians to collaborate with him for fear of being persecuted. So what López Obrador is trying to, what he'll try to do in the last two and a half years of his term I think is to consolidate or to expand what he was unable to win in this election by pushing forward constitutional reforms that make his fourth transformation permanent and this continues to show that Mexico although we have much to be thankful for in the midterm election there are still danger signs ahead there are focos rojos and those have to do with López Obrador's emphasis on centralizing discretionary power in his hands with weakening checks and balances particularly the Supreme Court and the judiciary with empowering the military and even though there were winners and losers in this election he still retains an enormous degree of power and wants to consolidate that power even if that means through extra constitutional means. So this is something that we have to keep our eyes on over the next two and a half years because even though there as I said there are things that we can celebrate including the fact that the National Electoral Institute has consolidated its reputation among the population and that the level of participation in the midterms was extraordinarily high in historic terms López Obrador's party won 11 out of 15 governorships up for grabs his party now governs about half of the Mexican population and he will try to select and pick his successor trying to resurrect many of the trappings of dominant party rule that Mexico came from in the 1990s under the PRI and we have tried to dismantle through the creation of autonomous or semi-autonomous institutions like the Competition Commission like the National Transparency Institute and all of this will happen in a context of Mexico being one of the countries that fared the worst during the pandemic. Poverty has risen by over 10 million people López Obrador severely mismanaged the economy by being one of the countries that offered less fiscal support to the vulnerable and Mexico is now carrying with the cost of that over 500,000 Mexicans died during COVID and we are I think in third place in terms of absolute numbers of deaths in the world. So this is going to be difficult for López Obrador despite the fact that he has very high level popularity ratings he is a President who is very loved but at the helm of a government that is increasingly judged badly in the polls in terms of managing the economy, the pandemic public insecurity which is on the rise this was one of the most violent elections that we've ever had 96 candidates for office at the municipal and state level were killed and it seems clear that López Obrador does not have enough control even with the National Guard to deal with these growing levels of insecurity and parts of the country that have become no man's land where the state is not present and where organized crime essentially governs. So the paradox for Mexico to conclude is a competitive election that shows that electoral democracy has survived López Obrador's worst anti-democratic or proto-authoritarian instincts but with an opposition that in order to continue to build constraints to his power will have to remain united and that will be difficult in the face of a President who is willing to resort to any means whatsoever to break apart the Democratic, the opposition coalition and in the context of a country that has grown poorer where institutions aside from the National Electoral Institute every day are being attacked by the President where journalists are facing... We need to close up your initial representation, please. Yes, are facing constant critiques from the President and his bully pulpit. So I think I'd conclude with a mixed picture of glados curos, of things that show us that democracy in Mexico can survive López Obrador but concerns about what he is willing to do in order to consolidate his power in the remainder of his term. Thank you very much, Denise, for sharing with us your analysis that clearly raises quite a bit of question marks and concerns about the current situation on the pressing and the future of democracy in Latin America in general but especially regarding Mexico. I would like now to invite our Secretary General, Dr. Kevin Casas-Amora. Dr. Casas-Amora, the floor is yours. Thank you, Daniel. And thank you also to Sergio and Denise for very insightful presentations. And inevitably some of the things, some of the points that they have raised are part of the reflections that I will share with you now. I mean, I want to make a few points. Five, four or five points. The most important of which is probably the first one. My first point is that when discussing the fate and the state of democracy in Latin America and the things that have gone wrong, I mean, there are individual stories and I think there is a macro story. You know, this is like Tolstoy's families, you know, that the happy families are all alike but the unhappy families are, they all have their own way to be unhappy. Well, something like that happens when it comes to democracy in Latin America. I mean, you see, I don't know, the cases of Nicaragua and Venezuela have their very peculiar and tragic evolution. The role of violence in undermining democracy is something that is very prominent in Northern Central America and Mexico as we just heard. The hangover from the armed conflict is something that is very Colombian. So there are specificities in this story but there are also macro narratives here at play, I think. And the big macro narrative in my view is that the pandemic has uncovered the strengths and the weaknesses of the process whereby Latin America built democracies over the past generation. The most obvious strength is that we can do elections very well. You know, I mean, we just heard what happened in Mexico but we also saw it in Bolivia, we saw it in Peru, we saw it before in the Dominican Republic, we saw it in a whole bunch of places where very competent elections were held during the pandemic and this is crucial and this is crucial because this is the ability to hold free and fair elections is the single most important achievement of the democratic transitions in Latin America over the past generation. We have to preserve that at any cost but it's also essential because the ability to hold elections in a competent way is for many countries, is for many political systems that are subject to enormous levels of stress now is the only safety valve, quite frankly. We need to preserve this and to do that, I think there's an action point here we need to support election management bodies as many people including idea did in the case of Mexico and we also need a round of electoral reform to bring to date many of the electoral practices in the region and here I'm just going to mention that for example when it comes to special voting arrangements things like postal voting, early voting we are in the Stone Age in Latin America so this is an obvious area where we can make rapid progress to improve even more the electoral side of democracy. Now, the other side of the story is that the pandemic is also showing the waveform results that we have had when it comes to building robust, capable states able to deliver public goods and services of good quality it's also showing the meager progress that we've made in fighting pervasive inequality it's also showing how awfully short we've fallen when it comes to eliminating impunity particularly about corruption it's also showing the inability to build robust representative institutions that go beyond elections so we have not done nearly as well in building all the other aspects that make for a robust democracy you know, elections are the easy part and we've done that the problem is that if you don't deal successfully with the other elements of democracy you render far more likely that the populist authoritarian head rears its head and ends up weakening and corrupting the electoral side of democracy and here there's a sequencing issue that I don't think has attracted a lot of attention which I would describe as follows and I'm simplifying here for the sake of the discussion generally speaking the democracies in the North Atlantic but also you know the likes of Australia, New Zealand and so on they had rule of law before they had democracy we are trying to build democracies the other way around we're trying to build democracies in places where the rule of law is nowhere near protected and secured therefore the likelihood that you will have democracies that are weak in terms of protecting basic rights democracies that are riddled with impunity democracies that are riddled with abuse of power democracies where checks and balances are weak the likelihood of all that is that much higher and therefore the likelihood that there will be chronic disaffection with democratic systems so the sequencing here is very tricky and I think we need to reflect more on this and most of all we need to pay more attention to the quality of the rule of law and my second point is that part of what we haven't done is recognizing some basic issues connected to institutional design problems that we have and here the most obvious one is this toxic combination that has become the norm in Latin America whereby you have presidential systems coexisting with increasingly fragmented party systems that all but assure that presidents will not have a legislative majority and that all but assure that there will be frictions between branches of power in a chronic way this is creating all sorts of problems including the fact and here just to give one example that is very well known the case of Brazil I mean if you have 30 plus parties represented in congress well there are many ways to manage that kind of fragmentation one of them is by purchasing legislative support via corruption so corruption becomes built into the institutional design so what we are seeing here is a combination that creates a very problematic oscillation in Latin America and here I'm going to quote you Daniel because I think this is a brilliant way to put it I mean you told me this I'm quoting you a very problematic oscillation whereby countries go or live between hyper-presidentialism that is very weak presidents that can hardly get anything done and hyper-presidentialism whereby they end up having you know these guys that think that checks and balances are of no consequence and they can roughshut over the political system so we live between those two extremes as a result of a faulty institutional design and one of the interesting things that are happening in Latin America right now is that I suspect that the Constitutional Assembly in Chile will have a very healthy debate on this point precisely on how how to how to design our political regime how to reform our constitutional the constitutional architecture of our political system now the third point that I want to make is well obviously and this has been mentioned before and I I really liked the notion that Sergio mentioned that you know what we have now is really a cleavage between the elite and the people well I would put a spin on that or add a footnote to that one of the things that we're seeing happening in the region connected to the huge representation crisis is that particularly in Chile and Colombia what we're seeing is showing the gulf that has opened between between political elites and the youth in particular the urban youth I mean it's becoming increasingly evident that political elites don't represent the societies they claim to represent that they are self-referential and there's a paradoxical thing here because in some ways Latin American countries are being or the political systems are being victims of their own success because the fact of the matter is that human development levels including investment in higher education have gone up quite considerably and have created this very mobilized active urban youth so in a way Latin American societies are educated enough to generate political contestation but not educated enough to be successful in the global economy of the 21st century we're neither here nor there now my fourth point which is about the corrosive impact of corruption inequality and privilege I won't bore you with the details but I a few years ago I did a very interesting research project on corruption scandals in Latin America and how they came about and I went through all the evidence about corruption the data about corruption attitudes in Latin America and so on and so forth and short story long story short corruption levels have not gone up in Latin America that we know it's just that it's easier to uncover corruption and that social attitudes in the face of corruption have hardened considerably and also and this is vital in the current moment in Latin America there's a lot of evidence that shows that the political fallout from corruption scandals is very different according to whether your economy is growing or not if the economy is growing rapidly a lot of people in a region turn a blind eye on corruption if the economy is not growing rapidly and that's been the case in Latin America pretty much since 2016 and obviously over the past year and a half then the political fallout from corruption can be lethal corruption I mean there are many deleterious effects from corruption one that I think is particularly important is that corruption scandals become the ostensible confirmation in the eyes of the people become the ostensible confirmation of the biases and the unfairness of the political system and I think that the single most important telling piece of information about the health of democracy in Latin America if you ask me is this question asked by Latino Aroo Mitro when they ask people whether they think that the political system works for the benefit of all the people or whether it works for the benefit of the powerful few 79% at last count in Latin America reply that they believe that political systems work to do the bidding of the powerful few and this figure back in 2018 which was the last time the question was asked it was 90% in Mexico and Brazil interestingly enough so this perception is a huge problem the perception of unfairness is a huge problem inequality is a huge problem but I would like to slice this a little bit inequality is obviously a huge problem but I would add again a footnote to this what I think is just as in serious is the anger in the face of unwarranted privilege and I'll explain this and I'll give you a very concrete example some time ago I came across an information about a member of an electoral management body in the region and that was in the newspaper and they were describing some of the perks that come with this job this is a guide but according to the information of the press it earned about 30,000 dollars a month that had access to discretionary use of seven cars which were used by his family had access to two mobile phones his children the education of his children was subsidized by the electoral authority and I could only imagine someone out on the street reading the newspaper I mean someone out on the street trying to sell their wares in the traffic light reading that this guy after all this guy is not Carlos Slim I mean we're not talking about the 0.01% we're talking about a guy that to put it in Latin American terms he's plugged in to the system that generates huge anger if you ask me this is something this notion of privilege was something that was fueling the protest in Chile in 2019 but also in Colombia and all over the region the perception of privilege is a huge irritant in Latin America and when added to the perception of corruption it's a huge problem for the social contract most people feel that they have nothing to gain from paying taxes and that's why enacting a tax reform in Colombia becomes impossible even though the reform put forward was essentially progressive but it's not a matter of whether the other guy will pay more taxes than I will I don't want to pay any taxes because I feel that I'm not going to get anything from that in sum with this I finish we have to do all the things that we left undone or poorly done since the transitions we have to make sure that we make progress in laying down the basic bricks of the rule of law and that means protecting at any cost independent judiciaries that if you ask me are the best barometers of the state of democracy want to know the best gauge for the health of democracy look at the independence of the judiciary if you ask me it means working to reduce impunity it means granting truly democratic access to justice it means making sure that the checks and balances work all this is within the umbrella of strengthening the rule of law it means also working on issues of institutional design as I mentioned it works it means working to improve public administration and public management the quality of public management thereby enabling states to deliver for people and it means fighting for inequality exclusion fighting against inequality exclusion and privilege so ultimately for democracy not to live dangerously it needs a robust community a police and it needs a robust state and we have neither hence our plight we need a new social contract that can lead us to both a robust community and a robust state and if we don't use this crisis to rethink our democracies we'll never do it and instead of renewing democracy we will be dooming democracy to live an ever more precarious existence where all the real achievements of the past generation will be in danger thank you thank you very much Secretary General for your very insightful analysis and especially for the five key points of concern let's move now to the second part it's already here in Panama 10-01 so we already spent one hour in our initial presentations I would like to invite the three of you to make any additional comment that you think that you wanted to expand your initial comment or you want to comment some of the initial presentation made by the other experts if that is the case please go ahead keep brief no more than two three minutes each then we will go into the Q&A question that part that I think that is very important a lot of people a lot of questions are coming in so I think that we will need to move in a much more interactive way of moving forward who wants to make any additional comment I have one specific question to keep up the discussion for Sergio Sergio what does the result of the constitutional of the election for the constitutional assembly with all this enormous proportion of independent candidates that were elected what does it mean for the future of the party system in Chile? In the middle of the discussion because the results of the three last elections show a trend towards independent people that don't belong to the parties but also show a trend towards more indifference in the sense that the percentage of people that are voting is declining very rapidly 2020 play beside 50% of the electoral participation 2021 the elections of the constitutional assembly and other elections including mayors and first-time governors of regions 45% and last Sunday selection of the second round of the governance 20% so the trends could be mobile and could grow and go down but there are some key issues here at least in my country first we cannot sustain democracy with the voluntary voting it should be mandatory as I pay taxes I have the responsibility of voting but 20% of people voting in the last election is impressive you cannot sustain the democracy with 50% of your citizenships or less than that 30% so the chambers of deputy approved yesterday returning to the mandatory vote so I think that could make a big one change the second thing is independence is a view of parties and we have a big discussion but it's easy to be an independent and say all the parties are bad or on the other side say well I belong to a party because I'm responsible I have a view of the society I have a narrative and I can govern independence come and go so we have a big issue now in how to reinforce the political democratic system through a new form of organizing political parties social movements and civil society that's a major problem it's not only presidential or semi presidential that would be a topic of our constitution but how do we build coalitions how we build common programs how we give sustainability in parliament to a president elected as minority in the parliament and cannot govern so this key issue because otherwise democratic governability will not function so I would say those are the two main problems and how to push young people to vote in a sustained way we saw that we saw that just one point I want to emphasize young people of the poor sectors of the society vote very low voting 20% 10% of the age 20 to 30 years on the other sectors of the population those young people vote about 50% of them they vote so we have a big this equilibrium in the way representations take place between the poor people and the rich people and so the voluntary vote favors the rich not the poor so that's critical for Latin America you cannot make social changes and reforms in democracy without the voting of those that would be favored with the reforms and so we have to change that I would say those are the things that we are discussing at this point given the constitutional debate that we are going to face in the future thank you very much Sergio Denise you were yes please go ahead reflections on the need for an active policy and a strong state to be quite fascinating because state capacity was veered in the last 20 years or so towards strengthening or assuring electoral democracy and as you said we do elections very well but we don't do combating corruption impunity or inequality well and the risk of personalistic rule populist authoritarian rule is the direct result of that so these sorts of leaders like Andrés Manuel Observador and others in the region are got themselves elected in order to deal with those unresolved issues but they are not strengthening state capacity in order to address the very issues that got them elected so there is something very paradoxical there they are not strengthening state capacity but actually weakening state capacity and what I see is that the agenda for institutional reform of the sort that you were talking about strengthening the judiciary strengthening checks and balances et cetera is not an agenda that is particularly popular in America today aside from some specific countries like Chile but in Mexico there is no desire for the painstaking long process of sitting down at the bargaining table and negotiating how to strengthen your judiciary it seems as though we went through that in an incomplete way over the past 20 years and now what people want is someone to just take charge and there in the popularity of the popularity of strong men like Luxorador who yes was at some level contained by the guardrails of electoral democracy but still has a lot of cards in his hand to play and those cards are not going to be used to strengthen state capacity thank you very much Deniz it's already 10 things we have 20 minutes to go I will yes Kevin I would like then move to the questions otherwise we are not going to do this very interactive as it was but if you allow me Daniel I'm going to ask you I'm going to ask you about Peru's election I mean you follow that very closely how does it fit the larger pattern or the larger patterns of how democracy is evolving in Latin America what's happening in Peru what do you see there in terms of this broader story thank you very much Kevin for the question I will use the word that Sergio used in his initial presentation it's a historic reaction from a group of people that in my view already lost the election and they are trying to either prevent that Castillo had any chance to win during the campaign during the second round during the ballot dash when that was not possible 24 hours after the election was closed they start saying that it was fraud for making allegations both the international observation mission from the OAA from the Organization of American States and the one that is from local that is Transparencia said very clear that they have not identified any type of major irregularity that may affect the result today we already have the final results according to OMPE one of the electoral authorities the difference in favor of Castillo is around 42, 44,000 votes Keiko Fujimori present a claim on Wednesday last Wednesday of around 800 tables electoral tables where they want to annul these tables because they say that it was fraud that is not the case now the one who needs to make a decision is the electoral justice tribunal that according to the procedure they will have to make a decision probably in the coming days but right now the situation is very, very dramatic because a group that is supporting Keiko Fujimori is making very strong claims that is affecting this high level of polarization and it's creating a very tense situation that whatever wins in my view I think that is going to win Castillo will create a very difficult situation in terms of governability because they are saying that Castillo cannot win because if Castillo wins the communism is going to take placing in Peru and I think that this is very sad but at the same time very dangerous because when you go to an election you have to accept the results and as I said there are all the guarantees that this election there is no way to have any major objection in terms of future irregularities I mean that there is a lot that is taking place in my view in my 35 years of experience in this I never saw an election with this level of hystericism I saw the very tough election in Mexico when Andres Manuel lost and there was a lot of claim and so forth I saw in the case of many others including in Bolivia but not this level of the threat of communism and therefore if communism is a threat this person cannot win an election I think that this is extremely dangerous and I think that we need to send a message from our institution what we are doing that for people to calm down there is a huge intoxication through social media that is aggravating even more the very difficult situations like us like the organization of American states like many others needs to try to cool down the situation and allow the electoral authorities to do their work make the final decision and then if you win or you lose you have to accept that result and then there is the second phase when you will have to govern but that's another task that's another challenge and it's extremely important that Peruvians accept the results that the electoral authorities is going to make in the coming days and wait for that final decision in calm otherwise I think that it's a very very dangerous and risky situation then now because I think that we put a lot of emphasis on the all issues those pending issues from violence inequality poverty what is true but what about the new issues the new issues that our democracy will have to confront what about how to deal with the revolution how to deal with digitalization how to deal with climate change are we our democracies many of our governments will equip to deal with these new issues that are going to be extremely important for positioning Latin America in the global scenario in a very competitive way or this is something that our governments and democracy are not giving enough attention who wants to take this this first question very quickly Daniel well I mean I'll be very blunt unless I'm missing something this is like an esoteric kind of discussion in Latin America I haven't seen any political system any electoral campaign that gives due attention to those issues that you rightly say that will be defining drivers of the future of the region but we are entangled on pretty basic issues including and this is something that none of us has mentioned that one of the sources of polarization of the debate is this process whereby we have imported the cultural wars from the US onto Latin America and we have the religious right as a very potent political force almost everywhere in Latin America and this has become one of the sources of polarization so I'm afraid that rather than talking about the fourth industrial revolution or climate change we're talking about abortion and we're talking about same-sex marriage we're talking about those issues rather than those long-term issues which I think will define the future of the region and beyond thank you Kevin Sergio you want to make a comment in your recent book you pay particular attention to these two main drivers digitalization and climate change yes in that book that you mentioned there is I would say sort of conceptualization of the transformation that we have to push for the future for the next 10 years or 20 years but the main issue there is what are the political actors that will push for those transformations and that's what we have to deal more with so we have to introduce in the system of political system of Latin America a debate on a strategic long-term view as a way out of where we are and we have the components of that one of the components is that we have to reinforce democracy in order to allow transformation within a democratic system but democracy must deliver as Biden is saying every day democracy must deliver in order to confront the Chinese so the state plays a role when we have to study how to do it and reforms of taxes in order to finance that and growth and we have to recognize that we are staying backward compared to the Asians in terms of technology in terms of productivity and without that discussion it's not purely a discussion of social issues without that growth that is a growth that gives something to everyone a distribution of the digital dividend to everyone you cannot deliver so the issue of delivery the issue of participation we have to make changes in our political system in order to allow for opening participation in order to break this polarization between elite and the people and to expand the elite we have to move in terms of discussion of different types of inequalities it's not just income inequality so we have to analyze that more in order to see how to act but the issue at the end falls into the political actors and my position is that we have in each country to develop those ideas to debate, to deliberate and then to introduce those ideas in political parties in candidates in all the elections in order that that's become part of a new paradigm a new logic where everyone moves in that direction that's my basic point and I would add to that that we need international and global space to do that confrontation between the US and China in a simplistic way will limit our autonomy so in that sense the Latin Americans we should together in order to define a multilateral policy for a multipolar world with the Europeans and with the US in order to have international and global conditions that allow us to move into the new direction thank you very much Sergio speaking on Biden let me go back to you Dennis we saw the Vice President in Guatemala in Mexico we saw the Minister of Foreign Affairs Secretary of State going to Central America we saw Suniga who is in charge of the Northern Triangle countries visit now we saw yesterday the new director of USAID going also to Central America what is your view about what is the situation especially in the Northern Triangle including then also Nicaragua and what do you think is going to be the future of this initiative is Mexico full on board in trying to help or because it's confusing yesterday the position of the Mexico staining like Argentina they join communiques saying that they don't want to interfere in domestic issues what is your view about the role that Mexico can play supporting the USAID initiative in helping these countries to strengthen the rule of law to strengthen the democracy precisely because you said these are not priority issues in Mexico so what is the situation and this ties in with one of the questions asked by Robert Kaufman about how political developments in the US and the Biden presidency are going to affect relations with Latin America I think that for the Biden administration the key issue right now vis-à-vis Central America and Mexico is not necessarily rule of law political development democracy yes that's what they're saying but the key issue is how to stop immigration because that would become a political domestic crisis for Biden that would jeopardize his entire domestic agenda if the Republicans seize on that issue to undermine him at every turn so although I believe that the effort to focus on stemming what is causing immigration in Central America although I believe that is based on the right instincts it's probably not going to have the desired results as quickly as the US would want so I think the emphasis is going to be on how you get Mexico to stop Central Americans from crossing over either by closing the border with Guatemala or by deploying the National Guard the Guardia Nacional in Mexico throughout the country especially at the US-Mexico border and sorry to interrupt you're touching a very important point if that is the target the objective then we go back to the Trump administration use Mexico to do the dirty job are we in the same situation but with a different wording about that the bottom line is probably yes and it saddens me to say that because the US has been noticeably silent about democratic erosion in Mexico and about the Observador administration recoiling from many of its commitments as part of the free trade agreement so and what I also saw over the past two days was a dissonance and the rhetoric because Pamela Harris explicitly said that the US supported the work of independent non-governmental organizations and was very emphatic about the independence of the judiciary in Guatemala and in Mexico and two hours later her press secretary came out and said her comments were meant explicitly for Guatemala and other Central American countries they were not made for Mexico and this is where I think there's a sort of a quid pro cool which is you stop immigrants we're not going to criticize you for violating human rights blurring the boundaries of the executive and the judiciary going after the independence of the judiciary as you know the Observador in his morning press based in USAID and the US Embassy for providing financial support to NGOs that combat corruption in Mexico that he proceeds as his adversaries so even though I had hoped that this change in administration would lead to more of a focus a US focus on what was happening internally in Mexico I think that the bottom line is that the US is going to is going to continue to pursue this policy of getting Mexico on board to stop immigration and turn a blind eye to political developments even if that means Democratic weakening in Mexico thank you Denise I'm going back to you Sergio if the situation at the national level in many of our countries is quite concerning what about the regional integration we really very pathetic situation to confront in the pandemic to get the vaccines to get the financial resources that we need very polarized and paralyzed regional lack of integration and cooperation what's going on what was happening what we need to do because it is clear that no country will survive this or will be successful by themselves so what we need to really go back and make stronger the regional cooperation the regional integration but also in order to be able to speak with one single voice to defend the interests of the region and get visibility we are becoming more and more irrelevant recently we were not even mentioned there so what the region needs to do in order to act together defend our interests together and get more visibility and influence well we are leaving really a paradoxical moment because we are having major change in the global order and the worst divisions and fragmentation in Latin America so that's very surprising we need the first and to be defining the rules of the first and we are so weak that we cannot even being heard nobody speaks about Latin America we are falling into a relevancy and that's an issue now how to get out of that I think that you should have some sort of constructive leadership the coordination between at least three or four presidents of the region if they take that and they say let us explore to say lack of whatever it is some issues that are common and we have to handle together that's one way the other things are out of our possible action now for instance infrastructure we have big plans of infrastructure we have organizations for infrastructure it's not moved so what I see as is that decision and that decision might start with some actions on the US China issue I think that's critical for us to see how that can affect us second to explore and to push for an agreement between the Mercosur and the European Union that will help to create a basis of common agreements because all the regions will be having an agreement with the European Union if that happens and we should generalize those specific agreements into a general agreement of the region that would be also a step forward and finally I think we have to deal with bilateral or trilateral agreements in the region among countries that have common issues for instance everything with the lithium if you take Bolivia Argentina and Chile we produce most half of the world lithium and that in all the projections is going to be double the demand in 2040 Chile and Peru they represent 50% of the production of copper and copper in the process of electrification of the world and renewable energy is a critical issue everyone is doing this thing alone but not only alone as a country but this is the hands of foreign companies that decide the strategies outside of our own country so there are I would say we should act on specific issues sectoral or project or bilateral and trilateral in order to start moving into a new stage that which we are now in addition to that I would say the G20 we have three Latin American countries there at least they have the responsibility with all the rest to coordinate among themselves the G20 is the most important body at this point in order to redefine the world with the Chinese inside and these three countries must also consult the other Latin American countries to have a common position I think that if you start moving you can create a dynamic in that direction that's the way I see that I am skeptical but optimistic that we have to do it because without that we are not going to achieve results and success thank you Sergio final question for you Kevin we see in many countries a lot of concern about the negative development of democracy and speaking about regional the regional level we see that the inter American democratic charter probably is not having the effectiveness that can have in order to precisely prevent this situation or if the situation is already taking place to give a concrete and effective response the case is in El Salvador the case right now in Nicaragua is in Venezuela what is your assessment about how this regional mechanism to protect democracy are working or not working and what needs to be done in order to strengthen that thank you Daniel well the short answer is that for the most part they are not working and they are not working in part because the inter American democratic charter was conceived for a different kind of threat to democracy to the ones we have now I mean the threats that were in the minds of the people that drafted the charter 20 plus years ago 20 years ago were the blatant fraud which has become a rarity in Latin America or the old school military coup which has become a rarity in Latin America what I'm saying is that the charter was conceived in terms of threats perpetrated against democratically elected governments and what we are seeing in most places not just in Latin America is I mean the real issue now and for some time now is the threat to democracy that emanates from democratically elected governments that's the real problem and that's a far more intractable issue because it operates in a sort of gray zone where the threat you never really know I mean until it becomes absolutely clear like in the case of Venezuela but it took many years to get there I mean you don't really know where the line is and therefore it's much more difficult to counter the trend so my answer would be that we need to redesign those mechanisms to protect democracy the big danger of course is that the moment you open the text of the inter-American democratic charter to a negotiation you might end up in a place you don't want to go so I would be very careful with that if perhaps something can be done by way of an annex to the charter perhaps something can be done via interpretation I don't know I mean I don't know enough about this subtleties international law but for the most part I mean and let me say that take the case of Nicaragua that we are witnessing these days look the real sign of the deterioration of democracy in Latin America is not what is happening in Nicaragua that was more or less this is a bit more blatant and vulgar that we expected but that was more or less expected the real sign of deterioration is the silence that's what's really baffling if you ask me luckily yesterday the OAS gave us you know took a step in the right direction but it's still a bit of a toothless kind of step we need to see much more if we are to in the way of action if we are to protect democracy mind you with this I finish this is something that is not just Latin America that is grappling with I mean look at the European Union I mean the European Union is tied up in knots dealing with some of their member states that may have already crossed the line beyond which you're no longer a democracy and they are pretty powerless to deal with that so it's a global issue and that's the big thing now challenges to democracy and this is a very important thing are not to be found only in poor and young democracies as used to be the old trope the challenge to democracy are global in nature and must be confronted globally through collective action thank you very much Secretary General well we are out of time so I would like to invite each of you to make a final comment and a brief with some clear indications number one what we need to protect to defend and to rethink democracy what will be the two three priorities that each of you will like to put on the table as key priorities and to the extent that is possible try to answer this question that this prominent scholar from Harvard Michael Sandel of his recent books do populists have a point because we criticize a lot of populist but he argued and we agree with him that these populists are taking more and more place because of the lack of performance of the traditional political parties and because democracy is not delivering so how to deal with that not only criticize because well it's quite easy to criticize and say look this is very dangerous this is very bad this is very negative but what we need to do in order to prevent that populism will take place in a region that between 2021 and 2024 all 17 countries will have a presidential election and a legislative election except Bolivia that had that election in 2020 so there is a fantastic opportunity to choose the right leaders or there is a major danger that if we don't do the things rightly we can get more and more populist leader with that I will invite Dennis to make her final comment so what do we do to defend democracy I think you need to start by defending institutions in reading Timothy Snyder's book on tyranny lessons for the 21st century one of the guidelines he has for citizens is choose an institution and defend it because institutions come under siege by populists who do have a point in that sense I agree with Michael Sandel and why do we need to defend and strengthen institutions in order to deal with what not just elections Kevin is right democracy is not just about elections in Latin America what do you need to focus on progressive fiscal reforms to address inequality ways in which to redistribute economic gains more fairly and I would say also deal with increasing polarization this rhetoric this narrative of the people versus the elites as Ziblatt and Levitsky argue extreme polarization does kill democracy and I think that we have to find a way in which to combat the populist rhetoric that can be extremely divisive and does not lead to consensus building, coalition building or addressing real public policy issues in a deliberative fashion brilliant thank you so much Denise very very well done Sergio please in addition to the three points I mentioned at the beginning strengthening elections separation of power and what we have been talking about two designing and conceiving a progressive structure change on a social pact a social pact with basic social and services public goods to everyone and third participation new ways of social participation socioeconomic councils democratic and citizens panels local power we have to think about that we don't have them but that in addition to that and human rights as a critical element in the middle of the whole thing I will add things using digitalization for strengthening democracy we should explore that and how we do that and how we integrate everyone to that in terms of information in terms of education in terms of health and infrastructure to have access to everyone second democracy and environment the protection of the planet people will take that as a central key issue and that has to be connected with democracy and finally I would say don't look aside the issue of the military the military are there in some countries they appear more in some countries less but take care about the role of the military in the future of a democratic system and also in the future of global change and climate change and the role of the military in the mitigation of climate change and the role in the natural disasters we have to rethink those issues we have to put new ideas in order to build the new road for strengthening democracy great closing remarks Sergio thank you so much and thank you also for putting on the table that many of these issues particular climate change are intergenerational issues where we need to really give responses not only to the current generation but also for future generation and there are also some critical issues that can attract more and more the attention of young people like for instance climate change Kevin your final comments and especially because you have been leading with the idea the issue of how to relate democracy with climate change I think that this is a very important moment also to expand and I give you the opportunity also to close this fascinating conversation I would like to thank all three panelists all our audience for sending all the questions I enjoy it a lot thank you very very much and you have your final words and the closing of the webinar Kevin please Daniel I mean look to your question about or rather Michael Sundell's question do populist have a point I think they do I mean I think populism whether we like it or not populism is a symptom of something it's a symptom that something is not right with the way democratic and representative institutions in particular are working it's a symptom that a lot of people are feeling that democratic institutions are not taking their demands and they're interesting to account the way they should it's a symptom that a lot of people are not feeling respected by their political system and by the way one of the things to avoid like a pest is this kind of you know a high eyebrow kind of discourse whereby the people that vote for populist leaders are fools you know that they're voting against their their own interest and they are you know gap to the idiots well I mean that's a discourse that is patronizing that is self-defeating and it's exactly the proof of the disrespect that a lot of people feel that drives them into the arms of populist authoritarian leaders so we have to be very mindful with that so rather than you know saying accusing people of being fools we have our work cut out for us and the work is about addressing the causes that are driving people to support a populist leaders so and that you know you also ask us to give a concrete recommendation well you know for me the single most important recommendation is that we have to put the quality of democratic governance at the center of agendas in Latin America for sure but more broadly and by democratic governance agendas I mean things like the importance of institutional design so that democratic systems are able to make decisions and implement decisions in an efficacious and efficient way I mean the importance of engaging with public sector and public management reform I mean the question of the fiscal robustness of the state which is of vital importance particularly in Latin America and I mean the question of trust without which no state can be efficacious I mean if there's one thing that has been proven in the course of the past 16 months is that it is those governments that elicit the trust of their citizens that are more effective in dealing with a mammal crisis such as this one and I guess ultimately the lesson here is that politics is not an externality you know if there's something that we have learned in the course of this pandemic is that good democratic governance literally saves lives so I wish that going forward we will pay the attention that the quality of democratic governance clearly warrants if we really care about development if we care about climate change if we care about the issues of the economic transformation that the world is undergoing if we care about all that politics is not an externality politics should be the focus of our attention and the quality of democratic governance and with that we bring to a close this discussion which I guess as you can see I enjoyed mightily a good company I almost felt as having a drink or a coffee with three good friends and many others that were witnessing this discussion and I hope to see more of this we need to reflect more we need to shake off the perplexity that to some extent we all feel about the political developments in in Latin America and this is the way to shake off that perplexity by discussing in a serious way but also with some historical context what's happening now these headlines didn't simply emerge there's a historical context and it's been wonderful to put this into a broader perspective I hope that our audience enjoyed the conversation there will be more of this because this is actually part of a webinar series called Debating Democracy that we will be organizing convening very regularly here at IDEA and I hope that you will join this effort to improve and to intensify the global discussion on democracy that this conversation has been a part of so with that I thank you all and please stay safe and please stay sane bye