 Good morning, everybody. Good morning. Welcome to this special event here at the USC campus. We have a fantastic panel here. And to introduce us to welcome our distinguished guests, we're going to hear a few words from Dean Amber Miller. Good morning. Welcome to USC and thank you all for being here both in person and virtually. As the summit of the Americas in LA wraps up a really busy week, we are happy to host this dialogue here on our campus. As you know, we have a number of distinguished panelists with us here this morning to discuss democracy and its challenges in Latin America. And as we as we think through these complex issues, I have no doubt that we will recognize many familiar themes with those that we are grappling with here in the United States. The issues of politics have hit many Latin American countries hard in recent years and democratic governments are struggling with economic inequality corruption and violence, ensuring free and fair elections, and other very familiar kinds of issues to those that we are coping with here. And as we've seen here at home, the COVID-19 pandemic has not made things any easier. We have the opportunity to convene a dialogue on these important issues with some of the most influential leaders in Latin America, who are going to provide their perspective on the state of democracy and the possible path to a brighter future so I am very much looking forward to hearing from them. It's a pleasure particularly to host this event here at USC where we have long been focused on developing a robust presence and a wide variety of collaborations in Latin America. Two of our eight international offices are located in the region in Mexico City and in Sao Paulo. We have academic partnerships throughout Latin America and Alzheimer's research business and supply chain studies engineering pharmacy Holocaust studies fine arts, and I personally have a collaboration that I work on down in the high out of comma desert in Chile. At USC Dornside, our departments of political science and international relations and Latin and Iberian cultures conduct important research on the region and its influence on the global stage. We have may master programs with students traveling abroad to explore topics like biodiversity in Mexico and traditional languages and Peru just to name a couple. And we recently launched a new center for Latin X and Latin American studies which is working to expand transnational collaboration. While empowering our students, many of whom have close family ties in the region to lead dialogues among our many Latin American communities across Los Angeles. The dialogue this morning will be moderated by our own professor of political science and international relations Jerry monk. In his research interest Professor monk examines democracy and state capacity in Latin America is the author of several books and many many journal articles. Professor monk was instrumental in the preparation of the UN development programs democracy in Latin America report and developing a methodology to monitor elections for the organization of American states. However, we couldn't be in better hands. So it is now my pleasure to turn the program over to Professor Jerry monk to welcome our special guests. I hope you enjoy the program I know that I will. Thank you again for being here. Thank you very much. Well, good morning. My name is Jerry Monk Gerardo monk Gerardo monk in Spanish. I'm professor here at USC and political science and I are I'll be the moderator of this panel. The aim of this panel is to have a conversation of Frank discussion about democracy about what's working with democracy was not working with democracy. How to improve the state of democracy. We're going to be focusing on Latin America, but I'm sure with this panel we're going to go beyond Latin America. Many people are very concerned about the state of democracy in the United States. So I can see the conversation spilling over to other countries. If we think about Latin American historical perspective. This is a good time for democracy in Latin America. A few decades ago, the region was dominated by dictators. Now the situation is very, very different. Elections are held as a matter of routine. We see the peaceful alternation in power among competing power parties on a frequent basis. If anybody was tuning into the hearings Congress last night, you realize what a big deal. The peaceful alternation in power is candidates from across the political spectrum by. For political office. If you're following what's happening in Colombia these days we see very different candidates. Seven countries within the region have elected women to a highest political office. If we compare Latin America to other regions in the developing south the global south. There's no region that can match the record of democratic accomplishments that Latin America has. I'm not talking about problems but it's important to start about the positive things to build on. So that this is in some sense a good moment to think about how to improve by building on democratic achievements. Obviously this positive picture is only half of the picture. There are other important things that need to be addressed. We cannot avoid noticing that three countries in the region are dictatorships. This is Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua. If we look at other countries and my students that have taken my courses know we discuss these issues a lot. We have major problems related to violence, corruption, poverty and inequality, environmental degradation. There's a sense of disconnect between politicians and citizens. Many analysts talk about a crisis of representation. So not all is well with democracy in Latin America. It's important to discuss these problems. More important it's important to think about concrete steps that can be taken to improve the problems in the region. I couldn't think of a better panel to discuss these issues facing the region, more globally the discussion about democracy around the world. We have with us. And the order in which they're seated. Leonel Fernandez, former president of the Dominican Republic, he served for three terms. So has important experience in government during a very important period in the history of the Dominican Republic. He's the founder of a think tank from glory. He is now the honorary president of that organization. He's very active in discussions within the Dominican Republic throughout the region. Welcome president. We have with us, Laura Chincheza, former president of Costa Rica, and somebody if you sort of move around international circles, she appears every organization playing an important role. So, some former presidents, whatever the Republicans here play golf, others are very active in politics. And she just certainly stands out in that regard. She has an important role in tools organizations that we have represented here she's co chair of the inter American dialogue. She's vice chair of the board of international idea. She's vice president of the club the Madrid. So she's very involved in the ongoing discussion about democracy development in Latin America. Kevin Casas Samora. He's a secretary general of international idea. International idea is an inter governmental organization based in Sweden. Dedicate and this is the one organization really focused on the promotion the defense of democracy. He was vice president of Costa Rica. He was also secretary of political affairs of the organization of American states. This is the group that oversees election monitoring within the hemisphere plays a very important role in protecting democracy within the region. Sitting next to to Kevin we have Rebecca Bill Chavez. She's the president and CEO of the inter American dialogue. This is a think tank based in DC. Here at USC we feel we have a special connection with the dialogue. Professor emeritus aid law and thought was a founding director of the dialogue. We wish you all the best in this new role. She worked in the Obama administration for several years as deputy assistant secretary for defense for Western hemisphere affairs. She's a recovering academic she used to be in academia now she's moved on determined to make a difference with the knowledge that she has. Finally, we have Luis Felipe Lopez Calva. He's an economist by training. He works in the United Nations. He's UN assistant secretary general. And he is director of the UN DP, the United Nations Development Program for Latin America and the Caribbean. This is sort of in some sense the UN's main development branch, working within Latin America. The UN DP like the USA ID in the US started as a agency focused on economic issues, their portfolio has brought now dealing with democratic governance intersection between economic and political affairs. So it's great to have Luis Felipe here with us. We're going to break down this panel into three parts. We're going to start with questions I'm going to pose to each of the panelists. I'm going to ask for short three minute responses take this to be your opening comment you're going to have plenty of time to talk after that. Then we move into a second segment in which I'd like to have a more of a open fluid discussion among the panelists, I may have some follow up questions. Let's get into the floor. The people that are watching us online they can send questions in through the chat. We're going to end at 12. We're going to have lunchboxes set up outside. So hopefully people can stay on and continue the conversation at that point in time. Okay. Let's get started. President Fernandez. You step down after a long time in the presidency of the Dominican Republic. About 10 years ago. A fair amount has changed in the region these have been hectic years. A lot of things happening, particularly the last few. What you see is the main changes in the region. What are the new challenges that are taking shape. What are the new challenges related to democracy. What are the opportunities that you see to improve democracy in the region. This is a very broad question, but just some opening statements. Okay, thank you, Professor monk for your very kind invitation and greetings to my colleagues at the panel. And thank you to all of you for being here today. I left office in 2012. So it's been exactly 10 years, and many things have happened in Latin America, of course, I would say putting putting it in context that we have been going through different economic and political electoral cycles. For example, between 2003 and 2013. Latin America went through what has been labeled as the golden decade in the region in terms of economic growth and development. In those 10 years, for the first time in its economic history, Latin America grew average nearly 4.5%. And that was because, because China was demanding many of our commodities in the region. So oil, natural gas soy beans copper whatever China was buying, because it was growing at a 12% average per year, but around 2013. And the next five years now I'm out of office the next five years. Latin America only grew around 0.8% according to a clock. Right. In those years, we began experiencing social protests. And it began in Venezuela but also in Brazil and Peru and Columbia in Chile, just about everywhere. We were having social protests, and then came the pandemic. And the pandemic was not only a healthcare crisis. It's been a multi dimensional crisis with impact in economics and social well being of the population because of the pandemic. There has been an increase in poverty because of the pandemic. First of all, there was, I would say a severe economic contraction. And because of that, our central banks increase their monetary policies and governments expanded their, their, their public public expenditures. That was that enabled our countries in the region to kind of initiate a recovering process, but now we are because of that because because we have to increase our government spending and because the central banks increase their monetary offerings. Their monetary supply. Inflation has taken place in the region. And inflation has become I would say one of the most. One of the most, I would say painful situation in the region because people have lost their purchasing power. If we look at the last two years and accumulated inflation of over 25%, especially on food stuff. Now, to deal with the issue. We have to increase interest rates at the central bank, and we have to reduce liquidity in the financial system. And what is going to come because of that, they'll be a halt in economic growth. There'll be more unemployment and inflation will not be wiped away because we have the war between Russia and Ukraine with the increase of the oil price and natural gas and fertilizers and other commodities so inflation will not disappear. And most likely we will face in the next few years in Latin America, some sort of recession or eventually stack inflation, which will be very negative. Now, this has had already an electoral impact political impact. In the last 14 presidential elections in Latin America, the ruling parties have lost 13 only in Nicaragua, the ruling party has been able to stay in power because they imprisoned all the opposition leaders. The situation looks a little bit bleak for the region. It doesn't look well, because of the economic and social impact we're having before the pandemic aggravated by the pandemic. And there seems to be now some sort of correlation between trends in global economy and its impact politically, socially, in our countries in Latin America. So these are the challenges we're looking basically, of course we have challenges in terms of democratic governance, violence, drug trafficking, corruption, transparency, the impact of social media technologies in the region. In education there was education was interrupted due to the lockdown created by the pandemic. And now we need to go back. Not only to where we were before, but to create new models of relationship between teaching and learning in the region because we're way behind, we're way behind from K to 12 and in higher education so I don't know if I'm over my time but in general this is the way we look at the region at this moment. Thank you very much. President, I want to ask you a similar sort of broad question about how you see the region democracy is challenges. You come from Costa Rica. If some country within the Americas is in a position to give classes on democracy. It used to be the United States probably not sort of Costa Rica is probably the one that has the strongest democratic tradition now so from that perspective but sort of from all the engagements that you have in these debates. This, how do you view things. Thank you, Professor for asking and mentioning the case of Costa Rica. Of course we are having also challenges in terms of democratic governance but of course they are not as as pressing as it is happening in other countries of our region. I think that the email provided a wonderful contextualization of the the situation in our region and how it has evolved during the last years in terms of social and economic terms in terms of social and economic perspectives. I want to emphasize a little bit more on the institutional side because according to this context that you know presented. What we can see is that we are having a, you know, growing demands coming from the population, because there are many overlapping crisis, impacting negatively the economic and social indicators in our region. In a way, it is, it is, it is telling us about the big challenge that our democracies have in terms of delivering in terms of responding to those long term structural chain challenges that we have. And that is, that is something that we, we have to put in the first place I mean these kind of challenges of delivering of responding to the demands of the citizens, but I would like to emphasize to other kind of challenges to kind of trends that I see concerning our democratic issues. One is the crisis, what I call the crisis of representation, and the other one is a demand, a growing demand for citizen participation concerning the crisis or representation, we have to recognize that trust in institutions is weakening effectively affecting especially the institutions of the representative democracy is specifically the political parties and departments. Let me give you some figures according to the Latino barometer and as an average, only 30% of citizens say they trust political parties. And the figure is 20% in the case of Congress is in addition, and this is something really concerning over 70% of citizens consider that their governments only benefit a few powerful groups. So these figures reflect a crisis of the collective mechanisms, the institutions that are called to aggregate interest in order to reach broad agreements in a democracy. If those vehicles are not responding, because the people do not trust in them anymore. That means that we have to do something about that. Because the distrust in those institutions is also impacting negatively the way the citizens is perceived democracy the support to democracy. In fact, support to democracy in our region has moved from around 65% at the beginning of the the 2020 2010 to 48 and 50% during the last three years. The other issue that I mentioned is a growing demand for citizen participation. And we have to recognize that citizens. On the one hand, they are not trusting enough in the traditional institutions but on the other hand, they are not only voting and that is a very good signal that is something positive that we have to take into account when analyzing the opportunities that we have in the region. People still consider voting as something positive. And they, they are turning out to vote during this electoral cycle. I mean this complex crisis we are going through. Whenever when we ask the people and we desegregate the, the, the, the, the figures of those who consider that voting is something positive we will find that there is an important portion of them who say that you should always vote but also you should protest that means that they are saying look, this is not only about voting. I want to be taken into account, you know, I want I want my voice to be heard. So those, according to those numbers, it shouldn't be surprising to see all of this mass mobilization and protest that have taken the streets and the cities in Latin America. To finalize, I will say that we have a big challenge concerning the democratic governance in our countries, and that is how to renew and rewire the traditional challenges of democratic participation, mainly parliaments and political parties, while at the same time trying to design and putting forward new mechanisms for citizen participation in my own terms, this is not an either or challenge. I think it is very urgently to try to move forward in both, you know, in both kind of challenges. I hear many people saying, look, democracy has shown to be resilient in Latin America, so we should be optimistic that we will be able to overcome this crisis. I agree with that. I think that we don't have much more time, and that in certain way we should aspire that democracy is not only resilient in our hemisphere but also that democracy should transcend and take into account the new kind of demands coming from the population, especially did you. Thank you. Thanks, that was wonderful. You had an organization international idea that does something unique. I think something very very needed. Your organization publishes on a regular basis report on the global state of democracy. So this covers the entire world, we really don't have anything like that. We're having great data, great analysis of data to tell us about the state of democracy weaknesses trends. Could you drawing upon sort of the discussions I'm sure you've had within your organization. Discuss some of the global trend made Latin America within some more global context. Thank you so much, Jerry, it's wonderful to see you is wonderful to be here is wonderful to be a doing this panel in partnership with USC and with the glory is an honor. Also to share this discussion with my fellow panelists all of them extraordinarily distinguished. And look, I won't bore you with all the details and all the findings that came up in the process of a drafting the global state of democracy report, the last iteration of which came out last November. I will identify some of the, some of the main findings and how they relate to the situation in Latin America I mean one. One of the things that we've been detecting whenever we measure the performance of democracy globally. And for some years now is a worldwide deterioration in the quality of democratic governance. The quality of democracy is being eroded a all over the world, and in very, you know, across the board, you know all aspects of democracy, pretty much are being a weekend. And this is something that we're also seeing in Latin America I mean one of the, one of the most interesting data points coming out of, you know, public opinion surveys in Latin America is this is something that I find really a important from the standpoint of diagnosing the situation of democracy in Latin America which is this, when you ask people whether a day support democracy in the abstract, a majority of people in Latin America still say that they do. When you, there's another group of people that say, oh well, you know, we prefer an authoritarian option. That proportion is not growing. What is growing is the proportion of people that say that it's exactly the same for them, whether to live on their democratic system or on their authoritarian regime. And that to me tells us that the real danger in Latin America is not really about military takeovers is that really about sudden reversals of democracy is about the gradual degradation in the quality of democracy particularly when it comes to the rule of law, which continues to be a huge pending for the region so there you have a first manifestation of a global trend and how it affects the situation of democracy in the region. A second global finding that had that the place out in the region is the increased brazeness on the part of authoritarian leaders. It's something that we're seeing all over the world but we're also seeing this in Latin America, you know, when you stop for a second and take a look at what's happening in El Salvador, what's happening in Nicaragua. The fact that despite really grotesque human rights violations taking place in Nicaragua that has been not a whiff of a reaction on the part of the region to to make the the principles of the of the inter American democratic charter count for something. Is a is is very telling I mean nowadays the price that you pay for democratic transgressions is is much less than it was a generation ago. So that the the regional and the international atmosphere in terms of protecting democracy has deteriorating a very significant way. Now, not all is bad in one important global trend that we see also playing out in Latin America is that that the electoral component of democracy has proven to be very resilient. A, you know, one of the things that Latin America does and does well is elections. And we saw in the course of the pandemic that countries in the region, learn to hold credible robust legitimate elections in the impossible conditions created by the pandemic this is also something that happened globally but it's particularly true about Latin America we've seen it, you know, elections taking place in Mexico in Bolivia in Peru in Costa Rica but pretty much everywhere. Good elections, you know, so the electoral side of democracy is robust and this is enormously important and needs to be protected at all costs because let's not forget that this is a region that not until so long ago. You know, we're not until so long ago power was a power was determined either in the military barracks or in the mountain. So, you know, we've adopted as a foundational principle for a politics in the region that the only legitimate way to access power is through credible elections. And last, but not least another global trend that we see playing out in the region is the vitality of civic action. Globally, over 80% of the countries saw social movements of different kinds emerging, even in very hostile environments like you know, Belarus or Myanmar or Cuba. During the pandemic, despite the often draconian restrictions put in place by governments with regards to freedom of assembly, but we also are seeing that in Latin America, the thing is, and before we get too cocky about this that a lot of that vitality has to do with some of the things that Laura just mentioned I mean with the fact that the normal challenge that the normal channels of representation in Latin America are obstructed so people are taking to the streets to to voice their, their demands and this is the way politics will be in Latin America for a for the foreseeable future. Thank you Kevin. Rebecca, of the people in this panel you occupy a specific unique position you work in Washington DC. Your organization tries to foster a dialogue between us policymakers leaders in Latin America, just listening to some of the speeches at the summit last night areas that's a tough job. But so, can you discuss Latin America from the perspective of DC, how us policymakers see things, whether they limit what can be done, what they're doing to help what can be done within Latin America. If there's something about the problems of democracy in the US that you think is relevant to just a discussion with Latin America please feel free to talk about it. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you to USC to internationally there, and it's, you mentioned that I'm a recovering academic. It's really wonderful to be on a university campus and Jerry I had the pleasure of meeting two of your students. And if we're thinking about reasons for hope. One of the reasons that I met who were seated right there one is going on to have a full bright to spend a year in Mexico City working on a full bright. And the second one is going to law school at Georgetown and she focuses on gender issues which are incredibly important in the region. Vice President Harris has been talking about women's economic empowerment and also gender based violence as a driver of migration so I'm so pleased to meet both of you. So, when you asked so you asked about how us policymakers see Latin America, and the word indifference was used in a different context, and I fear that there is. In the moment I'm, I'm very pleased that we had the focus of the President and we had a robust congressional participation. Yesterday, but I do think that there is not the attention on the Western Hemisphere that there should be. I had the opportunity to testify before the Senate about the summit of the Americas, and I was Senator Keynes witness, and he ended the hearing by just calling out. There are only three senators who showed up for this hearing, which, which says a lot. So I think one of our responsibilities is continue to draw attention to the region and it's important to the United States. And I think that's particularly salient given what's happening in Washington DC this week with the House Select Committee hearing and the importance of elections that that Kevin point pointed out and peaceful transfer of power. It's the United States is showing when we think about the resilience of democratic institutions it's very important when we talk about democracy in the Americas, or the broader global, global democratic recession to include the United States in that conversation. And I think that when the US is speaking to the region about democracy I think it's really important that it do so from a place of humility. As far as US policymakers and what they should be focusing on when it comes to the region. And in the context of today's panel, I agree that they should that the US should be very focused on on democracy and it is a focus of the Biden administration. The declining faith in democracy is is incredibly troubling, but I will point out that in the United States 64% of US citizens say that democracy is in crisis, or at risk of failure. So the numbers are not limited to to Latin America. But one of the and President Chinchilla alluded to this is that one of the reasons that democracy is under threat in the region is because people don't see democracy delivering. They're both most basic needs. 70% of black citizens of Latin America and the Caribbean report that they're dissatisfied with how democracy works. And this helps explain the democrat the acceptance of the democratic transition transgressions of a leader like Bukele who massive abuses of human rights yet he maintains an 80% popularity rate. So this is where the indifference came in your point about the indifference between preference for democracy versus a more authoritarian form of government. So I think when the US is thinking about the region. It needs to or should consider the reasons behind this lack of faith and democracy, and focus on things like inclusive economic recovery. President Fernandez mentioned this. And I think actually President Biden did in his inaugural address that 22 million people in the region fell below the poverty line in the wake of the pandemic. The inequality, the gap between the rich and the poor has widened significantly public health is another area. And then another I would say is the hemisphere wide migration policy. I'm very pleased that I think up until really this week, the tendency in the US has when speaking of migration, it's been solely focused on the US southern border and how migration affects the United States, but migration truly is a region wide challenge, and it should be treated as such. I finally mentioned the point that President Fernandez made at the beginning about the education. Latin American the Caribbean had the largest, longest school closures in the world. Some schools are in some and Honduras schools are just now starting to reopen, and then just the impact of the digital divide on education, the lack of connectivity, which is something I think going forward needs to be a focus. And I'll stop there. Thank you. Thank you very much, Rebecca. Luis Felipe. Sometimes this is a perfect segue Rebecca talked about democracies that deliver. And I think when I think of the UNDP sort of that's basically what the UNDP is really working on with its programs, thinking about the Democratic side, knowing that it has to deliver in terms of economic well being human development. What is the UN and the UNDP doing with regards to these issues. How do you see that I guess the connection between the development challenges and the democratic government side. Thank you very much. And it's really a privilege to be in this very distinguished panel and to be at USC very nice. It's very nice campus and as as a record is very nice to be in an academic environment and being able to talk in depth about these these issues that we deal with every day in our conversations with governments. And I think the question is, it's very pertinent because at the end, in this briefing intervention I'm going, I want to land in what I believe is the key word for both in a way trying to understand the situation and trying to find ideas to to start a positive cycle of recovery and that that concept is legitimacy in a very specific way that I'm that I will mention in a minute but I want to say also that I agree that there is an issue with the capacity of democracy to deliver and that's why I always think of the two main ways in which legitimacy is built. We have insisted from UNDP and in general one is process legitimacy, which is a democratic side of, of what we call democratic governance and the other is outcome legitimacy which is precisely delivering results to people. And these are the two ways in which you can build legitimacy to lead to what David Hume in the 18th century said, one of the main questions, the main paradoxes or important questions for political philosophers was the easiness with which the many are governed by the few. And I think the key element there is legitimacy. So that's why it's very important to think about what are the elements that build legitimacy on the process side and what gives legitimacy on the, on the outcome side. And I do want to say that in the last 40 years in Latin America transitions we can call it from boots to boats. We left the dictatorships and we went into into a more democratic environment. There were important results that we should also acknowledge. There was a dynamic growth that we expected and we have written a report on that last year at UNDP and the mediocrity of work of growth, but we did deliver, for example, a very important reduction in poverty improvement in many social indicators. So those 40 years, we also have to acknowledge that we're not wasted. There were many important achievements during those years that also created, and I would refer to this for example to the case of Chile. To a crisis of aspirations in a way a little bit like at the Lexus, the Tocqueville and the French Revolution. I think there was when when we feel this slow down in growth, the cycle, the, you know, super cycle of commodity prices is over. And then many people realize that that train that, you know, that was going fast in terms of growth in the case for example of Chile, one of the three countries that achieved their level of high income country that in a way was able to overcome the middle income trap, but because of the structural inequalities and exclusion, social exclusion, they realized they were not going to benefit from that from that process. That's one example that there are two different extent, some other examples throughout the region, in which we left basically as we have always say, we were, we're in a middle in a society that our middle income. Some countries that have not managed to become middle class societies. So the majority of the population was left vulnerable so not being poor, but not having the economic security that was needed to face the current shocks that we have faced. So that uncertainty turned into into frustration. That vulnerability that with which we entered the series of shocks, you know the pandemic, the slow, even for the slow down of growth and now the crisis in Europe and inflation that President Fernandez very clearly described. So it's a moment of very high level of uncertainty, where people lose the sense of agency the sense of control over their own, over their own lives and the sense that the system can respond to their needs. And that's the level of sort of lack of power. So in 2017 I led a report at the World Bank on governance and law the World Development Report. And we said that we wanted to look at the micro foundations of power, and why policies fail when people are not part talking about the process legitimacy, and we basically show how these power asymmetries actually lead to failures of policy. I used to joke with my colleagues that among economists, when you talk about power, people can only think of electricity. It was, it was very important to bring the notion that power matters, when we want to understand why policies fail, and why democracies are unable to deliver and the part of this is that the huge power asymmetries that are reflected for example in the fact that you have a process in which social policies did address poverty and reduce poverty through for example conditional cash transfers. This was at the cost of the middle class and not at the cost of the top incomes that were untouched during that process. So at the margin, the resources went to the poor from the middle class from the quality of services for example to the middle class, but not from really the top, the top income that were, as I said, were left untouched. There is some very serious, I believe sense of lack of agency and we will address this by the way in our global human development report that is going to come out in a few months globally which we look at how the uncertainty that we are facing changes political behavior, economic behavior and social interactions in a way that could be dangerous for what we call democratic strengthening. So the issue is legitimacy for with this I finished. How do we rebuild legitimacy we look at this process and outcomes on the outcome legitimacy as a professor monks mention monk mentioned. We work with the governments to try to improve the capacity of institutions to deliver in social services and so on but let me talk about the process legitimacy part, which are the four pillars of our democratic governance. What we call effective governance in democracy program at UNDP and we are partnering now we with the idea international and we are just finishing also an op-ed with Kevin that we will publish soon talking about this program. There are four elements that we see as key one is the quality of elections as Kevin mentioned the other is the crisis of representation and political parties what is the state of the political parties and and whether political parties are actually representing the voters the third is civic space and peaceful social movements that has also by the way is having shrinking the civic space in the region, and the fourth very important is the quality of public deliberation. That you know that the weakening of the reduction in the quality of the public information and the public deliberation has also led to a very noisy political process and we're facing this in many cases so if you just to leave it in a in a way of trying to see what we see as a way to rebuild that we're going to see these four areas working on elections, political representation, social organization and quality of public deliberation as a ways to try to overturn this negative, just one one indicator that is objective and not subjective. What is the budget that we're preparing a note on this as a budget that has been going in the last 10 years to institutions that is strengthening democracy in the sense for example control on on the executive controls on on on the executive power. What is the budget that is going to those institutions and what is the budget that is going to autocratic institutions like the military. And you can see a massive shift from investment in democratic institutions to an investment in those that actually strengthen the centralization of power and I think that's a very worrisome indicator. Thank you, when I hear economists talk about power issue, what I've usually heard statistical power so it's not even something as interesting as I told energy, yes, it's even a bit more removed. Now we're going to move into the second phase sort of I invite a free exchange among you. I can throw out some questions to provoke you but if you have any things in mind that you want to add to the discussion. You've all listened to each other very patiently. Thank you, Jerry well this is this this first round was was wonderful and very a, you know elicited many, many, many thoughts I mean, you know one in one of the things that I am very concerned about the regards to the, to the future of democracy in the region is this. I mean there's several, there's several things that have been mentioned here, I mean, number one. And here I connect something that President Fernandez mentioned with something that in the Felipe mentioned the question of inflation. I mean, inflation has shown to have over and over and over historically. The Leterious in effects for democracy. And it so happens that with the exception of a few countries perhaps Argentina and a few others. The current generation in Latin America has not experienced inflation. I mean this is going to be a new thing. So, the effects of that are difficult to predict but cannot be good. And here is where I linked this to the to a to one of the comments made by by the Felipe which is how inflationary pressures on a lot of things create uncertainty and uncertainty is kryptonite for democracy. Uncertainty creates this notion that when, when, when uncertain when social uncertainty levels go through the roof, the natural tendency is to seek the paternal is always paternal because always meant the paternal embrace of authoritarian So this is a real danger for for democracy the second question. The second issue that I would like to to mention that has been mentioned again is the question of the ability of democracies to deliver and in that sense, the pandemic as in many others has been a very stern teacher. What has what the pandemic has rendered evident is the weakness in terms of state capacities that we that we see in Latin America in terms of state capacities to provide decent public goods and services and I'll give you just one fact. When the pandemic struck. Latin America had 2.1 hospital beds per 10,000 people. Right. The average for OECD countries is 4.7 hospital beds. Well, that's how weak public health systems in Latin America where, when they had to deal with this mental crisis, and that's a, that's just one example of a broader phenomenon, you know, the very limited ability to respond to social demands in the context of crisis and how this affects the ability of democracies to deliver. And my final point is, again, about something that was Felipe mentioned, which I think is crucial in. There's another danger that is real impressing for democracy in the region, which is the, the widespread acceptance that democracies, democratic systems don't make a difference in people's lives. That's demonstrably false in light of the evidence of the past generation in Latin America, and we should never lose sight of that democracy in Latin America has results to show. Not all the results that we would like to have, but have, you know, has some very impressive results in terms of social well being, for instance, in terms of reduction of poverty in terms of even the reduction of inequality from extremely high levels. So it is important not to lose sight of that in this winter of this content. Luis Felipe has to leave in five minutes or so. Luis Felipe if you want to add something now before you go. Take my apology, but I have to represent my institution at the conversations in the conversion center so. I think one point which I think addresses precisely what Kevin reiterated which is the issue of uncertainty and that's why we want to bring this issue to the to the conversation to with a global human development report by the way also present in a great ally in the production of the recent human development reports globally as well. I think the issue of uncertainty as a trigger of many behaviors that could be detrimental to positive outcomes that we expect one entry point that we see as fundamental is the notion of seeing this as an opportunity to promote universal social protection systems, and we have insisted a lot on this, not in not universal basic income universal social protection to bring back the notion of universal provision provision of a minimum package of services to population through the same source, general taxes, perhaps, and also with the same quality for everybody because we have created through the social protection systems, citizens of you know first class second class citizens through the diversity that is fueled by by fully designed social protection systems, and the emphasis on targeting not as a way to ensure universality but as a way to exclude some people from from the, from the high quality services so we insist a protection systems that are universal growth friendly, physically sustainable and truly inclusive. It could be one immediate response to try to provide people that sense of economic security that could trigger eventually a political dynamics that can be, you know, you know, better than what we have today. Because now what we have is very targeted a specific responses from, in many cases, leaders that want to strengthen their centralized capacity to control power, rather than something that is more, you know, socially discussed process So I just want to leave it there as you asked me one thing that you and the P is proposing to try to address these legitimacy crisis from the outcome and the process side. I would also like to say that a discussion on how to bring back universality of a minimum package social protection, health education, unemployment insurance and the like, finance through the same source and so on and look at ways to because then the discussion of for example tax reforms. Don't become the objective. The tax reform is not an objective is an instrument. So if we really want to think about what it means to renew a social contract, let's discuss what is the minimum set level of security that we should collectively provide to everybody, and how we finance that. And then we will reveal from there so I would I would just leave it there to end with a positive proposal, concrete proposal for me. Thank you very much for your contribution to the panel. I believe that I have to do to run out. One of them. Yes, I would like to kind of present the historical perspective and where we stand at this moment. Since 2010, some countries in the region have been celebrating the bison 10 of our independence. We've begun in 2004 because really the first country in the region to gain independence was Haiti. But it is forgotten always. And so we begin celebrating that from 2010 until 2025. All the independence movements in Latin America. Since our inception as nation states, we aspire democracy democracy never came through. In the years we had military ruling class. It was only in the last 40 plus years that we have been able to transition from authoritarian regimes into democratic systems. Have we progressed in the last four decades in Latin America, absolutely anywhere you go in Latin America today is radically different of what it was 40 years before. Infrastructure development. You can see it. I'm sorry, you can see it anywhere there's a way when you go to Chile from the airport to the city is called shanhattan. When you say well shanhattan is a combination of Shanghai and Manhattan. The notion of modernization, right. Can you imagine that we have a subway system in the Dominican Republic that there's a subway system in Panama. That is also many other subway systems in other places. There is an indication there has been progress. Poverty has been reduced middle class has been expanded. People travel continuously. When I was coming to LA I found someone from from the Dominican Republic on the plane, I said where you going I'm going to Wisconsin, he said. I can't imagine a Dominican going to Wisconsin. I can imagine going to New York, Washington Heights, but not to Wisconsin. Well, there you go. He was going to a milk festival, because we have cattle raising in the Dominican Republic but now the many can go to Wisconsin to participate in the global festival about how to you. You milk cows. So, it's a way of indicating that we have becoming more integrated worldwide. But the reason why we have progressed is because we have us, we have solved politically a main problem that we have discussed on the table today. How do you access power. And before, even in the 60s. In our case, the Dominican experience. A dictatorship a long standing dictatorship was brought down to he was. One boss came from exile, a friend of Josef, he gets a Caribbean Legion. He was elected at a landslide. The first democratically elected president after a long term dictatorship. Seven months after he was overthrown by military coup. There was no popular insurrection in 1965 and the Dominican Republic. The slow one was to return to democratic constitution, elected government, and then there was a US military occupation inspired by the Cold War, preventing a second Cuba in the Caribbean. The Republic had nothing to do with a socialist Cuban oriented revolution was democratic constitutionally, but the Cold War environment created this this decision by the Johnson administration. So when my generation started participating in politics. The idea was, we aspire democracy, but it's impossible. To democracy has been obstructed. So the notion of revolution came through. And the, I would say the, the inspiration was the Cuban revolution. And everywhere in Latin America in the 60s, the youth wanted to participate in a revolutionary process. It was only at the end of the 70s beginning in the Dominican Republic, where we had elections, the work and tested and a change of regime and alternation of democratic power and then all the 80s and afterwards. We have had elections as the only legal and legitimate way to access power. And because of that we have democratic political stability. And with democratic political stability you get economic growth, sustainable development, progress, prosperity and well being. The other side of the picture is Haiti. Since Haiti doesn't have stable democratic political system. It's chaotic. It's always in the, in the midst of a crisis. So Haiti instead of progressing is always moving backwards is in a state of misery. No one has an answer to what it's not only a failed state is a collapse state nowadays, but the main reason it doesn't have democratic political stability. What we have in Latin America that enables progress that enables sustainable development and well being is because we have had for the first time in our history during 40 years. We have had democratic political stability, and we have to work in order to strengthen that, you know, in all the ways we can be a positive comments in a row. It's contagious. Yeah, so you want to serve. The coffee is kicking in. I think that we should bring a very important pillar for democracies to, to, to, to stay to be stable to, to have the possibility to project to the future and that is the rule of law. And when I, when I listen to what we have already said about the progress we have been able to achieve in our region, there is no doubt. Any kind of indicator that you can take, you will see that we have achieved amazing progress. In fact, in terms of democracy, we are still the most successful region. For the years of democracy, and it cover almost all the countries. With the exception of Cuba, all of them were democracies at certain point then during the last year we lost Venezuela, we lost Nicaragua. But we didn't do enough in terms of people love law. And what we are seeing is that since other kind of, of, of menaces, you know, search as a result, for example, of the growing, the growing presence of organized crime in many of the countries, that is one of the main factors that explain the corruption in, in, in, basically in Central America, Colombia and Mexico, when you see those bureaucratic elites making businesses with some business elites with any kind of part of ethical principles. When you see the abuses of power, etc, etc. And there is no response coming from the justice system. So it is impossible to imagine that democracy can prevail. If you don't have a robust system of rule of law. And so in certain way, the new rulers, the new leaders, this kind of unscrupulous populist that we have already we have now again in our region aspiring to take power. They know it very well. They know that it is very easy to get access to power through precisely legitimate means, because most of them, all of them have won an election. But they know that once they access to power, once that they are in government, they can ignore the other considerations of a democratic system, a democratic governance, which is respecting the laws respecting the Constitution, etc, etc. So it is true that, you know, that we have many positive things in the region, but my message basically is that we shouldn't take democracy for granted. We already have two examples, Venezuela and Nicaragua. Nicaragua was a very weak democracy. But Venezuela was one of the only three democracies that we have during the 70s. Colombia, Venezuela and Costa Rica and look what happened. And what I see now in the rest of the Central American countries is the Lani, Karen, what she's doing, they, they, they, what they might not do that is about they are following almost the same plan. And probably we will have even more examples so the rule of law is something and also we should put a pension about what is happening with the, the military. They are there. They're playing a more discrete role, but they are becoming the arbiters of political crisis that was very clear for example in the case of Bolivia. They are participating more and more in the economy. They are controlling many state owned enterprises. And I can give you the cases of Mexico, the case of, of course, Venezuela and Nicaragua. So I'm also, you know, in with this very weak rule of law and a growing role of the military again. And with these leaders, populist kind of leaders, I think that we are getting a mix of explosive elements that attempt against democratic. So I'm going to follow on what President Chinchilla was saying, and I really appreciated the way Luis Felipe ended his conversation about one, looking at the budgets of governments to see how much is being spent on agencies that actually control executive power you know the traditional agencies of horizontal accountability versus how much of the budget goes to strengthening the centralization of power and he used the example of funding of the military, you know what's the balance and I thought that was a really powerful way and useful but because, you know I think when we, what President Chinchilla's point is excellent, you know, you have democratically elected leaders, who then deliberately dismantle these agencies of horizontal accountability. And if you're looking at courts through, through even the other constitution protect calls for judicial autonomy you see practices like court hacking the violations of a judicial tenure tenure production. We see it with the attorney generals sort of the lack of independence of attorney generals. So, the judiciary is also in rule of law so also so important to a tackling corruption which is a major issue in the region but I also wanted to highlight the point about the military and I say this from someone who served in DoD. The growing militarization of the region is extremely concerning. We see it in the militarization of law enforcement, the militarization of migration policies is another area. And the example I mean I think there was the scenes in the Salvador's Congress when the military went in to kind of intimidate members of Congress to support Bukele's legislation. I mean, I agree. I think that the military we don't hear enough about this this trend, and I think it's something very important for us to keep an eye on. Look, again, this is this is very interesting but I'm gonna, I'm gonna pick up on a point that I found really, really interesting mentioned by President Fernandez which is this. I mean I'll put it like this. It's almost like a like a sound bite. I guess the previous generation in Latin America. It showed that democracy is possible. The task for the current generation is to show that democracy is good and fair. That's a different task. And it's a more complicated task. I mean what we see in the again in public opinion surveys in the region is that people in Latin America support democracy in the abstract. But they are deeply deeply unhappy with democracy in practice. Right. And, and, and the reason for this disaffection is is connected to some of the things that have been mentioned here I mean number one, the question of the rule of law which continues to be a huge pending assignment for for for the region and particularly, there are so many aspects to this, but there are two that are a particularly salient. The question of corruption and impunity for corruption. That's an absolutely toxic issue for democracy and not just in Latin America we see it in, from the standpoint of Latin of international idea we see it at play, virtually everywhere. I mean the effect of corruption on democratically legitimacy is a really toxic one. So, this angle of the lack of rule of law has to be addressed in a very urgent way. And the question of public security, which is another big one that is important for the rule of law, and that has an impact on the quality of life for for people. So, that's one big agenda. And then the other is the question again of delivery, you know, and to go back to a, you know, to that notion that people support democracy in the abstract but not in practice I mean look I mean we can make here in this room. The normative argument for democracy until we go blue in the face. For the immense majority of people, what matters is whether democracy is able to solve real problems for real people. That's what matters. And I guess the practical implication of that is the, the urgency of putting at the heart of public debates in Latin America, the question of the quality of democratic governance, and that means a few things. Others. That means tackling questions of institutional design that you know a lot of, I mean you know a lot about a Jerry I mean the, a, how to design our political systems in ways that make them more able better able to solve issues in a more efficient and capacious way. And I'll give you one concrete example that I use the other day, you know, on a discussion where a president chinchilla a participated in as well. The, I mean this very in this very visible thing that we have in Latin America, a, and very problematic that coexistence of presidential systems with highly fragmented and increasingly fragmented party system which we know from decades ago in political systems that is a, is a, is a problematic setup. And yet, we see very little in the way of reform efforts to rethink the constitutional architecture of our political systems. So this agenda matters. Number two, what was Felipe mentioned the question of fiscal robustness as a prerequisite for political systems to be able to respond to social demands. And, you know, how you collect your revenue and how you spend your public resources and there has to be a discussion about that at the heart of a robust democratic governance agenda. The question of the quality of public administration, which is a truly central one. You know, this used to be seen, you know, as a peripheral issue as a technical issue is not I mean, you know, the quality of public administration is the tool of the trade for governments to respond to social demands. And finally the question of trust, which as we've seen during the pandemic I mean trust is the arguably the single most powerful determinant in the effectiveness of governments to respond to crisis whether they elicit. The trust of the of the citizens, and you cannot talk about trust, again, without talking about the question of corruption if you're not serious about doing with corruption trust would never be rebuilt so I mean this is the kind of agenda that I think should be at the heart of her public debates in in Latin America because it's instrumental to solve everything else. And I'll leave it at that. Just to second Kevin's point sort of this from my own research and bring more and more emphasis and I think sort of it's more and more important state capacity sort of the quality of the public administration reforms that are needed. So the policy process can come up with some great laws and policy initiatives but if it's not implemented and efficacious way without corruption. It's not going to deliver. So, so I think that's sort of a key sort of sort of part of the problem. I don't think it's being discussed and you want to add to that. No, I just wanted so we had a host of mayor summit on Tuesday at one of the events on the side on the margins of the summit the broader summit. One of the things that came out that was really interesting I thought is that it gets this point of public administration and trust and government is in the US at least there are a recent survey shows that 72% of American US citizens have faith in their local leaders versus 25% in the federal government. And it was really it's this is a positive note. It was really heartening to hear from these mayors that are actually they are delivering that they on a way I came with that that at the city level, we see these bulwarks against authoritarianism, because by solving problems like addressing climate change addressing migration, the mayor of Bogota was there and she was talking about the 500,000 new Bogotanos that are now living in Bogota, you know, at the local level I do see, I do see hope. That is true. Yeah, that is that is true. I will say that that I would say that there are good things happening in terms of state and public administration reform we can see many specific experiences at the local level, I will say that we have many examples there. And also, there are very positive developments in terms of using digital technologies to better deliver public services in terms of more transparency more efficiency less cost to the people. I will say that there are some efforts there that should be encouraged by regional institutions, etc. My concern is, is about reforming the political system. Nothing is being discussed seriously. It seems to be that it is prohibited in the region to speak about something different than the presidential system. And, and what is happening that we are trying with two kinds of responses. One is more hyper presidentialism, because for many people, that is the best way to resolve the limitations that we have in terms of democratic governance so let's give power to one strong man so he will be able to resolve everything. And let's put all the powers in his hands. And we, we can see what is happening with this kind of responses but that is one of the responses that is being tried in some in some countries and the other kind of response is from meditation. All electoral reforms and political reforms. They are positively aimed at encouraging more participation, but the final results is a diminished governments governance because we are fermenting the political representation. The thing is between there is nothing now reasonable being thought about what to do in terms of political reform and for me that is probably the most critical issue. We all agree and what we're saying, perhaps it's a different angle that we take. We're trying to make the point that we do have an electoral democracy, and that we have solves a historical problem that the only path to access power is through elections. And nowadays we don't have right wing military coup or left wing gorillas. So it's through elections that we access power. Because of that there has been political stability in the last four years, and today we're better off than we were 40 years ago. This is my point. Now, I understand that there is a sense of ambiguity and complexity in what is taking place in the region and worldwide. Perhaps we can borrow from Dickens his metaphor. It was the best of times it was the worst of times. And I think this is for Latin America and for the rest of the world. So what will be our challenges nowadays. I would say yes, we need to strengthen the rule of law. Absolutely. We need to have an independent judiciary. Yes. But if you look at the polls today. What are the people really thinking about the three major issues that are impacting citizens in Latin America. Number one, the cost of living. Now this is today. Secondly, unemployment. Third, crime and violence. There are many many issues. Of course, there are some other issues there is a crisis of confidence that we've talked about and we know that is true. Political parties, the traditional political parties are just disappearing. And we have new political parties that are coming to the fore. In the last two elections, Costa Rica, something that you know, much better than me, the ruling party came in third was unable to participate in the runoff. In Colombia, the ruling party and the third was not able to go to the second round. So there is a problem with political parties with parliaments. There's a problem with democratic institutions. They're not up to people's expectations. They're not functioning. So there is a need to have political reform. But also is, you know, having political reform in theory is, I mean, is being able to really deliver to people's needs and expectations. This is a problem that we see. You take the police, for example, and this is part of Miguel is success in El Salvador, because he understood he has understood that through traditional institutional channels, many problems are not solved. You have these gangs. Had to call it that. That's matters. That's matters. Well, cool, terrible. They, they hijack people. They, they, you know, what happens. Bukele comes in. He is very has, he has a hard line policy against them. He gels them. And it denies them launch. I'm not going to be launched today because you have behavior that people applaud that that's the way you should go. The argument that these violent gang members should be respected in the human rights people respond yes but how about the victims. These guys are now respecting the victims human rights away should we respect them. So this rhetoric, this new way of dealing with problems which is out of traditional institutional channels is having a reception it's being considered as an alternative to what we have done traditionally. Right. You look at the problem of drug trafficking, most likely military and police are participating in drug trafficking and arms trafficking. Now, if you engage the police in being rewarded with part of what have been taken away from the drug dealers. You create some sort of a reward some stimulus to them, they might be able to have a different way of behaving towards the problem. But if they earn $500 a month this is your salary for a police captain $500 a month. And the drug dealers are giving him to $2 million. What do you expect. He says as a as a game changer for him as it changes his way of life. So we have to look at it from, I would say, innovative ways. No, we have to look at what has been put in place for the last 40 years has not worked out in terms of institutions. So we have to think out of box, being innovative, bring new fresh ideas in order to solve these problems. This is what I think about the institutions now. As you see the cost of living unemployment. This is the problem today, but it's also about having access to water supply is having access to electricity, having access to an education quality education. These are the main problems access to a health care system that can really deliver. So we have an agenda of problems that have been from the past that has not been able to be solved yet. But at the same time we're being challenged with robotics and artificial intelligence and algorithms and all this new stuff, which is a 21st century. So we're trapped, not solving problems of the past and being challenged by problems of the future. I think that we need to change our economic and social model of development. It has been has been successful for for 40 years. It doesn't guarantee is going to be successful in the future. We have a labor intensive economic development system. Extractive industries in South America. But at the same time there's a widening gap between the developed world and the under the auto developing world. In terms of technologies, as you said before, the digital we don't have digital markets in Latin America. Not enough, I would say we don't have a Latin American Amazon, not even local, not even local do we have e commerce developed in our in our countries. So we need to move forward into a more capital intensive, technologically driven economic model, combining with the rest we have to solve the problems of quality of education access to water supply but at the same time, we need to move forward in terms of digital technologies for education for agriculture production for health care, because if we do not do that we are only passive consumers of high tech. We need to create new products and services, more value added with the use of technology. I think this is the road for the future in Latin America. We need to move forward. So it is, yes, political reform, institutional reforms, but also a new sustainable economic and social model that looks into the future. Last comment before I open for questions. Look, it two points. I mean one about a how several of these issues are interconnected. And, and I'll give you one concrete example. The question of the fragmentation of party systems and apparent lack of willingness to engage in a serious effort to to pursue political reform. This creates a very perverse incentive for corruption. I mean, if you're the president of Brazil. You have to deal with a Congress were 30 plus party systems are represented constructing a workable majority to push forward a reform agenda is an impossible task. There are many ways to build such a majority. One of them is by purchasing it. That's exactly what has happened in Brazil repeatedly. So you see how a problem of institutional design feeds into corruption. So that's one point. The second point is about what President Fernandez has just said, the, this apparent disconnect between the, the need to pursue political reform, and the more topical issues that are affecting our lives. And this disconnect is very true. I mean political reform is not a, is it is not a sexy issue I mean it's not a vote winner anywhere. And this is a case, yet where the urgent trumps the important. If we don't engage in serious political reform, we will not be able to solve all the other issues. At any moment we have to be able to walk and Twitter the same time. Right. I mean we have to be able to solve to address some of the more urgent issues, but we need to engage in the long term political reform that we so sorely need. And, and the trick here, I would think, and is a is a is a major feat of political leadership that is needed is how to connect in the discourse, how to connect political reform to people's will be. That's the trick, and it's not an easy one to pull off, but it's an essential one in the current situation in Latin America. Okay, you have all been incredibly patient. We're going to now move to the Q amp a from the floor. Also, the people watching us online to the chat. We have to help us here and not failure and Senisa will take the mic to you. Can you please identify yourself. What we start with Vicky and then Max, please identify yourselves and ask your questions. Hello to everyone here and thank you so much for such an fascinating conversations on Victoria John chain from the University of Southern California. I have many questions but I'm going to zero it in one in particular just because it's circling back to the comments that particularly President Fernandez and Mr Casa Samora made about digital media technology I think you hinted at it but my question goes to. What role do you think technology has to enhance or weaken democracy in the region because we have colliding effects. On the one hand, we have the usage of technology right in which citizens use it to participate and I think that goes to the point of President with projects in the society so that's great because it enhances democratic behavior. On the other hand, you also have the uses of technology, and you mentioned Bukele many times, who is extremely savvy in managing information and calling himself. I am the coolest dictator in the world right and when he was candidate. It actually help him to gain popularity. So attached to that. So as leaders as organizations and as we talk about reforms and communication because technology is for dissemination but it's also to access information how do we make sure and ensure right that there's also not this information. And that you can also show that democracy is delivering. I know this and unfair question is convoluted is a lot, but I'm curious how you as leaders as leaders of different organizations can see that because again, I think President Fernandez made the point. In the first century, we have a new generation, right that wants to see democracy work. But how do you also communicate that in such a way that speaks to everyone's interest, and also speaks to everyone's way in accessing information, because it's not the same as some decades ago. Thank you. Thank you panelists. I just want to put some some elements, but I will be sure that my colleagues will add to this reflection. I was part of a global commission on digital technologies and democracy. And there was a very interesting conclusion about that. Yes, technologies have a very important role to play in the quality of public debate and that that was mentioned by, by, by Luis. That usually when those technologies are used in a, in an environment which is characterized previously by polarized media, as it is the case in the United States, for example, that that media existed before on social media. So when you have those kind of conditions polarized environments, high distrust levels to elites. Illiteracy in general, not only digital illiteracy mean deficits of education. Okay, so what you will find is that digital technologies, most probably will incentivize the worst of the society. So, I mentioned this because it is very common to blame digital technologies for all the problems that we already have in our societies and in our political systems, and also to blame them for the false of mediocre leadership that we are having is, if you have a leader who doesn't mind how he is talking to his people, come on, I mean politics is about educated and the people. So you will never change anything with this kind of leaders. So in certain way, I say this because of course I think that there is a role for social media. At that time we recommended actions at different levels first. The technological platforms needed to adopt many kind of ethical codes they needed to make some changes in the designing of the algorithm seems they needed to better moderate the content of in some cases we discuss about the business model to so there are many things happening in that side. I will also say that there is a challenge of regulation. If you ask me, my preferred model is Europe. I don't like the way the United States is working with that, because among other things, it is impossible to follow the example of the United States when you belong to a small economy. So in our countries, for example, we, I mean, we don't have any possibility to negotiate with the big platforms. So the only way will be collectively. And that is a problem because I don't remember Latin America as divided as it is today we are unable to bring together our governments for anything in trying to coordinate any kind of policy. But the only way for those countries will be coming together to try to negotiate with the digital platforms or or try to encourage the United Nations to adopt certain kind of, of instruments. And finally, we strongly recommend it to invest in people in education in in in literacy and in in encouraging the public debate in civic education. So if you bring those elements together is probably you will you will find something different now, a final final word. So today I had meetings with the Nicaraguans with the Venezuelans with the Cubans, those who are suffering the effects of those dictatorships. And for them, digital technologies is the way through which they have been able to organize themselves to raise their voices to denounce the abuses. So let's be careful because whenever we try to control social media or to to put the power to control social media in some authorities in some governments, we can end up with a worse result. Anybody else want to add. Yeah, I would like to add to what Laura has said. Here's a bright side in a dark side in the use of technologies. And the bright side is just what Laura has said, you know, you empower sectors of society to delivery struggle against authoritarianism against dictatorships, etc. Now there's also a dark side to all this. We know that bots are used. And that can somehow. Create a false, a false perception of what reality is all about fake news, the ideal fake news of misinformation disinformation, which is more than traditional propaganda, we can all identify propaganda. But when you're using bots and algorithms, and you create messages that become viral. And people think that this is public opinion trend that is dominating and it's not true. You create a problem. And I think democracy is being challenged by these types of, of, of misuse of technology, you know, to create a false public opinion, create followers in those opinion trends and eliminate people from, you know, following up on what good measures should be in order to strengthen democracy and move forward. So I would say, I look at technology, you're looking at it from a political perspective, how can social media be used. We all understand is a revolution for the first time you have interactive communication worldwide, simultaneously, you know. But I also look at it from a social economic standpoint. I think our country's Latin America needs to move forward in terms of manufacturing goods and services, more value added with the use of technology. Right. And I think, in order to do that we need more. More, I would say, tight link with the US system. I think connecting in our case I always see Florida, because of our geographical proximity connecting Latin American countries with Florida the four state in the union with technological development. In anything that has to do with hardware and software, I would say, hardware assembling if we can have businesses in Latin America that can begin with like high tech, like assembling hardware computers, but also doing hardware development, developing apps for mobile phones, we can do, we can train our youth in doing this in Costa Rica, you have Intel since many years ago. In the Dominican Republic we created a Santa Domingo cyber park, which is supposed to be a high tech corridor. We created a technological Institute of the Americas we have trained over 50,000 youngsters who are capable in different areas of technology so it's connecting. And it's, you know, it's being part of a more broad process is not only Latin America we have to link to the rest of the world. And this is linking more to the US to the US system, which leads worldwide in terms of high tech development. So, I see it from a political standpoint, but also from a socio economic development standpoint. So we take a question from max Sophia. Thank you very much, Professor. use the phrase horizontal accountability. I'd like to sort of pursue that theme a little bit in political science we make a distinction between vertical accountability, accountability of the mic. Is it, is it okay. Is that the issue. I'd stand up. Thank you. Yeah, okay. So, so in political science we often make a distinction between vertical accountability the accountability of elected leaders to citizens through parties and mechanisms of representation versus horizontal accountability which you mentioned the accountability of agencies of government, one to the other separation powers checking balances human rights on this person's offices and that sort of thing. And high quality democracies tend to score high on both dimensions. What's really striking if you look at the data on Latin America, in particular over the last decade is that there's, there are no cases in the region where you see simultaneously the improvement on both dimensions. In two cases, we see the deterioration in both dimensions that stick Rockwell and Venezuela, but mostly what we see in the region is either improvements in vertical accountability, or improvements in horizontal accountability, but not both it seems as if we get leaders who are have powerful parties and movements behind them to which they're to some degree accountable, but who behave in ways that undermine horizontal accountability or checks and balances or we get leaders who respect the constitutional rules of the game, and, and very quickly see the erosion of their popularity to become very unpopular. And, and, and there's a sort of a sense that they're not delivering. Why is it in your view, I have my own theories but I'd love to hear any reflections you might have on why it is that simultaneous improvements in both dimensions of accountability seem to be so This is Max Cameron from Professor University of British Columbia. So, I think so vertical accountability is right the that's where the elections come in fair and free elections. And I would agree with what President Fernandez has said about the progress we've made when it comes to vertical accountability with exceptions like the ones that you, you called out but I think that the erosion of horizontal accountability that started began a long time ago I mean we saw it in the 90s in a country like Argentina under Carlos men and I'm just, if this is where there was like this deliberate erosion of these agencies of horizontal accountability, the courts are an obvious one, but the ones that you mentioned as well where you know the Congress is supposed to be a horizontal accountability but we see that, you know, in under hyper presidential systems, Congress also disappears as an agency of accountability. So, you know, my, my greatest concern is, is about these agencies of accountability and that's, you know, I thought that's why I was so struck by this idea of looking at a budget and seeing how much of it is going to strengthen horizontal accountability is a horizontal accountability because my guess is a steadily decreased over time in the region vice vice these I guess I think he framed it as a more autocratic agencies like the military but I think when we're thinking about the rule of law when we're thinking about liberal democracy anything beyond electoral democracy. These agencies are are are critical and I think that I really appreciate their question because it's what we should be focusing on. That's one heck of a question. Right. I mean, I guess the obvious answer is a fairly banal one well because these things are difficult. Right. And that's why you don't. Easy to advance on both both fronts but I'll give you a slightly more sophisticated answer. I think a. I think that sequencing in the process of building a democratic system matters a lot. And what I'm thinking about here is that when you take. And I'm going to paint here with a broad brush, right. When you take democracies in the northern Atlantic. Plus, you know, the Australia's and New Zealand's that are, you know, similar in many ways. Those places had rule of law before they had democracy and before they had universal suffrage in particular. Right. In Latin America we're trying to build democratic systems the other way around. So we have the electoral side of democracy recently well consolidated and we definitely have universal suffrage. But we don't have rule of law, and the, and the problem is that the political pressures that dominate the electoral side of democracy. And the social demands that are channeled that way, very often work at cross purposes with the, with the notion of strengthening horizontal accountability. With the notion that you need to create checks and balances that are worthy of that neck. So it, how do you get out of that I don't know because you know we were dealt the the hand we were dealt right when when democracy came about in Latin America. But I'm just trying to say that the way in which we are trying to build democratic systems in in Latin America presents particular challenges. And, you know, I never failed to remember when we have these discussions the, the quip a altered by by former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown when, you know, they were talking about rule of rule of law issues and he said something to the effect Well, you know when it comes to, when it comes to the rule of law to building the rule of law, you have to know that the first 500 years are the hardest ones. Right. Well, that's the way this works. I mean this this kind of thing. It doesn't happen overnight and and it will take generations for Latin America to build decent horizontal accountability institutions I think I saw a hand at that table at that table we have pretty little time so we'll take both questions together and you want to start there and then at that table. Hello, I'm Kelvin, I'm from Nicaragua I just came to the US the last year under a full board scholarship. Also I do electrical engineering so I don't have a political background we still like these topics. And I think that under the discussion that you had I think it's true that Latin America has moved in terms of democracy. We don't see it as a possibility now we see it as a challenge. But they're based on my experience I see a phenomena going on on Latin America that is related to the transfer of power. Whenever it comes that we go from one party to another one after a successful election, I see that the direction of the government changes a lot. And as we're talking now about rule of power that takes time. And sometimes these situations come and politicians, not democratic ones take advantage and they ask for more time on the power. So my first question under that is how this phenomenon of trunk of power can be tackled so that we can create more sustainable development in our countries. And under this context, I want to bring also, and the other phenomena that is happening especially on, on Nicaragua that the rule of law is not being damaged, we just changed the law. Yeah, and under this topic I want to bring on to the table, the topic of reelections what's your opinion about reelections. Thank you very much. Can we take the question from that table please. Please stand up. Hello, my name is Carmen Williams. I am from the Dominican Republic. And my question goes to. We know that today's society is not the same as it was 20 years ago. Today's society is more based on results. So, from your perspective, since Miss President Chinchilla mentioned that we have now. We need to retrieve trust for institutions. How, how would you, what is your advice for us to gain and retrieve people to trust institutions in order to strengthen democracy in America. Thank you very much. So we have those two last questions we have about five minutes. You have another of these guys stand up. Okay, my name is Maximo Lovingas I'm from the Dominican Republic. And it is a pleasure for me here being here in front of you. And I want to ask a question that I think that hasn't been addressed for me the question is democracy, democracy, excuse me, it's not a thing that's just election day is a thing that is continuous that is previous election day and continuous every day in our lives. And I want to ask, what do you think is the role of political parties in the protection of democracy. How can they avoid the rise of authoritarian leaders because we know that they've no, no longer come with coops. How can we avoid that current wave of polarization. Thank you. Thank you very much. So, last, last comment from the panel. I'll go first, you know, I'll take the question on political parties because is one that has entertained my mind for for a while. As you're about to see a, you know, in incarnations, I've been attending discussions about a political parties for probably 25 years, right. It's an academic as a active politician, you know, wearing different hats. And the only one of those discussions ended up with everyone with a very serious face, including myself, saying, we have to strengthen political parties because they are essential for democracy. And that's true. The problem is that after 25 years of repeating that mantra, we have nothing to show for it. The credibility of political parties is in patterns in Latin America and beyond. So it raises very interesting questions as to whether we are just flogging that horse. It might be that political parties the way we understand them to be. They may be a 20th century creatures. The future of political representation lies elsewhere. And I cannot provide an answer that I mean that's beyond my pay grade. You know, I, I haven't gotten there, you know, in terms of my, of my answer I mean what can replace political parties, I don't know, I strongly suspect that part of the answer is through this, and that we haven't been able to figure this one out and certainly political parties have been have not been able to figure a useful way, a viable way to establish a connection, a connection with citizens through digital politics. But is a, is a, is a complicated question. I mean, I, I would love to think that we have some kind of magic wand that will allow us to strengthen political parties, but I'm very much afraid that we don't. You asked me where I would start with an agenda to strengthen political parties I honestly I wouldn't know where where to start I mean the credibility is so low. So I, you know that the action point that flows from this is one for both academia and think tanks and and other people that work on this issues to think more systematic about the future of political representation I don't think we have. A devoted enough systematic attention to that issue. Thank you. Thank you, anybody. I will tell you one about trust and Leonel says he will take the one about religion. I prefer to give you one example, when I was president, there were people elected me. Basically, based on two major concerns. One was security, and the other was infrastructure. Okay, so we needed to do something very seriously about those two areas because you know that was my commitment with the people. And, and I tried to different approaches, just because in one case I knew that we had the kind of personal bureaucracy institutional framework to do it. And in the other because yes, it was quite different. So in security, our approach was to involve the people since the beginning, we decided, for example, to measure the problem to stay this baseline, consulting the people and national consultation we went to the communities we look for the different sectors. You know it was something really very open and democratic. And once that we had a kind of diagnosis, of course, we also were working with, with the robust data, no don't many indicators. But we basically said, the opinion of the people counts in this issue, because security is something that takes place at the local level, I mean the crime is is local, usually. And so we, we, we start doing that. And then we design different responses at the community level that was probably our most important approach mean from the community level, we try to tackle the crime problems and we prepared the police to be able to deal with the communities, because there is a different way to work. They have to learn how to relate with the people because it is not only about listening to people is also about taking decisions in the same table with them, establishing the priorities, about how you know they are performing, etc, etc. The other area was infrastructure and infrastructure was a totally different approach because it was almost impossible to do it differently. Because the institutional framework is accustomed to work in a very close and obscure manner in a very vertical kind of format. And it was almost impossible to speak about, you know, it facilitated the participation and opening the process. So the people could know what was happening. And so what happened there when insecurity was succeeded. We do not only achieve our goals, but the people were very happy about the results in infrastructure. It was a nightmare. It was a totally nightmare, because everybody was suspicious. If there were corruption behind the contracts, because since we didn't consult the people didn't want the road to, you know, to affect, for example, the environment, or some communities, etc, etc. So what I say is that we have the keys about how to be trust with citizens. And for me, there is no other way than be transparent, be accountable. And the only way to do it is building the means, the institutional means, the venues, the mechanisms for the people to be part of the process. Well, I'll try to respond to some of the questions that have been raised in a very broad sense, beginning with you. All right. Political parties. I think there is a crisis of confidence to institutions, including political parties in Latin America, but also worldwide. I think here in the States, there is a conversation about the role of political parties. There is, there is a debate in Europe. And then you had two parties, and now you have four or five parties. In France, two parties were leading since the end of World War II. The Golistas and the Socialist Party. And now you have the party led by President Macron that was just founded five years ago. And when you look, parties are going through difficult times, but new parties are emerging. It is the old parties that are disappearing and new parties are emerging. Right. And it's happening in Latin America so we cannot look at it in an isolated way, as if it is something that is happening only in Latin America, the world is in turmoil. There is an ethical crisis. And I think one crisis that we tend to kind of not not take account of is there is an ethical crisis. There's an ethical crisis and everything. There's an ethical crisis in politics. There's an ethical crisis in the media. There's an ethical crisis in digital media and social media. There's an ethical crisis everywhere and ethical crisis that we have to meet in order to regain confidence. The lack of confidence is because people see that political leaders are benefiting from the system, while everybody else is struggling. So corruption has a lot to do with that. If people see that a political leader comes into power and he enriches himself pretty fast. And the rest of the people are still lacking, you know, the solution of basic needs. Well, there is a disconnect between political parties political leaders and the rest of the population. So we have to address the ethical issue as a core issue in order to regain confidence for democracy. We have to train the new young leaders that come to the parties in the meaning of morality of ethical and and and being always accountable to the people horizontally or vertically, whatever, but you must respond to the people trust in you to lead their future. I do believe, Kevin, in that political parties have a future is the only way that you can really organize the people and mobilize the people through social media. You can, in a way, connect, you communicate, and somehow you mobilize, but these mobilizations have always been leaderless, and they end up in nothing. The best example is Arab Spring. I mean, you had, you had uprisings in Egypt uprisings in Syria everywhere, but they lack leadership, because leadership comes through political parties. And the thing about political parties is that they are organized in the territory. So in each state in each province in each territorial unit you have people that are being organized and mobilized according to the parties philosophy ideology and political objectives. The only way you can really permanently mobilize is through an organization and that is a political party. Now political parties need to go through changes also, and they are, and they are. I founded a new party just two years ago. It's called in Spanish, La Forza del Pueblo. In English, you would say the force of the people, it's very difficult to translate and really have the spiritual meaning that it has in Spanish. Okay. In just the power or people's power, people's power. Okay, in just two years, we have registered 1.5 million Dominican citizens. And Paul said we're taking yesterday in Dominican Republic, the incumbent president's 38% of intention of the vote for the 2024 elections. I have 36, just two years building a new party, because our previous party split the Dominican Liberation Party. And the reason it split is because the dominant leadership at the time, the incumbent president at the time didn't understand something that worries you. He didn't understand the limits of power. Power has limits. And in democracy, the limits are the rule of law. There are rules for everything you play by the you play the game according to rules. When you shoot it to point if you shoot from far away is three points. Right. And that's the way it should be in politics you were elected for four years according to the Constitution you respect that. You can't go over the Constitution and stay in power forever, you can, and you cannot change the Constitution in order to stay in power, because that that would be unethical. You should you're supposed to legislate in favor of the people not for yourself, not for self benefit. It doesn't work that way. So I think, you know, creating this consciousness that there is a limit to power that you must play the game according to the rules you accepted. And that's why I would say the future of a sustainable democratic system. Now about reelection and I would I said I should respond to that. Well, I think that reelection is not bad per se. The people make a decision. If President Biden is doing doing a good job the people reelect them for a second term. Now, the US system originally didn't establish that it was two terms. It could be forever President Franklin Delano Rose was elected four times. And it was after him that an amendment within the Constitution the US Constitution established two terms. But this is what this is a decision made by the American people for its delegates in Congress. We should understand that no political system is universal. We're celebrating Queen Elizabeth 70th anniversary in power as the Queen of Britain right nobody's questioning that 70 years in power. She was never like that. She is the head of state of the UK. The Pope. Well, the Pope is I would say the Vatican is a state that the Pope is elected for life. Nobody questions that not even God is questioned in that right. So it all depends my belief though is this. You can have a system in Latin America would say this, or you could be enable you're unable to be elected for two terms. Like the one term if you're doing well well the citizens will decide if you stay in power or not. Skip a third term. You may be able to come back again. Now what is the difference. The problem is, if you are in power, you tend to use the tools of power to stay in power. But if you have to step down and come from below. I mean, it's democratic you're participating just as someone else. Now why do I believe in this, because democracy in the region is still fragile is still young is not 500 years old as Gordon Brown would say is just 40 years old. Democracy in Latin America still is in its infancy and leadership comes through experience. It comes through hard work, it comes through failure, it comes through, you know, standing up again after you've been knocked down, and you learn that through live you learn that through experience. So depriving the possibility of having someone with experience with democratic values to come back again, but coming from below, not from above. I think it's a possibility. And it's a decision countries will have to make. In our case in the Dominican Republic we've had we have had everything. We have we have had indefinite reelection Balagar. So he was president seven times, seven times, he was blind 90 years old and still leading the country. And now he's a legend she's become a legend in the Dominican Republic and in Latin America. See, after that we amended the Constitution it was one when I was elected for the first time in 1996. Don't think I'm part of a museum right back in 1996 it was elected for the first time. I was not able to get reelected for a second consecutive term, because the Constitution banned that. This successor amended the Constitution for two consecutive terms. When he was trying to get reelected he lost I came back into office in 2004 so I benefited from his reform and was able to get to consecutive terms 2004 2008 2012. The Constitution then was amended again to come back to one, one term at a time one term and you have to skip the second term. This is where President Medina made an amendment. He amended the Constitution to have two terms. He wanted to amend it again to have three terms. And this is where we split. So I'm able by the Constitution to come back again for two terms that will be definitely unless we amend the Constitution again which is something I play some money that I will not do if I get back into office. Okay, so this is the way to have this is the mechanism which has worked in the Dominican Republic now. Okay. Briefly, what was your question? I think I answered that. I think I answered that. And you. I think I answered that too. I think it's an ethical question. Okay. Rebecca, you're the last one. Okay, I'll make this very brief because I know I'm standing in the way of lunch but I think I really love the way you framed it by saying that democracy doesn't stop after the election and then it's every day you work on it I thought I really appreciated that. And really quickly on reelection. I agree that the number of terms doesn't necessarily matter so Mexico for instance has a usurp for a six annual. For many years, Mexico was undemocratic because the, the president had that it also and he could pick his, his next president so even though there was a certain term limit it was far from a democracy. I think what's worrisome is the trend. And this is not the case in Dominican Republic, I want to say is is when a leader immense the Constitution when he's in power to stay in power oftentimes indefinitely. And that's why I think the agencies are of course on accountability or what we should be focusing on when, which is part of the rule of law, because that's what enables an dominant executive or a hyper president to to to. So it comes from the right and the left right it's not just leftist or presidents from the right that do this. But it's almost like there's been a playbook created. And, and presidents are learning from one another how to do this. I'll leave it at that. Thank you. Thank you very much. This concludes the panel. If things have gone according to plan, we should have lunchboxes outside so I invite you all to continue the conversation outside. If you have some way to go, you can take the lunchbox with you. I'd just like to conclude by thanking the panel for an incurably substantive discussion. Thank you all and please join me.