Direct Democracy in Latin America
- written by: Juan Carlos Madroñal, Mas Democracia, Spain.
The last decades of the twentieth century have seen a spectacular advance of Direct Democracy in many countries of Latin America, not only in respect of the numbers of referendums held (which have doubled in each of the last three decades), but also because of the inclusion of several tools of direct democracy in the national constitutions.
This detailed report shows the weaknesses in this apparent advance of democracy. The examples of the bad use of direct democracy in Latin America are not an argument against direct democracy itself, but against a messy design of those mechanisms and against a dishonest use of the tools by the political elites. Very similar examples of bad use can be found in respect of the mechanisms of representative democracy, without this being an argument against it.
