Authoritarian Personalism, Parties, and Democratic Erosion in Central America

• In Event: Learning from Global Democratic Challenges and Innovations Mini-Conference III: Democracy, Dictatorship, and Democratic Backsliding in Central America

Abstract

When authoritarian-minded personalist politicians seek power in electoral democracies, how do they use political parties? Some personalists seek to gain control of an existing political party to turn it towards their interests, acting as caudillos who push out opponents and centralize the party around themselves. Other personalists develop their own party and use populist, anti-establishment appeals to break through the control of established political elites and take power. Once in office, caudillos and populists both seek to erode democratic institutions and norms to aggrandize executive power, but is the way they use parties different? We might expect variation, since caudillos may have preexisting party elites to manage and could face legislative challenges, while populists in personalist parties have exercised greater control over the party and its membership, and so may be less susceptible to internal tensions. This paper compares the cases of the caudillo Daniel Ortega and his FSLN party in Nicaragua and populist Nayib Bukele and his Nuevas Ideas party in El Salvador to develop a theory of how personalist political leaders’ use parties in their quest to erode democracy and consolidate authoritarian control. Ortega was a former revolutionary leader in the FSLN who gradually gained influence during the group’s collective rule in the 1980s, becoming first among equals among FSLN commanders. After the FSLN lost power, Ortega set about centralizing the FSLN around himself and later his family. Bukele, by contrast, was initially a politician in the ex-rebel FMLN party, but abandoned it after pushback from party elites, starting Nuevas Ideas and sweeping to power. Bukele has emulated some of Ortega’s democracy-eroding practices, but also forged his own path. Comparing these two cases will illustrate how authoritarian personalists in similar post-conflict Central American settings used parties pursuing unfettered power, and I also assess whether lessons from these cases may generalize elsewhere in Latin America or beyond.

Author

• Kai Massey Thaler, University of California, Santa Barbara