The COVID-19 Emergency and Instability in Latin America

Abstract

The standard story is that emergencies are dangerous because they centralize power in the executive, undermining checks on power, allow for abuses of rights, and potentially erode the democratic order. Scholars have long wrestled with how to design emergency powers so as to avoid these pitfalls, and Latin Americanists have a deep historical familiarity with the abuses posed under the guise of suppressing emergencies. Yet the experience of many Latin American countries during the COVID pandemic belies the standard story. While presidents in a few countries (such as Mexico and Venezuela) did indeed seem to use the pandemic to centralize power in anti-democratic ways, in many countries presidential governance was extremely difficult, with weak, embattled presidents contending with waves of instability. Rather than accruing power, in other words, presidents in a number of countries across the region were merely trying to hold on to it. Consider, for example, that Peru saw two pandemic-era impeachments and a resignation, Ecuador a narrowly-survived impeachment attempt in the midst of mass protests, Chile a failed attempt to rewrite a constitution, and Colombia a series of escalating protests that forced the incumbent president to make a u-turn on austere economic policy.

Why has experience across the region been so discordant with theoretical expectations about political behavior during emergencies? First, many countries in the region were facing instability before the pandemic occurred, so COVID added governance challenges during already-difficult periods. Second, as Versteeg and Ginsburg have pointed out, emergencies come in different flavors, and the last round of theorizing (which was based largely on the post-9/11 context) may be less applicable to the distinct patterns of politics caused by the pandemic. And third, as emphasized in this brief chapter, the pandemic itself, and the many restrictions imposed by governments in response to it, had devastating economic effects on already-fragile and patchy economies and social safety nets. Inflation spiked, while GDP contracted and unemployment and poverty rates increased sharply. In Europe and the United States, governments responded to these challenges in unprecedented ways, creating new temporary or permanent programs and expanding new ones. But across most of Latin America, the response was much less adequate. Governments across the region were not able to figure out adequate responses to the economic side of the emergency, and this in turn fed many of the protests and other forms of instability seen throughout the region.

Keywords: pandemic, emergency powers, Latin American constitutionalism