Title: The State of Democracy in Latin America
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The State of Democracy in Latin America
Youth and Democracy
End of an era: opportunities and challenges
A new debate: the quality of democracy
My opinion
Daniel Zovatto
Former Brookings Expert
Director for Latin America and the Caribbean - International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance

Content: Moreover many nominal democracies have slid towards autocracies maintaining an external democratic appearance through elections which lack, however, the rights and institutions that support their democratic claim. Latin America today is radically different from what it was only three and a half decades ago. Despite all of its faults, democracy is the most common type of government practiced in the region, although it with a high degree of heterogeneity. Today we have more consolidated democracies, more and better social protection policies and stronger and more integrated economies. During the last decade, 60 million people escaped poverty, expanding the middle class by more than 50 percent. The great challenge is now how to keep progressing and how to make this progress sustainable in a volatile global environment, full of challenges and uncertainties. However, Latin America is a paradox: it is the only region in the world that combines democratic regimes in almost all countries with large sectors of their populations living below the poverty line (27.9 percent for 2013, according to ECLAC), the most uneven economic distribution in the world, high levels of corruption and the highest homicide rate in the world. Nowhere else in the world is democracy shaped by such an unusual combination of factors. It is a fact that our democracies exhibit important deficits and symptoms of fragility.