#143 The Breakdown of Democracy in Uruguay: Alternative Political Models

By Charlie G. Gillespie

From the Introduction

The breakdown of democracy in Uruguay--a process that culminated in the closure of the National Assembly in June 1973--has been rather neglected by political scientists. This paper provides a brief chronology of the events marking the process of breakdown and then sets out five perspectives on the salient features of the crisis 1968-1973, and its antecedents over the previous decade. Many of these merely treat the same problems from different angles. Thus the natural consequence of the prolonged economic crisis--(falling real national income per capita, mounting foreign debt, financial instability, and periods of inflation in excess of 100 percent per year)--was a labor and industrial relations crisis--(increasing union militancy, waves of strikes and mobilizations by workers). Linked to these processes (albeit more loosely) was the process of radicalization in politics which was often described by conservatives and the military as "ideological contamination." The counterpart of this radicalization on the left was the use of ever more extreme measures of state coercion and repression which, from the presidency of Pacheco Areco onwards, began to erode civil liberties and the constitutional order. The left denounced such practices as "Fascism," while liberals saw the "Latin Americanization" of Uruguay, particularly with respect to the expansion of the military and its increasing political interference. It would be wrong, however, to see the growth of extremist ideologies (whether Castroist or reactionary) as an "alien invasion." To see them as such is to ignore the changing condition of Uruguay which made political actors more receptive to such currents, and produced the brutal confrontation of terrorists with the security forces.

It is the ambition of this paper to go beyond these predominantly descriptive perspectives to attempt a deeper explanation of the causes of the breakdown. For this reason I subsequently discuss four models of Uruguayan politics which have been used to explain the structural failure of the democratic system. They are the "Traditionalist," "Corporatist," "Patronage," and "State-Autonomy" models. The conclusion of my analysis is that none of these is upheld by available evidence considered in isolation. At the same time it is suggested that the recasting of the latter two into a single hybrid makes a truer account of the origins of the democratic breakdown possible. Finally, I shall explore certain propositions elaborated by Claus Offe as to the relationship between Liberal Democracy and Keynesian welfare states--both in stability and crisis.