Re-engaging Latin America‘s Left? : US relations with Bolivia and Ecuadorfrom Bush to Obama

When US President Obama took office in January 2009, US relations with Bolivia had reached a historic low. In 2008, Bolivia’s President Evo Morales expelled the US Ambassador, accusing him of meddling in internal affairs. The US government responded by expelling Bolivia’s Ambassador to Washington. In the same year, President George W. Bush “decertified” Bolivia for not cooperating with the US in its counternarcotics efforts, which led to the suspension of US trade preferences for Bolivia. The Bolivian government, for its part, expelled the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). US-Ecuadorian relations, by comparison, may have seemed smooth to the incoming Obama administration. Yet, again in 2008, the Ecuadorian government had broken off diplomatic relations with Colombia, the United States’s most important ally in South America. The US military base in Ecuador was about to be closed in 2009 because Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa had refused to extend a bilateral agreement with the US. In early 2009, Correa expelled two US Embassy officials, accusing them of interfering in internal security affairs. Since their initial election in 2005 and 2006, Morales and Correa have developed friendly relations with Venezuela and Cuba, and increased bilateral cooperation with countries like China, Russia and Iran. Upon assuming office, Obama promised to launch “a new chapter of engagement” with Latin America. This agenda included repairing relations with Bolivia and Ecuador, even if the two countries are relatively minor players in the region. The present report looks at the recent evolution in US relations with Bolivia and Ecuador with a view to both the Bush legacy and the first years of the Obama Administration. Given the broadly perceived failure of Bush’s Freedom Agenda and Obama’s declared goal of shifting from this confrontational approach to a strategy of global re-engagement, one should expect significant change in US policies toward these two countries too. Yet, as this PRIF report argues, the picture is remarkably different: On the one hand, the most important change in US policies toward Latin America had already occurred during the Bush Administration, more precisely in the first year of Bush’s second term (2005). For Bolivia and Ecuador this meant that the US reacted far less confrontationally to the election of Morales (December 2005) and Correa (November 2006) than most observers would have anticipated. US relations with Ecuador have been surprisingly smooth in spite of a series of political changes promoted by Correa that in earlier times very probably would have provoked serious US countermeasures. Even in the Bolivian case where bilateral relations have clearly suffered since the election of Morales, the US refrained from taking an openly confrontational stance, continued cooperation with Bolivia including with the central government, and, in the area of development aid and democracy assistance, showed remarkable flexibility in adapting to the Bolivian government’s demands. On the other hand, there is much more continuity than change in Obama’s policies toward the two countries. So far, the Obama Administration has largely continued the rather pragmatic policies of the later Bush years. In line with Obama’s general change in rhetoric there were some signals of openness for dialogue, especially in regard to Bolivia. But in areas of crucial concern for the Bolivian government, Obama has followed in Bush’s footsteps: He annually “decertified” Bolivia as failing in its counternarcotics policies, which meant Bolivia’s continuing suspension from trade preferences. The ongoing bilateral dialogues with both countries have yet to produce results that would mark a real difference from the Bush era. The present report proceeds as follows: Following overviews of political changes in Bolivia and Ecuador and of recent trends in US policy toward Latin America in general, it analyzes, first, how the US administration led by then President George W. Bush reacted to the election of Morales and Correa, who both openly challenged US interests in the two countries. Second, it looks at the Obama Administration in order to identify changes and continuities in US policy, as well as the implications these had for bilateral relations with the two countries. The report is mainly about empirically analyzing the evolution of US policies toward Bolivia and Ecuador. Yet, the comparative section will also present some tentative explanations that point to two types of limits that characterize contemporary US policies toward Latin America. First, democratically elected governments which are based on broad popular support make it hard for any US government to justify openly confrontational policies – in particular, given a contemporary regional context characterized by strong Latin American support for elected governments. As long as there is general US interest in remaining engaged in a certain country, these circumstances then require the US to be much more flexible and tolerant than US governments in the region have been accustomed to historically. Second, some crucial and almost non-negotiable demands on the part of the US seriously limit this flexibility. In the cases at hand, this holds especially for counternarcotics. It is difficult to say whether Obama would be willing to acknowledge the failure of the “War on Drugs.” Yet, very clearly, he is very much dependent on not provoking resistance in the US Congress by touching on too many contentious issues at the same time. In a more general sense, important voices on Capitol Hill demonstrate that to be “too soft” on Morales would create domestic problems for the administration

The question of self-determination in international democracy promotion

The paper discusses the norm of self-determination as a core element of and a difficult challenge to international democracy promotion. Collective self-determination is part and parcel of the promise of democracy and, hence, of democracy promotion. Yet, at the same time, the idea that political communities should determine themselves clashes with democracy promotion's aim to shape political orders from the outside. Given the scarce attention to the question of self-determination in the academic and political debates about democracy promotion, the paper is mainly of a conceptual and theoretical nature: Its aim is to review the literature on self-determination in order to clarify the concept - or, in fact, the competing concepts - of self-determination and discuss its relation with democracy in general and democracy promotion in particular. The paper (1) shows that the claim to collective self-determination constitutes a common normative denominator between contemporary opponents and supporters of democracy promotion; (2) reviews the range of conceptions of collective self-determination from a maximalist notion of liberal-democratic self-rule to a minimalist understanding of self-determination based on a rather broad notion of popular sovereignty; and (3) discusses implications for democracy promotion understood as the promotion of democratic self-determination

Power in democracy promotion

The international promotion of democracy is about power, but the scholarship on this issue offers little systematic attention to the role and relevance that power might have in this context. This article critically discusses the literature that does explicitly deal with power in democracy promotion and proposes a multidimensional perspective as a way to improve our understanding of the international politics of democracy promotion. First, the typology of power proposed by Barnett and Duvall is applied to systematically conceptualize the power dimension of democracy promotion. Second, the article revisits the two main attempts to theoretically grasp the role and relevance of power in democracy promotion that draw on the Realist concept of relative power and the neo-Gramscian theory of hegemony, respectively. In both cases, the article argues, a multidimensional concept of power is analytically useful, as it enables an understanding of the complex nature of democracy promotion that goes beyond interstate relations and includes the attempt to change the very constitution of the recipient or target country from within

The political economy of post-neoliberalism in Bolivia: policies, elites, and the MAS government

With the ebbing of the pink tide, the MAS government in Bolivia remains as one of the most successful leftist governments that had been elected throughout Latin America since the late 1990s. In order to better understand this surprising success story, this paper analyses the political economy of the post-neoliberal model that has taken shape under MAS rule. More specifically, it looks at the interaction between the strategic orientation and the specific features of economic policy-making in Bolivia, on the one hand, and the evolving relationship of the MAS government with the country’s economic elites, on the other. The paper argues that Bolivia’s specific version of post-neoliberalism has facilitated increasingly cooperative relations between the government and economic elites, while the latter have themselves contributed to the consolidation of the former. At the same time, the analysis of the political economy of Bolivian post-neoliberalism also reveals its inherent fragility

What Do We Know about Struggles over Neoliberal Reforms? The Political Economy and the Contentious Politics of Stabilization and Structural Adjustment in Latin America and beyond

Das vorliegende PRIF Working Paper sichtet und analysiert die Forschung zur politischen Ökonomie makroökonomischer Stabilisierung und neoliberaler Strukturanpassung mit Fokus auf die Erfahrungen Lateinamerikas in den 1980er und frühen 1990er Jahren. Das Arbeitspapier diskutiert Kontroversen, Argumente und Erkenntnisse zu einer Reihe von Schlüsselfragen: der Rolle des Regimetyps (demokratisch versus autoritär) für die Einleitung und Umsetzung von Wirtschaftsreformen; dem Zusammenspiel zwischen der Auseinandersetzung um Wirtschaftsreformen und politischen Transformationsprozessen; der Bedeutung internationaler Akteure und Faktoren; der Rolle innerstaatlicher Strukturen und Akteure; der Dynamik internationaler Verhandlungen über Wirtschaftsreformen; sowie den Ursachen, Merkmalen und Folgen von "IWF-Unruhen" und "Austeritätsprotesten". Ziel des Papiers ist es nicht, ein kohärentes Set an Erkenntnissen zu präsentieren. Es gibt vielmehr einen Überblick über eine so breite wie heterogene Forschung, die eine Vielzahl von Einsichten, Ideen und offenen Fragen hervorgebracht hat, die bei der Untersuchung aktueller Auseinandersetzungen um Wirtschaftsreformen zu berücksichtigen sind.This PRIF Working Paper reviews and discusses the scholarship on the political economy of macroeconomic stabilization and neoliberal structural adjustment, focusing on Latin American experiences during the 1980s and early 1990s. It discusses controversies, arguments and findings on a couple of key issues: the role of regime type (democratic versus authoritarian) for the adoption and implementation of economic reforms; the interplay of economic reform struggles and processes of political transformation; the relevance of international forces and factors; the role of domestic structures and actors; the dynamics of international negotiations over economic reforms; as well as the causes, characteristics and consequences of "IMF riots" and "austerity protests". The aim of the paper is not to present a coherent set of findings but rather to give an overview of a literature that has produced a diverse range of insights, ideas and open questions that are helpful to take into consideration when studying contemporary dynamics of economic reform struggles

Postliberal democracy emerging? A conceptual proposal and the case of Bolivia

Recent political changes across Latin America that challenge mainstream conceptions of liberal democracy have led to speculation about some kind of postliberal democracy possibly emerging in the region. Up to now, however, a systematic assessment of this proposition is lacking, as is an explicit conception of postliberal democracy. In order to contribute to filling this research gap, the present paper proposes a conceptual framework for analyzing political change towards postliberal democracy, in Latin America and beyond, and probes the plausibility of this framework in a case study on Bolivia. It argues that the concept of postliberal democracy indeed helps us understand the contemporary transformation of Bolivian democracy and that it has comparative advantages over alternative conceptual frameworks like (radical) populism and defective (illiberal, delegative) democracy

Democracy promotion and civilian power: the example of Germany's 'value-oriented' foreign policy

While Germany is generally considered one of the most important democracy promoters, there is still limited work on the German approach to promoting democracy. There is a general understanding that Germany - as a civilian power - should be guided by democratic values in its external affairs, but it is neither theoretically nor empirically very clear what this means for the actual practice of democracy promotion. The present paper contributes to filling this gap by (1) locating democracy promotion as a foreign policy aim and instrument in the role conception of civilian power, (2) summarising the fragmented state of the art on German democracy promotion, (3) presenting results of a qualitative content analysis in order to reconstruct the main features of the official outline of German democracy promotion, and (4) confronting these programmatic findings with a brief comparative view on the practice of German democracy promotion towards Bolivia, Turkey and Russia

Beyond the liberal peace: Latin American inspirations for post-liberal peacebuilding

Critics of liberal peacebuilding have started to move beyond mere criticism and think about what hybrid or post-liberal peacebuilding might mean. This article aims at contributing to this debate by bringing contemporary experiences in that are usually not reflected in the peacebuilding literature. Since the turn of the century, political changes in a series of South American countries, including most notably in the case of Bolivia, have led scholars to identify trends towards post-liberal ways of organising and exercising political rule. The context in which these processes occur is, of course, very different from the so-called post-conflict societies usually studied by peacebuilding scholars. Yet, precisely because of these differences, conditions for a locally driven search for post-liberal democracy are much better in Latin America. In this sense, while the attempt to move beyond liberal peacebuilding does certainly not need yet another template to be implemented worldwide, these experiences might well serve as important inspirations in the ongoing search for locally grown, hybrid variants of a post-liberal peace

Ambivalent consequences of social exclusion for real-existing democracy in Latin America: the example of the Argentine crisis

When analyzing the relationship between democracy and social exclusion in Latin America, the perspective prevails that emphasizes the contradictory nature of ‘formal democracies' characterized by both deep social inequality and political and economic marginalization. However, when taking into account the astonishing durability of democracy in most Latin American countries it is time to shift the focus to incorporate the surprising compatibility of real-existing Latin democracy with a highly exclusive social structure. Although confronted with grave economic, social and political crises, countries like Ecuador, Argentina and Bolivia have (so far) maintained their, howsoever precarious, democratic regimes. Drawing on the recent experience of the surprisingly quick restabilization seen in Argentina following its deep crisis in 2001/2002, the article argues that it is the specific result of Latin America’s 'double transformation' (combining political liberalization and neo-liberal restructuring), which explains the central features of de- as well as re-stabilization. The combination of political democratization involving processes of economic crisis and their neo-liberal 'resolution' has socio-economic consequences that are, firstly, socio-politically destabilizing. Secondly, they hollow out democratic participation and representation by undermining the capacity for collective action on the part of broad sectors of society. Thirdly, however, it is this second implication - since it is the capacity for politically mobilizing precisely those harmed by the neo-liberal reforms and economic crises, which is being limited - that simultaneously operates in a politically stabilizing way

Ecuador after Correa: the struggle over the "citizens' revolution"

The year 2017 in Ecuador has been marked, first, by the electoral victory of Alianza PAIS and, then, by the rapidly escalating conflict within the governing party. With the departure from office of Rafael Correa, who had governed the country since 2007, Ecuadorian politics has entered a new period which is characterized by political realignments and heightened political uncertainty. At the same time, the economic situation is improving only gradually and imposes significant constraints on the new government led by Lenín Moreno. The article reviews the politically turbulent year of 2017, and, in doing so, analyzes the struggle over the legacy of the “Citizens’ Revolution” that has broken out between the supporters of the new president and the followers of his predecessor