Pandemocracy in Latin America: Revisiting the Political and Constitution Dimension of the Pandemic

Pablo Riberi (ed)

Facultad de Derecho, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba; Facultad de Ciencia Política y Relaciones Internacionales, Universidad Católica de Córdoba

Tell us a little bit about the book. 

The word ‘pandemocracy’ has been coined to provide a nuanced description of a set of post-pandemic non-democratic situations. A core concern of this book is whether well-entrenched mechanisms of democratic responsiveness and accountability are still fulfilling their constitutional goals. Or, conversely, have all these extensive legal regulations finally undermined atavistic constitutional principles such as separation of powers, federalism, and timely judicial review? 

Concerning the legal and political dimensions, through diverse perspectives the book grapples with the lingering post-pandemic consequences. Far beyond analyzing rights-impairing policies, the volume addresses two main questions: firstly, how has the fight against COVID-19, especially the individual and collective responses of Latin American nation-states, influenced the relationship between Power, People, and Parliaments? And secondly, does democracy take a step back and let something like pandemocracy replace its long-lasting meaning?

From a preponderantly Global South perspective, the book explores the constitutional, political, and institutional measures that have paved the way for aggressive post-COVID-19 policies in various Latin American countries. The contributions provide a detailed portrait of how democratic backsliding is likely to be a result of said trends. The book goes beyond mere observation, deploying theoretical tools that enhance a more comprehensive understanding of the current situation.

Finally, the book sheds light on the makings of legitimate authority and its most subtle connection with democratic politics in the region. Multidisciplinary perspectives demonstrate how less demanding democratic standards have brought about more authoritarian, populist, and hyper-presidential decision-making trends, which, after the COVID-19 pandemic, have collaterally thwarted a wide range of well-entrenched constitutional expectations. 

What inspired you to take up this project? 

Pandemocracy in Latin America is a collective work that is part of an extremely ambitious research and editorial project. Konrad Lachmayer, who edited Pandemocracy in Europe with Matthias Kettemann, invited me to explore the most relevant institutional and political nodes that the pandemic crisis left in Latin America. His idea was to achieve such goals through a collective volume whose predominant insights should come from the deep Global South.

My interest in the subject and the scarcity of high-quality literature on the connections between constitutional emergencies, democratic decay, and biopolitical – and digital – control mechanisms were, without a doubt, decisive in my acceptance of the proposal. Naturally, given that these scattered developments were not communicated in English, it was clear that I should confront another hurdle. I needed to assemble a first-rate line of experts in constitutional law, constitutional theory, and comparative constitutional law willing to contribute to an English volume – as the lingua franca – conveying the Latin American take on these issues. I am deeply grateful to Konrad Lachmayer, Antonio M Hernández, Delia Ferreira Rubio, David Landau, Javier Couso, Ricardo Ramírez Calvo, Manuel J García-Mansilla, Marcelo Figueiredo, María Florencia Saulino, Sergio Verdugo, Daniela Urosa, José Ignacio Hernández, José M Serna, Trilce Valdivia and Ignacio Colombo Murúa for accepting this challenge.

Whose work was influential on you throughout the project?

Firstly, the volume edited by Lachmayer and Kettemann, Pandemocracy in Europe, is noteworthy. Secondly, other IACL-AIDC members, including José M Serna (as editor) and I, have contributed to a collective book dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. The former has comprehensively addressed the concept of pandemocracy while the latter sketches an interesting account of major COVID-19 constitutional challenges in the region.

When framing pandemocracy, I could not help resorting to other cherished readings such as those provided by Bernard Williams or Michael Walzer. While opening a multidimensional universe of subtleties, the epistemic ambitions of these authors are always paving the way to substantive knowledge. From a legal perspective, Jeremy Waldron’s Political Political Theory and Michel Rosenfeld’s A Pluralist Theory of Constitutional Justice give us also vibrant examples of the kind of narrative that was pivotal in planning this collective undertaking. (Editors’ note: See here for an IACL-AIDC blog video conversation with Michel Rosenfeld about the latter book).

What challenges did you face in authoring the book? 

Concerning the state's actual performance as well as the fairness of emergency policies during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is plausible that civic culture, parliaments' responsiveness, executive goodwill, or judges’ activism are just isolated pieces of an overly complex puzzle. In this regard, the book aims to unravel a particular set of elements and relations conflated in what we may acknowledge as the post-COVID-19 pandemocratic setting.

Given these facts, from a methodological point of view it was essential to articulate a multidisciplinary approach that captured a piecemeal of national experiences without overlooking other crosscutting axes of interest. Consequently, this volume conveys a collection of essays that consecutively explore theoretical elements (first section), specific situations at the national level (second section), and other transversal thematic nodes (third section). Beyond all these concerns, all contributions are complementary while integrating one section into the other.

Now, let me unveil a key challenge – perhaps risky – that contributors had to deal with. When exploring a multilayered realm such as the pandemocratic one, it is rewarding to ramble over invisible bridges that usually allow visiting Law from Politics and Politics from Morals. Transcending the borders of legal discipline, although analytical clarity and methodological homogeneity should always prevail, all the contributors had to grapple with descriptive, normative, and philosophical issues that, at random, brought about very demanding epistemic and narrative challenges. I believe that we have successfully coped with them.

What do you hope to see as the book’s contribution to academic discourse and constitutional or public law more broadly?

Beyond the value of every chapter, our work deserves attention for one main reason. My intuition is that the concept of pandemocracy as a methodological proposal implies changing the focus and examining political systems through an alternative lens, by which less visible political and constitutional edges and shades are more likely to come to the surface. Among other goals, this comprehensive perspective can shed more light on how so-called hyper-presidentialism has been worsening and why constant emergencies have been multiplying. From these facts, it seems easier to make out why waning democracy and institutional decline are gaining momentum in the Latin American region. In other words, pandemocracy as a backdrop can serve as a kind of prism or spectrum through which it is possible to discover the underlying mechanics of growing authoritarianism within the polities of the region.

In broader or narrower analysis, the compiled works explore how and why constitutional decision-making and controlling practices by parliaments, courts, and other institutions at the federal and subnational levels cannot curb executives' unfettered powers. In many Latin American political systems, handing over power to executive actors – along with their entourage of technocrats and bureaucrats – looks like a pervasive leading trend.

Finally, against the tide of mainstream constitutional literature that has insisted on analyzing case law and the detrimental impact of the pandemic on human rights, the contributors to this book have prioritized the analysis of the Power section of the Constitution.

What’s next?

I expect that new volumes will convey other regions’ pandemocratic consequences shortly. As far as I know, there are other projects so that in the not-too-distant future, new contributions analyzing Pandemocracy in Africa, Asia, and the Anglosphere will be part of this Bloomsbury/Hart Publishing collection.

Regarding my writing commitments, I am currently engaged with two books in progress. When either of these publications materializes, I will be delighted to share the news with the IACL-AIDC blog and its readers. I am grateful to you all.

For more information and to purchase the book, click here.