This article is adapted from AQ’s special report on the Trump Doctrine
AQ: What are the biggest threats to democracy in the region over the next five to 10 years?
CS: I think there is a global threat: the distance between people and those who govern them, which creates distrust. We are living in a super-accelerated world. We feel crises of every kind—economic, environmental, etc.—and the permanent bombardment of information opens space for the emergence and consolidation of dangerous authoritarianism.
AQ: This is happening worldwide, but Chile still appears to maintain a strong hold on its institutions and democracy. Why?
CS: There are multiple factors. One has to do with our foundation, with our historical origins. We recently did a study on civic space and civil society in Chile, and the country scores well on many metrics. Chile has a track record of institutional respect for elections that goes far beyond one political cycle or another. In addition, the branches of government are still relatively separated. There are checks and balances, and the Electoral Service (SERVEL) works, which allows us to trust the election results. We haven’t had any allegations of fraud in recent years, but that must be safeguarded. We need to see how long that lasts and how it holds up.
AQ: The environment around Chile’s November elections and December runoff was tense, but was any candidate proposing anti-democratic reforms?
CS: We did a governance analysis, and our interpretive reading of that work suggests that there is still consensus on democratic minimums, at least formally and in discourse. The problem we observe in general is that issues of democracy and participation are barely present in the proposals. The conversation was very focused on security, order, and, in many cases, in a very populist way: based on the idea that all it would take is a single leader to implement them and that would be that.
AQ: Is this a problem specific to Chile?
CS: No, Chile is arriving late to the trend. There is a very deep crisis of representation for years now. Civic space is closing in many different places, and the right of assembly or freedom of independent media is becoming difficult, to name two examples.
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Schaeffer is a sociologist and public policy expert with a Ph.D. in political science
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Miranda Mazariegos
Reading Time: 2 minutesMazariegos is an editor at AQ.
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