Law and Democracy in Latin America

Making Democracy Work

Throughout the course, we have focused primarily on the state and its weakness. Most of the solutions we have discussed also have to do, reasonably enough, with strengthening the state. But we have also noted, especially in connection with judicial reform efforts, that the state and its institutions are not independent of the society in which they are embedded. In this unit we read about what some social actors have done to activate the state and its institutions.

The traditional method for making governmental actors take notice of social demands is by voting the bums out of office. This has been referred to as Vertical Accountability. It can be effective, but it is also a very blunt instrument, as you often must wait years to exercise it, and cannot target specific policies for a response. Also, in order to vote someone out of office, you must gather majoritarian support, which is not always easy even when you care deeply about an important issue. An alternative means of holding governmental actors to account has been labeled Horizontal Accountability. One expression of this is the checks and balances arrangement built into the United States constitution and into constitutions across Latin America. But, especially in recent years, new agents of horizontal accountability have appeared across the continent, including Brazil's Public Prosecutor, which we have already seen, the Anti-Corruption offices in Argentina and elsewhere, various auditing agencies, ombudsmen organizations and even Judicial Councils. The problem is that these actors are not always self-motivated and proactive - indeed, they can be downright passive or even obstructionist when it comes to targeting powerful political or social interests.

Here is where society can play a role. In an exercise of what Smulovitz and Peruzzotti call Societal Accountability, social actors mobilize to activate the instruments of Horizontal Accountability to bring pressure to bear on certain governmental actors and demand a response to particular demands. In this unit, we examine the strengths and weaknesses, the advantages and disadvantages of this method of imposing some accountability upon the government.

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