| dc.description.abstract | This master’s thesis theorizes populism, democracy, and the relationship between them. The alleged threat that populist leaders impose to the democratic characteristics of political systems, brings up the question of how big this threat de facto is. In this respect, Kurt Weyland argues that two conditions need to coexist in order for populist leaders to successfully autocratize the political system they rule: Firstly, institutionally weakness. Secondly, successful crisis management or profit from huge resource windfall. Consequently, most populists fail in weakening democracy. Two recent cases of populist leadership in Latin America – Nayib Bukele in El Salvador and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil – show how differently political systems with populists in power may develop. Whereas Brazil remained a democracy under Bolsonaro’s rule, Bukele has made El Salvador into an electoral autocracy. The thesis seeks to answer the following research question: To what extent does Weyland’s theory on the necessary conditions for autocratization under populist rule apply to the cases of the presidency of Nayib Bukele and Jair Bolsonaro?
Populism is here regarded as a political strategy. To measure the extent of institutional weakness, the multilevel model of Wolfgang Merkel is being utilized. The operationalization of the second condition is based on Weyland’s definition of what a crisis is. Due to the relative wide aspects of the political systems that are analyzed, the data collected is secondary literature including surveys, research articles, books, news articles and reports. The analysis indicates that both countries were institutionally weak before Bukele and Bolsonaro came into power. Considering the crisis definition Weyland presents, only El Salvador was plagued by crises. In accordance with Weyland’s theory, the absence of the second condition in Brazil may explain the failure of Bolsonaro. Therefore, Weyland’s theory seems to apply when taking these two cases into consideration. The analysis further sheds light on the importance of the Brazilian federal state system’s role in preventing Bolsonaro’s attempts of weakening democracy. Hence, one could argue that the theory of Weyland would profit from the inclusion of the distinction of federal and unitary states when discussing the first condition. The results support Weyland’s argument that the threat of populism against democracy should be taken seriously, but also that it is often less imminent than assumed. | |
