The Recall in Latin American democracies

Abstract

The recall was, until recent decades, a tool of direct democracy that was hardly known or used outside the United States. However, the crisis of representation and of the party system that several Latin American countries suffered led to recover the recall as an additional form of citizen participation and control that could boost receptivity and responsibility of elected authorities. In only three decades, the recall has moved from being barely known to spreading to the most important Latin American countries and becoming one of the distinctive features of the region. In this work we present a comparative study of the recall in Argentina, Colombia and the Republic of Peru, where it was limited to regional and local authorities. We also analyse the recall of local legislators and authorities by decision of the political parties and popular vote in Panama; the recall in Ecuador, Venezuela and Bolivia, where this institution has spread to all elected offices, including the president of the republic; and the recall of the president and governors of the federal entities of Mexico after the constitutional reform promoted by López Obrador. This work ends by assessing the institutional designs of the recall, where we emphasize the tension between draft legislation and its conditions for implementation.