We live difficult and distressing times. At the global level, war conflicts resurface, governments chosen by electoral route adopt authoritarian forms, and polarization has replaced dialogue with tragic results for people and even peoples. And Bolivia is no exception.
Why does this happen? Partly because the elected leaders themselves erode their institutions from within. This was warned by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Zibatt in their work how democracies die, where they clearly describe how contempt for the rules of the game and the delegitimization of the adversary can dismantle the democratic system without directly attacking the system of weights and counterweights.
Should we worry? Yes, because democracy is not only an electoral procedure, but a complex mechanism for accountability, public deliberation and respect for fundamental rights, but in a “peaceful” environment.
In this context, freedom of expression is an essential component of that democratic balance. In a recent work, the crisis of democracy, Adam Przeworski said that, without basic rights of expression and association, the elections lose their essence.
Protecting freedom of expression today implies not only guaranteeing the right to speak, but also to listen to different visions.
The current challenge is how to do it in a polarized environment. Cass Sunstein, in his writings on the Republic in the digital era, points out that the rise of social networks has fragmented the public debate, catching people in “Eco Chambers” where only pre -existing ideas are reinforced.
To that we must add the proliferation of deliberate misinformation. In lies: falsehoods and freedom of expression in an era of deception, Suntesin points out that lies can affect public health, the electoral process or social cohesion, as we see these days in the country. The safer solution is still more deliberation, no less; And even worse censorship.
A good democracy also requires shared values. The aforementioned Levitsky and Zibatt highlight mutual tolerance and self -containment. That is, the political actors are recognized as legitimate adversaries and not as existential enemies, and that they avoid using all the power that they could formally exercise, as we have seen in the country.
In Latin America, these principles retreated by the advance of the populism of the left, center and right, a phenomenon that, according to Andrés Velasco and Irene Bucelli in populism: origins and alternative responses of public policy, divides society between a “pure people” and a “corrupt elite”, thus mining the possibility of lasting and necessary agreements and dividing even more to countries.
Beyond its own value, democracy has economic impacts. In the economic origins of the dictatorship and democracy, they gave Acemoglu and James Robinson explain that democratic regimes arise when elites, political or economic, give part of the power to reduce conflict, which promotes the common good.
Years later, in his article democracy does cause growth, together with Naidu and Restrepo, they demonstrated that democracies promote development by strengthening property rights, expanding investment in human capital and improving the provision of public goods.
In fact, Amartya Sen, Nobel Prize in Economics, said in the value of democracy that no democratic country with free press has experienced a famine. That is, open deliberation and citizen control can save lives by forcing governments to respond to the urgent needs of the population.
Bolivia is no stranger to these challenges. Institutional fragility, permanent polarization and distrust between actors have weakened democratic quality. Economic, the urgent solution to the crisis and the subsequent recovery cannot be achieved without democracy, freedom and reliable institutions.
