Enforcing peoples’ right to democracy: transnational activism and regional powers in contemporary Inter-American relations

The Inter-American Democratic Charter (IADC) is the most comprehensive multilateral framework for dealing with democratic breakdowns and backslidings in the Western Hemisphere. In such cases, the Organisation of American States (OAS) is supposed to defend democracy by suspending states, imposing sanctions or taking other multilateral measures. Oftentimes, however, the OAS has looked the other way. The question, then, is what makes the difference. In this comparative case study, we use cross-cases comparisons and process-tracing to identify the actors and causal mechanisms that determine when and whether the IADC is actually enforced. We explain inconsistent enforcement by analysing interactions among three sets of actors – the governments of powerful member states, OAS secretaries general and civil society organisations – during coups, executive takeovers and electoral frauds in OAS member states between 2001 and 2020. Our analysis reveals that cooperation between an activist secretary general and civil society actors was neither sufficient nor necessary for IADC enforcement. By contrast, US support for enforcement was a necessary but insufficient condition for the OAS to act. To get it to do so, the United States required the support of two leading regional powers: Mexico and Brazil. These findings suggest that the ‘right to democracy’ enshrined in the IADC hinges upon the volatile preferences of the executives of the OAS’s three most powerful member states. The resulting lack of institutional autonomy leads to inconsistent enforcement of the IADC, jeopardising the credibility of the region’s formally declared right to democracy.