La calidad de la democracia paraguaya: un avance sobre caminos tortuosos

Abstract

Within the framework of growing concern for analyzing the quality of young democracies, this article focuses on the Paraguayan case. A democracy sometimes neglected by the academic literature. However, Paraguay is drawing attention as a consequence of Colorado’s Party defeat (in office since 1947) in the 2008 presidential election. A theoretical and methodological thinking about the concept of the quality of democracy together with an empirical research have been done in this article. Five essential dimensions have been taken into consideration: political rights and civil liberties; rule of law; accountability; responsiveness and political participation. The main conclusion is that Paraguay has a low quality democracy, far away from the rest of Latin American countries. This statement is backed up by three different explanations that are, at the same time, interlinked. These are the following: socioeconomic factors, features of its own political institutions (above all, the widespread clientelism) and, finally, political parties’ interests and strategies.