Estatalidad y calidad de la democracia en Paraguay

Abstract

Taking into account the fact that in all existing indices of the quality of democracy Paraguay fares rather poorly, the author explores how «stateness» accounts for that poor performance. He argues that together with a pattern of truncated modernization that produced an invertebrate society conducive to generalized clientelism and the constitutional and institutional framework that reinforces and perpetuates it, the weakness of the State imposes additional severe constraints. These constraints manifest themselves in two dimensions: the weakness of the state apparatus and its narrow social base in terms of «state-for-the nation or the people».