Democracy Adrift: Caudillo Politics in Nicaragua INTRODUCTION n April 13, 2004, Nicaraguan president piry of his term. However, Nicaragua would have Enrique Bolaños suddenly appeared in been a very different case from other recent over- Opublic to alert his countrymen that he throws. Whereas governments in other places was in danger of being overthrown. A person have been felled by mobs of enraged citizens not given to grandiose gestures, the president (Ecuador, Peru, Argentina, Bolivia) or at least warned the nation that he would only leave the of opportunistic former soldiers (Haiti), in Nica- office to which he had been democratically elected ragua the force propelling events would have as a cadaver. Bolaños did not name those plot- been a political conspiracy by two ex-presidents ting his ouster but he did not need to—any of the country and mortal enemies of one an- reasonably informed Nicaraguan knew by in- other. An additional curiosity of the moment stinct that he was referring to Arnoldo Alemán was that Alemán found himself in prison and and Daniel Ortega, and apparently not with- negotiating with one hand tied behind his back. out cause. Even more arcane were the fluctuating condi- According to an intense wave of rumor tions of his confinement, which derived from sweeping the capital, Managua, the two caudillos Ortega’s ability to manipulate Nicaragua’s judi- of Nicaraguan politics were seriously discussing cial system at his whim. the possibility of effecting a constitutional coup The mini-crisis of early 2004 came at a dis- against the elected president. The discussions tinct moment in Nicaragua’s recent political evo- came to naught, but not before sending shock lution. During the preceding six months, as the waves through the government, the donor com- two caudillos locked horns over the fate of con- munity and the media. Ortega and Alemán would victed ex-president Alemán, the chronic dysfunc- have used charges of “electoral crimes” revolv- tion in the country’s political institutions grew ing around the presence of stolen money alleg- acute. In the capital, Managua, the National As- edly found in Bolaños’s 2001 campaign coffers sembly, bogged down in political wrangling, failed as a pretext to impeach Nicaragua’s elected leader. to pass more than a handful of ordinary legisla- What would have come afterward is murkier but tive bills. The Supreme Court of Justice con- may have included the calling of a constituent ducted its annual election of officers in March, assembly to make radical changes to the power but only after a three-month impasse in which setup of the country. the high court did not sit. Meanwhile, the sup- Had this eventuality come to pass, Nicaragua posedly autonomous South Atlantic region con- would have been the sixth Latin American coun- tinued a two-year stint without any consensually try in recent years to have witnessed the exit of accepted government while drug traffickers ran an elected president from office before the ex- rampant through its territory. 2 Democracy Adrift WHAT HAPPENED country’s dominant political machines. In office TO THE TRANSITION? from 1997-2002, Arnoldo Alemán showed a If the events of the previous eight years had not strong tendency to regress to the “dominant been sufficiently convincing, these episodes and power” system of traditional Liberal clientelism, the trends behind them rammed home an obvi- and in all probability still wants to do so even ous conclusion. Fourteen years after the end of though he is now a prisoner. While striving for the Sandinista revolution and well after the “third political and personal vindication, the eternal wave” of world political change has crested, the leader of the opposition, Daniel Ortega, es- consolidation of democratic institutions in Nica- pouses radical-democratic notions of politics ragua is not occurring. Although it is now fash- that prefigure a drive to reassert Sandinista he- ionable to dismiss such naïve notions, in the early gemony in an outwardly democratic framework 1990s “consolidation” was the expected long-run if he regains power. outcome of the wave of transitions from au- Democracy, and president Enrique Bolaños thoritarian rule that had recently sprouted in Geyer, seem hopelessly and helplessly caught in Southern Europe, Eastern Europe, Latin the middle of this gigantic tussle. At the very America and other parts of the world. And in beginning of his administration, president the mid-1990s, Nicaragua briefly appeared to be Bolaños outlined ambitious goals for the reform making progress in roughly the right direction. of Nicaragua’s institutions and of the archaic By this date, however, it is increasingly recog- political culture that underlies them. After nearly nized in academic and policy circles that most three years in office, he has been able to realize of the more than 100 countries that embarked none of those objectives. His tangle has reached on democratization starting in the 1980s are not the point where, in the face of a possible over- consolidating their “transition” to democracy.1 throw of the country’s democratically elected Indeed, serious question has been raised about leader in April 2004, Nicaraguan society barely the whole analytical framework of “transition reacted—indeed, it did little more than yawn. studies” and its adequacy as a guide for policy to If it is relatively easy to demonstrate that assist democratic development. In this revision, democratic development in Nicaragua is not oc- many Latin American countries are coming to curring, it is difficult to pin down exactly why be seen as what Thomas Carouthers of the not. The traditional political science of devel- Carnegie Endowment calls cases of “feckless plu- oped countries harps on structural themes such ralism,” a term which roughly denotes a stable as high levels of poverty and inequality, back- state of unconsolidated democracy in which par- ward political cultures, and the presence or ab- ties routinely alternate in enjoying the spoils of sence of specific historical sequences of politi- office without improving anything.2 cal and state development in “explaining” why Although feckless pluralism is one outcome, some countries make it to developed democracy this report will argue it has not been Nicaragua’s while others do not. The United Nations Devel- outcome. Its fate is more disturbing, for it is opment Program (UNDP) has recently published caught in a competition between an analysis that would supplant these genres of authoritarianisms desirous of moving the coun- explanation with other structural variables, try back toward rightwing or leftwing hegemony. namely the loss of state capacity vis-à-vis the Since 1990, these authoritarianisms have been market and the infringement of the effective sov- personified by two individuals: Arnoldo Alemán ereignty of the Latin American countries by the and Daniel Ortega, maximum leaders of the forces of neoliberalism and globalization. Introduction 3 Alone, none of these approaches has proved the work done to improve governance in devel- to be compelling, leaving a cloud of explanatory oping countries has helped much.4 uncertainty. The only reasonably certain thing to However, the question emerging at present be said is that absolutely all of the forces hin- goes beyond this frame of inquiry. If democracy dering democratic consolidation apply to the in Nicaragua is not consolidating, then where in Nicaraguan case, most of them powerfully. In fact is the country heading? On the path to a an apt summation, Argentine scholar Guillermo possible answer to this query, one question that O’Donnell, a leading political scientist for de- needs to be addressed is “what is Nicaragua?” cades, concludes that a series of countries in Latin With a modicum of sociological scrutiny, but- America that include Nicaragua “function in ways tressed by some historical reflection, Nicaragua that current democratic theory has ill prepared emerges as one of the world’s most singular coun- us to understand.”3 tries, and also as one of the more fragile. The consequences of this consolidation-not- This report thus begins by profiling occurring have likewise long been blurred. While Nicaragua’s “national problem.” After that, it “feckless pluralist” politics as conceived by offers its readers a review of Nicaragua’s politi- Carouthers can go puttering on without endan- cal evolution since 1990 and briefly details the gering a society’s viability, the destructive com- essentials of its fledgling democratic system. It petition between Nicaragua’s paired caudillos goes on to portray the government in power, appears to be growing more dangerous. Not only assessing its achievements and shortcomings, and is it threatening to strangle such economic and then profiles the government’s opponents. In its social progress as Nicaragua has been able to latter sections, the document deals with the way make over the last decade, but it may portend a in which key institutions have functioned in re- serious threat to the nation’s safety and integra- cent years and chronicles the Bolaños tion in the long term. administration’s efforts to restart the democratic It is even more difficult to gain a grip on what transition in Nicaragua by reforming them, ana- to do about it. A multi-cornered entity known lyzing why these efforts have had little impact. as the “international donor community” has been All this is a prelude to a final commentary on trying to assist the development of Western-style where Nicaragua may be heading. Is the country democracy in post-revolutionary Nicaragua for rambling eternally through an endless transition, nearly 15 years. While such assistance has done approaching a threshold over which democracy some good, it is not clearly turning the tide. In will begin to consolidate anew, or heading to- this respect, Nicaragua is not an exception to ward crisis and possible state failure? In this di- world experience.