CIAO DATE: 06/02

When Democracy Isn't All that Democratic: Social Exclusion and the Limits of the Public Sphere in Latin America

This paper argues that many of the challenges faced by Latin American democracies today and the long-term implications of those challenges for democratic stability can be usefully understood in terms of their impacts on the public sphere. The first section of this paper develops a theoretical framework for understanding the public sphere as the nexus between civil society and the state. The second section then examines the nature of the public sphere in Latin America and the ways in which large segments of the population are effectively marginalized from actively participating in it. More specifically, the narrowness of the public sphere is discussed in terms of two interrelated dimensions: the dominant mode of interest intermediation, which the author calls neopluralism, and the growing gap between the general population and the political elite. This section concludes with a case study of Chile after the return of democratic government in 1990. The final section of the paper briefly discusses the need to fill the growing public void in Latin America and some possible steps to take in order to invigorate effective public spheres in the region.

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