What’s going on in Peru? Harvard’s Government Professor Steven Levitsky, who is also the director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and the co-author of How Democracies Die, tells us of the many challenges the country faces after Peruvian President Pedro Castillo was ousted from office last week after an attempted self-coup. His Vice-President Dina Boluarte became the seventh president in six years and the first female Peruvian president in history.
June Carolyn Erlick:
Steve Levitsky is a professor in Harvard's Government Department, the director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, and the co-author of How Democracies Die. Today we'll be talking about the situation in Peru. Welcome, Steve.
Steve Levitsky:
Hi, June. Thanks for having me back.
June Carolyn Erlick:
Last week, Peruvian president Pedro Castillo was ousted from office after an attempted self-coup. His vice president, Dina Boluarte, became the seventh president in six years. So, are we just seeing more of the same?
Steve Levitsky:
Well, in a sense, yes. Peru has the whole cocktail of ingredients for political crisis. There's a very, very high level of public discontent in general. That's been true for a while, but it was made worse by the Covid situation. Peru was one of the hardest hit countries in the world, and Peru's also very, very fragmented political parties have collapsed. Politicians, if you can believe it, career politicians have almost disappeared, and politics is basically overrun by amateurs, and it shows. Peru's also descended into a fair amount of left-right polarization, which you see across the region. So the combination of left-right polarization in amateur politics has proven to be really, really destabilizing.
June Carolyn Erlick:
There's several ways of seeing what happened last week. So is this a win or a loss for Peruvian democracy?
Steve Levitsky:
I think it's both. It's a win in the sense that democracy survived. Just about 30 years previous to that, in April 1992, Alberto Fujimori, another political outsider faced with a congress that wanted to impeach him, successfully closed down Congress, dissolved the constitution and ended Peruvian democracy for nearly a decade. So the fact that Pedro Castillo tried to run the script again, but failed, is a good sign. It's certainly a win for democracy. The fact that the coup failed is positive, but it also pointed to a number of pathologies improving democracy right now, none of which, unfortunately, have been changed in a serious way by Castillo's fall. In fact, I think that his successor government, the government of Dina Boluarte, is in danger of falling, really, potentially, any day, any week.
June Carolyn Erlick:
You say pathologies. What do you mean by that?
Steve Levitsky:
The fact that Peruvian politicians are, almost without exception, political amateurs without parties who have very, very little experience in democratic politics, very, very little socialization into democratic politics, and maybe most importantly of all, extremely narrow time horizons. They know they're not going to be around in politics in a few years. They have no past in politics. They have no future in politics. They only live for today. They have no teams. They have no parties. They don't act collectively, so you've got politicians across the country and in congress and in the presidency acting in a very short-term fashion without much skill, without much experience, and without much vision of the future. And that almost invariably leads to chaos.
June Carolyn Erlick:
Castillo was a rural school teacher who came from a peasant family background. Some, including Colombian president Gustavo Petro, are saying Castillo's removal is classist and racist. Is there any grounds for that charge?
Steve Levitsky:
Look, Castile's removal is over-determined in the sense that there's no question that opposition to Castillo has elements of classism and racism to it. It always has. I mean, the reaction of Lima's establishment, the Lima elite in the media, in the private sector, in politics, in culture throughout, the entire Lima elite was horrified by Castillo and terrified of Castillo from the very beginning. And that shaped the entire establishment's and the Congress's response to Castillo from the very beginning.
But to wipe away and ignore the fact Pedro Castillo attempted to end Peruvian democracy, is just utterly dishonest and I expect more from an established politician like Petro. Pedro Castillo, yes, he was under pressure. Yes, Congress was trying to remove him. And yes, the Peruvian right had tried to remove him undemocratically, had tried to steal the election from him and was driven by racism and classism. None of that excuses an effort to kill Peruvian democracy and nobody can deny that Pedro Castillo tried to do that.
June Carolyn Erlick:
I personally loved the headline in the New Yorker. I don't know if you saw it, Steve. "Can the country emerge intact from the world's shortest lived dictatorship?" Can it?
Steve Levitsky:
Yes. Look, a democracy in many countries, including Peru, has shown a great capacity to muddle through and to sort of muddle through crises. And there is certainly a possibility that Peruvian democracy will muddle through this crisis. One thing that works in favor of at least democratic survival is the fact that all the players in Peruvian politics are weak. Nobody is strong enough to impose authoritarianism on anybody else. That doesn't necessarily make for a high-quality democracy, but it helps democracy survive.
The problem is, at some point, given this level of public discontent, somebody, some more politically skilled populist, will gain enough public support that they will be able to kill democracy. If Peruvian politicians and Peruvian elites in general are not able to take some meaningful steps toward creating a more representative political system, Peru will have its Rafael Correa, it will have its Hugo Chavez, it will have another Fujimori.
June Carolyn Erlick:
When you say we'll have another Fujimori, there are two Fujimoris who are politically active.
Steve Levitsky:
Yeah, it won't be them. Keiko Fujimori has long since ceased to be a populist, although she may run for president again. I think Peru will have elections soon. She may run again. She'll be a contender. But she is nowhere near the political support that she had a decade ago, and she's nowhere near the popular support that her father had decades ago. Peru's next Fujimori will be somebody not named Fujimori.
June Carolyn Erlick:
Dina Boluarte became Peru's first female president. Do you see any significance in that?
Steve Levitsky:
Sure. The region is becoming a more inclusive, more egalitarian place, slowly. Peru is kind of a laggard on many dimensions of social inclusion. It's a pretty conservative place. It is always a step forward when you sort of break that threshold. Unfortunately, Boluarte wasn't an elected president. It would be better to see an elected female president. I think you will relatively soon, but the sad undercurrent here is that Boluarte is set up to fail, that this is likely to be a very, very unsuccessful presidency and probably a very short presidency and probably a very forgettable presidency.
June Carolyn Erlick:
She just appointed a new cabinet, about half male and half female. What's your take on the cabinet?
Steve Levitsky:
My take on the cabinet is I don't know many of them, which means that they're not very high-profile figures. What they mostly are, are sort of second-tier technocrats, which isn't terrible. I think it's a more competent cabinet than the last few cabinets of Pedro Castillo. But what it shows is that most cabinet type figures, most major Peruvian politicians, and many, many leading technocrats, were not willing to join this government. They didn't want to get on what they viewed as very likely a sinking ship. And so her inability to fill her cabinet with more high-profile figures suggests that she's perceived to be very, very weak and probably not long for this world, politically.
June Carolyn Erlick:
How long would you give her?
Steve Levitsky:
Oh, I always get these wrong when I predict. It depends on her response. I mean, initially, she insisted that she was going to serve until 2026. Legally, constitutionally, she's right to say that, but badly, badly misread the mood of the country, which, for better or worse, really across the political spectrum, left, right, and center, all was demanding new elections.
And so she waited, maybe, politically fatal, 48 hours. Protests erupted. There were deaths in these protests, and she made a concession last night calling for elections in April 2024. That even does not seem to be enough. People on the streets are demanding immediate elections. Still unclear whether her concession of holding elections in 2024 rather than 2026 was enough to buy her time. It looks like it's not. The level of protest is continuing to rise.
June Carolyn Erlick:
One of the other things protestors are calling for is a constitutional convention like in Columbia, like in Chile. How do you read this and do you think this would be beneficial for the country?
Steve Levitsky:
Look, I have a not very sexy middle ground answer to that question. First of all, the protestors are demanding many, many, many things. There's not a single voice to these protestors. Some of them are Castillo supporters who are sympathetic to Castillo and view him literally as a political prisoner. They view him like President Petro of Colombia does, as someone who was overthrown by the right and he's now a political prisoner, some of the protestors are pro-Castillo. Some of them are more generally radical left and are seeking a new constitution because that's sort of part of the left's political project very vaguely in the 21st century.
Others are just sick to hell of the entire political establishment and want to just take another crack at it by voting. Congress has a single digit approval rating. Both Castillo and Boluarte are very unpopular and so there are many, not particularly political Peruvians who just want to renovate those in power, want those in power out. They want elections. So not everyone's demanding the same thing. The polls suggests there's not massive support in Peru for a new constitution. But there are two reasons why it may be worth doing.
I don't think a new constitution is going to change Peru the way many people hope it will. Peru's had a number of different constitutions. Its neighbors Ecuador, Bolivia, have had even more constitutions. Words on paper only get you so far. They're not going to solve the fundamental problems that Peru face. It's not going to solve the problem of entrenched and extreme social inequality. It's not going to solve the problem of a very weak and ineffective state, which I think may be the core problem. It's not going to solve the problem of a collapsed political party system and a decimated political class.
A constitution can't solve any of those problems. What a constitution can do, though, is provide probably a relatively brief and modest breadth of legitimacy to the system, which is basically drained to near zero. And it can fix a few problems. The rules of the game of the Fujimori Constitution, the relationship between this sort of semi-presidential system where Congress can hold these votes of no confidence and the president can, under some circumstances, close down the congress legally, constitutionally, and this whole set of rules around vacating the president, all of these rules have been abused over the last decade. Badly abused to the point where it is very hard, given the absence of a strong constitutional authority, a legitimate constitutional court, it's very hard to maintain healthy executive legislative relations anymore because the rules for no confidence votes, the rules for vacating the president, the rules for closing down the congress.
I mean, kill or be killed issues in executive legislative relations are basically up in the air and shattered on the ground. Nobody agrees what the rules are regarding vacating the president, regarding votes of no confidence, regarding closing the congress. Those are really important. And so given that the legitimacy of the current political system is close to zero, and given that such important rules, such as how to remove the president or when you can close down congress, are no longer really viable. There's no agreement around them.
Those are two modest arguments for a new constitution. The left's hope that a new constitution will bring paradise, or even that it'll bring anything left of center, that's a dream, because the Peruvian left is weak. They'll have elections for a constituent assembly. The left will do poorly and you'll have a constituent assembly that looks something like Peru's current congress: fragmented, pretty conservative, pretty corrupt, pretty incompetent because they're not experienced politicians. And so the constitution you get will not be what the left is dreaming of. It also won't be what the right fears.
Ever since the Chavez era, ever since the wave of Bolivarian constitutional changes in the first decade of the 21st century, the right everywhere, Chile, everywhere, fears that a new constitution means Chavismo. It's not true. Again, they'll have an election. The left will do relatively poorly, because the left is weak in Peru, and it'll be a very pluralist, very diverse constituent assembly that will produce a constitution that could be mediocre, but it's not going to be Chavista.
And so neither the hopes of the left nor the fears of the right will be realized. It'll just be a new constitution that won't dramatically change Peru, but, given the lack of legitimacy today, might be a helpful breath of fresh air.
June Carolyn Erlick:
You mentioned that the left is very weak, and yet Pedro Castillo won. How do you explain that?
Steve Levitsky:
Pedro Castillo won 15% of the votes cast on Election Day. One out of eight Peruvians got up on Election Day and cast a ballot for Pedro Castillo. 85% of Peruvians voted for something else. You had a very fragmented field with close to 20 candidates and so 15% of the votes cast, which is a little bit more, about 20% of the valid vote, was enough to get him into a runoff, and he got in a runoff with the one person in Peru who is less popular than him. Not one person, but one of the few politicians in Peru who were less popular than him, and that is Keiko Fujimori, who is extraordinarily unpopular.
She'd run for president twice before. She'd been in politics for a while. Peruvians were sick and tired of the political elite, the political establishment. She was associated, not only with her father and with authoritarianism, but just associated with the corrupt political elite and the status quo. Pedro Castillo was an outsider. He represented something new. He represented change, where Keiko Fujimori did not. That enabled him to win, not because 50.1% of Peruvians loved Pedro Castillo. They didn't. 15% of Peruvians liked Pedro Castillo, but 50.1% of Peruvians voted against Keiko Fujimori. They voted for something else. He won by default.
June Carolyn Erlick:
You talk about the role of corruption there. Boluarte made her cabinet take an anti-corruption pledge. Is that significant or is that pure showmanship?
Steve Levitsky:
Pure showmanship. I mean, I don't know anything about these folks, whether they're prone to corruption or not, but every president, every government, talks about fighting corruption. If you go back and listen to Pedro Castillo during the campaign or at the beginning of his presidency, he claimed that he had the honesty of a teacher, Peruvians should trust him. There was a fair amount of corruption in the Castillo government, so these are words.
June Carolyn Erlick:
Stepping away from political infighting and the weakness of the state, what are the major challenges faced by Peru in the next year?
Steve Levitsky:
Look, Peru, unfortunately, has a very basic challenge of forming a government. I'm not saying this is imminent, but there is a risk of Peru descending into anarchy. There are violent protests now in provinces across the country. These are growing, and the entire political elite does not have a response to it. It does not look today like the Boluarte government has the capacity to govern Peru, that it has the authority to deal with protests in various provinces of the country. It doesn't have the authority, for better or worse, to send in police to shut those protests down. It doesn't have the authority to negotiate and deliver to protestors.
So whether you seek a negotiated solution or a repressive solution ... I personally prefer the former. Either one, this government doesn't have the wherewithal to do it. It doesn't have the ability to govern. And Peruvian elites have not figured out, if this government can't govern, how to get another government. How to form another government. And at the very least it's going to take time. Even if they all agree to hold elections, minimum, it'll be nine months away. Boluarte's been in power for less than a week. She's already a lame duck. Complete lame duck, with very little authority.
And so the biggest challenge for Peru, honestly, in the next year, is forming a government with just a minimum, just a dose, a couple of drops, of public legitimacy, enough to do public business every day. Right now they don't have such a government. It's very dangerous.
June Carolyn Erlick:
I see you're a pessimist.
Steve Levitsky:
Not by nature, June. I am pessimistic about the situation in Peru. There's nothing on the horizon that suggests that any of the factors that are contributing to this crisis are going to change. It will take a stroke of good luck. It will take an election in which somebody who is both very capable and very public-spirited manages to get elected, and that that's effectively a shot in the dark.
June Carolyn Erlick:
Thank you very much for your time. You've been listening to Steve Levitsky. He's professor in Harvard's Government Department. He's also the director of the David Rockefeller Center of Latin American Studies, DRCLAS, and the co-author of How Democracies Die. Thank you so much for being at Faculty Voices.
Steve Levitsky:
Thanks.