Latin America Erupts: Millennial Authoritarianism in El Salvador

In May 2021, Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele used his legislative supermajority to fire the country's highest court and top prosecutor. The power grab deepened El Salvador's democratic crisis by dealing a major blow to horizontal accountability. What explains Bukele's rise and the c...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of democracy Vol. 32; no. 3; pp. 19 - 32
Main Author Meléndez-Sánchez, Manuel
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 01.07.2021
Subjects
Accountability
Authoritarianism
Bukele, Nayib
Corruption
Courts
Democracy
Elections
Pacts
Politics
Populism
Presidents
Social media
Social networks
Wisdom
El Salvador
Latin America
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Summary:In May 2021, Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele used his legislative supermajority to fire the country's highest court and top prosecutor. The power grab deepened El Salvador's democratic crisis by dealing a major blow to horizontal accountability. What explains Bukele's rise and the concomitant decline of democratic institutions in El Salvador? Bukele's success relies on millennial authoritarianism: an innovative political strategy combining traditional populist appeals and classic authoritarian behavior with a youthful and modern personal brand built on social media. His emergence has also been facilitated by two broader factors that challenge the conventional wisdom about democracy and democratic backsliding: the hidden long-term costs of democratic pacts and the unintended consequences of fighting corruption.
ISSN:1045-5736
1086-3214
1086-3214
DOI:10.1353/jod.2021.0031