Delegative Democracy Revisited: Peru Since Fujimori

Issue Date July 2016
Volume 27
Issue 3
Page Numbers 148-157
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Despite the improvement of democratic institutions in Peru during the last fifteen years, Peruvians are strongly dissatisfied with democracy in their country. We argue this dissatisfaction results from weak vertical accountability. In our article, we show how Peru has regained meaningful horizontal accountability since the authoritarian years of the 1990s, but has struggled to develop complementary channels of vertical accountability beyond elections. The absence of strong parties and civil society combined with the Peruvian economy’s rapid growth in recent years has allowed presidents to abandon their reform promises and, consequently, generate public disappointment in the democratic system.

About the Authors

Alberto Vergara

Alberto Vergara is professor of political and social sciences at the Universidad del Pacífico in Lima.

View all work by Alberto Vergara

Aaron Watanabe

Aaron Watanabe is a graduate student in Latin American Studies at the University of Oxford.

View all work by Aaron Watanabe