A governança internacional da proteção à democracia : um estudo comparativo da organização dos Estados Americanos e da União Europeia

Abstract

Democratization studies have produced relevant diagnoses of the outcomes and challenges to democracy. As a general rule, these studies have privileged the role of domestic conditions, as an explanans of democratic transformation and promotion. The present thesis dialogues directly with this literature, assuming that international actors, such as intergovernmental organizations (OIGs), play a key role in protecting democracy in world politics. Focusing on the European Union (EU) and Organization of American States (OAS), this thesis investigates the conditions in which OIGs participate of democratic-protection policies in periods of transition a democratic discontinuity or breakdown. We would argue that three conditions are sufficient for OIGs to engage in protecting democracy. First, at the domestic level, elite actors must move toward democratization during transitional period or attempt a coup d’état in cases of discontinuity/breakdown. Second, at the international level, OIGs must coordinate their actions with an autonomous agency (the International Secretariat) in a decision-making arena that includes various member states. The present study has used the combination of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and Causal Process-tracing (CPT) to select typical cases and verify the empirical causal mechanisms that led those three conditions toward the intended outcome. It has analyzed the role of OIGs during the Czechoslovakian, Bulgarian, and Haitian periods of transition, as well as cases of democracy discontinuity/breakdown in Hungary, Romania, Peru, Paraguay, Guatemala, and Honduras. The findings show that the analytical model has considered the role of conditions in all cases of transition for both organizations, as well as all cases involving the breakdown of democracy and OAS action. The European Union behaves differently in cases of democratic discontinuity because the EU democracy-protection regime represents an intervenient variable, especially given the option of international bureaucracy to participate without coordination in the member-states’ decision-making arena. The present thesis argues that, to understand IGO participation in democratization studies, analyses must first assume this participation as a matter of governance; second, they must assume that coordination exists between the domestic and international spheres, and last, that OIGs are relevant in this process.