Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Guatemala has been faced with a daunting set of issues since the signing of the country's historical peace accords in December 1996. The prospects for consolidating peace and democracy have depended on the successful reform of political, legal, and military institutions as well as the re-negotiation of political participation, in particular equal and meaningful participation for historically marginalized groups. The hemisphere's multilateral forum, the Organization of American States (OAS) has been supporting these reform efforts through various peacebuilding initiatives. Particularly relevant to the Guatemalan context is the fact that the OAS has recently expanded its peacebuilding and democracy strengthening agenda to include conflict prevention programs.  It is during the phase following the signing of peace accords that activities aimed at preventing a renewed outbreak of violent conflict are considered especially valuable. With this in mind, the Organization established a program to help Guatemalans address ongoing tensions and political disputes, particularly related to the implementation of the accords, before they spiral into destructive violence.  The program entitled Culture of Dialogue: Development of Resources for Peacebuilding in Guatemala (OAS-PROPAZ)  has focussed on strengthening the capacities of governmental, civic, and community institutions to manage and resolve disputes in collaborative ways. My paper argues that the PROPAZ programme represents an innovative and commendable initiative who's achievements can be attributed to a confluence of factors: the right moment in time, the right staff, its fluid and adaptable nature. However, I conclude that it is unlikely that such a program can be easily replicated for a number of reasons which I outline in the last section of the paper.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Throughout most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Latin American states vigorously defended notions and practices of sovereignty that defended territorial inviolability, self-determination, and non-intervention. These absolute principles were originally captured in the regionally recognized Calvo and Drago doctrines and later on in the OAS Charter. In extreme form, countries like Mexico even upheld the Estrada doctrine: automatic recognition of the sovereignty rights of all states, irrespective of their particular regime. In recent years, the Organization of American States has gradually developed a collective defense-of-democracy regime culminating in the Democratic Charter (IADC) of 2001 that has begun to challenge traditional notions of sovereignty in the Inter-American System. Accordingly, where once regime type mattered little, sovereignty entitlements are now increasingly limited to countries under democratic auspices. Moreover, article one of the IADC stipulates that all peoples in the Americas have a right to democracy and their governments have an obligation to defend that right - a potentially powerful justification for multilateral interventions that might breach individual countries? sovereignty in order to defend democracy. The cases of OAS involvement in recent political crises in Peru and Venezuela illustrate how sovereignty practices are being constructed, reconstructed, negotiated, and contested by a plethora of interstate, state, and non-state actors in both localized and international fora. Adopting a social construction of sovereignty approach, this paper underscores that sovereignty is indeed no longer what it used to be in the Americas but still very much alive.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: ABSTRACTDuring the nineties, the Organization of American States developed collective mechanisms for defending democracy in the western hemisphere. A process began with the declaration of Santiago, passed through the protocol of Washington and achieved a major watershed in the approval of the Inter American Democratic Charter in Lima, September 11, 2001. This institutional development represented a commitment to democratic constitutional continuity in the whole continent. The preservation of democracy was not anymore a question of internal jurisdiction of specific member states but an issue of hemispheric concerns. ]This paper discusses the implementation of the Inter American Democratic Charter to three specific cases of democratic crises that occurred in 2005: 1) The deposition of president Lucio Gutierrez of Ecuador in a combination of popular mobilization and impeachment by the National Congress after Gutierrez twice sacked out the highest judicial authorities of the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Tribunal of Ecuador, 2) the resignation of president Carlos Mesa in Bolivia after massive mobilizations of civil society against his government; and 3) the invocation of the IADC by Nicaraguan president Enrique Bolanos under the assumption that democracy was at peril because the National Assembly, dominated by opposition parties (FSLN and PLC) passed constitutional reforms that significantly reduced his presidential prerogatives. The crises are discussed in the following framework: First, I discuss the sources and the development of the specific crisis and; Second, I concentrate on the OAS response to it. The central approach is to look at the building of a functioning democracy as a long term project, trying to understand not only the immediate sources of instability or the short term effects of the OAS intervention but also assessing the impact of the OAS response in the long term consolidation of democracy in the country and the wide effects of the intervention in the international regime and the norm of hemispheric democratic solidarity.Why is this analysis relevant? The crises in Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua seem to approach situations of democratic governance that the region would likely face in the next decade. During the 1990?s, the OAS developed a doctrine of democratic solidarity coherent with the prevailing interpretation of the non-intervention norm recognized in the OAS Charter. The Declaration of Santiago and the protocol of Washington clearly defined situations in which the hemispheric organization should react and how to react to situations of political upheaval in a state member. This refers essentially to cases of a military coup or a foreign military intervention. Short of these two extreme cases, any intervention was doctrinally questionable. The Inter American Democratic Charter expressed a continental consensus on supporting democracy beyond these extreme cases. The main disruptions of democratic consolidation in the region have its roots today in the explosive socioeconomic situations in some countries, the dysfunctional system of political parties and the low performance of courts, parliaments and other state institutions that make difficult the observance of the rule of law and the constitutional compliance with the balance of the public powers of the state.This paper analyzes the OAS responses to three crises of this kind, searching for common problems and lessons that can help international organizations, states and civil society groups to draw useful conclusions about the tools and methods to use in future situations.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The OAS's intervention in Venezuela reveals the limited consensus among its members as to how the Democratic Charter should be applied and the capacity of the US to dictate the terms under which the OAS intervention took place.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The Organization of American States (OAS) has built up a solid record on democracy promotion over the past decade. There was even the prospect that the OAS could move from being a classic club-type entity to a more networked mode of organization. This sense of momentum; however, has increasingly run up against a number of obstacles. At the top of the list is the uneven role played by the United States. Although still wanting to ?manage? the OAS the US has become torn between aggressive/coercive and passive/distracted behavior with respect to key aspects of its agenda. This paper traces this theme through snapshots of two recent case studies: the election of a new OAS Secretary General and the push for a strengthened Inter-American Democratic Charter at the June 2005 OAS General Assembly. The paper concludes with an analysis of the paradoxical implications of this changing dynamic. On other hand, the historical pattern of inequality between the diplomatic projection from the US and the other members within the OAS may have ended. On the other hand, the nature of the rifts within the organization may shift the balance away from networked multilateralism back to a problematic (or even dysfunctional) club style of operation.