A qualidade da democracia na América do Sul.

Abstract

Democracy as a political regime suffers from a major world crisis due to its economic, political, social and cultural impacts. Immigration to Europe of African and Asian peoples from conflict areas is a problem of global proportions. The Islamic State, which harvests innocent lives with its terrorist attacks, worries the authorities of developed countries and of solid democracies, affecting the new world order. Crime, violence and corruption smear the democratic institutions of the South American countries. The research sought to assess the quality of the democracies of the South American countries in the midst of the world crisis of democracy. How to pragmatically assess the quality of political regimes? How the rule of law institutions guarantee the civil liberties and political rights of the people of these countries? Has the culture and political participation of South American populations advanced or receded since the transition from dictatorships to democracies? These questions were the guiding principles of the research that, methodologically, was exploratory, comparative and empirical. Freedom House's research supported the empirical analysis of democracy. The study compared the democracies of South America between 2006 and 2015, was based on the theoretical theory of contemporary procedural democracy. The main results showed that: 1. Most countries are in the middle gray zone between consolidated democracy and nondemocracy; 2. Only Uruguay is among the consolidated / advanced democracies; 3. Brazil is a partially democratic, or semi-democratic country; 4. The least democratic regime is Venezuela among the eleven countries in the region.