22
Declining State of Democratic Institutions and the Implications for Governance
was the source country for 50 percent of drugs seized in Europe, where
drug consumption has doubled in a decade from 63 to 124 metric tons.
Venezuela is also the source country for a great majority of the drug
flights between the Americas and West Africa, where the drug trade
has influenced local politics and funded instability. In Bolivia, coca
production has reached endemic levels under President Evo Morales,
former head of the coca growers union. Currently there are 50,000
hectares under cultivation in Bolivia, producing 113 metric tons of
cocaine which is fueling the rapid rise in consumption and violence
on the streets of Brazil.
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Despite real attempts to curb production,
Peru has become arguably the largest producer of cocaine – overtaking
Colombia. The most significant problems generated by the drug
trade are in Mexico and Central America where in the latter case the
governments of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador are unable to
adequately cope with the violence and corruption resulting from drug
trafficking – and where drug money has polluted political campaigns,
purchased judicial decisions and has impacted the highest levels of
elected and administrative government.
Despite this somber assessment, the return of national level
authoritarianism and the creeping cancer of corruption – as well as the
corresponding rise in insecurity and collapse of institutionalism – can
be arrested by the ongoing commitment to strengthen local democratic
governance. True believers in the promotion of representative
democracy have understood for many years that the closer government
is to the people it represents, the more responsive it is required to be
to constituents and the easier it is to ensure accountability, and even a
change in political leadership when required. As former Speaker of the
U.S. House Tip O’Neil famously stated, “All politics is local.” Local
governments are often proving grounds for new generations of leaders
who are able to gain credibility and create a platform by demonstrating
success in responsive governance. Equally, when people feel democracy
working at the local level they are increasingly discerning when faced
with pseudo “participatory” democracy – and they are more committed
to the real thing.
