Voting Beyond Borders: The Path of External Suffrage Reforms in Latin America
The incorporation of suffrage from abroad represents a complex and significant step in Latin America's broader journey toward democratization.
by Daniela Benguiat, research collaborator of the Observatory of Political Reforms in Latin America and student at Saint Louis University Madrid.
Suffrage laws are an essential component of democracies. Despite international law that protects and ensures all citizens have equal voting rights, governments still determine, to some extent, who gets to participate in electoral processes. Based on non-discriminatory and objective criteria, governments dictate the necessary conditions for suffrage, to ensure that civic representation is fair and legitimate. That being said, suffrage reforms tend to be common as changing contexts and trends urge governments to constantly update suffrage conditions. With the expansion of globalization during the late 20th century, this was the case for democracies that were obligated to consider the voting rights of citizens who had emigrated to other nations, and were residing abroad.
The issue arose in Latin American democracies that were barely emerging during that period. After stabilizing their democracies and legitimizing suffrage within their national territories, most Latin American countries experienced significant emigration waves concurrent with economic and political crises. This prompted them to strengthen their relationship with their emigrant population by granting them the right to participate in national electoral processes from abroad. These decisions were mainly made on the basis of increasing political pluralism, increasing citizen representation, and building transnational relations (Tagina M. & Corrado A. 2023).
Using data from the Observatory for Political Reform in Latin America, this post will analyze the political reforms on suffrage from abroad in eighteen countries of Latin America from 1947 to 2021. It will focus on the trends for incorporating the reform and the patterns within specific aspects of the laws with the aim of understanding how suffrage from abroad influences democratic legitimacy in Latin America.
By analyzing when the right to suffrage from abroad was incorporated in Latin American legislations, four different time periods can be observed, the first group includes the first two decades in which the reform was starting to be implemented, while the following three groups are divided by the subsequent decades. Within each subgroup, noticeable patterns demonstrate the driving trends and the regional context influencing these reforms, as well as the specific aspects of the legislations and which elections they included through time. As seen in the Suffrage from Abroad Reforms in Latin America 1960s to 2010s graph, this legislation was introduced in Latin America by Colombia in 1961, during a period characterized by authoritarian regimes, military coups, and revolutionary movements in the region, and a time where becoming stable democracies was still far off. Consequently, the massive exile of Colombians due to the political violence during the 1950s motivated the new regime of Frente Nacional to allow emigrants to vote from abroad in presidential elections, as a means of bolstering democratic legitimacy in the country (Gonzalez O. 2010).
Suffrage from Abroad Reforms in Latin America 1960s to 2010s
Source: Observatory of Political Reforms in Latin America
Not long after, Brazil and Peru implemented the reform; however, Peru was the only country to make suffrage from abroad an obligation for non-resident citizens since the beginning of its democracy, incorporating it in the publication of the 1979 Constitución Política del Perú (Leibe L. 2015). Even though the type of elections included was not specified, since 1993 suffrage from abroad has included general election and popular referendums. The early incorporation of the abroad population in democratic processes demonstrates advanced legitimation of democracy in these three countries, which was later challenged by subsequent governments.
The topic of suffrage from abroad was not mentioned during the following decade, 1980s, characterized as the third wave of democratization, where most Latin American countries, including Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, were transitioning from military dictatorships and authoritarian regimes to democratic states. The second wave highlighted in the graph covers the decade of 1990s, characterized by periods of severe economic crises in the region, mainly caused by external debts and instability of global markets. This led to hyperinflation, unemployment, and acute poverty in many Latin American countries, leading to continually increasing emigration patterns and periods of instability.
Under these circumstances, Argentina, Mexico, Venezuela, and the Dominican Republic applied the reform during that decade. In 1996, Mexico approved a reform to allow suffrage from any electoral district, which opened the possibility of voting from abroad. However, representative groups advocated for formal legislation in the upcoming years, which resulted in the 2005 reform that systematically introduced the right for Mexicans residing abroad to vote in presidential elections. The initiative for this reform was driven mainly by the argument that citizens living abroad contribute to the country’s economy through remittances, and therefore their representation in political activity is crucial and valuable for the stability of the country (Valverde L., 2018). Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, and Bolivia, a decade later, adopted a similar initiative to Mexico’s, where representative groups were the ones who pushed for the reform to be applied, and delays even resulted in intensified pressures and actions (Navarro F.L. 2016). These initiatives showcase the civic interest in and significance of including the input of non-resident citizens in political decisions, which demonstrates higher advocacy for democracy and civic representation from citizens themselves as well as strengthened democratic systems where civic demands are voiced and taken into account.
The next two decades were characterized by significant political, social, and economic changes. During the 2000s, Latin American governments experienced a shift towards left-leaning leaders and policies, inclining towards increased state control and economic redistribution, advocating for opposite strategies to the neoliberal ones prevalent during the 1990s. Nicaragua, Ecuador, Panama and Bolivia were the countries to implement suffrage from abroad during this decade, encouraging more civic inclusiveness and representation in hopes of recovering from the 1990s economic downfalls. The last decade featured in this data set, the 2010s, was a turning point for this reform in Latin America; six more countries started allowing suffrage from abroad, making seventeen of the eighteen countries in this data set implement it. This shows a shift towards consolidating democratic values in the region, as well as an urge for civic representation and maintaining transnational relations, amid polarization between emerging left and right wing regimes. Uruguay is the only country in which the reform was not approved, as it only had 37.5% of the required plebiscite votes in 2009 (Navarro F.L. 2016).
This analysis showcases four pivotal periods where suffrage from abroad was implemented in Latin American legislations, extending from the 1960s to the 2010s. Patterns in the reform demonstrate how actions were mostly driven by political instability, economic motivations, democratization efforts, and civic inclusion. The journey of seventeen countries implementing the right to vote for non-resident citizens residing abroad is part of the democratization process of each of these countries, where the national and global context pressured countries to recognize the role of their diaspora in political decision-making. The evolution of these reforms displays patterns of stabilizing and consolidating democratic legitimacy. Nevertheless, democracy in practice demonstrates that reforms such as this one are not sufficient to sustain authentic democracy practices.
How to cite:
Benguiat, Daniela (20 de septiembre del 2024). Voting Beyond Borders: The Path of External Suffrage Reforms in Latin America. Blog #LabData, Observatorio de Reformas Políticas en América Latina. https://observatorioreformas.substack.com/p/01c96d9f-444a-4760-9eec-ccb8bed8deb2