The Permanent Campaign of Rafael Correa: Making Ecuador's Plebiscitary Presidency

Abstract

Analysts developed the notion of the permanent campaign to describe how presidents and prime ministers employ political marketing techniques in their quest to mobilize public support. To date, most scholarly studies of the phenomenon have focused on its features and consequences in advanced democracies. This study expands the analysis of the permanent campaign by examining its relationship to the rise of an extreme version of the plebiscitary presidency in the Andean region of Latin America. Through an examination of the administration of Rafael Correa in Ecuador, we show how the permanent campaign has been used as part of a strategy to secure the president's stay in office and effect far-reaching constitutional change. In countries where mechanisms of accountability are already weak, we conclude that conjoining of the plebiscitary presidency and the permanent campaign is likely to exacerbate the accountability deficit and generate problematic consequences for democratic political development.