Abstract

The institutionalist framework of the anchors of democratic consolidation, developed by Leonardo Morlino at the beginning of the century, has since then occupied an established place in the democratization literature. The underpinning theory, in its original formulation, argues that, following a fragile democratic transition, intermediate institutions - such as parties, corporatist arrangements, and clientelist networks - can anchor societal sectors uncommitted to democracy. Through them, these uncommitted citizens may gradually transform their attitudes toward the democratic regime, enabling its consolidation. Yet the specific causal mechanisms by which parties and clientelism produce this effect remain underspecified. Moreover, the framework has also rarely been applied outside its original European setting. This dissertation addresses these gaps by examining the role of anchors in the reconsolidation of democracy in Ecuador between 2006 and 2017, following a decade-long political and economic crisis. The analysis focuses on the presidency of Rafael Correa, during which Ecuador underwent a process of institutional renovation, allegedly to transform the regime in a post-liberal direction. The dissertation proposes and tests several causal links between anchoring and democratic consolidation in their conventional understanding. These include the integration-moderation thesis, the role of parties as arenas for social capital accumulation, clientelism as a mobilization mechanism, and the tension between clientelistic and programmatic electoral logics. The present work also examines anchors through the lens of the regime's own political discourse, drawing on Laclau's discourse theory. It investigates the role of parties, clientelism, and civil society organizations following their rearticulation within Ecuador's declension of twenty-first-century socialism, the Citizens' Revolution. Specifically, it assesses whether these arrangements contributed to consolidating democracy in radical, if not liberal, terms. While some conventional anchors have been strengthened, and others radically transformed, little evidence was found of an intrinsic democratic character of such institutions in either conceptualization of democracy. …víceméně