The news from Peru is grim, though perhaps not surprising to those of us who watch the slow decay of Western-style democracies with a historian's eye. The country's political establishment, already fragile, now faces a populist surge that British analysts warn could sweep away the last vestiges of institutional order. One might be forgiven for sensing a familiar pattern: the collapse of a republic into the arms of a caudillo, a story as old as the Roman Republic's fall to Caesar.
But let us not be too hasty in our comparisons. Peru is not Rome, though the symptoms of decay are strikingly similar: a political class bereft of ideas, a populace disillusioned with liberal democracy, and a charismatic strongman waiting in the wings. The current crisis, triggered by a corruption scandal that has ensnared multiple presidents, has exposed the hollowness of Peru's democratic institutions.
The Congress, once a check on executive power, has become a revolving door of opportunists. The judiciary, meant to be impartial, is staffed by political appointees. And the press, oh the press, has traded its fourth estate duties for clickbait and partisan screeching.
Into this vacuum steps the populist, a figure who promises to clean the Augean stables with a single, authoritarian broom. The British analysts are right to be alarmed. But their alarm is a symptom of a deeper intellectual decadence, a refusal to admit that liberal democracy, as espoused by the West, may be a cultural artefact rather than a universal truth.
Peru, with its history of caudillismo and its fragile institutional memory, was always an unlikely candidate for stable democratic governance. The populist surge is not a bug, but a feature of a system that has failed to deliver prosperity, justice, or dignity to its people. The real question is not whether Peru's democracy will survive, but what will replace it.
And that, dear reader, is a question that should keep us up at night, for it is a question we may soon face ourselves.
