Beyond Elections: Redefining Democracy in the Americas

Sílvia Leindecker and Michael Fox
Reviewed by Richard Van Heertum
CUNY/College of Staten Island

 Beyond Elections takes on a huge topic – the future of democracy in the Americas. The documentary by Sílvia Leindecker and Michael Fox
ably traverses the complexities of this broad question, relying predominantly on the voices of the people to explore how we define democracy, its nature and limitations in the Americas and efforts to expand it. The film centers on South America and a series of recent reforms implemented to spark a more participatory approach to democracy that challenges neoliberalism and transcends the limitations of the traditional liberal representative model. Parallels are drawn to the U.S., but the focus is on South America and its attempts to challenge the limitations of the past and address popular sovereignty and poverty head on with the direct participation of its citizens.

The approaches outlined in Beyond Elections include participatory budgeting (based predominantly on the Porto Alegre approach of Brazil), community councils in Venezuela and cooperatives in Venezuela, Brazil and the U.S. All three rely on giving people a voice and real decision-making power in how funding is allocated to their communities. This is the overarching theme of the documentary: how to move beyond representative democracy to give citizens a real say in how society is organized socially, politically and economically. The film moves on to provide a trenchant critique of neoliberalism and the ways that it has undermined democracy in South America, focusing on the IMF and World Bank, the 2001 crisis in Argentina and a Neo-Marxist critique of contemporary global capitalism. It looks particularly at the role of the U.S. in “betraying democracy in the name of democracy” in South America and historical antecedents to the contemporary crisis of democracy global capitalism has wrought. The film concludes by looking at alternatives to neoliberalism and ways to expand our conceptualization of democracy beyond its liberal roots in the American and French Revolutions.

The major strength of the film is hearing the voices of the people, empowered by the aforementioned reforms to chose and implement projects that have improved their communities. We also hear a diverse array of perspective on what democracy means and its powerful Utopian potential. And the film does provide a profound critique of globalization and capitalism and their largely deleterious effects on democracy in the Americas as well as the power of media and political discourse to delimit and undermine democracy. At the same time, while everyone cannot be Errol Morris, poor pacing and a lack of compelling images do undermine the documentary to some extent. This might be because the filmmakers are attempting to stay true to their own ideals of democracy – relying predominantly on the voices of others in driving the narrative structure – but more narration and better organization could help maintain audience’s attention. The relatively uncritical perspective on Chavez is another problem as is a failure to offer any real critique of the limitations of the approaches mentioned – except in the necessity to expand them. While I tend to agree with the political perspective of the film, a more balanced approach would have at least addressed the potential problems with popular democracy.

Overall, Beyond Elections offers a strong critical reflection on democracy in the Americas, contemplating its past, present and future through the voices of those most affected by its current limitations, inequalities and injustices.