Legitimacy and Self-Succession : The Paradox of the Latin American President

The coup in Honduras demonstrated the inherent weakness of democracy in Latin America. More than being the first coup in Honduras, the author of this study believes the coup came about from a loss legitimacy by then President Mel Zelaya, as he was the first Latin American president to fail at pushing through a constitutional amendment allowing for self-succession. Given the success rate of both rightists and leftists, this paper proposes an analysis of what makes Latin American presidents legitimate. This paper first outlines two competing models of legitimacy, a democratic and authoritarian model, and runs a series of OLS regressions to test both of these models. While the paper identifies extensive flaws in the model, it does support the idea that democracy is not necessarily the only institution engendering presidential legitimacy in Latin America