Executives and emergencies : presidential decrees of exception in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to identify how Presidents in the Central Andean Region have used Regimes of Exception in the first decade of the twenty first century. According to the doctrine, Regimes of Exception equate to a concentration of powers in the executive branch and the suspension of human rights to overcome an ‘exceptional threat’. In Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru, these mechanisms were used by military governments at different times throughout the 20th century to deal with unrest but they have not been studied by political scientists. This paper offers an exploratory analysis of the use given to these mechanisms by Presidents in the period between 2000 and 2010