Intelligence and Democracy in Latin America and Africa: A Comparative Perspective

The relationship between intelligence services and a country’s political regime has always been problematic, especially when the regime is democratic, and even more so in the Global South. Democratization and autocratization are complex, diverse, and multidimensional political processes. Considering current levels and features of intelligence institutionalization, along with their historical legacies, this article examines how security agendas, geopolitical postures, and the swinging political pendulum in a given country affect intelligence agencies across organizational, cultural, and technological perspectives. To answer this broad question, the article compares four countries: two Latin American (Guatemala and Ecuador) and two African (Ghana and Tanzania). Overall, the more peripheral a country is in terms of its global share of power and wealth, the more vulnerable and unstable its political institutions tend to be. On the other hand, governments meet these pressures with strategic choices that shape intelligence reform. Moreover, rapid technological transformation constrains and enables the missions attributed to intelligence services. This study concludes that worsening peripheral positioning within the global economic and power structure, coupled with the emergence of new forms of gradual democratic erosion, are the primary sources of the enfeeblement of the intelligence-democracy nexus in these four countries.