Popular Impeachments: Ecuador in Comparative Perspective

Resumen

This chapter focuses on popular impeachments: episodes in which presidents have been removed or forced to resign as a result of political interactions in which street protests demanding their dismissal played a central role. It contextualizes the Ecuadorian presidential ousters by reference to the broader patterns of change and popular mobilization since 1980s. The chapter examines the specificities of political crises and the sequences of events that ended the three presidencies, closing the analysis with an interpretive hypothesis that suggests the existence of an effect of informal institutionalization behind high incidence of popular impeachments in Ecuador. Finally, it offers a more general argument that recasts the concept of societal accountability in order to interpret popular impeachments as correctivepunitive interventions of civil society. Keywords:civil society; Ecuador; mobilization; popular impeachments; societal accountability