Are Political Parties Key to Democracy?

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-36028117

The reading by Juan Pablo Luna uses O’Donnell’s essays to form an argument that is quite intriguing for the reasoning behind Latin Americas lack of success. Luna uses O’Donnell’s ideas of a horizontal and vertical accountability. O’Donnell states that there must be a balance of both, which Luna agrees with, but Luna argues that O’Donnell does not go into great detail about vertical accountability and argues that in fact it might actually be the most important of the two. What is interesting is that vertical accountability is when the citizens of a given country are the ones that put restraints or a check on the president. Luna thinks that this is the reason for why Latin America will not be able to succeed in having a full democratic institution in place. This is an intriguing concept because if you think about the case in Brazil with their President just recently being impeached than you could argue that Brazil is a very democratic institution because it is practicing a check and balance on the president of their country when corruption or a scandal takes place, but I disagree. Following Luna’s idea, a strong horizontal accountability does no good if the people of the country cannot and will not trust the government or political individuals, parties, and institutions to look out for their welfare or safety. Protests begin to happen, ideas begin to form, and individuals begin to take things in to their own hands when they believe that they are not being represented. Luna also makes a good point with stating, “First, he was correct to insist that political regimes do not follow a linear, irreversible trajectory from authoritarianism to low-quality and then high-quality democracy” (pg.160). Meaning that democracies coming from authoritarian regimes have a tendency to slip back into authoritarian regimes. An argument is made that the lack of trust comes from the media and any story that is published on mainstream sources, that may be true or false. So the question is, should the media show all of the corruption and scandals occurring in Latin America, therefore causing the lack of trust and confidence in a government, thus leading to coups, or should they limit it? And if they limit it then how do you hold individuals accountable? Is the media causing the crumbling of Latin American democracies because of the immediate changes in citizens’ social interests and lack of trust in a political party to put forth their best wishes and needs, thus allowing another political party to form and take advantage of a situation? I feel the constant back and forth of changing social interests and not a commonality in issues leads to unstable governments and individuals wanting to seize power from their opponents, through horizontal accountability, and not wanting to actually look out for the citizens of their country, which would lead to the failure of vertical accountability and the citizens turning back to an authoritarian regime that appears to put forth their best interests and end the corruptions. I mean in the United States and other well stabilized democratic institutions the social issues are common (abortion, welfare, marriage equality, etc.) but the way to handle or opinions on how to handle different issues is what allows citizens to get behind a certain party or political agenda. Within Latin America it seems that the lack of trust and lack of strength in political parties does not allow for debates to occur or the desire to align and thus a desire for a different system. Therefore, another question would be are strong political parties necessary for a stable democratic institution? The constant shift to match the voters opinions or ideas at the time n order to win elections or gain popularity is dangerous because of the uncertainty it causes.