Last Friday, the Congress of Paraguay removed President Fernando
Lugo from office. The entire impeachment process lasted a mere
two days. The presidents of Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador,
Bolivia, and Argentina rushed to describe this as a “coup
d’état,” while the Brazilian and Uruguayan presidents have
called for Paraguay’s expulsion from Mercosur and Unasur due to
the democracy clause in each of the treaties. Mercosur’s Ushuaia
Protocol on Democracy (1998) and Unasur’s Additional Protocol on
Democracy (2010), as well as the OAS’s Inter-American Democratic
Charter (2001), require that states have a democratic system in
place in order to be admitted and to participate in each of
these international organizations. In other words, a democracy
clause seeks to punish anti-democratic governments with
isolation from the international community. But what are the
specific events that turn an OAS member state into an anti-
democratic one, triggering the application of the democracy
clause? Technically, each organization