Political exile and democracy

Abstract

Political exile is a mechanism of institutional exclusion geared at revoking citizenship rights and removing individuals from full participation in the political and public arenas of a country. Due to its exclusionary character, the literature tends to assume a correlation between authoritarianism and exile, on the one hand, and democracy and asylum, on the other. This work challenges this view and discusses the more complex interactions between exile and democracy. Relying on qualitative case analysis of individual and massive exile and on a quantitative database of presidential exile in the nineteenth and twentieth century, it shows that also democracies generate exile and that also authoritarian countries have provided sites of exile and asylum for those fleeing from their home countries.

Keywords

• exilio político
• exilio presidencial y masivo
• destierro
• asilo