1-The Democratic Charter: a Contribution to the Strengthening of Democracy in the Americas? By adopting the Inter-American Democratic Charter on September 11, 2001, the member states of the Organization of American States (OAS) reaffirmed their commitment to strengthening OAS instruments for the active defense of representative democracy. By defining in a formal – although not exhaustive – manner what OAS member states recognized as the essential elements of democracy, the Democratic Charter is innovative. It is also innovative in that it establishes procedures to implement not only when the democratic order is overturned, as in a coup, but also in the case of major threats to or alterations of that order. Because the governments agreed on the essential elements of democracy, OAS member states now have criteria on which to evaluate threats to democracy. Collective action may, therefore, be taken in a wider range of situations than simply in the case of a coup.
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