This chapter documents the restrictive conditions under which leftwing, “Bolivarian” populism managed to destroy democracy in Latin America. Only Hugo Chavez of Venezuela (1999–2013), Evo Morales of Bolivia (2006–2019), and Rafael Correa of Ecuador (2007–2017) accomplished this feat because they benefited from the high instability plaguing their countries’ presidential systems and, at the same time, from the enormous hydrocarbon revenues provided by the global commodities boom. By distributing massive benefits to ample population sectors, they won overwhelming political support, which they leveraged for dismantling the remaining, already battered checks and balances. By contrast, presidents who did not benefit from such a huge windfall or who governed in countries not suffering from high institutional instability did not manage to still their power hunger and asphyxiate democracy. Instead, some of these leftwing populists suffered irregular evictions from office, whereas others managed to serve out their terms, but failed to perpetuate themselves in power and strangle democracy.

Despite the dominant role it plays in the Beninese economy, the cotton sector has not succeeded in accelerating the country’s economic growth. Yields have been volatile, and production practically stagnated from the mid-1990s to 2016. This poor performance mainly relates to the sector’s unstable management, which has oscillated between public and private monopolies. In its turn, this unstable management relates to several institutional factors including changes in ideology of the donors supporting the sector and the country’s political leader, elite bargaining, and clientelist contracts motivated by rent-seeking. These factors gave way to institutional instability, with the government abruptly overturning policies and planned actions by the previous government or re-assigning the mandates of management organisations in the cotton sector, which caused uncertainty in the sector and increased the cost of agriculture services in the sector.