August 03, 2005
Democracy in Latin America
This is my first time guest-blogging at Babalu and it's my distinct pleasure, and an honor, to have been invited.
This morning I was posting at my blog about the gaping hole of reality in Fidelugo's Bolivarian revolution, and came across this article, Latin America’s dysfunctional democracy, by Denise Dresser, Professor of Political Science, Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México.
In the article, Ms Dresser explains,
Governments that are built on clientelism don’t need to respond. They produce skin-deep democracies in which people have a vote but don’t really have a stake, in which wealth is increasingly concentrated and income disparities are harder to breach. Worse still, such governments turn their citizens into recipients instead of participants.Earlier this year I attended a lecture at the Princeton Public library by José Ignacio García Hamilton (website in Spanish), who describes
. . .
Democracy may be working well enough in terms of free and fair elections. But something else is malfunctioning, and it transcends particular presidents, whether the president is Venezuela’s populist Chávez, Mexico’s conservative Fox, or Brazil’s left-leaning Lula. It has to do with a deep, historic, structural reality.Latin America’s dysfunctional democracy is the result of a pattern of political and economic behaviour that condemns Latin America to stagnation, independently of who governs. It stems from a pattern of postponed or partial structural reforms, of privatisations that benefit elites but hurt consumers.
This has sustained a model that places more value on the extraction of resources than on the education and empowerment of people. Bountiful resources such as oil are a bane for democracy in developing countries, because when a government gets the revenues it needs by selling oil, it doesn’t need to collect taxes. Governments that don’t need to broaden their tax base have few incentives to respond to the needs of their people.
La cultura de la democracia se asienta en la autonomía de la voluntad. En las sociedades autoritarias, en cambio, la esfera de la autonomía se aleja del individuo ingresando en otra dimensión: la del padre, el jefe, el general, el dictador.Dr. García Hamilton explored how the authoritarian society can develop into a clientilism culture.The culture of democracy is based on autonomy of the will. In authoritarian societies, however, the sphere of autonomy moves away of the individual entering in another dimension: the one of the father, the head, the general, the dictator.
Alvaro Vargas Llosa, who Mora has previously quoted, has published a must-read book, LIBERTY FOR LATIN AMERICA How to Undo Five Hundred Years of State Oppression. In his book, AVL looks at clientilism and statism.
Hernando de Soto, in his book The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else explains how the process of establishing propert rights and the rule of law as a normalized component of a society is more a political--or attitude-changing--challenge than anything else.
As we contemplate the possibility of a democratic Cuba, it's worth examining how democracy has developed in Latin America, and how to reform institutions and the underlying culture for the benefit of the public.
And how to avoid more Cubazuelas.
Posted by Fausta at August 3, 2005 12:30 PM
Comments
Welcome, Fausta!!!!!
Posted by: A.M. Mora y Leon at August 3, 2005 12:30 PM
"Bountiful resources such as oil are a bane for democracy in developing countries, because when a government gets the revenues it needs by selling oil, it doesn’t need to collect taxes. Governments that don’t need to broaden their tax base have few incentives to respond to the needs of their people."
How true, How true. This is exactly the same problem which led to such corruption in Louisiana's politics in the last century (see: Huey Long, Earl Long and Edwin Edwards). Until our state diminished the % of revenue it was collecting from oil excise taxes there was no reason for the people to care how corrupt their politicians became. They weren't touching our money and so who cares if the taxpayer (read rich oil co's like Exxon) was getting screwed over.
Posted by: Blake at August 3, 2005 12:32 PM
Sorry for the late "welcome" Fausta! Here is the money quote (no pun intended) from the article:
Such distorted priorities reflect a simple reality: democracy in Latin America seems incapable of dismantling old networks of clienteles and their traditional power-sharing arrangements. The old elites remain, locked inside their gated communities, fending off the poor, whom they have no incentive to empower, because plentiful cheap labour is so beneficial to those who employ it.
I've argued that the Anglo-American/Free Market model, as good as it is, warts and all, would never work in Latin America due to just this type of entrenchment.
Posted by: George L. Moneo at August 3, 2005 09:47 PM
George, I agree with you up to a point -- but read the books by de Soto and AVL. Their proposals are most interesting, not only for what they proposed, but for opening the possibility of change towards true democracy and free markets.
Posted by: Fausta at August 4, 2005 07:26 AM
George: I asked Alvaro about CAFTA awhile back and he said it was not perfect but it would be a lot better than what we are seeing now. He said he supported it. 'We have to live in reality,' he more or less put it.
Posted by: A.M. Mora y Leon at August 4, 2005 11:44 AM
It is doubtful whether even a cent of Mexico's or Venezuela's oil has ever "trickled down" to the people. The venality of their rulers, the impotence of their courts and the docility of the people has created a kind of "democracy" that amounts to little more than a confidence scheme which is renewed every four, five or six years. There is, of course, no solution to this problem but to continue with the farce. Any democratic society, however corrupt, will still have greater freedom and respect for human rights than the most scrupulous dictatorship. Although, to tell the truth, Generals do tend to steal less than career politicians (compare Pinochet, who is accused of taking $200,000 in bribes, to the late President Echevarria of Mexico, who stole $8 billion in today's dollars).
Posted by: M.A.T. at August 5, 2005 10:17 PM