Democracy: Government of the People or Government of the Politicians? (Critical Currents in Latin American Perspective)

DEMOCRACY

Critical Currents in Latin American Perspective Ronald H. Chilcote, Series Editor Democracy: Government o f the People or Goverment o f the Politicians? Josi. Nun Cardoso’s Brazil: A Land for Sale James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer People’s Power: Cuba’s Experience with Representative Government, Updated Edition Peter Roman

DEMOCRACY Government Ofthe People or Government of the Politicians?

JOSE NUN

Translated by David Haskel and Guillermo Haskel

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Ldnham Boulder N e w York Toronto Oxford

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC Published in the United States of America by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowmanlittlefield.com P.O. Box 317, Oxford OX2 9RU, United Kingdom Copyright 0 2003 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

0 D.R. 2000 Fondo de Cultura Econ6mica de Argentina, S.A. ISBN 950-557-373-1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Nun, JosC. [Democracia. English] Democracy : government of the people or government of the politicians? / JosC Nun. p. cm.- (Critical currents in Latin American perspective) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7425-2039-0 (alk. paper)-ISBN 0-7425-2040-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Democracy. 2. Democracy-Latin America. I. Title. 11. Series. JC423.NS613 2003 321.8-dc21 2003004209 Printed in the United States of America

@ TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSUNIS0 239.48-1992.

CONTENTS

vii

Preface

1 Introduction

1

2 Family Resemblances

5

3

Athens and Sparta

9

4

Schumpeter and the Politicians

13

5 The Pluralist Theories

25

6 The Declaration of 1948

29

7 Capitalism and Democracy: A First Approach

33

8 The Keynesian Alchemy

37

9 Marshall and the Citizens

41

10 From Schumpeter to Marshall

51

11 The Experience in the Developed Capitalist Countries

55

12 European Transitions to Democracy

59

13

Capitalism and Democracy: A Second Approach

65

14

Legitimacy, Moral Autonomy, and Preferences

71

35

From the Thirty Glorious Years to the Great Recession

81

V

Corz ten ts

vi

16 Welfare States in Transition

85

17 The Problematic of Social Exclusion

89

18 The Latin American Case

95

19 An Unhappy Balance

105

20

An Idea and Its Concrete Manifestations

111

21

Conditional Democracy

117

22

Deceiving Resemblances

123

23

Epilogue

129

References

137

Index

141

About the Author

151

PREFACE

I

started writing this book at the request of Enrique Tandeter, to be published in the Sevie Breves of the Fondo de Cultura Econ6mica de Argentina he coordinates. That is why I tried to follow as much as possible the parameters of that collection, aimed at a broad public and eluding the formal requirements of academic works written for specialists. In the end, the text exceeded the requirements of that series and appears under a different rubric. However, I kept the initial orientation, although I added an appendix with the main bibliographic sources I used. Needless to say, a book like this is dedicated to all those who may have the patience to read it. But I would also like to add a very special and very affectionate dedication to Diana, my wife, and my children, Paula, Diego, and Juan. Buenos Aires, May 2000

vii

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1 INTRODUCTION

A

century and a half ago, Abraham Lincoln warned that his country urgently needed a definition of the wordfreedom because it had been badly distorted: “The world never has a good definition for this word,” he lamented. “We are all decidedly in favor of freedom, although we do not always have the same thing in mind when the word leaves our lips.” This phenomenon repeats itself today in Latin America regarding the word democracy. Worse still, democracy has become, with an alarming ease, a commonplace that seems to be taken for granted and that generates few discussions, let alone observations like that of Lincoln. Ironically, the subject is being debated more in the “First World” than among us. There appears to be more than one reason for this state of affairs. First of all, most of the current political regimes continue to be evaluated, at least in part, by contrast to the preceding military dictatorships-in other words, by that which they are not. This is the case regardless of the current regimes’ institutions and practices, of the support they elicit, and even of their real distance from the past. It seems reasonable, though, to evaluate them in a positive light when considered as the opposite of horror. A second cause is the widespread dissemination of the neoliberal idea that there are no alternatives, which conveys a formalistic and technocratic view of democracy itself. Rhetoric aside, this view conceives democracy simply as one possible system of political equilibrium, to be recommended only as long as it does not leave the door open to excesses that may affect the current patterns of capitalist accumulation. Hence, many people appear to be satisfied with the mere existence of periodic elections and, depending on the place, a larger or smaller number of public freedoms. They consider 1

2

Chapter 1

this to be proof enough of the democratization of political life. Asking for more would be utopian, and we know well what kind of abysses utopias can lead to. A third reason for the lack of discussion about democracy results from a number of factors that will be explored later, among which economic crises and social exclusion processes take pride of place. A profound and generalized disarticulation of the identities and solidarities of the popular sectors-which historically were the major driving force behind widespread political participation-has occurred. The contrast is remarkable indeed: decades ago, most of the politically excluded were workers striving to attain citizenship; today, most of the socially excluded are unemployed and underemployed individuals who devote all their energies to trying to stay alive. Lastly, we are witnessing an evident retrenchment of critical thought. The least that can be said is that the issue of democracy has not become in Latin America the ferment of a debate about the present and future of our countries. I suppose there are still many intellectuals who suffer from a bad conscience, because for years they attacked formul democracy (following a tradition initiated by the French left in 1848) and now fear that any objections they raise may lead to misinterpretations. The major problem in earlier times were the kind of radical alternatives those intellectuals made their own (and which they now renounce); today, the problem is instead their excessive prudence, which has created another of those well-known cases in which the baby is thrown out with the bathwater. O n top of all this, and not to be disregarded, is the fact that, because of the political history of our countries, Latin American social thought has traditionally focused much more on oligarchic, populist, or despotic regimes than on democratic ones. This, combined with the aforementioned critical prudence, has made it specially receptive to the analyses of democracy prevailing in the First World, in particular those of Anglo-Saxon origin and of a mostly descriptive orientation. As a result of these circumstances (and of others that could be added to them), the material poverty affecting growing numbers of people in Latin America at the beginning of this century is accompanied by an increasingly impoverished public discussion about the organization of our societies and the most fair and equitable ways to rule them. That is why I believe this is a good time to rethink some concrete aspects of the issue of democracy and to review certain common ways of thinlung that have made them murky. My aims here, I repeat, are not purely aca-

Introduction

3

demic. I would like to place on the agenda, in a simple and accessible way, a number of questions related to the conditions of possibility of democracy, to the links between citizens and social rights, and, ultimately, to the relations that might exist nowadays between democracy and equality. I address these questions because I consider them to be particularly relevant, which is not to say that they are the only relevant ones. I firmly believe, however, that these questions are major premises of any serious dialogue about democracy. I also believe there has been for too long a tendency to neglect them, which plays nicely into the hands of those who have no interest whatsoever in discussing them. Such neglect explains why, as Lincoln would have said, the notion of democracy has been seriously distorted among us, forcing the literature to resort to a growing number of adjectives to modify it: transitional, incomplete, delegative, low-intensity, relative, uncertain, and even, in a significant perversion of the language, authoritarian. The matter is not, of course, the use of adjectives itself Actually, the term democracy has never been free of them: since the early eighteenth century, the term representative has been attached to it, and later, depending on the case, it would be called direct or liberal or parliamentarian. But the adjectives I mentioned before refer to something else, to absences or distortions in the object they describe; thus, they are symptoms of an uneasiness that should receive our full attention. To this end, it may be useful to return to some well-known starting points that remain valid and can help us organize the discussion. But before we do, let us turn our attention to a couple of preliminary considerations.

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2 FAM I LY R E S E M B L A N C E S

I

t should be acknowledged from the very beginning that, in general terms

and contrary to what might be expected, there is little we know yet about democracy with sufficient empirical or theoretical certainty. It is understandable. As Darnton and Duhamel have pointed out, even adding the nearly two centuries of Athenian democracy and the barely two centuries of Western democracy (this latter estimate being clearly too high), in twenty-six hundred years of history the phenomenon of democracy has only appeared in a few spots on Earth over less than four hundred years, and remains even today almost totally alien to some four-fifths of humankind. What is more, over the last half century, constitutional democratic regimes have existed continuously in only twenty-two countries, and these regimes have had abundant differences among them. It should be noted that the Athenians have bequeathed us no systematic analysis of their own experience, and many of the fundamental texts on modem democracy were written by those who either never got to know it (Montesquieu, Rousseau) or witnessed only its first steps (Tocqueville, J. Stuart Mill). In more contemporary times, the majority of the best and most influential contributions to the subject have focused on very particular cases, especially those of the so-called Anglo-Saxon (and some Western European) democracies. This brings me to one of the central points I wish to defend. To put it briefly, the notion of democracy has the typical structure of afamily resemblance concept, and it should be treated accordingly. Let me clarify very concisely the meaning and some of the consequences of such an assertion. It is usually assumed that, when we apply the same concept to a set of 5

6

Chapter 2

different instances, we do it on the basis of one or more properties that are shared by these instances. And in many cases this is so: for instance, there are good and bad sisters, pretty and ugly, fat and slim. But all of them have a common property-that of being the daughters of the same parents. This was generally taken for granted until the 1930s, when an Austrian philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, disrupted the peace among epistemologists by showing that things frequently occur in a different manner. Let us consider, he suggested, the word gumes. A moment of reflection is enough to see that the word designates a very wide gamut of activities for which there is no common element: there are games for a single or several players, of chance or ability, between professionals or amateurs, games using balls, dice, arrows, or cards. We are in the presence, rather, of a complex repertoire of similitudes and differences, of features that appear or disappear as soon as we try to compare them. Let us admit then that the activities we refer to share afumily resemblance and, as in a family, that resemblance is not necessarily transitive. A may have some resemblance to B, and B to C, without the same happening between A and C. It is not strange, therefore, that when we are asked to explain what a game is, we usually give examples; that is, we resort to a description. Although multiple consequences follow from Wittgenstein’s argument, I will mention only those more relevant to our subject. Firstly, it follows from the above that we do not usually apply concepts with a family resemblance structure to certain cases because they have some properties in common; instead, these cases acquire such properties as a result of the operation that includes them within the same concept. (What boundaries can be stipulated for the word gumes?) This clearly shows the basically conventional character of the concepts we use: to continue with the example, the games’ own features are actually less important than the concrete situation that leads us to classify some activities as games and not others. Finally, since we are not dealing here with a theory simply about resemblances-which would render the concept undetermined and useless-but about family resemblances, judgments of this sort always depend on the specific instances adopted as paradigmatic, that is, as objects of comparison: within a family one resembles (or does not resemble) somebody else. Now, let us return to democracy. In consonance with the above (and contrary to any essentialism), we use this word when talking about particular political regmes nowadays not so much because of a specific set of properties they have in common; rather, these regimes end up having such common properties as a result of the operation that classifies them as denioc-

Family Resemblances

7

racies. It all depends on the agreed criteria ofrelevance and at which point it is decided to stop making distinctions. That is why a constitutional monarchy and a republic, a presidential government and a parliamentarian one, and countries with completely different electoral systems can all be categorized as democracies. (Debates among political scientists about the very cases of the United Kingdom and the United States are quite revealing. To some they belong to the same type, that of the “Anglo-Saxon democracy.” Others question this assimilation and contrast British parliamentarism with U. S. presidentialism, the unitary character of one government with the federal character of the other, the strong bipartisan system of the British with the weak and amorphous one of the United States, and so on.) With regard to the paradigmatic cases, only about twentytwo nations tend to be described as stable democracies out of the nearly two hundred independent countries that exist today. This limited group is the largest in contemporary history, and, furthermore, it only reached that magnitude over the last few decades. Both circumstances lead observers to take as objects of comparison those cases with a longer and more permanent democratic tradition, which have been the subject of the most elaborate analyses. I am referring, of course, to a handful of highly developed capitalist countries: the Anglo-Saxons, in the first place, and secondly a few more countries in Western Europe. Given that these are the usual points of reference, to assign democracy the status of a concept with a family resemblance structure immediately sounds a warning note. Are the qualifying features that are selected pertinent or not when other countries are included in the same category? Should it be assumed that such characteristics are present in all cases, or that they are present in some and not in others? Can a hierarchical order be established among those features? Are there at least partial modes of equivalence that may be deemed justifiable? Moreover, are we indeed talking about one family, or several? What I am trying to say is that it is always necessary to examine and discuss the criteria for inclusion that are employed, as well as their applicability to new situations, and that there is no way to avoid such an examination. Concepts with a family resemblance structure are as indispensable as they are problematic. There is perhaps no better evidence of the difficulty they pose than those peculiar adjectives (discussed in chapter 1) that the Latin American literature has been forced to attach to the notion of democracy over the last few years. The political system of a given country may resemble that of

8

Chapter 2

the established democracies, but perhaps not much and only in some secondary aspects, or maybe the less desirable ones. . . . There is something else: a significant part of the scientific enterprise entails working on concepts with a family resemblance structure to control their vagueness, fine-tune the criteria for inclusion, and, finally, isolate one or more common properties that obtain in at least some of the cases, thereby arriving at definitive concepts (perhaps transitorily-that is, until anomalous instances surface again). The literature on democracy is full of efforts of this kind. Regrettably, though, they fail, as I will show in dealing with one of the most well-known contemporary examples. I suspect that these efforts will keep failing for a long time, because I believe that the epistemological fate of the concept of democracy is, like that of games, to stubbornly maintain its structure of family resemblance. I trust all this will become clearer in the pages that follow.

3 A T H E N S AND SPARTA

T

hat the concept of democracy has been problematic from the beginning is suggested by the double original meaning of the word demos in Greek: on the one hand it described a community of citizens; on the other, it meant the crowd, the poor and the wicked. Is it necessary to say which was the meaning preferred by the enemies of Athenian democracy? In this respect, it must be recalled that Socrates’ well-known “I only know that I know nothing” was not meant as an expression of humility, but as a mockery of the ambitions of the heterogeneous crowd wishing to govern Athens-a crowd so uncultivated that, unlike the philosopher, it was not even aware of its own ignorance. As a modern echo of the derogatory use of the word, at least until 1830 in the United States, and until the 1848 revolutions in Europe, few dared to proclaim themselves advocates of democracy. But whatever the value attributed to democracy or the definition adopted, if those four hundred years of history mentioned earlier teach us anything, it is that, when the word democracy is used, it is always taken for granted, as a minimum, that the ultimate foundation o f the power of the state is thefreely expressed consent ofall the citizens. This is the basic convention agreed on by the critics and the defenders of the different forms of democracy, be they ancient or modern, direct or representative. Were we, then, mistaken? Could this be the common property we were looking for? The difficulty is that such a basic convention is a far cry from gwing us a simple and univocal criterion for inclusion, since it inevitably refers us to a complex and controversial series of previous issues meant to establish what constitutes free expression of consent, what should be its 9

10

Chapter 3

range, and who should be considered citizens. (It is as if we were satisfied with defining game as an amusement or entertainment activity.) I propose that, at this point, we make a very important distinction, to which we will come back several times. This is the distinction between the idea of democracy as collective self-government (I am calling this the basic convention) and its concrete historical manifestations. It would be a flagrant paralogism to imagine that the latter could be a pure incarnation of the former. In different places and in uneven ways, such manifestations incorporate and combine local traditions, habits, institutions, beliefs, and styles, while conveying different interpretations of the practical viability of that general convention. That is why it is in relation to such concrete historical mangestations that thefamily resemblances to which I refer apply (or do not apply). Moreover, in a first, schematic approach to the subject, it is important to distinguish between two broad interpretations of citizens’ participation in the public arena, both of long standing. One interpretation understands democracy as an effective expression of the general will; that is, as the government of the people. The other sees popular participation mainly as a platform for thegovernment ofthepoliticians. It is quite significant that it was the second vision (defended by the Federalists) that nurtured the U.S. constitution, and that would later inspire most Latin American constitutions. Undoubtedly, Athenian democracy is, from a historical point of view, the experience that better symbolizes the first vision (and that is why the vision’s defenders turn to Athenian democracy time and again). Athenian democracy evokes a powerful image, although one that is not entirely accurate: that of the citizens as a whole gathered in an assembly to decide on collective affairs in a direct way and without mediation. It is well known that neither women nor foreigners or slaves counted as citizens in Athens. Even so, citizens’ numbers varied, at different times, from thirty thousand to sixty thousand, while the agora, or meeting place, did not have room for much more than the six thousand who constituted the quorum of the assembly. O n the other hand, there also existed representative institutions, with members chosen at random for periods not exceeding one year. (Athenians did not consider voting to be democratic, as, they said, it inevitably favored the rich and successful.) Despite these facts-and not least for all the lessons that can also be drawn from its limitations-the Athenian polis remains one of the greatest known examples of the government of the people, and it is still valid to adopt it as a point of reference for this perspective. Ancient Greece also gives us an admittedly rudimentary early example of what I call, generically, the government of the politicians, although in a

Athens and Sparta

11

context that neither was nor pretended to be democratic. In Sparta, power was in the hands of an elite, but the members of the city’s council were appointed using a procedure that, to a certain extent, heralded the election of representatives via voting in many modern democracies. Candidates paraded before the citizens, gathered in an assembly (their total number never exceeded nine thousand), and were cheered or not according to the preferences of the audience. In a neighboring room, impartial evaluators registered in written tablets the intensity of the applause and shouts garnered by the candidates, and through this method (which Aristotle considered decidedly childish, although it is less distant from our modern procedures than it seems) they determined the winners. Athens and Sparta are then the symbolic starting points of two visions that, in given times and places, promoted the formation of different families. However, in this century, and especially since World War 11, both have finally converged into a single great family, that of Western democracies, although the cohabitation of the two visions has not always been peaceful or harmonious. For the sake of brevity, then, I will take the 1940s as the starting point for the journey the following pages will undertake. Two fundamental elaborations of the two lines of thought-which, explicitly or not, have established the main patterns of the debate about democracy still prevailing today-date back to that moment. The first was published in 1942 and establishes some of the most serious arguments supporting the vision of the government of the politicians. The second appeared in 1949 and profiles the kind of citizen who nowadays demands any type of democracy inspired by the idea of the government of the people. Both will help us, I hope, to better understand key aspects of the great family I am refemng to, a family to which many new political regimes aspire to belong.

NOTE 1. Leibniz, probably the greatest European philosopher of the seventeenth century, wrote: “Today there is no prince so bad that it would not be better to become his subject than to live in a democracy.” As Charles and Mary Beard would recall many years later, refemng to the U.S. constitution: “When the Constitution was written no respectable person would call himself democratic.”

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4 SCHUMPETER AND THE POLITICIANS

J

D E M O C R A C Y AS A M E T H O D

oseph Schumpeter was a remarkable economist, a compatriot of Wittgenstein, who taught for many years at Harvard. Like John Maynard Keynes, he was born in 1883, the same year Karl Marx died-and a good part of his academic efforts was aimed at criticizing both men. An aristocrat and elitist, he was his entire life a lucid and rigorous conservative who tried to keep science and politics apart.’ In 1942 he published Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, a work that, in his own words, condenses four decades of dehcation to the study and analysis of sociahm. The book’s main thesis is that, inevitably, socialism will replace capitalism. This would not, as Marx believed, be due to capitahsm’s flaws, but would result from its success: progress and innovations would become routine, and capitalism would have to give way to a more rational system, ruled by a central planning authority. (That this has not occurred does not prevent modem scholars 6 o m deeming Schumpeter-“the Marx of the bourgeoisie,” as a colleague nicknamed him--one of the economists par excellence of the globalization era. This status is a result of the place given in his theory to those “destructive creation” processes that he considered one of the main virtues of capitalism. As an example of Schumpeter’s continuing influence, the book on Silicon Valley written by Andrew Grove, one of the founders of INTEL, uses for its title one of Schumpeter’s typical phrases: Only Paranoiacs Survive.) 13

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Chapter 4

In Capitalism, Socialisni, and Democracy, Schumpeter considers whether democracy and socialism are compatible, which leads him to the prior question of what should be understood by democracy. His handling of this issue would become one of the most influential and widely read parts of that work. It may be useful to point out here that if, in 1942, a discussion of the issue invited anything, it was the exertion of a very cautious realism: in 1920 there were thiroj-five or more constitutionally elected governments of representative democracy in the world; by 1938 the number had fallen to less than half that; and at the beginning of the 1940s there were no more than twelve. As Hobsbawm recalls, in those days “nobody predicted or expected a revitalization of democracy after the war.” Fascism and communism were on the rise, and the future seemed to belong to them. The fairly raw realism that Schumpeter deploys in his analysis starts by considering democracy as a political method and not as an end in itself. Assertions about its functioning, therefore, do not make sense “without a reference to given times, places, and situations.” Democracy may or may not contribute to economic development, to social justice, or to providing food, healthcare, and education: the fundamental issue is that it is exclusively a procedure. What does this mean? It is traditionally thought, Schumpeter says, that in a democracy the electorate first defines and makes decisions regarding political controversies, and then appoints a number of representatives to implement those decisions. He is referring, essentially, to the vision that I am calling the government of the people. According to Schumpeter, barring exceptional cases, in practice things never happen this way. O n the contrary, the sequence is inverted: first the representatives are chosen, and they are then in charge of solving the controversies and making the decisions. It couldn’t be otherwise. The community is always divided into a relatively small group of political leaders and a large mass of citizens, with an intermediate layer of nilitants acting as a nexus. The leaders (and their advisors and technicians) are organized into parties, which recruit militants and draw up platforms that are afterward proposed to the electorate, which is called on only to choose among them. O f course this is not the only way popular preferences enter into the model. The competition among leaders forces them to adjust their programs according to those preferences to win the favor of the voters. The resemblance to the operation of a market economy is evident: parties act as companies offering their products to citizens who behave as

Schuriipeter arid the Politicians

15

consumers. In this case, the consumers resort not to money but to votes. In the Schumpeterian view democracy is not a market of perfect competition but an oligopolistic one, both because of its high degree of concentration of supply and because of the extent to which, inevitably, public preferences are manipulated. Then what about the general will? On one hand, in all communities the differences of values and opinions are such that is impossible for such a will to emerge, much less for it to serve as the basis for a consensus on a “uniquely determined common good discernible to all.” O n the other hand, it would be naive not to acknowledge that the seeming wishes of the voters are fabricated by propaganda, so that “the will of the people is the product and not the motive power of the political process.”2 In fact, “the typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field.” This field appears to him so remote and complex that “he argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests.” At this point, a first important difficulty arises. The model drawn up by Schumpeter contains a single democratic element, mediate or immediate, which is electoral competition. Without it, the model could not even aspire to be called democratic. But Schumpeter’s negative judgments of the electorate make it hard, at first sight, to understand why he assumes that voters can validly intervene in that competition. There is a single possible answer, and not a very solid one: it requires a lesser degree of rationality to choose leaders than to decide the policies to be implemented. This is certainly the solution adopted by Schumpeter, for whom “democracy means only that the people have the opportunity of accepting or refusing the men who are to rule them.” That is why, according to him, the democratic method amounts to no more than an “institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote.” We will soon see that Schumpeter himself perceives the limits of this solution. His perspective leaves open the question of how the citizens he describes can be qualified to evaluate the different candidates and their programs. What resources would they have to adequately process the messages they receive or to appraise the contenders’ past and present performances? (Alexander Hamilton and the U.S. Federalists were more consistent and categorical on this issue. They simply did not believe that common citizens were in a position to decide who should be their president; so they created

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Chapter 4

the electoral colleges, to which, initially, a clearly deliberative function was assigned. Alternatives of this kind raise the issue of an infinite regression, as it cannot be understood how such citizens would have the ability to select the members of those colleges.) In addition to these problems, the influence Schumpeter attributed to propaganda was exaggerated (and specific to the time in which he wrote). Further, political decisions regarding such issues as war and peace, jobs and wages, social welfare, access to education, abortion rights, and discrimination could hardly be as remote from the voter as he thought. But what has been said so far is enough to understand why, in this vision, democracy is the government not of the people but of the politic i a n ~ Citizens .~ are only there to applaud or withhold their applause, as in Sparta. As for the leaders, they necessarily become professionals, specialists in public affairs and in “treating with men.” As Max Weber recognized, besides livingfor politics they dedicate themselves to living $politics. Like any other profession, those who belong to it develop their own interests, wishing above all to keep their jobs and to cling to power once they have achieved it. This not only may seriously affect the quality and transparency of their leadership, but it poses a second (and quite considerable) risk for the continuity of the democratic regime, whose mechanisms are increasingly in danger of running in a void. And again, Schumpeter is aware of these limitations.’

T H E LIMITS O F MINIMALISM At this point, a more far-reaching reflection can help us understand why the two families I refer to (the government of the people and the government of the politicians) are less antagonistic than they seem. Social reality is hopelessly complex and ambiguous, so that any effort to explain it by means of-a simple and coherent model, however useful, eventually reaches its own limits. I will offer a classic example. So-called objectivist sociology basically conceives women and men as products of the society in which they live, and hence emphasizes the study of the socialization, adaptation, and integration processes modeling them. Its main concern is the problem of social order and, therefore, the analysis of the mechanisms of adjustment that make life in common possible. On the contrary, so-called subjectivist sociology considers society first and foremost as a human product; it examines social action and the ways in which

Schumpeter and the Politicians

17

men and women create the values and norms guiding their behavior, In this case, the focus is on the control that the agent exerts on the milieu in which she has to live and on her potential to develop autonomous projects. But neither of these two views can aspire to a monistic and totalizing explanation, a limitation of which their more lucid exponents have always been aware. Thus, an objectivist like Durkheim ends up appealing to the subjectivism of innovative moments of intense “collective enthusiasm” to explain how the established order is stripped of its routine and transformed; and a subjectivist like Weber studies the process of bureaucratization and uncovers the ways in which the modem organization man becomes trapped in an “iron cage.” In the end, each of these approaches to society resorts to the other. Let’s resume our path. As I have stated, the vision of government of the people features the popular assembly as its most distinctive expression and also as its limit. If it was difficult for people to regularly attend the Athenian agora meetings, it would be illusory to suppose that a more or less permanent assembly could be the key political institution for a large, complex, and differentiated modern society-and, moreover, to assume that everybody would be eager and able to actively participate in it. That is to say that in practice the assembly-in any of its form-necessarily coexists with &verse mechanisms of representation. The same goes for the referendum, the delegative mandate, and the rest of the modalities of direct expression of the citizens’ will. For all the efforts to keep it at bay, the vision of government of the politicians creeps in through the cracks. It is evident, though, that something very similar happens when this latter vision is held to be central, short of its losing all democratic semblance. It is for this reason that I have underlined Schumpeter’s awareness of the risk that elitist models like his always face. Moreover, this is why his definition of democracy as a procedure cannot be dissociated from his way of addressing the issue, that is, by carefully stipulating the “conditions for the success of the democratic method.” This opens the door to a series of questions more germane to the vision of government of the people while making it clear that a merely procedural conceptualization of democracy is not viable. Such a conceptualization apparently isolates a common property of all democratic regimes (the method), thus departing from the always complicated and arguable appeal to family resemblances. Were a procedural conceptualization of democracy viable, a regime would be democratic whenever the method was present. It is easy to understand why Schumpeter’s formula

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immediately attracted so many supporters. But, as we shall see in a moment, he was the first to believe-and for very good reasons-that things were not that simple. To put it another way, Schumpeter’s is one of those definitions that are often called conditional, because they provide a specification of meaning that is only valid as long as such specification is subject, in turn, to the fulfillment of certain conditions. And the nature of the conditions Schumpeter sets for his proceduralism gives it the relatively open texture that is typical of family resemblance concepts. Before moving ahead, I would like to highlight a rather remarkable fact, partly responsible for the poverty of the Latin American debate on democracy I mentioned in chapter 1. Explicitly or implicitly, the literature on the so-called transitions to democracy our countries experienced over the last two decades has been very much influenced by Schumpeter’s conceptualization of democracy as a method. Its simplicity and realism seemed to dispel any doubts in both the theoretical and practical fields, especially for those who were trying to leave behind their previous revolutionary f e r v ~ r There .~ was no place for outdated Rousseauean illusions, then. Competition among leaders and periodic elections are, and must be, the pillars of the system, and all that matters is that, through the vote, the people empower every so many years those who will make decisions on their behalf. If things do not come out the way they expect, the voters will have the opportunity of redressing the situation in the next polls. Contrary to what several generations of tenderhearted men (pace Hegel) have imagined, this, and nothing else, is democracy. That is why now we are all (or almost all) democratic.6 The Latin American debate on democracy resorted to a typical extractive maneuver: the definition of democracy was taken from Schumpeter, but no attention was paid to the demanding conditions to which he had subjected it. Never mind that he states, bluntly: “Democracy thrives in social patterns that display certain characteristics, and it might well be doubted whether there is any sense in asking how would it fare in others that lack those characteristics-or how the people in those other patterns would fare with it.” He insists: “If a physicist observes that the same mechanism works differently at different times and in different places, he concludes that its functioning depends upon conditions extraneous to it. We cannot but arrive at the same conclusion.” This omission is all the more serious and surprising gven that the author takes pains to differentiate between “societies in which

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it is possible that [the democratic method] will work” and those in which it may, additionally, “be a success.”

THE CONDITIONS FOR A DEFINITION Schumpeter writes that it is possible for democracy as a method to work in “the great industrial nations of the modern type”; therefore, his argument applies very explicitly only to them. This is no small restriction: he is referring to the “modern capitalist societies” and, more precisely, to the developed Western nations or, as he also says, to capitalist societies “in their stage of maturity.” As far as they are concerned, he states, “there never was so much personal freedom of mind and bodyfor all, never so much readiness to bear with and even to finance the mortal enemies of the leading class, never so much active sympathy with real and faked sufferings, never so much readiness to accept burdens as there is in modern capitalist society. . . .” In fact, Schumpeter anticipates one of the central tenets of the theories of modernization of the 1950s and 1960s: a country must grow economically and transform its patterns of social organization before addressing the issue of political development-that is, the adoption of a representative democracy. Neither he nor those who followed him imagined that the sequence might be inverted, that the democratic method could precede modernization.’ Of course, one can agree or not with such a proposition. What is not admissible is to adopt the procedural definition without even discussing it. Schumpeter, I insist, confines his argument explicitly to the more developed societies, where “social legislation or, more generally, institutional change for the benefit of the masses is not simply something which has been forced upon capitalist society by an ineluctable necessity to alleviate the everdeepening misery of the poor but that, besides raising the standard of living of the masses by virtue of its automatic effects, the capitalist process also provided for that legislation the means ‘and the will.’ ” There is more: a grounding in economic and social development makes the democratic method viable in principle, but is not enough to ensure its success. Some of the reasons for this have already been touched on here and have to do with the attributes that both the leaders and the led must possess. Let us review briefly the four conditions for success set by Schumpeter.

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The first relates to the dangers the professionalization of politics always entails. Schumpeter asks how a democratic society could prevent the corruption of leaders, their closing ranks among themselves, their manipulation of the resources of power to perpetuate their rule. How could such a society attract the more capable leaders and prevent the talent and the character of the politicians from falling “below the standard,” as he believed happened in the Weimar Republic? Schumpeter’s answer is unconvincing and finally circular: “the human material of politics . . . should be of sufficiently high quality,” and to achieve this, “the only effective guarantee” is the consolidation of a “social stratum’’ entirely devoted to it. He says nothing, for instance, about the risk of this stratum itself becoming corrupt or about the role that should be played by legal norms and their institutionalization in a firmly rooted constitutional state. But I am less interested in discussing this pseudosolution than in stressing what it implies: to wit, that neither the competition among leaders nor their attainment of votes is guarantee enough of their competence or their democratic behavior.8 A second condition refers to the convenience of excluding from the field of political decisions a number of matters better left to experts, such as the administration of justice, the handling of finances, etc. In other words, it would not be necessary or useful for the democratic method to impinge on all the functions of the state. The previous danger also threatens this principle, because “the politician’s power to appoint the personnel of nonpolitical public agencies, if remorselessly used, will often suffice to corrupt them.” Thirdly, it is indispensable for a democratic government to count on “the services of a well-trained bureaucracy of good standing and tradition, endowed with a strong sense of duty and a no less strong esprit de corps.” But such a bureaucracy “cannot be created in a hurry,” and, again, “the question of the available human material is all-important.” As can be seen, all these conditions concern leaders and raise a previous problem that the democratic method cannot solve by itself, although the problem conspires against democracy’s good performance and even against its continuity. We are on the frontier of the vision of government of the people, whose mistrust of all mediations that might interfere with the autonomous will of citizens has historically led it to argue forcefully for the implementation of different mechanisms of control of the delegates or representatives and diverse systems of checks and balances. Moreover, issues like civic education and the quality of democratic practices have always

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taken pride of place in this perspective, and it is precisely to them that Schumpeter links his fourth condition. Schumpeter’s fourth condition concerns the people’s “democratic selfIscip1ine”-their abiding absolutely by the law and showing a high degree of tolerance for differences of opinion. For this to occur, Schumpeter writes, “above all, electorates and parliaments must be on an intellectual and moral level high enough to be proof against the offerings of the crook and the crank, or else men who are neither will be driven into the ways of both.” This is a decisive statement and it is worth a second reading. On one hand, it stresses again that, by itself, the method Schumpeter calls democratic is not immune to crooks and cranks, and neither is it necessarily apt to protect the very practice of democracy. O n the other hand-and the issue will come up several times in this book-the success of that method ends up depending on the citizens’ high intellectual and moral level. The issue is so important that Schumpeter goes to the extreme of proclaiming that “even the necessary minimum of democratic self-control evidently requires a national character and national habits of a certain type which have not everywhere had the opportunity to evolve and which the democratic method itself cannot be relied on to produce.” If taken literally, such an assertion either is again circular or leads to ethnocentric interpretations that are both irritative and unsupported. But leaving such an unfortunate formula as it stands, it indicates once more that, for Schumpeter, a procedural democracy can operate validly only in places where-for whatever reasons-the citizens are endowed with the material, intellectual, and moral resources deemed adequate. Hence his restriction of the analysis to the developed countries, and also the imprudence of those who have sought to appropriate the method while forgetting the conditions, not realizing that it only appears to be simple. So, for example, Castoriadis is right when he writes, in a strong critical tone, that a procedural democracy constitutes a fraud “unless one intervenes deeply in the substantive organization of social life.” Except that Schumpeter (despite his monarchic convictions, his limited sympathy for democracy, and his disdain for the “subnormal,” who, according to him, are always the most numerous part of the people) not only knew this, but he said it first. Later on, Castoriadis wonders what would happen if “democracy fell from heaven” onto a country (supposedly he is still talking about democracy as a method); and he answers that it wouldn’t last more than a few years

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unless it produced individuals worthy of it and capable of making it work and develop. Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy proves that Schumpeter would have been even more skeptical than Castoriadis about the method’s ability to generate such individuals. In short, a sizable part of Schumpeter’s popularity among political analysts in Latin America (and not only here) is based on a misunderstanding. More witty and less indulgent than many of his followers, the Austrian economist did not believe in the government of the people, but he was convinced that, without a series of very precise requisites, the government of the politicians would lead, sooner or later, to a mockery of the democratic regme. This would happen in spite of the existence of political parties or periodical elections. Thomas Jefferson had already said that it meant nothing that the despots “might have been chosen by ourselves: an elective despotism is not the government for which we have fought.”

NOTES 1. As Paul Samuelson, one of his best disciples, would say years later, the young Schumpeter had stated very early his three great ambitions in life: to be Vienna’s best lover, Europe’s best rider, and the world’s best economist. Many would say that he achieved the third goal, although he himself never believed he had. Once settled in the United States, he added two other objectives to his personal agenda: to become an art expert and to be successful in politics. There is here an obvious specular relation with Keynes, dance and music patron, director of the Bank of England, and economic representative of his country in the United States. 2. Twenty years later the U.S. political scientist V. 0. Key Jr. condensed the point into a formula that was to become famous: “The voice of the people is just an echo”-of the voices of parties, of candidates, of propaganda, and so on. 3. If there were there any doubts about the actuality of the Schumpeterian vision, it would be enough to read what Gernian sociologst Ralf Dahrendorf (1996) wrote half a century later: “The democratic illusion that there is something such as the government of the people has been a constant invitation to usurpers and new monopolies.” This is Schumpeter almost verbatim. 4. Some of the analogies Schumpeter resorts to are of an undeniable eloquence: “The Prime Minister of a democracy,” he writes, “could be compared to a rider so absolutely absorbed in trying to hold on to the saddle that he can make no plan for the ride, or to a general so absolutely busy ensuring that his army will abide by his orders, that he has to abandon strategy to its own fate.” 5. For example, Chilean sociologst Angel Flisfisch, referring to the Schumpeterian definition, writes: “It is a conceptualization that adequately captures both the sense and the effective mode of operation of a democratic political order.” O f course, it would be easy to multiply quotes such as this. 6. It must be noted that another apparent advantage of the procedural definition is what the Argentine political scientist Guillemio O’Donnell calls its minimalism, which

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facilitates quantitative comparisons among a wide range of cases. In principle, it would be enough to base the comparison on variables that are assumed to be objective, univocal, and homogeneous, such as the existence of periodical elections or of political parties. However, the numerous cases of dubious classification that always arise bear witness to the fact that, even at this level, a minimalist definition is not enough. 7. A U.S. political analyst wrote, typically, three decades ago: “the experience of the modernizing nations indicates that democracy, as we understand it, is not appropriate to their stage of development” (Apter 1965, 452). O n the contrary, Brazilian sociologst Francisco Weffort stated in 1990: “I think it cannot be denied that democracy is the only way that may lead Latin American countries to modernity.” And this after stating that modernization in Latin America has stagnated “in the social and economic fields”; that there is a troubling “blockade of expectations” and a “general anomy”; that we are heading toward “social disintegration”; and that feelings of a “loss of future” and a “loss of a place in the world” have spread among the people. 8. The dfferent qualities required for a political vocation were a central concern for Max Weber, whose influence on Schumpeter is well known. For Weber, this is a profession demanding a fairly unusual combination of intellectual and emotional attributes. Among other things, the politician must take full personal responsibility for the cause he embraces, have good judgment, be sensible and stoic, possess high levels of energy and resilience, and be aware that his task requires “wrath and study.”

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5 T H E PLURALIST T H E O R I E S

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t is common (and correct) for scholars to present Schumpeter’s work as the immediate antecedent to the so-called pluralist conception of democracy, which dominated the Anglo-Saxon literature in the 1950s and 1960s and whose influence was also felt in Latin America. I will refer to this conception only briefly, because my main goal is to derive from Schumpeter’s work a different view. The pluralists accepted the procedural definition of democracy but changed some of its assumptions, trying to distance themselves from a strict vision of democracy as government of the politicians. Their well-founded main criticism of Schumpeter was that, by operating with a dichotomic model including only citizens and politicians, he overlooked the less-than-trivial fact that such citizens participate in a great number of associations (unions, business organizations, pressure groups, religious and neighborhood organizations, etc.) that articulate and aggregate their demands to then promote and foster them before the authorities. The consequence of this, according to the pluralists, is that power is dispersed throughout society and there always exists a multiplicity of points of access both to the public space and to decision-making processes. From this perspective, then, the state acts mainly as a referee deciding among the different demands made on it, taking into consideration their quality and the support they command. The possible concentration of power that Schumpeter described (and worried about) was therefore by no means inevitable.’ As Robert Dahl, one of the most lucid theoreticians of pluralism, 25

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wrote in 1956, while a dictatorship is the government of one minority, a democracy is the government of many minorities, which vary in number, size, and diversity.*According to Dahl, “democratic theory deals with the processes through which ordinary citizens exert a relatively high degree of control over the leaders”; and the fundamental instruments of that control are, on the one hand, periodic elections and, on the other, competition among parties, groups, and individuals. But what I would stress is that, here and elsewhere, Dahl (like Schumpeter before him and many other pluralists later on) also strives to establish “the social requisites of democracy,” that is, again, the conditions that render it possible and viable. For Dahl the most important requisite is material abundance, which he directly links to the industrialization and urbanization processes that took place in the developed capitalist countries. Such abundance not only allows for “poverty and social conflict to be reduced to manageable proportions” but for citizens to enjoy high levels of education and information as well as the free time necessary for political participation. He adds that, even though the distribution of income may not be egalitarian, political resources must be relatively equal for all if a democratic order is to be feasible. Moreover, there must be widespread consensus in society about the values ruling the system-consensus understood not as mere acquiescence but in the deeper sense of a true political culture. Years later, Dahl (1985) would mitigate the oversimplification of his initial writings with two acknowledgments that are highly significant for our subject: one, that in capitalist countries large organizations-especially the economic ones-have achieved excessive power, generating dangerous asymmetries that distort the rules of the game; and two, that without a previous democratization of the workplace, political equality ends up being a myth. In the end, states Dahl unequivocally, all the requisites of democracy can be condensed into the need for a strong egalitarian principle. These approaches to democracy lead then directly to the question of its feasibility in particular contexts. What is more, after taking the vision of government of the politicians as their starting point, the pluralists qualified Schumpeter’s apparent realism by adding to his analysis the consideration of both a variety of possible forms of action in the public space and the asymmetries of power. And, most significantly, they put special emphasis on the issue of equality, while the Austrian economist argued he had not found “in the sphere of empirical analysis” any “rational justification” to praise it. That is why my intention here is not so much to engage in a discussion about the structure of power-as pluralists do-but to connect these

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remarks to certain aspects of the problematic of the conditions, which I deem critical to determining when and how is it possible to talk about family resemblances.

NOTES 1. Although I cannot pause here to discuss this issue, it is worth pointing out that the plurahst perspective changed over time due to a double recognition: of the growing relative autonomy of the state apparatuses, and of the great asymmetries of power characterizing the groups that put pressure on them. In the last few decades, the perspectives known as “Neopluralist” and “Neocorporatist” have provided good evidence of these changes. It should be added that in the United States pluralism has been much more than a political theory: it has become a public philosophy shared by Republicans and Democrats, although they identify with different interest groups. 2. Strictly speaking, Dahl prefers to reserve the term democracy for an ideal (and perhaps unattainable) political system with a perfect or nearly perfect equality of power, and talks instead ofpo2iarchFthat is, the government of many but not all-when he is dealing with concrete regmes. In this way, he illustrates the difference between the idea of democracy and its concrete historical manifestations, which I referred to in chapter 3.

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6 THE DECLARATION O F 1 9 4 8

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ndoubtedly, Rousseau was the great champion of the idea of government of the people-in spite of his radical skepticism about its possibilities of ever materializing. As he says in a deservedly famous passage of the Social Contract, laws are always good for the rich and bad for the poor, “from which it can be inferred that the social state wlll be advantageous for men only when all of them would own something and none of them would own too much.” Contrary to what most believe, this led Rousseau not to advocate an absolute economic equality but to maintain that democratic participation requires that “no citizen be rich enough so as to buy another and none so poor as to be forced to sell himself.” This compelling formula summarizes an issue of great importance and one I wish to highlight: in this model of democratic participation, what is relevant is not so much inequality per se but, on the one side, the degree of polarization between those having too much and those having almost nothing and, on the other, the very intensity of the deprivation suffered by the latter. There is a highlighting of maximum and minimum levels-of neither too much nor too little--on which I will insist later. In the case of Rousseau, the ideal society he imagined was able to solve the problem because it was a society of small rural owners, reasonably homogeneous and independent. Although Rousseau’s influence on the U. S. revolutionaries was negligible (among the Europeans, they largely preferred Montesquieu and John Locke), on this point the parallelism between his ideas and those of Thomas Jefferson is quite remarkable. Also, for the author of the Declaration of Independence of the United States, a genuinely participative republic 29

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required morally autonomous individuals, which was impossible in the absence of adequate material security. Like Rousseau’s, his ideal citizens were farmers and, to a much lesser extent, craftsmen and merchants. Furthermore, both Rousseau and Jefferson believed not that such autonomy would be an automatic consequence of economic position, but rather that it should be constituted and elaborated through practice and organization. That is why both strongly emphasized the importance of popular assemblies. Is it necessary to add that, in both cases, the horizon of reflection was a fundamentally agrarian world not yet transformed by the industrial revolution? O f course, that world would be modified profoundly in the coming centuries, during which capitalism, technical change, urbanization, and other forces combined to undo the material foundations of those analyses. In the industrial countries, the production of wealth experienced spectacular increases at the same time that the old ways of life were disappearing, and both social inequahty and the economic insecurity of the workers intensified. That is why, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, when political participation started to broaden, the debate about the conditions of democracy gained great momentum in the West. Were the new scenarios suitable for democratic practices? Would voting, individual freedoms, and distributive justice become compatible some day? Could a democratic political regime, which is based on the fiction that all citizens are equal, operate in harmony with a social regime of accumulation such as capitalism which, by its nature, constantly produces inequalities? For the revolutionary left, the general answer to these questions was negative, although room was made for some exceptions.’ For adherents of other theoretical perspectives (diversely identified as reformist liberalism, idealist humanism, ethical socialism, social democracy, etc.), that conciliation appeared possible. Such was the case of John Stuart Mill, for instance, whose refomiist liberalism led him to what he described as “a socialism with reservations.” The fact is that almost one century would pass before a concrete model (more on it later) was able to provide the rudiments for a solution to the dilemma-decades that included, among other things, crises and depressions as serious as those of 1870 and 1929, the generalization of mass unemployment, two world wars, and the rise of fascism and communism. I t is precisely this concrete model that has nurtured the contemporary idea of citizenship, whose cradle was-not by chance-Europe. In turn, thanks to the implementation of this idea, the ever-problematic relationship between economic inequality and political equality has been kept within

T h e Declaration .f 1948

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manageable limits, facilitating at least rhetorically the invocation of the vision of government of the people, adapted to the new realities. But before addressing these issues more directly, I would like to mention an event of great transcendence that occurred during the same decade that Schumpeter’s book was published.‘ I am referring to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, approved by the United Nations in 1948.3 This document-inseparable from the trauma caused by a war that killed fifty million people, over half of them civilians-established three great categories of individual rights to which everyone is entitled, without discrimination of any kmd and with no state, group, or individual authorized to override or suppress them. The two first categories are those of civil and political rights, which incorporate the main demands the British, American, and French revolutionaries fought for in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Civil rights consist of individual liberties (freedom of speech, expression, thought, association, assembly, etc.), which are affirmed in the face of any state’s attempt to infringe on them; political rights entail the capacity to fully participate in the government of the public res-that is, the ability to elect and be elected. The newest (and more controversial) category is the third one, that of economic, social, and cultural rights. Although these rights had already been advanced by socialists in the nineteenth century, they were added to the public agenda thanks to the climate of solidarity and less aggressive individualism that prevailed in several places during the years of World War 11. These new rights include those to work; get the same salary for the same job; enjoy protection against the effects of illness, aging, death, incapacity, and involuntary unemployment; receive an income making life compatible with human dignity; have a standard of living adequate to guarantee health care and general welfare; be assured of rest and leisure time; and benefit from ample access to education and to the community’s cultural life. As we can see, these are a special kind of rights, different from the previous ones: they do not protect the individual from state interference, nor do they enable her to participate in politics; rather, these are rights that the state itself has the responsibility to implement, passing laws and providing the necessary resources to that end.

NOTES 1. In 1872 Marx included Britain, the United States, and “perhaps the Netherlands” among such exceptions. It is interesting to note that Lenin denigrated as reformism any

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universal and abstract proclamation of such compatibility, while, like Marx, not ruling out the existence of exceptional cases. 2. If the 1940s witnessed the deadliest war humankind has experienced, it also was (and not by chance) a period of great intellectual ferment, which deserves to be carefully studied in all its breadth and complexity. In 1944, for instance, Friedrich von Hayek published The Road to Serfdom, which Max Eastman serialized in an abridged version in the Reader’s Digert Selections; it thereafter became the bible of neoliberalism. Just three years later Karl Polanyi published, in turn, T h e Great Transformation, with its devastating criticism of the “pure utopia” of a self-regulated competitive market, a concept held over from the nineteenth century. 3 . From a legal standpoint, this declaration was only a resolution of the United Nations General Assembly and hence lacked the mandatory effects that an international treaty entails for those who ratify it. The process started by the declaration was completed only in 1966, when two new instruments were used to ensure adherence by ratifying member states: the International Pact on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights and the International Pact on Civil and Political Rights.

7 CAPITALISM AND D E M O C R A C Y : A FIRST APPROACH

A

short theoretical pause is again required. It so happens that capitalism, like democracy, is a concept with a family resemblance structure. From this point of view, and unless one operates at a very high level of abstraction, there is not one “capitalism” but many “capitalisms.” To quote from a text written by Durkheim and Fauconnet in 1903, and still vahd, let us begin by saying that individuals try to prosper “within communities that are quite different one from another,” and that both the nature and the success of their efforts depend on the particularities of the community in which those efforts take place. Let us put it in more precise terms. When individuals seek to gather wealth not as an end in itself but as a means for obtaining more wealth, we call them capitalists. Technically speaking, having money or other goods does not mean having capital, although it may be considered to have this meaning in everyday language. Capital is not a material object but a process; when this process does not take place, capital ceases to exist. In its paradigmatic expression, the process I refer to consists of the continuous transformation of money into cornmodties that, in turn, are later converted into more money. This is the secret of the so-called process of capitahst accumulation, that is, of the constant metamorphosis of investment money into profit money. Therefore, every time we refer to capital we are implicitly allulng to the webs of social relations and activities that allow that metamorphosis to occur, at the same time that they condition it. These 33

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webs are woven and unwoven “within communities that are quite different, one from another,” as Durkheim and Fauconnet stressed. Contrary to what Adam Smith and Marx himself thought, such networks-which involve different economic agents-never become selfsustaining systems spontaneously. This makes indispensable the action of the state at different levels to organize, among other things, markets, the administration of justice, security, the honoring of contracts, currency and credit systems, the supply of laborers, the relations between employers and workers, infrastructure services, foreign trade, financial rules and urban growth patterns. Social networks and the action of the state result from past and present negotiations and struggles, and require multiple political, ideological, and even ethical justifications, according to the traditions of the given “community,” its institutional frameworks, and the concrete conflicts that arise. Therefore, as the communities are different, so are their particular modalities of the process of capitalist accumulation. Hence, the concrete shape of capitalism in each place ends up being the result of a “system of values and habits inherited from time immemorial,” to use the words of French anthropologist Emmanuel Todd. Two consequences follow: first, there was not one bourgeois revolution but several, and second, capitalist regimes may resemble one another but are never identical. Something similar happens with regard to social classes, their structures, their orientations, and their struggles: they are always the result of particular histories, which sometimes give more agency to certain actors and practices and set more favorable conditions of public production and reception for certain discourses. Only those who imagine that there is one capitalism could think that there is also one system of classes and one pattern of behavior typical of each social class, as if it were possible to tell in advance the conscience or the attitudes that should be attributed to big businesspeople, small merchants, or rural or urban workers. How is all this linked to the issue of democracy? First of all, let us recall that Marxists and non-Marxists have always acknowledged that, historically, capitalism and democracy have been associated, be it in harmonious or conflictive terms. This consensus includes an acceptance that market relations constitute the material basis of liberal or representative democracy. Certainly, evaluations of capitalist democracy vary widely: according to Engels, it masks exploitation and thus becomes “the logcal form of bourgeois government”; to others, it is the political regime that best embodies the ideals of freedom.

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The fact is that, in modern times, there were no democratic political regimes before the establishment of capitalism; and today there are consolidated democracies in all the developed capitalist countries. In other words, there can be capitalism without democracy, but so far, there has not been democracy without capitalism, which, at first sight, is rather curious. This is curious because capitalism and democracy are not, by definition, necessarily complementary systems: the first is based on the right to private property and starts from a basis of inequality, reproducing it on a large scale through competition; the second gives pride of place to citizenship rights for all and makes of freedom and equality its two cornerstones. As a result, capitalist domination faces an inevitable tension when it has to be articulated within a democratic political regme; and it cannot manage such an articulation without first reaching a social compromise. I close these remarks by pointing out that, thus far, such Compromise has taken root more or less solidly only in certain capitalist contexts. That is why, when addressing the relations between capitalism and democracy, it is vital to specifi the concrete forms of capitalism and democracy being discussed.

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8 T H E KEYNESIAN ALCHEMY

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uring the postwar period, in the capitalist countries that were later to be known as central or developed (and that act today as objects of reference for the family resemblances of democracy), it was possible to give a more or less reasonable (although uneven) incarnation to the principles of the Declaration of 1948, while in the rest of the world they were implemented either very partially or not at all. The gloomy years of the Great Depression and the interwar period had an undeniable bearing on all this. If, at the end of World War I, many were dreaming of going back to the pre-1914 world, when World War I1 ended nobody (neither the winners nor the defeated) thought of returning to the painful decade of the 1930s. So, for instance, as early as November 1940, amid the bombings that killed over forty-five hundred Britons in just that month, Conservative prime minister Winston Churchill asked William Beveridge, a Progressive Liberal, to analyze how best to fight in the future against the social effects of the economic crisis of the previous decade and of the ongoing war.’ The Beveridge Report was published in 1942. From the prologue the author warns that the state must ensure the welfare of all its citizens, not because the rich ought to be generous toward the poor but because this was the only way society could be protected from itself. We are at the beginning of what was later called in Europe the “welfare state,” which reached its peak in the 1970s.*By that time, the countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) were devoting on average half or more of their public budgets to social expenditures; and in several of them a happy union between economic liberalism and social democracy seemed to be consummated. To quote T. H. 37

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Marshall, “a type of capitalism softened by an injection of socialism” was in the making. Together with the dramatic experience of war, several other elements contributed to the advent of the welfare state and supported the cultural climate of the new era. In those nations where the welfare state took hold, the demographic factor was very favorable; inflation remained extremely low; people had become used to paying high taxes during the war; and so on. But, undoubtedly, the two great pillars of the welfare state in the making were Fordism and Keynesianism. Fordism, synonymous with mechanization, industrial mass production, and Taylorism, created the necessary conditions allowing for steady productivity increases to be accompanied by sustained wage improvements. Such improvements were one of the key components of the Keynesian miracle, which transmuted the particular interests of the workers into the general interests of society, without society’s ceasing to be capitalist. That is why full employment (the basis for a high effective demand) became the dominant concern of economic policy, as it never has been before or after; and, as a result of this, the average unemployment rate in Western Europe during the 1960s was around 1.5 percent. The effect of these processes was that, in the countries I refer to, the liberalization of international trade implemented in 1944 in Bretton Woods with fixed exchange rates was linked to public policies that, far beyond cushioning the imbalances that arose, sought to provide social security and services to the population at large, financing spending via tax systems that adopted a clearly redistributive bias.” In sum-and in spite of the persistence of very considerable economic, gender, and racial inequities-a virtuous circle of economic growth and social prosperity was generated, a true “golden age” that lasted over a quarter of a century and facilitated in those places, to a fair extent, what Eric Hobsbawm calls “the most drastic, rapid, and deep revolution in hunian affairs recorded in history.” This was no small feat. And one of the major consequences of this transformation was the emergence, for the first time, of what Robert Caste1 calls the “salaried society”-that is, not simply a capitalist society, in which most workers earn a wage, but a full employment society, increasingly homogeneous, in which paid work enjoys a status, dignity, and protection endowed to it by both employers and the state. In this way, a fairly general access to a new kind of security, now linked to work and not just to property, was consolidating. In other words, the contemporary equivalent of that

The Keynesian Alchemy

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farmer idealized by Rousseau and Jefferson was emergmg, and with him or her, the conditions for the political compromise that served as the foundation for what is quite accurately named cupitulixt democracy.

NOTES 1. A year later, Churchill and U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Atlantic Charter, which set as one of the Allies’ main goals delivering humanlund from poverty. The issue would resurface explicitly in the charter of the United Nations. 2. The very name weyarewhich became popular in the 1970s-evoked, by contrast, the tragc circumstances of its immediate origm. The same state that had previously taken the greatest responsibility for wadare was now in charge of the country’s weyare, that is, its econonlic development and social integration. 3. In the Monetary and Finance Conference of the United Nations, which was held in Bretton Woods in 1944 and gave birth to the International Monetary Fund, it was agreed to eliminate exchange restrictions; the participants established fixed exchange rates, convertibility of currency, and a multilateral system for international payments.

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9 M A R S H A L L A N D THE C I T I Z E N S

SOCIALISM B

A

s I have hinted before, Britain played a pioneering role in the changes

that brought about the welfare state (although, at later stages, other countries would make more progress). And it was in Britain that another of the episodes of the 1940s that I wish to incorporate into my exposition took place. I am referring to the series of conferences on citizenship gven by Thomas H. Marshall at Cambridge University in 1949, which have served until now to define the main contours of this issue. Marshall was an outstanding sociologist, with considerable experience both as a scholar and as a government official. He had also inherited the traditions of British ethical socialism, strongly oriented, since the nineteenth century, toward promoting social equality by various means. It is not surprising, then, that Marshall became a convinced advocate and researcher of the welfare state, which the Labour administration of Clement Attlee had started to build a few years before.’ As Marshall would argue some time later, there are two kinds of socialism, which he simply termed A and B. Socialism A is revolutionary and anticapitalist, with little interest in social policy, which it basically conceives as a dominant class stratagem to keep popular unrest under control. Socialism B, on the other hand, combines the principles of social policy supported by the most advanced liberals with a disposition to trust the potentiality and efficiency of state action. For this socialism, which was Marshall’s, social policy is not a mere complement of economic policy but is placed above it and has the mission of correcting “the deficiencies inherent to a market

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economy.” In other words, while for Schumpeter socialism was a technical horizon of output maximization, for Marshall it constituted a moral horizon fostering the reduction of inequalities. The aforementioned Cambridge conferences had two great merits. O n the one hand, they provided some concrete institutional anchorages for the human rights that had been proclaimed by the United Nations a year before, at the same time making it evident that such rights can only be put into practice when certain conditions are met. O n the other hand, they established the multidimensional character of the notion of citizenship, made up of at least three elements: the civil, political and social. Marshall’s exploration centered exclusively on the historical evolution of his country, where all men had been considered free since the seventeenth century. It was to this matrix of freedom that successive specific rights would eventually be added. Strictly speaking, as our author knew, the British case had a particular evolution, quite different from that of continental Europe. So, for instance, while in the latter a system of representation by “states” or “orders” (nobility, the guilds of merchants or craftsmen, etc.) had existed since the late Middle Ages, Britain had preserved the ancient principle of territorial representation, which was later to facilitate a much smoother transition to a unified regime of democratic liberalism. But, above all, beginning in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the law had emerged in Britain as one of the core conflict areas in the struggle against monarchical absolutism that the lords of the land were waging. This is a point of singular importance, because in the eighteenth centurywhen, according to Marshall, the contents of the civil component of citizenship were defined-the aristocracy was to take advantage precisely of the interpretation of the laws and of the rituals of justice to consolidate its hegemony.2 This last assertion does not contradict Marshall’s views. In the eighteenth century, by making the law the main ideology legitimizing the established order, the lords opted for an institution endowed with a special logic, conveying particular rules of fairness and universality that, in the end, could not be reserved for their exclusive use. If, on the one hand, the law served to protect them from the king’s arbitrary power, on the other, it could also be used by common men in their own defense, as it would. In other words, the fact that class relations were mediated by the law meant that the rulers had to submit to the law as well, at least to the extent of preventing that mediation from becoming a mere d e ~ e i t . ~

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In this way, thanks to juridical norms and the actions of the judges, the freedoms of speech, thought, and faith-and, obviously, the very right to claim justice-acquired an increasingly general form. In the economic field, the deep transformations under way gave great impetus to the right to own property, the right to sign contracts, and the right to work. At the same time, instituting the right to work entailed the derogation of all the statutes and regulations that restricted it and, at the same time, led the courts to reinterpret diverse local habits and customs opposed to its exercise. In other words, Britain was at the threshold of modernity, when the free worker entered the scene and the foundations of that contractual equality on which capitalism would build its own structure of inequality were laid. This arduous process prompted an escalation of struggles between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, which strived to share in the prerogatives of voting and competing for public office. Again, the universalist potential of these demands quickly led workers to make them their own, all of which would turn the British nineteenth century into the formative period of the political element of citizenship, in a broad sense. Its symbols were the Acts of 1832 and 1867, which extended, with limitations, men’s right to vote. It was only in the next century that the restrictions were lifted, granting universal suffrage to adult males in 1918 and extending it to women in 1928. The citizen who was already free to work, earn money, save it, and invest it was now becoming free to participate in public matters, as a voter or as a candidate. And if the courts ofjustice had been, since the eighteenth century, the institution most closely linked with civil rights, Parliament and the local councils would become, in the nineteenth century, two of the institutions most directly involved in political rights in Britain. We finally arrive at the third group of rights that, according to Marshall, define citizenship and are characteristic of the twentieth century-social rights, whose novelty we have already underscored and which are worth considering now in their full dimension. There had certainly been social rights before the twentieth century. For instance, beginning in 1795 in southern England the so-called Speenhamland system guaranteed a minimum wage, provided family subsidies, and prescribed the “right to live.” But the system was just a remnant of the old order, a premodern and precapitalist barrier to the freedom of the market; which failed categorically in its goals and was eventually swept away by the Industrial Revolution. It was replaced by the Poor Law of 1834, which not only took great care to avoid any interference in wage relations but

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also presented aid to those in need as something alien to citizenship-its beneficiaries automatically lost their civil and political rights; that is, they ceased to be citizens. The premise was that, by definition, a citizen had the necessary means to get by on his own; this is why the first Factory Laws protected exclusively women and children, who did not qualift as citizens. Marshall shows how the nature of social rights started changing when compulsory and public primary education was established. The right to education should be regarded, he tells us, “not as the right of the child to go to school but as the right of the adult citizen to have been educated.” It is clearly within the welfare state, though, that social rights are placed on the same level as the two other elements of citizenship, “creating a universal right to real income which is not proportionate to the market value of the claimant” and requiring public authorities to implement that right. Hence school and social services are among the most typical institutions of this third component. Now it can be better understood why Marshall spoke of the emergence of a new kind of capitalism, “softened by an injection of socialism.” He was pointing to the “general enrichment of the concrete substance of civilized life” that was taking place due to the incorporation of solidarity criteria where thus far the individualist competition of the market had p r e ~ a i l e d . ~ These solidarity criteria would generate in turn major tension among the three elements of citizenry, given the different values inspiring them.

THE ESSENTIAL SPIRIT OF THE STATE Marshall’s analyses are relevant to my argument in two ways. First of all, and despite being based on the British case, they shed light on some fundamental transformations that have impinged, since the postwar period, on the democratic organization of the developed capitalist countries. At the same time, and precisely because of that impact, Marshall’s analyses reopen the question about family resemblances I have been posing from the start: Are we facing here a catalogue of rights that sets up sufficient common properties for a canonic definition of democracy? Marshall himself makes two points that will help in providmg an answer. They are especially important, although to my knowledge the literature has paid almost no attention to them.

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The first is explicitly normative and is worth emphasizing. ‘‘There is no universal principle determining what the rights and duties of citizens shall be,” said Marshall in 1949. There are only societies “in w h c h citizenship is a developing institution [that] creates an image of an ideal citizenship against which achievement can be measured and towards which aspiration can be directed.” In those societies, this image has guided through its ups and downs a movement in search of greater equality and the inclusion of the largest possible number of persons as &ll citizens, in possession and enjoyment of all their rights. The second point was made during a 1962 conference, in which Marshall criticized the distortions the welfare state had suffered due to the ascent of the consumer society, whose individualist materialism constantly erodes To this criticism he added the assertion that the welfare state con~olidarity.~ stitutes neither a general concept nor an ideal type, because its features are moddied according to place and time; hence, it does not have a unique structure of its own that could be reputed the correct or the orthodox one. What is crucial (and I underline it again) is the “essential spirit” animating it, w h c h is none other than that of socialism B; and ths, Marshall insists, does not entail rejecting capitalism but rather acknowledging that there are some aspects of “a civilized life that are above it and that must be achieved by stopping or replacing the market.” We should expand on this last observation of Marshall’s in order to better connect it to the first one. In focusing on the concept of citizenship, his analyses had a paradoxical propensity to neglect the crucial question of the state-which constitutes the other side of that concept.6 The paradox is especially pronounced when one takes into account the fact that the rights of citizenship are, in the first place, duties the state assumes toward its members.

T H E STATE AS A C O N S T R U C T I O N To continue using the British example, the necessary conditions for the propagation of civil rights were that the state had managed to have a monopoly of the legitimate use of violence all over its territory; that it subjected its coercive power to a unitary, homogeneous, and coherent system of legal norms; and that it was thus in a position to enforce constitutional guarantees and ensure the administration of justice. In this way, a limited government and the rule of law became the coordmates of a public space in which the

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story that Marshall tells could unfold, and in whose realm participation criteria were modified over time, causing a transition from representation by notables to representation by parties. While political rights were born and extended in this way, the increasing universalization of the vote brought with it new problems for the state. In the beginning, voting was limited to those having property or investments, a certain level of formal education or experience in public office; that is, it was granted to individuals supposedly interested in defending the established order and who, at the same time, were materially and intellectually able to do it. When those restrictions were lifted, things changed, because political rights were now granted to many people who were in no position to take full advantage of them. After considerable struggles and compromises, the task of solving such deficiencies fell to the state, thus promoting, as we have seen, the social dimension of citizenship. But to talk about the state is never to talk about a datum; rather, it is to talk about a construction, a cultural artifact that appears as both the result and the expression of given conflicts and traditions, crystallized in historically specific sets of institutions and practices.This explains the role intellectuals have played in elaborating the theory of its sovereignty or in establishing its articulations with civil society and, above all, in turning it in the West, over the last two centuries, into the bearer of collective projects that, depending on particular moments and places, mixed in different degrees nationalism, modernization, social justice, and economic growth. To say state, then, always connotes particular experiences. This is precisely what Marshall meant when he tried to define the welfare state not by means of a differentiated type of structure but rather by “the essential spirit” animating it. I believe that this “essential spirit” may be summarized in a fairly simple formula that I will develop later: while nineteenth-century liberals had negatively defined freedom as the noninterference of the state in private matters, now it was acknowledged (with varying degrees of conviction), that any genuine commitment to freedom also required a commitment to the conditions that would make it feasible for all citizens, and that establishing such conditions was a foremost obligation of the state.

I say “with varying degrees of conviction” because that linear identification between the welfare state and social democracy suggested by Marshallinspired, I insist, by the British case-is hard to sustain. In fact, many of the postwar European governments that implemented social policies were

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conservative. If, to a great extent, they did so under pressure from unions and leftist parties, it is also true that even earlier the need to mobilize people for war had made it necessary to win their allegiance.’ The generalized rise to power of social democracy was to take place later: by the mid-1970s all the governments of northern Europe already belonged to this political sign. That is why Hobsbawm dates to that period the emergence of the first welfare states. I prefer to follow the more usual practice, accepting that states that are given this name emerged significantly earlier, although I would also like to point out that they took many different shapes. Also, it is worth anticipating that welfare states have not necessarily existed in places where people have benefited from a more or less wide range of social rights. This allows me to give a negative answer to the question about family resemblances I left pending a few pages ago. The Marshallian catalogue of the rights of citizenship does not provide us with enough elements to define democracy, since, at the very least, it refers us in each case to a study of the peculiarities of the state in which those rights operate and acquire their sense. Again, only such features will allow us, according to the circumstances, to try to uncover family resemblances.

POLITICAL VISION A N D CITIZENSHIP But we have to take another step forward. If the state is a construction, so is citizenship. Hence, as Marshall himself points out, there is no universal principle that can dictate its contents. It depends on the traditions and institutional frameworks of each country and, especially, on the prevailing political vision. In this regard, it is symptomatic that the Marshallian conceptualization itself has been the object of diverse readings, according to the perspective adopted by each interpreter. For some, whose political views are close to those of Marshall, it follows from that conceptualization that no democratic citizenship is possible without social rights. Some go even farther and consider these rights to be the “ontological and moral precondiso close tion” for civil and political rights. But there are some-not ideologically to Marshall-who hold that social rights are in no way constitutive elements of citizenship but are just a means to facilitate it.x I will return to this subject later. I wish to stress now that citizenship, like the state, is not a mere datum but a social construction founded, on the

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one hand, on a set of material and institutional conditions and, on the other, on a certain image of the common good and the way to achieve it. This is to say that citizenship always is the result of a struggle, notwithstanding the fact that in certain places this struggle was solved long ago, and since then a particular form of citizenship has been taken for granted. Therefore, it is only logical that Marshall supported the welfare state by advocating a conceptualization of citizenship rooted in the principles of ethical socialism he had made his own and which were so removed from the elitism of Schumpeter. However, as he himself hints between the lines, there is no objective way to prove--leaving aside the discourses prevailing at a given time-that everyone feels (or will feel) called on to constitute a moral community. Both the state and citizenship, I repeat, are constructions resulting from struggles and compromises that cannot be dssociated from specific histories, traditions, and contexts. I should add that the intellectuals’ analyses also become part of this process, to the extent that they help strengthen some interpretations of reality over others.

I would like to point out that all this does not mean that the constructions of the state and of citizenship would be necessarily identical or homologous (hence my previous criticism of Marshall). Furthermore, the tensions and conflicts arising between them provide frequently important clues to understandmg political change. In the case of the United States, for example, Tocqueville had already warned that the logic of a state increasingly dominated by the idea of industrial development at any cost could lead to an “administrative despotism” far removed from the democratic traditions of a citizenship based on values such as equality and active participation in community life. NOTES 1. That the British Conservative Party, dislodged from power in 1945, later claimed (and for good reasons) part of the merit for the installation of the welfare state is further evidence of the new spirit of the time. This is the same Conservative Party whose candidate, Winston Churchill, had suggested in a regrettable speech of the 1945 campaign that the accession to power of the Labour Party would constitute the first step toward the establishment ofa British gestapo. Despite that speech, well into the 1960s, the Conservatives kept thinking that there was no better alternative for their country than a mixed economy.

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2. In 1975, the British historian E. P. Thompson published on this subject his u.7zigs and Hunters, a remarkable piece of research to which I refer the interested reader. 3. When in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the balance of power changed in Britain, and the country entered a stage of great social conflicts, the dominant sectors hesitated between resorting to force or submitting to the law. As Thompson recalls, although several bloody steps were taken in the first dxection, 150 years of constitutional legality prevailed in favor of the second alternative, which finally wiped out the hegemony of the aristocracy itself. The contrast with the historical evolution of Latin America makes redundant any further comments about the enormous significance these issues have had. 4. Perhaps it may be useful to recall that Adam Smith himself, the father of economic liberalism, added to the sixth edition of his famous Theory OfMorul Sentiments a chapter dealing with “the corruption of our moral feelings as a result of our disposition to admire the rich and to ignore the poor or the miserable.” Several years before, Montesquieu had already warned that the key principle of democracy was virtue, and for that reason he did not believe democracy feasible in modem times, when social and political practices speak of luxury, riches, and finances rather than virtue. 5. The welfare state emerged, as Marshall recalls, “at a time when the sense of national solidarity created by the war coincided with the enforced restraints on consumption and the regime of sharing imposed by post-war scarcity.” I t is worth recalling that the rationing of products such as butter, margarine, cheese, bacon, and meat was lifted in Britain only in 1954. 6. To be fair, the same omission occurs in Schumpeter, who does not even mention the state and the rule of law as preconditions for the working of his procedural definition of democracy. 7. In 1999, British sociologst Anthony Giddens bluntly stated that “the Welfare State, such as it exists today in Europe, was created during and by the war, as were so many aspects of national citizenship.” This thesis had been sustained since 1950 by Richard Titmuss, another expert of the same orign. However, Giddens exaggerates when he says “such as it exists today,” in that he overlooks three things: in Europe there is more than one kind of welfare state; there have been deep and fiequent reforms regarding social policies; and, because of such reforms, if war solidarity is an explaining factor for the rise of welfare states, it is not useful for explaining its permanence or its transformations. This is leaving aside the fact that countries such as Sweden and Switzerland did not take part in the war. 8. For the interested reader, Fraser and Gordon are examples of the first stance, Roche of the second, and Barbalet of the third (see references).

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10 FROM SCHUMPETER TO M A R S H A L L

T

he political visions characterizing Schumpeter’s and Marshall’s thinking were noticeably different, and because of that they both also conceived of citizenship in radically different ways. For Schumpeter, the so-called democratic government was an elitist game and political participation played a clearly secondary role. In fact, he did not even believe that universal suffrage was indispensable in a democracy, since a qualified vote could suffice; neither did he consider the periodicity of elections very important. He heralded the arrival of socialism, but this had little to do with ethical ideals; his image of socialism was, essentially, that of a great central authority that would control the production system as a whole. From such a perspective, it is only logical that citizens’ duties would be confined to participating in elections. In the best liberal tradition, from time to time citizens are called on by the law not to express their will in political matters but just to provide the government with officials. Strictly speaking, then, the people are nothing but a creation of the law. The citizenry is dissolved as such at the very moment it casts its ballots. Before and after this moment, public matters are handled by the officials. There is a very faint echo, and it comes from Sparta. Nothing is further removed from the Marshallian horizon. Indeed, the British sociologist does not deal directly with democracy as a political regime (the concept isn’t even mentioned in the volume compiling his main works), but rather, as we have seen, he studies the expansion of citizens’ rights over the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries until their 51

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culmination in the welfare state as a concretion of the ethical ideals of social democracy (his socialism B). He places two main issues at center stage: participation and equality. As Marshall explains in a 1953 text, one of the welfare state’s great dilemmas was how to establish “equality of opportunities without abolishing the social and economic inequalities” inherent to capitalism. In contrast to that of Schumpeter and his followers, this vision of politics fosters, then, an active idea of citizenship and of its implication in community life that goes far beyond voting. In this case the murmur is very soft, but comes from Athens. Going back to the metaphor I have been resorting to from the start, the perspectives adopted by our authors are inscribed on the traditions of what might have always remained two different families: government of the politicians and government of the people. However, with tensions and difficulties, they ended up merging, under the aegis of the former. The merger was facilitated not just because both give great importance to civil and political rights but because, for different reasons, they also coincide in granting all citizens a set of social rights. I have already said that the issue of inequality did not trouble Schumpeter. What did concern him was the existence, on the one hand, of a democratic self-control of the population, barring unpredictable and violent behavior as well as excessive criticism of the government or the politicians; and, on the other hand, a widespread culture of tolerance and compromise-those “feelings of sociability without which it is impossible to be a good citizen,” as said Rousseau, a conspicuous member of the other tradition. That is, while Rousseau maintained that a “civil religion” was indispensable as a pillar of respect for the law, Schumpeter’s “democracy as a method” posed as one of its main requisites the presence of an adequate public morality.* Given that, in Schumpeter’s view, all behavior results from interests, such public morality depended on reasonable levels of collective welfare. That is why-as I have already mentioned-he confined the scope of his arguments to capitalist societies “in their state of maturity,” in which an “effective sympathy” for “the real and feigned sufferings” of the people and a “good disposition to accept social burdens” prevailed; and in which, furthermore, “the material means and the willingness” to implement “social legislation or, in a broader sense, institutional reforms in favor of the masses” were available. A moment of reflection is enough to realize that, on this issue, Schumpeter’s stance was the one criticized by Marshall’s socialism A: social rights

From Schumpeter to Marshall

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conceived as a bourgeois mechanism for the integration and the taming of the workers so that they will pragmatically submit to the government of the elites. But this is not the point now. What is important is that, their inclinations and motives notwithstanding, the two thinkers coincided in giving the welfare and social protection ofpeople a substantive role. In the case of Marshall, as in the cases of Rousseau and Jefferson before and Dahl afterward (to refer just to authors already mentioned), what was at stake was the citizens’ ability to participate in an autonomous way in the political debate. And this was unthinkable in the absence of a material and social substratum making it possible and guaranteeing it. By overlooking the issue of the state, furthermore, Marshall neglected another aspect of the same question, which we could assume was included-although in a very vague and imprecise way-in the Schumpeterian idea of a public morality. I am referring to the nontrivial fact that, once the state takes as its duty ensuring the prosperity of the society as a whole, its substantive legitimacy becomes dependent on the existence of this prosperity, or, at least, on the existence of convincing and credible indicators leading the people to believe that it will come about in a not-sodistant future. In other words, collective werare appears twice: as a condition for the exercise ofcitizenship and as a conditionfor the legitimacy ojthe state.

NOTE 1. Such an appeal to a necessary condition that the democratic method is unable to produce brings to mind the well-known and deadly criticism that Durkheim addressed to Herbert Spencer’s utilitarianism. According to Spencer, modem societies were essentially based on contracts, that is, on agreements fi-eely reached by indwidual actors. Durkheim retorted that a proposition like this reverses both the historical and the logical sequences involved. It is only by starting from the social context that we may understand how individuals are constituted and in which ways they enter into contractual relations. Moreover, contracts would lack any meaning in the absence of a complex set of previous conditions making them trustworthy and, above all, applicable. Mutatis mutandis, the same goes for all restricted definitions of democracy attempting to condense it in a formula such as “holding periodic elections.” If a practical illustration is needed, the case of Bosnia has provided a telling one: without a previous consensus on the very contours of the political community, the ritual of voting became a tragc trap.

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11 THE EXPERIENCE I N THE D E V E L O P E D CAPITALIST COUNTRIES

I

n 1942, the Beveridge Report on social security in Britain declared war on poverty, illness, ignorance, and indolence. And during that “golden age” I described earlier (the “Thirty Glorious Years,” as a French economist called them), virtually all developed capitalist countries enrolled in the same war and achieved significant victories, spurred by the competition against the Soviet Union and its allies. Thus took place the most lasting political compromise known thus far between capitalism and democracy in times of peace. Each of those countries entered this compromise at their own pace and with their own modalities, and therefore their achievements were quite uneven. But, in general terms, a conscious and sustained effort to control macroeconomic variables and regulate the labor markets to protect job stability became clearly central. At the same time, there were massive public funds transfers to finance public education, unemployment subsidies, health care insurance, pensions, home loans, and so forth. The Scandinavian nations, which had taken the lead since the 1930s, made the greatest progress in this field-first Sweden and Norway, followed by Denmark and Finland. In these places there was an ever-more-explicit identification with that egalitarian model at which Marshall’s socialism B aimed. (This model would also have a very promising start under Clement Attlee’s Labour government in the second half of the 1940s, in what would be known until the 1960s as “Beveridge’s Britain.”) In the Nordic coun-

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tries, social entitlements were particularly generous and, during an initial phase completed in the 1960s, succeeded in guaranteeing adequate levels of income to the whole mass of the population. Over the next two decades, there was progress toward the implementation of active employment policies together with a vigorous fostering of gender equality and of social services. Since then, these services have stood out for their universal character (they are provided to every citizen), for their gratuitousness (they are funded via taxes), and for the fact that they take into consideration the needs of the beneficiaries rather than the beneficiaries’ financial contributions. However, the case of the Scandinavian nations gives me an opportunity to warn the reader of the ever-present threats of determinism. The fact that more egalitarian conditions for the construction of citizenship were created there than in other places does not mean that such construction had the same features in all the Scandinavian countries. Their diverse social and political structures, cultural factors, and, in particular, different national styles of making politics played a significant role. In Denmark, for example, there is a long-standing rural tradition that fosters grassroots participation in alternative, extra-parliamentarian movements. In Sweden, citizens tend to participate in government through political parties and to get strongly involved in parliamentarian policy. Welfare state contributions were refracted in these prisms without substantially altering them. In contrast, in other European countries prevailed, according to the times, “the Bismarckian model,” named after the German chancellor who, at the end of the nineteenth century, to stop the advance of socialism, created the first state system of social policies in modem times, which included social insurance and pensions for the elderly. Precisely because of its conception as an insurance, this model and its byproducts are much less universalistic and redistributive than the Scandinavian: not only are they founded on the financial contributions made by the beneficiaries but, also, they calculate the amount of pensions and subsidies according to the income habitually earned by the applicants. Given its horizon, this model was designed mainly with the wage earner in mind (moreover, a male wage earner who was the head and only provider of his family), although it was later extended to the majority of citizens. The original intention of this model explains why it usually has to be complemented with social assistance to the more disadvantaged, under different arrangements in terms of money and coverage. Generally speakmg, places that employ the Bismarckian model have been influenced less by Marshall’s socialism B than by the objective of acting

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on the most immediate causes of social conflict, in order to prevent it or, at least, to mitigate it. But what really matters is that the minimum welfare conditions on which the political compromise of capitalist democracy was based were met here as well. The case of the United States is a dfferent story, in spite of its being the birthplace of the very expression social security, which was first used in the time of the New Deal. Its family resemblance to the European welfare states is fainter than the one obtaining among the European states themselves, and, like democracy flaws today in Latin America, that singularity has forced observers to resort to qualifiers, calling it a liberal, marginal, or residual welfare state, or, simply, a semi-welfare state. In fact, the U.S. economic performance and that of the main European countries cannot be assimilated either, considering that-from the late 1940s until the beginning of the 1960s-the United States experienced a relatively low growth rate and comparatively high unemployment levels; although at the same time, high wages prevailed there too. The logic of the U.S. system of social protection is quite clear, as are its roots in a strong individualism and an open frontier past; and, of course, it has little to do with that “essential spirit” mentioned by Marshall. In this case, one of the premises for the construction of citizenship has been that the goods needed for survival should be obtained in the market, which supplies them according to the contribution each person makes in terms of effort, abilities, and so forth. When, due to reasons beyond his or her control, an individual is deprived of the means of subsistence, he or she has to ask help, first from the family and then from different private networks of communal solidarity. The state is a last resort that should be asked to step in only after the other sources have failed. In this way, the actual beneficiaries of official protection end up being the truly poor, who almost invariably are singled out and stigmatized because there is a lingering suspicion that they are trying to abuse public generosity. However, an explanation particularly relevant to my argument is in order. There is little doubt that, due to the factors I have outlined, and in spite of the reforms introduced by Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s, the U.S. public network of social welfare is uneven, patchy, and scarcely solidaristic. From this point of view, it is legitimate to say that social rights have made comparatively weak progress in the United States. However, there are several reasons to qualify this assertion. I will mention four of them. O n e relates to the extraordinary economic prosperity the United States enjoyed during the last century (includ-

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ing the war years), which led to the improvement of the standards of living of vast sectors of the population, so that toward 1968 income distribution was not more uneven than it was in 1776, when the United States was one of the most homogenous countries of the time. Another reason for the strengthening of social rights in the United States is the effective role played by the unions, which, since the 1930s, have negotiated welfare measures directly with employers (unemployment compensation, health care coverage, paid vacations, pensions, etc.). The third reason is the importance achieved by what is usually called “fiscal welfare,” that is, the use of public resources to fund private welfare schemes. Last but not least, the presence of an extended network of voluntary associations has contributed to a significant number of needy people finding shelter and assistance within civil society itself. This latter assistance occurs independently of the aforementioned victimization of the disadvantaged (aggravated by racial discrimination) and the notorious social inequities inherent to the model.’ Whatever its limitations and the degree of similarity between its concrete manifestations, it is clear that the so-called welfare state extended after the war to all the industrial countries with consolidated democracies, that is, to all the places where representative democracy existed before World War 11. This means that the Marshallian catalogue of citizenship rights operated effectively in those places, while adopting qualitatively diverse features in each one of them, and that the famous “essential spirit” took roots in only a few countries. It is obvious, though, that not all developed capitalist nations were democratic before the war. It is legitimate to ask, then, what happened there. The question is important and deserves its own chapter.

NOTE 1. An article published in the New York Times Magazine in 1963, entitled “What Sort of Nation Are We?” stated that the United States was a highly democratic country despite the fact that “the will of the majority is not reflected in many of our political institutions.” The reason alleged was precisely that American-style democracy “must be interpreted as a social rather than as a political phenomenon. It has meant that a greater and greater number of Americans have been able to ascend to a level of material security . . . that in other countries remains the privilege of exclusive minorities” because “social classes play so sniall a role in our national life.”

12 EUROPEAN TRANSITIONS TO D E M O C R A C Y

WEST GERMANY, AUSTRIA, A N D ITALY

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he three European countries in which representative democracy was reestablished at the end of World War I1 were West Germany (FRG), Austria, and Italy. The three had traditionally participated in the state-dominated and corporatist conception of social policy fostered by the Bismarckian model; and they activated it again in the new circumstances following the war, each country with its own peculiarities. The German case can be taken, though, as a relatively emblematic one, both because of its importance and its similarities to the other two. As is well known, the FRG came out of the war economically, socially, and morally exhausted. Recovery came after its foreign debt was condoned and the monetary reform ofJune 1948 took place. This recovery is mainly associated not with the Marshall Plan but with the “social market economy” that later sparked so much admiration among the liberal fundamentalist right-wingers in Latin America. This enthusiasm was based on an intentionally distorted interpretation of the so-called German miracle that started by turning Ludwig Erhard into its almost exclusive protagonist. True, Erhard was, at the time, the European champion of price liberalization; left unsaid, though, was that he was also a staunch advocate of state intervention in favor of active industrial policies.’ Worse still: this distorted interpretation set aside the role played by the “social” component of the model, overlook-

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ing both the strong political leadership provided by Konrad Adenauer and the very significant action of the social Christian wing of the ruling Christian Democratic Union, which promoted the principles of catholic reforrnism and its trade union doctrine. When added to this the influence that the occupying powers and such remarkable personalities as British Labour Party union leader and politician Ernest Bevin (minister of foreign affairs under Attlee) had over the FRG; one can begin to understand why economic recovery, as Ralf Dahrendorf explained in 1991, was accompanied by “the codetermination in the coal and steel industries, a highly participative ‘constitution of the enterprises,’ an elaborated and costly pension plan for the elderly, and a public health care system which, altogether, made Germany one of the states with the highest welfare standards in Europe.” This is precisely what I wish to highlight: that here too, between the 1950s and 1970s, there took shape an extended “social state” (the expression Germans prefer), which, under the pressure of social democracy, eventually moved to an intermediate position between the Bismarckian and the Scandinavian models, with some influence from the U.S. model too. The FRG is one of the places where social policies have been most deliberately used to avoid and control conflicts. Transfers of public resources to such ends have been sizable, with a modest but increasing universalistic emphasis. However, different factors (such as liberalism, conservative reformism, and social catholic ethics) have combined to diminish the significance of social services provided directly by the public sector. It is in this regard that we find again the U.S. scheme of state subsidiarity, with the prevalence it gives to the family and voluntary associations as sources of help for the needy. However, the attitude toward the poor has not been the same, and, as an observer has ironically put it, the German federal law of social aid has simply banned the existence of poor people in its territory, In light of all the available evidence, there is no doubt that social policies formed one of the main pillars of the FRG’s spectacular recovery. At the same time, the social state consolidated full employment and favored agreements between companies and unions, placing the standards of living and security of most of the country’s workers among the highest of the capitalist world. These factors-combined from 1951 on with workers’ and unions’ participative practices-played a key role in the process that, as Jurgen Habermas puts it, made a people lacking “the roots of a republican mentality . . . get used to the traditions of freedom.” Before leaving this case, I will make a final remark which is relevant to

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Latin America. Shortly after the end of the war, German sociologist Gerhard Baumert conducted one of the first polls among youths of the FRG. The survey’s main conclusion was the following: “Since the time when the U.S. army brought in large amounts of consumer goods the Europeans needed to survive, the notion of ‘democracy’ remained closely associated in the minds of the young Germans to the notions of ‘food, clothing, and abundance.’ ” Four decades later, Dahrendorf (1994) states unequivocally: “German democracy continues to be unstable precisely because it remains very intimately linked to material prosperity.” I point this out because, from my perspective, it is worth wondering what would have become of Germany’s democracy without the “German miracle” and without the “social state.”

GREECE, P O R T U G A L , A N D SPAIN The second wave of Western European transitions to representative democracy took place three decades after the first one, and its main protagonists were Greece, Portugal, and Spain, the “poor capitalism” areas of that region. The dictatorships that ruled those countries applied to the management of social affairs a version of the Bismarckian model, dubbed “despoticcorporative,” under the aegis of ecclesiastical hierarchies and aimed not at the citizens as such but at the specific groups of workers they wanted to attract in each case. The funds allocated for these purposes were quite meager: while member nations of the European Community assigned on average 24 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) to funding for social protection, in these three countries the proportion was less than 10 percent. As Spanish expert Jost Maria Maravd summarizes: “At the end of the dictatorships, Southern Europe societies, and the Spanish one in particular, were far removed from the social services systems and rent transfers that accompanied economic prosperity in Western Europe.” The situation changed very clearly with the arrival of democracy: a few years later, spending on social welfare exceeded 19 percent of GDP in Portugal and 20 percent in Greece and Spain; that is, it had doubled. As is usually the case, the characteristics and pace of development of these social states were uneven: thus, the 1970s saw the fastest growth in social spending in Spain and almost no such growth in Greece. But in all three places-and

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particularly when social democratic governments reached power-the public sector multiplied social initiatives, seeking to achieve at least an intermediate position between the Bismarckian and the Scandinavian models. The consequence was that-as it had happened in the FRG, Austria, and Italysocial inequality ratios declined noticeably. There is a general consensus among observers on the great significance that the development of social policies had in Southern Europe, as in Western Europe, for the consolidation of democratic regimes; moreover, this consolidation was possible in spite of the high unemployment rates that prevailed in Spain and Greece and the fact that Portugal’s poverty levels remain the highest in the European Union. This relates to another factor I wish to underscore. I indicated before that the welfare state was established in Northern Europe during the postwar “golden age,” that is, in times of an economic expansion as impressive as it was sustained. But in the nations I am referring to now no such expansion took place during their political transitions. O n the contrary, the installation of representative democracy occurred here in the context of the deep capitalist crises unleashed in the 1970s and of their aftermaths. And, yet, the creation and implementation of social policies took place both when the economy grew and when it stagnated; and they were not subject to the fluctuations of unemployment rates either. This is another element to keep in mind when considering the argument I will develop later on.

JAPAN Although it concerns a non-European country, it is worth including here a brief reference to another case of transition to democracy that took place in the postwar period and moves in the direction of my argument, while not exactly following the route of becoming a welfare state. I am referring to Japan. After 1945, the U.S. government of occupation not only bestowed on this country a new constitution but also restructured its limited social security schemes along Western standards. However, in this as in other fields, the Japanese persevered in their practice, initiated in the nineteenth century, of “adopting and adapting” foreign models. Thus, they assigned the government a very peripheral role in the assistance of the needy, maintaining in this regard the customary, almost exclusive role of the family and, in a subsidiary way, that of the local community. This explains why, during the best

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years of the “Japanese miracle,” social spending averaged scarcely 2 percent of the GDP. In fact, the state’s strong dirigisme focused on a spectacular process of nation building, which led, from the 1950s to the 1970s, to annual production and productivity growth rates of more than 8 percent, while unemployment rates fluctuated around 1.3 percent. What is significant here is that, among the pillars of such perfomlance, were a remarkable national system of obligatory education; high job stability; extended programs of social protection for workers provided by the companies themselves (specially the largest ones); and very high levels of family savings that ranged, depending on the year, from 13 to 20 percent of household income.

As we have seen, in its most elaborate versions the European welfare state sought to somehow equalize income by means of both a progressive fiscal system and massive public transfers aimed at funding social spending and investments. Japan followed a different path, not centered on public transfers, but rather limiting intra- and intercompany wage dispersion, so that differences between citizens’ gross incomes ended up being much smaller than in the West. To sum up, in the case of Japan too the transition to democracy was accompanied by a swift economic development that increased the people’s general well-being and led to a marked decline in inequalities. In fact, the level ofJapan’s distributive equality was higher than that ofthe other developed capitalist nations, including the Scandinavians.

NOTE 1. It is worth recalling that the F R G inherited from Nazism a much more extended state than the ones obtaining in many other European countries. Thus, in 1950, public spending accounted in the FRG for 30.4 percent of GDP and exceeded that in France and Britain. In the mid-1970s public spending reached 42 percent in the FRG, while, by that time, spending in social services had doubled.

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13 CAPITALISM A N D D E M O C R A C Y : A SECOND APPROACH

S O C I A L CLASSES A N D D E M O C R A C Y

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have been referring to the political compromise on which capitalist democracy is grounded in certain places and to some of the conditions that have made it possible. It is time to say a few words about how that compromise was reached, which means returning to the question of the relations between capitalism and democracy. In the 1950s, a series of quantitative comparisons made by U.S. sociologist Seymour Lipset inaugurated what was to become a long path of analysis emphasizing the existence of a high-although not perfect-positive association between economic development (as gauged by wealth, industnalization, education, and urbanization) and democracy. To put it in more simple terms, the assumption was that, as development increased, so did the probabilities of having a democratic political regime. Why did this correlation exist? The first interpretation of the data attempted by Lipset was not very convincing: as an economy develops, he proposed, the expectations and demands of the masses grow at the same time that the ability of the elites to satisft.them increases. But why would a virtuous circle of this kind necessarily work within the institutional framework of democracy and not, for instance, of populist authoritarianism or military tyranny? Lipset’s second response is more interesting but makes the causal connection less direct and transparent. It is not related to economic develop65

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ment in itself but to the atmosphere of moderation and tolerance that it can foster among significant sectors of the population. In such an atmosphere, guided by their interests and realizing the advantages they might obtain, workers prefer to put forward gradual demands and not to take revolutiona r y positions. However, they encounter the opposition of the rich, who resist relinquishing significant parcels of their economic and political power. In this way “a democratic class struggle” erupts, which, sooner or later, an ever-expanding middle class settles in favor of popular claims. Clearly, then, from this perspective (which has become common among theoreticians of modernization) the middle class is the key to-and the main guarantor ofdemocratic institutionalization and stability. As I have said before, Lipset’s theses fed abundant debates and reformulations. But here I will briefly address one particular line of analysis that refutes his argument.’ It states-with the caution generalizations always impose-that almost everywhere the prodemocratic force par excellence was not really the middle class but the working class. Nonetheless, this class had to seek allies to face a powerful constellation of enemies, often led by the traditional big landowners It did not find those allies within the bourgeoisie, which was one of the main centers of resistance against the political incorporation of the workers (with the partial exceptions of the cases of Switzerland, Britain, and France) .’ Therefore, the working class depended heavily on the middle class, which-contrary to what Lipset says-always played an ambiguous role, due to the often-contradictory interests, orientations, and expectations of the sectors forming it. Depending on the circumstances, the middle class could be as much a reactionary force as it was a factor of democratization, joining the struggles of the unions and the workingclass parties. This implies that-as Marx himself guessed-capitalism and democracy are closely linked, due to the contradictory nature of the former. As it develops, capitalism weakens the traditional power of the landowners, while at the same time promoting an increase in the number of workers and other subordinated sectors, from which democratizing pressures will subsequently stem. But the authors I mention feel compelled to introduce-with reasontwo main restrictions to their interpretative framework, with the evident aim of distancing it from any essentialism. The first restriction is that class interests are not given but produced by society, so that at any historical conjuncture dfferent alternative paths always open up, even though the gamut of possible options is constrained by ideologcal compromises and organiza-

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tional limitations. The second restriction arises from the fact that no class position can be understood without takmg into account the situation, attitudes, and behavior of the other social classes, as well as the features of the state and the behavior of international actors.

THE R O L E O F THE BOURGEOISIE With this, I resume my interrupted story about the developed capitalist nations. In consonance with what has been said, the configurations and trajectories of capitalism in these countries have been diverse, and there is no shortage of classifications trying to capture this diversity: early, mid-, or late industrializers; open or closed economies; Rhineland capitalism versus U. S. capitalism; and so forth. But there is at least one trait that has been common to all of the developed capitalist nations in a given historical period, in spite of the differences I have pointed out-and many others that could be easily added. As we have seen, during the prosperous postwar years and at different paces, those impressive and undoubtedly heterogeneous constructions generically referred to as “welfare states” emerged in the wealthiest capitalist countries. In this way, based on different combinations of Fordism and Keynesianism, the first fully “salaried societies” in history emerged. And it was in those salaried societies that the Marshallian catalogue of citizenship rights became a reality, spurred far more by economic success than by that “essential spirit” the British sociologist talked about. At a much later stage, Southern Europe’s poor capitalist countries were democratized. By then, international economic circumstances had changed remarkably and a different ideological climate had started to prevail in the West. But in spite of that c h a n g e a n d of the fact that full employment had ceased to be the priority of governments now fiercely engaged in fighting inflation-the situation of workers improved there as well, and a panoply of social rights was added to the civil and political rights of citizens. Does the class hypothesis still make sense in light of the evidence? To a fair extent, yes-but with qualifications and additions. I have already signaled the impact war had on the fostering of social policies both in winning and losing countries, although for different reasons. Shortly afterward, the welfare states’ officials themselves endeavored to promote new social measures,

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which, in turn, were instrumental in strengthening and increasing their own power. However, the decisive role played by the trade unions and the social democratic parties in the Scanlnavian countries and in Beveridge’s Britain is similarly clear. They played the same role in West Germany, Austria, and Italy, although in these cases popular organizations of other political signs also intervened. And the same phenomenon was then to occur in Portugal, Greece, and Spain. As it is often the case, the United States constitutes an exception, given a social and political evolution that has always been quite different from that of Europe. Even so, it is worth signaling a few points. First, the welfare state was less developed in the United States. Second, social security was established by Roosevelt in the mid-1930s as a response to the growing misery and unrest caused by the Great Depression. Third, Roosevelt’s scheme was not modernized until the Kennedy and Johnson administrations in the 1960s, when, among other things, the movement for civil rights intensified. And, finally, the more serious studies on the subject show that there has always been, in the United States, a direct relationship between the intensity of popular mobilizations and the extension of the social benefits provided by the government. At any rate, I have already indicated how, through other means (including union action), at least a partial equivalent of the Marshallian catalogue materialized in the United States as well. This part of my argument can be summarized, then, as follows: in the period between the end of World War I1 and the late 1970s, and with obvious variations, in all the central and democratic-representative Western countries (including the less developed of Europe) the processes of capitalist accumulation unfolded in such a way that social inequality levels declined and the well-being of the popular sectors increased. From this analysis stems a lesson we should not ignore, having, as we do, Latin America in mind. In the experience of the countries previously discussed, the bourgeoisie, l e j to its own, was never a main and spontaneous agent ofdemocratization. At most, and finding itself forced to, it sought to preserve its domination by responding to some of the pressures and demands that usually emerged from below, activated by the workers and their union and political organizations.

NOTES 1. This line of analysis was initiated by Therbom in 1977 and continued in 1992, with revisions and new contributions, by Rueschemeyer, Huber Stephens, and Stephens (see references).

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2. In the early case of Switzerland, industry had a basically rural implantation, and industrial businessmen, professionals, intellectuals, and craftsmenjoined workes and peasants in a liberal front against the patriciate and the cities’ corporations. In France and Britain, in contrast, the realignment of several bourgeois factions can be interpreted as a convenient answer to the strength of previous popular mobilizations.

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14 LEGITIMACY, M O R A L A U T O N O M Y , AND P R E F E R E N C E S

W

hy have political compromise and the extension of social rights resulting from the establishment of welfare states been so decisive? To what extent have they contributed to defining a series of features characteristic of the countries to which I have referred and not present in the same way in other places that, however, people insist on calling democratic? The answers to these questions must be sought along three main lines. One concerns the characteristic I will describe as systematic of citizenship rights; another, the need for a substantive legitimation of the political order in contemporary societies; and the third refers to the significance, for any democratic regime, of the process whereby citizens decide their preferences. These questions are not simple, but I will try to address them as concisely as possible.

CITIZENSHIP AS A SYSTEM To say that, in a democratic regime, citizenship’s rights as defined by Marshall form a system means two closely associated things. First, among those rights there are clear relations of mutual implication; second, the regime can cease to be democratic not only if one or more of those rights are lacking but also if their joint development is notoriously uneven and/or encompasses limited sectors of the electorate. 71

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The “English sequence” (in a somewhat reformulated and stylized version) helps to illustrate better than any other the relations of mutual implication of citizenship rights within the framework of a capitalist society. We already know that the hard-won achievement of civil rights paved the way for modernity. With them, individual freedoms acquired an organic legal status for the first time. However, economic privileges and political domination threatened to deplete that legal status of all meaning due to the class bias continuously imposed both on laws and on their enforcement by courts. Hence, the ideals of a substantive justice made increasingly evident the need for extending political rights to avoid those distortions and to bestow an audible voice on those excluded-first the bourgeoisie and then the rest of the population. Moreover, with time, a growing recognition emerged that there can be no genuine political debate when material deprivation violates the dignity and autonomy of some of the parties supposedly called on to participate in such debate on an equal footing. That is to say that, to make sense, political confrontation depended on the diffusion of social rights. It is important to point out immediately that this logic of the relation between the dimensions of citizenship is not a one-way street, as my schematic account of the “English sequence” might suggest (in Sweden, for instance, political rights were established before the generalization of civil rights.) What counts is that, as far as democracy is concerned, the absence or weakness of any of those dimensions affects the others. A populist authoritarian regime, for instance, does not constitute a true welfare state just because it upholds a series of social rights, if at the same time it overrides civil and political rights. After all, it was Bismarck who passed the first social security laws, within the autocratic framework of the German empire; and in Stalinist Russia people received very tangible social benefits without there being any hint of democracy or due legal process. The same happens when an oligarchic government formally fosters political rights without guaranteeing civil freedoms or certain minimum standards of social protection. Having established the systematic character of citizenship rights-and taking into account the question I previously put forward regarding the particular character of democracy where the Marshallian catalogue has operated-I must add something. Representative democracy is a matter o f t h e layest possible majority o f the population enjoying those rights and not just some sectors o f it. This is the historical peculiarity of the welfare states I referred to: they extended the limits ofJill citizenship like never before; or, to put it the other

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way around, they shrunk in a remarkable way the number of both the semicitizens and the noncitizens.

$ill

A BRIEF EXCURSION TO INDIA At this point, a brief mention of India-which proudly proclaims itself “the world’s largest democracy”-could perhaps help clarify my thesis. For what generic meaning can be attributed to voting in a country where half the population receives an average annual income slightly above one hundred dollars per capita? Where well over three hundred million voters live below the poverty line? Where the literacy rate is less than 50 percent-or half this figure among the untouchables-and nearly 70 percent in the case of women? Where social security is a luxury reserved for public servants and only a part of the economy’s limited formal sector? To talk here of family resemblances without talung into consideration the endemic violence and corruption that afflict India’s political life entails the risk of paying more attention to the form than to the content.’ I do not mean to question the public freedoms that exist in India or the institutional traditions the country inherited from the British “civil service.” Those are unquestionably very valuable assets, which should be protected and extended. However, as Mahatma Gandhi soon understood but Jawaharla1 Nehru interpreted differently, the British legacy also included strong elements of state authoritarianism and political sectarianism. That is why, gwen the primacy Indian governments always enjoyed in the absence of a hegemonic class, almost everything has depended-in a Schumpeterian key-on the quality of the leadership of the moment. I think it is fairly clear today that, since the mid-1 960s, the genuine effort at implementing representative democratic principles, which had gathered a strong impetus since the approval of the 1950 constitution, has started to weaken. It is true that in general terms India has enjoyed a stable economy, with a low inflation rate and moderate growth; but it is also true that it has had little success in improving the lot of hundreds of millions of poor people. The vast difision of small rural and urban properties has limited the level of inequality in comparative terms; but in this case it has neither prevented backwardness, misery, and submission nor contributed to cultural innovation or managed to become so far a trustworthy foundation for democratic life. If something is evident after all these years, it is that the results of peri-

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odical elections have extremely little influence on the decision-making process of macroeconomic and fiscal policies. O n the one hand, the politics of representation is often tantamount, in practice, to the measures adopted by a coalition of dominating groups, mainly formed by rich landowners and industrialists, plus the members of the state bureaucracy. At the same time, as the Indian political scientist Ghanshyam Shah puts it: “Local ‘patrons’ bribe, divide, co-opt, hypnotize, and terrorize the poor.” It is they who manage and filter social programs in such a way that the assistance scarcely reaches the most needy, and the lot of one of the five poorest places on Earth improves very slowly, if at all. As Human Rights Watch reports show, what has materialized in many parts of India is a fusion of lumpen-capitalism and feudal brutality. Needless to say, for these inequities to obtain it is necessary that the poor have no access to the protection of judicial and police systems that are clearly corrupt. This means that, for considerable sectors of the Indian population, the total or partial lack of effective social rights is associated with an equally significant absence of civil rights. “A citizen deprived of support knows that, in most cases, he/she can neither resort for help to police nor to a corrupt administration or to a court system that will take an average of 20 years to give its verdict.” (LeMonde, 2 October 1999). Moreover, it is in fact the very deprivation of such rights that-to a great extent-has allowed the dispossessed to keep their political rights for the past fifty years, since, as they are, these rights have no cutting edge. The members of the dominant coalition use the polls to settle their conflicts. They need the support of vast numbers of poor people to gain power through periodical elections; and to achieve their aims they resort to everincreasing doses of authoritarianism and populist clientelism.’ To this, a marked increase of religous affiliations-whose affinity with the tolerance deemed typical of the liberal democratic models is admittedly meager-has been added over the last few years. At any rate, as Pankaj Mishra points out, the main threat is not this, but “India’s great poverty and ancient inequities, and the unprecedented violence they are now breeding.” According to this author, India continues to be considered a liberal democracy only because of the short-sightedness of Western observers and Indian intellectuals trained in the West. “The steady undermining of the Indian State is a fact often obscured by the commonplace and rarely examined assumption about India: that it is, after all, a democracy whose political institutions resemble-no matter how supedi-

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cially-those of the democratic West” (Times Literaty Supplement, 7 January 2000). In view of all this, a Latin American reader would hardly be surprised to learn that in 1998-1999, India’s military budget rose 14 percent, and that today it represents more than twice the amount spent on education, health care, and social services combined. Neither would such a reader be surprised to know that, according to some estimates, 70 percent of Indian politicians are corrupt, and the criminalization of political life is on the rise. The distance between this case and those considered paradigmatic does not require too much elaboration. And it invites us to pose some rather disturbing questions to which I shall return. What is the proportion offill citizens required by a representative democracy for it to deserve its name? Do distant relatives count as members of the democratic family? Under what conditions and starting from what resemblances do they count? It is not by chance that the literature about the case of India has stopped being congratulatory and is increasingly treating it as a “political exception.”

SUBSTANTIVE LEGITIMACY Besides extending social rights, in the advanced capitalist countries the welfare state served the double and vital purpose of consolidating public institutions and ensuring their legitimacy. I quote Spanish sociologist Victor M. Ptrez-Diaz: “It seems safe to assume that if most people believe that their country’s economic system is grossly unfair and therefore unacceptable from a moral viewpoint (either because it allows a minority to exploit a majority of have-nots or because income disparities, with or without exploitation proper, are allowed to grow in ways that may seem utterly unjustifiable), they will have great difficulty in persuading themselves that a public discourse of civic duty, due respect for the law, and patriotism is meaningful, and indeed that they belong to the same nation as that minority of exploiters, of people exceedingly rich and powerful and possibly above the law.” This is the core of the problem. As I have already pointed out, over the last two centuries the modem Western state has been much more than a juridical construction called on to guarantee the monopoly of legitimate violence on a given territory and, in this way, sovereignty. It has become, at the same time, the bearer of collective projects that, especially in democratic

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contexts, constitute the key to social integration, that is to say, to the formation of cohesive human groups. It is one thing to be a member of a state, subject to its authorities and its laws as a mere inhabitant of a territory; and a very different thing to enjoy the full rights of citizenship and be defined (and define oneself) as an active participant of a community guided by a declared common goal. The former only requires recognizing in the state aformal legitimacy. But the second raises the addtional and crucial problem of the state’s substantive legitimacy, dependmg on whether that state meets its purported goals, or, failing that, has enough credibility to make plausible the idea that it will meet them in a not-too-distant future. Depending on the time and the place, those collective projects have been dominated by the struggle against traditions, by nationalism, and/or by efforts at imperialistic expansion. But, quite clearly, since the 1940safter years of economic depression, massive unemployment, and warindustrial growth, full employment, and prosperity became the substantive ideals par excellence. These ideals became even more important when, during the increasingly harsh Cold War, capitalist democracies had to show that they were in a better position than their enemies to address people’s demands. (In what would prove to be one of his greatest mistakes, at the end of the 1950s Nikita Khrushchev visited the United States and launched his famous challenge that in a few years the standard of living of Soviet workers would not only match that of U.S. workers but would far surpass it. In this way, he accepted the values of the consumer society as universal standards of measurement and entered a contest he had no reasonable chance of winning.) Posed in these terms, the question of legitimacy goes beyond the level of individual beliefs and acquires a significant objective dimension. For a society’s institutions are not just systems of rules or ways of organizing and distributing tasks. They always imply the realization-however proper or distorted-of certain values, ideas, and norms. Hence these values, ideas, and norms are expressed concretely through those institutions and the practices characterizing them; and that is why both institutions and practices can be conceived as a kind of objective language that the society speak^.^ Through this language, a public discourse takes shape on a different level from that of words, including those used by authorities and political leaders. When t h s public discourse does not differ too much from reality as experienced and interpreted by citizens, conditions arise for them to develop an

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increasing trust in institutions and to identifj with them, in the belief that the same is happening to other citizens, that is, that other citizens share that trust and identification and the resulting respect for the rules. Conversely, when there is no such correspondence, when the police or the administration ofjustice cease to be impartial, or when political corruption grows, the institutional order begins to lose its meaning; each citizen feels that the others are experiencing a similar hsenchantment, and thus social life enters a period of withdrawal and alienation. In keeping with this point of view, I am trying to emphasize thatbeyond the marginalization and impoverishment processes that were also present-in those golden postwar years and in the countries I have referred to, the public discourse about capitalist abundance and liberal democracy transmitted by the institutions was becoming plausible for large segments of the population. This discourse was all the more compelling in contrast with the news coming from behind the iron curtain and with the painful realities of the underdeveloped areas that First World residents were getting to know through travel and the media. With this, the substantive legitimacy of the advanced capitalist countries not only increased but took very strong roots-o strong that, from that moment onward, the political debate in those countries had to abide by its parameters, and the echoes of revolutionary arguments were quite muted there. As I will explain, when the glow of the Thirty Glorious Years faded away and the salaried society began weakening seriously, contrary to many predictions it was not the legitimacy of the advanced capitahst countries as such to first go into a crisis but rather the legitimacy of some particular actors, such as the unions and, in general, the advocates of strong state intervention.

POSITIVE FREEDOM A N D PREFERENCES In previous pages I linked the welfare state to equality, highlighting the extent to which it contributed to a progressive distribution of income. I wish to say a few words now about its relation, no less important, tofreedom. Ironically, this question has been obscured in recent years by the strong and obstinate opposition to the welfare state mounted by the neoliberals, that is, by the self-proclaimed staunchest advocates of freedom. The reason for this apparent paradox is quite clear. From Thomas Hobbes onward, a negative conception of freedom has spread in different

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guises. It is called “negative” because it defines freedom simply as the absence of external obstacles to individual action. From this point of view, to be free is to be able to do whatever one wants to, within the limits imposed by law. The elective affinity between this perspective and the status of the most privileged sectors of society can be understood without much explanation. In contrast to this perspective-and also with different manifestations-a positive vision of freedom as self-realization, as the control over one’s own life, has developed. According to this second stance, there can be subjective choices made in the absence of external obstacles, and yet they may not be free choices. Depending on the context, such choices could be the result of economic and social coercion, of an individual’s lack of education, of material deprivations forcing an individual to accept protectors and to submit to their orders, and so forth.4 Put differently, rights can never be separated from the effective possibility of their exercise short of depriving them of any content. This leads to a vexing question: Are we not facing here a germ of totalitarian danger? If subjective choice has taken place in the absence of external obstacles, who can claim the right to question it but those who think they know better or feel authorized by divine inspiration, the laws of history, or racial purity (with consequences we all know too well)? I hasten to say that nothing is farther removed from that germ than the “essential spirit” Marshall referred to. From his point of view no one is vested with the authority necessary to launch such a questioning in a valid way. The problem he poses is different and it can be summarized as follows: any commitment to freedom also entails a commitment to the social preconditiorzs offreedom. If these are not met, if those “basic conditions of equality” TOCqueville referred to do not obtain, if the individual lacks a minimum quota of dignity and is dominated by elementary fears such as not being able to survive, then he or she lacks autonomy and his or her alleged freedom is but a m ~ c k e r yThe . ~ welfare state must guarantee those preconditions; this does not imply intervening in the subjective choice but making it authentically possible. This is why Claus Offe is right when he says that the good citizen is not so much defined by the preferences he expresses but by the way he reaches them. Of course, the way a voter makes his or her choice is not important according to the neoliberalism of neoclassical inspiration in vogue today. This neoliberalism applies the same logic to the market and to poli-

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tics, that is, it considers that in both cases preferences are individual and exogenous and must be taken at face value, whatever their origin. But the effects of social citizenship manifest themselves precisely in those places where preferences are formed, and not-I insist-because they dictate the content of preferences or even require an active political participation. Rather, they help make political participation as autonomous as possible, and put at its disposal a series of indispensable resources in terms of income, education, knowledge, information, and the capacity for dialogue and deliberation. Whether the individual uses these means, or whether he or she uses them smartly, is a different story. But the example of India is sufficient for an understanding of all their significance. Furthermore, the importance of autonomy goes far beyond the act of voting. Autonomy is also one of the conditions for being able to participate in an effective and reflexive way in the wide associative space situated between the state and the market that has been called “civil society.” I confess to having reservations about the immediate and unidirectional link that it is now fashionable to establish between the growth of civil society and democracy. After all, Germany and Austria fell into Nazism in the midst of an intense associative life, and Ku Klux Klan members tend to participate with great enthusiasm in community organizations. And it is evident that, over the last two decades, there has been a mushrooming of voluntary organizations that give shelter to “reactionary neo-tribalisms,” as Scott Lash and John Urry put it. But, this said, an active civil society becomes an indispensable requisite for a process of democratization if two sets of criteria are met. First, a civil society must constitute, aggregate, and redefine pluralist interests; generate areas of equality and solidarity; and foster dialogue and the confrontation of opinions. Second, it must raise barriers and set limits to the possible excesses of the state’s officials and apparatuses.

NOTES 1. As stated in a recent report: “Inefficiency, corruption, an absence of accountability and other forms of mismanagement have hurt everything from schools to roads to foreign investment” ( T h e Economist, 4 September 1999). 2. In the words of M. S. Gill, electoral commissioner of the elections of September and October 1999: “We are desperate to prevent democracy from derailing but the more violent areas are also those with the highest levels of poverty and dliteracy and where justice is more absent. People ask that we g v e them ideal conditions for voting during the six weeks of elections when some of those areas have been abandoned for half a century” (Itztemational Herald Tribune, 5 October 1999).

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3. This subject, of Hegelian inspiration, has been very well developed by Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor. 4. It is worth reminding the neoliberals that, in the nineteenth century, liberalisni tended to oppose universal voting in the fear that submissive rural workers, for instance, would naturally vote for the local notables in strongly patriarchal contexts. Universal voting was the great subject of debate in the German National Assembly of 1848-1 849 in Frankfurt. As a Norwegian constitutional expert wrote a few years later, the vote “must be reserved for citizens who have suficient judgment so as to understand who can become the best representatives as well as the necessary independence so as to remain firni in their convictions.” 5. Years ago, French socialist Leon Bluni said, irrefutably: “Every society that is willing to ensure the freedom of man must start by guaranteeing his existence.”

15 FROM THE THIRTY GLORIOUS YEARS TO T H E GREAT RECESSION

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n the developed capitalist countries, the postwar boom had started to fade by the mid-1960s. Driven down by the two oil crises of the next decade and by competition from Asia, it gave way to the “Great Recession” of the 1990s.’ It is plausible to speculate, as some observers do, that phenomena like these are just the visible face of the complex transition from an “industrial society” to an “information society.” But it is not my intention here to engage in a discussion about long-term trends of this sort. The fact is that the main indicators of those countries’ economic performance validate a recessive image: between 1973 and 1997 all such indicators were between 30 and 50 percent lower than those of the period from 1950 to 1973; at the same time, the average unemployment rate doubled. As Paul Krugman points out, although one cannot say that the world economy is today in a depression, it is clearly facing the same kind of structural problems that afflicted it in the 1930s. These problems have surfaced despite the good growth levels the OECD members experienced in 1999, clearly led by the United States, and a slight decline in the average unemployment rate. But the changes have not been only economic. One very significant change, in terms of our analysis, regards the way in which the role of the state has been redefined in most developed capitalist countries. After playing the role of the demiurge of history for over two centuries, the state, in the last two decades, not only has lost a significant part of its power at a s u r p r i s 81

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ing speed but has been demonized by neoliberalism as directly responsible for almost every contemporary ill. There have, undoubtably, been several objective reasons for this besides increasing fiscal deficits. The development of new technologies has shortened distances to a minimum, facilitated an extraordinary expansion of markets on a world scale, and made the competition to control portions of those markets much more significant than the old competition for territories. This erosion of the value of physical borders-whose custody has always been one of the main functions of the state-is a consequence of several factors: of trade barriers falling down, a process that has accelerated since the late 1950s (over the last half century, world trade has multiplied by fifteen); of the phenomenal growth of financial transactions since the 1960s (today they reach a daily average of $1.5 trillion, a figure exceeding the combined reserves of all the world’s central banks); and of the formation of powerful regional blocs (which means, for example, that about half the domestic laws of its member countries actually depend on decisions adopted by the European Union.) But objective reasons per se are not enough to explain the particular bias of the transformation. In order to understand this bias it is necessary to go back to the political compronllse that served as the foundation of capitalist democracy in the postwar years, that “Keynesian agreement” that ensured full employment and the implementation of social policies of inclusion, financed by a progressive tax system. This agreement did not intend to trespass on capitalist enterprises or affect their power structures, but it did so in practice by undermining unemployment-that powerful capitalist instrument for regulating and disciplining the labor force. It is true that, with the crises and recession of the 1970s, the number of unemployed increased. In a rather anomalous way, though, prices also rose. This new phenomenon of stagnation with inflation (stu$ation) markedly reduced profit rates, especially in the manufacturing sector. The main economic agents attributed this to two concurrent factors. O n e was the politicization of the labor market; workers, who were employed and unionized, prevented an adjustment of costs via the reduction of real wages (this inability to move down came to be known as the “rigidity” ofwages). The other factor blamed for stagflation was excessive spending by a welfare state deemed responsible for workers’ politicization and for sustaining effective demand through social policies during the contraction phase of the economic cycle. From this perspective, the Thirty Glorious Years left behind a

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disastrous balance: they abusively weakened the capitalists and exaggeratedly strengthened the workers and their organizations. In keeping with this perspective was a report, published in 1975, that would prove very influential and set the tone for times to come. It had been requested by the Trilateral Commission (formed by some of the world’s most powerful economic groups) and signed by three prestigious experts. Its eloquent title is: T h e Crisis of Democrucy: Report on the Governability of Dern ocracies. The book is dominated by the notion of excess. The industrialized countries were facing increasing governability problems due to an “excess of democracy” that had exerted “a leveling and homogenizing influence” at the expense of the “authority inequalities and difference of functions” required by any social organization. At the same time, excessive political participation and growing expectations that the government should satisfy people’s needs had led to an overload of demands on public authorities, who were unable to meet them. Moreover, the dynamics proper to any democratic system, the authors said, tend to push the government to address the question of unemployment while inhibiting it from efficiently tackling the problem of inflation. In this sense, they concluded, “inflation is the economic illness of democracy”; and therefore very severe adjustments were required if the institutional erosion was to be remedied and the govemability crisis ended. Thus were outlined the main points of what was to become the discourse of the new right, which achieved power for the first time, in 1979 in Britain, with Margaret Thatcher. The fight against inflation replaced full employment as the new central axis of economic policy; the primacy that had thus far been gwen to equality was expressly questioned; and for the first time an attempt was made to place the postwar welfare state on the defendant’s stand. Among other arguments used against the welfare state, from T h e Crisis ofDemocracy on, are that its financing requires high taxes that affect the capacity to invest; that the public sector thus deprives the (allegedly more productive) private sector not just of its savings but also of valuable human resources; and that the generous protection it provides to citizens acts as a disincentive for working. In this way, a radically ideological turn began, boosted decisively by the crisis of communism and the increasing globalization of economic relations. Until then (and to a fair extent thanks to Keynesian arguments), it had been taken for granted that it was in the general interest to consider work-

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ers’ wages not just as a cost but also as an income, on which the health of domestic markets depended. Now, especially the large companies were operating more and more on a world scale, with their eyes on markets that were not exclusively national; for the sake of competitiveness, they treated wages above all as a cost-and one that had to be cut. Some results did not take long to appear after this ideological turn: unemployment, underemployment, the precariousness of jobs, and poverty all rose. With them rose the pressures on a welfare state that was overwhelmed by demands at the same time that powerful economic groups and their ideologists were denigrating it as the main culprit in what was happening.

NOTES 1. The expression Great Recession belongs to Emmanuel Todd, who asserts that the current capitalist crisis is much slower than that of 1929 due to two main reasons: today, the social protection networks of the developed countries contribute to meeting citizens’ demands for social services; and there are no strong collective beliefs threatening the political equilibrium. 2. The report was authored by two sociologsts (Michel J. Crozier, from France, and Joji Watanuki, from Japan) and a political scientist (Samuel P. Huntington, from the United States).

16 W E L F A R E S T A T E S IN T R A N S I T I O N

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enerally speaking, and beyond their rhetorical value, the economic arguments wielded against the postwar welfare states proved to have a feeble and unconvincing empirical basis.' O f course, they stdl had very considerable ideological and political effects, although in the end (and this is what really matters here) those effects were not as significant as the arguments' promoters intended. As does any institution existing in contexts that are always in a state of flux, the welfare states needed restructuring after a while. The welfare states had been conceived for relatively homogenous, salaried societies in which the manufacturing sector played a key role, while full employment allowed for risks to be spread among many people. There were several complex changes upsetting the welfare states since the mid-l960s, with the effects varying according to the peculiarities of such changes, the different characteristics of those states, and the strength and flexibility of their bureaucracies. First of all, occupational structures changed and became more fragmented everywhere. In just over a generation, the number of factory workers declined to an average of less than 20 percent of the economically active population, while the heterogeneous world of services was on the rise; labor markets were strongly segmented; and, as I mentioned in chapter 15, unemployment, underemployment, and the precariousness of jobs emerged as massive and persistent phenomena. Secondly, women were incorporated on a large scale into the labor force. The working family with the husband as the only provider ceased to be the rule, and the number of single-parent households grew very fast. At the same time, the acceleration of technological changes and the growth of poverty, criminality, and drug consumption 85

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reached unprecedented levels, exceeding by far the abilities developed by the welfare states to deal with them. Besides, the welfare states had become, in part, the victims of their own success. For instance, partly thanks to their services, beginning in 1960, the life expectancy of their populations rose steadily, and in several countries the number of elderly people almost doubled. This placed a heavier burden on social security and public service systems at a time when the number of contributors was declining, due both to unemployment and to a low demographic rate of growth. At the same time, budgets were strained by a remarkable rise in school enrollnient and, more generally, by civic pressures to gain access to cultural goods-fostered by, among other things, the same technological changes that altered occupational structures. Brief and incomplete as it is, we must include in this list the bureaucratic hypertrophies of the public sector, in which a large number of specialized officials often served their own professional interests by promoting frequently overlapping, contradictory, or simply self-referential social policies. The concurrence of these and other factors led many political leaders (mostly those of neoliberal inspiration) to make the welfare states the central targets of their criticisms. Paradoxically, the postwar prosperity had paved the way for this: as John Galbraith had forecast in the 1950s, in affluent societies the figure of the consumer was increasingly replacing that of the citizen; and, as Marshall had warned in the 1960s, possessive individualism was eroding the concept of political legitimacy grounded on principles of solidarity and social justice. Nevertheless, in general terms, in developed nations the welfare states continued to grow in spite of the fact that, at the end of the 1970s, the fiscal deficits of West Germany, Belgium, Britain, Italy, Japan, and Switzerland already exceeded 5 percent of their GDP and would soon reach 7 percent. What is more, between 1960 and 1994, the average public spending of OECD countries doubled, reaching almost half of their GDP; and, at the same time, the average capital tax rate (with a clearly redistributive bias) rose from about 30 percent in the 1970s to nearly 40 percent in the 1990s. Certainly, there were very important national differences. In those places where the welfare state had been marginal and always concerned with not undermining incentives to work-as it typically was in the United States-services were restructured, subsidies were cut, and in 1998, under Ronald Reagan, the Family Support Act was reformed. Financial aid for have-nots was now dependent on their enrolling in education and training

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programs meant to reincorporate them into the workforce. The reform also reduced to five years the maximum period during which people could get aid from the state.’ That same year the Thatcher administration introduced very similar changes in Britain, only in this case altering a tradition that, as we have seen, aimed at separating social rights from market vicissitudes. Similar measures were also adopted in Australia and New Zealand. As economist and Nobel laureate Robert Solow pointed out in 1998, the main problem with such reforms is that, if they really want to attain the goals they preach, they themselves must create jobs for social services beneficiaries, either in the public sector or by subsidizing the private sector, which increases public spending instead of reducing it. At any rate, I wish to highlight here that, in spite of the modifications they introduced and in spite of their repeatedly stated goals, neither Thatcher nor Reagan was politically strong enough to dismantle, except in a very partial way, the welfare states that existed in their countries. (It is illustrative that David Stockman, one of Reagan’s main assistants, resigned from his post for precisely that reason, accusing the president of not carrying out his promised “revolution” against state interventionism.) In this area, the evolution of the continental members of the European Union is even more telling, because, if on the one hand they redefined and limited the scope of many of their social polices, on the other they established citizens’ right to a minimum income both from the supply side (training programs, recycling plans, etc.) and from the demand side (working hours reduction, part-time contracts, e t ~ . )The . ~ common denominator of these measures is a direct intervention in the process of income distribution via laws and regulations instead of redistributing income ex post facto via fiscal measures such as taxes and social security transfers. In those nations, moreover, average social spending, which was near 25 percent of the GDP in 1980, had grown to almost 35 percent by 1994, with 80 percent of it earmarked for pensions and health care. Actually, social spending expanded steadily starting in the 1970s, shrunk between 1984 and 1990 (when many studies heralding the end of the welfare state appeared), and has continued to grow in recent years. At present, one of the most pressing discussions in those countries concerns the extent to which social protection must remain in the realm of the national states or should become a priority for the European Union as a whole. So far, there is nothing resembling a European social model, and calls for a “social Europe” are just an aspiration. However, it is worth considering that the report issued in 1997 by the Committee of Sages,

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appointed to this effect by the European Commission, clearly concludes that without true economic security citizenship cannot exist. Besides, with the Amsterdam Treaty signed that very year by the member countries, the language of fundamental social rights is back, and full employment “as a question of common interest” for the whole European Union has been advocated for the first time. That is to say that the importance of the welfare state is not only far from being exhausted at the national level, but that the present debate on the prospects of a “European citizenship” is actually a discussion about the possibility of articulating a “social European citizenship.”

NOTES 1 . A good source for the reader interested in this subject-which I can only treat here in passing-are the statistics analyses conducted, among others, by Lane Kenworthy. It is worth adding that a repeated finding of the studies periodically published by the O E C D and the European Union is that a high level of social protection does not constitute an obstacle for economic development and that it even favors it. 2. Nowadays, in spite of nine years of economic expansion and low unemployment rates, poverty continues to be very serious in the United States and affects one to two out of every ten Americans, depending on the indicators that are used. Even worse: almost one out of every five children lives in poverty there (a rate double that of the main European countries), as does one out of every four black f a d i e s (see these arid other data in T h e Economist, 20 May 2000). 3. There are already several European countries where a guaranteed minimum wage is in force, conceived as a right of the citizens and, therefore, of universal character and unlimited duration.

17 THE PROBLEMATIC O F SOCIAL EXCLUSION

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lthough I have sketched only the broad outline of the evolution of the capitalist democracies that are usually considered paradigmatic, and visited just some of its aspects, I must address an apparent contradiction before closing this overview.

For one thing, as I have said, welfare states are undergoing a restructuring process but still enjoying good health, and the measures aimed at limiting them have been and are the subject of intense social and political conflicts. Nevertheless, since the late 1980s the problematic of social exclusion has gained momentum in those countries as one of the main prisms through which reality is experienced and explained. An understanding of why this is so provides new clues about the relationship between democracy and social rights in the contemporary world. The fact that this reconsideration of social rights is taking place is quite revealing in itself. The first European studies on social exclusion appeared in the 1960s and 1970s, in the context of successful salaried societies. Those studies aimed precisely at being the societies’ bad conscience, showing that there stdl existed people who remained outside the broad social protection networks: the prisoners, the drug addicts, the handicapped, the mentally ill, etc. A fair number of such cases were considered to be remnants of a past that would be eliminated by progress. The question then lost visibility, and when it was reintroduced in the literature of the last decade, its meaning had changed. Since then, it has designated a deep and generalized crisis of 89

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the social bond and, because of that, it refers much more to processes and relations than to particular groups of individuals. But above all, this exclusion is no longer defined as residual but considered a direct byproduct of the current socio-economic order. Although it refers to France (undoubtedly, a case with its own distinct features), Emmanuel Todd’s description can be easily extended to other developed nations. Until the end of the 1970s, he says, everybody in France dreamed of becoming rich. This potent national image was replaced over the following decade by that of a stationary society, in which victimized minorities no doubt existed, but three-quarters of the population enjoyed a high standard of living. Finally, by the mid-1990s the “nightmare of an endless regression, of the impoverishment of increasing sectors of the population, of an inexorable growth of inequalities” made its appearance. Available polls confirm Todd’s vision: according to a survey carried out in September 1995 by CSA-La Rue, for instance, over one out of every two French feared becoming excluded and more than one out of every ten felt they had already been excluded.‘ The landscape is not rosier on the other side of the Atlantic. It is true that the U.S. economy entered the year 2000 in the largest uninterrupted expansion it has enjoyed since the 1940s. However, a recent report by the Economic Policy Institute in Washington shows that, in spite of the prosperity, the incomes of almost 65 percent of the country’s workforce have declined. Furthermore, in the last two decades, inequality increased markedly. For instance, over that period, the income share of the richest 20 percent of the population grew an impressive 55 percent while that of the poorest 20 percent fell by 6 percent, which means that the former gets at least 1,000 percent more than the latter (LaNu&, 2 May 2000).’ To quote Kevin Phillips: “As the twenty-first century gets underway, the imbalance of wealth and democracy in the United States is unsustainable, at least by traditional yardsticks. Market theology and unelected leadership have been displacing politics and elections. Either democracy must be renewed, with politics brought back to life, or wealth is likely to cement a new and less democratic regime--plutocracy by some other name.”3 To better assess what is happening now, it is useful to compare it with what took place in the beginnings of industrial civilization. At that time, exclusion was defined mostly in political terms: a working class that was being massively incorporated to the productive system demanded the same rights as the other classes. Its goal was to get in. Today, exclusion is defined mainly in socio-economic terms and bears witness to the crisis of postwar

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salaried society: perfectly normal and integrated citizens run daily the risk of being pronounced useless or redundant and of being pushed into poverty and a precarious life. Their goal is not to exit.4 The elements overdetermining this phenomenon are many, but all of them converge on one point: societies organized for two centuries around the supreme value of work as a means to earn a living and as a token of moral accomplishment-and whose culmination were those Thirty Glorious Years of full employment and economic well-being-are no longer capable of providing jobs to all their members or ensuring stable and wellClosely linked f a c t o r s s u c h as the paid careers to those who get a alleged or real competition posed by immigrants (stigmatized as foreigners even in their second generation) and a widespread deinstitutionalization of family links, with the subsequent weakening of primary solidarities-make it much less surprising that insecurity and uncertainty have spread so notoriously, in spite of the survival of the welfare state.6 Because what matters today, I insist, is that social exclusion does not refer so much to categories or specific groups as to processes that put established social bonds in crisis and constitute a palpable threat to ample layers of the population. That is why the welfare state’s social policies are necessary but not sufficient: they provide relief to urgent cases (much more in Europe than in the United States, as we know), but they are unable to fill in the distressing lack of meaningful alternatives for those who fear being left outside or are already there. All this poses a remarkable paradox: exactly when capitalist democracies have beaten communism, their own disenchantment begins. Politicians argue that national states can do little in the face of globalization forces, and in this way they acknowledge all the relevance lost by political parties and voting as instruments of change. Worse std-lacking, themselves, ideological convictions or long-term proposals to back them, and overwhelmingly exposed by the media to public opinion, many of those politicians end up disclosing their weakness and scant substance in full view. That is why feelings of nonsense, alienation, and lack of interest concerning public issues are so widespread, all of them hardly compatible with a robust democracy and more prone to pave the way for the authoritarian, populist, intolerant, or frankly chauvinist dxourses being offered as alternatives. The First World has entered, as political scientist Jean-Marie Guthenno states, a triple crisis: that of the so-called consumer society, that of the so-called representative democracy, and that of the idea of progressand “the three phenomena are parallel and of the same nature.” This teaches

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a lesson that is important to add to my previous arguments about social rights and the welfare state: they are not enough to support a solid democracy when the social fabric is weakening and there is not (or there ceases to be) an institutionalized discourse that can instill cohesion into a community. It may be worth clarifjring that in no way am I referring here to the end of the capitalist democracies (although several books with such titles have appeared over the last few years, mostly written by European authors). It is enough for my purposes to be aware of the extent and nature of their present crisis. Or, more precisely, it is enough to recognize the ways in which the processes I have mentioned are capable of unleashing such a crisis, even in the context of political regimes consolidated long ago.

NOTES 1. See, in the same vein, the depiction of Jean-Louis Andreani in LA Monde almost five years later (11 February 2000): “The social climate is constantly marked not only by the fear of unemployment and layoffs but also by a simmering tension that may lead the slightest local demand in terms of workmg time or wages to erupt into focalized strike movements, such as it has happened in public and private transport.” 2. In Britain, the cradle of the neoliberal experience, at the start of the 1970s the income of the richest 10 percent of the population was three times higher than that of the poorest 10 percent. In the late 19YOs, the difference had risen to four times higher. In terms ofwealth (and notjust ofincome), in 1996 10 percent ofthe population owned over 50 percent ofthe total, and 50 percent owned only 7 percent (Guardian Weekly, 18 May 2000). The situation was even worse in the United States, where the Federal Reserve and private data indicated that by the year 2000, 10 percent of the population owned two-thirds of the total wealth. 3. This is the closing paragraph of Kevin Phillips’s Wealth and Democracy (New York: Broadway Books, 2002), and should be taken here as an addenda to my original text since Phillips’s important book appeared while I was revising the English translation of mine (written in 2000). I believe this addenda is not just worthwhile but clearly relevant to my general argument. 4. First World authors such as Susan George put it even more bluntly. For centuries, she says, the central political question was: “Who occupies what rank in the social ladder?” Then, after the great bourgeois revolutions, it was replaced by another one: “Who gets the juiciest slices of the pie?” Today, with globalization, the primary question is simply: “Who has a right to survive and who does not?” (Disent, Winter 2000, 15). 5. In September 1999, the French multinational Michelin made two announcements: that its profits had risen almost 20 percent in the past semester and that over the next three years seventy-five hundred jobs would be eliminated-a good symbol of the times. 6 . According to reports published by the OECD in 1997, “labor insecurity as perceived by the workers is more widespread in this decade in all OECD countries for which data is available.” Note that, in 1996, the highest levels of insecurity were

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recorded in the United States and the United Kmgdom, that is, in the places where social protection had diminished the most, and this in spite of four straight years of unemployment decline. It is worth adding that in the places where traditional famdy links have been maintained the most-for instance, in Italy’s Mezzogomo-unemployment and poverty are not necessarily accompanied by social exclusion.

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18 T H E LATIN A M E R I C A N CASE

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f one of the great postwar political problems in developed countries was trying to limit the inequalities generated by capitalism, the question was noticeably more difficult in Latin America. Not only were such inequalities far greater but they were combined with others, characteristic of significantly less modern structures of domination and exploitation. I am refemng to the well-known question of dualism or, better stdl, to the structural heterogeneity of these societies. Although it is true that generalizing in this field is always dangerous, and in Argentina or Uruguay, for example, such phenomena were historically of a lower intensity, it cannot be denied that Latin America as a whole ended the twentieth century as the most uneven place on Earth, with over one-third of its population living below the subsistence levels usually considered minimal and with nearly one-fourth of its population uneducated. As the Inter-American Development Bank’s 1998- 1999 Report observes with sober diplomacy, the area clearly suffers from an “excess” of inequality, which becomes evident when it is compared to other areas in the world with similar GDPs. In t h s connection, international experts brought into vogue a distinction that returns us to the family resemblances issue. Since national data on income distribution are usually presented divided in quintiles, those experts make a distinction between 40 : 40 : 20 societies and 60 : 30 : 10 societies, according to the ways income is appropriated.’ The first ones are the less uneven: there, the richest 20 percent get 40 percent of total income; the next 40 percent, 40 percent; and the poorest 40 percent, 20 percent. This is the situation in most developed countries, 95

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except the Unites States, Australia, Ireland, and New Zealand, where unbalances are greater. No sensible observer would dare to call such a distribution egalitarian. However, there is a remarkable contrast with the situation in the more uneven societies: in these, the richest 20 percent tends to get 60 percent of the total income; the following 40 percent, 30 percent; and the poorest 40 percent is left with only 10 percent. These are the conditions prevailing in Africa and Latin America. Thus, at the end of the 1980s, countries such as Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Guatemala, Panama, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and, less clearly, Bolivia, were orbiting around the 60 : 30 : 10 pole. As for Argentina, between 1980 and 1994 it enjoyed the dubious honor of shifting from the category 40 : 40 : 20 to the category 60 : 30 : 10. Uruguay and Costa Rica recorded the lowest inequality rates in the region. (I leave aside the case of Cuba, as neither is its economic regime capitalist nor is its political system a representative democracy.) Moreover, it is worth keeping in mind that these figures underestimate the actual levels of inequality: first, they measure the annual income received without considering the wealth already accumulated; second, they include only payment for jobs, leaving aside rents, interests, dividends, and other forms of capital return; and third, as different sources have documented, rich people systematically declare an income lower than what they effectively get, while, out of shame, the poor usually declare a higher one. But to be useful for sociopolitical analysis, inequality must be complemented by at least two other indicators. Inequality may obtain in countries where the per capita income is comparatively high (the best example being the United States), as well as in places where it is quite low. In the latter case, the analysis ofpoverty, added to that of inequality, becomes of particular significance. At the same time, within an uneven society, income differences may be rather gradual and stable or entail great gaps tending to widen with time. When this second situation occurs we talk about the polarization of income distribution, whose importance increases as the inner homogeneity of each social layer and the heterogeneity between the different layers increase.

From this point of view, and since long ago, Latin America has provided an example par excellence of a great inequality associated with a great poverty and a great polarization.

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For instance, during the “lost decade” of the 1980s, when the region’s per capita national income fell by 15 percent, the number of have-nots increased at a pace doubling that of demographic growth; that is why poverty today affects between two-fifths and two-thirds of the total population in many countries.2 In 1980, according to estimates of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) for the area as a whole, 35 percent of households were under the poverty line; in 1986 that number had grown to 37 percent, and in 1990, to 39 percent. This means that millions of Latin Americans are not just victims of inequality; they are also deprived of the necessary resources to maintain a minimum of basic dignity. Regarding polarization, a simple (although admittedly incomplete) way to gauge it is to compare the income of the highest quintile (the richest) to that of the lowest quintile (the poorest) on the income distribution scale. Based on recent data for ten Latin American countries, Adam Przeworski tells us that the average relation is 16.95, that is, more than triple the one recorded in OECD countries (5.12) and also much higher than that of seven Asian countries (6.5) and ten Eastern European countries (5.05).3That is to say that in Latin America inequality is overdetermined both by poverty levels that, in many places, are not just relative but also absolute, and by a deep gap between the rich and the poor, which has widened even more over the past few decades. But the real dimension of the problem is considerably larger. Insecurity and economic instability also affect large numbers of workers who, statistically, are above the poverty line, that is, are not considered poor in technical terms. This is not hard to understand given that in 1990 the formal/modern sector of the Latin American economy barely absorbed 48 percent of the workforce, while in 1996 the rate fell to a meager 43 percent. Between the same years-when it was assumed that the tough adjustment measures implemented during the 1980s would bear hit-eighty-five out of every one hundred new jobs involved informal, low-quality, and low-income activities and were deprived of any social protection. Thus, the singular Latin American paradox of our times becomes apparent: while in the First World both the old and the new democracies were consolidated in the context . f a marked decline in inequality, poverty, and polarization, here the opposite is happening, and the current democratization processes are accompanied by a critical increase in the three phenomena.

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The consequences for the ways in which citizenship is constructed are certainly very significant, and they far remove the experience of our countries from those of the paradigmatic cases in relation to which resemblances are usually established.

TWO PART I C U LA R TRAJECTORIES There are two partial exceptions that tend to confirm the rule. I have said before that Uruguay and Costa Rica are the Latin American countries featuring the lowest inequality levels. They also are (and this is not a mere coincidence) among the places in the region where, on the one hand, the social protection measures for citizens were developed the most and, on the other, the resemblance of the representative democracy regimes in office to the paradigmatic cases is greater. In Uruguay, during the second presidency of Batlle y Ordbfiez (191 11916), a state with a considerable urban and clientelistic basis started quite early to provide assistance to the population. This, together with the consolidation of the legal system and the expansion of both public education and public administration, created the conditions for the growth of political participation over the next two decades. Even though Gabriel Terra’s military coup in 1933 opened the door to fascist and phalangist influences, the social state continued its development, albeit now with a corporativist bias. Later on, representative democracy made a comeback, and the 1942-1955 period was that of the “happy Uruguay,” when a rather significant number of civil, political, and social rights “in the European style” materialized, within the framework of an increasingly fully salaried society. Thus, what has been called a “middle class egalitarian culture” became a reality and, not without some painful scars, managed to dodge the post-1955 economic difficulties and to survive more than a decade of military dictatorship (1973-1985). In fact, the military did not dismantle the basic structures of the welfare state, and hence it could be restored when the constitutional order finally ret~rned.~ Today, Uruguay is far from being a rich country, and the dream of transforming it into the “Switzerland of the Americas” has evaporated. But inequality, poverty, and polarization levels are still comparatively low, while the country’s democratic institutions count as the most solid in Latin America. Although this evolution cannot be attributed to just one cause, neither can we doubt the major role played by a more or less balanced

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development of the dimensions of citizenship, relatively close to the prescriptions of the Marshallian catalogue. Although more recent, the evolution of Costa Rica has several points of contact with the Uruguayan case. Moreover, Costa Rica has made what is probably the greatest progress in the region regarding the institution of a welfare state inspired by social-democratic principles of universality and equity (Marshall’s socialism B). Again, it would not be reasonable to dissociate this circumstance from Costa Rica’s successful representativedemocratic performance and from its similarities-proudly proclaimed by its citizens-to First World political regimes. This is not falling into a causal monism but pointing out what appear to be some of the strongest and most characteristic fibers of a social fabric that is admittedly complex. The point becomes clearer when the experiences of Uruguay and Costa Rica are compared to those of the rest of the Latin American countries.

BRAZIL AND A RESTRICTIVE SOCIAL PROTECTION For the sake of brevity, I will focus for a moment on the Brazilian case, not only because of its indisputable continental importance but also because it clearly illustrates some of the questions I wish to highlight. The most important of these questions is that the restrictive social protection patterns typical of most Latin American countries make the concept of the welfare state inapplicable to them-at least in the sense in which I have been using the ~oncept.~ A remarkable economic growth and some significant progress (particularly in the field of education) notwithstandmg, dualism, inequality, poverty, and polarization have been and are relevant features of the Brazilian case. In the 193Os, the authoritarian government of Getulio Vargas inaugurated a social protection system aimed only at urban formal workers and the organized sectors of the middle class, with an evident corporative and clientelistic orientation and very limited redistributive effects.6 There are two elements to be taken into account here. The first is that social rights should have, by definition, a universal character. Secondly, the measures implemented in Brazil were not inscribed in a true process of con-

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structing citizenship, since very few people enjoyed civil rights at that time, while political rights simply did not exist. Successive expansions of the social protection system did not make it lose its selectivity, fragmentation, and heterogeneity. In fact, these shortcomings were a consequence of the kind of populist compromise prompted by the so-called process of industrialization by import substitution as it took place in Brazil. In a highly protected market with high profits in the modern sector of the economy, such social benefits, administered paternalistically, clearly served the purpose of politically controlling almost exclusively the urban workers (at least until the 1970s), leaving the fate of the majority of the rural workers in the hands of local landowners. As a result, these social policies helped to deepen dualism and divisions while being financed by the population as a whole via a distorted system of relative prices. So, until the constitutional reform of 1988, the social policies implemented were never truly focused on fighting poverty and inequality as such but were used, above all, as tools to co-opt the popular sectors. Thus, it is not surprising that in 1986 the World Bank was able to show that the poorest 41 percent of the population received only 18 percent of the total social benefits; or that Brazil today still has one of the highest levels of inequality and polarization in the world. Estimates of several Brazilian experts indicate that, having left behind the times of populism and military dictatorships, the country entered the 1990s with some 100 million poor people. According to Draibe, Guimaraes de Castro, and Azeredo, about a third of its 150 million inhabitants live on or below the poverty line; another third is only slightly above that line; and no more than 50 million people “are incorporated to the benefits of citizenship and the market economy.” To fully appreciate the significance of this subject in terms of my general argument (and, especially, regarding the systematic character I have attributed to the rights of citizenship), that balance sheet must be complemented with the picture drawn in 1995 by the historian Josh Murilho de Carvalho. It can be flatly asserted, he says, that, even in the large Brazilian cities, “today, the civil rights are the less widespread and guaranteed.” He provides the following account: (1) between 5 and 10 percent of the highest-income families constitute the segment of “doctor citizens,” for whom “laws do not exist or, in any case, are softened”; (2) the next 60 percent are the “simple citizens,” to whom the civil and criminal codes “are applied in a partial and uncertain way”; and (3) the remaining 30 percent is composed of those who are tagged, in police jargon, “element citizens,” those who

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“do not know their rights or have them systematically violated by other citizens, the government, or the police.”’ These are descriptions that can be extended, with few changes, to Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Paraguay, and many other Latin American countries. They become even more pertinent when the rampant inequahty, poverty, and polarization of Central America are taken into account. High illiteracy rates, regressive economic policies, elites who do not pay taxes, institutionalized violence at every level, and lack of legal protection create situations having little to do with the premises of democratic discourse. That is why the question with which Guatemalan sociologist Edelberto Torres-Rivas closed his 1991 analysis of the electoral processes in his country, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Honduras remains in full force: “How have millions of impoverished and terrorized Central American peasants voted?” His answer: “They vote but they do not choose. They are just half-citizens of a low intensity political democracy.”

THE CASE O F A R G E N T I N A If Argentina’s social situation has traditionally been better than that of most other countries in the area, for quite a while several features were bringing it closer to the more general Latin American pattern, to which it has now become more and more assimilated. Above all, it constitutes another expression of a rather peculiar phenomenon that has become distinctive of the area: the low or nonexistent positive association that obtains between social protection and representative democracy. I mean that, contrary to what has happened in the developed capitalist nations, social protection grew in Latin America in the partial or total absence of representative democracy; and it tended to decline precisely when representative democracy was strengthening. But even in the Argentine case one can speak of a true development of social rights only in a very limited way. It is true that, during the first two governments of Perbn, there was a very significant redistribution of income. Inequality levels declined markedly at the same time that social spending and benefits for the workers rose-albeit within much narrower margins than in Europe. But here also, except for education and health care, the criteria used were corporative and selective, within the framework of an industrial process of import substitution that

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fostered high rates of employment and brought the country closer to the situation of the postwar salaried societies. In this way, a protection system contradictorily combining universal and particularistic tendencies was created. As RubCn Lo Vuolo and Albert0 Barbeito sum it up: “The peculiar characteristic of this institutional hybrid is that it favored the expansion of the system along a path of ‘imitation of privileges.’ That is, there was no struggle for universal basic rights, but rather ‘status’ differences were being legitimated and those lagging behind sought to ‘hook up’ with the groups getting the highest benefits.”

All this took place within an authoritarian populist context that favored such segmented and clientelistic social integration of workers, but that was far from adopting the republican bases of a representative democracy. That is, it suffered from the deficient and unbalanced construction of a citizenship that was submitted to considerable tutelages and controls. As in Brazil, a social protection system was thus consolidated and continued to grow without its inner logic being modified, in spite of the fact that the groups getting the greatest advantages changed according to different circumstances. This continued until the system was plunged into a crisis in the 1970s, which means that it persisted both during military governments and in the brief interregnums, when an incomplete constitutional order marked by strong limitations on political participation was reestablished. According to statistics, from 1980 onward the average level of social spending settled around 17 percent, barely exceeding half the average of the European Union (32 percent). By contrast, between 1980 and 1994, for example, poverty rates grew threefold. At the same time, comparative analyses made by Barbeito show that per capita spending in education, health care, and social security declined in the period from 1970 to 1994, which has very seriously affected the quality of those services since then. The unemployment rate in urban areas, which was about 6 percent in the second half of the 1980s, reached 14.7 percent in May 2000, and only a very minor sector of the jobless population has access to unemployment insurance (a benefit with no history in the country). Moreover, an estimated two-fifths of the job-holdmg population is currently unregistered, and no more than 28 percent has a formal stable job. That is why I started this commentary pointing out that standards in Argentina are becoming increasingly similar to those prevailing in the rest of Latin America.8 Again, going back to the criteria explained before about unemploy-

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nient, poverty, and polarization, all this led to a notorious growth in social inequality, as witnessed by an ever-more-regressive distribution of income: if in 1991 the richest 10 percent of the population was getting 34.1 percent of the income, and the poorest 30 percent just 8.8 percent, in 1997 those figures changed for the worse, becoming 36.6 and 7.7 percent, respectively. Official data for October 1999 regarding the Buenos Aires metropolitan area show that the richest decile earns twenty-four times more than the poorest one, the worst gap over the last few decades and, it is worth noting, a gap twice as large as that of the 1980s, when the transition to democracy began. (Taking into account the aforementioned tendency of the rich to underestimate income and of the poor to overestimate it, some observers estimate the gap to be at least 50 percent wider now. And this, I repeat, is taking into account only annual incomes and not accumulated assets.) According to World Bank studies, at the end of the 1990s over a third of Argentina’s population was below the poverty line, and 8.6 percent was below mere subsistence levels. Translated into numbers of people affected, these figures are the most striking in the country’s modern history: 13.4 and 3.2 million respectively (see note 8, below). As other data indicate, there are today, for instance, almost two million elderly people who do not get support of any kind. This evidence points to another phenomenon that deserves consideration: the rapid impoverishment of Argentina’s middle class, which in other times was the largest and most prosperous in the region. Official data confirm this: at the beginning of the 1980s, these so-called new poor accounted for 3.2 percent of the population ofthe Buenos Aires metropolitan area; fifteen years later, in May 1996, the figure had jumped already to 26.7 percent. As can be expected in view of this scenario, in Argentina not only did inequality and poverty increase, but social polarization became much more intense. For example, comparing the 1976 and 1996 situations of the upper and lower quintiles of the income scale shows that the polarization rate simply doubled, going from 6.3 to 12.1. Moreover, according to World Bank estimates, the gap has continued to widen, and now the richest 20 percent gets an income 14.7 times higher than that of the poorest 20 percent, a ratio close to the Latin American average.

NOTES 1. A quintile here means 20 percent of the population. Therefore, to divide income distribution by quintiles is to differentiate 20-percent segments and determine what part of total income accrues to each one of them.

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2. This estimate is based on the conventional definitions of poverty in terms of subsistence minimums. These definitions, however, underestimate the magnitude of the phenomenon, not only due to the arbitrariness with which the minimums are calculated (taking into account biological factors much more than cultural ones) but because, as I say in the text, those situated above the alleged “poverty line” are excluded from such tallies in spite of the precariousness and vulnerability of their position. O f course, if the reasonable comparative criterion applied in Europe to conceptualize poverty (as having an income equivalent to half or less the national average per capita income) were applied in Latin America, the figures would certainly be much more dramatic. 3. The United States is still an exception among developed countries. According to reports from the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, the rate there is 10.57. 4. O n these subjects, the reader may see the work of Fernando Filgueira I mention in the references. 5. I t is true that, to avoid sterile semantic discussions, one can also talk here of a welfare state, provided one adds, as many authors do, that it is a special variety, distinct from the European, due to its very low level of coverage and its very high degrees of corporatism, segmentation, and inequality. As always, in cases like these the problem is to establish when a rose ceases to be a rose. 6. Unlike what happened with Peronism, the improvements urban workers experienced under Getulio Vargas were mainly due not to income redntribution but to geographical mobility: by moving from the countryside to the city they changed in a positive way their standards of living, although these new immigrants were not especially prosperous. 7. A 1993 census of the prison population in Brazil showed that 95 percent of the inmates had been living under extreme poverty conditions before their confinement. As Carlos Vilas sums up: “According to this study, the ‘typical inmate’ in Brazil is male, black, illiterate or semi-illiterate and has no means to pay for a lawyer; the most frequent crime is robbery or theft.” Unfortunately, this is no great surprise. 8. By mid-2000, of an urban labor force of 14 million people, more than 4 million have employment problems and are seekmg a job; about 2 d i o n are unemployed; and another 2.1 million are underemployed in precarious and occasional jobs or working just a few hours per day (Clark, 25 June 2000). At the time of revising this translation (March 2003) the open unemployment rate has climbed to more than 23 percent, while 44.2 percent (3.7 million workers) of the labor force is unregistered and 6.4 million workers lack any kmd of social protection (Clarin, 5 March 2003). As a result, more than 21 million Argentines (57 percent of the population) live today under the poverty line. Moreover, Argentina produces enough foodstuffs to nourish 300 million persons, but 10 million of her inhabitants are currently starving.

19 A N U N H A P P Y BALANCE

O F CROOKS A N D C R A N K S

I

t follows from all the preceding evidence that the boom of neoliberalism and the globalization strategies that have so far prevailed in the world have led everywhere to a significant increase of inequality. The ideologists of the “new right,” meanwhile, proclaim that notions such as economic equality are definitely out of fashion; accuse of “sociologsm” those who dare wonder about the social causes of the great upsurge of margnality and exclusion; and assert that, ultimately, the poor are to blame for their own predicament.’ As we have also seen, the consequences of implementing the paradigms of neoliberalism and globalization have been particularly devastating in Latin America, where they spread in places that had not enjoyed the previous advantage of Marshall’s “capitalism softened by an injection of socialism.” That is to say, they spread in places where (with just a few exceptions) neither a political culture of egalitarian inclination nor a corresponding civic conscience had ever existed. Economically, this gave great impulse to an untamed individualism associated with rent-seeking practices, widespread corruption, and extensive tax evasion. It is quite revealing, for instance, that in most Latin American countries private investment rates as compared to the GDP are lower than the average in developed nations, while the levels of income concentration are clearly higher. In other words, the local dominant classes accumulate an enormous wealth but their productive investments remain remarkably low. 105

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What is the explanation for this lack of productive investment? One of the reasons is the dominant classes’ preference for financial speculation and sending huge amounts of funds abroad, which they feel is safer (providing good evidence of the quality of their own domination). Another reason is their high propensity to consume. Thus, according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean data, reproduced in 1997 by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, in the early 1990s the average consumption by the upper income sectors in Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela accounted for over 85 percent of what they earned from their properties and companies, that is, up to 40 percent of the national income of their respective countries. But the problem goes far beyond economic issues. It so happens that social values and norms are strengthened by their use and not merely by words. Therefore, for citizens to be interested in equality and justice, fair and egalitarian institutions and practices must obtain. When this does not occur, distrust and a lack of solidarity pervade all levels of society. If, comparatively, this has been one of the great historical deficits in Latin America, the events of the last twenty years have raised it to a maximum. The British expert in public policies Julian Le Grand accurately says that, explicitly or not, the design of any social policy always starts from certain assumptions about human motivations and behavior. He differentiates schematically three types of inclination that can be discerned among the members of today’s societies: the philanthropic or altruistic inclinations of the gentlemen; the egoistic and selfish ones of the crooks; and the passive ones of the subordinates. In these terms, when social democrats like Marshall promoted the welfare state, they assumed, on the one hand, that both public officials and taxpayers would act as fairly generous gentlemen and, on the other, that the users of social services would basically behave as subordinates, that is, that they would be satisfied with getting a universal pattern of relatively elementary services, regardless of their own social class origins. If, in places such as Britain, things were more or less like this during the first few decades after the war, Le Grand says, they later changed drastically.2 He elaborates: “it is barely just a caricature to describe such change as the transition from policies aimed at being financed and managed by gentlemen and put to good use by subordinates to policies aimed at being financed, managed and used by crooks.” To go back to Schumpeter, the risk of a widespread political presence of crooks and cranks, or of other men

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“who are neither” but “will be driven into the ways of both,” would have materialized. If I may be allowed to resort to broad strokes too, what I am trying to say is that, in general terms, in Latin America: (1) with excessive frequency, crooks prevailed among public officials and taxpayers; (2) most of the beneficiaries of the middle and upper strata also tended to be crooks, while all the rest invariably played the role of subordinates; and (3) this scenario has not been modified but rather considerably aggravated since the 1980s, with less and less credible politicians invoking social justice only during their electoral campaigns. In fact, given their magnitude and characteristics, inequality, poverty, and polarization are nowadays questions that cannot be solved as the indirect result of policies adopted with other goals in mind (such as pleasing international agencies, balancing the budget, attracting capital of any kind, increasing exports, or even inducing GDP growth). Furthermore, more than a few among those advocating the opposite position act decidedly as crooks, and I would like to illustrate this with some examples.

T H E GRASSHOPPER AND T H E ANT More than a few Latin American economists were enthused by the idea of the so-called trickle-down efect. The simplicity of the idea is captivating: it asserts that, sooner or later, a process of economic growth benefits the lower sectors of society, as more employment, income, and possibilities for consumption leak through. I am not concerned here with the plausibility of this idea in itself but rather with the way it has been used among us. In its literal translation the effect sounded too humble to politicians eager to attract the support of the have-nots in so beaten an area as Latin America. The vernacular propagandists of neoliberalism entered the scene and did not hesitate in resorting to a trick, simply modifying the effect’s name to make it more enticing: instead of trickle-down they started speakmg of spillover (a term unashamedly borrowed from the literature on technological diff~sion).~ The state must be downsized, the economy become wide open, the markets deregulated, the fiscal deficit eliminated, and the remaining problems would be solved by themselves thanks to a sustained growth of the GDP, which would spill its goodies over onto society, making everybody happy. At a rhetorical level, it

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was an effective recourse; as far as concrete results were concerned, we saw what happened. This spillover ideology has also fed a celebrated commonplace of a similar lund: “First, we need to grow, and only then to distribute.” It seems an elementary logical assertion, and it even evokes the old fable of the grasshopper and the ant. But things change when one attempts to transfer this conventional wisdom from the individual to the social level. First of all, in this case we are not talking about persons who just enter the labor market and start working but of places where there is huge wealth concentrated in a few hands, wealth that could be immediately distributed. Secondly, those insisting on transferring that sequence (first, grow/save; then, distribute/ spend) to the national level are unfair to their audience in not explaining that every model of growth necessarily carries with it certain possible patterns of income distribution and not others. That is why in Latin America grasshoppers have always been more opulent than ants, malung moralists such as Lafontaine or Samaniego posthumously uneasy. The problem now is not only that such strategies are still in force, but also that things have reached a point at which the gamut of possible alternatives has narrowed dangerously. The steady dismantling of legal protection for workers under the pretexts of labor flexibilization and higher competitiveness provides good evidence of the first assertion. As for the narrowing of alternatives, I wlll offer a general reflection that also suggests why imitations are always risky.

AMBIGUOUS SOLUTIONS The historical experience in developed countries indicates that major inequities caused by capitalism are best addressed as more universal countervailing systems of social protection are implemented. There are several reasons for this. Nondiscrimination between sectors favors equality, in spite of the fact that, in the short-term, compensatory policies for those left behind may be required (which is often referred to as “positive discrimination”). At the same time, selective programs may affect the neutrality of the state by leaving in its hands a differentiated allotment of resources and fostering in this way its propensity to engage in patemahtic and clientelistic practices that are not exactly useful in terms of expanding equality. Due to their particularism, in practice, such programs often end up stigmatizing their beneficiaries and locking them in a vicious circle that speciahsts call “the poverty

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trap.” Besides, as Le Grand would say, in a world of crooks it is better to limit the discretionality of decisions as much as possible--another argument in favor of granting citizens universal services. However, in a region like Latin America, all this becomes less clear. Firstly, the present shrinkage of the public sector makes the volume of resources available for social polices too limited to allow a universal model to prevent the consumption gap from growing. (Remember that one logical basis for universal allocations is that they are in fact neutral in the case of the well-to-do sectors of society, since these sectors more than compensate for the allocations received with the taxes they pay. This rationale is obviously jeopardized when the fiscal system is very regressive and tax evasion very high). Even worse, the gap would probably widen with such ample coverage, since the poor would get fewer resources than they need, while the rich would keep resorting to private services. In other words, attempts at applying egalitarian measures in very uneven societies almost invariably lead to deeper inequality, because, obviously, the possibilities of taking advantage of those measures are also unequally distributed. If institutional deficiencies and the ubiquity of crooks are added, it is easy to understand the reservations universal programs tend to generate here, as it is far from clear that they will really help those needing them the most. Unfortunately, under the present circumstances, there seem to be no optimal solutions. As they have been applied in recent years, policies aimed at focalizing and decentralizing services face, on the one hand, the serious limitations inherent to selective models and, on the other, a failure to overcome the specific chstortions that I have just mentioned. Besides (and this is not a minor point), they almost inevitably reaffirm the segmentation between full citizens and the rest of society. It should be added that, fairly often, those programs are less oriented toward increasing efficiency and participation than toward simply preventing dangerous outbursts, keeping marginal sectors at bay at the lowest possible cost. This, however, must not be taken as a blanket criticism of the efforts being camed out in different Latin American countries to palliate some of the worse effects of the neoliberalism still in vogue. But even the best programs end up being little more than partial remedies in light of the inequities constantly resulting from the social regimes of accumulation that have been established and that so markedly restrict the field of possible reforms. From this point of view, there are no credible signs that the general situation will change substantially in the corning years if deep changes are not enforced. Even in those places where further social deterioration could be prevented,

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there would be little reason for satisfaction. Things are bad enough as they are to make it wholly unacceptable that a more or less immedate transformation is not an absolute priority and that all efforts are not devoted to this goal. Furthermore, the statistical evidence available is conclusive: to reduce poverty, lowering the current levels of inequality is by far a better and more immediate solution than economic growth alone. Needless to say, to apply both remedies together would be the optimal alternative.

NOTES 1 . For arguments like these (whose only novelty is that now they are assigned some respectability), see, for instance, Mead (1992). It should come as no surprise that those who think this way have also become the champions of “zero tolerance” and defend the idea that states must not intervene at all in the economy, but should be implacable repressors of those who break the law. 2. As I have indicated in chapter 9, authors such as Galbraith and Marshall himself were clearly aware of these changes while they were taking place. 3. It would be interesting to make a list of the ideologcal semantic distortions that pervade the neoliberal discourse in Latin America. Thus,fical haven has been intentionally mistranslated asfitcal heaven, as a voluminous literature in Spanish testifies. The message is obvious: tax evaders are not pirates but just people escaping from hell.

20 A N IDEA A N D ITS C O N C R E T E M A N I FE S T A T I 0 N S

D E M O C R A T I C LIBERALISM

I

started with a distinction between the idea of democracy as collective self-government and its concrete historical manifestations. Let us return to this question to point to a peculiarity. Until the nineteenth century, several of the main theoreticians and advocates of representative government (what I have been calling here the government of the politicians) openly denied any relation of this system to the idea of democracy. Not only was it something different, it was also something better. This comes out clearly in the Philadelphia debates about the U.S. Constitution and in the famous commentaries Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison wrote shortly afterward to support it.’ This constitution (in which the Latin American ones found such strong inspiration) is concerned with property rights at least as much as it is with political freedoms, and it is evident that it fears “the abuses of freedom” more than “the abuses of power.” That is why its advocates criticized so fiercely in the Convention “the turbulence and follies of democracy,” found “incompatible with personal security or the rights of property” and leading to regimes that “have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.” In contrast to this, Madison wrote in the famous chapter 10 of T h e Federalist, a representative government (which he called a “republic”), in the hands of “wise, patriotic and fair” citizens, could ensure that “the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will 111

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be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves, convened for the purpose.” It may be argued, however, that all these authors subscribed to John Locke’s well-known principle, according to which men who, by their very nature, are free, equal, and independent, cannot be deprived of that condition and placed under the political power of someone else “without their own consent.’’ But this did not make Locke a democrat. Like so many others who followed in his footsteps, the English philosopher took for granted that the mass of the population gave their consent merely by being members of civil society, at the same time that he considered politically relevant only those male citizens owning sizeable assets. These men chose their representatives from among their peers, thus remaining linked to them by close bonds of mutual convenience. This is to say that, in practice, when the “decent people” participated in politics, they did so basically to ensure the defense of their own interests. And that is the point. There is nothing intrinsically democratic in participation in itself: everything depends on who participates and under what conditions. It is true that, from the nineteenth century on, political participation was extended in most of the prosperous Western countries. But if the people struggling for a wider participation increasingly did so in the name of democracy, the main concerns of those who gradually granted them voting rights were mostly the maintenance and viability of institutions already in force and the protection of individual interests as defined by the logic of a rising capitalism. Hence the well-known paradox, aptly summed up by French political scientist Bernard Manin: “contemporary democratic governments have evolved from a political system conceived by its founders in opposition to democracy.” This paradox has had, and continues to have significant consequences. To be more precise, liberalism (which is the issue at stake) was democratized via the incorporation of universal suffrage-its almost only democratic element-while keeping most of the institutional frameworks that were typical of it. That is to say that, when people refer today to “liberal democracies,” a deliberate rhetorical distortion occurs that puts the adjective in the place of the noun. We are actually dealing with “democratic liberalisms,” within which there are scarce concrete expressions of the idea of a self governed community, while this idea operates as their main ideological attraction. To put it in different terms, today’s most successful democracies were not ini-

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tially the consummation of the idea of democracy, but embraced it much later and in a very partial way. This brings us back to the question of concrete historical manifestations, that is, of the nations that today claim to be democracies. It is worth returning here to Schumpeter for a moment.

“DEMOCRACY IS WHAT IT IS” Once again, it is convenient to highlight the particular context in which the Austrian economist wrote his book of 1942. Simply put, it was that of the most serious global crisis capitalism had gone through so far. That is why two of the great theses of his work cannot be dissociated. One thesis states that, in spite of everything, it was very likely that capitalism would witness another fifty-year period of prosperity similar to the one that ended in 1928. The forecast proved true, although at that time very few shared it. The second thesis is the one we have already examined. It puts forward a realistic readmg of democracy not as it had been dreamed by philosophers but as it really existed in certain places, that is, as a method proper of a system of institutional equilibrium that sets up the government of the politicians and from time to time submits its actions to the verdict of the ballot boxes. “Ifwhat we want is not to philosophize but to understand,” Schumpeter said bluntly, “we have to admit that democracies are such as they must be.” Under the terms I have been using, the idea of the government of the people would be one thing, and its concrete historical manifestations quite another. In the end, only concrete historical manifestations of democracy matter, despite their being, in fact, democratic liberalisms in which those actually ruling are the politicians. In this case, it seems that an is manages to become an ought to be. As we have also seen, Marshall’s position was quite different since his analysis of citizenship rights was more directly inspired by the idea of democracy as collective self-government. The Marshall of socialism B questioned “a social order based on the premise that free competition and individual enterprise are the highest goods” and denounced consumer society because it lacks “a concept of legitimacy grounded in a principle of social justice.” The idea of democracy dominates these references and Marshall’s

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criticisms of the concrete historical manifestations of that idea assign pride of place to the social and political equality of citizens. I have devoted a good part of my analysis to showing that, in the developed countries, the Schumpeterian assertion that “democracy is what it is” only became plausible because, among other things, the foundations of these societies changed significantly, although the main institutions that liberalism had built in the older democracies were maintained. This was possible thanks both to that postwar bonanza he foresaw and to the diverse incarnations of the welfare state. Treating democracy as a method-which justified the concrete historical manifestations of the government of the politiciansworked in developed countries because the idea of the government of the people was never totally abandoned (and not exclusively at a rhetorical level). T h e irony o f t h i s story is that, infact, Schumpeter’s theory held true only i n places that, directly or indirectly, abided by Marshall’s advice. Furthermore, when over the last two decades the idea of democracy began fading away in the central countries, and almost all government functions became the mere operation of a system, not only did disenchantment spread throughout the population but also antidemocratic movements started to gain momentum. Although their ideology is very confusing, these movements mainly feed on the loss of prestige affecting both traditional parties and the government of the politicians, while they reject liberal democracy, except when elections are deemed an effective way to reach power.2 It is true that this kmd of phenomenon admits at least two interpretations. One is optimistic and emphasizes the democratic traditions that have consolidated by now in most First World countries-traditions that, sooner or later, would doom antidemocratic movements to f a i l ~ r eThe . ~ other interpretation is more skeptical, pointing out that even years of learning the rules of representative government do not seem to be enough to immunize a system against the forces that seek to destroy representative democracy. I do not necessanly question the first reading, and, in fact, I hope it proves right. But it is the second reading that interests me most as I turn again to Latin America.

NOTES 1. The U.S. Constitution was debated and written in Philadelphia in 1787, in closed sessions, then ratified by the different state conventions. The purpose of the commentaries I am referring to was precisely to explain and justify the contents of the constitutional text to ensure ratification. In 1788 Hamilton compiled the commentaries in two vol-

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umes published under the title The Federalist. From the following century onward, this work was to have a remarkable influence on Latin America. In 1840 a Portuguese version was printed and circulated in Brazil and in 1868 its first translation into Spanish was published in Buenos Aires. 2. Sigmficantly, several of these xenophobic and populist movements-which try to capitalize on the disenchantment and insecurity I have mentioned-support the theses of economic neoliberalism but are against free trade. That is, they advocate a neoliberalism enclosed within national borders, with the corresponding dismantling of the systems of social protection and a minimum intervention of the state in the economy. For a good synthesis see Jean-Yves Camus’s report in Le Monde Diplomatiqtre, 4 March 2000. Its title, “The New Fascist Order in Europe,” may be misleading b e c a u s e a s the author himself warns-these phenomena are not simply assimilable to Fascism or to Nazism. 3. The Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek maintains that, in fact, the rise of a populist Right serves to legitimate the liberal democratic hegemony, since it provides a negative common denominator to the established political spectrum. Thus far, the argument looks plausible. Obviously, though, it is an indicator of the weak positive content of social cohesion nowadays.

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21 C O N D I T I O N A L DEMOCRACY

WHAT H U N T I N G T O N D I D N O T SAY

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ritish political scientist John Dunn has remarked that, in the rich countries, the success of representative democracy was the consequence of a fairly peculiar combination of its feasibility and its appeal: what made it feasible (the effective protection it provided to a market economy) was not the same thing that made it appealing to the popular imagination (the idea that the legtimate power of the state is founded on periodical free elections by the citizens). Dunn’s remark seems to me quite correct but incomplete, since a crucial third term is missing. For many years, that compatibility between feasibility and appeal was mediated by a generalized increase in people’s welfare resulting from the ways in which both the market economy and the state were structured. And when the situation changed, the questionings I mentioned in the previous chapter arose. Things happened very differently in our region, and that is why I have placed so much emphasis on what I call the Latin America paradox of our time: trying to consolidate representative democracies in contexts marked by poverty, inequality, and polarization, and where the social regimes of accumulation presently in force foster marginality and exclusion, while state functions contract and prove unable to deal adequately with the dramatic crisis now unfolding. Under these conditions (and it could not be otherwise), the language that prevails is Schumpeter’s, not Marshall’s. Thus, the idea of democracy as the government of the people quickly lost its influence on the public dls117

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course of the advocates of representative democracy. More assertively in the beginning, when military dictatorships fell or were hsplaced, neoliberalism tried to replace that idea in people’s minds with a salvationist emphasis on the only possible economic alternative and its promise of abundant and growing material achievements. But, barring very few and partial exceptions, this has not happened and most of the population has not benefited, while at the same time the shortcomings of the new institutional orders have become increasingly evident. Given this, one could well wonder, in Dunn’s terms, how the feasibility and the appeal of representative democracy are being combined in what thus far has been a relatively stabilized form of domination. (Its meaning and its future, however, are fairly uncertain in Peru, Ecuador, Paraguay, Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and several other places, including Mexico, with its yet rather ambiguous evolution.) There are several possible answers, but there is one I wish to highlight, considering its importance: everything indicates that representative democracy has been feasible only within very narrow limits that politicians must negotiate constantly with big domestic and foreign economic groups, for whom this system-as it stands-appears to be more reliable than many military dictatorships, which proved arbitrary, inconsiderate, and hard to control. One of the main premises of such negotiation is a clear-cut separation between economy and politics, in accordance with neoliberal canons. Governments are obliged, for instance, to give absolute priority to the payment of their enormous foreign and/or domestic debts and to abide by the indications (and conditionalities) of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, regardless of commitments they may have made to voters and even regardless of the latter’s most urgent needs. This means that we are facing not just a representative democracy that has no qualms about identifying itself as the government of the politicians but also politicians who, in general, using the excuse of the requirements of globalization or the fear of capital flight, meekly submit to the conditions imposed by the dominant economic forces. It is not surprising, then, that the representative democracy here portrayed as viable is becoming every day less attractive to larger sectors of the population. Thus, if it is true that most Latin Americans continue to prefer democracy to any other regime (which is easy to understand, considering the cultural climate and the lack of alternatives), scarcely one out of every three of them declares him- or herself satisfied with the way it works.’

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One of the forms this dissatisfaction takes is the great distance separating politicians from voters, with the resulting damage to the relation of representation. It is worth bearing in mind that Schumpeter launched his theory when the radio broadcasting era had already started but not yet that of television, with all the latter means in terms of the personalization of politics, especially within contexts of weak parties imbued with little ideology. That personalization tends to create an image of proximity that enhances disenchantment when promises are not kept and, furthermore, parties lack the structures and ideologies capable of reasonably maintaining popular expectations. It would be enough to take the word of certain influential theoreticians of the market economy and democratic liberalism to recognize the risks these kinds situations pose for governability. I am thinkmg of the warnings issued by Samuel P. Huntington and others-which I summarized in previous pages-about the dangers an excessive participation of the people in politics allegedly entails. With much more reason we could now pose the inverse problem (about which they say nothing): I refer to the danger of voters’ increasing loss of confidence in a regime that claims to be representative but in which elections have a steadily declining influence, due to the excessive participation of major foreign and local capitalists and their lobbies in public decisions. Moreover, this notonously excessive political intervention does not seem to be leading to a sustainable and inclusive development, and it looks remarkably like a festival of crooks fed by unprecedented levels of corruption, tax evasion, and legal manipulation. That is why I have spent some time on one of the important lessons that may be drawn from the contemporary history of the advanced capitalist countries: almost nowhere did the bourgeoisie by itself play a central and positive role in the consolidation of liberal democracy. In other words, without pressure and control from below, that process would not have followed the paths it &d, and neither the state nor the citizenship would have been constructed in the way they have.’ Hence, the Latin American paradox I have already pointed out should be complemented by another. It could be enunciated as follows: to strengthen representative government, politicians do not seriously seek to mobilize the popular sectors, but rather try to gain the support ofthe very domestic andforeign bourgeoisies that, in the past, thrived under the military dictatorships and, today, profit3om privatizations andfinancial deals. The consequence is that we are witnessing an

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enormous concentration not only of income and wealth but also of power and of the ideas supposedly capable of fostering economic growth and defining the nature of democracy itself. There are two origmalities here: one is the pretension to consolidate a representative democracy while most people’s standard of living is worsening; and the other, to do so while the most powerful bourgeois sectors are clearly hegemonizing the process. TEACHINGS FROM PHYSICS

All this makes it advisable to rethink a formula that, in Latin America, has

become one of the preferred commonplaces of the politicians: “Democracy flaws should only be corrected with more democracy.” The assertion is unquestionable when it is used in opposition to past, present, and future authoritarian messianisms or redemptionisms of any kind. For all their great limitations and injustices, the current representative democracies have brought about public freedoms that cannot be given up and that must be upheld and extended. However, with increasing frequency, there is a tendency to use the abovementioned formula in the same way that “there are no alternatives” was used by Margaret Thatcher in the economic field (or to apply the Schumpeterian assertion that “democracy is what it is” to a different context). This ends up meaning that democracy should be corrected with more of the same-something that, in light of what has been argued so far, is not at all evident. I believe that the following phrasing would be more plausible: democracy should only be corrected by experimenting with new forms of democracy more adequate to the particular circumstances in which we have to live. I will resort again to a teaching from physics that Schumpeter liked to recall: “ I f a physicist observes that the same mechanism works dgerently at dgerent times and in diflerent places, he concludes that itsfunctioning depends upon conditions extraneous to it. W e cannot but arrive at the same conclusion (regarding the democratic system). ” This can obviously lead to two different conclusions: to attain similar results, conditions must be changed or the mechanism must be changed. The theoreticians of modernization upheld the first conclusion, asserting that liberal democracy could not work in developing countries (they called

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them “underdeveloped”) if their economies and societies were not deeply transformed first. One of the nefarious consequences of this position was that it served to justify dictatorships of every kind that learn to disguise their despotism in modernizing clothes (and anticommunist, when appropriate). In more recent times, and in an understandable reaction, several authors (among whom I have already mentioned Weffort) reversed the sequence, stating with similar vigor that democracy had to be a precondition for modernization. Nevertheless, when the point of view of the society as a whole is adopted, the evidence that can be offered, so far, to uphold this position is, as we have seen, less than satisfactory. The terms under which democratic viability is being negotiated with the large factors of power, make of democracy all too frequently a real brake for modernization (or, if one prefers, they cause it to promote a modernization that undermines national integration and victimizes large segments of the population). That is why I believe that the physicists’ dilemma adopted by Schumpeter does not allow for half measures: either the conditions or the mechanism must be modij?ed. The only nonauthoritarian option arising from the historical reality of our countries is clearly the second one. That is, we urgently need to venture into what Brazilian political scientist Roberto Mangabeira Unger has called “democratic experimentalism.” Quite apart from the intrinsic merits of his proposals, what I consider most valuable is the spirit that animates them-that of “forging a rebel way of national development and redoing the institutional form of market and democracy.” As he himself states, anything less is merely a fetishism of structures and institutions that have been imported. However, as should be obvious, modifying the mechanism immediately entails dealing with the conditions, precisely because democracy has never been and cannot be a mere procedure. This leads us back to the question of family resemblances.

NOTES 1. Polls conducted by Latinbarbmetro throughout Latin America between January and March 2000, for instance, indicate that 60 percent of those surveyed supported democracy but only 37 percent approved the way its institutions work (Cladn, 20 May 2000). Even gwen the vagueness of the term devrtocracy, the majority that supports it is not overwhelming and decreases visibly when the question becomes more concrete. 2. Over four centuries ago Machiavelli wondered whether a republic should put the protection of freedom in the hands of the powerful or of the people. He opted for the people, because it is always better “to leave something in the hands of those who have the least desire to usurp it.”

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22 DECEIVING RESEMBLANCES

T H E BALD M A N ’ S S O P H I S M

A

t the beginning of our exploration I resorted to Wittgenstein, who made famous not only concepts with a family resemblance structure but also the idea that habitually a word has no other meaning than that arising from its use. In that sense, there is no doubt the term democracy is today almost exclusively used in Latin America to designate the government of the politicians. That would appear to be its major resemblance to what happens in the cases considered paradigmatic. But this resemblance is deceiving in two ways. ( I will deal with the second of these ways in the following section). First, in Latin America-in most places and for most people-civil and social rights accompany the political rights of citizens in a very incomplete way, which, in turn, affects the political rights themselves. It is not by chance that fraud (before, during, or after the elections) is today a recurrent topic in many places, although it is only one of the manifestations of a broader problem: on the one side, the scarce or nonexistent autonomy of vast sections of voters and, on the other, an incomplete and often distorted development of the republican rule of law. This bears witness to the weakness of the process of institutionalization of the representative government, which is what is detected by observers who use expressions such as “low intensity democracies” (lucidly introduced by Edelberto Torres Rivas and Guillermo O’Donnell) when they see the distance separating these regimes from First World democratic liberalisms. Because, barring a few relative exceptions, Latin America was far from 123

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having deeply rooted liberalisms that would later become democratic. And the resulting “liberal shortcomings” have been aggravated by inequalities and exclusions that today visibly and dangerously limit the number offull citizens. At the same time, this prevented the extension of that “compensatory bonanza” I mentioned in the case of Germany. That is to say that, in practice, the criterion of “inclusive citizenship”-which such a prestigious analyst of the paradigmatic cases as Dahl (1999) requires “for a government of a state to be democratic”-is not (or is badly) abided by. According to that criterion, no adult who resides permanently in the country and is subject to its laws should be denied the rights enjoyed by others-which encompass all the rights and opportunities that might be needed for the effective functioning of the political institutions of a large-scale democracy. This is a proposition of Marshallian resonance that immediately evokes the very idea that Latin American elites today choose to ignore: that of democracy as the government of the people. There is here something of the “bald man’s sophism” dealt with centuries ago by Diogenes Laertius. According to his argumentation it is impossible to determine when exactly a person becomes bald. Baldness does not happen just because a person loses one, two, or three hairs. Following the logic of this reasoning, says Diogenes, a person would not be bald as long as he had a single hair on his head. And, nonetheless, at a given (and admittedly imprecise) moment, people start talking about his baldness. Well then, how many “noncitizens” or “half citizens” (both in a legal position to qualitjr as “full citizens”) must there be within a representative democracy before we can say that it has become bald, that is, that it has ceased to be a representative democracy? The example helps to better explain why an answer to such a question depends on politics and not on epistemology. As a matter of fact, the real problem is to know what degree of total or partial exclusion a society is ready to tolerate. And that depends as much on its traditions and political culture as on the characteristics of the actors who form it and the power relations that obtain among them at a given moment. Referring to industrial countries, a sociologst I have already quoted, RalfDahrendorf(1994), writes: “ifwe allow say 5 per cent [ofthe population] to be denied access to our civic community, we should not be surprised if doubts about the validity of our values spread throughout the social fabric.” What then should be said about countries in Latin America where that percentage isjive, ten, orjiieen times larger?

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Coincidently, Dominique Schnapper, a French sociologist, says that “in rich democratic societies the processes of social exclusion constitute a scandal,” since “they question the very values on which the social order and the idea ofjustice presiding over its organization are founded.” Why should it be less scandalous in “poor democratic societies”? I repeat: in this matter, explicitly or implicitly, to draw a line between what is considered acceptable and not acceptable is always one of the main objects of political struggle. That is why in previous pages I explained that both the state and the citizenship are constructions, and I referred to the role that-for good or badintellectuals have always played in creating these constructions. That is also why I criticized the passivity of those Latin American thinkers who, over these years, have decided to put aside reflections i la Dahrendorfand chosen not to wonder whether democracy in this region may have been born bald or is prematurely becoming so. It is likely (as one would hope) that this passivity will start changing in view of the mounting seriousness of the situation.

THE APPARENT AND THE REAL The first reason for the deceptiveness of Latin American democracies’ inmediate family resemblance to the paradigmatic cases (I refer to a common acceptance of democracy as the government of the politicians) concerns its more apparent than real character. The second reason has to do with the way it conceals a much deeper resemblance. Latin American democratic regimes are clear heirs of the vision of representative government consecrated by the U. S. Constitution, which sought in a deliberate way to immunize the economyfrom the threat ofpolitical changes. This means that, left to itself, the mechanism Schumpeter refers to is part of a gear system that works very efficiently to perpetuate (and not to substantially modify) the established order. As a consequence of a large-scale war and/or of a serious economic crisis, it is certainly possible that this order might be destabilized, the field of action of the government significantly increased, and transforming forces able to gain ground: that is what occurred in the industrial countries during the postwar Thirty Glorious Years. Otherwise, not only the pressure-group tactics of the large interest groups but also the institutional divisions and counterbalances that shelter the economy strongly reduce the margins within which political actors can maneuver.

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(Almost everywhere, the resistance to change typical of the tax systems provides a good example of what I am saying, regardless of the party in power.) This means that, when concentrated and exclusionary social regimes of accumulation take root, as it generally happens today in Latin America, representative democracy-understood just as a mechanism-naturally tends to reproduce such regimes, regardless of the good or bad intentions of those who are elected. The validity of the physics teaching I mentioned before may thus be fully understood, with an important addition: in this case, the mechanism itself contributes to maintaining the conditions that make it work in a different way than in other places. That is the reason for the usually meager results of the republican reforms that intend to improve the functioning of the institutions: on the one hand, they quickly run into their own limits; on the other, they do not act on the main question. To continue with the metaphor, the deep family resemblance I am referring to is responsible here for the growing feebleness of the ostensible family resemblances that obtain in relation to the paradigmatic cases of consolidated capitalistic democracies. Actually, a curious inversion of the terms has occurred-one that is worth noting and that I will consider now.

BLACK’S DILEMMA As I have pointed out, the existence of an exact correspondence between an idea and its concrete historical manifestations is impossible, in the same way that there is never an exact correspondence between a scientific theory and its empiric interpretation. In the 1930s the philosopher Max Black put forward a famous dilemma. Are the contours of an orange or a tennis ball imperfect copies of an ideal shape known by pure geometry, or is the opposite true? Does the geometry of spheres provide a simplified and imperfect version of the space relations proper to a certain kind of physical object, to which category the orange and the tennis ball belong? In other words, who should be blamed for the lack of correspondence-the world or the theory? Should the concrete historical manifestations or the idea be blamed? In their analyses of democracy, Schumpeter and his followers have no doubts: the one to blame is the idea. According to them, the latter proved to be less rich, less realistic, and less efficient than the concrete historical manifestations of liberal democracy in the developed capitalist countries. Marshall and many other critics of such concrete manifestations worked

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with the inverse assumption, striving to correct the deviations of a practice that in class societies has constantly forsaken any vision of democracy as collective self-government. The problem is that, in Latin America, oranges and tennis balls often adopt shapes very different from those they assume in the First World, in spite of trying to be like them, and often precisely because of this. Moreover, there are even good reasons to suspect that some of the Latin American varieties do not belong (or belong less each day) to the same category of objects as those of the First World. Thus, in the last two decades, taking pride of place in Latin America have been economic and political conceptions that are blatantly transposed. At an economic level, phenomena Characteristic of the region--such as a weak and inarticulate industrialization, structural heterogeneity, or a low capacity for innovation-required imaginative solutions, strictly adapted to the peculiarities of each place. Instead, neoliberalism stepped in with its blind belief in the neoclassical model, which prescribes a single and universal recipe and demands that an imperfect world adapt to it, whatever the cost. Where the real world should have taken priority, a dogmatic choice in favor of theory was made. At the political level, though, Schumpeter was used in order to prevent discussions of the idea of democracy-which is exactly what was urgently needed. For Latin Americans who have historically seen their autonomy confiscated by the left or the right are legion. It should be sufficient to mention vernacular oligarchic regimes, dictatorships, authoritarian populisms, Leninist movements, and the like. This is the heavy heteronomous tradition that had to be transformed and from which the government of the politicians and a mutilated citizenship are now not too distant. That is why, in terms of Black’s dilemma, in Latin America today it is necessary to appeal to the idea of democracy as collective self-government to correct the alarming imperfection of those calling themselves its concrete manifestations. This is not tantamount to embarking on a utopian voluntarism. Strictly speaking, utopian voluntarists are the advocates ofthe prevailing order who believe it can be managed in such a way that it will resemble more and more the paradigmatic cases. Contrary to what has been done, the region should really try to emulate the First World experience, giving much more priority to Marshall’s than to Schumpeter’s discourse. It is indispensable to recover that lost vision of democracy as the government of the people, both to protect it from the threats of populism and

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to foster an active public debate about the scope and the limits of the government of the politicians. Please note: I am not saying that recovering that idea means to get rid of the government of the politicians but rather to restrain it, to make it accountable, and to endow it, in fact, with much more substantial legitimacy than it has at present. As I will indicate in the next chapter, the task is precisely to combine and balance both visions; otherwise, the government of the politicians will continue to eclipse almost completely the government of the people. To accomplish this it is necessary to put at the top of the public agenda the guarantee and the generalization of the civil, political, and social rights of all citizens, without which there are neither autonomous subjects nor contracts or social pacts that may be deemed valid. Much less, without such rights, is there a representative democracy firmly grounded and truly deserving of its name.

NOTE 1. This sophism belongs to the same genre as the miter or “sophism of the heap,” which could serve us as well for this short exercise in analogical argumentation. O n e of the best-known sophisms in this genre is attributed to Eubulides: a heap of sand keeps being a heap of sand if a grain is taken away; therefore, if grains were to be taken away one at a time, the last remaining grain should still be considered a heap of sand. This conclusion is obviously false. The paradox stems from the fact that we are facing what philosophers call a “vague predicate,” whose limits are uncertain and hard to determine. But it is clear that at a gwen moment the heap of sand ceases to exist.

23 EPILOGUE

S

ays Roberto Mangabeira Unger: “When wars are scarce and economic collapses become manageable, all of us contemporaries have to learn to change without ruining ourselves. The alternative to catastrophe as a condition for change is the reform ofideas and ofinstitutions.” This is the alternative about which I have been talking (although I doubt that our economic collapses are today always manageable). The road of mere dependent imitation of the experience (or the preaching) of First World countries has never been useful for Latin America: neither when it adopted, in the instance of the central countries, the Ricardian theorem of comparative advantages, nor when it submitted to the logic of an alleged “vicious circle of poverty,” nor when it was industrialized by the hand of the transnational corporations, nor now, when it adheres to the “Washington consensus” and to a seemingly realistic conception of democracy as the government of the politicians. Moreover, a government of the politicians that keeps abiding by the dicta of that “consensus” is doomed to lose the reduced bases of substantial legitimacy it still has and to face increasingly serious problems of govemability.’ There is not, nor can there be, a general recipe for the reform of ideas and of institutions-much less when our point of reference is Latin America as a whole. The nature and historical dynamics of the countries of the region are too different, and their national styles of making politics too diverse, t o advance universal models of change. Each time this was done, the consequences were indeed disgraceful. At most, what can be attempted at this level is the formulation of sensitizing criticisms, which may suggest where to look without being able to predict 129

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what will be seen.2 For better or worse, this has been my main goal in the previous pages. I believe that they make clear enough why the idea that there can be an effective (and advantageous) division between economy and politics must be abandoned. Today, this idea serves those who are economically powerful, allowing them to subordinate politics to their interests. Abandoning the idea implies revising cultural assumptions as widespread as the one that refers to the “intervention” of the state in the economy, falsely taking for granted that there is such thing as a capitalist economy that precedes and is independent of the state. To use the same terms, the state always “intervenes” in the economy: the discussion should focus on the kind of intervention the community finds desirable. Those seeking to avoid such a discussion resort to two kinds of conflicting arguments. O n e raises the ghost of an almighty state that would choke private initiative, as if extremism were the only option that could be opposed to what exists. The other invokes a ghost more recently produced, that of globalization, to force us to accept that the state cannot intervene in spite of its willingness to do so, and hence there are no alternatives. These are very fragile rhetorical concoctions that, up to now, have had rather surprising results, and they must be overcome if the debate is to progress. Social states such as those of the Scandinavian countries have not prevented, nor do they prevent, the development of capitalism. And globalization-falsely conceived as the monolithic and seamless power of the large transnational economic and financial groups and their organizations-only paralyzes the political actions of those who adhere in practice to the strategies of some of those groups and prefer to consider the battle lost before waging it. In fact, fi there is a lesson to be drawn from our story, it is that, inexorably and in contradiction to what the neoliberal separation between economy and politics maintains, the present and future oj work and the workers constitutes an essential part Ofany sen’ous debate about democracy in Latin America, because on them hinges the possibility that democracy might be sustained, as it should, by a majority ojfull citizens. That is why, under the present circumstances, there is no subject deserving greater priority than this for those who believe in democracy. And it cannot be left to economic or labor relations experts, with the excuse of depoliticizing it, simply because this is today the most political of all subj ects.3 Besides, those experts are as conditioned by their idiosyncrasy as any-

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one else, and not only do they suffer pressures from the dominant groups but they often adopt fairly peculiar attitudes when they hold positions of power. Their credentials for holding such positions are not votes but their assumed knowledge, and, because of that, they cling stubbornly to it, particularly when they count on the non-neutral support of the international bureaucracies and the “there are no alternatives” ideology. Therefore, an excessive protagonism of the experts always entails two very serious dangers to democracy: dogmatism and authoritarianism. In any case, the task of the experts should be to supply the public debate with data and probable scenarios; while a subject of such vital importance as the form that government will take should be decided and committed to by the community as a whole, in spite of all the limitations that may afflict it. It verges on the absurd that current Latin American economic discussions turn far more on monetary and financial issues than on the conditions an economy of production requires to create jobs and expand domestic markets. Now it is easier to understand why democracy has conveniently been reduced in Latin America to a procedure, and the conditions Schumpeter set for it to work successfully are left out of the discussion.

To change that state of affairs, the public agenda needs to incorporate urgently, and with clarity, items that can mobilize the people and their multiple organizations around subjects that-contrary to what Schumpeter himself believed-are not at all far from the concerns of the common citizen, nor so difficult to understand as some pretend. Who is in a better position than its victims to understand that the neoclassical labor flexibilizatiog being imposed today seeks only a total deregulation of the supply and demand of manpower for the benefit of employers, and has little to do with modernizing labor processes for everybody’s benefit? Who is better able to recognize the true scope of a legal security invoked in inflated terms as soon as any threat to the interests of the big capitalists is perceived-but not when hundreds of thousands of workers are left in the streets or have their salaries cut? Let us take one more step in the same demythologizing direction: What is the true content of that “unique thought” in which the rationality of our times has allegedly been incarnated? Strictly speaking, it pivots on three quite general value axes that are perfectly debatable by any common person: a certain degree of tolerance about ideas and customs; a great passioq for money; and the belief that social inequalities are ineradicable and, ultii mately, necessary. The first axis connects that unique thought to the princi-

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ples of democracy as a mere procedure; the other two, to the abandonment of Keynesianism and the return of neoclassical economics. Beyond this, the concrete interpretations and applications of the imaginary unique thought vary from place to place and are very different in the United Sates than in France or in Britain than in Germany. That is to say that, contrary to the propaganda, there is no real convergence among countries, as any glance at their fiscal or social policies can As Emmanuel Todd concludes his penetrating analysis of the subject: “the unique thought is empty, there is nothing in it since it is really a non-thought or a zero-thought,” centrally and exclusively aimed at “glorif$ng impotence.” The task is, precisely, to fight against such glorification, uncovering both the weakness of its theoretical foundations and the specific social sectors it benefits. This task accounts for the importance of that participating path I am referring to, which, among other things, should be able to provide a democratic channel for the revolts and the open and latent social conflicts that the present situation makes inevitable. There is not only the possibility that they may get out of control at any time; history teaches that they may easily become a propitious cultural medium for the emergence of self-appointed saviors of the people. Such a path for the reconstruction of the state and the citizenship requires the promotion and multiplication of &verse forms of direct democracy, like popular consultations, referenda, and plebiscites; and it also entails that, besides these modes of democratization linking the citizens to the government, other horizontal and decentralized ways of participation be fostered among the citizens themselves, at the level of the organizations of civil society and the social movements the latter may nurture. As I have explained elsewhere, it is time to realize (mainly in Latin America) that there is no necessary incompatibility between representative democracy and direct democracy. In societies as differentiated and complex as ours, it is not a question of one replacing the other but of both reciprocally influencing and conltioning each other, provided distinct levels of action are differentiated. In that sense, my argument is not an invective against politicians or against representation in general, but rather a criticism of the ways in which the former tend to operate and the characteristics currently exhibited by the latter. Furthermore, I think there is no viable alternative without politicians taking charge of it; but this will be more feasible with the stronger the pressures exerted by public mobilizations and popular organizations. The alliances that may be forged and the solutions adopted could pave the way for an articulation of collective projects able to pull these countries out of the present crisis and for the engagement in these projects of the

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energies of a majority of the population. Furthermore, common wills thus galvanized always become a mighty material force indispensable both for fostering production and for negotiating with the large capitals and their agencies. Otherwise, history will keep repeating itself, since these powerful groups have shown enough muscle and resolve to swallow up the local “Schumpeterian” politicians (and their technocrats), who unfailingly overestimate their negotiating abilities. In Latin America, today more than ever, it is time for the parties of change, not of order and defense of the status quo. Main Touraine points out that, in France, the most significant conflicts have moved from the field of social rights to that of cultural rights; and that an employment policy should be for France “the great challenge of the coming decades, in the same way that the improvement of social protection was the main goal of the post-war period.” Underdevelopment has considerable disadvantages: one of them is that, among us, all those questions are absolutely pressing, social rights as much as cultural rights, and social protection as much as an employment policy. However, history teaches us that sometimes underdevelopment may also have its privileges: for instance, learning from the mistakes of others and being able to skip some stages if actors really rise to the challenge. For this, it is necessary that the viability of democracy become really attractive to the majorities; and the only way to achieve this is by betting strongly on a democracy of high intensity, which is not in the plans of the big local and foreign bourgeoisies. But this requires that the fight against inequality be considered a first priority and that we all jointly invent new institutional forms that complement, transform, and expand the existing ones, for otherwise, as experience shows, we will find ourselves on an inclined plane that leads to maintaining the status quo or something even worse. I insist that to draw up a catalogue of those new institutional forms would be easy but not useful; because, by definition, they need to possess their own features according to the characteristics of each place. Suffice it to say that they are possible; that many are already a reality and must be strengthened, articulated, and diffused; and that it would be good that Latin American intellectuals who have not yet done so accept as one of their most significant missions the interpretation, strengthening, translation, and communication of such experiences.

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I am referring to the actions of democratic and combative unions; of grassroots communities; of peasant movements; of different municipal or regional multiclass associations; of ethnic, gender, and ecological social and cultural movements, among others; of productive fronts forged by workers, employees, and small- and mid-sized entrepreneurs; of the numerous groups of students, teachers, researchers, intellectuals, journalists, and artists; and of many more emerging every day. I am also thinking of the enormous possibilities being offered today by the media and electronic resources as significant as the Internet to form national and international networks to link and articulate initiatives that, like the ones I have mentioned, may be very distant one from the other. Such resources make it possible for these groups to overcome the particularism of their structures and their claims, fostering dialogue and deliberation and generating multiple spaces in which to concentrate initiatives and push forward joint efforts. In 1999 and 2000, protests such as the ones in Seattle (against the World Trade Organization) and in Washington (against the International Monetary Fund) gave abundant evidence of the great effciency of such instruments. As in the past, the unwanted consequence of technological breakthroughs is that their use can hardly be limited to a mere preservation of the system that has generated them and often opens up possibilities of struggle, organization, and negotiation that are both new and powerful. Everything indicates that a significant part of the fate of human rights in Latin America and of a democratic consolidation, which the government of the politicians is in no condition to ensure by itself, will depend more and more on those devices of resistance and change. Finally, it was thanks to an innovative spirit of this sort that democracies succeeded in consolidating during the postwar period in the countries we take as paradigms and with which we have achieved, so far, at most and in very few places, a quite feeble family resemblance.

NOTES 1. “In theory, the International Monetary Fund supports the democratic institutions of the countries it aids. In practice, however, it imposes policies that undermine the democratic process.” This quote comes from Joseph Stiglitz, who until 1999 was the World Bank vice president (Clarin, 25 May 2000). Michel Camdessus himself, who managed the IMF over the last few years, has commented: “It is true that if there is a

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danger capable of causing the system to blow up, it is the poverty and the enormous differences between the poor and the rich it has fostered” (El Pais, 23 April 2000). Some wonder (or are entitled to wonder) before whom the international officials are democratically accountable for the policies they first apply and later regret. Their mistakes affect the lives of millions of people, but rarely their own. 2. The dlstinction between definitive and sensitizing concepts was introduced a few decades ago by U.S. sociologst Herbert Blumer. 3. There are few examples more revealing of this trend toward a supposed depoliticization than the present vogue of placing unelected technocrats at the helm of the central banks, independently of electoral results. This means that citizens are not even able to gwe an opinion about the people in charge of a vital area of economic policy. The main justification for this is the alleged security of the investors. There are still no good coniparative studies showing whether undemocratic practices such as these are also beneficial for the majority of the people. 4. The interested reader can consult works by specialists as diverse as Lance Taylor, Gosta Esping-Andersen, Dani Rodrik, and Geoffrey Garrett (see references).

This Page Intentionally Left Blank

REFERENCES

I

indicate below the main bibliographical sources mentioned in this book, preceded by a short orientation for the nonspecialized reader. Dahl (1999) provides a useful and up-to-date general introduction to the subject of democracy and includes a good bibliography. For those able to read French, the volume edited by Damton and Duhamel (1998) is very commendable. Originally, each one of the twenty-five chapters-which cover a wide spectrum-was prepared for TV by a top-level specialist. Those wishing for a more in-depth exploration of some of the historical issues I discuss are advised to consult, among others, two accessible and well-documented books by Hobsbawm (1995) and Castel (1997). A comparative source of consistently high interest is the collection in four volumes compiled by O’Donnell, Schmitter, and Whitehead (1986). Also useful is a more recent collection edited by Przeworslu (1995), which includes an ample bibliography. As for the authors who were central to my presentation of the subject, I hasten to say that the works of Schumpeter and Marshall that I quoted are easy to read and not reserved for experts. Apter, David E. 1965. The Politics ofModernization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Barbalet, J. M. 1988. Citizenship. Milton Keynes, England: Open University Press. Baumert, Gerhard. 1952. Jugend der Nachkriegszeit. Darmstadt, Germany: Edward Roether Verlag. Blumer, Herbert. 1969. Symbolic Interactionism. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Castel, Robert. 1997. Las metamorfosis de la cuestibn social (The metamorphosis of the social question). Buenos Aires: Paidbs.

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References

Castoriadis, Cornelius. 1997. “Democracy as Procedure and Democracy as Regme.” Constellations 4, no. 1. Dahl, Robert A. 1956. A PreJace to Democratic Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. . 1985. A Preface to Economic Democracy. Cambridge: Polity Press. . 1999. La democracia (Democracy). Buenos Aires: Taurus. Dahrendorf, Ralf. 1991. Reflexiones sobre la revolucidn en Europa (Reflections on the revolution in Europe). Barcelona: Emect-. . 1994. “The Changing Quality of Citizenship.” In T h e Condition $Citizenship, ed. Bart van Steenbergen. London: Sage. . 1996. “Citizenship and Social Class.” In Citizenship Today, ed. Martin Blumer and Anthony M. Rees. London: UCL Press. Damton, Robert, and Olivier Duhamel. 1998. Introduction to Dtmocratie, ed. Darnton and Duhamel. Pans: Editions du Rocher. Draibe, S. M., M. H. Guimaraes de Castro, and B. Azeredo. 1995. The System $Social Protection in Brazil. Democracy and Social Policy Series, Kellogg Institute, University of Notre Dame. Dunn, John. 1993. Conclusion to Democracy, ed. Dunn. New York: Oxford University Press. Durkheim, E., and P. Fauconnet. 1903. “Sociologe et sciences sociales.” Rtvue Philosophique 55: 465-97. Esping-Andersen, Gosta. 1996. “After the Golden Age? Welfare State Dilemmas in a Global Economy.” In Welfare States in Transition, ed. Esping-Andesen. London: Sage. Filgueira, Fernando. 1991. “Un estado social centenario: El crecimiento hasta el limite del estado social batllista” (A centennial social state: The growth to the limit of the Batllist social state). Working paper no. 81. Montevideo: PEITHO. Flisfich, Angel. 1991. “Estatismo, economia, y democracia en la crisis actual del socialismo” (Statism, economy, and democracy in the current crisis ofsocialism). In Capitalismo, democracia, y reformas (Capitalism, democracy, and reforms), ed. Norbert Lechner. Santiago: FLACSO. Fraser, Nancy, and Linda Gordon. 1994. “Civil Citizenship against Social Citizenship?” In The Condition of Citizenship, ed. Bart van Steenbergen. London: Sage. Garrett, Geoffrey. 1999. “Mercados globales y politica nacional” (Global markets and national policy). Desarrollo Econdmico 38, no. 52. George, Susan. 1997. “How to Win the War of Ideas.” Dissent (summer). Giddens, Anthony. 1999. La tercera via (The third way). Madrid: Taurus. Gut-henno, Jean-Marie. 1999. L’avenir de la libertt (The future ofliberty). Paris: Flammarion. Hobsbawm, Eric. 1995. Historia del siglo X X (History of the twentieth century). Barcelona: Critica. Kenworthy, Lane. 1995. In Search of National Economic Success. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage.

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Krugman, Paul. 1998. Trre Accidental Theorist. New York: W. W. Norton. Lash, Scott, and John Urry. 1994. Economies $Signs and Space. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage. Le Grand, Julian. 1998. “Caballeros, picaros, o subordinados?” (Gentlemen, crooks, or subordinates?) Desarrollo Econdmico 38, no. 151. Lipset, Seymour M. 1959. “Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy.” American Political Science Review 53. Lo Vuolo, RubCn M., and Alberto C. Barbeito. 1998. La nueva oscuridad de la politica social (The new darkness of social policy). Buenos Aires: Miiio y Divila Editores. Mangabeira Unger, Roberto. 1999. La democracia realizada (Democracy accomplished). Buenos Aires: Manantial. Manin, Bernard. 1998. Los principios delgobierno representativo (The principles of representative government). Madrid: Alianza Editorial. Maravall, JosC Maria. 1996. “Presentacibn” (Presentation). In Perspectivas tedricas y comparadas de la igualdad, I1 Simposio sobre Igualdad y Distribuci6n de la Renta y la Riqueza (Theoretical and compared perspectives of equality, Second Symposium on Equality and Income and Wealth Distribution). Madrid: Fundaci6n Argentaria. Marshall, Thomas H. 1963. Sociology at the Crossroads and Other Essays. London: Heinemann. Mead, Lawrence. 1992. T h e New Politics $Poverty. New York: Basic Books. Murilho de Carvalho, Jose. 1995. Desenvolvimiento de la ciudadania en Brad (Development of citizenship in Brazil). Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Econbmica. Nun, JosC. 1987. “La teoria politica y la transicibn democritica” (Political theory and democratic transition). In Ensayos sobre la transicidn democrritica en la Argentina (Essays on democratic transition in Argentina), ed. J. Nun and J. C. Portantiero. Buenos Aires: Puntosur. . 1989. La rebelidn del coro (The rebellion of the chorus). Buenos Aires: Ediciones Nueva Visibn. . 1991. “La democracia y la modemizacibn, treinta afios despuks.” Desarrollo Econdmico 31, no. 123. See “Democracy and Modernization, Thirty Years Later,” Latin American Perspectives 20, no. 4 (1993): 7-27. . 1999. “El futuro del empleo y la tesis de la masa marginal.” Desarrollo Econdmico 38, no. 152. See “The End of Work and the ‘Marginal Mass’ Thesis” Latin American Perspectives 27, no. 1 (2000): 6-32. O’Donnell, Guillermo, Philippe Schmitter, and Lawrence Whitehead, eds. 1986. Transitionsfrom Authoritarian Rule: Prospectsfor Democracy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. O’Donnell, Guillermo. 2000. “Teoria democritica y politica comparada” (Democratic theory and comparative politics). Desarrollo Econdmico 39, no. 156. Perez-Diaz, Victor M. 1987. El retorno de la sociedad civil (The return of civil society). Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Econbmicos. Przeworski, Adam, ed. 1995. Sustainable Democracy. New York: Cambridge University Press.

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Przeworsh, Adam. 1999. “El estado y el ciudadano” (The state and the citizen). Escenarios alternativos 3, no. 7. Roche, Maurice. 1987. “Citizenship, Social Theory, and Social Change,” in Theory and Society 16: 363-99. Rodrik, Dani. 2000. “Gobemar la economia global: Un unico estilo arquitecthico adecuado para todos?” (To govern the global economy: A single architectonic style adequate for all?). Desarrollo Econdmico 40, no. 157. Rueschemeyer, D., E. Huber Stephens, and J. D. Stephens. 1992. Capitalist Development and Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Schnapper, Dominique. 1996. “IntPgration et exclusion dans les sociCtCs modernes” (Integration and exclusion in modern societies). In L’exclusion, ed. Serge Paugam. Paris: Editions La DCcouverte. Schumpeter, Joseph A. 1942. Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. New York: Harper and Row. Solow, Robert M. 1998. Work and Wefare. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Taylor, Charles. 1975. Hegel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, Lance. 1988. Varieties of Stabilization Experience. New York: Oxford University Press. Therbom, Goran. 1977. “The Rule of Capital and the Rise of Democracy,” New Lej Review 103. Thompson, E. P. 1975. Whigs and Hunters. New York: Pantheon Books. Todd, Emmanuel. 1999. La ilusidn econdmica (The economic illusion). Buenos Aires: Taurus. Torres-Rivas, Edelberto. 1991. “Los mecanismos de la ilusi6n: Las elecciones centroamericanas” (The mechanisms of illusion: The Central American elections). Working paper no. 1. Costa Rica: FLACSO. Touraine, Alain. 1999. iCdrno salir del liberalismo? (How to exit liberalism?).Barcelona: Paid&. Vilas, Carlos M. 1997. “De ambulancias, bomberos, y policias: La politica social del neoliberalismo” (Of ambulances, firemen, and policemen: The social policy of neoliberalism). Desarrollo Econdmico 36, no. 144. Weffort, Francisco C. 1990. “A America errada.” Lua Nova (Sao Paulo) 21: 5-40. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1958. Philosophical Investigations. New York: Macmillan.

INDEX

Adenauer, Konrad, 60 advanced capitalist countries, 75, 77, 119 Africa, 96 agora, 10, 17 alienation, 77, 91 Andreani, Jean-Louis, 92nl Apter, David E., 23n7, 137 Argentina, 95-96, 101-2 aristocracy, 42-43 Aristotle, 11 Asian, 97 assembly, 10, 11, 17, 30 associations, 25, 134 Athens, 5, 9-11, 52 Atlantic Charter, 39111 Attlee, Clement, 41, 55, 60 Australia, 87, 96 Austria, 59, 68, 79 authoritarian, 3, 72, 91, 120 authoritarianism. 74, 131 authorities, 25, 76, 78, 83 autonomy, 20, 30, 53, 71,72,78-79, 123, 127-28 Azeredo, B., 100, 138

Barbeito, Alberto, 102, 139 Batlle y Ordbiiez, JosC, 98 Baumert, Gerhard, 61, 137 Beard, Charles and Mary, I l n l Belgmm, 86 Beveridge Report, 37, 55, 68 Bevin, Ernest, 60 Bismarckian model, 56, 59-60, 62, 72 Black, Max, 126 Blacks dilemma, 126, 127 Blum, Leon, 80n5 Blumer, Herbert, 135112, 137 Bolivia, 96, 118 Bosnia, 53nl bourgeoisie, 13, 34, 43, 66-68, 72, 11920, 133 Brazil, 96, 99, 102, 104, 115 Bretton Woods, 38, 39n3 Britain, 31, 41-43, 49, 55, 66, 69, 83, 8687, 92, 106, 132 British civil service, 73 Buenos Aires, 115 bureaucracy, 17, 20, 74, 85-86

bald man’s sophism, 123-24 Barbalet, J. M., 49n8, 137

Camdessus, Michel, 134nl Camus, Jean-Yves, 115n2

141

142

Index

capital, 33, 107 capitalism, 1 , 13, 19, 26, 30, 33-35, 3738, 43-45, 52, 55, 62, 65-67, 77, 82, 95, 105, 108, 112-13, 118, 130 Capifalitm, Socialism, and Democracy aoseph Schumpeter), 13-14, 22 capitahst democracies, 34, 39, 57, 65, 76, 82, 89, 91-92 capitalist societies, 19, 38, 52, 72 capitalists, 33, 83, 119, 131 careers, 91 Castel, Robert, 38, 137 Castoriadis, Cornelius, 21-22, 138 catholic reformism, 60 Central America, 101 central banks, 82, 135 change, 129, 134 Chile, 96 Christian Democratic Union, 60 Churchill, Winston 37, 39n1, 48nl citizenship, 2-3,9-11, 14-15, 17,21,2526,29-30, 35, 37, 41-48, 51-53, 5658, 61, 63, 67, 71-79, 83, 86-88, 91, 98-102, 106, 109-11, 114, 117, 119, 123-25, 127-28, 130-32 civic community, 124 civic conscience, 105 civic education, 20 civil freedoms, 72 civil religion, 52 civil society, 46, 58, 79, 112, 132 Clari'n, 104n8, 121n1, 134 classes, 34, 65-67, 72-73, 90, 106, 127 clientelism, 99, 102, 108 coercion, 78 cohesion, 92 Cold War, 76 Colombia, 101, 106, 118 common good, 15, 48, 112 communal solidarity, 57 communism, 14, 30, 83, 91 community, 33-34,48,52-53,62,76,79, 92, 131

competition, 35, 108 compromise, 35, 52 concepts, 5-8 concrete manifestations, 10, 111, 113-14, 126-27 conditions, 18-21, 26-27, 30, 34, 38-39, 42, 45-46, 53, 65, 76, 98, 112, 11718, 120-121, 126, 131 consensus, 9, 15, 26, 53, 112 consolidated democracies, 58, 62, 126 constitution, 5, 20, 98, 100, 102 constructions, 46-48, 75, 125 consumers, 15, 45, 76, 86, 91, 113 consumption, 106, 107, 109 contracts, 43, 53, 128 corporative, 98-99, 101 corruption, 74-75, 77, 105, 119 Costa Rica, 96, 98, 99 cranks, 21, 105-6 crisis, 91, 92, 113, 117, 132 criteria for inclusion, 7-9 crooks, 21, 105-7, 109, 119 Crozier, Michel J., 84n2 CSA-LA Rue, 90 Cuba, 96 Dahl, Robert A., 25-26, 27n2, 53, 124, 137-38 Dahrendod, Ralf, 22n3, 60-61, 124-25. 138 Darnton, Robert, 5, 137-38 decisions, 14-16, 18, 20, 25, 109, 119 Declaration of 1948, 29, 37 delegative mandate, 3, 17 deliberation, 79, 134 democracy, 1-3, 5-11, 13-18, 19-21, 25-26, 33-35,37,44,47,51-53, 55, 57, 61, 65-66, 71, 74, 79, 83, 89-92. 97-98, 101, 112-14, 118, 120-21, 123-27, 129-34, 137 democratic experimentalism, 121 democratic liberalism, 42, 111-1 3, 119, 123

Index democratic regimes, 16-17, 22, 65, 71 democratic tradition, 7, 114 democratic viability, 121 democratization, 2, 26, 68, 79, 97, 112, 132 demos, 9 Denmark, 55, 56 deprivation, 29, 72, 78 developed capitahst countries, 7, 19, 21, 26, 35, 44, 55, 58, 67, 81, 83, 86, 90, 95, 101, 105, 108, 114, 117, 125-26 developing countries, 120 development, 19, 1 19 dictatorships, 26, 121, 127 dignity, 72, 78, 97 direct democracy, 3, 9, 132 disenchantment, 77, 114, 119 Dissent, 92n4 dominant classes, 105, 106, 118, 131 domination, 95, 106, 118 Dominican Republic, 96 Draibe, S. M., 100, 138 dualism, 95,99, 100 Duhamel, Olivier, 5, 137-38 Dunn, John, 117-18, 138 Durkheim, Emile, 17, 33, 34, 53n1, 138 Eastern Europe, 97 Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, 97, 106 economic crises, 2, 125, 129 economic depression, 76 economic development, 14, 39, 65 economic groups, 118 economic growth, 38,46,99, 107-8, 110, 120 economic inequality, 31 economic insecurity, 30 economic instability, 97 economic level, 127 economic liberalism, 37, 49 economic policy, 41, 101

143

Economic Policy Institute in Washington, 90, 104113 The Economist, 79n1, 88112 economy, 107, 118, 121, 125, 127, 130-3 1 Ecuador, 96, 101, 106, 118 education, 16, 26, 44, 63, 65, 75, 78, 79, 86,98-99, 101, 102 egalitarjan, 26, 96, 105-6, 109 El Puk, 135nl El Salvador, 96, 101 elections, 1, 18, 22, 26, 51, 73-74, 90, 114, 117, 119 elective despotism, 22 electoral campaigns, 107 electoral colleges, 16 electoral competition, 15 electoral systems, 7 electorate, 14-15, 21, 71 elites, 17, 51, 65, 101 employment, 56, 102, 107, 133 Engels, Friedrich, 34 equality, 3, 26, 29-31, 35, 41, 45, 48, 52. 77-79, 83, 105-6, 108, 112, 114 Erhard, Ludwig, 59 Esping-Andersen. Gosta, 135114, 138 ethical socialism, 30, 41, 48 Eubulides, 128111 Europe, 9, 29-30, 37, 42, 46-47, 49, 57, 59-60, 68,88-89,91-92, 101 European Commission, 88 European Community, 61 European Union, 62, 82, 87, 88, 102 exclusion, 2, 89-91, 105, 117, 124-25 experts, 20, 130, 131, 137 Factory Laws, 44 family, 57, 60, 62, 85, 91, 100 family resemblances, 5-8, 10, 17-18, 27, 33, 37, 44, 47, 57, 73, 75, 95, 98, 121, 123, 125-26, 134 Family Support Act, 86

144

Index

famien, 30, 39 Fascism, 14, 30, 98 Fauconnet, P., 33, 34 T h e Federalist, 111, 115nl Federalists, 10, 15 Filgueira, Fernando, 104n4, 138 finances, 20, 82, 119 Finland, 55 First World, 1, 2, 91, 97, 99, 114, 123, 127, 129 fiscal, 82, 86, 107, 109, 132 fiscal haven, 110n3 fiscal heaven, 1 10n3 fiscal welfare, 58 Flisfisch, Angel, 22115 Fordism, 38, 67 fomial democracy, 2 France, 66, 69, 90, 132, 133 Fraser, N., 49118, 138 freedom, 1, 19.30-31,34-35.42-43,46, 60, 72-73, 77-78, 111-13, 120 full employment, 38, 60, 67, 76, 82, 83, 85, 88, 91 Galbraith, John, 86, 110112 game, 6, 8, 10, 26 Gandhi, Mahatma, 73 Garrett, Geoffrey, 135114, 138 gender equality, 56 general will, 15 George, Susan, 92n4, 138 Germany, 59-61, 72, 79, 124, 132 Giddens, Anthony, 49n7, 138 globalization, 13, 83, 91, 105, 118, 130 golden postwar years, 55, 62, 77 Gordon, L., 49n8, 138 govemability, 83, 119, 129 government, 45, 53, 67-68, 99, 101, 114, 118, 124-25, 131-32 government ofthe people, 10,11, 14, 1617, 20, 22, 29, 31, 52, 113, 114, 117, 124, 127-28

government ofthe politicians, 10, 11, 1617, 22, 26, 52, 111, 113, 114, 118, 123, 125, 127, 128, 129, 134 The Grasshopper and the Ant, 107-8 Great Depression, 37, 68 Great Recession, 81, 84 Greece, 61, 62, 68 Grove, Andrew, 13 Guardian Weekly, 92n2 Guatemala, 96, 118 Gut-henno, Jean-Marie, 91, 138 Guimaraes de Castro, M. H., 100, 138 Habermas, Jurgen, 60 Hamilton, Alexander, 15, 111, 114111 health care, 75, 101, 102 Hegel, G. L. F., 18 Hobbes, Thomas, 77 Hobsbawm, Eric, 38,47, 137-38 Honduras, 96, 101, 118 Huber Stephens, E., 68n1, 140 human rights, 42, 134 Human Rights Watch, 74 Huntington, Samuel, 84112, 117, 119 idea ofdemocracy, 10, 111-14, 117, 120, 126-31 idealist humanism, 30 ideology, 119, 131 inclusion, 45, 82 income, 75, 79, 90, 95-97, 103, 105, 107, 120 income distribution, 26, 30, 38, 63, 77, 87, 95, 97, 99, 101, 103, 108-9 India, 73, 74, 79 individualism, 31, 44, 57, 86, 105, 112-13 individuals, 33, 46, 90, 108 industrial development, 48, 58, 74, 76, 90, 124-25 industrial revolution, 30, 43 industrialization, 26, 65, 67, 74, 101, 127 inequality, 29-30, 35, 42-43, 52, 62, 68,

Index 73, 83, 90, 95-101, 103, 105, 107, 109-10, 117, 124, 131, 133 inequities, 74, 108, 109 inflation, 38, 67, 73, 83 information, 26, 79, 81 innovations, 13, 127, 134 insecurity, 91, 97 institutions, 46, 76, 77, 112-14, 118, 121, 124, 126, 129, 133 intellectuals, 2, 46, 48, 74, 125, 133, 134 Inter-American Development Bank, 95 interest groups, 125 interests, 52, 66, 79, 112, 130, 131 International Herald Tribune, 79n2 International Monetary Fund, 39n3, 118, 134111 Internet, 134 Ireland, 96 Italy, 59, 68, 86, 93 Japan, 62-63, 86 Jay, John, 111 Jefferson, Thomas, 22, 29-30, 39, 53 jobs, 16, 55, 63, 87, 91, 96-97, 131 Johnson, Lyndon, 57, 68 justice, 20, 42, 43, 72, 77, 106, 125 Kennedy, John F., 57,68 Kenworthy, Lane, 88111, 138 Key, V. O., Jr., 22n2 Keynes, John Maynard, 13, 22 Keynesianism, 37-38, 67, 82-83, 132 Khrushchev, Niluta, 76 Krugman, Paul, 81, 139

La Nacibn, 90 labor markets, 55, 82, 85, 108 Laertius, Diogenes, 124 landowners, 66, 74, 100 Lash, Scott, 79, 139 Latin America, 2, 22-23, 25, 49, 57, 61, 68, 75, 95, 97, 99, 101-2, 104n2, 105.

145

107, 109, 110113, 111, 118, 131; constitutions, 10; debate on democracy, 18; democracies, 125; elites, 124; paradox, 97, 117, 119 law, 29, 42, 51, 72, 75-76, 87, 100 Le Grand, Julian, 106, 109, 139 LA Monde, 74, 92nl Le Monde Diplornatique, 115112 leaders, 14-16, 18-20, 26, 73, 76, 86, 90 Lechner, Norbert, 138 legal system, 20, 98, 101, 108, 119, 131 legtimacy, 53, 71, 75-76, 86, 113, 117 liberal democracy, 34, 74, 77, 112, 114, 119-20, 126 liberalism, 3, 30, 41, 51, 59, 112, 124 Lincoln, Abraham, 1, 3 Lipset, Seymour M., 65-66, 139 Lo Vuolo, R u b h M., 102, 139 Locke, John, 29, 112 lower sectors, 107 Machiavelli, Nicholas, 121x12 Madison, James, 111 majorities, 72, 130, 133 Manin, Bernard, 112, 139 Maravall, JosC Maria, 61, 139 marginality, 77, 105, 109, 117 market, 15, 34, 41, 43-45, 57, 78-79, 82, 84, 87, 90, 100, 107, 117, 119, 121, 131 Marshall, Thomas H., 37, 41-48, 49n5, 51-53, 55-58, 71-72, 78, 86, 99, 105-6, 110n2, 113-14, 117, 124, 126-27, 137, 139 Marshall Plan, 59 Marx, Karl, 13, 31n1, 34, 66 masses, 65 material security, 30, 38 Mead, Lawrence, 110n1, 139 mechanism, 120-21, 125-26 media, 91, 134 merchants, 30, 42

146

Index

Mexico, 96, 101, 118 middle and upper strata, 107 middle class, 66, 99, 103 military dictatorships, 1, 65, 98, 100, 102, 118, 119 Mill, John Stuart, 5, 30 minimum wage, 43, 87 Mishra, Pankaj, 74 modernization, 5, 11, 19, 43, 46, 66, 72, 75, 95, 100, 120-21, 131 monarchy, 7 money, 15,33, 131 Montesquieu, 5, 29, 49114 Murilho de Carvalho, Jost., 100, 139 nation, 63, 75, 113 national, 21, 87, 91, 97, 106, 108, 121, 129 nationalism, 46, 76 Nazism, 63, 79 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 73 neoclassical model, 127, 131-32 Neocorporatist, 27n2 neoliberalism, 1, 32, 77-78, 82, 86, 105, 107, 109, 118, 127, 130 Neopluralist, 27n2 Netherlands, 31 New Deal, 57 New Zealand, 87, 96 Nicaragua, 96, 101, 118 norms, 76, 106 Norway, 55 Nun, Josk, 139 objectivist sociology, 16 occupational structures, 85, 86 O'Donnell, Guillermo, 22n6, 123, 137, 139 Offe, Claus, 78 oligarchic regmes, 72, 127 Organization for Economic Cooperation

and Development, 37, 81, 86, 88n1, 92n2, 97 Panama, 96 paradigmatic cases, 6-7, 75, 98, 123-27, 134 Paraguay, 101, 106, 118 parliaments, 3, 7, 21 participation, 2, 10, 17, 26,29-31, 46, 48, 51-53, 56, 72, 76, 79, 83, 98, 102, 109, 112, 119, 132 particular, 102, 108, 134 parties, 14, 22, 26, 47, 56, 66, 91, 114, 119, 125-26, 133 Paugam, Serge, 140 peasants, 101, 134 people, 15, 17, 18, 21, 51, 112, 119, 131 Pkrez-Diaz, Victor M., 75, 139 Perdn, Juan D., 101, 104 Peru, 96, 101, 106, 118 Phdips, Kevin, 90, 92n3 physics, 120, 126 plebiscites, 132 pluralism, 25-27 plutocracy, 90 Polanyi, Karl, 32n2 polarization, 29, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 103, 107, 117 police, 77, 101 political change, 19, 48, 125 political compromise, 39, 55, 65, 71, 82 political culture, 26, 105, 124 political level, 127 political regime, 34, 92 political resources, 26 political sectarianism, 73 political struggle, 125 political system, 112 political vision, 47 politicians, 13, 20, 25, 91, 107, 113, 118, 119, 120, 132 politics, 16, 78, 90, 112, 118, 119, 124, 130

Index poor, 29, 37, 49, 57, 60, 73, 74, 96, 97, 100, 103, 105, 109 Poor Law of 1834, 43 popular consultations, 132 popular mobilizations, 68 popular organizations, 132 popular sectors, 2, 100, 119 population, 112, 114, 118, 121, 124, 133 populism, 65,72,74, 91, 100, 102, 127 Portugal, 61, 62, 6% poverty, 26,39,73,77, 84-85,91,95104, 107, 110, 117 the poverty trap, 108 power, 16, 20, 25, 26, 27, 66, 68, 75, 8183, 101-12, 114, 120, 121, 124, 131 practices, 46, 76, 105-6 precariousness, 84-85, 91 preferences, 14, 15, 71, 77-79 presidentialism, 7, 15 private sector, 83, 87, 105, 109, 119, 130 procedural democracy, 14, 17-19, 25, 49, 121, 131-32 progress, 13, 89, 91, 99 property, 6-9, 17,38,43-44 prosperity, 53, 57, 61, 76, 90. 113 Przeworski, Adam, 97, 137, 139 public dwoune, 76, 77, 117, 128, 131 public opinion, 91 public policies, 106 public sector, 25, 45, 60, 83, 86, 87, 106-7, 109 Reagan, Ronald, 86-87 referendum, 17. 132 reforms, 31, 109, 129 representation, 17, 42, 46, 74, 119, 132 representative, 3, 9-10, 14, 20, 111-12, 119 representative democracy, 14, 19, 58-59, 62, 72-73, 75, 91, 96, 98-99, 101, 102, 114, 117, 118, 120, 124, 126, 128, 132

147

representative government, 111, 114, 119. 123, 125 republic, 7, 111 republican, 60, 102, 126 resistance, 134 revolts, 132 revolution, 38, 87 revolutionary, 30-31, 41, 66, 77 rich, 29, 37, 49, 66, 75, 90, 96, 97, 103, 109 rights, 31,42-43,4547, 52, 67-68,7172, 74, 76, 78, 90, 98, 100-101, 111, 123-24, 128, 133 Roche, Maurice, 49n8, 140 Rodrik, Dani, 135n4, 140 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 39n1, 68 Rousseau, J.-J.. 29, 30, 39, 52, 53 Rueschemeyer, D., 68111, 140 rule oflaw, 45, 123 salaried societies, 38, 67, 77, 85, 89, 91, 98, 102 Samuelson, Paul, 22111 Scandinavian nations, 55-56, 60, 62, 68, 130 Schmitter, Philippe, 137, 139 Schnapper, Dominique, 125, 140 Schumpeter, Joseph A,, 13-22, 23118, 2526,31,42,49n6,51-52,73, 106,11314, 117, 119-21, 126-27, 131, 133, 137, 140 self-government, 111, 113, 127 sensitizing criticisms, 129 services, 85, 86, 106 Shah, Ghanshyam, 74 Smith, Adam, 34,49n4 social action, 16 social and cultural movements, 134 social bond, 90-91 social conflict, 26, 132 social democracy, 30, 37, 46, 47, 60, 62, 68, 99, 106

148

Index

social integration, 39, 76 social justice, 14, 46, 86, 107, 113 social market economy, 59 social movements, 132, 134 social order, 16, 113, 125 social pacts, 128 social polarization, 103 social policies, 41, 46, 49, 56, 59-60, 62, 67, 82, 86-87, 100, 106, 109, 132 social protection, 52-53, 56-57, 61, 63, 68, 72, 87, 89, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 108, 133 social regmes of accumulation, 30, 109, 117, 126 social rights, 3, 43, 44, 47, 52, 57, 67, 71, 72,74, 75, 87, 88, 89,92, 99, 101, 133 social security and services, 38, 44, 56-57, 60, 62-63, 68, 72-73, 75, 86-87, 101-2 social state, 29, 60, 61, 98, 130 socialism, 14, 30, 38, 41, 44, 51, 56, 105 socialism A, 41, 52 socialism B, 41, 45, 55, 113 socialists, 31 society, 25, 37, 38, 45, 53, 66, 71, 76, 78, 90, 91, 95, 105-7, 109, 114, 121, 124, 132 Socrates, 9 solidarity, 44, 45, 49, 79, 86, 91, 106 Solow, Robert M., 87, 140 sorites, 128nl Southern Europe, 61, 67 sovereignty, 46, 75 Soviet Union, 55, 72, 76 Spain, 61, 62, 68 Sparta, 9, 11, 16, 51 Speenhamland system, 43 Spencer, Herbert, 53nl spillover, 107, 108 stagflation, 82 state, 20, 25, 31, 34, 37, 38, 45, 46, 47, 48, 53, 57, 63, 67, 76, 79, 81, 85, 87, 98, 107, 108, 117, 119, 124, 125, 130,

132; action, 41; apparatuses, 27; authoritarianism, 73; bureaucracy, 74; as a construction, 45; essential spirit, 44-46, 57-58, 67, 78; intervention, 77; subsidiarity, 60 Stephens, J. D., 68n1, 140 Stiglitz,Joseph, 134nl Stockman, David, 87 subjectivist sociology, 16 substantive legitimacy, 53, 71, 75-77, 128-29 Sweden, 55, 56, 72 Switzerland, 66, 69, 86 taxes, 38, 82-83, 86-87, 101, 105, 109, 119, 126 taxpayers, 106, 107 Taylor, Charles, 80n3, 140 Taylor, Lance, 135n4, 140 Taylorism, 38 technocrats, 133 technologies, 82, 85-86, 107, 134 television, 119 Terra, Gabriel, 98 territory, 75, 76, 82 Thatcher, Margaret, 83, 87, 120 Therborn, Goran, 68111, 140 Thirty Glorious Years, 55, 77, 81-82, 91, 125 Thompson, E. P., 49n2-3, 140 Times Literary Supplement, 75 Titmuss, Richard, 49n7 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 5, 48, 78 Todd, Emmanuel, 34, 84n1, 90, 132, 140 tolerance, 52, 66, 74, 131 Torres-Rwas, Edelberto, 101, 123, 140 Touraine, Alain, 133, 140 trade unions, 47, 58, 60, 66, 68, 77, 134 transitions to democracy, 18, 62, 85, 103 transnational corporations, 129-30 trickle-down effect, 107 Trilateral Commission, 83 trust, 77

Index underdeveloped areas, 77, 121, 133 underemployment, 2, 84, 85 unemployment, 2, 30, 38, 76, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 102 unemployment rates, 62, 63, 81 Unger, Roberto Mangabeira, 121, 129, 139 unique thought, 131-32 United Kingdom, 7, 93 United Nations, 31 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 106 United States, 7, 9-1 1, 27, 29, 31, 48, 5758, 60, 67-68, 76, 81, 86, 88, 90-93, 96, 104, 111, 114, 125, 132 universal, 44, 56, 60, 99, 102, 106, 108-9, 129 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 31 universal suffrage, 43, 51, 112 unregstered, 102 untouchables, 73 urbanization, 26, 30, 65 Urry, John, 79, 139 Uruguay, 95, 96, 98, 106 vague prehcate, 128111 values, 26, 76, 124, 125, 131 Van Steenbergen, Bart, 138 Vargas, Getulio, 99, 104n6 Venezuela, 96, 101, 106, 118 Vilas, Carlos M., 104117, 140 virtue, 49 voluntary associations, 58, 60, 79 von Hayek, Friedrich, 32n2

149

vote, 14-16, 18, 20, 43, 46, 51, 73, 78, 118-19, 123, 131 voting, 10, 11, 30, 43, 52, 53, 73, 79, 91, 112 wages, 16, 38, 43, 56, 63, 82-84 war, 14, 16, 30-32, 38, 47, 59, 61, 67, 76. 106, 125 Washington consensus, 129 Watanuki, Joji, 84112 wealth, 30, 33, 65, 90, 96, 105, 108, 120 Weber, Max, 16-17, 23118 Weffort, F. C., 23n7, 121, 140 Weimar Republic, 20 welfare, 16, 37, 39n2, 52, 53, 57-58, 6061, 117 welfare states, 37-38, 41, 44-48, 52, 5758,62-63.67-68,71-72,75,77-78, 82-89,91-92,98-99, 104115, 106, 114 West Germany, 59, 68, 86 Western countries, 68, 112 Western Europe, 7, 38, 61 Whitehead, Lawrence, 137, 139 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 6, 123, 140 women, 8s work, 38, 43, 91, 130 workers, 2, 30, 38, 43, 53, 60, 61, 66-68, 82-83, 87,90, 97, 99-102, 108, 130, 131, 134 World Bank, 100, 103, 118, 134 World Trade Organization, 134 World War I. 37 World War 11, 11, 31, 37, 58, 59, 68 Zizek, Slavoj, 115n3

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ABOUT T H E AUTHOR

One of Latin America’s most noted scholars, Josh Nun is senior researcher

at the National Council of Technical and Scientific Investigation (CONI-

CET) of Argentina and director of the Institute of Advanced Social Sciences, the National University of General San Martin, Buenos Aires. He has taught, among other places, at the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Chile; FLACSO Mkxico; and was a professor of political science at the University of Toronto from 1970 to 1991. His latest book is Marginality and Social Exclusion (Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Econ6mica, 2001).

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