The Americas Political Folio (Jan/2012)
enero 25, 2012 | Categoría: English, Folio Político Las Américas, The Americas Political Folio
Strategic Analysis Bulletin
Vol. 1, No. 1, La Paz, Bolivia, January 2012
© 4 – 3 – 150 – 11
The Americas Political Folio is a monthly publication produced by Praxis Pública with sponsorship from the AVINA Foundation and the Yale World Fellows Program.
The analytical content and opinions expressed in this document do not reflect or implicate the institutional position of the organizations supporting this bulletin.
Director: Franco Gamboa.
The State in Latin America: Society’s Brain or the Expression of an Identity Crisis?
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disappearance of the former Soviet Union in the 1990s, nothing has been as surprising or as deeply worrying as the current crisis of the State. Not only has it ceased to be the brain of society, the State is also finding it very difficult to connect up the set of institutional networks that would enable it to solve the main problems facing citizens.
In the 21st century, the State is no longer the nodal point for the construction of economic development or for generating solid political orientations. It is currently plagued by an identity crisis with regard to what the State can do effectively, with full security to reproduce the political order, and with certainty to ensure the operation of the economic and social order. One of the most crucial political challenges in the 21st century lies precisely in the need to rethink the State as a system of powers and institutional forces that will enable it to return to its role as society’s brain. This implies:
- Being able to predict its actions in the medium and long term.
- Knowing itself from within as a State and being aware of its cultural, social, economic and political surroundings to be able to target its interventions.
- Effectively controlling its decisions to implement any public policy in a timely manner.
If this is not possible, it then becomes essential to discuss and identify once again the main requirements for a reform of the State in the Americas.
The big problems: a comprehensive look
In Latin America, the complexities of the State oblige us to think carefully about the role of history and the need to identify processes of cause and effect. Our region is characterized not only by having taken a particular historical path, but also by the problematic decisions taken by politicians and leaders at any given time to lead us down the “specific pathways” we are still dependent upon to the present day.
The political actions and intentionality of leading elites, the army or political parties have marked how the State functions. Although it is very difficult to generalize and draw out a universal political theory to analyze the State in Latin America, it is important to bear in mind that in Chile, Uruguay and Colombia, political parties are strong enough to articulate the power of the State, achieving a significant degree of centralization when taking decisions and developing public policies.
The opposite is the case in Argentina, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and some Central American countries such as El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala, where a stable party system, with leading elites who have foresight and defend a set of durable institutional rules, has hitherto been unable to mature. Likewise, Chile, Mexico and Argentina had the capacity for a State that exercised a monopoly on coercion and power through top-down violence, in contrast to Uruguay, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia and Venezuela where, for a long time, the State’s presence in rural areas was weak. Nevertheless, the continent’s political elites, parties and state bureaucracies have come up against six major conflicts which are undermining the State’s capacities today:
- Latin American states are unable to generate their own political and institutional knowledge sources and capabilities to improve their interventions. This can be perceived above all in policies on education, employment creation, old age pensions and citizen safety – to reduce the terrible urban violence – as well as their inability to control the contraband trade in all sorts of products from the emerging economies of India and China, together with the tremendous threats posed by drug trafficking, which has acquired unprecedented power, almost completely destroying the possibilities for controlling it in Mexico and Bolivia.
- States are increasingly losing the ability to monitor, guide and enforce top management decisions in the lower ranks; in other words, it is very difficult to control middle-ranking officials who, to a great extent, are used to working under a system of state clientelism, which wipes out the institutional effectiveness of any ministry, sub-national or municipal government.
- The power relations that characterize all states are affected by a civil society that is very unsubmissive and reluctant to obey the State’s policy guidelines. Civil society, especially when undergoing a process of democratization, demands greater freedoms, more rights and guarantees, rejecting the intervention of the authoritarian State and restricting its power relations. This means that state forces must use the army and police as the last resort of power to oblige society to obey. Interest in politics progressively evaporates, leading to the emergence of a crisis of citizenship together with the deterioration in state power relations.
- The crisis of citizenship manifests itself through disenchantment with the potential of political commitment. Civil society distrusts the capacities of the State. Although its aspiration is for the State to continue to be the controlling brain and the beacon lighting a single way, what Latin American states are experiencing now is a crisis in which the agents of effective action – ministries and collective action by civil society – are unable to visualize long-term joint projects. Instead, what seems to characterize citizens, state policies and the interest in returning to the State as society’s brain is insecurity, especially when there are expectations of unemployment benefits, environmental protection and citizen safeguards, avoiding violence of any kind.
- States have many constraints preventing them from generating the necessary incentives for the stakeholders involved in economic growth, the equal distribution of wealth in society and the benefits required to set up a Welfare State. There is still a very pressing need for ample social safety nets, especially for the poor and for vulnerable groups: indigenous people, young people, children, people with disabilities and older people. The availability of technological, human and financial resources is inadequate and, as a result, the middle-ranking officials who implement or monitor certain public policies tend to take discretional decisions, thus reducing the effective impact of any state intervention. Discretionality holds sway because top management loses its grasp of the work on the ground in a complex reality, as well as failing to provide the necessary resources.
- Policy and management decision-making in state structures creates informal mechanisms for delegating authority, and the widespread use of these aggravates discretionality in the actions taken by middle-ranking officials. Therefore, problems are only partially solved and the original policies may even become totally distorted, leading to public administration problems that weaken the capacity to exercise efficient institutional power within the State. The State is unconnected, unprofessional and easy prey to corruption, as in the cases of Haiti, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Venezuela, Paraguay and Cuba.
Consequently, Latin American states need to address the following issues with greater determination:
- The first is the problem of the centralization of power in the construction of the State and the design of government institutions. How and to what extent can the State gain control of the main mechanisms of coercion in a given territory? In what way is the State an entity that maintains an autonomous and differentiated structure? Was decentralization of the State favorable for restoring its role as society’s brain? Or are the power struggles between the decentralized regions and the central State responsible for deepening the political identity crisis in state capacities?
- The second issue is the formation of party-political coalitions that consolidate the democratic system as the best form of state government. Which are the most suitable methods for forming strong governments and having representative members of congress or political institutions? Are they free elections, authoritarianism, presidential re-election, dictatorial tendencies or coups d’état? Here, what marks the fundamental difference is to protect democratic governments in the region, with strong participation by grassroots urban and rural citizens, together with an active opposition in the dispute over access to state power.
The diversity between one country and another in Latin America obliges us to reflect on what political relations characterize strong and efficient states, and to identify corporatist and state-centric tendencies in the design of public policies. In other situations, what needs to be carefully assessed is whether the process of centralizing the power of the State to protect its functions as society’s brain is slower. How can an efficient State, with legitimate power and authority, but at the same time able to encourage pluralism, political parties and local governments that are much closer to the needs of civil society, be strengthened?
It is essential to understand the failures typical of state structures when trying to bring about important results such as social integration and the development of the idea of citizenship, in order to become a State that protects fundamental rights and encourages equity, while also promoting a collective identity that facilitates the connection between the State and the development of nations throughout Latin America.
Latin American states have bureaucratic structures that have gradually been growing and taking charge of the most important economic growth challenges, but their capacity is doubtful and negatively bountiful in terms of clientelism. This leads to a complete lack of effectiveness which damages the obligatory cooperation that is expected of society; in other words, the State seeks to impose its authority to generate resources or apply policies, but squanders its efforts on electoral ends, short-term political ambitions and due to particularist visions that lose sight of the broader horizon as society’s brain. In this area, the impact of financial crises and problems linked to capital flight provide clear proof of the Latin American State’s weak capacity to control its basic economic functions.
It is also striking that the State is in crisis at the very heart of the European Union and in the United States, where fiscal indiscipline and economic stagnation seem impossible to overcome.
Imagining some solutions
Finally, strategic analyses would be incomplete without an attempt to imagine certain solutions or recommendations for state reform. A first approximation demands the following:
- Today, more than ever before, there is a need for knowledge and renewal of efficient mechanisms for taking and implementing management decisions in the public sphere.
- Political leaders and technocrats must be able to predict institutional behavior in the organizational structures of the State.
- The development of complex or overly sophisticated political organizations becomes a barrier to the implementation of more useful state actions. There is a need to maintain political control that is simple but functional.
- Relations of authority need to be reciprocal in nature. This means that there should be formal authorities with political rank within the State, but together with the recognition of other expressions of informal authority which bring to the fore highly motivated, well-trained officials with an ethic of accountability and the ability to commit themselves to political values favorable to the nation’s interests.
- Effective public sector management must reduce the high levels of discretionality in delegating authority.
- Formal political authorities depend on lower-level institutional structures to perform concrete tasks. However, a problem-solving capacity must be maintained in the lower levels of the State’s organizational structures, identifying the sites where the key work is done, the main resources are employed and the most important effects are produced.
- Implementation of the State’s proposed solutions to a series of problems should not always be seen as the result of relations of authority, organized hierarchically and aimed at gaining prestige for political leaders. We should consider that the solutions are the recovery of the State’s challenges to restore it to its proper place as the brain or institutional guide that redirects politics, society and institutions.
- Finally, the State should constantly evaluate the positive and negative results of its interventions, encouraging political leaders and technocrats to develop an ability to neutralize the tendency to disobedience that arises both in different sectors of society and in the internal power struggles among low-ranking officials who try to resist any institutional change.
The Praxis Pública agenda
We invite you to listen to our interviews analyzing issues such as the building of strategic alliances, looking at three examples in Latin America. Next Billion in Spanish, the Ibero-American Inclusive Business Network, Praxis Pública and the AVINA Foundation came together to organize an online workshop that discussed the cases of Por Ti Familia (Peru); Empresas de Nariño (Colombia); Salud para mi Barrio (Chile).
From Honduras, we carried out another analysis of international development cooperation. 8% of total world development cooperation funds are invested in Latin America, without having much impact on levels of poverty and underdevelopment. This is why it is crucial to discuss the main problems such as corruption, lack of accountability and citizen participation, as well as the ineffectiveness and impacts of development cooperation investments.
Government policies on climate change are another critically important problem. Praxis Pública talked to Luis Rivera, a researcher at the University of Costa Rica, who participated in the design of the NEEDS project (National Economic, Environment and Development Study on Climate Change).
As part of its agenda for 2012, Praxis Pública will be taking forward other analyses, including an assessment of the current situation in Haiti with Jessica Faieta, director of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), while the political philosopher H. C. F. Mansilla will look at an issue that always needs to be reflected on: populism in Latin America, what it means and the extent of its reach in political culture.
Communication, contributions, suggestions and comments to: franco.gamboa@aya.yale.edu.
