The components of democratic citizenship do not easily coexist with extreme and persistent inequality. Rather, they tend to get distorted in ways that pose serious problems for the practice of democracy. According to the most recent estimates of the UN's Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), there were 209 million Latin Americans living in poverty in 1994, up from 197 million in 1990, a 6% increase. A decade of neoliberal, market-oriented reforms has brought about the reactivation of private investment and economic growth together with an overwhelming deterioration of living standards and the impoverishment of large num- bers of people. Deep and persistent social inequalities have distorted the nature of both economic growth and recession in Latin America. It is the poor who bear the brunt of recession through job loss, downgraded working condi- tions, declining real wages, small-business bankrupt- cies and so on. It is the wealthy, on the other hand, who are the first to benefit from growth through access to credit and foreign exchange as well as tax exemptions and other government benefits. In Argentina, for exam- ple, between 1990 and 1994, the so-called "golden years" of the convertibility program of Carlos Menem and Domingo Cavallo, the gross domestic product (GDP) increased by one third-some $100 billion-- Carlos M. Vilas is a sociologist and historian at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and a member of NACLA's edito- rial board. His most recent book is Between Earthquakes and Volcanoes; Market, State, and Revolutions in Central America (Monthly Review Press, 1995). VOL XXXI, No 1 JULIuAuG 1997 and labor productivity grew by 50%. Real wages, how- ever, remained virtually frozen and unemployment sky- rocketed. By contrast, after the "tequila effect" of Mexico's December 1994 peso crisis rippled through Argentina, the country's GDP shrank by 4.6%, while unemployment almost doubled (see Table 1). In the Buenos Aires metropolitan area, unemployment in- creased from 602,718 (12.1% of the labor force) in 1994 to 953,632 (18.8%) in 1995. The 1995 rate of female unemployment was even higher at 22.3%.1 Both growth and recession, then, had clear class implica- tions. Workers gained little during the boom and lost much more than their employers during the crisis. Figure 1 presents a rough measure of social inequal- ity in 17 Latin American and Caribbean countries in the early 1990s, and compares them to several countries in Asia and Africa, as well as the United States. The high- est levels of social inequality are found in Latin America, with 14 out of 17 countries ranking higher than much poorer countries in Asia and Africa. In Figure 2, we see that this income inequality was a fea- ture of the Latin American landscape well before the advent of neoliberal restructuring. In part, this is because there is much more cumulative inequality in Latin America than in other regions. Different types of inequality, stemming from class, gender, race, regional and even religious differences, tend to overlap, creating extremely rigid social structures. This is particularly true in countries where class and ethnic domination 57ESSAY/DEMOCRACY AND INEQUALITY coincide, such as in Brazil and trary to the neoliberal idea that nomic growth leads by itself to i geneity, we see that countries s rate of growth as Mexico, the Dc Nicaragua have similar levels o the case of Ecuador when compa Figure 3 highlights an addition American inequality. It compare earnings of chief executive of largest private corporations in with those countries' per capi income polarization so extreme American countries shown on th. in those four countries enjoy higher levels of T income than many of their colleagues in much more developed countries. In Argentina, for example, CEOs earn 7% more than their U.S. colleagues even though Argentina's per- capita GDP is one third that of the United States. Mexico's CEOs earn 12% more than those in France, while France's per-capita GDP is nearly six times that of Mexico. 2 The region's persis- tently high levels of poverty and inequality pose some problems for the o Latin American democracy. TI poverty is taking place in coun elections and have more or I among political parties. These c by regimes that are considered their regular elections and open so-called "transitions-to-democr 1980s and by the "consolidatin taking place today. 3 But even i sphere, these approaches are cl there is evidence that a number tions" have retreated to tradition to regimes which combine demo authoritarian rule. I would like to suggest a differ tion to open competitive election the effective observance of the autonomy of the judicial from th government. It also requires ac officials, free access to informati Guatemala. And con- "market-friendly" eco- ncreased social homo- o divergent in size and ominican Republic and f inequality, as is also ared to Argentina. nal dimension of Latin s the after-tax average ficers (CEOs) of the 21 selected countries ta GDP. Nowhere is as in the four Latin e chart. Business elites "able 1 over military and security forces. In addition to these minimal political conditions, genuine democracy requires access to certain socioeconomic conditions such as education, jobs, health care and housing, which allow for the effective practice of citizenship. These conditions are sorely lacking in most of our "really existing" democracies. 4 Although electoral procedures and party competition may be found in settings of massive poverty and pro- found inequalities, poverty and inequality tend to dis- tort the effective meanings of democracy and citizen- ship. In conditions of extreme poverty, formal citizenship may mask a retreat toward patron-client political relations, while democratic institutions fre- ECONOMIC GROWTH, LABOR PRODUCTIVITY, WAGES AND UNEMPLOYMENT IN ARGENTINA. 1"9095. (Index numbers, 1990 = 100) Year GDP Productivity (1) Wages (2) Un mp(3yment () 1990 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 1991 108.9 115.0 101.4 73.4 1992 118.4 128.0 102.7 77.9 1993 125.5 138.0 101.3 123.4 1994 133.6 148.0 102.0 128.6 1995 126.9 ... 100.9 234.9 (1) Output per hour (2) Average real wage (3) Open unemployment; does not include underemployment. Sources: Argentina's Government Statistics Authority (INDEC) and ECLAC. ngoing celebration of quently house authoritarian power relations. The ten- he current growth in sions between inequality and impoverishment on the tries that hold regular one hand, and democratic politics on the other, can have ess open competition a devastating effect on the latter. This can be seen more ountries are governed clearly if we consider the question of citizenship. to be democratic-for competition-by the T iberal democracy-the purported goal of Latin acy" literature of the American political elites and their U.S. supporters g-democracy" debates L .- can be thought of as the political regime of cit- n the strictly political izenship. Citizenship, in turn, is made up of some basic, early inadequate, and interrelated components including, minimally, the fol- of "democratic transi- lowing: individual autonomy, involving personal free- ial caudillo politics or dom vis-h-vis all other individuals as well as individual cratic formalities with freedom and rights vis-ei-vis state power and power- holders; equality of rights and obligations of all individ- rent approach. In addi- uals in a particular polity; efficacy, or the ability (and the s, democracy requires perceived ability) to achieve desired outcomes through rule of law and the one's direct or indirect efforts; accountability, or the he executive branch of assumption of responsibility for one's deeds and their countability of public consequences upon others (which must apply to public on and civilian control officials as well as to private individuals); empathy, or NACILA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 58ESSAY/DEMOCRACY AND INEQUALITY the ability to place oneself in settings and situations beyond one's locality or everyday horizon; and finally an idea or assumption of a shared belonging to some- thing that is common to all citizens (the res publica, as the Romans called it, or the English commonwealth). These components of citizenship do not easily coexist with extreme and persistent inequality. Rather, they tend to get distorted in some of the following ways. VoL XXXI, No 1 JuLY/AUG 1997 Personal autonomy refers to physi- cal freedom as well as access to some basic resources that allow for a minimum of self determination: a decently paid job, education and access to information, sustainable living conditions, and the like. Figures on income disparities suggest that while the elites have abundant and sometimes excessive access to such resources, increasing majorities of the Latin American population are deprived of them. There is certainly a great deal of freedom and autonomy among the richest 20% of the Brazilian households which col- lectively earn 67.5% of the country's national income, or among their colleagues in Guatemala, who get 63% of the pie. They enjoy more than autonomy. These elites, as the Brazilian sociologist Octavio lanni once put it, behave not as rulers, but as conquerors. Quite the contrary is true on the lower floors of the social edifice. What kind of personal auton- omy is experienced by the job- less, the homeless, the poorest 40% of the Latin American pop- ulation who get only 5.7% of their country's income in Mexico, 5% in Venezuela, 7% in Brazil, 4.9% in Chile, 2.7% in Guatemala and 4.9% in Colombia? The much-discussed crisis of political parties is in part the result of this immense social polarization. 5 The inability of political parties to process and respond to the demands and expectations of the impoverished without contesting the overall imprint of market-dominated restructuring reinforces people's alienation from conventional representative democratic insti- tutions. Something similar can be said with regard to the in- creasing inability of unions to represent and mobilize the grow- ing numbers of the un- and under-employed, and those ex- pelled from formal labor mar- kets because of transnational sub- 59ESSAY/DEMOCRACY AND INEQUALITY contracting, "flexibilization" and other forms of labor discipline. In addition to their conventional political and eco- nomic objectives, most Latin American parties and unions once traditionally performed a number of social-assistance functions with regard to jobs, educa- tion, health care and the like. Because of neoliberal restructuring-including budget cuts and union bust- ing-these social-welfare functions have largely disap- peared. It is now the state, through "targeted" social policies, which directly fills the void left behind by the retreat of unions and parties from the daily needs of their constituencies. Since state resources-compensat- ing for the rigidities and shortcomings of the market-- are not sufficient to reach the entire population in need, a poor-against-poor competiti access to much needed resources. In such polarized social set- tings, to speak of equality is plain mockery. There is, of course, a constitutional framework of legal equality, yet when socioeconomic and cultural dis- parities reach extreme levels, effective inequality tends to dominate legal equality. In these circum- stances, the egalitarian democratic principle of "one person, one vote" is devoid of any relevant meaning. In the upper levels of the social order it is quite obvious that "one person" has access to much more than one vote: we are dealing here with cor- porate power. Take the case of Carlos Slim, the wealthiest man in Mexico, whose estimated $6.1 billion of assets include controlling interest in the Mexpican telepnhnnp point Telmex well nR mninr shares of the nation's largest bank and most profitable financial firm. 6 Are Slim's political power and efficacy restricted to just the ballot he casts every two or three years? Hardly. On the lower levels, of course, "one per- son" does mean "one vote," although post-electoral pirouettes by government officers frequently empty vot- ing of its ability to achieve the goals the majority of the electorate is pursuing; cheating "the sovereign people" looks like standard operating procedure in market- friendly democracies. These inequalities in personal auton- omy have a powerful impact upon efficacy. Patron- client relations of domination and subordination tend to substitute for relations among equals. Personal ties sub- stitute for impersonal institutional loyalties. This is par- ticularly clear on the lower rungs of the social ladder, and is increasingly present among segments of the mid- dle class. Having a friend or a relative who holds some powerful position tends to be more conducive to the achievement of specific goals-getting access to a health clinic or a job, having the roads paved or the garbage collected--than the entitlements granted by citizenship rights. The very vulnerability of people in poverty reinforces their search for someone else's effi- cacy, and personal relations take precedence over enti- tlements. This is what the Mexican anthropologist Guillermo de la Pefia calls "negotiated corporatism." Efficacy here refers to the ability of subordinate individuals to man- age themselves in non-democratic power structures and social networks. 7 In a recent survey conducted in the Dominican Republic, for example, the demand for strongmen and for authoritarian solutions was most common in the most vulnerable segments of the popu- lation-among lower-income respondents, among the less educated, among women more than among men and among blacks much more than among whites. 8 A direct, non-mediated political relationship tends then to develop between the impoverished masses and the power holders. In this relationship, power becomes unrestricted, and the masses look for some basic secu- rity for the future. We have seen this develop in a num- ber of countries. In Peru, for example, a vast majority of the most deprived population re-elected Alberto Fujimori in 1995, while in Brazil the poor opted for Fernando Collor de Mello in 1990, and for Fernando Henrique Cardoso in 1995. In none of these cases was the successful candidate backed by a full-fledged polit- ical party or by labor unions. Loss of efficacy takes place in at least two interre- lated levels: with regard to one's individual ability to achieve personal goals, and with regard to politics as a way to cope with collective conflicts and troubles. There is then a frequent overlap of electoral support for strongmen or caudillo-type candidates, and electoral absenteeism. According to a nation-wide survey con- NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 0 I 1--ESSAY/DEMOCRACY AND INEQUALITY ducted at the Institute of Social Research of Mexico's National University (UNAM), 29% of the Mexicans interviewed never talk about politics. Political indiffer- ence, however, is higher among people with no schooling (52%), among elementary-school drop- outs (49%) and among those in the lower economic strata (47%).9 A similar disdain for politics has been found in sur- veys on political culture in both Nicaragua and El Salvador.l 0 Consequently, high electoral absenteeism should come as no surprise: 60% in the Salvadoran congressional and municipal elections in March 1997, and 40% in the first round of the so- called "elections of the century" in 1994. Mexico's very high electoral absenteeism, on the other hand, receded sharply in the July 1994 presidential elections when elec- toral competition grew, opposi- tion parties gained more room for conducting their campaigns, international observers were allowed to oversee the voting, and there was a feeling among the public that the coming elec- tions could bring a change in their lives. Electoral participa- tion went up to more than 73%, 1- In settings of perceived power- lessness, impunity substitutes for accountability. The belief that there will be no punishment for violations of a historical record. Loss of political and social efficacy is neither a sponta- neous nor a "natural" phenome- non. It is a dimension of politi- cal power, nurtured by escapist fare from most of the media net- works, and neoliberal assistance programs like Mexico's once- celebrated PRONASOL, which oscillate between repression and the co-optation of indepen- dent popular organizations. In this context, one of the key- and most difficult-steps of political organizing is the process of convincing people that their own efforts can be fruitful in putting an end to their daily suffering. VoL XXXI, No 1 JULY/AUG 1997 61ESSAY/DEMOCRACY AND INEQUALITY the law is not just a subjective or psychological feeling; it is nurtured by the objective evidence that there are no legal sanctions for breaking the law. When impunity exists, it tends to permeate the entire social structure, even while manifesting itself in quite different forms: pervasive tax evasion particularly in the upper levels of business corporations; "flexible" labor relations that enable business firms to fire workers with no advance notice or compensation; drivers passing through red lights and bribing police officers; the omnipotence of bureaucrats; police brutality in their dealings with the poor and the political opposition; open or poorly hidden corruption at all levels of government administration. Poverty is usually accompanied by a feeling of power- lessness which in turn is reinforced by the objective inse- curity pervading everyday life in poor neighborhoods. In this setting, voting may harbor quite a different meaning from that discussed in conventional political theory. For most educated and concerned citizens, voting may be associated with general proposals country, what to do with foreign trade, how to manage the foreign debt, what strategy of poverty alle- viation is best suited to the situa- tion, and so on. As field research has found, this is not the case in the world of poverty. Here, voting is an ingredient of an overall system of tradeoffs between the haves and the have-nots, an instrument to achieve specific resources like schooling, jobs, personal security, land titles, and the like." In this environment, the ballot becomes something like the credit card of the poor. It would be misleading to con- clude that authoritarianism lies deep in the hearts and minds of the poor. In the recent past the Latin American poor have been active participants in revolutionary strug- gles in Central America, as well as in democratization processes in South America and the Caribbean. It is the authoritarian nature of post-adjustment settings which, in the absence of viable and credible progressive alternatives, biases the options of the masses toward a variety of authoritarian options.12 When there is no foreseeable long- run and inclusive alternative, peo- ple have no option but to seek immediate, short-term solutions, how to run the particularly when these solutions provide today's job or tomorrow's food. ,. Under conditions of extreme inequality, empathy recedes to close affective ties: the family or kin group, locality, religious or ethnic groups. It becomes extremely difficult, if at all possible, for the poor to decipher landscapes beyond their daily lives and troubles and their immediate localities. A retreat to "primordial ties"-as anthropologist Clifford Geertz termed them--takes place which substitutes for the "imagined communities" of nation, state or anything falling beyond the frontiers of everyday life. Under the conditions of neoliberal restructuring, the processes and institutions that can foster a broader social empathy-education, accessible information, community-based organizations-are becoming smaller and less accessible. Public education is shrink- ing due to privatization; shrinking public budgets are driving museums and libraries into complete disarray; Figure 3 CEOs INCOME / GNP PER CAPITA (1996) 92.7 Brazil Venezuela Mexico Argentina South Africa Hong Kong Singapore USA Spain UK Australia Italy New Zealand Canada France Germany Netherlands Switzerland Belgium Japan Sweden 48.6 45.3 39.4 32.8 13.3 12.4 11.6 10.2 9.8 "9.5 08.2 S7.4 7.3 N7.3 S6.8 16.7 5.6 15.5 15.5 4.2 Source: Towers Perrin Consultants, 1996. NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASESSAY/DEMOCRACY AND INEQUALITY and the "global superhighway" is out of reach of those who do not have access to a home phone-not to speak of the cost of equipment. Cross-country mobility is cur- tailed by the privatization of transportation, increasing fares and decreasing family income, and even state- funded tourism programs are a thing of the past due to cutbacks in social spending. yiyl- l , i"Everyone for her or him- self' has replaced the commitments to a shared belong- ing to the polity. Huge and usually increasing social distances between the richest and the poorest conspire against solidarity. The commonwealth is no longer common: it has been privatized and belongs to the wealthiest. As the German political scientist Herman Heller stressed, the very idea of a shared code of mean- ings involving everyone in the polity usually retreats when confronted with structural inequality and exclu- sionary development.13 Like empathy, shared belong- ing is learned through processes and institutions. It is hard for people expelled from formal education and without access to basic social resources such as health care, a decent house-even a decent room-because of joblessness and poverty, to feel like members of the same social setting than those having them in excess. In turn, allegiance to an international governing class and to the corporate world has replaced citizenship in the ranks of the very wealthy. Elites have loosened their material and symbolic links to any particular country, any particular polity or any particular citizenship, becoming increasingly committed to corporate interests and goals and even to the country that houses the head- quarters of the corporations they work for. Democratic accountability has been eroded even further as the national elites have become more accountable to the 1. International Labor Organization, Yearbook of Labor Statistics 1996 (Geneva: ILO, 1996), p. 389. 2. Research on CEO salaries conducted by the consulting firm Towers Perrin, Pigina 12 (Buenos Aires), February 16, 1997. GDP figures are from World Bank, World Economic Report 1996 (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1996). 3. See Guillermo O'Donnell, "Illusions About Consolidation," Journal of Democracy, Vol. 7, No. 2, April 1996, pp. 34-51. 4. See Carlos M. Vilas, "Participation, Inequality, and the Whereabouts of Democracy," in D. Chalmers, C.M. Vilas, et. al., eds., The New Politics of Inequality in Latin America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 3-42. See also Steven Volk, "'Democracy' Versus 'Democracy'," NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol. XXX, No. 4, January/February 1997, pp. 6-12. 5. See Claus Offe, Contradicciones en el estado de bienestar (Madrid: Alianza, 1990), pp. 151-167. 6. See Carlos Marichal, "The Rapid Rise of the Neobanqueros," NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol. XXX, No. 6, May/June 1997, pp. 27-31. 7. Guillermo de la Peha, "Estructura e historia: La viabilidad de los nuevos sujetos," in Transformaciones sociales y acciones global financial community and to multilateral agencies like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). Because the loans that these agencies offer are politically conditioned, many government officials con- sider themselves no longer accountable to their citizens but to the lending agencies themselves. The relation of representation which is central to any electoral democ- racy has moved from a link between government and citizens, to a link between government and these finan- cial institutions. The self empowerment of the people, moving from clientism to a full-fledged citizenship, is the only way out of these authoritarian democracies, and the only escape from authoritarianism in general. Most of the agenda for the promotion of effective democracy has been prompted by the efforts of people to organize them- selves in the face of repression from governments and scorn from conservative intellectuals. From these efforts have come the movements for human rights, labor rights, freedom of information, women's rights, ethnic and racial pluralism, peasant access to land, the rule of law and environmental protection. In its very beginnings, citizenship was accessible to just a tiny proportion of individuals-free, literate, adult, propertied, native-born males. It has been the task and the success of a whole range of social move- ments to open up the rights and obligations of citizen- ship to larger proportions of the adult population, emancipating both citizenship and democracy from class, gender and racial boundaries. Yet this move from subordination to citizenship is neither spontaneous nor inevitable. As with everything in politics-and in human life-it has to be brought about by need, desire and commitment. 1. International Labor Organization, Yearbook of Labor Statistics 1996 (Geneva: ILO, 1996), p. 389. 2. Research on CEO salaries conducted by the consulting firm Towers Perrin, Pigina 12 (Buenos Aires), February 16, 1997. GDP figures are from World Bank, World Economic Report 1996 (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1996). 3. See Guillermo O'Donnell, "Illusions About Consolidation," Journal of Democracy, Vol. 7, No. 2, April 1996, pp. 34-51. 4. See Carlos M. Vilas, "Participation, Inequality, and the Whereabouts of Democracy," in D. Chalmers, C.M. Vilas, et. al., eds., The New Politics of Inequality in Latin America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 3-42. See also Steven Volk, "'Democracy' Versus 'Democracy'," NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol. XXX, No. 4, January/February 1997, pp. 6-12. 5. See Claus Offe, Contradicciones en el estado de bienestar (Madrid: Alianza, 1990), pp. 151-167. 6. See Carlos Marichal, "The Rapid Rise of the Neobanqueros," NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol. XXX, No. 6, May/June 1997, pp. 27-31. 7. Guillermo de la Peha, "Estructura e historia: La viabilidad de los nuevos sujetos," in Transformaciones sociales y acciones colectivas (Mexico City: El Colegio de Mbxico, 1994), pp. 141-159. 8. Isis Duarte, et. al., La cultura politica de los dominicanos (Santiago de los Caballeros: Pontificia Universidad Cat6lica Madre y Maestra, 1995). 9. Institute of Social Research/UNAM, Los mexicanos de los noventas (Mexico City: IIS/UNAM, 1996). 10. Mitchell Seligson, Political Culture in Nicaragua: Transitions 1991-1995, Monograph, Washington, D.C., December 1995; Jack Spence, et. al., Chapultepec Five Years Later: El Salvador's Political Reality and Uncertain Future (Boston: Hemispheric Initiatives, 1997). 11. See Francisco Weffort, Qual democracia? (S5o Paulo: Schwarcz, 1992). See also Mercedes Gonz6lez de la Rocha, The Resources of Poverty: Women and Survival in a Mexican City (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1994). 12. See a lengthy discussion of this point in Carlos M. Vilas, "Are There Left Alternatives? A Debate from Latin America," in Leo Panitch, ed., The Socialist Register 1996 (London: Merlin Press, 1996), pp. 264-285. 13. Herman Heller, Escritos politicos (Madrid: Alianza, 1985), pp. 257-268.
