Luis Rubio

“One is not who he is because of what he writes, but because of what he has read.” Jorge Luis Borges

I recently had access to a marvelous read, The Book of Disquiet, by the poet and writer Fernando Pessoa. I had read his chronicles and novels that described Lisbon, his city, in exceptional fashion. This book showed me an author who was many authors in one, with distinct stories, positions, ideological visions and even biographies. The book is a compendium of incomplete writings, notes and diverse paragraphs intended to be the autobiography of one of his characters, an alter ego of Pessoa himself. It is like a diary with prose, poetry and narrative that one cannot put down for even a minute.

The Passage of Power is the fourth volume of the biography that Robert Caro writes about Lyndon Johnson, and comprises the period when Johnson becomes the U.S. Senate majority leader until Kennedy’s death, the fact with which Johnson assumed the presidency. What’s extraordinary about the biography is that it is a blood-and-guts study of power: a detailed and punctilious explanation of bona fide politics. Just for illustration, in the first volume Caro devotes 14 pages to describing how Johnson, a young mover and shaker of 17, became the leader of the senatorial assistants by spending five hours in the Senate restrooms where he shaved 57 times while he won over all of his peers. The Caro biography is somewhat the face side of the coin of Memorias by Gonzalo N. Santos: two politicians out to conquer the world.

A World Transformed is a bit sui generis. Written by President Bush Sr. and his then National Security Advisor, Brent Scowcroft, the book deals with the worldwide transformation that this U.S. President was witness to during his mandate. While this former president could have written any one of the memoirs among the thousands that prominent politicians publish, what is extraordinary about this tome is that it reveals the dilemmas that Bush faced and the way he conducted his administration in attempting to achieve a successful landing of the relationship between the United States and Russia after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German reunification and the demise of the Soviet Union. An enormous geopolitical transformation related as if observed by its two main protagonists. The book is not new (it was published in 1999) but it is a fascinating story recounted with modesty and aplomb.

The Law of the Constitution, a treatise on Rule of Law, originally published by AV Dicey in 1885 and only available thanks to the extraordinary Liberty Fund editorial project, constitutes an opus magnum on the contents and nature, but also the limitations, of Rule of Law. The most riveting part of Dicey’s study for me is the comparison of the English and the French legal systems in terms of Rule of Law. For Dicey, this concerns two systems so foreign to each other in fundamental conception that they start with radically distinct ways to understand and conceive of the relationship of the individual and the State. Protection of property as conferred by administrative law (as Dicey calls the French system) before that which the English “common law” confers entails different treatments for investors, commerce and actions on the part of individuals. These differences explain many of the conflicts we observe in the application, for example, competition law in Mexico, (which is based on the English system) before the general legal system, which derives from Roman law.

Wayne A. Leighton and Edward J. López have written a captivating book on the factors that favor or impede change in a society. Their point of departure is that “political change is as follows: Incentives are shaped by the rules of the game, which economists call institutions, and these institutions in turn are shaped by the ideas in a society. In other words, ideas matter”. From this the authors attempt to respond to three queries: Why do democracies generate policies that impose net costs on society? Why do such policies persist over long periods of time, even if they are known to be wasteful socially and there are better alternatives? And why do certain wasteful policies eventually get repealed, while others endure Their response, in Madmen, Intellectuals and Academic Scribblers, is that change comes about when those who create the ideas, those who argue about these and those who decide on political policies rebel against the existing order and become change-promoting “entrepreneurs”.

The most profound and interesting book I have read so far this year was Margaret Thatcher’s authorized biography*, published posthumously. Beyond the biographical data, what was extraordinary with respect to the stateswoman was that, not being a member of the British elite, she came to revolutionize her country and the world. Her instincts were those of an ordinary person who saw the difficulty and complexity of life from below. The book has the virtue of studying the prime minister under her own circumstances, not with the benefit of time: this perspective allows understanding the decision making process, her determination and the enormous risks she was willing to take. The book is fascinating because it permits the reader to understand the dilemmas of power, and precisely therein lies the enormous grandeur of the subject of the biography: a woman who, in effect, took on the world and defeated it. Although her party’s traditionalists would later remove her from office, by that time she had already changed her country and, without doubt, the world.

Erick Schmidt and Jared Cohen, two key Google actors, analyze how the advance of technology affects the power structures. One of their conclusions is that governments that close in the face of technological change will be forever engaged in combating the forfeiture of control that this closure entails. They study the case of Mubarak in Egypt and how his decision to bar access to the Internet might have precipitated his fall from power and how the Chinese government has constructed mechanisms to utilize that same vehicle –the Internet- as a means of control. The authors explore all manner of scenarios: a fragmented world in which national borders are recreated in cyberspace, mechanisms that charge for access to diverse sites, visa requirement for navigating into some sites, and opportunities for personal development never before seen, such as online education. Of particular importance is their analysis of Internet security and the cyber wars that could be brewing. The New Digital Age is a profound book that leaves behind much food for thought.

* Margaret Thatcher-The Authorized Biography, Volume I: From Grantham to the Falklands

www.cidac.org

@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

Lee Kuan Yew, the universal statesman who made possible the transformation of a filthy harbor, saturated with corruption and all sorts of vices, into one of the most modern city-states of the world, Singapore, has spent decades observing and analyzing with enormous depth and vision what is happening in the world. Supposedly retired, he is a frequent visitor of presidents and prime ministers in Beijing, Washington, Davos and other capitals where his wisdom is always appreciated and respected. Recently, three academics interviewed him and gathered all this wisdom in a small volume* for ordinary mortals.

His comments on China and its evolution over the future of that nation are particularly valuable. The following is a summary of that part of the book:

Are Chinese leaders serious about displacing the United States as the number 1 power in Asia? In the world? “Of course. Why not? They have transformed a poor society by an economic miracle to become now the second-largest economy in the world… They have followed the American lead in putting people in space and shooting down satellites with missiles. Theirs is a culture 4,000 years old with 1.3 billion people, many of great talent -a huge and very talented pool to draw from. How could they not aspire to be number 1 in Asia, and in time the world?”

“The concern of America is what kind of world they will face when China is able to contest their preeminence… Many medium and small countries in Asia are also concerned. They are uneasy that China may want to resume the imperial status it had in earlier centuries and have misgivings about being treated as vassal states having to send tribute to China as they used to in past centuries. They expect Singaporeans to be more respectful of China as it grows more influential”.

“The Chinese have concluded that their best strategy is to build a strong and prosperous future, and use their huge and increasingly skilled and educated workers to out-sell and out-build all others. They will avoid any action that will sour relations with the U.S. To challenge a stronger and technologically superior power like the U.S. will abort their ‘peaceful rise'”.

“The Chinese have calculated that they need 30 to 40, maybe 50, years of peace and quiet to catch up, build up their system, change it from the communist system to the market system. They must avoid the mistakes made by Germany and Japan. Their competition for power, influence and resources led in the last century to two terrible wars…”

“China will inevitably catch up to the U.S. in absolute GDP. But its creativity may never match America’s, because its culture does not permit a free exchange and contest of ideas. How else to explain how a country with four times as many people as America -and presumably four times as many talented people- does not come up with technological breakthroughs?”

“China faces enormous economic problems -a disparity in income between the rich coastal cities and the inland provinces, and in income within the coastal cities. They have got to watch that carefully or they might get severe discontent and civil disorder. Technology is going to make their system of governance obsolete. By 2030, 70% or maybe 75% of their people will be in cities, small towns, big towns, mega big towns. They are going to have cell phones, Internet, satellite TV. They are going to be well-informed; they can organize themselves. You cannot govern them the way you are governing them now, where you just placate and monitor a few people, because the numbers will be so large”.

“Straight-line extrapolations from such a remarkable record are not realistic. China has more handicaps going forward and more obstacles to overcome than most observers recognize. Chief among these are their problems of governance: the absence of the rule of law, which in today’s China is closer to the rule of the emperor; a huge county in which little emperors across a vast expanse exercise great local influence; cultural habits that limit imagination and creativity, rewarding conformity; a language that shapes thinking through epigrams and 4,000 years or texts that suggest everything worth saying has already been said, and said better by earlier writers; a language that is exceedingly difficult for foreigners to learn sufficiently to embrace China and be embraced by its society; and severe constraints on its ability to attract and assimilate talent from other societies in the world”.

“China is not going to become a liberal democracy; if it did, it would collapse. Of that, I am quite sure, and the Chinese intelligentsia also understands that. If you believe that there is going to be a revolution of some sort in China for democracy, you are wrong. Where are the students of Tiananmen now? They are irrelevant. The Chinese people want a revived China”.

“To achieve the modernization of China, her Communist leaders are prepared to try all and every method, except for democracy with one person and one vote in a multi-party system. Their two main reasons are their belief that the Communist Party of China must have a monopoly on power to ensure stability; and their deep fear of instability in a multiparty free-for-all, which would lead to a loss of control by the center over the provinces, with horrendous consequences, like the warlord years of the 1920’s and ’30s.”

Finally, his rosy thoughts on how he expects China to evolve to 2050: “China discovered that to run a modern state it needed the rule of law. It had a comprehensive set of legal codes by 2035 and found that a stable legal system, together with clear administrative rules, actually strengthened central authority. Erring provincial and local governments were brought to book through due process of law, a method more effective than the endless negotiations that had been the practice before. Also, with the rule of law, ordinary citizens are now protected from the arbitrary authority of officials. Business enterprises are also able to plan large long-term investments. The independence of the judiciary took another 20 years to achieve in practice, because historical tradition, which required magistrates, as officers of the emperor, to carry out imperial orders, was deeply embedded in Chinese officialdom”.

In this book Lee says a lot more, not all commendable, about Mexicans, democracy and globalization. Talented and highly intelligent, he has thought about the key issues of the future on which it is imperative to reflect.

*Allison, Blackwill and Wyne: Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, The United States and the World, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2013

www.cidac.org
@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

Lee Kuan Yew, the universal statesman who made possible the transformation of a filthy harbor, saturated with corruption and all sorts of vices, into one of the most modern city-states of the world, Singapore, has spent decades observing and analyzing with enormous depth and vision what is happening in the world. Supposedly retired, he is a frequent visitor of presidents and prime ministers in Beijing, Washington, Davos and other capitals where his wisdom is always appreciated and respected. Recently, three academics interviewed him and gathered all this wisdom in a small volume* for ordinary mortals.

His comments on China and its evolution over the future of that nation are particularly valuable. The following is a summary of that part of the book:

Are Chinese leaders serious about displacing the United States as the number 1 power in Asia? In the world? “Of course. Why not? They have transformed a poor society by an economic miracle to become now the second-largest economy in the world… They have followed the American lead in putting people in space and shooting down satellites with missiles. Theirs is a culture 4,000 years old with 1.3 billion people, many of great talent -a huge and very talented pool to draw from. How could they not aspire to be number 1 in Asia, and in time the world?”

“The concern of America is what kind of world they will face when China is able to contest their preeminence… Many medium and small countries in Asia are also concerned. They are uneasy that China may want to resume the imperial status it had in earlier centuries and have misgivings about being treated as vassal states having to send tribute to China as they used to in past centuries. They expect Singaporeans to be more respectful of China as it grows more influential”.

“The Chinese have concluded that their best strategy is to build a strong and prosperous future, and use their huge and increasingly skilled and educated workers to out-sell and out-build all others. They will avoid any action that will sour relations with the U.S. To challenge a stronger and technologically superior power like the U.S. will abort their ‘peaceful rise'”.

“The Chinese have calculated that they need 30 to 40, maybe 50, years of peace and quiet to catch up, build up their system, change it from the communist system to the market system. They must avoid the mistakes made by Germany and Japan. Their competition for power, influence and resources led in the last century to two terrible wars…”

“China will inevitably catch up to the U.S. in absolute GDP. But its creativity may never match America’s, because its culture does not permit a free exchange and contest of ideas. How else to explain how a country with four times as many people as America -and presumably four times as many talented people- does not come up with technological breakthroughs?”

“China faces enormous economic problems -a disparity in income between the rich coastal cities and the inland provinces, and in income within the coastal cities. They have got to watch that carefully or they might get severe discontent and civil disorder. Technology is going to make their system of governance obsolete. By 2030, 70% or maybe 75% of their people will be in cities, small towns, big towns, mega big towns. They are going to have cell phones, Internet, satellite TV. They are going to be well-informed; they can organize themselves. You cannot govern them the way you are governing them now, where you just placate and monitor a few people, because the numbers will be so large”.

“Straight-line extrapolations from such a remarkable record are not realistic. China has more handicaps going forward and more obstacles to overcome than most observers recognize. Chief among these are their problems of governance: the absence of the rule of law, which in today’s China is closer to the rule of the emperor; a huge county in which little emperors across a vast expanse exercise great local influence; cultural habits that limit imagination and creativity, rewarding conformity; a language that shapes thinking through epigrams and 4,000 years or texts that suggest everything worth saying has already been said, and said better by earlier writers; a language that is exceedingly difficult for foreigners to learn sufficiently to embrace China and be embraced by its society; and severe constraints on its ability to attract and assimilate talent from other societies in the world”.

“China is not going to become a liberal democracy; if it did, it would collapse. Of that, I am quite sure, and the Chinese intelligentsia also understands that. If you believe that there is going to be a revolution of some sort in China for democracy, you are wrong. Where are the students of Tiananmen now? They are irrelevant. The Chinese people want a revived China”.

“To achieve the modernization of China, her Communist leaders are prepared to try all and every method, except for democracy with one person and one vote in a multi-party system. Their two main reasons are their belief that the Communist Party of China must have a monopoly on power to ensure stability; and their deep fear of instability in a multiparty free-for-all, which would lead to a loss of control by the center over the provinces, with horrendous consequences, like the warlord years of the 1920’s and ’30s.”

Finally, his rosy thoughts on how he expects China to evolve to 2050: “China discovered that to run a modern state it needed the rule of law. It had a comprehensive set of legal codes by 2035 and found that a stable legal system, together with clear administrative rules, actually strengthened central authority. Erring provincial and local governments were brought to book through due process of law, a method more effective than the endless negotiations that had been the practice before. Also, with the rule of law, ordinary citizens are now protected from the arbitrary authority of officials. Business enterprises are also able to plan large long-term investments. The independence of the judiciary took another 20 years to achieve in practice, because historical tradition, which required magistrates, as officers of the emperor, to carry out imperial orders, was deeply embedded in Chinese officialdom”.

In this book Lee says a lot more, not all commendable, about Mexicans, democracy and globalization. Talented and highly intelligent, he has thought about the key issues of the future on which it is imperative to reflect.

*Allison, Blackwill and Wyne: Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, The United States and the World, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2013

www.cidac.org

@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

“The old is dying and the new cannot be born: in the interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms will appear”. Thus wrote Antonio Gramsci in his Prison Notebooks. We Mexicans have much experience in these latter because, in the long run we’ve had decades of a series of transitions that have no beginning or end. In contrast to the handful of nations that achieved –due to circumstances or to exceptional leadership- constructing a negotiated transition, Mexico’s course has been a medley of true reforms, prejudices, competition and clashes with interests devoted to undermining the process. The challenges have come equally from Right and Left, bureaucracy and de facto (or veto) powers. On occasion due to apathy, on others due to the absence of vision or capacity for political delivery, the country has gone from being an authoritarian system to an undefined hybrid, steeped in contradictions and incomplete processes. I wonder whether the ongoing complexity in negotiating often ludicrous legislation (as with the political reform) or ideological battles around the energy bill could be explained in this dimension.

There are two examples that seem particularly relevant and on which there is so vast a literature that allows for a dispassionate and revealing reading. China is a country in which its government and party have planned down to even the time the sun comes out and, however, it experiences a process of change that is ever more less under the control of its authorities. The Eastern European countries supply a contrasting example because in these nothing was planned: their national and political evolution was due to a great extent to what happened in another latitude, the Soviet Union. Both cases cast light on the subject.

Robert Kaplan* has for years, and various books, been studying the Chinese evolution. His ideas may be summed up as follows: a) the era of the technocrats is coming to an end, giving rise to that of the politicians, and “politicians, even in liberal democracies, exploit people’s emotions. That could lead to more erratic, more nationalistic leaders”; b) the problem is not the democracy: “the problem in China is a vast and undisciplined State in the messy and decades-long process of liberation”; c) “Democratization in its initial stages in any society means a diminution in the power of the elite, and with the exception of totalitarian states  –which China is not anymore- the fall of the elites may lead to more intemperate policies in the short run”; and d) “the problem with authoritarian states is that if they remain in place for several decades, the only people who end up capable of running ministries and formulating policies are the authoritarian elites themselves. Thus, toppling such systems entails serious risks”.

Anne Applebaum**, expert in Eastern European countries, describes the relative success (or failure) of these nations in the following manner: “The factor most closely linked with stability and growth (in the Eastern European nations) is human: those countries that had an ‘alternative elite’ –a cadre of people who had worked together in the past, who had thought about government and who were at some level prepared to take it over- were far more likely both to carry out radical reforms and to persuade the population to accept them. Hungary, Poland –and, to a lesser extent, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and the Balkan states- all benefited from the presence of people who had been thinking about change, and organizing to carry it out, for a long time”. “Elsewhere, opposition groups had not been so well unified or repression had been much harsher. So when the Soviet Union disbanded, former communists –perhaps dressed up as social democrats or nationalists- took charge again. Some were better, some were worse.  On the whole, they did not press for radical change –because radical change was not in their interest”.

It appears evident that both perspectives offer lessons for Mexico. Like China, Mexico underwent an incomplete change in which, despite the alternation of parties in government, the authoritarian structures of yesteryear have not been dismantled nor has a body of civil servants that grew and developed independently of the old system been incorporated. As in the least successful nations of Eastern Europe, old PRIist functionaries remained in control of the State apparatus, rendering the approval and implementation of significant reforms more difficult. It’s sufficient to recall the way that the unions of the state entities were maintained unimpaired and untouched throughout this period or the way officials of the PRD and the PAN, respectively, adapted to the ancestral, corrupt, ways of governing.

Perhaps the main lesson that these examples offer is the fact that, in the absence of an explicit agreement among the elites (Spain, Chile or South Africa) or the total collapse of the former system (Eastern Europe), the future of a nation depends in good measure on the leadership capacity found at the moment. That is, there is an extraordinary element of luck in all of this. China is undergoing a huge process of change on a daily basis and has yet to see what type of landing it will have. For their part, the Eastern European nations have exhibited very distinct politico-economic ways in their transition process, some nations ending up in much better shape than others.

In his study on the (religious) Reform movement, the birth of Protestantism, Patrick Collinson*** affirms that “no revolution, however drastic, has ever involved a total repudiation of what came before it. What do revolutionaries have to work with but the ideas and aspirations that they have inherited? What was Stalin but a new kind of tsar? Thomas Hobbes pronounced “the Papacy is not other than the Ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, seated crowned upon the grave thereof”. “Jesus was not the first Christian, and Luther was not a Lutheran”. The political changes and transitions among systems take time and are never alike.

Mexico will have to find its own way, with the structures, persons and vision available to it. One paradox of our peculiar evolution is that the party that always proffered the radical reform (in the Applebaum sense) did not know how to head it nor did it have the grandeur to attempt it. Now it’s up to the PRI to try it, avoiding running into snags along the way as has occurred with the Chinese government. It is not surprising that when China “hit the wall” in the past few months, its government began searching for a new strategy. Mexico is not too far from experiencing a similar crash against the proverbial wall. As soon as that happens, the government will have to build a way out. The advantage is that a lot of planning doesn’t make the difference. Maybe, after one of these typically-Mexican slapdash ventures, things will turn out well for it.

*The China Puzzle.

**http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/anne-applebaum-preparing-for-freedom-before-it-comes/2013/02/07/80729050-70af-11e2-ac36-3d8d9dcaa2e2_print.html

***The Reformation.

www.cidac.org

@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

“Each tells the tale as it went for him at the fair” says a popular old refrain. The same is true for corruption, access to justice and the quality of government. It is not in vain, as GK Chesterton once wrote, that “the poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly, the rich have always objected to being governed at all”. The perspective is important: each citizen finds himself in a distinct place on the social, political and economic value chain in society and this place confers upon him a greater or lesser capacity to influence his own destiny or that of the society. Inevitably, these differences translate into distinct social behaviors. Corruption emanates precisely from these differences and manifests itself in the strangest ways.

Corruption, together with impunity, is one of the ills that the major part of the population identifies as at the heart of our problems. In conversations, tweets or serious discussions, it is impossible to elucidate the generalized perception of the endemic ills to which the population objects and that are, however, immovable, a permanent part of the scenario. At the same time, these same individuals who object not infrequently resort to this self-same corruption to resolve a problem or to confront an everyday situation. Is this a contradiction?

A similar situation can be observed in the way that the application of the law is deliberated. For some the central problem lies in the unwillingness, or inability, of the authority to make the existing regulations stick and, even, in their propensity to modify the laws in order not to have to enforce them. For others, the laws are designed to benefit the powerful and to preserve their interests. Can one and the same law possess these two characteristics, be inherently contradictory?

For its part, the authority, of any type and level, confronts daily realities that become inexorable and defining. Undoubtedly, some governments prefer to privilege antagonistic and even violent groups because of their own political or ideological motivations, but the majority knows that enforcement of the law is often impossible in the terms under which the regulations establish it. The case is not infrequent of a municipal president or a state governor who employs public force as established by the law, only to find himself with a political conflict of enormous scope due to his acting: the original matter shifts to second place and the problem the society identifies as the “real” one ends up being the “repression” or the violence with which the governor acted. John le Carré said it very well in one of his novels: “All power corrupts but some must govern”. How, then, to govern under conditions like these?

There is no doubt that the country is experiencing moments of political and social effervescence that project a society in conflict with itself but also, returning to the original theme, rights and realities are disproportionately biased in favor of those at the pinnacle of the power value chain. The corruption -impunity- that characterizes  the way authorities, some companies and criminals incur are nothing other than the reflection of the excessive differences of power and access to same in this chain.

Corruption is many simultaneous things. In some instances it is the consequence, in others the symptom and, for many, a means to the solution of their problems. It depends on the position on the “value chain” of power where one finds himself. For the run-of-the-mill citizen, corruption is the solution to the authority’s excessive discretional power: a bribe –small or large- allows the citizen to wriggle free from an inspector, a traffic officer or a bureaucrat whose powers are so vast that this ends up being a functional solution. Corruption is symptomatic of a festering political system characterized by the existence of so many laws and rules that confer such broad powers on the authority that the potential for abuse is immense and permanent.

In a word, corruption derives from the existence of such generalized, imprecise and undefined laws and regulations that they open vast spaces of discretional attributions, conferring excessive power –arbitrary- on the authority, at all levels. This excess of authority translates into diverse social evils: inequity in the application of the law, the possibility of rewarding some and punishing others employing the same statute, whether they be union or company bosses or individuals. It translates into impunity -another form of corruption- for those wielding power.

This context is what makes it possible for the “de facto powers” to be nourished and to grow, for delinquents and criminals to appropriate the streets, highways or border crossings and for there to exist an environment of permanent uncertainty regarding people’s security and that of their rights and property. In the country, the most commonplace of inspectors or their peers in other ambits possess such enormous authority that they can decide on the opening or closing of a company or whether a person ends up in jail. In similar fashion, the powers of the regulatory entities are so vast that they can decide on things at will. So much arbitrary power makes it impossible to have a reliable and credible authority. Instead of having clear guidelines, the authority possesses great latitude, opening spaces of enormous impunity, thus arbitrary and illegitimate, and also dysfunctional. These excesses in turn translate into environments that facilitate the entrenchment of monopolistic practices, the taking of buildings or roads and violence. Or passing ludicrous laws. Recognition is key to observing that these elements comprise distinct sides of the same coin.

Under these circumstances, it would be absurd to pretend that more of the same type of regulations, laws or entities could end corruption: laws have consequences. What Mexico requires is to delimit the boundaries of the powers that the laws grant, open spaces of competition in all ambits, eliminate restrictions on trade and imports and, in a word, create conditions so that no one –government, enterprises, unions, political parties- would entertain the possibility of accumulating so much power or the capacity for imposition as happens now. When the playing field of this “power value chain” is more level, less biased and more equitable, the country could flourish.

Corruption and impunity, twin sisters, are the product of our political reality that takes root in laws and regulations. The reality will change when the game preserves from which these emanate are attacked, when bureaucratic faculties are well defined and delimited, eliminating arbitrariness, the mother of all corruption and impunity.

The electoral bill just passed by the Senate is a jewel of incentives for corruption and impunity. It would be desirable that it be dismissed outright by the Congress. If this does not happen, the citizenship better hope that the energy reform (that was exchanged for the electoral bill) at least justifies such an arbitrary law and the anti-democratic features it comes associated with.

www.cidac.org

@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

“Each tells the tale as it went for him at the fair” says a popular old refrain. The same is true for corruption, access to justice and the quality of government. It is not in vain, as GK Chesterton once wrote, that “the poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly, the rich have always objected to being governed at all”. The perspective is important: each citizen finds himself in a distinct place on the social, political and economic value chain in society and this place confers upon him a greater or lesser capacity to influence his own destiny or that of the society. Inevitably, these differences translate into distinct social behaviors. Corruption emanates precisely from these differences and manifests itself in the strangest ways.

Corruption, together with impunity, is one of the ills that the major part of the population identifies as at the heart of our problems. In conversations, tweets or serious discussions, it is impossible to elucidate the generalized perception of the endemic ills to which the population objects and that are, however, immovable, a permanent part of the scenario. At the same time, these same individuals who object not infrequently resort to this self-same corruption to resolve a problem or to confront an everyday situation. Is this a contradiction?

A similar situation can be observed in the way that the application of the law is deliberated. For some the central problem lies in the unwillingness, or inability, of the authority to make the existing regulations stick and, even, in their propensity to modify the laws in order not to have to enforce them. For others, the laws are designed to benefit the powerful and to preserve their interests. Can one and the same law possess these two characteristics, be inherently contradictory?

For its part, the authority, of any type and level, confronts daily realities that become inexorable and defining. Undoubtedly, some governments prefer to privilege antagonistic and even violent groups because of their own political or ideological motivations, but the majority knows that enforcement of the law is often impossible in the terms under which the regulations establish it. The case is not infrequent of a municipal president or a state governor who employs public force as established by the law, only to find himself with a political conflict of enormous scope due to his acting: the original matter shifts to second place and the problem the society identifies as the “real” one ends up being the “repression” or the violence with which the governor acted. John le Carré said it very well in one of his novels: “All power corrupts but some must govern”. How, then, to govern under conditions like these?

There is no doubt that the country is experiencing moments of political and social effervescence that project a society in conflict with itself but also, returning to the original theme, rights and realities are disproportionately biased in favor of those at the pinnacle of the power value chain. The corruption -impunity- that characterizes  the way authorities, some companies and criminals incur are nothing other than the reflection of the excessive differences of power and access to same in this chain.

Corruption is many simultaneous things. In some instances it is the consequence, in others the symptom and, for many, a means to the solution of their problems. It depends on the position on the “value chain” of power where one finds himself. For the run-of-the-mill citizen, corruption is the solution to the authority’s excessive discretional power: a bribe –small or large- allows the citizen to wriggle free from an inspector, a traffic officer or a bureaucrat whose powers are so vast that this ends up being a functional solution. Corruption is symptomatic of a festering political system characterized by the existence of so many laws and rules that confer such broad powers on the authority that the potential for abuse is immense and permanent.

In a word, corruption derives from the existence of such generalized, imprecise and undefined laws and regulations that they open vast spaces of discretional attributions, conferring excessive power –arbitrary- on the authority, at all levels. This excess of authority translates into diverse social evils: inequity in the application of the law, the possibility of rewarding some and punishing others employing the same statute, whether they be union or company bosses or individuals. It translates into impunity -another form of corruption- for those wielding power.

This context is what makes it possible for the “de facto powers” to be nourished and to grow, for delinquents and criminals to appropriate the streets, highways or border crossings and for there to exist an environment of permanent uncertainty regarding people’s security and that of their rights and property. In the country, the most commonplace of inspectors or their peers in other ambits possess such enormous authority that they can decide on the opening or closing of a company or whether a person ends up in jail. In similar fashion, the powers of the regulatory entities are so vast that they can decide on things at will. So much arbitrary power makes it impossible to have a reliable and credible authority. Instead of having clear guidelines, the authority possesses great latitude, opening spaces of enormous impunity, thus arbitrary and illegitimate, and also dysfunctional. These excesses in turn translate into environments that facilitate the entrenchment of monopolistic practices, the taking of buildings or roads and violence. Or passing ludicrous laws. Recognition is key to observing that these elements comprise distinct sides of the same coin.

Under these circumstances, it would be absurd to pretend that more of the same type of regulations, laws or entities could end corruption: laws have consequences. What Mexico requires is to delimit the boundaries of the powers that the laws grant, open spaces of competition in all ambits, eliminate restrictions on trade and imports and, in a word, create conditions so that no one –government, enterprises, unions, political parties- would entertain the possibility of accumulating so much power or the capacity for imposition as happens now. When the playing field of this “power value chain” is more level, less biased and more equitable, the country could flourish.

Corruption and impunity, twin sisters, are the product of our political reality that takes root in laws and regulations. The reality will change when the game preserves from which these emanate are attacked, when bureaucratic faculties are well defined and delimited, eliminating arbitrariness, the mother of all corruption and impunity.

The electoral bill just passed by the Senate is a jewel of incentives for corruption and impunity. It would be desirable that it be dismissed outright by the Congress. If this does not happen, the citizenship better hope that the energy reform (that was exchanged for the electoral bill) at least justifies such an arbitrary law and the anti-democratic features it comes associated with.

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Luis Rubio

“The old is dying and the new cannot be born: in the interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms will appear”. Thus wrote Antonio Gramsci in his Prison Notebooks. We Mexicans have much experience in these latter because, in the long run we’ve had decades of a series of transitions that have no beginning or end. In contrast to the handful of nations that achieved –due to circumstances or to exceptional leadership- constructing a negotiated transition, Mexico’s course has been a medley of true reforms, prejudices, competition and clashes with interests devoted to undermining the process. The challenges have come equally from Right and Left, bureaucracy and de facto (or veto) powers. On occasion due to apathy, on others due to the absence of vision or capacity for political delivery, the country has gone from being an authoritarian system to an undefined hybrid, steeped in contradictions and incomplete processes. I wonder whether the ongoing complexity in negotiating often ludicrous legislation (as with the political reform) or ideological battles around the energy bill could be explained in this dimension.

There are two examples that seem particularly relevant and on which there is so vast a literature that allows for a dispassionate and revealing reading. China is a country in which its government and party have planned down to even the time the sun comes out and, however, it experiences a process of change that is ever more less under the control of its authorities. The Eastern European countries supply a contrasting example because in these nothing was planned: their national and political evolution was due to a great extent to what happened in another latitude, the Soviet Union. Both cases cast light on the subject.

Robert Kaplan* has for years, and various books, been studying the Chinese evolution. His ideas may be summed up as follows: a) the era of the technocrats is coming to an end, giving rise to that of the politicians, and “politicians, even in liberal democracies, exploit people’s emotions. That could lead to more erratic, more nationalistic leaders”; b) the problem is not the democracy: “the problem in China is a vast and undisciplined State in the messy and decades-long process of liberation”; c) “Democratization in its initial stages in any society means a diminution in the power of the elite, and with the exception of totalitarian states  –which China is not anymore- the fall of the elites may lead to more intemperate policies in the short run”; and d) “the problem with authoritarian states is that if they remain in place for several decades, the only people who end up capable of running ministries and formulating policies are the authoritarian elites themselves. Thus, toppling such systems entails serious risks”.

Anne Applebaum**, expert in Eastern European countries, describes the relative success (or failure) of these nations in the following manner: “The factor most closely linked with stability and growth (in the Eastern European nations) is human: those countries that had an ‘alternative elite’ –a cadre of people who had worked together in the past, who had thought about government and who were at some level prepared to take it over- were far more likely both to carry out radical reforms and to persuade the population to accept them. Hungary, Poland –and, to a lesser extent, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and the Balkan states- all benefited from the presence of people who had been thinking about change, and organizing to carry it out, for a long time”. “Elsewhere, opposition groups had not been so well unified or repression had been much harsher. So when the Soviet Union disbanded, former communists –perhaps dressed up as social democrats or nationalists- took charge again. Some were better, some were worse.  On the whole, they did not press for radical change –because radical change was not in their interest”.

It appears evident that both perspectives offer lessons for Mexico. Like China, Mexico underwent an incomplete change in which, despite the alternation of parties in government, the authoritarian structures of yesteryear have not been dismantled nor has a body of civil servants that grew and developed independently of the old system been incorporated. As in the least successful nations of Eastern Europe, old PRIist functionaries remained in control of the State apparatus, rendering the approval and implementation of significant reforms more difficult. It’s sufficient to recall the way that the unions of the state entities were maintained unimpaired and untouched throughout this period or the way officials of the PRD and the PAN, respectively, adapted to the ancestral, corrupt, ways of governing.

Perhaps the main lesson that these examples offer is the fact that, in the absence of an explicit agreement among the elites (Spain, Chile or South Africa) or the total collapse of the former system (Eastern Europe), the future of a nation depends in good measure on the leadership capacity found at the moment. That is, there is an extraordinary element of luck in all of this. China is undergoing a huge process of change on a daily basis and has yet to see what type of landing it will have. For their part, the Eastern European nations have exhibited very distinct politico-economic ways in their transition process, some nations ending up in much better shape than others.

In his study on the (religious) Reform movement, the birth of Protestantism, Patrick Collinson*** affirms that “no revolution, however drastic, has ever involved a total repudiation of what came before it. What do revolutionaries have to work with but the ideas and aspirations that they have inherited? What was Stalin but a new kind of tsar? Thomas Hobbes pronounced “the Papacy is not other than the Ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, seated crowned upon the grave thereof”. “Jesus was not the first Christian, and Luther was not a Lutheran”. The political changes and transitions among systems take time and are never alike.

Mexico will have to find its own way, with the structures, persons and vision available to it. One paradox of our peculiar evolution is that the party that always proffered the radical reform (in the Applebaum sense) did not know how to head it nor did it have the grandeur to attempt it. Now it’s up to the PRI to try it, avoiding running into snags along the way as has occurred with the Chinese government. It is not surprising that when China “hit the wall” in the past few months, its government began searching for a new strategy. Mexico is not too far from experiencing a similar crash against the proverbial wall. As soon as that happens, the government will have to build a way out. The advantage is that a lot of planning doesn’t make the difference. Maybe, after one of these typically-Mexican slapdash ventures, things will turn out well for it.

*The China Puzzle.

**http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/anne-applebaum-preparing-for-freedom-before-it-comes/2013/02/07/80729050-70af-11e2-ac36-3d8d9dcaa2e2_print.html

***The Reformation.

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NEXOS – Luis Rubio

Over the last four decades, Mexicans had it all: governments that had no idea what they were doing and that ended up causing profound economic and social crises  (LE-A and JL-P), governments that dealt with crisis and strove to do the best possible (M-DLM and EZ), governments that understood the reality and sought to change it radically (C-SG) and governments that attempted to change but that lacked the interest or the vision (VF-Q) or the capacity (FC-H) to achieve it. What we hadn’t had was a government with the capacity and disposition for change but without the least concern for the reality that they were endeavoring to alter.

The point of departure of today’s government was simple and overwhelming: the country has not been advancing, the economy exhibits a very poor performance, poverty has not been diminished and the political structures don’t respond to the needs of the country nor do they resolve its problems. In a word, the country is adrift said the then-presidential candidate and to alter that course requires an effective government. Whether one shares the adopted strategy or not, no one could dispute the essence of the diagnosis.

What is significant is not the diagnosis or the fact that, beyond the  general indicators from which the statements of the previous paragraph derive, the solution proposal, the strategy followed throughout this first year of government, does not respond to a specific analysis of what exists, to a calculation of the economic or social variables, or to an analysis of the dynamic that characterizes the country in general and each of its components, but it is rather the product of the comparison of how the country operated “when it did function” with the current situation. The relevant comparison that today’s government is encountering is not surprising given the personal biography of the president and his home state, is with the era of stabilizing development (1940s-1960s). What’s apparent about that era is eloquent: order, high economic growth rates, little political conflict and a government with the capacities necessary to preside over the destiny of the country and to act in the face of its challenges.

My hypothesis is that the roadmap of the government arose from that conception and that its strategy resides in the reconstruction of the structures and characteristics of times long past with the objective of converting the president into the heart of the State and the government into the factotum of economic development. That is, it’s about a political response –a search for power- to the problematic that the country is experiencing on all fronts, a factor that perhaps explains the emphasis on matters of power as well as the absence of specific projects on matters that overwhelm the population, such as public security, justice, corruption, bureaucratic abuse and the appalling performance of the system of public expenditures at all levels of government.

With that rationale, the government’s first stage consisted of establishing a sense of order, a hierarchy of authority and a strong presidency a cut above the everyday strife. To advance it made exceptionally skillful use of communication to undertake initiatives that range from the implantation of form as a basic element in political relations (perhaps the best example of this was the extraordinary care with which the inaugural ceremony was organized) up to the arrest of the teachers’ union leader and the construction of the so-called Pact for Mexico. The government faced up to instituting itself as the political heart of the country, imposing conditions of dialogue with its counterparts, limiting the “de facto -or veto- powers”, canceling channels of alternate communication, stipulating rules for big business, marking a distance with the U.S. government and some of its agencies and, in general, placing itself above interests that, in the governmental diagnosis, had grown at the expense of the State.

The strategy unfolds with that same power criterion in each area of governmental activity. In the case of the economy, the priority interest is expanding public expenditures, thus the categorical imperative for the government rested on increasing fiscal tax collection and reducing the spending available to consumers and businesses. In a word, the development project is the government. The government is changing the development model of the past two-odd decades to one no longer based on market criteria but in a strategy of power as a means of achieving development. The new model is political to a greater extent than economic and the wager consists of whether its benefits will translate or not into a higher economic growth rate than that reached in past decades.

To the government’s credit, it can be said that for some time the need has been evident for a change in direction for the simple reason that what there was wasn’t working. The relevant question is whether the shift of course that the government has executed in the development model is likely to achieve, in the words of President Peña, the transformation of the country. It is evident that one of the great deficits, if not the main one in recent decades, has been precisely the absence and ineffectiveness of the government. In this respect, it is clearly necessary to reestablish a sense of order and authority.

The problem is that it is not only effectiveness that is necessary; a suitable project is also required. Within this context, the meager results to date should not come as a surprise. The government has promised effectiveness but has come up short, not only in realities but also above all in its project. Reforms have not been aligned with each other and often are lacking in substance. The country is much more complex that the State of Mexico and, as illustrated by presidential decisions and results in matters such as housing, the economic growth rate, the fiscal miscellany and the way it has permitted those opposed to different reforms to join forces, leadership has been much less effective than the discourse promised. The play-off between rhetoric and reality could lead equally to an integral project review, which would be desirable, and to a new vicious circle of inflation, leadership and crisis, multiplied by the political conflict and insecurity that underlie these.

The world has changed dramatically in the five decades since the so-called “stabilizing development” development model breathed its last owing to exhaustion. From this perspective, no matter how indispensable the government’s strength were to be, the characteristics that today make countries successful transcend the fact of possessing an effective government: the existence of an effective government is a necessary condition for development to be possible, but it’s not enough. With all of their avatars, what makes nations like Korea, Indonesia, Ireland, Poland, Colombia and Chile successful is the leadership quality that their governments have achieved. That leadership has served to persuade their populations, to convince them of their projects and, in a word, to procure the legitimacy of the government and of the governor. That leadership is not especially economic: it’s not the public expenditure that exerts an impact on the citizenry, convinces unions to accept governmental mediation and confers certainty on investors so that these will commit substantial resources with a long-term view.

What makes the government successful is that it is effective in what essentially corresponds to it and that implies solutions for fundamental problems –security, physical infrastructure, justice, education, etc.- and that all social actors will be brought on board (utilizing all the resources necessary). Development is not a power project: it is a result of the effective action of the State.

The success of the government will not depend on how many reforms it passes –a poor measure of comparison with former governments- but instead on the problems that these reforms resolve. To date, the tenor of the current government, above all in the legislative terrain, has been more an exercise of power –to demonstrate that this government indeed has the capacity to achieve basic reforms- than of advancing a coherent, profound and continuous project of transformation. The difference doesn’t lie in the capacity of political operation (condition sine qua non to make development possible) but in the substance of its project. This might appear to be the same thing but it isn’t.

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Luis Rubio

Once when the Duke of Richelieu (1766‒1822), the French statesman, was planning a military campaign, an officer placed a finger on a map, saying: “We shall cross the river at this point.” Richelieu replied: “Excellent, sir, but your finger is not a bridge.” The difference between planning and achieving is enormous and is particularly notable when tensions are high, objectives are interlocked and the realities assert themselves.

The first year of the presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto has been everything that his fellow party members and detractors expected. As the former foresaw, the government has been efficient, organized, ordered and disciplined. There is a clear objective, it has reconstructed and fortified the structures of control, the governors have drawn back, the opposition parties are playing ball with the government (which has generated charges of “collaborationism”, not necessarily mistaken), the legislative agenda advances and the cabinet carries on without questioning anything. As his detractors anticipated, order is not the equivalent of having a plan, inexperience has translated into a very poor economic performance, insecurity is on the rise, the government’s popularity is ebbing and promises to maintain financial stability and eliminate obstacles to the development of the country vanish into thin air.

Beyond the contrasting positions and opposite perspectives that denote these dissimilarities, two things are unquestionable. The first is that today there is a government with a sense of power and order, something that had disappeared from the map since the seventies. Many criticize the excessive formality of the group in power, but forms are also content: they are an expression of order and a call to respect the rules, although these are unwritten, those of the PRIist system of yesteryear. The other, also irrefutable, is the profound contradiction between the government plan presented in the campaign that vowed to stand guard over economic stability, eliminate the obstacles to economic growth and launch a “transformative” project, with a lack of coherence among the diverse reforms advanced, the spirit of not affecting the interests close to the heart of the governmental party and an economic agenda oriented more toward satisfying particular political and bureaucratic criteria than the pledged transformation.

After nearly two decades of paralysis in the matter of relevant reforms (there was much legislation, the majority more political and social in character than truly structural in nature), the first year of this government has been especially significant for its obsession with advancing an ambitious agenda of modifying substantive themes liable to affect interests and to create new realities above all economic. For many years, there was talk, but no movement, about key reforms associated with labor, education, telecommunications, energy and taxes. In all of these, the government has made a reform proposal, nearly all involving constitutional amendments, it has negotiated with the opposition parties and has achieved their approval. From a formal point of view, the result is impeccable: the entire agenda took the form of legislation. The only one missing, the implementing legislation in the matter of energy, is only a question of time because the governing coalition has sufficient votes for approving this itself.

The problem lies in the quality, in the content of the reforms. In addition to that, their implementation will deal with basic conflicts that, one expects, will be infinitely more complex than those that have plagued the streets of Mexico City and some others in months past. Concerning the content of the reforms, the government made its own the notion that the problem was the absence of reforms and not the content of these. What was important was to place a check mark on the list of required reforms and the reality, as if by magic, would be transformed. If one observes the content of several of the already approved reforms, not much can be expected from them, and this assuming that they’re implemented in an integral manner.

The labor reform does not entail radical change; instead of liberalizing the labor market it makes it more bureaucratic. The educational reform constitutes an advance, but not as deep as its supporters suggest and we have yet to see whether it can be implemented. The so-called tax reform ended up being a big fiscal miscellany without greater coherence than that of financing, with deficit and additional public debt, an exacerbated budget, nearly all oriented toward defraying more bureaucratic expenditure, contrary to what was promised and running the consequent risk of sparking a crisis. The telecoms reform appears to have ended with a new arrangement among de facto powers on the subject. The energy reform is inconclusive and, although it is by far the most promising, it is impossible to know at this time whether the content of the secondary laws will favor a real change. In any case, what’s evident is that there is no connection among the diverse reforms: what was important was not to remove obstacles to growth and increase productivity but rather to be able to check them off on the list.

After approval of the secondary laws in energy matters the implementation of that and of the rest of the reforms will come. That’s where the administration’s profound objectives as well as its capacity of political operation will be put to the test. Some matters are relatively simple to translate and shift from legal reform into concrete reality: the “real” labor market will continue to exist in a world of contrasts where, in the reality, the law is ignored; in telecommunications its own law is already the product of arrangements among the actors in the sector. The conflict will persist in educative matters, where the key lies in separating academic from the strictly labor issues. The great conflict edging nearer is that of the world of energy where the internal interests of bureaucratic monsters Pemex and CFE will lock horns –their bureaucracies, unions, contractors- who for decades have plundered and pillaged without bounds. The government has been concerned with the protests in the streets, but these will be nothing compared with what will materialize when attempts are made to modify the reality of the sector.

The year has been impressive in two senses: on the one hand, in the façade of achievements and advances. On the other, in the inexperience of the government and its devotion to trying to impose its view, turning a blind eye to the reality. I have no doubt in my mind that in the ensuing months we will witness a clash between these two vectors. All that is left is to trust that there will be the flexibility to adapt the objective to the reality and not the other way around.

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FORBES -Luis Rubio

Politics is, after all, a matter of leadership, exhortation and conviction. In a presidential system, it is the head of the executive branch who stands in the bully pulpit to disseminate the history that he wishes to construct along his mandate and get the population on board behind his project. President Peña’s government has achieved full control of communications and the media and has consolidated itself as the heart of domestic politics, something that had not happened since the beginning of the nineties. However, beyond its qualities and project, the government is saddled with weight of the history of the past and, above all, in the way this has been told, which is scarcely conducive to the type of transformation that the president seeks.

All countries have their history and their dose of victories and losses, of opportunities and triumphs. But one difference among societies that get ahead and those that persist in their stalemate is the way they see themselves and how they project themselves to the world. The first great media success of the current government took place long before it won the election and consisted of dominating communications to the foreign press. Outside of Mexico, the future president was presented as a transformer of the country, as a person capable of giving a new thrust to the Mexican economy. That strategy remains in place: the main communications begin abroad and filter in. I ask myself whether this will not respond to the fact that the ideological hegemony (Gramsci Dixit) is contrary in good part to what the president has said abroad that he proposes to accomplish.

While nations such as France or the U.S. celebrate their independence and other festivities as great epic triumphs, Mexicans tend to emphasize the defeats, the abuse of the foreigners, the invasions. The very fact of having a “National Museum of Interventions” reflects the national spirit that we Mexicans have learned through the textbooks. That history, that way of telling it, places us in the role of victims, of losers and a society that conceives of itself in that manner can never achieve development. As Macario Schettino says, in order to be successful one first must imagine it.

The narrative is the way that history is told. Although it is evident that whosoever proposed to relate a narrative is inevitably trying to manipulate history, this is always told from the perspective of the one in whose hands lies the power to do so. The mere title of the classic The Great Lies of Our History, of Francisco Bulnes, shows that there’s nothing new in this theme.  The question is why not tell a history of winners: not lying and not manipulating, only telling and convincing the population of that other side of our history which, in a totally conscious and even abusive way, has been ignored.

Mexico is a country rich in successful entrepreneurs and in migrants who transform their lives, Oaxacan Indians who are bilingual for in Mixtec and English because they never learned Spanish but who commandeer successful supermarkets. There are architects of international stature and pilots who fly with airlines in Maylasia. The Cinco de Mayo celebration has acquired almost epic proportions precisely because the Mexican is avid of triumphs and memorable examples.  However, our history is generous in highlighting the victims and parsimonious in extolling the victories. The successful history that the government of President Peña wishes to construct must start within because it is the Mexicans,   from the most modest to the most pretentious, who will have to believe and thus project it to the rest of the world.

Porfirio Díaz said that “governing Mexicans is more difficult than herding turkeys on horseback”. He doubtlessly knew something about that. The government, and the country, must start somewhere and the enormous number of successful Mexicans suggests that the stance of the victim does not come from the population but rather from the sum of poor governments in our history and the insistence on driving victimization home.

Mexico’s change will occur, in this government or in another, in this century or the next, when the country defines itself in a more constructive manner, when it sees itself as the same as the rest of the world.  In other words, success requires a competent government, but is impossible if the society does not believe it is possible. The sum of good public policy and a coherent narrative with a vision of the future could begin to make the difference.

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