INSTITUTE MONTAIGNE

Three questions to Luis Rubio
INTERVIEW – 10 JUNE 2022

Luis Rubio
CHAIRMAN OF MEXICAN THINK TANK MÉXICO EVALÚA

The invasion of Ukraine by Russia on February 24, 2022, was met with strongly by the West, characterized by remarkable collaboration between the US and Europe in imposing sanctions on Russia and providing assistance to Ukraine. This determination is however not shared by the whole world. Although 141 out of 193 countries voted in favor of the March 2 UN General Assembly resolution demanding that Russia “immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw all of its military forces from the territory of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders”, some abstentions were striking, including from Algeria, India, Senegal and South Africa. And even among those that condemned the Russian aggression by voting in favor of the resolution, a number of countries refused to follow the West in its attempt to isolate and weaken Moscow. This is in part due to some of these countries’ strategic and economic ties with Russia. They are not willing to compromise their national interests by joining in on sanctions, in a war widely seen as European – rather than global as the West portrays it. The argument of the threat to the rules-based world order brandished by the West is also difficult to hear for many countries, which accuse the United States of “double standards”, taking as an example the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq launched without the UN Security Council approval. 

This context has led Mahaut de Fougières, Head of Institut Montaigne’s International Politics Program, to gather non-Western perspectives to better understand countries’ perceived ambiguity on the conflict, the dynamics at play behind decisions, and the anticipated consequences of this war beyond European soil. Mexico is our first country. Its stance in the face of war in Ukraine is ambivalent. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador declined to impose sanctions on Russia and condemned the EU for sending arms to Kyiv, yet Mexico voted in favor of the March 2 UN General Assembly resolution demanding that Russia immediately end its military operations in Ukraine. Luis Rubio, Chairman of Mexican think tank México Evalúa, explains Mexico’s reaction is both influenced by its complex relationship with the United States and by President López Obrador’s lack of interest in foreign affairs.  

How do you explain Mexico’s stance on the conflict?

Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (“AMLO”) has a profound lack of knowledge and disdain for international affairs. When it comes to Mexico’s foreign policy, one of the President’s favorite quotes is “the best foreign policy is a good domestic one“. By somewhat inverting Carl von Clausewitz’s famous dictum (“war is a continuation of politics by other means“), the President shares his conception of the world and his disdain for the way in which it has evolved. AMLO is firmly anchored in the 1970s, a time during which he was the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, PRI) leader in his home state of Tabasco.

AMLO is firmly anchored in the 1970s, a time during which he was the PRI leader in his home state of Tabasco.

This was the time during which PEMEX, the government’s oil monopoly, was growing rapidly. It was also a period where government operatives, like the current President, had money to create a clientele favorable to the party in government. AMLO’s whole government has been built around a recreation of the 1970s model because from his perspective, things worked out well then. During that era, Mexico’s economy was inward looking and government driven.

The President thus believes in isolating Mexico politically and economically as much as possible for two reasons.

• First, on the economic side, he believes Mexico’s poverty, corruption and inequality all stem from the liberalization of the economy that took place during the 1980s. Whether this premise is right or wrong, he attributes these ills to the reforms carried out after the government went virtually bankrupt in 1982.
• Second, he has been backtracking on democratic reforms, concentrating power and eliminating or neutralizing the institutional structure built over the past few decades as counterweights to the presidential power, and he does not want to be judged by outsiders on these actions.

López Obrador has thus strived to limit contact with the US government and returned to Mexico’s old nature: rhetorically attacking the United States under the assumption that this strengthens his domestic popularity. However, AMLO is also a political realist, he understands the limits of what he can do, and was instrumental in facilitating the ratification of the USMCA trade agreement (the United States, Mexico, and Canada updated NAFTA to create the new USMCA in July 2020).

It is with this context in mind that the López Obrador administration’s contradictory stance towards Ukraine should be viewed, with conflicting domestic forces at play: those that want to be part of the international community and those that would rather retreat. Above all, it is an attempt to show independence vis-à-vis the great power of the North, an old way of playing hardball on relatively irrelevant issues with the US.

What is the impact – if any – of this war on domestic politics? Is there a consensus on this issue?

Protective of its national sovereignty (with an eye permanently glued to the North) and having operated mainly within the framework of a one-party system, to which the current administration is aiming to return, Mexican traditional foreign policy has always been based on a non-intervention strategy.

This is done to avoid outside judgment. It is hence unsurprising that the López Obrador government refused to impose sanctions on Russia. Though there is a constituency that supports this position, the average Mexican citizen “votes with his or her feet” (i.e. moving to a different city or state because they prefer its government policies compared to those in force where they currently reside).

Mexican traditional foreign policy has always been based on a non-intervention strategy. 

The best indicator of Mexicans’ priorities and preferences is emigration. Despite the volume of Mexican migration dropping in the last decade (largely as a result of changes in the demographic pyramid) it has recently picked up. This is fuelled by economic hardships in Mexico and by opportunities provided by the US economy.

Can the war affect the US-Mexico relationship?

Despite a common border and more than two decades of partnership, the US-Mexico relationship is arguably one of the most complex in the world. Both countries are divided by legacies of history and very contrasting cultures. The levels of development on each side also deserves a mention. A stark asymmetry of power will always persist between both countries. Nevertheless, Mexico’s influence on the US should not be overlooked. The potential lack of cooperation of a Mexican government on issues that are politically relevant to the United States cannot be minimized. Hence, both nations understand that they are joined at the hip and strive to control the level of conflictuality.

Almost forty years ago, both nations agreed to manage the bilateral relationship based on two principles. The first is compartmentalization of issues: never mix issues that plague the relationship (such as migration, drugs, exports, imports, investment, etc.) so as not to politicize problems and be able to effectively address them. The second, is that neither government should surprise the other in public or, as diplomats now say, no daylight should come about so that issues can be managed and both can anticipate changes in direction. These two principles set the foundation for an ever-growing economic and peaceful relationship that catered to both nations’ interests. Even though policy inaction on various fronts is preventing Mexico from reaching US levels of development, both countries never failed to address issues resulting from the complexity of their vicinity. Recently, for example, President López Obrador surprised President Biden by publicly conditioning his attendance to the Summit in The Americas to the presence of the presidents of Cuba and Venezuela. Most telling, President López Obrador is the first president since that agreement was reached in the 1980s who shares neither the vision of closer ties, nor the need to address common problems in tandem.

The critical question for Mexico and, inexorably, for the bilateral relationship, is whether AMLO’s current vision is the beginning of a new era, or rather an exception to the ever-greater closeness that has characterized the past few decades. This issue will be of paramount importance in the 2024 Mexican presidential election. The 2024 US presidential election will also prove to be pivotal, for a return to a Trump administration could decisively change the course for the bilateral relationship.

Copyright: PEDRO PARDO / AFP

http://www.institutmontaigne.org/en/blog/mexico-playing-hardball-united-states

Luis Rubio

“There are decades where nothing happens and there are weeks when decades happen,” wrote Lenin. The great changes in direction in history are usually not appreciated at the time that they acquire points of inflection, because the daily lives of most of the inhabitants of the globe do not change radically. However, observed retrospectively, those moments are crucial. Everything indicates that the invasion of Ukraine points toward one of those instances, with enormous implications for the future of the world.

Paramount breaking points, such as the end of the Second World War, the collapse of the USSR, the constitution of the European Union or the distancing of China with respect to the West, above all since the 2008 financial crisis, are all inflection points that altered the way the world functions, in some cases dramatically.

The invasion of Ukraine marks another moment of transition. While some of the components of the “new future” had already started taking shape, such as the artificial islands that China had been building in the South China Sea for eventually converting it into an interior “lake”, the direct confrontation ensuing between the West and Russia inaugurates a new era. Primarily, it announces the end of the “holiday from history,” as George Will once wrote. The notion that it is possible for one nation to abstract itself from the interests of the powers assuming that everyone plays according to the same rules appears to have ended. Geopolitics is back.

Though it took some time for this to consolidate, little bits and pieces that were coming together along the way are suggestive. After the end of the Cold War, economic decisions gained preeminence and all nations dedicated themselves to competing by attracting investors to generate new sources of economic growth and development for their countries. Fukuyama penned his famous article entitled “The End of History” a notion that became a mantra for companies and governments: the capitalistic system had won, and the whole world became “flat” according to Thomas Friedman, which was taken to mean that there was no distinction between Germany and Zambia with respect to the localization of an investment. In the meanwhile, Samuel Huntington, Fukuyama’s teacher and a more profound and cautious observer, argued that cultural and political differences would not disappear because of their entertaining similar economic criteria, but the so-called “Davos world” nonetheless became the dominant dogma.

In retrospect, the rise to power of a pack of “strongmen” around the world throughout the last decade announced a change in that model, which, beyond their specific attributes or defects, signaled the appearance of leaders responding to novel sociopolitical realities in countries as a diverse as Brazil, the U.S., Hungary, Turkey, China and Mexico. When the Mexican president argues that economic decisions take a back seat to political ones, the message crystal clear: to hell with the Davos model. For citizens and entrepreneurs that implies a government much less concerned with development and geared to subordination and control.

These circumstances reveal a very clear trend, that which Huntington had identified and which, now, with Ukraine, promises to convert itself into a new geopolitical reality. The U.S. government has always been prone to making decisions that ignore its commercial commitments: its size and nature leads it to suppose that the whole world must fall into step. A recent sample of this is the subsidy for electric cars, which disincentivizes investments in Mexico (and Canada), and is proof that economic rationality has been subordinated to political factors.   For Mexico this is scarcely the first sign of what could come about the day that its main growth engine, the American economy, starts to act flexing its muscle as the powerful nation that it is, just as Trump did, in small scale, with respect to immigration.

The return of zones of influence will not be a repetition of what existed during the Cold War, but it will change the way nations relate to each other. The information economy and the era of artificial intelligence change the nature of political and economic activity while there are various burgeoning powers, such as India, which have the capacity to limit the impact of the two or three new zones of influence (U.S., China and Russia) that will foreseeably come into being. In the historical experience, zones of influence imply the preeminence of powers with the capacity to exercise control or some degree of discipline over the nations of a determined region. In the digital era and with real factors of power permanently on the radar, such as the competition between China and the U.S. in diverse demarcations, a new schema of this nature will surely imply greater conflict than that which characterized the Cold War era.

On the other hand, the greatest protection that a nation can achieve in the face of this new reality lies in the obvious:  in the strength of its own development, only possible within the context of a government with clarity of direction and a society with no major divisions. The absence of these conditions signals the complicated future that awaits Mexicans.

www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

For many decades, democracy was perceived as the ideal mechanism for processing the demands of society and, at the same time, for generating conditions for the progress of nations. Not by chance did Churchill coin the phrase that “democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried.” However, during the last two decades, two phenomena have occurred that have placed the primacy of democracy in doubt. Much of the discontent that led to governments such as that of President López Obrador derives therefrom.

First, some nations have achieved producing better results in terms of economic progress than emblematic democracies. In particular, the success of China is impacting regarding its attaining elevated and sustained rates of economic growth for various decades and what that has implied for hundreds of millions of persons who have come out of poverty. The success of an autocratic government has kindled doubt with respect to the transcendence of democracy as the best system of government, which has engendered a schism, for the developing world, between autocracies and democracies.

Secondly, the technological change that the planet has been undergoing has dislocated all societies and produced hardly commendable results in terms of inequality, unsatisfied expectations for human development and the absence of opportunities for the development of the individual. While the political discourse blames pejoratively denominated “neoliberalism” for the ills afflicting nearly all nations of the globe, what is interesting about this is that no one disputes the economic system in the world: the essence of the dispute lies in the political priorities and their consequences. The digital world gives rise to extraordinary disruption because only persons who have the preparation necessary to prosper in that space have some certainty about their future.

These two circumstances -the effectiveness of the autocratic governments and the disruption deriving from the advent of the digital world became true manna from above for politicians ready to exploit the social discontent. The problem is that those politicians -and Mexico’s president is a perfect example of one- do not offer a better solution to the problems that their electoral success caused.

Yascha Mounk* argues that the general pattern of the governments that have emerged because of exploiting social discontent is the weakening of the elements that made their political ascent possible, like the previously existing liberal institutions. The concentration of power undermines the few or many vestiges of the structure of legality and independence of the institutions, strengthening the political leader, but not always solving the problems that they promised to tackle, which becomes the ultimate cause of their eventual decline.

The “existential struggle” that Mounk describes is suggestive: “As the opposition attempts to reverse the slide toward illiberalism, populist leaders seek to gain ever greater control. Were they to succeed, illiberal democracy turns out to be but a way station on the path of elected dictatorship.” However, says Mounk, the great challenge of charismatic leaders is that their popularity tends to erode to the degree that people demand the tangible satisfiers that they are not obtaining.

The peculiarity of the government of President López Obrador is that it has not employed its power to build a sustainable economic platform for the long term. In contrast with Singapore or China, two very different but nonetheless signature cases, Mexico is not on the road to consolidation with a modern, successful and transformed economy for the population. Just to cite an example, were Mexico to imitate China in its development process, the President would have been the leading champion of the Texcoco Airport, like the new one of Beijing. The fact that the President opted for a provincial, regional airport and one without a future reveals his genuine inclination. That is, the situation of Mexico does not form part of the autocratic–democratic debate that characterizes the world because its economy does not exhibit the trademark of a successful and vigorous nation like those. Thus, its path will be quite different.

The flagship projects of the government -the oil refinery, the airport and the Maya Train- are not works that will come to alter the gradual descent that the country is experiencing. These are much more monuments erected to the president than vehicles directed toward a new stage of development. When the electorate that enthusiastically elected the president in 2018 turns around and sees all that has not been accomplished and the solutions never considered, the question will be what’s next. Or, in other words, how far will his popularity go?

Mexico did not procure the consolidation of its democracy before the arrival of a government that was devoted to diminishing if not eliminating it, but democracy continues to be the best way to resolve the country’s problems for a very simple reason: not even with all its accumulated power was the current administration able to build a better quality of government or better results.  The citizenry ought to drive the construction of a system of checks and balances that renders the latter inevitable.

*Journal of Democracy, Vol 31 #1, January 2020

www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

The Mexican president’s discourse of the past three years has modified the vectors of Mexican politics. Many elements that were taken for granted have been exposed as puny or insubstantial, while attempts have proliferated to explain the phenomenon that the president represents, as well as what will remain after his six-year term, beginning with the 2024 electoral feast.

Of course, nobody knows how this government will end or what will happen in the coming presidential election, but the factors that will determine both results are clear. Exploring them, or at least putting them on the table, is a necessary exercise to ponder what awaits Mexican society.

A first discussion refers to the depth of the change that President López Obrador has spearheaded or, in other words, how much of the previous political reality will prove to have been a constant and how much of it will have been radically changed. Many scholars close to the government have spoken of an alleged regime change and not a mere shift of nuance and priorities.

Not much clairvoyance is required to observe that the president has followed all the practices, criteria and strategies of the old PRI: the control of power as an objective and the development of mechanisms to ensure his permanence beyond the formal electoral processes. That is, the constant is power and its instruments. What has undoubtedly changed is the facade that had been built for thirty years to create the appearance of an increasingly institutionalized society, with counterweight mechanisms to limit presidential excesses. The facade has come down, but the goal of controlling everything is as alive as it ever was in the old political system. No regime change has taken place. The old one has only been stripped.

A second element is that of the president’s power base. The revocation of the mandate showed that the hard-core base that supports him is approximately half of those who voted for him in 2018. A good part of it follows him uncritically, as if it were the flock running after its preacher. Time will tell how permanent it really proves to be, but what is not insignificant is that there is another part of the population that rejects the president, in an increasingly visceral way. Jan-Werner Müller, a student of democracy, says that one cannot ignore a counter phenomenon that manifests itself in populist moments of our era: that just as there are believers who follow the leader, there is also a silenced majority through the rhetorical mechanisms of defamation, polarization and delegitimization.

Müller* affirms that this type of strong but exclusive leadership has the characteristic of pretending to have a monopoly on the representation of citizens when, in reality, it is a dispute between leaderships and political parties. The weakness of many, perhaps most, of the institutions that existed has been the crucial factor that gave the president the enormous capacity to manipulate daily life and neutralize so many spaces in society, while at the same time intimidating vast sectors of the population. All of which does not imply that he has achieved control of society, but rather its appeasement, which raises the obvious question of how permanent this taming will be.

A third element of the current moment is precisely that of control. No one has the slightest doubt that the president has managed to concentrate and centralize power in the country, but he has done so at the cost of economic growth, the alienation of vast sectors of society, and the accumulation of an ever-increasing number of victims and enemies who will inevitably wait for the moment to reverse their circumstances and, perhaps, take revenge. The paradox of control is that it is not lasting: it follows a cycle that begins and ends with the six-year term and weakens along the way. Thus, another key question is how serious the damage will have been inflicted on the economy, society and those victims. The answer will determine the potential for a benign conclusion, or in crisis, of the current government.

Finally, the fourth element is that of the opposition. Democracy is not a matter of consensus, but of conflict management through institutional channels. The claim that it is possible to return to the era of the single, monopolistic party, as the president’s recent electoral reform bill would suggest, seems absurd, but that has been the presidential logic, although, paradoxically, it is organized crime that has advanced in the direction of recreating it. Therefore, one more question is who will ally with whom for the 2024 election. Perhaps today there is no more important question than this.

At the end of the day, the problem with the current government is that it has not solved any of the problems that it outlined in its campaign proposal. The country is worse off in all conventional indices. Looking ahead, the key question is not who will lead the next government, but what strategy will it adopt to deal with the problems facing the country -those that already existed and those that the current government needlessly created- all of this while addressing the grievances that led to the present moment.

*Democracy Rules, Farrar

www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof
a quick-translation of this article can be found at www.luisrubio.mx

Luis Rubio

The president enjoys a high popularity rating, higher, for the first time (if only by a couple of percentage points), than his recent predecessors at this point in the game. This popularity has two relevant characteristics: on the one hand, it bears no relation to the performance of the government, where its rating is abysmal to say the least. On the other hand, the main source for the president’s high approval rate dwells on the cash transfers of the government’s social programs. The president did not bet on the growth of the economy, on employment growth or on the consolidation of previously existing projects, but on the construction of a structure of dependence of his social base. This begs two questions: first, how solid is that base of support? And, second, is it a source of power and popularity that could transcend the six-year presidential term or does it reflect a merely transactional relationship, as used to happen in the PRI era? The answer to these questions could well determine the future of the sexenio and the nature of the next government.

The great success of the president has been precisely the approval that he enjoys personally and the consequent high popularity. In this, his management has been exceptional not because of the high numbers, but because of the disconnect between the president’s popularity and the way in which the population evaluates the things that directly affect them, such as security, employment and consumption capacity. In other words, the population does not feel satisfied in terms of their well-being and, nevertheless, gives high marks to the presidential management. The contradiction seems evident, but that is where the president stands out: in his ability to communicate with his base, based on cash transfers, not results.

Virtually every government in the world begins with high expectations that reflect the hope that the new administration will be able to successfully deal with the challenges of everyday life. The president himself raised four fundamental challenges (poverty, corruption, growth and inequality) as the issues to deal with, but the population has not experienced relief in any of them: the indicators show a growing deterioration. Worse, there is no reason to expect an improvement in the performance of the economy -or of government itself- in the next two years, from here to the end of the administration, because the government has not invested in projects likely to improve well-being of the population, solve their problems or attract investments that could achieve this.

In reality, the government has done everything possible to impede private investment, while overloading government accounts with obligations that have already become a burden for the future development of the country. After emptying all trusts, reserves and contingency funds to continue financing cash transfers, the public sector accounts are beginning to experience increasing fragility because the absence of growth results in a decrease in tax collection.  Although at first glance managed responsibly, public finances look artificial as all sources of promotion of economic growth have been stripped, the lack of new sources of revenue and the growing obligations assumed by the government to invest in and pay for deficits of PEMEX and CFE. In other words, the pretense of fiscal orthodoxy is unstable and will become a huge risk factor as the six-year term advances, interest rates rise, and the most basic problems that affect the daily life of the population are not dealt with.

The six-year term progresses while the natural problems inherent to the political cycle become more acute. Presidential control begins to diminish, the internal struggles for power intensify (and much more for having unleashed the succession three years before time), and the insufficiencies of the government become more and more evident. Also, the fractures in Morena are not small. Doubtlessly, narrative control and cash transfers contribute to maintaining a high popularity rating, but such support is only guaranteed from the social base that maintains a quasi-religious connection to the president. As the revocation of the mandate vote of April 10 demonstrated, that base is no longer what it was and its erosion can only accelerate. The president has benefited from the lack of compass and capacity shown by the opposition leaders, but this also has limits. The political cycle is uncontainable, and it will provoke swifter political activity and many items that today look virtues will begin to reverse, and that is if things go well for the president.

The revocation of the mandate determined the ceiling of unrestricted support for the president. The rest -some 70 million potential voters- is up for grabs. Clearly, the popularity index includes many of those 70 million, but that support, historically, is circumstantial, almost always dependent on an exchange of benefits for votes: it is interests, not beliefs, that guide that relationship. The president has been extremely adept at using government funds to solidify his support base, but there is no substitute for well-being. Now it is the opposition who has to prove that they have a better project to achieve it.

www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

The objective is clear: stay in power beyond 2024 at any price.  Showing their true colors is the latest novelty brandished by the lousy transformers of the Fourth Transformation.

The electoral legislation in force in electoral matters dates from the nineties, within the context of interminable electoral disputes that would impede governing in a multiplicity of states and municipalities. Mexico’s National Electoral Institute (INE, and its earlier incarnation IFE) was created to resolve, once and for all, the conflicts of that epoch. In addition, its promotors imagined that, with the electoral issue resolved, the future of the country would be exemplary. The 2006 presidential election -which AMLO lost, but never conceded- proved that hypothesis erroneous, thus constituting the remote origin of the new bill.

The new initiative proposes diminishing the cost of the electoral system, reducing the number of legislators in both chambers, eliminating the electoral institutions as they exist today and modifying the structure of representation at the state and municipal level, accompanied by a budgetary rationale. If one enters profoundly into the spirit of the initiative, it becomes plain that the objective is both budgetary and political.

Two items constitute the heart of the budgetary matter in the electoral ambit: one is the cash transfers to the political parties (part for their functioning and part for campaigning); the other lies in the structure of the electoral apparatus itself. The initiative is peculiar because government financing of the political parties was an express demand from the PRD in the 1996 negotiations with the argument that a) with this, the risk of converting the political parties into means of money-laundering would be eliminated; and, b) to ensure similar conditions of access and electoral competition. In its essence, the approach consisted of adopting the European model for electoral systems instead of the North American model, where each party seeks its own sources of financing. It was not a bad argument, but it is ironic that a government originally emanating from the PRD would be the one pressing for dismantling that structure.

Regarding the electoral apparatus, it is without doubt costly because it is a permanent structure that functions at full throttle only during campaign periods:  before, during and after every time there are elections. Most nations do not maintain an electoral bureaucracy in permanent fashion, but its existence stems from the conflicts that led to the creation of the original IFE: the mistrust was such that the parties agreed to a costly structure, but a trustworthy one, to guarantee that the popular mandate would be complied with religiously.

It is obvious that many of these expenditures can be reduced but, prior to this, one must ask whether: a) There is a guarantee that the sources of conflict and misgivings will not return under a new scheme, in that it is the political party in the government that always calls the results into question? and b) Where would the funds saved be directed?

On the political side, the reform proposes drastically reducing the number of legislators with the logic of lowering their cost. Significant in the government’s modus operandi is that there is not a sole consideration in the initiative’s text that displays concern in terms of the representation of the population in Congress, the capacity of the legislators to comply with their responsibility or the effect of a lesser number of legislators on the system of separation of powers. That is, to hell with the counterweights.

There is no discussion on these rubrics for one and only one reason: the President does not conceive of the legislative branch as a component of a system of checks and balances, but rather as an instrument for ratifying the presidential decisions. As in the old PRI era, the president has no desire to entertain discussion nor arguments, nor does he wish his initiatives to be changed even one iota, but that they be voted on just as he dispatches them.

In a word, this is about recreating the old monopolistic political system of back in the day that responded to only one person and where the citizenry did not exist nor have presence or rights. It is about centralizing the power, eliminating counterweights and guaranteeing the current governing clique being in power in perpetuity.

The pertinent question would be on the consequences of implementing a system such as that proposed by the President. Time will tell, but it is necessary to speculate on the implications: above all, the initiative supposes that the citizenry is an amorphous accumulation of zombies who align themselves and respond to the presidential will without a peep. Second, the objective is to curtail or eliminate the opposing political parties  (which would include, presumably, the satellites of Morena such as the Verde and the PT, because they would no longer be useful); and, finally, in third place, the enormous savings that the diminution of institutions, entities, legislators and stooges would represent would be funneled directly into transfers to the president’s clienteles, in other words, rendering the population more dependent on the President by the day.

The plan is Machiavellian for the individual in power. For the citizenry, the message was articulated by Stalin several decades ago: “I consider it completely unimportant who will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this—who will count the votes, and how.”

www.mexicoevalua.org

@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

Mexicans have become accustomed to living in a world of alternative reality: things are not the way they are and instead calling them by their right name, Mexicans sweeten them with pretentious synonyms and euphemisms so they will appear logical and commonplace, though everyone knows they aren’t.  When one observes what happens in other latitudes or hears how the inhabitants of normal countries behave, it suddenly becomes apparent how abnormal Mexican life is in increasing numbers of ambits and explains López Obrador’s success in undermining the advances that had actually taken place.

Rampant insecurity ends up being natural and normal; the lack of job opportunities turns out to be natural; the encumbrances imposed by the bureaucracy -including practices of extortion- come to be ordinary; the lousy quality and focus of the educational is now neoliberal, to be replaced by the Mao’s Red Book; the growing limitations in freedom of expression end up being respectable; eliminating the certainty provided by the electoral institutions is now a triumph of democracy. The world is upside down. All that works must be eradicated.

Mexican democracy is another of those alternative realities to which Mexicans have become accustomed. There is no doubt that the citizenry votes, that the votes are counted and that the popular representatives and the candidates who are elected exercise their function for the period corresponding to them. If democracy were defined in strictly electoral terms, thanks to the National Electoral Institute (INE) Mexico has one of the most successful and consolidated democracies in the world. However, Mexico is far from being a democracy understood as a political system within which the citizenry enjoys freedoms, effective protection of its rights and real representation by the members of Congress, accountability by those exercising Executive Power at all levels of government, and physical security for themselves and their property.

One needs to go no further than to read the newspapers or listen to the news any morning to confirm how distant Mexican democracy is from the most elementary point of reference. It is usual for Mexicans to find information about politicians or functionaries from illegal tapping of phone conversations;   the murder of a journalist; the publication of information that should be slated as confidential; the decision to classify as “privileged” information about governmental projects, thus denying the citizenry access to information that it should possess to understand how the government spends the resources gleaned from its taxes; or the crass impunity of more and more public servants. The point is clear: Mexican democracy is very strong in one sphere (the electoral) but extremely frail in all the others.

There are at least three hypotheses why Mexicans finish up mired in these circumstances. One is that the authors of the 1996 Electoral Reform -which was definitive in creating conditions of equality for political competition- were excessively optimistic regarding the way a political or social order can be changed.  For them, all that was needed was to introduce rules for fair and equal rules for electoral competition and everything else would be sorted out by itself, something that evidently did not come to pass. While the defeat of the PRI was accompanied by the weakening of the presidency and brought greater freedom of expression, twenty-five years later it is obvious that the change was less definitive or transcendent than what its promotors imagined. A second hypothesis, which does not exclude the latter, is that the Fox government, the immediate beneficiary of the PRI defeat, suffered from the privation of vision and capacity with which to transform the political system. Clearly, there is no doubt of the veracity of this factor.

A further explanation for this phenomenon derives from another aspect. According to Waller Newell,* one type of tyranny is that which reforms the existing order to improve the populations’ quality of life, but without the minimal aim of altering the centralized order that, in addition, facilitates the concentration of power and illicit means of  enrichment,  that is,  corruption. Thus, in the words of the author, this is about a benevolent tyranny.** Thus, one way to understand the Mexico of the past half century is to see the reformer administrations as driven to improve the population’s life and economy, but without changing the political status quo, a hypothesis that does not contradict, but rather complements, the previous two. Nonetheless, it explains why Mexican democracy could never prosper.

Mexican democracy turned out to be frail in terms of bettering the quality of life of the population because, while for three decades it did achieve an economic transformation that favored the whole country, even if today’s President denies it, it did not lead to consolidating the liberation of the citizenry with respect to justice, security, education and fundamental rights. It is this weakness that made possible the emergence of a government like AMLO’s.

The disputes of today, doubtlessly stirred up by the President himself, derive from the poverty of the results of many key reforms that, on their not affecting political, union or business interests that favor the status quo, hinder and curb the country’s development in general.

The great deficit is the democratic one but not that of the electoral institution, which is critical and the example for the world, but more accurately the tyrannical system of government that continues to be the norm and not the exception.

*Tyrants. **the other two types of tyranny being the kleptocratic (as in Mugabe or Al Assad) and millenarian, like Stalin or Pol Pot.

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a quick-translation of this article can be found at www.luisrubio.mx

Luis Rubio

The system of separation of powers devised by Montesquieu had as its main purpose the protection of the freedoms and rights of the citizenry. The idea was that the three branches of government would strike a balance that would make abuse by any of the three impossible: the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary. Unfortunately, Mexico’s experience has not validated this notion concocted by the eighteenth-century philosopher. Instead of being the guarantors of freedoms and rights, a minority of ministers of the Supreme Court of Justice have managed to make a mockery of the essence of democracy and civility in the country.

The PRI era was characterized by the submission to the executive of the entire structure of power, both formal and informal, in the country. The hope was that the alternation of political parties in the presidency would produce a new equilibrium, for which various institutions were built, all of them conceived to prevent the abuses that, historically, the executive had extracted from the citizenry and imposed upon the entire structure of power. The first entity to be reformed was precisely the Supreme Court (1994), which was followed by the Federal Electoral Institute (1996), and then by a variety of institutions and entities dedicated to conferring predictability, certainty and stability on the conduct of the key affairs of national life, in all its ambits.

It is evident that that vision did not materialize for the entire country. Rather, after the financial crisis of 1995 and its sociopolitical consequences, the intended expansion of the “modern Mexico” towards the rest of society was abandoned, with which the country was split in two: the country of formality, exports and growing productivity; and the country of informality and extortion. The first generates growth, employment and opportunities, but in the second inhabits the majority of the population. The abandonment of this other Mexico has been patent.

López Obrador arrived to subvert the vision of the modern Mexico but, apart from entrenching himself in his idealized little world of the 1970s, he did not bring about a positive proposal for the construction of a better future. Instead, he has dedicated himself to dismantling the structures of modern Mexico, the one that functioned more or less well. With this, he is condemning the entire country to decline. To the promoters of the presidential vision, the proposals to subordinate the Supreme Court, dismantle the Federal Electoral Institute or terminate the process of energy diversification may seem visionary, but none of this is accompanied by a proactive plan, capable of giving viability or greater equity to the future. All that is being done is to return to an impossible past which, in any case, was neither attractive nor equitable.

Seen from this perspective, it is clear that the Supreme Court of Justice has not lived up to its fundamental responsibility, which is to protect the essential freedoms and rights of citizens. The Court has not only failed to attend to matters of primary importance for democracy and the integrity of the population -for which perhaps there is no better example than the so-called preventive detention without the intervention of a judge- but its performance has been extremely poor on key issues, as illustrated by the lopsided approach it took to the constitutionality of the electricity law.

In truth, the problem is not “The Court” but the strange requirement that characterizes its procedures, which mandate a two-thirds majority to determine the constitutionality of a law. This is what has given excessive power to the president and to the minority of four ministers the ability to trump the majority in transcendental decisions. In addition, the powers in the hands of the Court’s president to manage the paper flow allows him to determine which issues are dealt with and which are frozen, which favors special interests instead of advancing those of the general public.

The net result is that the Court fails in its key function of defending the citizenry. Rather, it is dedicated to protecting the government from the citizenry. One must wonder, how is it possible that the branch of government that is responsible for ensuring that neither of the other two branches abuse or limit the freedoms and rights of the population has ended up submitting itself to the executive and is dedicated to protecting the latter? In a word: who defends the citizenry?

What is evident in the behavior of several of the Court’s ministers is that their criteria are more political than legal. Although politics is, naturally, part of the context in which the members of the Court act, citizens must expect autonomy and independence in the workings of the Court, which is the only reason why their appointments are for fifteen years: to be sheltered from presidential influence.

In the world of reality, what is crucial is not the theoretical vision of a philosopher from two hundred years ago, but the elements available to citizens to protect themselves. The Court is or, rather, should be, the guarantor of these rights, so the pertinent question is when will the ministers assume their responsibility to protect citizens against abuses by the executive branch. That is to say: who do the ministers work for? Why insist on advancing an agenda that clearly contradicts the constitution and the freedoms and rights of the people?

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Luis Rubio

The agricultural worker at the end of the XVIII century was suddenly displaced by the appearance of the steam engine that substituted for, says Gertrude Himmelfarb,* an average of 50 employees in one fell swoop. It took between twenty and thirty years before the nascent manufacturing industry would absorb that shifted manpower, this despite that the new technology, although terribly disruptive, was very easy to learn. Two hundred years later the world is undergoing a similar situation, but one accompanied by the enormous difference that the new technology -digital and informatic networks- is not easy to assimilate because it demands abilities and capacities that only an adequate educative system can provide.

The maladjustment derives from the technological change that affects all nooks and crannies of life: the economy, society and politics. No space has not gone unturned in an incisive transformation due to changes in the manner of production, instantaneous communications, the social networks and the interconnections linking communities worldwide. The manner of working has been transformed and there is no human might that can stop technologies such as the three-dimensional printers producing entire houses in the site at which they will be anchored or the contrasts in the value of traditional labor force -manual processes- in the face of those who devote themselves to programming the software making the computers function that control more and more productive systems.

The disruption is universal, but there are nations that find themselves in especially propitious conditions for confronting it, while the majority bear up under complex political processes to endure the consequences of the disruption.  Some use the public expenditure to stimulate economic activity, others generate anomalies. For AMLO the easy way out has been to try to take refuge in the former era in which the technological change was not a relevant factor, but the reality has demonstrated that this is not the solution. The antique sugar mill he portrayed months ago as the way out abides in history and only in confronting the digital era will the country get ahead. But what is evident is not always politically conducive.

All of this gives rise to a sea of uncertainty in all ambits, produces drastic changes in the philosophies of government and permanent anxiety with respect to the future.  The common denominator is the abruptness of the technological disruption and its cultural impacts, but every society seeks its own ways of coping with it. It is not by chance that nations that have invested massively in education in the past decades, especially the Asian nations, dominate many of the new technologies and exhibit an extraordinary capacity of adaptation. Contrariwise, societies that have not made these investments undergo diverse types of lurches and convulsions, as illustrated by cases such as that of Trump, Bolsonaro (Brazil), Castillo (Peru), Boric (Chile), Orban (Hungary) and Xi (China). The circumstances of each nation are distinct, what they are identical in is the urgency of coming to grips with the massive challenge that this disruption entails.

Needless to say, not all nations are devoted to what is important and urgent, which is to build the capacity to face this phenomenon head-on. As brought home by previous examples, many are found in denial, attempting to take asylum in an idyllic past or believing that they can erect barriers to impede being swept away by the approaching torrents. The notion that the reality of the knowledge world can be evaded is absurd, but that does not restrain many from dedicating themselves to this, including to be sure Mexico’s president.

The reality is that we have two options: one is to pretend that it is possible not to adjust oneself, which would imply a conscious decision to impoverish the country and close off all opportunity for the future, which is precisely what the current administration is doing. Following that course would require increasingly more controls, more repression and, consequently, fewer opportunities. They can gild the pill with all the dogmas and discourses imaginable, but none of that changes the inevitable trends and their consequences.

The alternative would consist of facing the future in decided fashion, which would involve carrying out all the changes that the country has refused to undertake in matters of education, health, infrastructure and, in general, changes the express construction of a future compatible with the forces that characterize the existing world. Manuel Hinds, a Salvadoran who has applied himself to thinking** about this, proposes the concept of the “multidimensional society” as a vision of facilitating the process of change and adjustment. His idea rings very clear: unidimensional societies have always been pyramidal in nature and incompatible with the digital technologies, the reason why it is imperative to accelerate the development of human capital (education and health),   to strengthen institutions likely to become effective counterweights and to separate the universe of the economy with respect to that of political power in order for each to fulfill their responsibilities and, together, build up economic activity and political stability.

Social networks or a pyramidal society: that is the quandary. On the latter depend development and democracy:  the dilemma is not a lesser one.

*The Idea of Poverty: England in the Early Industrial Age; **In Defense of Liberal Democracy

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Luis Rubio

The similarity between debates on the future is surprising in the United States and in Mexico. Very distinct societies, they are confronting situations that are not entirely different, but their circumstances are indeed radically so, which permits contrasts and learnings that have no equal.

In the U.S., January 6, 2021, changed the political panorama drastically: a key date every four years, it is the day that the U.S. Congress certifies the presidential election. For the first time in history, a group of demonstrators, egged on by Trump, invaded Congress, attempting to overturn the legislative proceedings. For the Democrats this comprised an insurrection while for the Republicans it was nothing more than a disturbance. In the end, that same night, Biden was certified, but most Republicans consider the election to have been stolen.

The dispute is centered on two elements. First, the election itself; and, two, the fact of placing in doubt time-worn constitutional procedures. With respect to the election, U.S. Federalism extends from the bottom up: it was the states that created the Federation, which is why they made arrangements for the conferral of equal representation of the states through the Senate, independently of their population. This arrangement made possible the Constitutional “Great Compromise,” which entails important implications that today are an essential part of the dispute: first, because states with fewer than one million inhabitants such as Wyoming, are entitled to the same representation as New York or California, each with tens of millions of inhabitants. This is what has created, on at least three occasions in recent decades, that a candidate who won the presidency did not win the popular vote. Also, given that each of the fifty states has its own electoral legislation and its respective authorities, its criteria for organizing and managing elections differs from the rest.

The electoral matter is central to the ongoing dispute and stands in direct contrast with the reality in Mexico; above all, it illustrates how absurd -or Machiavellian- the position of the Mexican President is. One of the most heated points of debate in the US focuses of the dispute on electoral matters concerning the requirements that a voter should fulfill to be able to cast a vote. The Republicans want strict requirements, for which the Democrats accuse them of wanting to restrict the vote. On their part, the Democrats wish to facilitate voting without restrictions. It sounds logical, until one observes the content of their proposals: there is not the least doubt that the Republicans have their eye on specific states and particular voters (above all, they charge that undocumented residents participate in voting, altering the result), but their proposals, though doubtlessly restrictive, are minor affairs compared with the Mexican electoral system. For example, the Republicans demand that voters present an official identification. The Democrats want to expand alternative means of voting, such as voting by mail and Internet, and they are opposed to any requisite involving the presentation of and ID.

The most visible (and effective) factor of Mexico’s electoral system -the voter ID- is rejected by the Democrats as a matter of principle. Both parties want to win the governorships that will hold elections toward the end of this year because that will afford them the opportunity to modify districting in their favor (another dramatic contrast with Mexico, where the institution responsible for districting is independent and autonomous).   The differences in the modes of managing the electoral processes lend themselves to the type of controversies that lie behind these examples, but their political implications are enormous and the heart of the second point of controversy.

The language says a lot: what for some is a disturbance, for others is an insurrection. The Republicans say that the Democrats want to close the door to a possible second Trump presidency (which is obvious), while wanting to ensure control of all the legal, administrative and electoral mechanisms for this to happen. The answer to all this lies in the midterm elections slated to take place in November of this year and that will determine the composition of the two legislative chambers and the thirty-six governorships at stake, in addition to that of the local legislatures. Typically, the party of the president loses the midterms, but this year that party could lose both chambers and, if it doesn’t lose them, the Republicans will claim election fraud with all their might. What’s up for grabs for 2024 is, well, incommensurable.

These circumstances have given rise to the publication of books* and articles asserting that the country is at the point of succumbing to a Trumpian dictatorship, not an inconceivable scenario, but a realistic one?

Indubitably, both parties have exacerbated the polarization, each blaming the other. It is also not impossible that another Trump government would degrade American democracy even more so due to the sole fact of its not respecting the institutions.  Although one must recall that, while he did defame them, he had no choice than to adhere to the rules, a huge difference with Mexico.

Mexicans face precisely the reverse: they have a great electoral institution that is under attack but an excessively powerful president who does whatever he wants without encountering any limit, except, until today, what the National Electoral Institute (INE) represents and, at times, the Supreme Court. The risks are very different, if citizens keep on allowing this.

*the most prominent being Barbara Walters, How Civil Wars Start

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