Luis Rubio

The great absentee in recent decades has been economic growth. Diverse international observers, particularly Gordon Hanson, have analyzed the phenomenon and the paradox of having brought about a broad gamma of reforms without procuring the long-awaited result. And it’s true, Mexico has undertaken all types of reforms and actions supposedly leading to high growth rates, but these have not materialized. Hanson argues that it’s not that “grand” reforms are lacking but rather arrangements of and adjustments to the existing ones in order to liberate the creative and productive potential of the country. President Peña’s government has been particularly incisive in the need to reconvene governmental thrust and focus to ensure that, this time, the result would be distinct. However, its actions to date do not suggest that it will accomplish its mission.

The government has set forth two great lines of public policy. On the one hand, it has sought to stimulate demand with accelerated growth of the public expenditure, which has achieved the growth of the fiscal deficit and the debt to a greater extent than economic activity. Oil prices have made this avenue unsustainable. On the other hand, much has been said about raising productivity, but to date more has been done to increase subsidies and protect the traditional domestic producers (as in the case of textiles) than to create conditions that render the nation’s old industrial plant more competitive, thus more productive. The big question is whether something better could be done, once and for all, to lay the foundations for a comprehensive economic transformation.

In a recent article, the product of a trip to Mexico, Dani Rodrik, Princeton professor, affirms that “the incapacity to grow constitutes an enigma for which there are no simple explanations”. In his books Rodrik has argued that the success of the countries of Southeast Asia resided in there being an optimal combination of economic liberalization and industrial strategies contributing to the adjustment of local enterprises to become competitive in international markets. That is, they not only opened the door to imports (as in Mexico) but, says Rodrik, more akin to engineers than to economists, the Asians concentrated on ensuring that local enterprises had opportunities for development.

It is not obvious that this type of strategy would have worked within the Mexican context, but the fact is that the national economy eventually split into two parts, one highly productive, the other lagging behind and with no future. On the other hand, reforms such as that of energy, if conceived as instruments of growth (which today, in the Mexico of very weak institutions is more likely in electricity than in Pemex), could have an impact similar to Asia. The energy reform could constitute an exceptional opportunity to develop a “new” private sector in an economic branch that has for long been inaccessible to Mexicans.

While the opportunity is obvious, so are the risks. Just as CFE, Mexico’s utility, is being transformed with a long term vision, centered on it becoming a facilitator of economic growth (which could presumably create opportunities for Mexican companies to compete head on with the international ones), Pemex is clearly looking inwards, attempting to recreate the old monopoly but now somewhat autonomous from the government.

The contrast between these two companies could hardly be greater. If one looks through Rodrik’s prism, it is conceivable that CFE will create conditions for new Mexican companies to establish themselves and grow in a competitive environment, free of political interference. On the other hand, it is also possible, today more likely in Pemex, that there will be new opportunities for cronies with implicit governmental protection to grab all benefits. The former would contribute to accelerating economic growth; the latter to more of the old same: corruption, unproductivity and cronyism.

One needs to go not far to see evidence for this: it is enough to look at the past. In Mexico there has never been a strategy oriented toward making the traditional productive plant competitive (before or after NAFTA), but there has been another, infinitely more pernicious one: instead of promoting the transformation of the traditional industrial plant, the government protected it, giving rise to informality and impeding the achievement of the central objective in Rodrik’s logic: widespread and sustained economic growth right from the base.

The museum-preserving strategy that the Mexican government has pursued over the past decades has an obvious socio-political rationale (the traditional industrial sector employs around 70% of workers), but that does not change the fact that it is losing one because it dispenses resources and does not contribute to growth. If the government nonetheless decides to pursue an industrial policy, it would be much better if it created competitive conditions in the energy sector that make possible for a new industrial plant to emerge. If it really wants for the latter to contribute to growth and development, the milieu would have to be free of bureaucratic interference, subsidies and cronyism. In other words, something unnatural for our governors.

The government has been right to define the problem of growth as one of productivity. Its challenge dwells on attacking the causes, rather than the symptoms of such a low level of productivity growth. The paradox is that the real political benefit derives from a robust and growing economy and not from a dying sector that is being supported with neither sense nor direction.

www.cidac.org

@lrubiof

Excesses and Vacuums

                                                                                                                            Luis Rubio

The accusation of supposed acts of corruption has turned into a national sport. No day goes by without the social networks posting photographs of a public official boarding a governmental helicopter or a politician’s wife entering a store in Los Angeles. The phenomenon cuts across the entire political spectrum, but the look is fixedly trained on the federal government. The faults of the Left appear lesser in the logic of the prototypical accuser. Is this an excess or merely a patriotic, therefore democratic, act?

My perspective is plain from the outset: on the one hand each person is free to express himself or herself as they please. Freedom is above all debate. On the other hand, it is evident that in the country there exists an enormous propensity for abuse, corruption and excess. Freedom is an extraordinary means in the hands or a committed citizenship to expose and fight corruption, abuse and excess, and nobody can object to this fundamental principle.

But such a broad definition of liberty is not equally free, even if it seems tautological, when the social media is used as a concerted instrument of attack, defamation and unlimited hate. I am not suggesting establishing any limit to freedom, but it is impossible to pretend that a concerted effort such as Mexicans have been witnessing is the result of free individuals acting on their own.

In this context, Does a person –civil servant or a relative- have the right to go shop wherever they like? Does such an act imply, by itself, an act of corruption? Clearly, it is not the same to employ government property or assets for personal or private purposes, than the freedom of each individual to do what they chose with their patrimony and their life. If the President’s wife wants to go shopping with her own money, since when is it a matter of concern for the remainder of us Mexicans?

In the perverted political and media circus that Mexicans politics has become, two distinct matters have been amalgamated that are not alike. In the first place we found the freedom of each person, from the President and his family and his inner circle –functionaries or not-, to the most modest of Mexicans, to do what they want with their life and money. Pretending that a few opinion bloggers or tweeters have the monopoly on the truth and the right to decide, with no responsibility whatsoever, with respect to whether this is legitimate or not, is not only arbitrary but potentially lethal. No society can survive if it does not respect the private life of its governors.

Second, the latter does not imply that the use of public resources for private ends is equally legitimate. In those cases in which specific behaviors are duly sanctioned by law, any infringement should be penalized immediately; the alternative would be to accept and recognize a distinct double standard for politicians with respect to common mortals. By the same token, where the law does not typify a situation of potential corruption or when it is a case of the private life of a functionary or his relatives, the mere pretension, by itself, of this being a crime is not sufficient: that must be decided by a judge. In the last weeks and months the two matters have been confused to such a degree that the political viability of the country as well as of organized society has been threatened.

The problem is that the latter is not a product of chance. Much of what goes on in the country on a daily basis responds to a much greater degree to the actions and causes of persons and groups dedicated to systematic denunciation as a political strategy. But at heart, this has become possible, because the government has left an immense vacuum: it is the government that has created the culture medium for the mistrust overwhelming the country. When the government lets down its guard in a society characterized by weak institutions, it rapidly becomes the source of all evil and corruption.

On lack of governmental action, one must look at what does exist, and that is a vacuum that has been filled by groups, interests and actors, some organized and other not, many of these with obvious agendas. In the absence of the government, the agenda is determined by the collective public that, in a country buttressed by institutions that are both dysfunctional and easy to manipulate, entails the risk of running off the rails. Which is precisely what has been happening.

The governmental defense, expressed in the periodical El País last December, is frankly pathetic: “We are not going to substitute reforms with theatrical acts of great impact, we are not interested in creating successful 72-hour media cycles. We are going to be patient in this new cycle of reforms. We are not going to cede even if the public clamors for blood and circus or to cater to the tastes of op-ed writers. It will be the institutions that get us out of the crisis, not a show of bravado”. The country does not cry out for shows of bravado but instead for leadership, clarity of vision and certainty. This also is not about theatrical acts but rather, simply, about there being someone in charge, commonly known as “governing”.

“Troy is burning,” Homer would have said, but the current government appears indifferent. A country like the U.S. could do the dead man’s crawl, but Mexico does not enjoy that privilege because certainty depends wholly on the government in turn. As long as the President does not assume leadership, the country will continue to remain adrift and the cost, as occurred in the “Tragic Dozen” (1970-1982), will end up being defrayed by the country and the present government. That outcome would not good for anyone.

www.cidac.org

@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

The proposal seemed infallible: restore order and growth. After years of disorder, criminality and an economy that appeared not to get off the ground, an effective government was promised. Many bit the hook, a sufficient number to provide a new opportunity for the old political party that, in one of those linguistic sleights of hand, presented as new something from a distant past that it intended to recreate. The premise of the new government, like so many others that preceded it, that of Fox above all others, was that the former governments comprised an inept group that didn’t understand anything. The new group embodied the truth and the capacity to make it stick.

The problem does not lie in the notion of recreating a better era but rather the pretension that this is possible. The past disappeared because it was unsustainable: because the reality passed it by. Echeverría broke with nearly four decades of a line of government –the so-called stabilizing development- because this had ceased yielding high growth rates. Certainly a change was required, but his response was the wrong one because it initiated the era of crises that beleaguered the Mexican economy for a quarter of a century. The reforms finally began in the eighties, under very difficult circumstances due to the hyperinflation into which Mexico almost plummeted. Had we taken the liberalizing pathway from the 1970 on (instead of a decade later), the process would have been gradual and without much ado.

The governments of the eighties and nineties were learning, almost always grudgingly, that the world was changing and that only by adapting themselves to the new realities would it be possible to redirect the Mexican ship. The post-revolutionary era had been characterized by iron-fisted governmental-PRI control of political and economic activity, but also of criminality. In each ambit, the government-PRI couple dominated and administered it for its own benefit.

Three examples illustrate the change that came about and that is irreversible, independent of governmental preferences. In the first place, no government can control what happens in an open economy. Control of the economy in the past sustained itself on autarky: nothing occurred without bureaucratic authorization that, additionally, was an interminable source of corruption. An open economy revolves around the consumer, whom the entrepreneur is required to cater to because he faces the competition of other producers through imports. While the government previously assigned resources, protected its favorites and determined the success or failure of enterprises, the governor of today must explain and convince the citizen at every turn.

Second, one of the characteristics of the past was control of information: the government nearly monopolized that basic resource, which it employed to exercise full control. At present a child has more information within his reach than all of the information possessed by the government of yore. Today’s world hinges on the ubiquity of information, which implies that the country must adhere to the global rules that expose corruption. It is not by chance that the current government has interposed a set of rules that limit liberalization in certain sectors or activities. However, despite the intention, this is no more than a vain attempt to control something that no one can control any longer, in Mexico or anywhere else.

The third example is that of information management, above all with regard to the government-press relationship. In the past, the government could pretend that what it informed abroad did not filter inside or that its impact would be less. In that era there were bureaucrats at the airport who censored imported periodicals when a note criticizing the Mexican government appeared. Now such pretentiousness is impossible but, notwithstanding this, the present government has attempted to send differentiated messages outside and inside: to the Financial Times it declares that there is a crisis of confidence but within it ratifies that there will be no change in its acting, despite that it is this that has brought on that crisis of confidence. Perhaps the main difference between the governments of Miguel de la Madrid and Carlos Salinas was that the former had to confront these new realities but it was the latter that assumed these to be an inescapable reality. That government would never have denied the existence of torture, even if it did little about it. No one can turn back the clock on ever increasing free-flowing information. If the government wants to restore some of its leadership it will have to assume this as a fact of life.

Conceivably the greatest error of the “old” PRI was that of holding the society in contempt. Fox won the presidency in 2000 in great measure because he understood the frustration of the citizenry. The PRI continued, and continues, to operate under the premise that the society is irrelevant, and is now confronted with a society bereft of hope that accepted efficacy of government in exchange for corruption only to find nothing of the former and everything of the latter and, to top it all off,  without money in its pocket. The PRI not only fails to recognize that its acting generates fury but also that it has become López-Obrador’s campaign team.

Disdain for the citizens’ feelings and perceptions of the whole of the political class will eventually be very costly because although penetration of the social networks is not universal, it is infinitely more widespread than the government realizes. Sooner or later, it will revert against it the notion that it is possible to govern (as if it were governing…) vertically without paying attention to the society’s grievances. The government and most politicians live in an era that no longer is.

www.cidac.org

@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

The United States is a global power, the wealthiest economy in the world and the chief point of convergence and attention of practically the totality of nations worldwide. Although Mexicans see that nation as our border, the reality is that we are two radically distinct nations in might, ambition and the manner of conducting ourselves. This is neither good nor bad: it is the reality that we must recognize and accept. The fact that Mexico proposed the negotiation that ended up being the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) implied that, after nearly two centuries of independence, Mexicans had recognized these differences and were willing to live with them, at the same time converting them into an opportunity. None of that has changed.

The U.S. is the signature reference point for almost two hundred world nations. For each one of these nations, the U.S. is a power that they want to attract or with which they want to define their relationship. Contrariwise, for the U.S. all these nations are static on the horizon that are important only when there are problems or due to their particular circumstances. Thus, there are a handful of countries that bask in the permanent attention of the Americans (such as China, the old USSR, Iran, some European nations) but they are the exception. Due to the neighborhood (and unfortunately, to matters like drugs and criminality) Mexico appears on their radar once in a while, but we are not a subject of permanent attention. Some would say we’re lucky.

Additionally, it’s important to observe the nature of our neighbor: this is a highly decentralized society in which a multiplicity of actors has a direct bearing on the making of decisions. The latter implies  that, barring moments of national crisis, that nation’s decision making, in internal as well as external political affairs, responds to a particular confluence of groups and interests at a specific point in time, which makes it possible –frequently, in fact- for contradictory decisions to emerge together. In this context, certain individuals can exert an enormous impact at a given moment, while at others everything screeches to a halt. With respect to Mexico, this implies that it will unfailingly be vulnerable to internal decisions of that country that have nothing to do with Mexico but that do affect its interests.

The preeminent point is that the problems that characterize the border and the relationship between Mexico and the U.S are never going to disappear. The problems change in nature and form over the course of time, but there will always be issues to be addressed, as occurs between Canada and the U.S.  In the presence of this reality, Mexico has always confronted a dilemma with its northern neighbor: see it as a problem or as an opportunity. The dilemma does not change nor will it change in a foreseeable future.

From the end of the Revolution until the mid-eighties, successive Mexican governments opted for seeing the Americans as a problem and employed the neighborhood as an internal instrument of political consolidation. Somewhat like Fidel Castro has done. In the eighties, Mexico turned on its heel and chose to conceive of the relationship and the vicinity as a source of opportunities. That’s how the NAFTA negotiation began.

Two years ago, the U.S. rejected Mexico’s (and Canada’s) request to be a formal party in the trans-Atlantic trade negotiations. The U.S. negative to Mexican participation in the European negotiation gave rise to all kinds of readings and speculations. One reading was that this decision changed Mexico’s geopolitical situation and demanded another type of consideration, presumably a modification of the economic perspective as well as its foreign policy stance. Another reading, more in keeping with history and the bilateral relationship, was that the U.S. decision had more to do with preferences and the ways of acting of persons or groups as individuals, and did not constitute a radical decision of a geopolitical nature. That is, going back to the beginning, the U.S. is acting according to its nature.

For Mexico, there are two ways of understanding the challenge that U.S. decisions entail. One is seeing them as a cue-switch, a geopolitical twist of great dimensions that reflects the lack of importance that Mexico entertains at the heart of the politics of that country, hence calling for an integral redefinition. The other way of looking at it is that our national interest in maintaining a close relationship with the U.S. continues and that the way of procuring the development of opportunities changes but not the need to do so. What appears obvious to me within the American acting vis-à-vis this matter is that Mexico must find the way to maintain and advance its economic interest by exploiting all the forms of political action that the American system permits, that is, parading out a show of force of all of the instruments of pressure, negotiation, lobbying and convincingness at its command, in its capital as well as, because of its decentralized nature, in all of its key localities.

Mexico’s relationship with the U.S. will always be complex because that is the nature of their political system and of their society and because it is such a great and powerful nation. For us, the challenge is never to lose from sight that it is an opportunity that must be constructed all the time: an opportunity that changes over time and that exacts a permanent capacity for adaptation.  The dilemma of today is exactly the same as twenty years ago: how can we oblige them to see us and to take our needs into account. The reality doesn’t change, only the guise.

www.cidac.org

@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

In her essay on the crisis in education published in 1954, Hannah Arendt criticizes the philosophy that positions the child at the center of the educative system. Her argument is that a permissive educative system engenders irreparable harm because it leads to the development of a churlish, demanding and disrespectful childhood in which the parents cede their function as educators to become their children’s friends which, she affirms, has produced generations of adults who never learned to be that. The essay caused me to reflect on the radicalization of Mexican youth and what that bodes for the development of a political system that inevitably should be simultaneously participative and functional.

The theme is not a novel one. Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in the mid-XIX century that one of the deficiencies of democracy lies in that it erodes the structures of authority until the underpinnings that make it work disappear, leading to the “tyranny of the majority”. More than concern with the reign of the majority, my reflection is on the way Mexico’s immature democracy has evolved, opening spaces for protest and radicalization, without there being effective participatory mechanisms.

In mature democracies, the rub is that politics has been fragmented or Balkanized by special interest groups, ever more narrow in their intent, that seek the spotlight. Environmentalists don’t care about growth, women privilege equality, the poor want more and more subsidies, no one wants to compete with imports, immigrants strike fear in the hearts of native populations. Narrow interests lead to sectarian actions. There’s nothing better than observing the nature of the matters that consume European parliaments or U.S. legislative proceedings to conclude that the most stolid and close-minded views repeatedly have the upper hand.

In contrast with those nations, where the problem is “too much” participation, or what the shape this has taken, in Mexico the issue is to a greater extent democratic immaturity or an unconsolidated polity than excess. In developed countries participation materializes through mechanisms that are perfectly established and recognized as legitimate. The result of the process can be unsatisfactory for the participants (illustrated by the recent vote on migratory matters in Switzerland or the incapacity of the U.S. to legislate budgetary matters), but the mechanisms or responsible institutions themselves are not in dispute. In Mexico’s case, a very substantial part of the population disavows the mechanisms and does not confer legitimacy on the political process. The problem in Mexico is one of essence.

Arendt considers that there is a deep contradiction at the heart of consolidated democracies, which is summed up as that authority or tradition cannot be spurned but, at the same time, we live in a society -and I would add, half a century later, in an era- in which tradition as well as authority are eroding at an unstoppable pace.

Mature democracies confront problems of process: how to make decisions in times of political fragmentation. We Mexicans face the challenge of how to organize ourselves to be able to construct that developed and consolidated society. It would be easy to say that I’d love to have the problems of the Swiss or the Swedes, where their decisions are, in relative terms, marginal in character. Mexico’s democratic problems start with the fact that at least one third of the population denies legitimacy to the government and to the array of institutions that embody the State.

This circumstance generates doubts concerning the viability of the political system and the democratic model that has been an uphill struggle to fashion. The Pact for Mexico was a brilliant mechanism because it allowed for sharing the guilt or, at least, sharing the costs among the three big political parties, but it didn’t resolve the essence of our dilemmas, which is reflected, for example, in the flagrant manipulation of the Constitution last year. I don’t object to the reforms, far from it, but the procedure is at the very least doubtful because it implies that meta-constitutionality is cheaper than constitutionality, that vote buying expedites the passing of laws at (apparently) no cost. The problem is that this doesn’t improve the capacity of the government to govern, it doesn’t strengthen the legitimacy of the authority nor does it guarantee results in the economic plane, or in security or in the properly political. The Pact ends up being a useful media mechanism but it comes at an enormous cost to the development of the country. Worse yet, it didn’t even attend to, never mind resolve, the problem of that enormous mass of Mexicans who feel alienated from the institutions, who rebuke them and who are not willing to engage in a democratic process unless they’re sure of winning. The López-Obrador phenomenon is not about a person but, rather, the personification of the phenomenon of challenging authority, of rejecting the institutions and of a permanent leaning toward radicalism.

At heart, the problem resides in the absence of mechanisms of participation that permit consolidating politics and protecting the core institutions, affording spaces to all and legitimacy to the whole. Mexico requires XXI-century solutions, not the poor adaptations of an already surmounted era. In his book The Revenge of Geography, Robert Kaplan says, in reference to Putin, that a visionary statesman would see that the way to get out of the hole is to construct a strong and participative society, the only way that excesses are rendered impossible. Not a bad lesson for Mexico.

www.cidac.org

@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

Politicians and interests, in addition to the so-called “red circle” (i.e. all those that comment on or act in the political arena), have been debating the construction of a new airport for Mexico City for years. During these years, China has constructed ten airports a year and plans to continue doing so until 2020. Even more significant is that the project of each of these airports is not limited to the physical construction of the airport terminal, but also involves integral foresight of urban and regional development. In contrast to China,  which is neither a democracy nor pretends to be, Mexico has not only been unable to end up constructing the famous airport but rather we have created a social environment of corruption, impunity, condemnation, hatred, lies and complicities that render impossible the coming to fruition of a work of even essential infrastructure.

In the last two decades Mexicans transited from the PRIist era of vertical control to disorder and to an attempt, on occasion pyrrhic, to reconstruct the old system. Along the way, the society changed without the consolidation of a democratic context: a culture of dialogue does not exist, the social networks are increasingly violent and visceral and the press tends to identify journalism with summary trials. The result is that some democratic forms live on with unmitigated pre-modern behaviors. In this manner, rather than establishing checks and balances, what is observed is the growth of two parallel worlds that do not communicate with each other: that of the society and that of politics, each with its coexisting vices.

What we call democracy has experienced an involution into a type of secular fundamentalism that is provincial, conceited and deeply anti-liberal. There’s no better example than that of our electoral system, where a system has been constructed of simulations and impunities that, ensconced behind a world of interminable rules, does nothing other than restrict freedom. No one should be surprised that a system so illiberal would exude so many conflicts and disputes as a result. Were there trust, as in consolidated democracies, so much legalistic paraphernalia would not be required.

To begin with, the growing divorce between the political world and that of the society is evident. While in the media the issues are discussed such as whether the world might be at the point of collapse, the politicians are not only immutable, but they conform to a script perfectly delineated beforehand. In the case of the supposedly autonomous commissions, like the INE (elections), IFAI (transparency) and similar entities or regarding what concerns the Supreme Court, the topics being discussed in the media have absolutely no impact on their resolutions: party quotas are untouchable and determine the result much before the issue becomes a matter of public debate. Open discussion has nothing to do with the arrangements among the parties. Parties and policy do not respond to the presumed democratic uproar, much of this devoid of any professionalism.

Perhaps there is no greater deficit in the things to come in the country than its lack of evolution toward a liberal and democratic society. Instead of advancing toward a respectful and serious discussion of public affairs, the preferred course is that of denunciation, outrage and, above all, disqualification. The political counterpart is that politicians’ businesses, corruption and their requisite impunity remain intact. In reference to a certain publication, the critics used to say that it could never recognize a pretty flower, a good dinner or a true friendship. Today that is the nature of the political debate. Accusations are registered definitively without those affected having the right to respond. The critics know the facts ahead of time and their version is unassailable. There is no other possible explanation: the candidate to this or that entity is a bandido because a radio announcer decided so. The political agenda dodges the debate and the debate is irrelevant: as in dictatorships.

Despite the seemingly endless diatribes that characterize diverse actors and sectors, Mexican society engages less and less in dialogue and rejects the right of the others, whoever they may be, to contribute their two cents’ worth to the debate. The paradox is that in the media and social networks acting is the same as takes place among politicians: with absolute impunity. Mexican society, and its democracy, has become anti-liberal. In a traditional –liberal- democracy, everyone has the right to express and defend themselves, independently of whether others share their point of view. In our society we have wound up with an infinity of monologues in which there is a sole truth and democracy is only achieved when I win. None of the others have rights because mine is the truth. The only truth.

Fundamentalism, according to the definition employed in perhaps the most profound study on the theme,* is “the belief that every word of the sacred text (whichever this may be) is divinely inspired and therefore true”. The sacred text can be the Bible or the Koran, but also the rhetorical discourse of any small-time politician or itinerant street peddler. What is crucial is the denial of an alternative view and, above all, of a method to construct it. Because in this nothing distinguishes a government possessing the absolute truth in the hands from critics who are equally intransigent.

Democracy is, or should be, a method for making decisions in a society. In Mexico, democracy has become a sectarian tool that is merely utilized as a shield when useful or convenient.

*Martin E Marty and R Scott Appleby, The Fundamentalist Project, University of Chicago

www.cidac.org

@lrubiof

FORBES – March 2015

Luis Rubio

The dismay never fails to surprise. I visit various places in Mexico and hear the same complaints and concerns: how is it possible that the deterioration of the country continues? Some worry about the insecurity, others went to college but now drive a taxi, others simply do not believe that their economic situation is going to improve. The question is no longer when but if it will be possible to emerge from the hole at all. This is especially true in the case of those who, in addition to the anguish, must also undergo the via Crucis that is confronting the judiciary to exact compensation after being harmed or forcing a service provider to comply with the terms of a contract or agreement.

The dilemma about governing the country is very simple: reestablish the control mechanisms of yesteryear or construct a new political structure. The first option, only modestly creative but easier to achieve, implies recentralizing power, imposing a set of control mechanisms in various areas, and attempting to subordinate society and above all the  so-called “de facto powers” to the presidential purpose. The alternative, which is much more complex and ambitious but also potentially much more durable, is redesigning the political system. At some level, the second stage implies finishing what was started by Plutarco Elías-Calles in the 1920s but adapted to the needs and circumstances of the 21st century.

In one of his articles, José Luis Reyna touched upon a crucial theme: “One difference between democracy and authoritarian systems is that few institutions and rules are required for governing in an authoritarian system; the will of the governor is sufficient for imposing his will, arbitrary or not, on the others. In contrast, in a democratic regime the rules must be able to be followed, obeyed and respected. For that institutions are needed to implement the agreements, the differences and their consequences.” Under this metric, Mexico continues to be, or at least behave as, an authoritarian regime.

The critical part of the Mexican reality is that since 1968 the centralized regime that concentrated power weakened until it virtually vanished but the country did not enter into a stage of institutional development. The result has not been the flowering of a society avid for democratic participation (although there are incipient manifestations of this) but rather the dispersion of power and the disappearance of responsibility. From what previously, within a very distinct domestic and international context, permitted the existence of a functional government (although not always effective and grandiose as the legend suggests), the country passed into an era of entitlement claimants in which the whole society –from the president to the most remote mayor, including legislators, business people, union and social leaders– defended privileges and perks, that is, the status quo. The authority and capacity for intimidation disappeared, at least at the federal level, but in all areas the forms continue to be authoritarian. It is the worst of all worlds: new mechanisms were not developed for resolving problems nor was there still capacity to use the mechanisms from before. Greater control and concentration of power will not change this reality.

The heart of the matter is whether the problem is one of persons or of political structures. Although all politicians have strengths and defects, Mexico’s problems transcend its presidents. The paradox is not a small one: given the weakness of the institutions, an effective president has enormous space in which to maneuver and, with that, the opportunity to do great good or great damage to the country. An effective leader can construct the foundations of a promising future or can do harm to opportunities for such foundations. Echeverría and López-Portillo exemplify the costs of strong leadership that damage the country and create disorder and costs that last for generations. Carlos Salinas modified the course of the development of the economy but did not consolidate it. The great statesmen of the past, such as Elías-Calles, ended up betraying themselves. The question for President Peña-Nieto is whether he will go down in history as one more president who tried but could not and as the president who inflicted irreparable harm on development, or as the new constructor of institutions, who made the country’s next stage possible. The challenge is the creation of a strong government that stems from the strength of its institutions.

Fragment from the book A Mexican Utopia: The Rule of Law Is Possible.  www.wilsoncenter.org

www.cidac.org

@lrubiof

 Luis Rubio

Somewhat the style of the film “Casablanca”, the end of the Cold War seemed to be “the beginning of a beautiful friendship”. Twenty five years later it is evident that geopolitical realities and interests are much more important in international relations than the greatest of best wishes. In fact, over the past years a revisionist literature has arisen that defies the conventional version of the role of democracy in national processes of change, particularly that involving the end of the Soviet Union. The lessons deriving from that are highly relevant for us Mexicans.

Revisionism is a constant in history because time, and the knowledge that accumulates over the years, permit an ever more incisive interpretation of the causes of distinct events or of the factors that turned them into reality. In the case of the USSR, the conventional version, broadly accepted, is that the West and democracy were the factors that finally defeated the Imperial Russia of the XX Century. We now know that the crucial factors that undermined the strength of that nation were its inherent economic weaknesses and the conflict that already then festered between Ukraine and Moscow.

Although the “new” Russia adopted democracy as its form of government and there were important advances in the government-citizenry relationship, neither there nor in Mexico has a liberal system of government taken root, understanding the latter as strong institutions that protect the citizen and effective checks and balances that render the Rule of Law effective. Fareed Zakaria was most pertinent when he coined the term “illiberal democracy” to describe this type of society.

In the end, a key question is whether democracy drove the development of liberal societies or whether the development of liberal societies gave rise to democracy. In the Western world, the predominant supposition is that democracy is what has produced development; and there is no need to go much further: the rationality of the U.S. invasion in Iraq was shored up by that notion and that has been the discussion revolving around the failed “Arab Spring”. This has also been the reasoning that has led to successive political reforms in Mexico. The problem is that, in many nations that have reformed themselves – some more advanced than others- this has not translated into a decisive economic advance or into the consolidation of a liberal society.

Mexico has taken great steps toward the consecration of rights in the paper of the Constitution, but very few have been effective in daily life. Suffice to see the state of affairs in the justice system or in the insecurity in which the majority of the population lives to discern how complex the social processes are and how uncertain their achievements. David Konzevik, creative thinker and acute observer of the reality, notes that “the 20th Century was that of human rights; if the 21 Century is not that of human obligations, this is far as we’ve gotten”. Over the past decades we have advanced in matters of rights, even if often in name only, but nothing has materialized concerning obligations, and the pathetic level of economic growth suggests that a line of happenstance between democracy and growth isn’t evident either.

On its part, the poor economic performance of recent decades has led to the coming together of the idea that there has been an excess in matter of citizen rights at the expense of the strength of the government because, according to this view, it is that strength from which the capacity of growth derives. Most likely, the current attempt to consolidate control mechanisms vis-à-vis the citizenry will also fail to achieve vigorous and sustained growth.

The reason for this is not of an ideological or political character. The true deficit is not one of a controlling government but rather of a functional one. Where the country evidences terrifying lacks is in matters of the government’s day-to-day operation: providing services, construction and maintenance of the infrastructure, public safety and justice. None of that will improve with greater control over the citizenry: rather, strictly speaking, a government more dexterous in achieving its fundamental duty (particularly in according security and fair and predictable conditions for the functioning of the rules of the game in all ambits) would require fewer mechanisms of control.  The key lies not in the control but instead in the solidity and reliability of the governmental function, very distinct things.

Within a context characterized by these basic absences the citizenry’s disillusionment that is running rampant in the country is inevitable. Also not surprising is the governmental argument that the only way to resolve the privations consists of reversing the excesses of recent times and achieving greater efficacy.  The true subject matter does not reside in the urgency of having a more effective government (a condition sine qua non) but of how this can be procured.

The great challenge consists of constructing a system of government that is effective but that also safeguards citizen rights. There’s no contradiction between the two: they are but two faces of the same coin. Unless the country returns to authoritarianism, its only playing card is that of constructing a liberal society, if only step by step.

Years of observing the evolution of Mexican democracy have convinced me that Womack was right when he affirmed that “democracy does not produce, by itself, a decent way of living. It is the decent ways of living that produce democracy”. Starting with those ways…

www.cidac.org

@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

For his holiday reading in the summer of 1835, John Wilson Croker packed the lists of those condemned to death during the Reign of Terror in revolutionary France. The several thousand guillotined in Paris after the establishment of the Revolutionary Tribunal (March 1793) and before the fall of Robespierre (July 1974) were accused of crimes ranging from hoarding provisions to conspiring against the Republic or sawing down the tree of liberty. In horrified disbelief, Croker asked the question that has never gone away: how could this happen? How could the progressive revolutionary optimism of 1789 have turned in just five years to summary arrests and executions? Questions still relevant today.

From optimism to terror, from great plans to reality, from trust to cynicism. The French Revolution began in a transforming spirit and ended up inundated in the terror that instigated the ardor of the revolutionaries. In the same sense, when the President and the Minister of Finance recognizes that behind the crisis characterizing Mexican society at present there is a problem of trust, the possibility is thrown open for starting to glimpse a less alarming horizon.

“Trust”, affirms the Head of the Eurogroup in recent negotiations with Greece, “comes on foot and leaves on horseback”. President Peña launched his government with everything in his favor. Although the votes of the 2012 election did not give him the victory for which he had hoped, his political skill and clarity of purpose more than compensated for that. In a few months he built a platform of credibility and trust that, while not consolidated, appeared promising. The numbers showed that his popularity did not rise, but the approval of extraordinarily ambitious reforms, above all in energy, opened the door for a transformation of the country in the long term. Nothing better than deeds to ensure trust.

Reality has set off on another course. Instead of steps being taken to systematically and premeditatedly gain it, trust evaporated: on horseback, at top speed. No one should have been surprised by this result: the government alienated everyone, PRIists and everybody else; the government did not even summon up the humility to construct an integrated team within its own Cabinet. When everything depends on the actions of (very few) individuals personally, the risk of something coming out wrong is enormous. The initial plan advanced with military precision. However, as failures in the process, sources of corruption and inability to respond made themselves known, trust, already in short supply, collapsed. The arrogance of the first year and a half wound up betraying the project.

The challenge for the government is more complex than it might seem. Although there certainly would be a series of actions that the government could assume for the sake of constructing a base of trust, its capacity to achieve it would be limited in that everything continues to depend on individual actions. Let me explain: beyond the problems of credibility that President Peña and his government are experiencing, the country’s problem is that everything depends on individual persons. That is, the way of acting as well as the way it’s done determine the capacity of the government to achieve credibility and trust. Given that we live within a context where the rules of the game change according to the government in turn, both form and substance are important.

In a word, the current government modified the game rules without having satisfied or convinced anyone. It ignored the population and even the key actors of the society in ambits from the political to the entrepreneurial, but including the media and, above all, the citizenry. Even the very PRIists feel excluded. On deciding to alter the public agenda and the way of relating to the society, the government organized itself to be distant. On the other hand, inasmuch as it recast the rules of the game in matters of the media (i.e., censorship), taxes and access of the diverse societal interests to governmental instances, it estranged itself from potential allies as well as from actors critical for its success.

There is no perfect relationship between the government and its society. Each nation has its history, traditions and forms. At the same time, every government imprints particular characteristics on its time in office. In this manner, David Cameron is very distinct as Prime Minister from Margaret Thatcher or Luis Echeverría from Gustavo Díaz Ordaz. However, what differentiates the U.K. from Mexico is not the personal style of their governors but the fact that Mexico’s possesses vast discretional powers that no British Prime Minister would ever imagine possible. That is, the governors of serious countries are limited by effective checks and balances that limit their capacity for action, but that also   establish a minimal platform of permanent trust. In Mexico trust comes and goes and each government has to win it; in England the popularity of the Prime Minister can rise and fall but the society is not left unprotected when one rises and another falls. Legality begins at home. Its absence is the measure of our lack of civilization.

In effect, the government must return to procuring the society’s trust. It would recover it much more quickly if it were to promote long-lasting guarantees and respect for the rights of the population than grand, spectacular acts.

www.cidac.org

@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

Corruption was a matter for profound reflection when the Founding Fathers of the North American nation deliberated on the elements that would be embodied in its new Constitution. Alexander Hamilton argued: “Purge [the British] constitution of its corruption… and it would become an impracticable government. As it stands at present, with all its supposed defects, it is the most perfect government which ever existed”. For Hamilton, corruption was an inevitable cost of public life. In the end Hamilton lost, to the integral system of checks and balances postulated by James Madison.

Two hundred thirty years later, the public argumentation in Mexico is nearly identical. The notion that swarms the environment is that, first, it’s always been like this, so it always will be. Second, since corruption permits things to function, its costs are minor. Although there are measurements suggesting an incremental cost (more than 1% of the annual GDP), it is evident that it has been mutating and that what might have been valid in the past is currently not necessarily so.

Beyond the specific characteristics of the phenomenon and how it has changed,  what should now be of concern to all of us is not the fact that a public servant enriches himself while in power (something usual), but the fact that corruption has become generalized, its tentacles affixed to all the political parties and increasingly penetrating all of society. If it previously had been a factor that allowed for attenuating conflicts or accelerating the implementation of projects, above all public works, an ancestral wellspring of corruption, today it comprises a metastatic phenomenon that could end up paralyzing not only the government but the country in general.

In his excellent essay in the February issue of Nexos, Luis Carlos Ugalde describes the nature and dimensions of the phenomenon, illustrating the manner in which the pyramidal corruption of the era of authoritarian presidentialism has been “democratizing” itself on becoming incorporated into all levels of government, parties, and branches of government. What previously was concentrated and an instrument of political cohesion has transmuted into a mechanism of political control in the hands of a growing number of actors. Worse yet, its ubiquitousness has generated widespread repudiation in society, ire that has become hatred.

The democratization of corruption has engendered a working-example effect that, combined with impunity, has spread to other ambits of the society. While the corruption of the past was typical of the availability of privileged intelligence within the government (for example buying land on knowing that a highway would be built there), use of the public expenditure for private gain or of the interaction between public and private actors (such as governmental purchases), corruption at present is frequent in transactions between private actors (such as purchasing advertising) and has become deeply entrenched in the definition of standard procedure (for example, hospitals demanding unnecessary studies that swell patients’ bills).

Rationalizing corruption as something ancestral and cultural authorizes the spawning and nurturing of political clienteles. The parties have devoted themselves to legislating increasingly extreme (and absurd) regulations for financing their campaigns, rules that they are the first to breach:  one calculation suggests that the average political campaign costs twenty times what the legislation sanctions.

More than an exclusively monetary phenomenon, corruption has altered the lexicon, the discourse and the modus operandi: this might appear to merely be a shift in semantics, but in what it in reality implies is that corruption has ceased to be merely a “necessary evil” and proceeds to be the only way of conducting public life. That “small” step infers that there are no longer limits and that anything goes: all vestige of community, organized society or dominion of the law disappears and becomes unattainable. History shows that this is the best culture medium for messianic, populist and authoritarian leaderships to emerge.

The greater part of the proposals for solution do not attack more than the symptoms. Law making in matters of transparency has become mired in a set of exceptions that diverse governmental entities have attempted to interpose, some more logical than others. But the dynamic of that discussion is revelatory in itself: every effort is concentrated on rendering transparency and auditing (which are important), but not on eliminating the causes of the phenomenon. The very name of the instrument proposed for combating it is suggestive of its limitations: the “national anti-corruption system”.

The problem of all of the formulas presented for combating corruption is that they do not dare to recognize the backstory, above all the reason why it has “democratized”. In a word, Mexico’s problem is not one of corruption, violence, criminality or drugs. Its problem is the absence of a professional system of government. Mexico went from an authoritarian patrimonialism of controlled corruption to a patrimonialistic disorder in which corruption has metastasized. Nothing is going to change until a modern system of government is constructed, with a professional and apolitical bureaucracy, secured by anchor to the Reign of the Law.

Until this takes place, the decomposition will persist and the economy will continue to yield mediocre results. Reforms are necessary, but without government and without law nothing will change.

www.cidac.org

@lrubiof