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…

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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.

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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.

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FORBES – Febrero 2015

Luis Rubio

An entrepreneur arrives at the inspectors’ office of the Ministry of Labor to inquire about a fine that he’d been issued. The person in charge explains to him that the inspector visited his company and found that the strips on the floor were 9 cm in width while the code establishes that these be 10 cm. That violation of the code entails a fine of 16,000 pesos to be paid within the next 30 days, but the person in charge informs him that there is nonconformity procedure and that it’s easy to win because the code has distinct measurements for floor strips depending on the part of the code applied. Act 2. A person seated next to the receptionist’s desk approaches the businessman and offers to represent him in the nonconformity procedure. They move over to a corner and the alleged attorney informs the entrepreneur that it’s easy to win the dispute and that his fees would be 5,000 pesos for the entire process. The entrepreneur reluctantly accepts the offer and in 24 hours the case is resolved for the modest sum of 5,000 pesos. The expeditiousness of the procedure leads one think that it‘s an artful ambush, a modus operandi devised for extortion pure and simple.

Simulation is the Mexican’s daily bread. Some are extorted from their money by organized crime, other by government inspectors, but the act of extortion is exactly the same. In both cases, the asymmetry of power is such that the citizen in the street has no alternative other than dealing with the consequences. Bureaucratic extortion dons a halo of legitimacy but it’s not distinct from the other: both are designed to increase the overhead of commercial operations just enough as to not wipe them out. What’s interesting about the governmental case is the simulation that characterizes it: the guise of legality that an act of flagrant abuse takes on.

Examples of simulation abound. A Physician friend of mine who was engaged in his social service stint in a population in State of Mexico came down with measles. However, the State of Mexico government had informed the public some months previously that measles had been eradicated in the entity. Thus, the case of measles could not exist. Act 2. An ambulance drove my friend home with a certificate of termination of his social service, although months were left until its conclusion.

The recently approved legislation on telecommunications matters, supposedly oriented toward generating greater competition in the sector, has not impeded the industry’s ongoing “consolidation”, that is, the dominant players buy out their lesser fellows.

For years, the Mexican National Electricity Company (CFE) anointed itself a “world-class enterprise”. The only problem is that it was alone in its league because it was not competitive under any of the relevant rubrics by which the industry is gauged. Luckily PEMEX to date has not had the audacity to adopt a similar point of comparison, perhaps realizing that a simulation of that magnitude would not be tolerated even by its own exalted personages.

Now that Mexicans are in the full throes of the electoral season (June 7), we find that it’s also the stage of the grasshoppers: politicians who abandon posts for which they were duly elected for the sake of coming by a new one. The responsibility assumed in the prior election to govern a municipality or entity or to represent a district in Congress is the least of their worries: what’s important, as the old saying of Mexican politics goes, is not whether the glass is half full or half empty but being inside the glass. Some civil servants entertain the urgent need to occupy a new post because they would thus be protected by legal immunity from misdeeds committed during their prior terms-of-office. The point is that there never was a commitment with the citizenry whom they’d sworn to govern (this latter, in a manner of speaking) or represent. The important thing was to have a post. Everything else is simulation.

Simulation is the true essence of Mexican politics. The discourse touts democracy but the reality is one of despotism; representation is advanced in the rhetoric but the objective is personal enrichment. The citizenry, economic progress and the nation’s well-being is the least of it: what’s relevant is staying alive in the power and corruption loop. What is truly astonishing is the ease with which the PAN and the PRD mimicked the PRI, the old and the new.

The simulation-corruption-impunity triad bestows respectability on the pillage, on the so-called vested rights, on the abuse, thus, on the country’s lagging behind. A country that lives in and from simulation is not one that can bestir itself or achieve development. There are contradictions that simply do not stand up under the light of any scrutiny.

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                                                                                                                                 Luis Rubio

Joaquín Villalobos, strategist and extraordinary reader of the criminal reality, wrote a long article* in which he clearly and precisely describes  the dilemma that Mexico is confronting. I transcribe here the core sentences of his argument:

• The State develops from the monopoly of violence, that is, from the capacity that a governing class possesses to exercise authority over a determined territory in order to protect those who inhabit it.
• Security is the first right of the citizens and the prime responsibility of the State. Thus, the coercive power of the State is the main power because the certainty of being protected with respect to life, patrimony and human rights are preconditions for everything else.
• Every void in the State’s authority derives in the growth of criminal power. This vacuum facilitates the convening and hierarchizing of small groups until they become great criminal organizations that eventually control the territory and co-opt the institutions.
• During the Cold War, police and military were deployed to the territory in considerable amounts to react to protests, uprisings and coup d’états. It is with institutions founded on those ideas that emerging democracies now intend to respond the tsunami of criminal violence.
• The police officer in the street was left with fewer resources, a low salary, debilitated authority, without social recognition, with doctrine and know-how learned from authoritarianism and nevertheless obliged to respect human rights.
• It is not possible to face the present criminal violence without a transformation of the security institutions, without a new deployment of these into the areas-of-concern and without a substantial increase in manpower. Preventive social policies will not be effective if citizens lead lives terrorized by crime; it is indispensable for the coercive power to quash the fear and reestablish the authority of the State in the communities. The police is the first line of contact between the State and the citizenry and the foundational pillar of all security; if it fails, the entire system fails.
• The way that authority was exercised in the past forged the base for the confusion between authoritarianism and strong State; when the former did not imply the latter, contrariwise the State was weak.
• The debate to find solutions to security problems has revolved around emphasis placed on repression or prevention. The first current of thought attests to impunity being what multiplies crime; therefore, the punishment should comprise the preeminent instrument to reduce it. The second establishes that the delinquent is a social victim, thus supposing that social programs should reduce crime.
• It is understandable that some demand decriminalization or regulation of the drug consumption, commerce or production…; however, in our case the criminal violence would simply move on to other crimes, with the aggravating circumstance of an increase of consumption that could create a public health problem for us that we do not have.
• Our security will only improve if we make advances in the construction of State and citizenry.
• For us the main task at hand is to strengthen the authority of the State and to protect our citizens. A strategy based on prosecuting drugs does not imply, necessarily, our fortifying our security; however, if we do strengthen our own security we will doubtlessly be more effective in combating narcotrafficking and any type of crime.
• The intent to solve problems with weak institutions that are the legacy of authoritarianism gave crime the time to put down cultural roots in our societies.
• The primordial task in security is to avoid there being victims; a society is safe when no crimes occur and not because the number of criminals who are processed and imprisoned.
• The criminal activity that chiefly evidences the defeat of the dissuasive power of the State is the massification of extortion.
• In the case of Mexico, the PRI regime preserved the peace by means of extensive and effective social control throughout the territory exercised by an extensive network of organizations that were the premier component of the so-called “inclusive authoritarianism”.
• The old Mexican security model was based on social control and institutional weakness… It was a derivation of authoritarian periods, therefore not repeatable.
• Recovering the territory implies that delinquents be deprived of stability, comfort, mobility, the power of intimidation and the capacity to concentrate on acting with impunity… It is not enough to catch and jail delinquents, it is crucial to counteract all of the attempts of these to intimidate, flaunt their power and act with violence.
• Pacifying communities and arresting delinquents are not contradictory undertakings… Capturing delinquents depends on being able to rely on intelligence and special forces, while avoiding crime requires territorial control.

In sum, says Villalobos, the current security crisis is a crisis of the State, by its absence, by its co-opting or by its weakness. Every vacuum of authority in the territory is occupied by another power, be they criminals, insurgents or   paramilitaries. Without reforming the security institutions bequeathed by the authoritarian regimes it is not possible to protect the citizens. If the police resemble delinquents, they will end up delinquents.

*Bandidos, Estado y ciudadanía, Nexos, enero 2015

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Luis Rubio

Four years is a long time: in this space a country can establish the foundations of its transformation toward development, but also to destroy what was accumulated over decades. The difference lies in the existence of a viable economic and political strategy and the leadership capable of leading the way through. As Martin Luther King affirmed, “darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that”. The question is from whence will come the light?

This president embarked with flying colors upon a long list of reforms and a political mechanism –the so called Pact for Mexico- for their approval. What followed makes plain the nature of the problem: the log jam set in when implementation of the constitutional reforms had to begin, a process by definition involving the affecting of special interests because reform inexorably entails modification of the status quo, but it opted not to do this. Some reforms were shelved, others watered down and yet others were in practice renegotiated. The result: many changes but little probability of achieving tangible benefits, while a dangerous propensity to undermine the existing (and weak) institutional structures was created.

As the months went by, it was evident that the criterion for putting the reforms into effect had no bearing on the success of these, but rather with not affecting specific interests. The case of the educative reform is illustrative: every single union section that rebelled against the reform was granted an exception. The same went with the National Polytechnic Institute.  It is natural and even commendable for the government to privilege peace and stability, making circumstantial concessions. However, exceptions are useful if only to buy time for subsequently forcing implementation of the reform required: contrariwise, they would become political facts that annul all possibility of the government’s achieving its own objectives.  Cancelling the implementation of the reforms can only provoke an expansive and endless wave of new petitioners: Does anyone remember the so called “concerta-cesiones” of the 1980’s, before the 1996 electoral reform, when each concession led to ever more complex demands?

As de Tocqueville once wrote of the reform process as the most dangerous moment for a government, the great risk that President Peña now confronts is having altered the foundations of the old constitutional order without having anything to show for it, undermining the groups and interests that sustain his party without having constructed a new coalition to support it.

By the time the events in Iguala came to be known the government already had problems. Iguala had the effect of unifying all who felt threatened, affected or aggravated by the government, mixing Greeks and Trojans together, some exceedingly innocent regarding the nature of their new “partners”. The absence of government response magnified the event (which I don’t want to minimize but it’s obvious that this also is not exceptional in a country that has witnessed over 100,000 deaths in recent years) and altered the political equation. What didn’t change was the governmental script and frame of reference, which have proven unviable and unsustainable.

The question is what’s next. Countries with solid structures that don’t rely on the skill or fitfulness of individual persons can navigate for a long time without anything happening: examples of this are plentiful, as with the U.S. today. But the contrary is also true of countries where the absence of institutions confers so much power, but also responsibility, on the individuals in charge. In one word, there’s no way that the country could survive without setbacks after four years astray. The government has to act –act differently- or will confront the actions and strategies of those bent on exploiting the roiling river. The strategy of no conflict at any price is leading the country towards anarchy.

The paradox of the moment lies in that the present government possesses the characteristics necessary to advance an ambitious reform project but appears to be unwilling to take the crucial step, which would inevitably imply affecting interests near the heart of the President himself, as well as building an alliance with the natural beneficiaries, although the majority still don’t know this: the citizens.

Successful reformers have been those who bestow privilege their reforms over and above their friendships. In their Praise of Betrayal, Jeambar and Roucaute affirm that “Everyone understands that it is very praiseworthy for a prince to keep his word and to live with integrity, without tricks or reprimands. Notwithstanding this, the experience our era demonstrates that the princes who have done great things have not put themselves out to keep their word”. That’s the tessitura in which President Peña finds himself: captain the ship into a safe port or be sunk by corruption, the keepers of agendas of non-institutional change and an economy that does not grow.

The best way of bringing the matter into focus is to acknowledge that the key resides in satisfying the population’s most basic needs, starting with the hope of a better life and the certainty that things will not get worse. The economic policy pursued to date goes counter these principles and endangers the viability of the country. Juan Perón observed that the most sensitive organ in the body is the pocketbook, a saying that applies equally to the most modest worker and to the loftiest businessman. The overarching uncertainty of the present can only be defeated with credible and lasting rules: clear-minded stewardship and a growing economy.

The President urgently needs to revert the destructive wave in which he finds himself and that can only happen with a game changer. Leading the nation towards the rule of law would be a grand place to start.

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Luis Rubio

The student assassinations in Iguala altered the political dynamic of the country and recast the fate of the government definitively. The crucial question is what the implications are. Judging by the discourse and communications of the President and his team, there is a certain number of insidious individuals who are guilty of having conspired against the government and having consciously engendered the current crisis. With this diagnosis, instead of coming to grips with resolving the situation, the government has devoted itself to pinpointing conspirators and guilty parties, destroying, step by step, its own capacity to advance.

Aside from some actors who are intentionally pledged to undermining the country’s stability and ousting the government, as various guerilla groups could be, it is difficult to believe that established businesspeople, other nations, or diverse institutions would have the least interest in, not to mention the capacity for, defying the government in this manner. In addition to that these actors live off the stability of the country and can only develop and prosper within that context, the basic question is, what would the government gain by flushing out the alleged guilty parties?

If anything has been evident throughout these exceedingly long months it is that the only big loser due to its paucity of action has been the government itself. Worse yet, the search for the guilty has led to aggravating the crisis, evidencing the government’s lacks and inabilities and emboldening its enemies. In this sense, beyond whether or not there are in reality conspirators, it is impossible not to arrive at the conclusion that the blame for the present moment, beginning with the situation in which the government now finds itself, lies in the initial error of a poor reading of the succession of events, from the strike of the Polytechnic students to Ayotzinapa. It was that error that led to the loss of credibility in the government, which still has not come to recognize the situation in which it finds itself. Some days ago, columnist Salvador Camarena recalled a citation of General Obregón that more fully explains the situation than all of the conspirators traipsing through the minds of our esteemed functionaries: “The first error is the one that counts: the rest are consequences”.

The problem with conspiratorial approaches –the first error- is that they get lost in their own labyrinth. Rather than advancing the governmental project, it ends up paralyzed in the “who did this to me?”, making it impossible to resolve the situation. The question that the government should be asking itself is “what did we do wrong?”, because that way of focusing the problem conveys concrete answers and the possibility of solving it. Inasmuch as the government persists in searching for the “bad guys” and in the inanity of continuing to engage in what has already proven not to work, its situation, and inexorably that of the country, will continue to pursue the inevitable course of systematic deterioration.

In a speech days prior to his assassination, Robert Kennedy revealed an idea that seems to be expressly conceived for this moment of Mexico: “Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul”. That is the true theme of Mexico: the urgency to construct a new platform for its development, something that does not depend on more legal reforms, more controls over society, budgetary actions, or scapegoats, but instead on a transformative vision appropriate for the XXI Century.

The country suffers from all kinds of ills, but the main one is the absence of a sense of direction and a skilful and committed government to head it. That absence, the reflection of a weak and inadequately professional system of government, creates a “roiling river” environment in which the more extremist interests and groups flourish and profit, the unruly of whatever stripe wax courageous and investment, thus the generation of wealth and jobs, is inhibited. All of this undermines governmental projects and postpones, if not nullifies the potential for economic growth.

In this manner, a government that wagered on its mere presence transforming the country is finding that the entire system has feet of clay. This reality admits two possibilities: one, start to correct the problems distressing the country and that now have had the effect of paralyzing the government; or, second, leave no stone unturned in seeking out the guilty, which would lead to an increasingly dangerous and risk-ridden scenario for the stability and viability of the country in its entirety.

It is evidently impossible to solve ancestral problems that this government and all its predecessors, have inherited from history.  What is possible is to change the tone, head up transformative processes and prove to the citizenry that there is a future that is not only promising but wholly possible. The government’s problem is that a cynosure of this nature would imply a radical departure from its initial project.

The government took the country by surprise with its reforms and the capacity for processing them in the legislative environment. What it didn’t do was recognize that this is the XXI Century, within the context of economic globalization and in the midst of an immense security crisis. Only by adopting the rules inherent in the globalization era can the government begin to change the nation’s course and, at the same time, leave a lasting legacy. The only way that the government can break the vicious circle in which it finds itself lies in becoming the paladin of the Rule of Law, practically the opposite of what fueled its venture at its outset.

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 Luis Rubio

Beyond its (enormous) economic impact, the true transcendence of NAFTA was its exceptional character in the public life of Mexico. NAFTA resolved the main source of uncertainty that impeded the flow of private investment. However, its exceptionality resides in that the government accepted limits to its capacity of action vis-a-vis those investors and in that altered one of the core characteristics and tenets of the so-called “system”, the way Mexico had been governed ever since the Revolution by the victors and according to their own will. I ask myself whether it will be possible to take the next step: construct a mechanism that limits the government’s capacity of action –thus, the main source of arbitrariness that exists at present, in reality or potentially, in front of the citizenry- but in the world of politics.

In its original conception, the objective of initiating the negotiation of a North American trade agreement was the creation of a mechanism that would grant long-term certainty to the investor. The context within which that objective was procured is important: Mexico was just emerging from a stage of financial instability, high levels of inflation, bank expropriations and, in general, an investment regime that repudiated foreign investment and that sought to regulate and limit private investment in general. Although the rules had changed in this respect, investment did not exhibit a willingness to pour into the nation as the government at the time pretended. Risk-averse investors needed certainty. NAFTA was the factual recognition that a much more audacious step was required to attract that investment.

At the end of the day, the governmental response constituted a milestone in the political life of the country because NAFTA entails a set of “disciplines” (as trade negotiators call them) that are nothing other than impediments to a government acting as it feels like or as the various interests that operate within the political apparatus might prefer. Acceptance of this set of disciplines implies the decision to “self-limit”, that is, to accept that there are rules of the game and that there is a severe cost to be paid in the case of violating these norms. In one word, the government ceded power in order to gain credibility, in order to attract investment. This ceding of power allowed the country to generate a huge new engine of growth in the form of foreign investment and exports. Without this ceding of powers, the country would have at best muddled along for the last twenty years.

Beyond the economic challenges the country encounters today (which are not few in number or simple), Mexico continues to face a fundamental challenge in politics and this one is not conceptually distinct from that which existed when it was decided to accept these economic and commercial disciplines. To the extent that the governor can say yes or no according to his own personal, political or party calculations without a concern for whether that decision violates the law, the rule of law is irrelevant; it does not exist. This circumstance is the one that makes the country dependent on one individual (a factor that tends to reproduce itself at the state level), thus impeding the consolidation of plans, projects or careers because everything is limited to the time lapse of a that individual’s six-year term in power.

What a certain cynic called the “sexennial metric system” (everything starts and ends within the span of a presidential term) is a national reality that not even the recent PAN governments (2000-2012) altered. The propensity for reinventing the world every time a new government takes over and to negate the value of everything that exists has its consequences in all ambits. For example, there are no master plans for the development of cities; investment –public as well as private- is conceived for the short term; pacts and agreements among parties are understood as personal, rather than institutional, issues; decisions on matters of permits and appointments are guided by choices of friends; there is no State policy in elemental affairs such as education, health, the fight against poverty or foreign policy.

The point is that each government feels itself to be the country’s owner and does not see its management as part of a long-term development process. Of course each governor believes that his projects will last and that he personally will join the ranks of the leaders of the nation’s Independence and Benito Juárez, the Founding Fathers, and that his name will go down in history as one of the great builders of the country. Few take note of the fact that the latter is infrequent because the country’s way of being impedes the growth and consolidation of independent institutions, leads to pernicious dependencies, and limits the very potential for success of any individual administration.

There’s a reason why some nations achieve access to development and that has less to do with the rates of economic growth than with the strength of the institutions that render growth feasible in the long term. A governor attempting to transcend would do much better to cede those arbitrary powers, what Mexicans call “meta-constitutional” attributions and power in the interest of consolidating an institutional system. In the history of PRI, personal power was everything and was never institutionalized. Institutionalizing power would be a much more effective way to transcend than to endorse grand projects that are none other than the reinvention of the wheel.

What nations such as Chile and Korea, among others, have achieved is instituting the Rule of Law as their prime institution. Each of these countries pursued its own process but the common denominator, was the acceptance of the governor to self-limit. This crucial step, which in the case of NAFTA transpired in a specific ambience, is the most tangible example of the challenge that Mexico faces. The country will not move on to the major leagues unless it takes that step.  Until that point in time, everything is a mere child’s play.

*From the book A Mexican Utopia: The Rule of Law is Possible, www.WilsonCenter.org

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http://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/Mexican_Utopia_English.pdf

Luis Rubio

There are two ways to focus on the challenges facing Mexico at present. The first is to assume that the Rule of Law reigns for everybody without distinction. The other is to set out from the recognition that what does exist does not work and requires a transformation. The two pathways constitute avenues with possibilities, but everything depends on the port one wishes to arrive at. Dante offers a reading on what the alternative implies: “The path to paradise begins in hell”, he tells us in a well-known passage. In another he affirms that “midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost”. Whichever the preferred perspective might be, both imply insinuating that the country is facing fundamental predicaments.

In recent months note has been made of all types of proposals for a solution. These vary depending on the personal experience or outlook that motivates the proponent: some are radical in content, others ambitious in their reach and some clearly entail a personal interest. Diagnoses also vary, quite paradoxical in a society in which it’s been said that the country’s problems were perfectly diagnosed and that all that was required was the approval of a set of reforms (“The Reforms,” with capital letters) to attain Nirvana. As it turns out we have lived through the period of greatest legislative “turbulence” from the existence of the standing Constitution and, however, the problems have not receded from view.

With this I do not wish to criticize the reforms ratified but rather the misleading tendency in vogue today of assuming fads as certainties and changes on paper transformed realities. Thus the national discussion has become one of diagnoses: whether the problem comprises the reforms themselves or the corruption, impunity or the political class, the political parties or the absence of the Rule of Law. Some are symptoms, others potential causes, but it is essential to determine which is which and what is what prior to continue grooming pacts, passing laws or pretending that the solution to such a complex situation lies just around the corner. The only thing that’s evident is that all of these are elements -components- of an intricate photograph with which the nation –and, above all the government- must deal.

In his most recent book, Political Order and Political Decay, Fukuyama offers some viewpoints that can be useful for understanding the complexity of the moment Mexico is currently traversing. His main conclusion is that the order of the factors indeed does change the product, but not deterministically: for a country to achieve the stability and order that allows it to progress requires a competent government as well as an effective system of checks and balances, but if the former does not exist, the latter will only serve to render the functioning of the government impossible.

Countries that first developed competent and efficient bureaucracies and then moved on to democracy, argues Fukuyama, are usually more orderly, efficient and uncorrupt, but their governments tend to be less responsive to the demands of the citizenry. The prototypical case that illustrates this example, says the author, is Germany, a country that he compares with the United States, where democracy preceded the development of a strong state. In the latter, organized citizens have enormous influence on the decision making process. The first example in the extreme would be China (very effective but not at all democratic), the example of the second Greece (very democratic but terribly dysfunctional). Where would you situate Mexico?

One way of understanding the author’s argument is observing systems of patronage: a system devoted to handing out favors ends up drowning in corruption and is highly obstinate to being reformed. Patronage, says Fukuyama, is an “ambiguous phenomenon” because it is “more democratic” but also “systematically corrupting”. Governments dedicated to constructing, nurturing and exploiting clienteles generate incentives so that everyone can see politics as an opportunity for personal gain.

When Fukuyama evaluates underdeveloped countries he says that the difference between nations such as Korea, Vietnam or China and those of the African sub-Sahara is that the former possess “competent, high-capacity states,” in contrast with those that “do not possess strong state-level institutions”. The key, says the author, resides in institutional strength and competence, not on any ideological or ethical (that is, cultural) orientation. Where there are strong institutions, there is a competent government, and vice versa.

Whatever the correct diagnosis of the Mexican problematic, it is clear that the country’s weakness in institutional matters is legendary, which leads us to two crucial questions: first, is the government willing to confront a problematic that it didn’t have on its radar and that sailed right past it in recent months? Second, will Mexican society have the capacity to accept that some advances in democratic matters are also part of the problem because some of them make impossible the existence of a functional and accountable government?

With respect to the first, the country lacks governmental capacity even for the most elemental: security, justice, infrastructure and the disposition for generating   certainty among the population. Regarding the second, the ability of the government to approve reforms would be sufficient for a great exercise of leadership that permits discerning between the desirable and the necessary. What’s not expendable is a functional and functioning government.

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