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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FORBES – January, 2015

Luis Rubio

It is easy to forget what the Berlin Wall was, its reality and significance, above all because in Mexico’s ambiance it often seems that the wall is still there. In Mexico, the wall was, and sadly continues to be, a great excuse for not solving the country’s basic problems, but also for justifying them and, in practice, perpetuating them.

The fall of the Berlin Wall entailed enormous symbolism: the West had won a great historic battle that had gestated from the moment that the powers divided Europe at the end of WWII. With the opening, the political geography of the Euro-Asian continent was altered, reestablishing German might and bringing the former Soviet empire to a close. Perhaps of greatest import was that the fall of the Berlin Wall annihilated Marxism as an ideology, although it didn’t disappear, especially outside of Europe.

The impact on the fall of the Wall in Mexico was distinct. The Mexican Left and, in good measure, the Latin-American Left, has preserved Marxism as dogma and a lodestar for action. While throughout history, and from much before Marx, the Left has always been defined by its opposition to an unacceptable status quo (such as poverty, inequality or lack of access to diverse types of satisfiers), its persistent proximity to Marxism is significant and revelatory. Marxism provided a unifying and justifying vehicle for opposition to the status quo and continues to be so. For those of us engaged in our university studies in the seventies, Marxism was the backbone of the social sciences. In some places it was learned as a science or as an analytical tool, in others as dogma, but its penetration was practically universal. With the fall of the Wall, the nature of Marxism changed, and with it the disappearance of the financing source for activists useful to Moscow. However, in Mexico Marxism persisted in part because it supplied an explanation for the social reality, but also for the absence of academic options. This fact had consequences, which can be appreciated directly, as well as indirectly, in the failed attempt at bring pressure to bear for a new presidential election at the end of last year.

Of course, the problem is not Marxism or the fact that well-entrenched nuclei of believers are alive and well in Mexico or in other latitudes. The problem is two-fold: on the one hand, within university ambits something very similar to what took place in the economy, where very often there is no competition either. Competition of ideas is one of the most important sources of advancement and transformation, because that’s how knowledge makes headway. To the degree that are no dissident ideas (because there aren’t any or because the environment does not permit them), knowledge stagnates.

The other problem is that the reality had not changed: as long as poverty exists, in combination with the absence of opportunities of participation for generations of teachers, academicians and students, frustration accumulates and permanent foci of extremism are generated. Much of the radicalism characterizing the country has its origin in real factors that derive from the political structure and the socioeconomic reality. Any political strategy that would aspire to attend to the nation’s sources of radicalism would have to recognize the factors that give it life.

The Ayotzinapa Teachers College, to cite the most apparent example, is known as a source of radicalism and it’s not the only one that shares this characteristic. These past months illustrate the absence (historical) of the understanding of the factors that generate permanent social conflict and that, for example, make Marxism attractive as an ideological source and battle strategy. In the seventies, it was combated by violent means (the so-called dirty war), those same means that did not alter the historical pattern but rather secured it.

The true learning from the fall of the Berlin wall is that there needs to be competition of ideas and conditions must exist that make economic development possible. Above all, the great lesson is that both things –conditions for development and rivalry of ideas- go hand in hand and constitute the essence of progress. To get ahead, Mexico will have to change its way of being: it is not by controlling or oppressing that advancement is achieved but instead by generating options for the population’s participation, all within an environment of competition and freedom. This is as valid for the economy as it is for politics.

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Luis Rubio

The world has undergone one convulsion after another during these last years. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the old mechanisms that (nearly) coerced stability disappeared, which led to that, in general, each nation had to develop and maintain its own sources of stability and adaptability. The Arab Spring is a perfect example because of its very differentiated impact: while all semblance of order in Libya vanished and Syria endured days of catastrophe, Tunisia achieved a democratic election, Egypt reconstructed its old forms and Lebanon emerged relatively intact. What explains the differences and what does that tell us about the disorder characterizing Mexico in the last months and years?

An article and a book throw light on what permits or impedes adaptability in the face of highly volatile political, economic or social processes. In Resilient America, which could be translated as “The Adaptable United States”, Michael Nelson describes one of those anni horribili: in 1968, explains Nelson, the U.S. experienced urban disturbances, the Tet Offensive in Vietnam (the beginning of the end of that “adventure”), the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy and the seizure  of the USS Pueblo spy ship by North Korea. “Not since the Civil War and the Great Depression, says Nelson, has the American political system been submitted to greater stress than in 1968…” and yet, to a remarkable degree, “the system survived”.

In Mexico we had one of those years in 1994 that ended up causing basic changes in the political structure of the country, sowing the seeds of the deepest financial crisis that the nation had ever undergone and forcing the transformation of the electoral system, eventually giving rise to alternation of political parties in the presidency. Although the cost in terms of legitimacy for the system was enormous, it could be argued that the country survived the crisis because it found the manner of adapting. In this, the contrast between that moment and 2014 is patent: on this occasion, and at least to date, the capacity of adaptation appears diminished if not inexistent.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Gregory F. Treverton offer an interesting perspective in their article The Calm Before the Storm*, a text that fine-tunes and brings some of the concepts that Taleb developed in his previous books down to earth: The Black Swan, and Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder. In this article the authors have focused on the way a political system administers disorder. Their central argument is that some political systems have the capacity to tolerate tremendous stress, while others collapse prior to the first tensions. The solidity or fragility of a system depends on the institutional structures of each nation.

Nelson deciphers the capacity of adaptation of the North American system at that moment because of its institutional structures (at some point he argues that “Madison rules America”, with this wishing to state that the separation of powers and political decentralization guarantees institutional behavior), as much as because the system-straining forces of discord were unaligned, they had no coherent political effect. More importantly, argues Nelson, the system includes mechanisms of dissention that allow any political force to express itself through perfectly established channels, whether these coincided or not with the government of the moment.

The Taleb and Treverton argument, more conceptual, is that taken at face value, centralization seems to make governments more effective, thus more stable. But that stability is an illusion. Centralization contributes to fragility. Although centralization reduces deviations from the norm, making things appear to run smoothly, it magnifies the consequences of those deviations that do occur. It concentrates turmoil in fewer but more severe episodes, which are disproportionally more harmful than cumulative small variations. In other words, centralization decreases local risks, such as provincial barons pocketing public funds, at the risk of increasing systemic risks, such as disastrous national-level reforms. Accordingly, highly centralized states, such as the Soviet Union, are more fragile than non-centralized ones, such as Switzerland, which is effectively composed of village-states. It would see they are talking about today’s Mexico.

The lesson would seem evident: Mexico is an extraordinarily diverse country in geographic, ethnic, religious and regional terms: While the Secretary of Finance is correct when he asserts that a development plan is required for the nation’s South that is distinct from that which has characterized the rest of the country, the solution that the current government has attempted –concentration of power, therefore concentration of responsibility- has done nothing other than exacerbate tensions. That exacerbation has translated into a disproportionate impact on the federal government, leaving it paralyzed. Instead of rendering it more effective, it has made it more vulnerable, more disposed to systemic attacks, therefore at greater risk for general stability. In retrospect, the chaotic decentralization of the last decade, as it turns out, had the benign effect of diversifying the systemic risk.

The latter does not imply that that is the lasting solution, but it does suggest that the present crisis is the product in good measure of having projected the characteristics of the State of Mexico –no alternation of political parties- to the remainder of the country, an increasingly more diverse and complex nation. Mexico must develop a political model that decentralizes power and establishes clear lines of responsibility, which in serious nations is called the Rule of Law.

*Foreign Affairs, January-February 2015

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Luis Rubio

Mexico’s problems didn’t start in Iguala nor do they dwell in what the government does or doesn’t do. In any case, paraphrasing an Arab snippet of wisdom, the government is guilty of having celebrated “before having the camel’s hairs in its hand”, but that’s an issue of arrogance and not of intention. The great problem of the government is that it doesn’t have a response, a strategy that matches today’s reality in the face of globalization and of an open society that, though far from having achieved democratic institutionalization, is no longer submissive and timorous as it was under the old PRIist regime. The problem is one of vision and perspective.

The government had tried everything: reforms, spending, threats; it has advanced infrastructure projects and cancelled others; it has attempted to convince the world but has ignored the Mexicans. The events of Iguala have not modified the need for action on multiple fronts nor must these events impede much of what has been achieved to date being consolidated and yielding favorable results over time: the case of energy is emblematic. What Iguala did was to give a voice to an entire society that rejects the imposition of an effete and a-historic concept of government.

It has taken the government months to flesh out a response in good measure because from the outset it repudiated the limits imposed by the reality. The government rejects the fact that globalization should impose severe restrictions on its freedom of action because globalization goes hand in glove with the transparency reverberating throughout the orb, the ubiquitousness of information that has empowered even the most unpretentious of citizens and given options to all social actors, beginning with businessmen and investors. The government demonstrated that it can raise taxes, benefit some contractors over others, privilege one private media outlet over other telecommunications companies and jail a teachers’ leader, but it has not demonstrated that it can remove the country from the hole it’s in. In this paradox lies its challenge: negotiating politicians within the legislative and partisan context is not the same as governing.

The first face of the paradox is key: the initial success, constructed on taking refuge in the Pact for Mexico forged among the political parties, incorporated the benefit of making the unobstructed approval of the legislative agenda possible, but at the enormous cost of rendering irrelevant the other parties as functional opposition. Many applauded the political agreement, but few considered its implications. Given the very restrictive electoral regime characterizing the country –this implying that it is exceedingly difficult to create alternative forms of political participation (including the creation of new political parties)- the country experienced the pressure cooker effect, in which dissidence is being manifested by other means, many of these  potentially illegitimate. The marches, protests, torchings and passive forms of rejection, but not thus less effective, illustrate the risk of closing all spaces for dissent and the manifestation of ideas or alternative proposals. Of course this is not exclusive to the current government, but its devotion to controlling and censuring in general, in addition to corrupting the opposition parties (e.g., moches or “sharing” a percentage of each spending program), has had the effect of annulling other means of access and participation.

On the second face of the paradox lies, in the last analysis, the true challenge of proceeding full face toward the future. The country is confronting a basic problem of governance; in a word, the country has not been governed for decades. Inertia has been getting the nation by, crises have been faced in the best possible manner, but no institutions have been consolidated, this meaning rules of the game that are known by all and made to be complied with by the government without distinction. In one word, means which allow the development of a functional society, a successful economy and, in general, a prosperous nation. There has been inertia but not government, and in that the present one is not different.

Governing does not consist of making agreements among politicians or advancing a legislative agenda. Governing is creating conditions for the functioning of society and ensuring that these operate systematically with the objective of making stability as well as prosperity possible. Without order the functioning of the country is impossible, but by order one must not understand the Porfirian (and PRIist) authoritarian dictum under which nothing moves. Order is a dynamic concept that entails an active participation of the society within a framework of transparent rules.

This has never existed in Mexican society. Mexico went from an authoritarian regime in which the rules were “unwritten” to a pseudo-democratic regime without rules and without government. The economy was reformed (at least in key aspects such as public finances and the trading regime) but a modern system of government was not constructed nor was transformation procured for the traditional productive plant with the aim of raising its productivity and rendering it possible to share the success of the development. Both of these things feed on each other: the old system of government pairs up with the old economy and one lives off the other in a symbiotic relationship that benefits very few, while simultaneously making it impossible for the majority of the population to have a viable and productive future. Anchors of stability are urgent that confer certainty on the population and a means of adjustment for the traditional (i.e., old) productive plant.

The great challenge resides in advancing the transformation of both the system of government as well as that of the old economy. These matters are perhaps not as flamboyant and inviting as energy sector reforms, but without them not even a reform as ambitious and promising as that of the energy sector has any future at all.

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Luis Rubio

We Mexicans have confused two very distinct processes that, while at some moment and circumstance could be complementary, can also be contradictory. For it to work, democracy requires strong and effective institutions that ensure participants in the political process of strict compliance with the fundamental rules of political coexistence. In this sense the existence of strong institutions is a precondition for the functioning of democracy. On its part, the strength and viability of any political system depends on institutions. To a greater extent than democracy, the key to political viability and stability resides in the quality and strength of the institutions.

Samuel Huntington, an acute political observer, observed that that there was permanent tension between institutions and democracy; one his many facets of heterodoxy consisted of affirming that there was much more in common between the Soviet Union and the U.S. (this was in the sixties) than between either of these and the so-called underdeveloped countries. In Huntington’s perspective, what placed the URSS and the U.S. on a par was not ideological but institutional; with all of their differences, he asserted, both nations possessed strong institutions, a circumstance that made all the difference.

In the eighties, Horia Roman Patapievici, a Romanian philosopher, stated that the prime objective for any country that aspired to develop itself, “the task is to acquire a public style based on impersonal and transparent rules like in the West. Otherwise business and politics would be full of intrigue”. And he questioned whether Romania’s Eastern Orthodox tradition is helpful in this regard. He went on the explain that Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Macedonia, Russia, Greece, and Cyprus – the Orthodox nations of Europe – were all characterized by weak institutions, compared with those of northwestern Europe. He and many others have intimated that this is partly because Orthodoxy is flexible and contemplative, thus tolerant of the world as it is, having created its own alternative order. Patapievici stated that in his country the Orthodox Church exacted an enormous challenge on the growth of institutions because its dogma of the Orthodox Church impeded the development of reliable and predictable rules: he insinuated that the flexibility inherent in ecclesiastical activity rendered impossible the adoption, on a social and cultural plane, of transparent and rules, known to all in advance. From the time I read those words, nearly thirty years ago, the thought came to mind that we Mexicans confront a similar challenge not so much because of the Church but due to the inherently corrupting nature of the functioning of the PRI.

In past decades, the country’s political mantra has been that there is the imperious need to construct a democratic structure as the form of government. With all of its avatars, Mexicans have advanced dramatically (and extraordinarily) in the electoral ambit but have been remiss, not to say incapable, in constructing the institutional scaffolding necessary to make democracy functional. This is not about an ethereal or ideological element: when a political party requests, reasonably and openly, as the PRD did recently, that the electoral authority organize and watch over its internal elections, there is no alternative other than to recognize that, on the one hand, there is a trustworthy and professional authority but, on the other, that no framework exists of reliable rules for direct interaction among persons, groups or parties in the political arena.

For fifteen years from the time the PRI lost its formal capacity of imposition with the disappearance of its legislative majority in 1997, the quasi-consensus among analysts was that democracy had not gelled in the country and that the great misfortune resided in the absence of mechanisms prone to creating legislative majorities through coalitions among the political parties. The experience of the last two years suggests that the problem does not lie in the incapacity of forming majorities (in that the evidence is overwhelmingly in the contrary direction: democracy did not impede the famous Pact for Mexico from making it possible to approve all of the bills that the government wished), but rather in the inexistence of rules of the game (thus, institutions), beyond those that stem from the skills of specific individuals.

The tangible fact has been that the capacity of political operation of the President has demonstrated that the problem wasn’t one of democracy but of the inexistence of ability in prior political leadership. At the same time, the manner in which that immense litany of initiatives –vaulting over all formal procedure in the legislative ambit- illustrates our enormous institutional weakness. In a word, the problem is not democracy but the political susceptibility to the imposition (or any word that one desires to employ) on the part of an effective political operator.

At the heart of the presidential success lies Mexico’s true dilemma: the experience of these times shows a citizenry incapable or unwilling to defend the few (frail as they may be) freedoms and institutions that the country possesses. The PRI has achieved imposing its forms beyond its ranks and no one –parties or citizenry- emerged to defend the formality, the heart of institutional strength. In a certain respect, corruption is nothing other than an indicator of the existence of alternative mechanisms for the solution of problems. In the political conduct of recent times we Mexicans have shown that we are not  “sons and daughters” of an institutional tradition or of the blacks and whites that are the legacy of dictatorial systems: instead, the experience of these times shows that the system of PRIist imposition –interminable grays- has permeated all of society and has made it incapable of defending its basic rights, and this does not, most certainly, a citizenry make.

www.cidac.org

@lrubiof