In some philosophical circles, there is an old debate on the efficacy of a long-standing mode of Chinese execution denominated ling chi, death by thousands of little cuts. Whatever the effect of ling chi on Mexican politics might be, our democratic system suffers from innumerable problems. We went from a centralized and semi-authoritarian regime to a process of democratic forms but ones without the contents of a democracy. There are thousands of opinions on the Mexican transition and its future: from those who affirm that the transition has already ended to those who consider it not to have even begun. Some are interested parties, motivated by mere political calculation, but others, on both sides of the spectrum, reflect contrasting visions that are equally respectable.

More than democracy, the demonstrations in the Arab nations in recent months have permitted an interesting discussion to blossom forth: the questions that arise from people expressing their opinions, arguing, and make proposals concern the manner in which to launch a citizen movement in a consolidated democracy, how to afford functionality to a political system in which the historical mechanisms of power centralization and population control no longer operate, how to construct the institutional framework that allows for the participation of the population and that renders the demands preceding the change of regime effective. In a word, the discussion –in Arab as well as in Western media- has concentrated precisely on the type of questions that we Mexicans have been discussing for decades.

Churchill observed that “democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time”. What Churchill did not explain was the mystery of how to arrive at the point at which democracy functions effectively as a system of government as well as a mechanism of representation. For example, elections have achieved representation of the diverse political forces in the legislative organs, but that does not necessarily mean that the population feels that it is represented or that we possess a functional system of government. The tension between these two factors –representation and effectiveness- lies at the very heart of democracy.

Of the many texts that I read on the changes in the Arab World, one caught my eye because it offered a distinct viewpoint on democratic complexity. The quote, anonymous, is from an Egyptian diplomat residing in a Western capital city who relates what he has learned after years of living outside of his country. “Democracy, the quote reads, is in fact a strict dictatorship, since each citizen is his own dictator. The citizen imposes upon himself a strict etiquette: not to push; not to steal; not to harass women and girls; not to harm or insult others; to stop at a red light even if it’s three o’clock in the morning; not to cheat in business; to hold the door open for the person behind you; to stand in line; not to behave in a socially unacceptable manner; and other such dos and don’ts which the citizen in a democratic society is obligated to abide by at every moment. He upholds these rules not out of fear of the regime (which is in no way intimidating), but out of self-discipline and conviction that only thus can a society run smoothly”*.

From this perspective, a democratic society is based not on coercion but, instead, on each citizen’s self-control that, on being practiced by the society as a whole, permits a life of freedom and comfort. It is, states the diplomat, an unwritten contract among all citizens to accept the rules of behavior in all aspects of life: in the street; when driving; in the economy, and in the family. The diplomat affirms that in his country, “there is no such social contract: no rules, no laws, no restraints and no self-dictatorship. Each person does as he chooses at any given moment with no self-restraint or consideration for others, unguided by even the most basic rules of conduct. A red traffic light is a mere recommendation; bribery is the norm; anyone can build what he wants where he wants; any manager can appoint his sons, daughters and brothers-in-law to any position under him, irrespective of their qualifications; and resorting to violence against the weak is widely prevalent. The individual feels free to act on his impulses and is not required to answer for his actions and misdemeanors”.  Sound familiar?

The difference between a democratic and participative and a centralized and authoritarian, system is evident. But the crucial difference, what attracted me to the argument of this diplomat, lies in the contrasting manner in which the citizen behaves. In a democratic ambience, the citizen assumes his responsibility as a central factor of the functioning of the social complex, while in an authoritarian, or simply a non-democratic, system, the citizen assumes no responsibility at all. Citizens respond to the rules of the game. When the rules reward the rule of law and penalize any conduct that violates this, the citizen adapts and adopts these rules as his own. From the moment that this happens, we find the consolidation of what the Egyptian diplomat terms “a strict dictatorship in which each citizen is his or her own dictator.” As long as there are no clear rules with which to comply and that require compliance, we are more like Egypt than like a modern and democratic nation.

For those who affirm that the Mexican transition is already over, the small issue of the entire citizenry remains pending. To some extent, this is analogous to which came first, the chicken and the egg, but perhaps the essence is simpler: while the citizenry does not perceive a basic change in the nature of the government and the system in its entirety, the sole difference, which is not a minor one, between the old and the current system, is that there are much broader degrees of individual freedom. What is needed is a regime of legality.

Mexico is afflicted with open and latent conflicts. The absence of democratic rules that all citizens (including, obviously, political parties and politicians) make their own, as in a self-imposed dictatorship, explains in great measure why the conflicts become deeper rather than become resolved. The incomplete Mexican democracy finds itself besieged by those who are desperate for solutions. The good news is that it is impossible to rebuild the old system; the bad news is that there is no guarantee that it is advancing toward an integral democracy, the dictatorship alluded to by the Egyptian attaché.

*Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, BESA Paper No. 131.

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Carl Friedrich, one of the most important political theoreticians of the XX century, said that “to be an American is an ideal; while to be a Frenchman is a fact”. According to Friedrich, U.S. identity is defined in normative terms, while that of the French is in existential terms. These differences translate into very distinct cosmogonies that exert an impact not only on their own structure and political and governmental organization, but also on their way of acting. Our case is no different. Much of what today characterizes U.S. political debate, economically as well as security- and border-wise, derives from this perspective. The question is how we can further avail ourselves of the bilateral relationship despite these differences.

As Octavio Paz observed with such insight, the differences between Americans and Mexicans transcend the specific. In his words, “The border between Mexico between Mexico and the U.S. is political and historical, not geographical. To cross the border between the two countries is to change civilizations. Americans are the children of the Reformation, and their origins are those of the modern world; we Mexicans are the children of the Spanish empire, the champion of the Counter-Reformation, a movement that opposed the new modernity and failed. Our attitudes toward time clearly express our differences. Americans overvalue the future and worship change; Mexicans hold fast to the image of our pyramids and cathedrals, to values we suppose to be immutable, and to symbols that, like the Virgin of Guadalupe, embody permanence. However, as a counterbalance to their immoderate cult of the future, Americans continually search for their roots and origins; we Mexicans search for ways to modernize our country and open it to the future. The history of Mexico since the end of the 18^th century has been the struggle for modernization. It is a struggle that has been frequently tragic and often fruitless. To ignore this is to ignore what Mexico is today, with its economic vicissitudes and the continuous zigzag of its political system”.  As with Friedrich’s observation, the contrast could hardly be greater.

The contrasts are not limited to cultural and philosophical aspects. The Aztec and Maya cosmogony had coalesced centuries before the American Union came into being, even in concept, and this explains many of our disagreements, but none of this has impeded our deepening the relationship nor our leveraging our development by greater proximity to them. What we have not done is to understand them better as a principle for more successful and beneficial integration. Our lack of understanding of their processes, not only on the commercial and economic plane, but above all in how their internal politics and, these days, budgetary matters evolve, is cost-intensive.

In his study on U.S. internal politics*, Samuel Huntington affirms that there is an “American Creed”: “in contrast with the majority of European societies, there is and has been in the U.S. broad consensus with respect to certain basic values and political beliefs”. This fundamental consensus allows for surmounting the differences that daily characterize its frequently acrimonious political process; that is, for Huntington, political polarization in the U.S. is a permanent characteristic that does not weaken its stability because it is the product of its origin and of a political system that prizes competition and the active participation of all of the special interests. From this perspective, the polarization that one can see in their media and political discourse as well as  in the disputes and discussions on issues of enormous transcendence, for them and for us, such as NAFTA, or its budgetary strategy regarding the economic crisis, is real and deep-seated, but does not entail the risk of a breakdown. This, said Seymour Martin Lipset, is a core characteristic of “American exceptionalism”.

If one follows the controversies in terms of these themes (and others that are strictly political, such as that of whether Obama was born in the U.S. or not), the differences are not lesser ones and the viewpoints, exceedingly caustic. In the trade front, which can be appreciated today in debates relative to free trade treaties with Colombia, Panama, and Korea, the issue is much more mundane and, in nearly all cases, reflects specific interests in areas such as unions and businesses, which assume that they would be benefitted or harmed if there were greater commercial opening. The theme of the budget is particularly striking because America’s mightiness has permitted it to evade a profound fiscal adjustment, while it has exhibited an extraordinary incapacity to recognize its predicaments and act accordingly.

The fiscal theme is especially disturbing not only because the health of the U.S. economy is key to our growth, but also because its nonchalant attitude vis-à-vis fiscal balance tends to strengthen the critics of our stability, on which Mexican middle-class viability depends. In the fiscal terrain, the U.S. is grappling with deficits in its GDP of more than 10%, a number that, with the sole exception of 1982, we never surpassed, even in our worst crises.

Those fiscal imbalances in Mexico translated into a split-second collapse of economic activity and into an inevitable fiscal adjustment to restore the financial health of the economy. After several crises, we Mexicans finally learned in 1995 that fiscal disequilibrium produces nothing other than poverty. It is not a coincidence that the Mexican middle class has grown exactly at moments of economic stability: in the fifties and sixties, and from 1995 on. For Americans, their present crisis has no precedent in modern times, which has lead to ranting and raving at both extremes: by those desiring to revive the economy with heightened expenditure, as well as by those seeking a fiscal adjustment without additional taxes. If they take a look at our experience, they would see that adjustment is inevitable and that there is no panacea for taxes. The problem is that their economy is so important for the entire world that they have been able to transfer many of their costs to other countries (for example, in the form of bolstering the peso or the Brazilian real), although it appears evident to me that sooner or later they will pay the consequences.

There is nothing that we can do in these matters and even less so because they are consumed and divided by the latter. However, where we could do a great deal is in cultivating the local populations in which there is greatest opposition to themes that are vital to us, above all trade, migration, and border issues in general. Times of weakness are times of opportunity and much can be gained with a great territorial deployment. This is just what the Mexican Ministry of the Economy did when it identified the products that would be grounds for retaliation on the matter of truck transport. Acting by the principles of the “American Creed” and its liberal, individualistic, egalitarian, and democratic essence at the local level could transform the relationship and the preeminent themes for our development.

*The Promise of Disharmony.

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Myshkin, the hero of Dostoyevsky’s novel “The Idiot”, -erudite, coarse, naïve- arrives at an important party, obsessed with not breaking the Chinese vase in mid-salon. He attempts to maintain his distance from it, but, no matter how much he tries, ends up destroying it. The episode could be a photograph of the political transition that we have experienced. The objective was to construct an idyllic democracy that would foster development of the country and civility in Mexican society. The result has been political paralysis, a rising level of social conflict, ill-will, an abysmal economic performance, and, to top it all off, generalized pessimism. The issue is not about establishing guilt, but rather, of the pressing need to recognize that there have been unanticipated consequences, many very serious, with which we have to deal.

Beyond objectives or good intentions, the political change that we have undergone has mainly manifested itself in decentralization of power. From the erstwhile omnipotent presidency, we proceeded to a new political reality: that of actors, formal as well as informal, stockpiling power and resources with no responsibility whatsoever and without even minimal checks and balances. The principal characteristic of the transition has been the transfer of the resources and power of the Federal Government and of the presidency itself to state governors, de facto powers, and actors of the most diverse stripes, all having in common their distance from the citizenry, not being accountable and, for all practical purposes, without any checks and balances.

The consequences of this new reality can readily be noted in all ambits, but are particularly patent in the pathetic performance of our economy, lack of public safety, and the conflict that brews in permanent fashion in all public forums. The country benefited from the transition because the sources of systematic abuse inherent in the centralized government of yesteryear disappeared. However, costs have not been minor and risks are on the rise.

Costs in the economic milieu have been extraordinary. Decentralization of power, a circumstance that mushroomed over the past three decades and that was precipitated by the defeat of the PRI, was accompanied by the transfer of public resources. Conceptually, no one can dispute the fact that in a democratic system, resources are administered by the representatives of the populace and, without doubt, the state governors and municipal presidents are the public officials closest to the citizenry. The problem is that the concept does not square with our reality. In the first place, the overwhelming majority of revenues are collected by the federal government and not by state and municipal governments; secondly, real, effective mechanisms for checks and balances do not exist for the state and municipal governments: this was always a problem at the federal level, but now it has multiplied. Finally, resource allocation has translated into much less efficient and impacting expenditure, thus a lower rate of economic growth.

Before, in the Golden Age of centralization of fiscal resources, Mexican Department of the Treasury had at its disposal enormous resources that it profusely applied to projects of development. The so-called “bolsas”, residual monies left over after satisfaction of current overhead expenditures (salaries, rents, administration costs), constituted an enormous portion of public funds and were employed to promote regional development, essentially through the construction of infrastructure. One year, the decision was made to electrify the southeastern region of the country, another, to build a highway to Queretaro, and another, to construct Cancun. The Federal Government conducted cost-benefit analyses of each project and generally decided in favor of those offering the best potential for raising the general economic growth rate. The dispersion of resources, which is the norm at present, possesses very distinct characteristics: there are very few governors who do economic cost-benefit studies. Rather, their criterion comprises personal, electoral, and political benefit, usually in that order. The result has been much greater corruption and opacity (which benefits the governors) and much less economic growth (the only way that more jobs can be gained for the average Mexican). That is, the population has lost, whereas the politicians have won.

The security crisis is a second consequence of decentralizing power and resources. The resources, functions, and responsibilities that were decentralized to the states were never adopted by the governors as their own. This is not to say that the former security scheme worked well, but decentralization had the effect of destroying what existed without anything substituting for it, with certain trifling exceptions. The result is the chaos in security that we are presently experiencing; its essence has nothing to do with narcotrafficking proper, but instead, with the fact that organized crime plagues the entire nation without the effective intervention of any police or judicial institution.

No agreement exists on when the political transition began or of what it consisted, but it is evident that the successive electoral reforms between 1978 and 1996 had the effect of favoring increasingly even-handed electoral competition, until the PRI was defeated at the polls. If the objective of the transition was to defeat the PRI, the transition complied. If by transition we wish to say the founding of a modern, more egalitarian and civilized, country, the transition has been a disaster. It suffices to read the newspaper or watch the newscasts in order to observe a nation progressively bitter and in conflict with itself. The problem lies precisely in that the transition confined itself to the electoral, leaving everything else to chance.

The big question is how to correct the present situation. If one observes similar countries that have been successful, such as South Africa and Brazil, we urgently need a strategy and leadership. The transition should have been an institutional commitment, but was nothing more than a collection of good intentions and remarkable arrogance. We must now deal with the consequences. On one occasion, Montesquieu affirmed that “there is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.” In Mexico, we must start by eradicating the tyranny of excess, abuse, and the absence of checks and balances for the reign of the law to begin.

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In Greek mythology, Pandora, the first woman on Earth, was introduced to Epimetheus in revenge for his brother Prometheus’s having purloined the secret of fire. In her new abode, Pandora found a two-handled amphora in which all the evils and disgraces of humankind had been concealed. Her curiosity piqued, Pandora opened the jar, inadvertently releasing all of the evils. Only hope remained inside. In recent days, with its resolution in matters of interconnection and the Federal Telecommunications Commission (COFETEL), the Supreme Court let loose many evils, condemning us to hope, because that’s all there is, that the Court knew what it was doing and that it did not create an ill-starred precedent.

Although, as has been its recent custom, the Court did not delve into the heart of the matter, in its resolution on interconnection tariffs emitted by the COFETEL it opened a veritable Pandora’s box not on the immediately relevant theme, but on what the public interest is. I’ll proceed by parts.

The recent vote of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) denies the possibility of obtaining a court injunction with respect to resolutions on interconnection tariffs emitted by COFETEL. The Court decided that suspension in matters of regulatory-type injunctions is not fitting, which has enormous implications for directly involved companies, but above all for the consumer. The reasoning that led the Supreme Court justices to arrive at this conclusion is the following: first, interconnection tariffs are “of the public interest”, and second, the enterprises involved are concessionaires, that is, they enjoy the benefits of a public good.

At first glance, just as it has been interpreted in the press, the resolution has had the benign effect of cancelling for TELMEX the opportunity of impeding the functioning of COFETEL as the regulatory entity through a strategy founded on the systematic and infinite interposition of injunctions. Protecting their interest, TELMEX had been doing precisely the same thing for years, which hindered the regulatory organ from imposing its regulations (some good, others bad) on actors in the telecommunications market. In terms of this specific theme, if COFETEL effectively reduces the interconnection cost, the market would acquire enormous dynamism. So far so good.

However, more careful review of the contents of the resolution reveals a profound oversight by the justices concerning the implications and transcendence of their ruling. In the first place, as noted by Justice Margarita Luna-Ramos (who was not in agreement with the content of the resolution and voted against the majority), all laws contain an expression of “public interest” that legislators include as a matter of course. From this perspective, to deny suspensions in judgments on injunctions in all themes and matters in which the public interest is claimed would imply destruction of the protection of the right to an injunction granted to the interested parties in all laws! In other words, by not probing the essence of the matter, the Court limited itself to a resolution that concerns the specific theme, but one that also created a precedent of galactic dimensions for any other theme that betakes itself to appear.

The other element skirted by the Court is similarly worrisome. Given our constitutional structure and how it conceives of private property, countless economic activities are managed not as the property of private individuals, but rather as governmental concessions to these parties. Concessions abound for ports, airports, highways, telecommunications, radio, television, and mines. With its decision, the Court established the precedent by which suspension can come to be denied in the presence of any acts of authority for any private-enterprise concessionaire. This principle recasts the entire concept, no less, of the relationship between private parties and the State.

The purpose of the Rule of Law is to protect the citizen from arbitrary action of the State. According to Hayek, the Rule of Law in essence implies that “the government in all its actions is bound by rules fixed and announced beforehand -rules which make it possible to foresee with fair certainty how the authority will use its coercive powers in given circumstances”. This resolution of the Court confers on the State the precedent of being able to cancel any concession. This is precisely what Hugo Chávez has done in Venezuela in recent years.

A government with an inclination resembling that of Venezuela could, thanks to this jurisprudence, usher into bankruptcy any commercial concessionaire only to nationalize it at a later date. The mechanism would not be difficult to imagine: first, establish an exaggeratedly high tariff that would correspond to an incremental cost for the respective company, or a ridiculously low levy that corresponds to such a paltry income that it would end up wiping out the enterprise. Of course, the aggrieved concessionaire could request an injunction and, over time, win the judicial injunction and demonstrate that the administrative resolution was unjust or that it was in non-compliance with the terms of the concession. But, as we have observed in the case of Venezuela, it could in many of these cases be a Pyrrhic victory because these affairs take years to sort out and, by the time the Court steps in, the majority of companies would have failed. When a government persists (recall the seventies in our country), the potential for destruction is interminable.

What is evident is the flagrant contradiction inherent between the immediate theme (the suspension: to concede or not to concede) and the fundamental issue (what the public interest comprises). Because the Court limited itself to deliberating on the immediate matter, it opened an enormous Pandora’s box in matters of much greater transcendence. In a word, it granted the government an expropriatory power through the rear portico.

Affairs directly related with the suitability of interconnection tariffs will resolve themselves. However, this mania of SCJN justices not entering into the heart of the matter will perhaps make life easier for them and avoid very controversial resolutions. However, the cost for society and for economic development can wind up being prohibitive due to the precedent that they establish. More importantly, not entering into the crux of the matter implies the Court’s abdication of its constitutional-court function, permitting the conflict, or survival of the fittest, to resolve itself.

John Locke, an XVII-century English philosopher, affirmed that “Wherever Law ends, Tyranny begins”. The Supreme Court has just positioned us a little closer to this possibility.

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Success and opportunity are in the air and even the most modest of citizens alludes to the future. The question is what sustains this flagrant optimism to such a degree. Brazil impresses us because of the attitude of its population and because the possibility of development has grown despite the obstacles imposed by its impenetrable bureaucracy, the deteriorated infrastructure, and the existence of oligopolies in one market after another. What impressed me most in a recent visit was their daring and the way they do not allow themselves to be intimidated by the adverse conditions: instead of complaining, they do whatever they must to be successful. The contrast of Brazil with Mexico is impressive, not due to its developmental strategy but, rather, to the attitude of its people.

The obvious explanation for its recent success is found in two circumstances: a predictable environment, which is the product of a set of serious although relatively modest reforms, but, above all, the continuity of their economic policy. President Cardoso carried out reforms in the nineties and President Lula continued these without changing course: the rhetoric changed but the path was maintained. On the other hand, the Brazilians have had the exceptional leadership of two presidents, in particular the second of the two. Lula transformed Brazil not only by his decision to maintain the course (no mean feat) but because, on not changing things or implementing radical measures, he consolidated the democratic institutions. In addition, he privileged the future over the daily problems and convinced the population to stay the course. Attitude and leadership worked magic.

An interesting country, big and diverse, with enormous distances, Brazil lacks a railroad infrastructure, which saturates the highways with cargo trucks. Foreign commerce suffers from the poor ports and connections with the interior. The most successful exports –meat, grains, and minerals- work because their production is found near the coast.

The obvious question for a Mexican visitor is what have they done that is distinct, what has given them the strength about which they boast today. Without doubt, the difference lies in their attitude and the leadership, because in structural terms, there is more myth than accomplishment. The Brazilian government collects many more taxes than the Mexican government (most of the difference are taxes raised at the state and local level), but their expenditures are not very praiseworthy; in fact, it could be argued that more money has done nothing other than promote Pharaonic projects that are, moreover, costly in legal tender and in results: from the construction of Brasilia, that bureaucratic monster distant and isolated from the daily reality, up to its industrial policy.

Lula’s great project was to finance the poorest families with a program similar to Oportunidades, whose contribution (just like in Mexico) was that millions of persons became incorporated into the consumer circuits: his explicit objective was to create a middle class society. What Lula did not do away with was the promotion of Brazilian industry: the government has financed the internal and external expansion of many private enterprises just because they are Brazilian. The great question mark is who has paid for this and how this has been paid for. The answer is very simple: very high taxes generate sufficient funds for all types of projects, but at the expense of the population. A Toyota Corolla car, which in Mexico has a price tag of 256,000 pesos, costs Brazilians 524,000 pesos. As economists say, there is no free lunch.

Therein dwells the main difference: in the 1980s, Mexico opted for placing the consumer as the beneficiary and the objective of the economic policy, while the Brazilian policy favored the business corporations. Everything else derives from this strategic focus: the government of Brazil does everything possible to strengthen the capitalization of its enterprises, to raise their profitability, and to protect them from the competition. This does not imply that the country is closed to imports, but rather, that its central objective resides in the construction of an economy strongly influenced by the government. The result is that consumers have access to products that are much more expensive and of worse quality than Mexicans do. Some day Brazil will liberalize its markets and this will entail a severe adjustment, such as the one we already went through in the past couple of decades. Much of that history is yet to be written.

In contrast with Brazil, which has been consistent in its economic strategy, we have been barging about: something opens, another closes. There is no consistency, no sense of direction: we have not dared to take the citizen model to politics, monopolies, and privileges. The absence of strategy and of leadership explains in good measure the different perceptions that we Mexicans and the Brazilians entertain with regard to the present and, above all, about the future.

There is another substantive difference. Although the numbers of homicides as a percentage of the population are worse in Brazil, the reality is that these are two distinct phenomena at play. Brazil is confronting a huge problem of criminality in some cities,   beginning with Río de Janeiro, but it is not a problem that expands on a day-to-day basis to the rest of the country as occurs in Mexico. In addition, Brazil has been serious about creating strong policing capacity and has chosen “creative” ways of facing its ills, such as taking the World Soccer Cup and the Olympic Games to, precisely, Río, both projects conceived, at least in part, as means to clean up saturated zones of criminals and to transform the region. The problems they face are very different in nature from those that Mexico confronts and cannot be compared just by the statistics.

Perhaps the important question would be whether Mexican could do something similar, that is, to strengthen the government as a factor of development and to protect and subsidize the productive plant. Brazil’s internal market is much bigger than that of Mexico, which affords it a relative advantage; however, the true difference lies in that Brazil has had a tremendous source of financing –its exports to China- that have permitted it to fund all sorts of projects (and excesses) through the public purse. Additionally, the funds that they were able to obtain for the development of new oil fields will procure for them immense cash flows that, employed intelligently, could do miracles. If one recalls, at various times, Mexico has enjoyed a similar windfall that has, nevertheless, left little. The problem, there and here, lies in the manner in which the money is employed. When the external conditions change, Brazil will be obliged to carry out a great fiscal adjustment; although the Brazilians have had great sense of direction, when that happens, it is not obvious that they will be more successful that we have been.

Mexico and Brazil opted for distinct modes of interaction with the rest of the world; however, nothing guarantees that their model is superior to ours. What is clear is that success lies in how competent the strategy is for achieving development: neither has found the Midas touch. All things considered, the fundamental difference is one of focus and vision: Brazil has a plethora of optimism. A little good leadership and clarity of objectives here could also do magic.

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The Sicilia march began as a cluster of bereaved victims justifiably angry due to the violence that is stalking the society. There was no agenda other than that of expressing and giving testimony to anguish and suffering on encountering the worst pain that a parent can endure. He sought to exact answers from the authority: the responsible instance in a civilized country. But it has not remained there. Diverse elements have converted the march into a novel political factor that could either wither on the vine or transform the national political reality.

Two circumstances explain the turning of events. The first is that, little by little, the march became a magnet that has attracted all sorts of groups, interests, and causes whose sole common denominator is their opposition to the government of Felipe Calderón. Among the organizations present, we find SME Mexican Electricians Union members, machete wielders from Atenco, strikers from the UNAM, and other organizations, groups, and parties. The gamut of petitions says it all: change the economic policy; remove the Head of Public Security; legalize drugs; democratize the electronic media; stop the war; reform the political institutions; and reconstruct public institutions and the social fabric. Each of these motions has its logic and support base, but taken as a whole suggests at least two things: that that the society is in effect fed up with the derangement of daily life and the violence; and that there are organizations that are always ready to exploit any chance to chop firewood from the fallen tree. Important to note that, for the marchers, the drug mafias and the criminals are not an issue.

The other circumstance that explains the veering off the course is that, surely without proposing it, the President transformed the march into a valid spokesperson: on directing his message to its claims, he gave life to a potential movement, effectively changing its nature. The march stopped being only one of thousands of demonstrations swarming in the streets to acquire, at least potentially, the dimensions of a political movement. What remains now is to await and speculate on the potential consequences.

This is not the first spontaneous movement to acquire strength and power. Nor will it be the last. What has the potential of making it distinct is the combination of factors that drive it. It is noteworthy that what likens it to the White March of 2004 is that, if for no other reason, it had the effect of losing millions of votes for López-Obrador precisely due to his arrogance on branding it a “plot”. Instead of showing compassion for the essence of the claim –the pain of those who had lost what was most dear to them-, the authority, then and now, responded with technicalities and scorn. The rough-riding river is always risky for the status quo.

Could this be an opportunity for the government? According to Fukuyama in his new book*, the wars that China experienced obliged it to devise a system of government that would adjoin the distinct states, monarchies, and leaders to give form to what ended up being a national State. The needs of war imposed the necessity of unity, while those of peace pressed for attention to mundane affairs, such as those of collecting taxes, registering the population, and creating administrative structures to respond to the acquired commitments. I ask myself whether this will be the opportunity for the government to begin to weave a security structure at the level of the entire nation, granting privilege to what is conspicuously absent in the march’s claims (and in the federal government’s actions during these five years): competent local governments and police forces that are capable of providing the population with the security that the old system (that centralized everything) did not provide, and that the narcotrafficker (who control everything) has purloined from it.

Will this be an opportunity for the citizenry? Many voices, in the march and in the press, have advanced the idea of the opportunity that this circumstance represents for the construction of a grand citizen pact that would be capable of demanding from the government, and of those competing in the upcoming election, a plan to end impunity and to throw light on the murders and abductions. It is a great opportunity to challenge the three levels of government and the legislators: what is their proposed solution for emerging from the pothole?

A march such as this agglutinates many people and many causes and has no need of becoming violent or politicized. Its attractiveness lies in two very evident things: the population’s desperation, and the incapacity or indisposition of the government to explain, much less convince, them of the logic of its strategy against the narco. After forty thousand deaths, García-Luna’s affirmation that the government would win the “war” in seven years triggered the citizens’ uproar. Another seven years with no explanation whatsoever. What will follow will depend on the ability of the government to break up the movement that it inadvertently activated.

As in all such movements, purity is not what leads to laurels. Javier Sicilia was clearly a peaceable man devoted to his tasks and causes until violence rapped at his door.  He now finds himself at the helm of a march that may well take on force or that may well disintegrate. Its fate will depend, on the one hand, on the capacity of the activists who have imbedded themselves in its bosom to manipulate the process without losing the signature halo of the original essence: the pain of the victims and the generalized grievances of the society, without which it would be impossible to attract the citizenry and civil-society organizations susceptible to affording it structure and the capacity of permanence. Its fate also depends on the success or the bungling of the government and that are the factors that could similarly provide fresh air for or an out to those who are “up to here” and who cry “basta”, much like those who, in an old Mexican saying, saw a donkey and summarily decided to take a trip. I do not doubt that in upcoming weeks this will grow or disappear. It is paradoxical that the professionals are on the marchers’ side.

The basta mood of the society is real and fear of a collapse because of the violence is worse. What is surprising is the inability of the government to understand the quandary in which it has placed the society: rather than placing itself at the helm or the protest march as part of its security strategy, it feels resentful and spiteful. What the march placed in evidence is the absence of solutions, the lack of leadership, and total incomprehension. The citizenry deserves an explanation. It is possible that the governmental strategy is the correct one given the givens, but if the population does not understand it as such, the bad guy of the movie will be the government. That’s why this march caught on.

*The Origins of Political Order.

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According to Lord Byron, “A thousand years may scarce form a State. An hour may lay it in ruins”. Our problem is that, despite what the PRIists –and everyone else- always thought, an institutional system was never consolidated in Mexico. Everyone spoke (and speaks) about institutions, but what the PRI defeat revealed is that the country had lived under a system of authoritarian features that imposed control but that never consolidated an institutional system that would manage power and check on its exercise. In this regard, our dilemma concerning the future is not distinct from before the time of the alternation of parties in government and this is a true tragedy.

The end of the PRIist era was not accompanied by the end of its main characteristics and forms, except that many of these stopped being functional, if not frankly dysfunctional. With its virtues and defects, that system maintained control and stability and, for decades, but not always, made relatively high economic growth rates possible. The PANist governments did not change the basic structure of the system, but the latter ceased being operative not (only) because the new governments were incompetent, but also because the “divorce” of the PRI and the presidency involved a migration of political power toward the governors, the parties, and what we now call the “de facto powers”. The political reality changed not because of the alternation of parties in the presidency, but because of the profound transformation that the reality of political power experienced within the society. The pretense of many PRIists to return to the status quo ante may in no way be differentiated from attempting to put the genie back into its mythical lamp.

In retrospect, the great surprise of the 2000 election was that one of the most important and ubiquitous rhetorical “truths” of the PRIist system that emanated from the Calles era in the 1920’s turned out to be false: Mexico never was a nation of institutions. As it turns out, it was an authoritarian system that employed discipline in order to maintain control and did so with diligence and care, in such a way that repression was utilized only exceptionally: the system achieved widespread legitimacy for many decades, and this led to that the distinct actors, and the population in general, would accept discipline not because of the threat of punishment as occurred in dictatorships, but because of rational but implicit calculation. In a manner of speaking, as Vargas-Llosa accused so clearly, the “perfect dictatorship” was attractive because it disguised its real nature very well. Much more than democracy and its complications, the true discovery that came with PRI’s defeat was that the country has no consolidated institutions, and perhaps from this emanate many of its current challenges.

Does this matter?  Many of those who most actively promoted democratic change affirm that this is an inevitable process of change and transformation and that what is exceptional in such transformative situations is an agreed-upon transition in which formerly authoritarian institutions become democratic: typically, this situation is complex and requires that political actors sooner or later recognize that democratic consolidation will only be possible through collaboration and the establishment of accords and bridges. On the other end of the spectrum, above all on the side of the PRIists and among ex-PRIists of the PRD, the conclusion is much more taciturn: for them, the democratic experiment failed and the course should be righted. Of course, in a world of political correctness, no one would dare to express this concept in such transparent fashion, but it is unnecessary to scrutinize too closely in order to understand how to read this. A candidate endeavors to modify the so-called “governability clause” in such a way that the threshold is lowered for achieving an artificial legislative majority, that is, to attempt to revitalize the old system through the back door. Others are even more forthcoming when they assert that Putin restored the order and viability of his country after a decade of supposedly democratic chaos.

Reflecting on the avatars of our reality, I retrieved an article that I had read in 1980 and that seems to me to be to be extraordinarily clairvoyant. Susan Kaufman Purcell and John FH Purcell* analyzed the Mexican political system and arrived at a series of conclusions that are useful for explaining to us the origin of our reality and, if fortune shines, for illuminating us about what must be changed. Some of their appreciations in this celebrated article are the following:

-“The Mexican state is a “balancing act” because it is based on a constantly renewed political bargain among several ruling groups and interests representing a broad range of ideological tendencies and social bases.”

-“The Mexican state is unique, however, in that it has never evolved from its original bargain into an institutional entity.”

-“The system is held together not by institutions, but by the rigid discipline of the elites in not overstepping the bounds of the bargain. It is therefore less a set of institutionalized structures… than a complex of well-established, even ritualized, strategies and tactics appropriate to political, bureaucratic, and private interaction throughout the system.“

-“ We view Mexican political stability as resting primarily not upon institutionalized structures such as the party of the presidency, but upon the interaction of two principles of political action: political discipline and political negotiation.”

-“Ideology is a mechanism both for linking elites to, and insulating them from, their potential constituencies.”

-“Herein lies the great paradox of the Mexican political system: it is simultaneously an elitist and a mass-based system. The constituencies of the rulers run the gamut from the richest to the poorest in society.”

-“The political system established in the 1920s was essentially an alliance among elites for the distribution rather than the redistribution of wealth. It was a system concerned with ratifying existing political and economic relationships, not with changing them.”

-“The structured institutions of Mexican politics which receive the greatest attention -the dominant party, the presidency, and the bureaucracy- are simply convenient formal formal frameworks within which the true balancing act, so necessary to the survival of the heterogeneous Mexican state, is performed”

-Mexico is less institutionalized that it might seem, given its history of stable government. In times of crisis… uncontrolled conflict and political breakdown are possibilities.”

The past cannot be changed, but we can learn from it. We came from an authoritarian era and not from an era of institutions. This difference explains, to a considerable degree, the complexity entailed in decision-making processes at present and their frequent paralysis. It is also an invitation to ponder that only close and intense interaction among clairvoyant and visionary leaders can make possible the construction of agreements and, eventually, of institutions that are likely to afford direction and stability to the system and, with this, viability to economic development. In other words: we have no functional institutions, thus, only the interaction of persons capable of and willing to surmount the daily wrangles would permit us to emerge from the hole in which we find ourselves.

*State and Society in Mexico: Must a Stable Polity Be Institutionalized? World Politics, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Jan., 1980), pp. 194-227.

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Whatever’s the rage rules us. Referendum, revoking mandates, and popular initiative are grandiloquent words that enthuse politicians and scholars. The idea of constructing a direct democracy holds enormous allure because it allows one to imagine an engrossed citizenry and immense respect among political actors, all at the service of the citizens. It would appear unnecessary to declare this notion ludicrous in our reality. It is with difficulty that we are able to abide, and often not that well, democracy’s first echelon: the electoral. At present, incorporation is being proposed of a composite of mechanisms oriented, in an ideal world, toward providing the citizen with instruments for more active participation. Is it possible for us citizens to believe that everything will change all of a sudden?

The difficulties in establishing a direct democracy are mammoth, chiefly for a country that is so large, diverse, and disperse as ours. It is not by chance that, save exceptions (some cities and very few nations, such as Switzerland), the manner embraced by all nations that call themselves democratic is that of the representative democracy, which is none other than a way of delegating decision-making required to take a society to a group of dedicated professional politicians devoted to this. Some countries have endorsed measures oriented toward limiting the potential for abuse or for excesses into which popular representatives could incur, above all through means such as the referendum (that submits determined decisions to the consideration of the population) for these to be supported or rejected by those who would be directly benefitted or affected.

If one studies countries that have adopted forms of direct democracy, the first notable thing is the manner in which these are divided into two groups: those that possess a consolidated democracy, and those that feign being democratic. The first group includes countries such as Denmark and Switzerland, while the second unites such bastions of democracy, like Venezuela and Libya. It is not difficult to appreciate the differences and contrasts: the first are nations in which politics serves the citizenry and the citizenry in turn maintains the right to exact accountability from the politicians, from their representatives. The second group comprises nations in which politicians control the decision-making processes and utilize diverse mechanisms, that is, forms of direct participation, as means to legitimize their modus operandi. The first are accountable to the people; the second serve themselves. The first see the citizenry as their raison d’être, while the second negate their existence and manipulate the citizenry at whim. The difference is not slight.

The question for us is, who are we more alike: The nations with a consolidated democracy, or those in which the politicians do not desist in their zeal for exploiting the population? The response seems obvious, which permits a doubt to arise concerning the ulterior motives or objectives, undisclosed, of those promoting this type of initiative.

Bet let us suppose that it is not like this: let us suppose that there is a deep conviction among those who promote this type of mechanism as a means for effectively democratizing our country. If one begins with this supposition, each of the proposals must be analyzed separately to evaluate the implications of adopting the set of initiatives under discussion in the Congress. The easy part is to dream of a good democracy and to suppose that, by the mere fact of ratifying a set of mechanisms that work in another area, Mexico will be transformed overnight.

To understand the complexity and possible implications of taking a route such as that proposed by the advocates of a direct democracy, it would be worthwhile to study the case of the state of California in the U.S. This state, as have others in that country, adopted diverse mechanisms of direct democracy at the beginning of the 20th century. California was a new state, sparsely populated, very homogeneous, with thoroughly entrepreneurial people and endowed with a colossal disdain for politics. The forms of direct democracy meshed well with the reality of a new frontier brimming with effervescence. In this way, a relatively small and disciplined population utilized instruments of this type to maintain its Governor and State Legislature under control. The situation changed during the second half of the past century. At the end of the 1970s, California was the state with the largest economy and population of our neighboring nation, and was characterized by huge demographic, ethnic, and ideological diversity. What had previously been a homogeneous and committed electorate was recast as a polarized and competitive space.

The problems began with a popular initiative in 1978: that of limiting property taxes. This initiative was as popular as it was irresponsible, not very distinct from those in Mexico who rally around the elimination of taxes, such as the new IETU (a control tax on income) or the excise tax on vehicles, without meditating on the consequences on the expenditure side: the voters in California succeeded in limiting property taxes without reducing the budget. The result was permanent fiscal disequilibrium. But the transcendental dimension was not this, but rather, the political effect that it wrought: from that moment on, an entire industry developed that was devoted exclusively to the promotion of popular initiatives and referenda and to obtaining the signatures of the citizenry. As a result, practically all of the legislators represent extreme groups in the ideological or political vernacular, with an exclusive commitment to the group that promoted them. We ourselves fell victim to this process in the form of Initiative 187, whose objective was to delimit the rights of the children of undocumented workers. The point is that the direct democracy that worked so well in a small and disciplined population has become a nightmare that impedes the act of governing.

Mexico must transform itself and create mechanisms of political participation that confer upon the population the capacity of supervising and demanding accountability from legislators. But the forms that are proposed would not have this effect; if adopted, even all of the provisions that the prototypical cases would recommend, we could easily end up like California. Our reality of political polarization guarantees this. It is more probable that endorsement of this type of initiative would end up creating new instruments of manipulation at the service of the worst interests. This is known by those who propose these mechanisms: The question is, why? What for? What is the true objective being proposed by advancing this? These questions are not irrelevant. The genie of direct democracy is hard to rebottle when released, even if the results are rotten.

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Poverty is one of our worst blemishes and also one of our greatest mismatches. Beyond the quotidian polemics (similarly originating from political, ideological, or, simply, conceptual differences), I doubt that poverty is not a cause that all Mexicans would wish to defeat. In contrast with other controversial themes, in this one the differences do not lie in the objective, but rather in “the how”. Marcel Proust once wrote that “the journey to discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes”. With this focus, a group of Mexicans has come together to procure a novel route toward combating poverty.

In the struggle against poverty, there are many conflicting postures and many angles and perspectives to be found. A first discrepancy resides in the function of the government as cause and response: some perceive the solution as originating in public spending aimed at equalizing conditions and to conferring material opportunities on those who are poor. Although many agree –with more or less caveats- with this very simplistic diagnosis, the proposals to address the issue vary greatly: for example, the Solidaridad was a spending program by means of which the government constructed local leaderships and transferred funds to families, all with an inevitable client-oriented logic. In contrast, its successor program, Oportunidades, privileged the decision of families in the use of resources and eliminated all sources of dependence. The former program granted funds through the leadership, while the latter, from a suite of comparable, objective criteria. But in both cases, it involved the government employing public resources to modify the families’ material reality. In combination with improvement in the localities’ physical infrastructure (streets, electricity, water, drainage) and attention to education and health, these programs focused on reducing poverty by changing the environment and consumption potential of the target population.

The previous paragraph might suggest that there is agreement among scholars, activists, analysts, and public officials with respect to what to do. However, the contrary would be closer to the reality. The mismatches not only refer to how much to spend or to how to spend it, but to who should exercise control over the expenditure, and above all, what role corresponds to the authorities. In addition to the fight against poverty, Solidaridad had an evident political objective: that of creating mechanisms for the strengthening of local leadership that would contribute to stabilizing urban zones that, as the result of migration from the countryside, had created districts with a high degree of divisiveness and the potential for instability. That this leadership could in addition contribute votes was not of scant interest. On its part, Oportunidades was conceived of as a State policy that did not create opportunities to develop political clienteles, although, indubitably, its promoters entertained hopes that a decrease in poverty would translate into votes.

Neither of the two ways, in itself, is good or bad. What is paradoxical is that both were shored up on at least a meager realistic supposition. I refer to that of education. Solidaridad as well as Oportunidades mandated that the children of families who benefited from the programs would go to school, where the objective was to break the chain of poverty that implied that children from poor families continued to be poor because they did not develop the human capital necessary for incorporation into the formal economy. That is, reasonably enough, education was contemplated as a natural mechanism to break with the historic determinism of poverty. Unfortunately, it was never recognized that much of the educational system that we have is explicitly devoted to preserving poverty, dependence, and political control. Perhaps this explains, at least in part, how it is that programs as distinct (and even dissimilar) achieved raising the consumption levels of the most impecunious families of the country but did not do away with, or begin to do away with, poverty in the nation.

A recently published book affords a perspective that suggests that the main problem resides not only in the manner in which the public spending is exercised or who exercises it, but above all, in the way in which the individual participates in the process. In Breaking the Poverty Cycle: The Human Basis for Sustainable Development*, Susan Pick and Jenna Sirkin propose that it is not sufficient to resolve the context or the milieu within which poverty is generated and preserved, but rather, it is necessary for persons to take control of their lives and to be capable of making decisions that allow them to break with the vicious circle. The book narrates not only a technique, but also a history of decades of experience of a Mexican institution devoted to doing exactly that: to developing public policy programs designed to generate alternatives and to developing the capacity to make decisions in informed, autonomous, and responsible fashion. The programs that the book describes have advocated that people stop being the objective of poverty-fighting programs in order to become the agents of change that make the programs successful. The implicit proposal of the book consists of adding the dimension of individual choice to poverty-fighting programs that are not contemplated in traditional economic development theories or programs.

In other words, the authors, who launched their model by attacking other human development themes, found that the transformation of persons into agents of change, into individuals capable of talking charge of their lives, is not only possible, but that when this takes place within the context of the availability of resources, such as those comprising the central component of programs such as Solidaridad and Oportunidades, the potential of breaking with poverty multiplies dramatically. It is evident that, independently of the political or ideological perspective of the politician or party promoting a determined perspective for combating poverty, this objective requires vast public resources. What this book demonstrates is that success is not possible only with public resources, that it requires the modification of the context within which the individual functions: that is, it requires that the individuals themselves take charge of the programs. This clearly will not appeal to those who are aiming to develop electoral clienteles or to those who prefer statist solutions because they are just that, but it opens up an extraordinary opportunity for those who see in the citizenry –and in the development of a responsible and decided citizenry- the future of the country.

*Oxford University Press

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In one of his many memorable moments, on sitting down to play a game of dominoes, Cantinflas asked: “Are we going to play like gentlemen, or like what we are?” We have been playing for many years as what we are and not as gentlemen, that is, with rules of the game that always change. Without rules, without political agreement, there will be no reform worthy of the name. In a country in which the law is accepted solely to the extent to which it serves the interests of each person, group, or party, the point of departure must be that of agreeing on the rules of the game. Only in this manner can we aspire to obtain legislation or reform that might transcend the sheer vanity of its promoters. If there is something that proliferates, it is laws, but these do not modify the reality: they only complicate it. We have laws for everything, but their enforcement is always discretionary, therefore becoming a permanent source of arbitrariness; thence, of uncertainty.

It is evident that diverse reforms are urgent for the country. However, proceeding to approve them would constitute a futile exercise until and unless the point of departure is addressed: a political covenant to which all political actors are committed. This absence need not deter us from conducting a debate on the necessary reforms, but it does not guaranty any relevance either. In this spirit, the following are some of the conceptual themes that cry out for reform.

The first group refers to the functioning of the system of government. It is indispensable to redefine the government’s function, as well as to construct the checks and balances susceptible to making it work efficaciously. The first great theme that is necessary is to strengthen the presidency of the Republic. The presidency tended to be strong, but more because of its tie-in with the PRI than due to its Constitutional powers. Today, an institutional redefinition is required for the executive branch, as well as for its relationships with the other two branches. The three branches require equilibria in the form of checks and balances within a democratic context.

Next comes federalism. We went from a centralized system of control from the presidency to a libertine system –in politics and in the exercise of public spending- in which there are neither rules of play nor accountability. In this same regard, it is imperative to reconstruct public security, encroached upon during these years, precisely when the growth of narcotrafficking experienced runaway rhythms. The distinct levels of government must devote themselves to structuring an efficient system capable of restoring the safety of a population and of building the foundations of the Mexico of the future.

A second item is that of the economy. Just as in the political arena, there is an untold number of proposals for economic reform ranging from the fiscal to trade. If one accepts that it is essential to create an effective system of government, its equivalent within the economic milieu would be to create conditions for productivity to rise dramatically. This would imply three great approaches: first, integration of the national market; second, the creation of an environment that would make savings and investment propitious; and third, consolidation of public accounts. Each of these approaches is a world in itself, but the conceptual content of each is easy to elucidate.

Integration of a national market is what was not put into effect when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was set into motion, that is, the existing economic structure was preserved, leaving it to businesses or individuals with personal vision to exploit the perks of the new system. Creating a national market entails two processes: eliminating the barriers to access, and driving the transformation of the productive plant. The first would include conversion of the educational system into the platform for the development of social and human capital, elimination of the biases that create inequity, and creation of mechanisms that support restructuring companies that continue to function under the closed-market paradigm. In this same respect, effective rules are required to promote market competition, to submit the entire productive plant –including that of public enterprises- to competition, to eliminate mechanisms that protect the productive plant in order to favor a non-discriminatory environment, and to construct effective mechanisms in defense of consumer interest. The final objective would be to raise the general productivity of the Mexican economy. The fundamental means for achieving the latter would be to eliminate rent seeking, i.e., the tendency to prosper not because of productive capacity or innovation, but rather, as the result of political connections or regulatory barriers.

The creation of an environment that makes saving and investment propitious involves acting on all of the other fronts to create certainty, predictability, thus confidence, in the population. Although there are myriad specific actions and reforms that could be encapsulated under this section, in reality  this involves that resulting from actions on the previously mentioned fronts herein: effective checks and balances; effective government; equitable economic conditions; effective mechanisms for conflict resolution; continuity in governmental policies, and accountability. In the last analysis, all of the reforms undertaken must eventually create surroundings that are favorable for saving and investing, or they do not fulfill their mission.

Consolidating public accounts implies shoring up the government’s fiscal base, reducing its dependence on income from oil, and inspecting the spending structure of all government levels with the goal of achieving three central objectives: to eliminate the government’s fiscal vulnerability; to reduce superfluous, unnecessary, and electorally motivated expenditures (which leads to more spending than investment), and to distribute the fiscal burden, not only in fairer fashion, but also, for it to contribute to raising savings, investment, and productivity.

The great theme at present in Mexico is that of recognizing that the old system is no longer adequate for guiding the fate of the country, and that orchestration of this does not depend on persons themselves, but rather, on the strength of the institutions that they design, construct, and adopt. Recognizing the urgency of an institutional redefinition implies commencing with the latticework of political accords that are necessary so that a broad political-economic reform can be implemented. That is, the precondition for the series of reforms that are necessary is an accord among the political forces that recognizes the new realities and relations of power. Once this is resolved, legislation will consist of nothing other than putting it into writing.

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