The economic crisis of the last few years could hardly have arrived at a more ominous time for the old international order. The institutions, practices, and power relations that arose with the end of the Second World War and the agreements signed in Bretton Woods placed the U.S. at the center of the world and of the institutions that would norm the functioning of the markets, trade, and financial transactions at the heart of international interaction. Sixty years later, things look quite distinct. China has become a formidable international actor, the economy of the so-called emerging countries has taken on unusual importance, and the majority of developed countries are in crisis. The old pyramid has been inverted, changing the political reality.

Ian Bremmer, the author of The End of the Market, a somewhat exaggerated title given the book’s content, says that the great change originated in the new correlation of strengths among the nations of the orb, but responded more than anything else to what the author denominates “state capitalism”. According to Bremmer, a group of countries, the majority with authoritarian or autocratic governments, has distanced itself from the rules of the market in the last several decades thanks essentially to active promotion of their legal enterprises, discriminatory game rules, and sovereign investment funds. With these instruments, they have been able to upset the institutions that modulated commercial and investment relations from the fifties on and that presently threaten the functioning of the existing economic order. Some of these nations, notably China, have distinguished themselves by the manner in which they have led their economies and achieved high economic growth rates, while others have come into power due to the possession of ample oil fields, above all in Russia and Saudi Arabia. The author includes nations as diverse as Egypt, Brazil, India, and Ukraine, and Algeria in his argumentation, throughout which he attempts to prove that the market has worked very well and that the international order runs the risk of coming to a standstill in the coming years.

The real thesis of the book is that the balance of power at the international level has changed, that the U.S. no longer represents the power of days gone by, and that other nations, particularly China, feel that they have the same right to define the form in which economic activity should be adminstered. That is, that the old hegemony has fallen and that the values that the U.S. drove in terms of market economy and democracy have lost legitimacy. The thesis is not novel, but does not cease to be relevant for this reason.

If one analyzes the argument at length, the truth is that the contraposition of stances is interesting but not always accurate. The efficient operation of an economy is not easy to achieve. To create institutions and game rules for a market economy requires not only conviction, but also a government capable of making these work, and this, as we have observed in Mexico over the past years, does not always occur. In addition to this, democracy, altogether necessary in a market economy, as such requires institutions and incentives that make it operate. In the absence of these, it is impossible to expect that it would function thus and that the political actors would behave according to its rules.

In addition to this, many nations have not even assumed the role of constructing a market economy or a democratic political system. It has been difficult for the group of nations cited by the author to distinguish themselves by their attempts to build a functional democracy and, when they tried, as in the case of Russia, the experiment lasted only a few years. It is in these terms that the true thesis of the book comes to be relevant because it entails lessons and consequences that we must not disregard.

What is exceptional concerning the ascent of nations such as China in the international concert does not lie in the fact itself, but inasmuch as the history of the world has been characterized by power transitions time and time again. China’s rise is interesting because it is an enormous nation with a centralized government and with strategic vision that not only is capable of derailing the international power balance, but also, the very way in which the planet operates in ambits ranging from the economic to lifestyle. Other nations that are similarly large, or more so, such as India, will perhaps end up having a lesser impact because they are characterized by a more diffuse internal power structure, independently of whether they have the possibility of being much richer in the last analysis. In addition, the great theme is less who ascends and who descends than how interaction plays out among the most powerful nations.

China and the U.S. have had many years of cooperation, but during recent times, seem to have advanced on a collision course. When one listens to the Chinese officials, the message, loud and clear, is that they do not seek a collision, but rather, a more equitable route to defining the main themes that afflict and characterize the world. China, a proud nation that feels it is in the right, sees no reason for having to submit to the game rules established by the U.S. as the dominant power sixty years thence, or for its internal, economic, and political evolution having to resemble what the Western world has fancied.

For decades, from the time that China reincorporated itself into the world and launched its economic opening, the presumption of the U.S. was that economic growth would lead to demands for political participation, which in turn would transform China into a democracy. This scenario may continue to be possible, but as of today, there is no doubt that the centralized political system whose functioning derives from the Communist Party retains the political power. To date, China has achieved this to a great degree due to its obsession for maintaining high levels of economic growth and its disposition to change whatever is necessary, to reform any structure or institution, with the objective of achieving growth. This strategy, in dramatic contrast with that of our Mexican politicians and governing class, has kept the population of China satisfied.

The current power equilibrium in China and between China and the rest of the world will depend in good measure on how the U.S. negotiates with and appeases, or confronts and threatens, the Chinese government. Whichever the form, what is not subject to doubt is that, as Napoleon said, once the Asian giant awoke, everything would be different.

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In his 1990 Nobel Lecture, Octavio Paz affirmed that “History’s sun is the future and Progress is the name of this movement towards the future”. What is difficult is to determine precisely when it advances and when it recedes: what is progress, and how is it achieved. Although it is easy to observe the great number of instances in which the country has experienced a sensible advance, the greater part of the population perceives a going backward, and entertains the sensation that things are bad and can only get worse. This has created visceral opposition to any change, but also, and paradoxically, unwholesome sympathy on occasion with miracle workers, conspiratorial theories, and other similar deviations. How can progress be measured in a better way?

The perceptions that citizens devise respond to the events, circumstances, and realities that are affecting them. A person or family may have a much better quality of life today than twenty years ago, a situation that can be measured objectively and convincingly, and, however, perceive that their situation is worse. Part of this is explained simply by the comparison that people make with their peers, partly due to objective situations (I could be better but I don’t have a job, which makes me worse), and in part due to a sensation of lethargy, paralysis, or inaction that has characterized the country for decades. Things could improve, but the generalized sense is that they get worse or, at least, don’t get better.

Gauging democratic progress is even more difficult than assessing material and economic progress because there are no measurable indicators that are grasped with ease. While one is able to calculate a salary and compare it, after removing the effect of inflation, with that which one earned twenty years ago, the same cannot be said for access to power, inter-party competition, or the quality of government. Some of these factors might appear evident (for example, that there is more freedom of expression), but it is also inescapable that, currently, more journalists lose their lives in the line of duty, above all in the world of criminality. Similarly, although it is obvious that the administration of electoral processes has improved dramatically, it is also plain that abuse by governors determined that their dauphins win elections is greater than ever

One way of appraising advances in political terrain, albeit not particularly orthodox, is to observe what has occurred in other societies that have gone through similar processes. In a work on Soviet archives, Jonathan Brent* describes his odyssey attempting to be granted authorization to publish, outside of Russia, the documents (letters, speeches, and writings) of the Soviet era, principally the documents of Lenin, Stalin, and the Communist Party. This narrative is much more than a story of the vicissitudes one would expect of an ambitious editor; it is, in the main, the description of a political system: what has changed; what has remained the same, and where something that had changed shows signs of retrogression. Eschewing all proportion, this appears to mirror our own recent evolution.

Brent begins by describing the stench that is breathable in some places, but this does not exactly refer to something one breathes, but rather, something that is perceived: as if something of the old system never disappeared and continues to be there. Although there is great aperture -people are free to travel, there is full access to the external world, and there is ample freedom of expression- the old bureaucracy remains ensconced in place and conducts itself as if it owned the world instead of as in the citizenry’s employ.

Brent’s description of the bureaucracy is extraordinary, not because it depicts the taco, the torta, and the cafecito (typical of a bureaucrat’s office in Mexico), but because it lusts after control, imposes bureaucratic requirements, works little, and boasts being the law personified. In its modus operandi, there is no notion of explaining what is required for approval of a determined procedure, and the rights of the citizens that are consecrated in the Constitution do not exist for those with the power to utter yes or no. Period.

Brent’s general message, and what brought me to think that the book is about Mexico, is that culture is more persistent than ideas and political regimes. People are accustomed to doing things in a certain fashion, and it is very hard for them to modify their patterns of behavior. Although many of the incentives have changed -in the case of Russia, for example, there are no longer detentions by the secret police in the middle of the night- arbitrariness remains the norm: the judicial authority decides whom to persecute and whom to set free, what constitutes a crime and who is guilty, and what their fate will be. In other words, the regime changed but judicial arbitrariness survives intact. The theme of culture is particularly ominous because it comprises one of the central factors making up the way people understand a theme, it shapes their responses, and even their thoughts.

In the economic ambit, the Russian continues to live in a world in which it is easier to make a living by stealing than by producing. Efficiency is a non-existent term, and productivity, even more so. Legality is what the authority and the powerful say it is, what we here are given to call “de facto powers”. In this context, it should not be surprising that corruption continues to be an instrument of power, although, states Brent, this responds to that there is no rule of law.

Mexico was never a totalitarian state like the Soviet one, but many things that Brent describes are revelatory in terms of what we have advanced in, as well as the enormous stretch that we still have to cover. For example, in the economic milieu, Mexico is much more advanced than the author describes. Although the fact that the country has a long way to go is unmistakable, Mexico’s economy is a Swiss timepiece compared with the current Russian oil economy. In terms of its bureaucracy and the judiciary, Brent’s description appears to describe Mexico. But in terms of the power exercised by the government, Russians have much more to fear in theirs than Mexicans do. Here, we have a dysfunctional government, while there they are experiencing the recentralization of power, something that surely does not bode well. This is no Nirvana, but the comparison allows one to think, or at least to dream, that what we have is progress, some type of progress, at long last progress.

*Inside the Stalin Archives, Atlas Books, 2010

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Democracy, according to Schumpeter, is a “method for making decisions”. This definition is so broad and pragmatic that it permits many forms of implementation and entails a key principle: the crucial part of democracy does not reside in compliance with certain forms, but rather, in the legitimacy that it enjoys among the population. The question I ask myself is how we can make compatible this functionality-based concept based with the reality of a society such as ours that is so given to form over substance.

The forms in our political society are rigid in part because of the legal system inherited from Roman law, but also are due to the nature of the political regime that institutionalized and structured public life. The great paradox of the PRIist political system lies in its rigidity of form, in which the most important rules were the “unwritten” ones. There were rules for everything, all written and codified, but these were of no matter. The system operated in relation to the unwritten rules. As Héctor Aguilar-Camín once wrote on the written norm, “… this is a typical regulation of Mexican legalism: it is exacting, rigorous, untouchable, and unable to be complied with. And no one has read it”. Of course no one read it, because the rules that are (or were?) truly worth their salt in the country are those that are not written down. What has changed is that in the world of yesteryear, someone made people comply with the rules, even if unwritten. The party-in-power changed but the system remains, except that no one has the power, the capacity, or the willingness to exact compliance with any rule.

How are we to escape from this labyrinth? If one observes successful countries, their central characteristic is the existence of rules of the game that are efficient and credible, that is, that generate legitimacy. Pursuing Schumpeter’s idea, the key is not the set square of the normative system. But instead, it is that the population is satisfied, that it respects the process because it considers it to be reliable, fair (however this is defined), and that it achieves the expected result. Successful societies differ in methods but coincide in that their populations consider them to be legitimate.

It is interesting to contrast three ways of being: in Japan, the public-policy decision-making process is long and conflictive, essentially “closed” in terms of everything happening within the bureaucratic and political apparatus; but once agreed upon at this stage, its implementation is very swift. For many, this type of process would be considered opaque and not very democratic because the population does not have a direct participatory role. However, the Japanese see it as representative: what is important is the perception, not the set square. In the U.S., the process tends to be rapid, but afterward there follows ample space for discussion. In contrast with Japan, the U.S. process is open, public, and conflictive, one in which all interested parties have the right to participate, and this generates legitimacy. In Mexico, the process has changed. Before, it was closed and its implementation fast. This is what many miss, because it was effective and was perceived as legitimate. However, over the past several decades, policy design has become conflictive and uncompleted, there is great conflict with respect to its implementation, and it frequently ends in paralysis, all of which has generated a perception of illegitimacy.

The key theme is the perception of legitimacy, and this is where another enduring theme enters into the Mexican discussion, but one that usually does not end in a pragmatic, functioning decision. Our devotion to form has led to the identification of legality as formal compliance with the norms. The majority of attorneys sustain the thesis: if the form is complied with, it’s legal. However, this has led to the norms being changed so that legality will not be violated, a situation that is contradictory in any light.

Perhaps the most important point of controversy is the purpose or raison d’être of the rule of law. Typically, to those concerned with compliance (or, in our case, non-compliance) with the law, what is important is to possess an instrument, conceptual as well as physical, that allows “enforcing compliance with the law”, i.e., that written and codified laws exist, and also the coercive means for compliance with these. This is what occurred to a certain degree in the PRIist system; the forms were maintained, and there were police and judicial bodies with the capacity and disposition to make them be complied with. However, this framework left the individual completely defenseless: it protected those who were in the government’s inner circle through the unwritten laws and discretionary use of authority. Thus, certainty depended on the person who governed, not on rule of law. If we wish to achieve the construction of legitimacy within the context of our current reality, we would have to invert the equation: the law should protect the citizen from discretionary use by the governing official and should be applied to both in identical fashion: rights and obligations.

In a fascinating book that appeared recently, entitled The Rule of Law, Tom Bingham affirms that the Rule of Law is not a conjunct of laws, but rather, a series of fundamental principles that norm the behavior of a society. Among these principles we find the following: the law must be accessible, intelligible, clear, and predictable; the themes of rights and responsibilities should be resolved by means of application of the law and not through the exercise of discretion; laws should be applied uniformly to all, whatever their rank or condition, except in cases in which objective variances justify a differentiation; the means should be provided, without excessive cost and without delay, to resolve legitimate disputes among persons unable to settle these themselves. Each of these principles, and others I have not included in this list, has a long history that lends content and sustenance to it, and more importantly, these confer certainty on the citizenry.

Bingham’s explanation is not very different from that set forth at one time by Douglas North, who wrote that, in essence, the Rule of Law implies “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”. The heart of the matter is the certainty and predictability that, in a great, complex, and diverse society, “can solely be provided by the Rule of Law, which, on being transparent, universal, and identical for everyone, ensures adherence to principles that free and protect”.

The arbitrariness that characterizes us will get us nowhere.

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An old refrain says that the genius of democracy resides in alternation of parties in power, because it compels the opposition to take the situation seriously: as long as the possibility exists of arriving at power, it is condemned to worry about the future. We Mexicans are on the threshold of the possibility of experiencing a new alternation of parties power, but it is not obvious whether the potential new occupants of the Los Pinos presidential residence are clear about the deep-seated change that has characterized the country.

Today, ten years after the first alternation in the presidency materialized, it is fashionable to hold the transcendence of the very deed of power having changed hands in disdain. Many recall the PRI with nostalgia, while others declare that we would be better with someone else. Some have already declared that alternation has failed as the cornerstone of democracy and respect for citizens’ rights. And, without doubt, if one focuses exclusively on the errors, bumbling, misinterpretations, and the insufficient governing ability of the PAN administrations, it is easy to justify any bias that one might entertain. If we limit ourselves to evaluating alternation as simply a switch from one government political gang to another, it is clear that alternation is worth little.

No one can doubt that what the country has become in recent years leaves much to be desired. Wherever one looks, economic performance or citizen tranquility has been poor, to say the least. However, on examining the numbers of the last forty years, one finds that the current situation is not very different. There are certainly many negative aspects that are attributable to the two PAN administrations, beginning with the newly inaugurated Fox government’s squandering of the great opportunity to transform the political system. But the negative tendencies that the country experienced date back to the sixties, when the slump in the economic growth rate began. In the seventies, we participated in an apparent economic improvement, but we have not yet recovered from its cost in terms of legitimacy, inflation, and debt. With Salinas, we were witness to an ostensible rebirth that did not last. To maintain that the country’s problems began in 2000 is simply absurd.

It would be similarly ludicrous to suppose that nothing has changed from 2000 on. The manner in which the post-revolutionary regime revolved the problems of political stability and power was to centralize these. First through hammering it into people, and later by means of incentives and controls of every genre, the PRIist system concentrated the power with which it was able to make decisions and demand compliance. The system, whose bud growth was the bonding between party and presidency (and the permanent exchange among both), involved a grid of structures, organizations, and mechanisms with tentacles that spread everywhere, which would allow for castigating dissidence and quelling rebellion. The system weakened over time, but concentration of power continued being its main feature.

Despite Fox’s failures and his blindness in the face of opportunity and the urgency to renegotiate power relations with the PRI, the very fact of his defeat changed the country forever. Independently of his achievement or failures, the “divorce” between the PRI and the presidency changed Mexico because it threw into disorder the pivot that permitted centralization of power derived from control of the population, businesses, unions, parties, the media, and the country in general. We have only to observe the manner in which an infinite number of organizations, groups, and companies distanced themselves from the PRI– and established themselves as independents- to illustrate the depth of the phenomenon. The seemingly sudden appearance of the so-called “de facto powers” was not so sudden: all of these were already in existence, but there was also some degree or capacity of control over them. The loss of the presidency left the PRI more as a party and less as the system of control of former times.

If one chooses to see the glass as half empty, it is clear that the disappearance of the old system was accompanied by the end of the certainty that control proffered. At the same time, if one regards the glass as half full, citizens abruptly acquired levels of freedom in which they, never before under the PRIist system, had relished. Neither of the two is perfect: today we have the uncertainty typical of democracy, but we have lost our bearings; we have broad leeway of freedom, but public insecurity does not allow us to exercise this.

In addition to what is undesirable, what is sure is that it is impossible to reproduce the old system. First off, it is impossible to go back to subjecting all organizations to a PRI-type regime. Second, beneficiaries of the power decentralization -governors, party and legislative leaders, and de facto powers- would not easily permit interlopers. The governors, who at present comprise a microcosm of the old presidentialism, will not relinquish even an iota of their new power. Third, there are countless legal and financial frameworks that have been employed for underwriting development projects at the state level that are not subordinate to federal control. Finally, it is a fallacy to suppose that the problem of insecurity and narcotrafficking is the product solely of governmental incompetence: the phenomenon is another. Narcotrafficking is a de facto power with appendages that are much more momentous than those of any other interest in the country. The backroom arrangements, understandings, and slush funds that countenanced narcotraffic functionings for decades were the product of the circumstances: there was a government in full control, but there was also narcotrafficking, whose business was purely conveyance South to North. This has now changed; we cannot go back as much as we might wish to, although we must confront this intelligently.

Many PRIists see Putin as a model of power reconcentration and de facto power submission to be imitated. There, as here, many politicians think that the worst that could happen to a country was to enter into a democratic game playing era. However, Putin’s power is not that of Stalin, and the old Communist Party is one of myriad players. It also cannot be ignored that Putin’s strength is due more to high oil prices than to the strength of his economy or the solvency of his government.

The relevant question for the person who aspires to govern Mexico from 2012 on is not one of power concentration, but in its stead, one of the construction of a political system capable of making decisions within a context of effective checks and balances that results in robust and sustained economic achievement. The old system should remain where it correspondingly should remain: in the past. Today, it is key to start to construct the future, because not even the PRI can live from the past.

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The story recounts that Commodore Perry, hero of the War of 1812, coined the phrase “We have met the enemy and he is us”. Something similar could be said of the old PRIist system; it continues, alive and kicking, because it benefits us all or because we believe that it benefits us in some manner. While all Mexicans, from the most modest to the most exalted, have aspirations to improve, the old system was so overwhelming and omnipresent that it affixed itself to the innermost core of our being. The result, visible in all ambits, is that although we consider ourselves modern, something of the old, something that holds us back from changing, continues inside there.

Benefits and privileges, small or large, are always attractive. It might bother us that an individual appropriates the public thoroughfare and later rents it out as a parking lot, but it is very convenient to find somewhere to leave the car when one is hurrying to a dentist appointment. It is easier to talk to someone we know for getting some official procedure taken care of without having to wait in line. All of these small privileges are in reality ways of discriminating against the entire remainder of society. Of course, none of these peccadilloes compares in sum with the abuse represented by the communications monopoly or the multimillion-peso transfers received by a public-sector union, but the concept is exactly the same. All of these are privileges that function at the cost of everyone else. The culture of privilege, of influence, and of rights without a counterclaim constitutes an affront to the country’s development.

The leading question is how we can turn this reality around. History relates that when the Romans finally achieved not only the defeat but also the destruction of the Carthaginians, their most powerful enemy, they thought that their Republic finally was safe and sound. What they did not take care of was themselves: as soon as they finished off the Carthaginians, the Romans themselves began to undermine their own Republic by abandoning its institutions, reducing its freedom, and gnawing away at its prosperity until they ended up in a civil war. We Mexicans are undermining our own viability as an organized society insofar as we play the privileges game, because we are rendering the functioning of a competitive country and a decent society impossible.

To leave the past behind is something easy in concept but difficult in practice, especially at the individual level, when a person or a family decides to break with these mores in order to attempt to live within a commensurate world in the eyes of the law. Many of us have made attempts in this regard. I remember two specific cases: on arriving to renew his driver’s license, an acquaintance of mine found himself with the receptionist who immediately asked him if he wanted normal or express service. Not understanding the nature of the question, my friend opted for normal. Hours later, after observing that the expeditious service involved only a few minutes, he finally succumbed: the receptionist alone could not change the system. The opposite occurred with a Mexican entrepreneur who attempted to carry out a tax formality in the U.S. His first instinct, as a Mexican, was to seek out some contact who could aid him in expediting his request. First he spoke by phone with an official at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico, who told him that he was unable to help him, but that he should go directly to the relevant office. Irritated, the businessman hung up the phone and began to speak with other persons in the U.S. One of these, a lawyer, told him that it was not necessary to ask for help but, more importantly, that on doing so he could be committing a crime. Incredulous and fearful, he went to the respective office and within fifteen minutes, without anyone’s help, he finished his business. The contrast between the two ways of functioning could not be greater. Here, everything is designed so that someone is benefited –from receiving a “modest” tip to being consigned an entire market-, while there, the system is user- and citizen-friendly.

One of the paradoxes of the system that we inherited is that it has become much more intricate from when the PRI was defeated in 2000. Before that, there were mechanisms, not frequently employed, to limit some of the worst excesses (as occurred with the “quinazo” –read newly inducted President’s Carlos Salinas’s jailing of PRI coreligionist and PEMEX syndicate kingpin Joaquín Hernández-Galicia “La Quina”), but these were never conceived of to construct a more functional and fair nation. With the dispersion of power that we have observed, there does not appear, under the current circumstances, to be a human power that allows for limiting the abuse that citizens suffer at the hand of bureaucrats, politicians, unions, business, and other “de facto” powers. So then, what it to be done? It would be easy to seek out the guilty –who did, or did not do, what- but this would not help us. If one peruses the newspapers or listens to the news, there’s no dearth of guilty parties. The problem is that such an approach does not change the reality.

It would be more useful to look for ways of going about whittling the system down that permits so much abuse and excess. There are two great lines that the citizenry can begin to voice in this direction: action and organization. As to actions, we could begin by saying NO, each of us at their own measure, to that world of privilege and its concomitant abuses. Simple things such as paying a fine instead of a bribe, parking, even if at a distance, so as not to promote ”rent” of the public way, standing in line when necessary, refusing to purchase something without the value added tax. A quixotic attitude may sound artless (and in many senses it is), except if it catches fire. With such an intricate system and an ensnarled structure of beneficiaries, it is difficult to believe that one person or one family can transform a nation.

The only way to effect a change is by creating an organization that little by little adds sufficient numbers of people to create a critical mass and to become a political factor to which the real powers –governmental as well as “de facto”- cannot deny dealing with. A group or family that decides to convene other families who join in with acts of “active resistance” in a situation such as our that of present one, in which we cry ”basta” every time could well spark and precipitate a sea change.

Gandhi instigated the strategy of passive resistance to defeat the colonial enemy. In our case, what is needed is a cogent and vigorous citizenry, willing to comply strictly with the obligations and regulations that life in society exacts. For Mexicans, the alternative is to hope that someone, in the goodness of their heart, will change things from on high, or to begin to do it by ourselves every minute of the day.

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“The future, environmental activist Dana Meadows once said, is a choice, not a destiny.” This year, commemorating the centenary of the Revolution, is a good time to reflect on the future. In addition to concentrating power, the revolution of a hundred years ago caused a huge number of deaths and was accompanied by the physical destruction of productive assets, resources and infrastructure. Now that power has descentralized yet again, the big challenge will be to give viability to the country. What is clear is that no country can succeed if it is not endorsed by and above has all the confidence of its people

The Mexican Revolution was the result of the Porfirian regime’s collapse and the inevitable inflexibility that accompanies the age of a single character. As Roger Hansen wrote decades ago in his famous study of the PRI, the PRI system solved this problem, in the unforgettable words of Cosio Villegas, with a non inheritable monarchical structure. But the PRI system also collapsed and its fall, albeit without revolutionary destruction, did not solve the problem of power. Today the country is again adrift, without clarity on the future or a sense of purpose. Nothing is more risky for stability than such an environment

Revolutions, said Jean Francois Revel, “either concentrate power or they are useless.” The Revolution of 1910 led not only to the concentration of power, but also to the creation of a system that, while it worked, allowed to respond to the challenges the country was facing. Like all revolutions and regimes arising from them, we had our own paraphernalia of myths, excesses, abuses and interests. But the interesting thing, and that was the point that Hansen emphasized, is that the success of the revolutionary regime was the same as that of Porfirio Díaz: the concentration of power made it possible to control a country as diverse and dispersed as Mexico, with an ever-changing geography and susceptible to generating political fiefdoms everywhere. Porfirio Diaz subjected regional powers in exactly the same way that General Cardenas did. What neither of the two systems achieved was to give institutional permanence to the country.

A country with Mexico’s traits can only be governed in two ways: either concentrating power or institutionalizing it. It is no coincidence that concentration of power was the common denominator of two successful eras in the country’s independent history. Unlike the Porfirian regime, the PRI built a system of inclusion that used corruption and its accompanying tolerance as control mechanisms, both key elements in the system. Unfortunately, the end of that era was not accompanied by the creation of a mechanism to resolve issues of power. In the absence of strong institutions to contain power, its dispersion has translated itself into a permanent source of instability

The extinction of the old mechanisms of concentration of power and the lack of institutions to contain those who have and wield power, constitutes a threat to development and is an essential component of the economic paralysis that characterizes us. People distrust politicians because they don’t see in them the ability to decide and act, while politicians reflect the enormous diversity that characterizes the population, which in turn leads them towards paralysis. The problem is not new: What is different today is that there are no mechanisms to solve it.

Many PRI politicians and former PRI members criticize PAN governments for its inability to act and think it is a people of individuals. This is why, they claim, the day they come back to govern everything will be different. It is impossible to question the lack of expertise in policy and government affairs among many PAN members. However, it is illusory to think that everything depends on those individuals. Ironically, it was Fox the president who thought the problem was one of morality: an honest president replaces the corrupt PRI and with that everything is solved. Clearly the matter was a bit more complex especially since his own election involved the “divorce” of the PRI and the presidency. But the main point is that the defeat of PRI did not solve the problem of power, of economic growth, and much less the one of morality.

The old question thus remains valid: how to govern Mexico? The constitution says that the solution is federalism, and after the PRI’s defeat in 2000 this is somehow what we have been saddled with. Except that our federalism does not involve a sum of effective local governments, but a permanent bickering by governors. Instead of a national emperor we now have a multiplicity of local feudal lords. The result, as shown by the poor growth of the economy, has been pathetic. From a liberal perspective, the solution has to come from an active and vibrant citizenry ready to enforce their rights and become an effective counterweight against local power. But no one can decree the existence of a militant and responsible citizenship, and its absence entails the risk of someone trying to restore order by hook or by crook.

“The revolution, Trotsky said, is impossible until it becomes inevitable.” That is our current risk:  that mismanagement from benign rulers or an attempt to re-concentrate power by other less benign leads us to the usual state of affairs: that despair and fear of chaos makes the ruler think that all is matter of will and personal determination.

Indeed, Mexico is extraordinarily difficult to govern because of its diversity and dispersion and because of the population’s nonchalance. As my friend Claudia Diaz says, “what harms countries is largely what harms people: inertia, rigidity, inability to form healthy alliances, counterweights and delusions (personal and collective)”. The question is how to break that inertia and that rigidity. Perhaps the answer can be found in leadership, as in Brazil, a country devoted to building the institutions that are indispensable for development. The risk, of course, is slipping back into a dictatorship.

One day Robert Pastor asked a taxi driver in Mexico City if he thought there would be a new revolution. “Mexico,” replied the driver, “already had one and that taught us that revolutions do not improve anyone’s life”. Now that we are marking an anniversary we should focus on what we lack: strong institutions that channel politicians and limit the power of special interest groups but at the same time make it possible to govern.

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“Life, said Kierkegaard, can only be understood backward, but should be lived forward”. But, in our case, how can the past be understood if we are not willing to live forward, and how can we live forward if we do not resolve the past?

Mexico has not known how to contend with its past, and I do not refer to the distant past, to our origin as a country. We are making our way from a regime founded on a dominant party and an exacerbated presidency toward a democratic paradigm, but lacking in rules and frames of references, which produced the mismatch in which we live today.

At the initiation of the present decade, with the defeat of the PRI, there were three groups of proposals on how to deal with the past: those that clamored for a retrospective recount and moral indemnification in the form of truth commissions oriented at putting the PRI in evidence; those that proposed a grand national pact that would “draw the line in the sand” regarding the past and construct a new political foundation; and those that outlined a pragmatic vision of understanding pari passu, i.e., “part and parcel”. I am not sure whether at some moment there was an actual decision in this respect, but what is evident is that a third-world pragmatism triumphed that did not lay the foundation for future development, nor did it compel the modernization of the PRI.

That is, there was a dramatic political upset but no directorship berth: everything was left to hook, or, as we can see in retrospect in many ambits, to crook. Zedillo’s government was satisfied with the electoral reform that leveled the playing field and left the remaining institutions to adapt as if by magic. On his part, Fox came into power with neither plan nor agenda, and stopped worrying forthwith. There was no attempt at reforming institutions, and all efforts were concentrated on undermining and debilitating the old bastions of the PRI in the government, such as the Ministry of the Interior, Gobernación in Spanish, without making amends to that which undermined its own ability to act. In addition to that, much more alarmingly, Fox ignored evidence of an accelerated growth in criminality, which then began to come to light. The sum of Zedillo’s lack of vision and Fox’s complete absence of responsibility impeded the country from achieving a smooth political transition.

What might have been, say the politicians, does not exist. The moment when there was the opportunity to restate the country’s political architecture in an elegant and pristine manner remained in the past. What did not remain in the past were the consequences of the old regime and the imbalance that these represent for the reality of today.

Alternation of parties in power in 2000 came to pass uneventfully. The losing presidential candidate recognized the defeat, and both governments, the incoming and the outgoing, cooperated to ensure a professional handing-over and reception of power. What was not seamless was the management of the consequences that the transition entailed and that handicapped the country from consolidating a stable democratic regime and the possibility of sowing the seeds for its development.

There are two types of consequences: those having to do with governability, and those that are concerned with everyday life. While, in a certain way, this is about two sides of the same coin, each merits its own analysis.

Perhaps the greatest of the costs generated by Fox’s do-nothingness can be observed in the fact that everything in Mexican politics continues as before, except for the robustness of the presidency. That is to say, with the separation of the PRI, the presidency lost its principal instrument of control and action. But everything else continued the same: contempt for the law; governmental and police corruption, and both administrative as well as criminal impunity. Instead of a government, we had something akin to Sicilian novelist Lampedusa running the presidency: pretending to change everything so that everything can remain the same. Six years later, the country was on the brink of chaos.

In terms of governability, there are two main elements: the capacities of the individuals in charge, and the might and competence of the tools at their command. The population gave Fox the benefit of the doubt with the former, recognizing that because of historical reality –there were no expert PANists in governmental management -you can’t ask for the moon. What has been incredible is that ten years later, the PANists have not been able to generate a contingent of competent politicians who are skillful in these matters.

Would that this were the only problem. The governing instruments and mechanisms that existed decades ago eroded little by little until they became unserviceable. Years prior to the PRI defeat, the country began to experience a gradual decentralization of power, one that suddenly bolted ahead in 2000, with the effect of previous institutions becoming inoperative, while new institutions were never created. The case of public security is paradigmatic: the Federal Government was de facto ceding power, mechanisms, and monies, but neither the federation nor the states develop the concomitant capacities. Ten years later, we are facing the phenomenon of a fortified, organized delinquency, emboldened and extraordinarily well armed. That is, precisely when the country was experiencing the breakdown of police capacities, extensively corrupt though they were, organized crime ballooned, with no rein or encumbrance whatsoever.

All this translates into growing costs for the society. Companies, beginning with the small ones, have become easy prey for extortion. Those with options and leverage amass their investments in distant places, if not abroad. Insecurity has destroyed businesses and opportunities. The obvious consequence is that investment declines, and with it, job creation. We can construct all the hypotheses that we want on the causes of the gridlock, but there is not the least doubt that physical insecurity and uncertainty concerning the rules of the game are the two main ones.

Perhaps the saddest feature is that now we retain all the ills of the old system without the benefit of the stability and predictability of the old sexenio, the six year term of office. The old system decayed from within and this ended up destroying it, a circumstance that occurred well before the transition. This should be understood by PRIists who dream of restoration and by PANists who wish to relinquish all and any responsibility. The issue at present is not to identify the guilty parties, but rather, to understand what happened in order to set the country on the right track.

We need a renewed country, with new institutions and governmental capacities derived from an overarching political arrangement among the powers that be. Nothing less than this is going to work if we want to live forward.

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One of my teachers, Roy Macridis, used to say that public policy, in particular that relative to foreign policy, should be evaluated not for its objectives, but for its consequences. The theme that especially grieved him was the war in Vietnam, concerning which his pithy affirmation was that the U.S. had achieved exactly the opposite of what it had proposed. I have no doubt that many governments confront similar situations in their daily operations: each program, strategy, speech, or decision is contemplated in the light of the information available, the biases of those participating or advising in the decision making process, and the objectives pursued. Once the decision is made on what to do and how to do it, what remains is to grapple with the consequences. Many projects achieve their purpose, others fail. Some end up being counterproductive.

President Calderón’s State visit to Washington a few months ago took place in the context of a profound cleavage in the American society about its future. On that occasion, the president was harsh in his judgment of the two most controversial issues in the nations’ bilateral relationship: immigration and the sale of arms in the U.S. for use by the narcomafias in Mexico. In both themes, President Calderón did not limit himself to the Mexican perspective, but rather undertook the delivery of a strong critique of the U.S. in these matters. With regard to immigration, the president proposed the need for a joint solution, but, after attesting to his respect for U.S. laws, he devoted himself to criticizing them. In the weapons theme, he not only did not limit himself to exacting from the U.S. government its commitment to halt the exportation of arms to Mexico, but additionally he warned them of the risk for the U.S. itself in continuing to sell high-caliber weapons for internal consumption in that nation.

It is difficult to understand the motivation of crossing the line between foreign policy and what constitutes an intromission into the domestic legal realm. Independent of what the law says, a foreigner should always be prudent with respect to voicing his/her opinion on the foreign policy of the other country, and even more so when the foreigner is a head of State. I suppose that there are two possible explanations for this lapsus: one, that is was a conscious decision, with full knowledge of the potential consequences, and the other, that he and his advisors never imagined or measured them. Now that the midterm elections have taken place, it is time to gauge the potential costs.

Speculating on this modus operandi, it is possible that it derived from a maximilistic moral position in which the objective was to make the weight felt of the implications of U.S. policies on Mexico, or perhaps, in a more simplistic fashion, the true audience to which the speeches were directed was not the immediate one, but to that of public opinion in Mexico. Were it due to either of these two possibilities, the question is what for? What is the possible benefit of proceeding to the extent of alienating half the hosts to whom, as well, he is proposing a long-term alliance, all of these disregarding the possibility that the Republicans might eventually end up having a greater role in governing?

Independently of whether the governmental strategy consisted of intentionally causing special disapproval on the part of the Republican legislators and the “Tea Party” movement, or whether it comprised a deep-seated lack of understanding of what has evolved in the US in recent years, the tangible fact is that, several months after the fact, the strategy has now proven to have been a mistake. What Mexico needs is a strong and viable relationship with the government and people of the US in order to deal with the complex problems that stem from the shared border.  Nothing is gained by alienating the voters or politicians in the ascent.

Some analysts have been arguing for months that the crucial moment of the Tea Party ascent coincided with President Calderón’s visit. It is impressive to observe the number of advertisements, YouTube videos, and speeches that employ the president’s words, images and the voice, as an instrument to pummel their rivals and, on the way, President Obama. As one analyst notes, “the Democrats in Congress applauded him, but at the level of the man-in-the-street, the words of the Mexican president came across as those of a cold, ungrateful, and hypocritical preacher reprimanding his congregation. In other words, justifiably or not, he angered the Americans.”

As my teacher would say, it is time to grapple with the consequences. Whatever the objective to be pursued of that visit, the consequences have been extraordinarily costly and could further grow, because all of this has strengthened the notion that Mexico has become a domestic political affair, which leads to blaming Mexicans as the cause of many of the ills that Americans are suffering.

As the old Chinese proverb goes, crises are also moments of opportunity. Mexico has become the bad guy of the U.S. movie, a circumstance that affects all facets of our interaction with that country. If the tide does not turn, the costs would amass in very specific forms, above all in much grimmer measures along the border and in rejection of new migratory legislation, or, considerably worse, in the adoption of legislation so uncompromising that the upshot would be closing the doors, not only to future migrants, but also predominantly to those already there. The time is ripe to launch a strategy to win over the minds of the Americans for the benefit of Mexico and Mexicans.

What Mexico has to do in the U.S. has been sufficiently evident for a long time. Mexico has been a serious and responsible partner, has devoted itself to confronting themes and problems that affect both neighbor nations, and has proposed to contribute to solving common problems in ways that years ago were pure heresy in our country. Today, however, the circumstances demand a decided activism, a decision to embark upon a strategy of the legitimization of Mexico and what is Mexican. With great vision, Luis de la Calle has spoken of the possibility of casting a Mexican actor as a physician on one of the most popular programs on U.S. television, or promoting two cities, such as San Diego and Tijuana, to jointly organize the Olympic Games. The issue is to change the collective U.S. imaginary for the image of the Mexican to be that of a hard-working and responsible person who wants a better life. Better a true image than endless bickering that leads nowhere.

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Mark Twain said that “the first part of life consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance without the capacity”. The same is true of governments. In 2000, the first alternation of parties in the government took place, but there was no change in the country’s institutional structures. In technical terms, there was no regime change. This was the first major error of Vicente Fox and the main cause of the permanence of the old political structures, the vices, and the encumbrances for development. What is taking place at present is something like a second opportunity, this time in the states of Oaxaca and Puebla. What their new governors do not accomplish at the outset they will not accomplish at all.

When Fox arrived at Los Pinos, the PRI was an inherent component of the presidential system. The organizations and structures that comprised it worked in coordination with the presidency and served as a mechanism of transmission and control. The interests represented by the party possessed vehicles by means of which they influenced and pressured the presidency. The system was corrupt, authoritarian, and frequently conflictive, but was also highly functional: it allowed for control, kept (almost always) the worst excesses within bounds, at least within the normality established by the “unwritten” rules, and maintained a semblance of order.

Fox’s arrival changed the system’s quintessential equation: on losing control of the presidency, the PRI became orphaned and began to experience distinct degrees of upheaval. The “divorce”, to put a name on it, between the PRI and the presidency changed the reality of political power in the country and unleashed forces that had not been witnessed since the Revolution. The power flowed from the presidency to the governors and the political parties. At the same time, many of the organizations that, in greater or lesser fellowship and synchrony, had worked in connection with the PRI, acquired a life of their own, becoming factors of autonomous power, but now without institutional moorings, that, for better or worse, in the past acted as checks and balances. Thus arose the so-called “de facto powers”, whose sole interest was their own. Suddenly, the resource disappeared that diverse presidents had employed to discipline these powers, the paradigmatic example of which was the “quinazo”: a change of leaders without changing the system.

When he took office, Fox had the opportunity, at least hypothetically, to negotiate an agreement with the PRIists, a meeting of the minds that could have translated into a new institutional structure. Even before the beneficiaries of the political change were to take notice of the implications of this, the PRIists were terrified of being incarcerated, à la the old system. They feared that the government would resort to authoritarian tactics to take control of the governmental apparatus, and that they would conduct themselves as had any of the former governments. Had they foreseen the effect of the loss of executive power, the brand-new PANist government could have negotiated from a position of strength: levering themselves up on the fear of the PRIists being sent to jail, redefining the nature of the political institutions, and changing the fate of the nation once and for all.

What happened is history. Above all, the new government (2000) possessed no insight, nor did it have a complete understanding of the forces that had been unleashed. In second place, in-fighting in the Cabinet concerning how to proceed ranged from the Jacobin positions of those who proposed inquisition-oriented truth commissions to judge (and, doubtlessly, to condemn) the old regime, to those who abrogated for maintaining the status quo. Unfortunately, there was no long term, institutional vision, capable of transcending the opportunity in order to take advantage of it in an exceptional manner.

The new governors of Puebla and Oaxaca cannot ignore Fox’s experience and its consequent cost. On assuming their function, they will encounter a scenario not very distinct from that which Fox found: an encumbered PRI, one saturated with interests that systematically wreak abuse and an incommensurable history of corruption. Some members of out-going administrations will be fearful (as illustrated by the sudden search for impunity by the Oaxaca state’s finance secretary’s attempt to become a member of Congress), but many have become emboldened by the way that any vestige of institutionality imploded with the arrival of Fox.

The situation creates an extraordinary opportunity to redefine the nature of politics in two of the most unprogressive and corrupt states of the nation. The new governors could spell out literal and absolute partings of the ways to those with accounts pending, but not in the manner of the old PRI, which despite the passage of the years, never stopped being the Obregonist party: “no one can resist a cannonade of fifty thousand pesos”, in other words, permanent corruption. Instead of attempting to buy peace, the new governors could propose a novel institutionality and open the floodgates for the rest of the country: new rules to which all submit for drawing a line in the sand with respect to the past.

The options, at least the conceptual ones, for the new governors are very simple: purchase peace and pretend that theirs were traditional elections (like the PRI of always); try to keep the ship afloat (like Fox); or provide a definition for a new institutional arrangement. No one in the country has attempted the latter, but it is what the country requires: new rules and a government ready and able to make them stick. Many will demand revolutionary justice (“jail to the corrupt”), but this world require a credible judicial system. Should they attempt this course in te new reality, what would most probably occur is that this path would end up in a “michoacanazo”: all show without a happy ending, squandering the great opportunity for transformation.

The true alternative is to redefine and specify the rules of the game: to establish a new institutional framework, based on the citizenry and not on corporations or party organizations, and an ideal legal framework for a society that proposes to transform itself. The exchange would depend on what the prevailing real powers are of a mind to do: if they accept the new rules and submit to them, their past will be free of any charges; if not, the law will be applied to them with no looking back. Meanwhile, the new state governors would have a sword of Damocles at hand, inclined to use it at the least provocation.

The new governors arrive in their states with an untold number of debts to those who supported them. They would do well to remember how Fiorino Laguardia broke with all of these the day he began his term as mayor of New York: “My first qualification for this great job is my monumental ingratitude”. It is imperative to start somewhere.

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Seneca, the Roman philosopher, had long since anticipated it: “If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable”. Tariff disputes, free trade agreements, and the future of the economy evidence the flagrant confusion that characterizes us. The positions of the government as well as those of the private sector are so absolute and enraged that it would seem that the entire world is at stake.

The conflict is out in the open: the specific theme is what is least important; what’s relevant is the confrontation. On the one hand, the government insists on the need to reduce tariffs, deregulate and create a more competitive environment for economic activity. On the other hand, the private sector jumps at the first opportunity, but with a sole monosyllable: NO. Truth to tell, both are right: because since no one, including the rest of the Mexicans, has any idea of where we are going, any road will take us there. Consequently, it is better to stage an uproar than to attempt to find a space of understanding.

In the meleé, perspective has been lost: the function of the government; the rationale of the business community; and the direction of economic development. For starters, the government’s obligation and responsibility is to create conditions under which the economy can develop. Among these is found the shaping of a competitive climate that allows a rise in the productivity of the economy as a whole, obliging entrepreneurs to be more efficient, and to foster the formation of new companies. In an ideal world, the rules of the game must facilitate the genesis of businesses when an entrepreneur generates an idea that is liable to gain ground in the market, and one that concurrently permits the transformation or death of those incapable of satisfying consumer demand.

This is the quid of the matter. The fundamental lack of definition lies at the heart of the contention between the government and the business chambers: who should be the beneficiary of the development, the entrepreneur or producer or the citizen and consumer. In the 1980s, the country appeared to have taken this basic step when imports were first liberalized, subsidies to industrial activity were reduced, and, apparently, privileging the consumer as the raison d’être of economic activity. The objective was not to do away with the productive plant, as business chambers and critics clamored, but rather to afford long-term viability to the nation’s economy by increasing production scale and creating a more specialized economy, one that would be more capable of satisfying consumer demand. That is, the spin attempted was that of obligating the productive plant to serve the consumer instead of the opposite: the consumer depending on the producer’s good will.

Behind the governmental logic of the time was found the old discussion regarding the function of the market in economic development. The objective of free trade is that all economies become specialized, i.e., instead of manufacturing all of the goods that the society demands in a country, each nation specializes in what is better. When a country has lived under the yoke of protected producers, it is natural that an opening to imports causes diverse disruptions; however, the objective of the opening is not to cause dislocation, but to provoke transformation of the sector so that the more efficient businesses could become consolidated; generate better, well-paid jobs; and, on the whole, a win-win situation.

Unfortunately, the opening of the Mexican economy was very unequal. Importation was liberalized of the majority of industrial products, but trade in services was not freed up, while diverse protection mechanisms were maintained –by means of tariffs, subsidies, exceptions, and tortuous regulations- that have had the effect of making competition much more difficult. The result has been that some industrial sectors confront merciless competition, while others dwell in Ali Baba’s treasure trove. The most recent episode of liberalization was suggestive of what we really are up against: some goods were liberalized but the game reserves of some items were preserved, such as electrical cables, on the pretext that Mexican norms are distinct, despite the fact that we export these and that they are identical to those produced in those countries. That is, they are boorish protection mechanisms for well-heeled companies that monopolize their market.

The indecision regarding the nation’s course and the criteria that should prevail in driving economic policy has caused an extraordinary delay in growth, but not only that: the costs are tangible. Paradoxically, the sectors with the least or null protection are precisely those that are the most competitive and those that pay the best salaries. The reason is simple: competition raises productivity, and the latter exacts better workers and generates resources for remunerating them better. It is not by chance that the true arrearage that Mexico is experiencing is found exactly in sectors and regions that “enjoy” the doubtful privilege of protection.

The nation’s real theme is that it has no sense of direction: the 1994 crisis annihilated the liberalizing project and, from then on, no government has had a clear idea of what course it wants to pursue or, to an even lesser degree, of knowing how to convince the population of the advantages or costs of this or other options.

Faced by governmental (and social) confusion, the private sector does what it knows how to do best: complain and protest. The reality is that the business chambers have a good argument, but have not known how to articulate it: the general conditions of the economy do not allow businesses to compete; thus, it is indispensable to liberalize and deregulate the protected sectors, beginning with the services sector, but including all of the industrial activities that continue to luxuriate in protections and subsidies. The prototypal entrepreneur pays highly for credit and transport; is the servant, rather than a consumer, of PEMEX, the oil company and of CFE, the utility entity; and, as if these encumbrances were but minutiae, suffers from a pathetic infrastructure and must defray costs for security. Their competitor in Korea, Taiwan, or China has access to highly trained personnel, unsurpassed infrastructure, and a government devoted to improving the conditions of competition every day. The problem of the Mexican entrepreneurs is not that they complain, but that they do not complain about what is relevant. Instead of demanding improved conditions of competition, they would rather play politics, propitiate constitutional controversies, and request subsidies. The country will never progress like this.

The difference with Brazil is not that its industries are protected, but that Brazil knows where it’s going. The difference is not minor.

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