“Democracy Deficit in Emerging Countries: Undemocratic trends in Latin America and the role of Brazil: a very short presentation”, Hartford, 12 October 2013, 3 p. Abridged version of the paper n. 2510, prepared for the Conference “Promoting Democracy: What Role for the Emerging Powers?”, organized by the Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE), the International Development Research Centre (IRDC), and the University of Ottawa (Ottawa, 15-16 October 2013).
Democracy
Deficit in Emerging Countries:
Undemocratic
trends in Latin America and the role of Brazil
(A very short presentation of
the paper)
Paulo
Roberto de Almeida
Ph.D. in Social Sciences, M.A. in Economic
Development, Brazilian career diplomat; professor of International Political
Economy at the University Center of Brasilia (Uniceub); currently Deputy Consul
of Brazil in Hartford, CT-USA; Website: www.pralmeida.org.
Conference Promoting
Democracy: What Role for the Emerging Powers?
(University of Ottawa,
15-16 October 2013)
(... Intro...)
My paper probably runs contrary
sense to expected arguments, which the organizers perhaps would hope to be in
favor of a stronger participation of emerging countries in the general movement
towards higher degrees of democratization around the world. No, I do not buy
this thesis, which would be a kind of late-Fukuyama optimistic view on the
march of History: I do not think emerging countries are becoming more
democratic, or pushing the world systems towards more democratic forms of
governance, only because they have a stronger stake in the globalization
process and in the economic interdependence, in general. For me, it all depends
on the equilibrium of political forces at domestic level, and the type of
ideologies and political doctrines that are at the core of hegemonic party that
controls the State. States are an abstract notion to encompass the polity in
its actual functioning. Government is a more concrete reality, because it arises
from electoral choices – such as those being made in Brazil and India, for
instance – or it derives from previous revolutionary process, and hold the
monopoly of power – like in China, for example – or it simply is the result of
powerful forces and movements which are capable of control the main leverages
of political power: usually the levers of the main economic riches (like in
Russia).
China and Russia are, palpably, the most visible undemocratic powers,
both internally, against their own constituencies, and in multilateral
organizations, where they act as restraints whenever the UN Security Council is
discussing “responsibility to protect” initiatives against nasty dictators
somewhere in the world. India and Brazil, for their side, arguably “big
democratic emerging economies”, have not notably distinguished themselves as
ardent and irreproachable defenders of democratic values and principles in
their respective foreign policies; at national level, their low-quality
democracy and large-scale, politically tolerated corrupt practices in domestic
politics, offer no good examples for strengthening democracy in other
countries.
That said, let me present how my paper was organized. I firstly have
some considerations of a truly academic nature about the two types of
democratic regimes; for one side, the ones that derive from the formal institutional organization, that is the classical
tripartition of powers, which reveals a conception of democracy based mainly on
its superstructure shape; and, at the other side, those which take ground on
the democratic mores of the society,
as arising, for example, from village level like in the old Anglo-Saxon approach,
that was transplanted to the United States with the first colonizers. But we
can leave that apart, because is only trivia for the academia.
After I make a very brief description of Brazilian path towards a
low-quality democratic system, after many decades of oligarchic or military
regimes. That’s no more Political Science, but just History, to put the current
regime in the context of the many changes the Brazilian polity endured in the
last half century. Next section is also context, but a current one: the rising
of the so-called new Left in Latin America; some observers divide this
persistent tribe of true believers in socialism in two bunches: the carnivore
type, that is Bolivarians and the like; and the herbivorous Left, who was running
some moderate distributive countries such as Chile, Uruguay and even Brazil. In
fact, they are all committed with the defense of old Stalinists such as the Castro
brothers in the last totalitarian dictatorship in Latin America, and they all
take their political guidelines from the São Paulo Forum, a Cuban-ruled forum
of Leftist and Stalinist parties that is firmly committed with the monopoly of
power in those countries.
As for Brazil, the real picture is worse than the one publicized by
international media, that is, a progressive out-of-the-people popular leader,
the trade unionist Lula, who is preserving democracy and at the same time
conducting the world’s greatest and most important income redistribution
program, embodied in the Bolsa Familia, together with his phantasmagoric participative
budget and other “social inclusive” measures.
In fact, it is not immediately visible, but it can be demonstrated, as I
have done in my paper, that Lula and the PT government are, essentially, a
neo-Bolshevik group, or an amalgam of various leftist and sectarian sects, who
are substantially engaged in, and committed to, the monopolization of power in
Brazil. They have conducted a very systematic work of submission of the two
other independent powers: either by literally buying individual
parliamentarians, or entire party ranks (and that is the origin of the worst
corruption case in the history of Brazil, the Mensalão, or monthly allowances,
in exchange of political alignment); or by nominating sympathetic judges to the
Supreme Court: they are doing that since the beginning, but accelerating the
trend with the final judgment of the case (after more than 8 years). They also try
very hard to control the media, convening national media conferences, with the
excuse of the “democratization of the press”, and have created many
State-controlled agencies, which are submerged by party militants and
fellow-travellers. There are thousands of them, everywhere.
Let’s not be duped: Brazil is not, of course, a undemocratic country,
but it is very much a under-democratic polity, with plenty of privileges for
the few, lots of pork-barrel in the parliament, and a corporatist
state-of-mind, that serves pretty much the almost fascist-like manipulation of
the governance by PT and its apparatchiks. Brazilian people, in general, love
the State, they are always demanding more public services, they all want to
become public officials, profiting from the high wages of the public sector –
in average, six times more than the equivalent functions in the private sector
– and they are unconscious accomplices in the overall dominance exerted by
bureaucrats over the nation. The dirigisme, the hyper-centralization, and the
State-induction of so many areas of the economy combines with the mandarins and
the maharajahs in control of strategic levers of the State to lead Brazil to a
situation of low savings, low investments, very low productivity gains,
insufficient innovation, and, in consequence, mediocre growth and distorted
development. The quality of public education is appalling, and, as in many
other sectors, it is impossible to fix it, due to the resistance of trade union
mafias which opposes any kind of meritocracy, and fight only for the most
complete isonomy rules.
At the regional and international level, PT government has given support
to the worst dictatorships in the world, beginning with Cuba and Venezuela, and
going to China and others. It has also been a sympathetic ally of the many
offenders of human rights everywhere. Their notion of diplomatic alliances is
that Brazil has to be aligned with anti-hegemonic emerging powers, in their
language “anti-imperialist” forces, which in the practice is a disguised word
for plain anti-Americanism in every area.
That’s all. Many thanks...
===================
Abstract of the paper:
After
an introductory discussion of the various meanings of democracy and its
institutionalization in historical cases, the paper focuses on the case of
Brazil in the regional context. After experiencing vigorous democratic dynamics,
following the transition from military regime in mid-80s, Brazil seems to have witnessed
a reversal of the previous democratic trend. Since the inauguration of Lula’s
administration, in the early 2000s, the new elite of the Workers’ Party (PT)
has aligned the government with the so-called Bolivarian countries in Latin
America. In politics, the PT has revealed itself to be tolerant of the habits
of the old oligarchies (clientelism, patrimonialism, corruption); economically,
it has stimulated the old practices of Colbert, dirigisme, and displayed a
preference for state-driven initiatives and controls (instead of autonomous
agencies). Some analysts even raise the specter of corporate fascism, which is
more evident in Bolivarian Venezuela; others suggest that a new unholy alliance
is uniting Lula’s Brazil with its old and new best friends in Cuba, Venezuela,
Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and even Argentina (not forgetting some of their undemocratic
cousins in other continents). Lula’s foreign policy confirmed a clear departure
from Brazil’s traditional defense of human rights and democratic values, as
reconstructed after the long undemocratic military interregnum by statesmen such
as Fernando Henrique Cardoso. The PT’s South-South activism and infantile
“anti-imperialism”, moreover, is directly at odds with, and opposed to, the more
prudent orientation of professional diplomacy. Not only does it not reinforce
democracy inside Brazil, but it also shows no determination to promote
democracy abroad (a fact clearly revealed by votes on the UN Human Rights
Commission, for instance). The weak democratic credentials of the new Gramscian
nomenklatura currently in power in Brazil offer scant prospects for a vigorous
promotion of democracy in most of South America.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
[Hartford, October 12, 2013]
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