Democracy deficit in emerging countries: the role of Brazil - an abridged version of an extended paper by Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Apenas o resumo de um trabalho bem mais amplo, que ainda vai ser publicado:

“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...

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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]