POLITICS-ARGENTINA: Democracy Needs Intensive Care

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Nov 9 2000 (IPS) - Argentina’s democracy, its great political achievement of the 1980s following the nation’s bloodiest military dictatorship, is now showing signs of deterioration that leading social scientists refer to as a “slow death.”

The idea originated with Argentine Guillermo O’Donnell, former president of the International Political Science Association and creator of categories of political analysis that are now widely recognised, such as the concept of “delegative democracy.”

The debate is not only about whether or not democracy is the best political system for the general welfare of citizens, but is also about a slow deformation of the system itself that would ultimately lead to a context that is still called democracy, but is in truth something else.

For O’Donnell, when political freedoms are restricted, the legal system becomes biased, violence committed by security forces is tolerated and politicians look the other way – the consequences are no less perverse then when they occur under a military regime.

Such would be the case of Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay and Venezuela, where these deteriorations are starkly evident, but in Argentina, conditions are also heading in that direction, the political scientist commented in an interview published by the Argentine daily ‘Página 12.’

Social scientists are underscoring a matter that would have been premature amid the euphoria that followed the end of Argentina’s latest military dictatorship (1976-1983), but the idea is now coalescing in the complete distancing of politicians from the people.

Several polls indicate that political parties, lawmakers and judges represent the most discredited facets of power in Argentine society.

The experts’ reflections arise in a context of the public’s widespread disillusion with the new government of the left-leaning Alianza coalition, which took power last December with promises to change the traditional ways of “doing politics” and to tune into the problems of the people.

After almost a year, the government appears to be far from meeting those objectives.

Economic growth has not taken root, unemployment continues to rise and a major scandal involving bribery in the Senate led to the resignation of Vice-President Carlos Alvarez, who stated that his fight against corruption had not received the backing he expected.

Investigations of the bribes – supposedly paid to senators for their vote in favour of a new law – confirmed what the public had already assumed: that in the Senate, laws were “arranged.” But even worse, the judge in charge of the case is himself under investigation for illicit enrichment.

Sociologist José Nun, who this month presented his book “Democracy: Government of the People or Government of the Politicians?,” says the political problem cannot be separated from the failure of the neoliberal economic model in Argentina, which has left thousands of voters unsatisfied, and they are increasingly distanced from politicians.

How many of the excluded can a democracy support and still be considered a democracy, wonders Nun in his book, and compares the system’s process of slow and imperceptible deterioration to that of baldness: when does a man become bald, the day he loses his last hair, or before?

Nun believes many Latin American academics prefer to avoid reflections on this issue, but he maintained it is likely, given the severity of problems in the region, that such passive attitudes will begin to change in the coming years.

O’Donnell, currently a professor at the University of Notre Dame in the United States, says the erosion process of the Argentine democracy is like the silent work of termites eating away at the foundations of an apparently solid house.

“One day the house is perfect and the next day the wind knocks it down,” he said.

“Democracies do not only suffer rapid deaths like an earthquake, they can also suffer – and more insidiously – a slow death, like a house eaten away by termites,” said O’Donnell, adding, “our political class is behaving as in a textbook case of slow death.”

This process is not necessarily irreversible, he pointed out, though Argentina has worrisome symptoms, such as the growing gap between politicians and citizens, the bickering among politicians themselves – demonstrating their inability to resolve problems – and the lack of a long-term vision to overcome the current crisis.

In this sense, Nun bases the hypothesis of his book on the idea that for many voters, democracy is increasingly perceived as “government of the politicians,” who are entrusted with managing a system that excludes many citizens, depriving them of political, economic and social participation.

When exclusive social systems of concentrated wealth are strengthened, as is happening in Latin America, representative democracy – understood as just a mechanism – naturally tends to reproduce that system beyond the control of political leaders, he says.

The sociologist even wonders if “the idea” of democracy is to blame, or if the trouble lies in its limited historic manifestations. He agrees with those who propose to correct democracy’s practical deviations in order to avoid the concept from being dissociated from the vision of “collective self- governance.”

O’Donnell, meanwhile, pointed out that in Argentina, “the political class is increasingly concerned about itself and not about public matters. The discrediting of Congress and the Judiciary is colossal.”

Sociologist Ernesto López, director of the Social Sciences Department at the University of Quilmes, agrees.

The risks of a “devalued” democracy are evident in the decay of ties between politicians and citizens, seemingly limited today to an exchange of “favours for votes,” especially when it comes to the lowest income sectors of the population, says López.

“Clientelism” is thus one of the manifestations of politicians’ failure to provide genuine answers to people’s problems, he pointed out, adding that in the contest between the market and the State, the latter is losing, and the heavy costs of its subordination are only just beginning to appear.