My latest essay for Tiempo Político1 is up today. It’s titled: “Reelección indefinida y ‘democradura’: ¿un modelo chavista para Bolivia?” I’ve posted similar discussions on indefinite reelection here & here. I’ve provided an English translation below.
It also seems that Bolivia has entered a critical stage. There’s a massive protest against the Evo Morales’s MAS government scheduled, which will include civic groups from at least six departments. Recent events seem to have isolated MAS further, giving more leverage to the opposition—and growing the media luna to include Chuquisaca & perhaps also Cochabamba (at least the city’s middle class). Meanwhile, the food & basic goods shortages (my parents haven’t been able to buy meat in about a week) seem to look more & more like Bolivia in 1982-84.
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Here is my own translation of the column:
More than 20 year ago the celebrated political scientist Juan Linz feared that many of the new democracies didn’t look like the advanced democracies. A ‘democradura’ is a political model in between democracy & dictatorship [a hybrid of democracia & dictatura], much like ‘dictablanda’ [a “soft” dictatorship]. For Linz & others, many Latin American democracies lacked institutions & civil societies that strengthened liberal democracy. Here we aren’t speaking of economic liberalism [neoliberalism], but of social & political liberalism. This argument was based on the conviction that democracy depends not only on electoral majorities, but also on norms for avoiding the creation of political, social, or economic hegemonies.Clearly, that failed in Bolivia. During 20 years of democracy, the country experienced a representative democracy, but constricted, democracy. The political parties of that era (principally MNR, ADN, and MIR) controlled the political scene & were controlled by personalities (Sánchez de Lozada, Banzer, and Paz Zamora). The reforms of the 1990s—especially Participación Popular—were attempts to improve the quality of Bolivia’s democracy. But they fell short. The social explosion during the last Sánchez de Lozada government demonstrated a strong rejection of that political style.
It should be surprising, then, to see Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) reanimate a hegemonic & personalist political model. Y call it such because the desire to incorporate indefinite reelection into the new constitution tends more towards personalist politics than towards institutional politics. Or are there no persons w/in MAS capable of being president after Evo Morales? Is it that MAS, just like all the other parties, is only a personal vehicle? These are serious questions.
Perhaps it’s true that the people should have the power to reelect their authorities. But then, why limit reelection only to presidents and vice presidents? But the world’s political experience demonstrates that permanent majorities rarely exist, although political minorities have frequently been able to maintain themselves in power. This means it’s more likely that a president in office will remain in power (since he controls the state’s apparatus) than that a true political majority exists. Notice that Evo Morales, who was elected in a landslide electoral victory in December 2005, only months later faces political divisions w/in his own legislative bloc. Doe Evo Morales represent the majority of Bolivians? Or doe he merely represent one tendency w/in a political party?
There are two grave problems w/ the idea of indefinite reelection. First, the need to reelect a president signals an incapacity to find other people capable of replacing him. One of the functions of political organizations (this includes not only parties, but also civic organizations, unions, and other groups that act in the political arena) is to organize teams of people w/ common interests & visions. But if the team is controlled by only one person, it’s difficult to speak of a party or movement, but rather a clientelistic group led by a caudillo [“strongman”]. That was the political model in Bolivia for more than two centuries. Do we want to repeat that?
The second problem w/ indefinite reelection is that presidents in office have powers they can use to assure their reelection. In the countries that permit reelection of presidents, rarely do sitting presidents not win reelection. Look at the easy reelection of Carlos Menem in Argentina, Lula da Silva in Brazil, and George Bush in the USA. Every president has a host of economic, political, and administrative resources to facilitate his reelection. It’s for this very reason that democracies permit only a single reelection. The chief benefit of this wise rule is that political parties in such democracies tend to define themselves by their programs, not by their caudillos.
Additionally, we should be wary of the combination of indefinite reelection & presidential election by runoff. It’s true that a runoff election empowers citizens, giving them the option of choosing between the top two contenders. The current [Bolivian] constitution gives that power to the legislature. But runoff elections also have problems.
In the second round, citizens can elect their preferred candidate from the two remaining choices. But, what if the majority of voters reject both choices?
Let’s look at the example of France in 2002. That year, Jacques Chirac sought reelection. Although he had low approval ratings, he managed to place first w/ only 19.88% of the vote. Jean Marie Le Pen can in second, w/ only 16.86% of the vote. Notice two things. First, ore than 60% of voters voted against these two options. Additionally, both Chirac & Le Pen belong to the right (Chirac the center-right & Le Pen proto-fascist right). That means that the majority of French voters voted for a left or center-left candidate. But w/ only the choice between center-right & ultra-right, the French reelected Chirac w/ 82.21% of the vote on the second round. See here that a sitting president w/ low approval ratings was able to easily secure his reelection, even though he was further to the right than most French voters. Even so, France doesn’t have indefinite reelection and only a short while ago Chirac left the presidential chair.
One of the few countries seeking indefinite reelection is Venezuela. And when we speak of Venezuelan politics, it’s necessary to speak of Hugo Chávez. It may be that the Venezuelan president is a great friend to the Bolivian people, w/ his economic assistance towards integrating Bolivia’s energy policy closer to the Venezuelan orbit. But inside Venezuela we see several problems. Shortly after closing a television station, Chávez threatened to expel from his country any foreigner who criticized his person. One of the most powerful presidents in the region now seeks to ensure that he could be president (as he himself said) perhaps for another 40 years. Again we ask: Is there no other person inside the Bolivarian movement capable of president? Does the Bolivarian model depend entirely on the person of Hugo Chávez?
When we speak of democracy, we should speak not only about plebiscitary majorities. We should also speak about institutionality. I fear that indefinite reelection aims more towards seeking to perpetuate personal power, and not towards the institutionalization of a broader democracy.
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1 Tiempo Político is a weekly supplement published by La Razón (La Paz) & edited by Carlos Toranzo, director of Instituto Latinoamericano de Investigaciones Sociales (ILDIS) in Bolivia. ILDIS is supported by Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES), a foundation tied to Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD).
Felicidades por la columna. I still think that your concerns need to be addressed at a different level, at the level of ensuring free and fair elections, and democratizing beyond the central government to local and regional communal councils, as is taking place in Venezuela. Of course the whole liberal discourse continues to be blinded by the conviction that Hugo is essentially a dictator or a democrator, whatever, which he is not as much nuance and theory as you may throw at it.
But I can't help but notice that you fail to mention Uribe? What do you think about the Colombian president who, using not only the power of incumbency and the state apparatus, but a massively favorably local and international corporate media, modified the constitution to allow his current re-election, and plans to do so once again?
I would hate to think he is not worthy of our analysis by virtue of his alignment with Washington's policies.
One more point I meant to bring up is clearly missing from your analysis, which is the referendum revocatorio which Venezuela is alone amongst the world's democracies in providing.
Doesn't it mean something that citizens can actually choose to terminate a mandate half way? Would Uribe allow this? And the fact that Chavez faced such a recall referendum and was still approved by his people is a huge testament to his democratic nature and true representativity.
I believe France still has indefinite election, though I have read that even Sarkozy has mentioned that limits might be a good idea. I think it would be interesting to study the dynamics of indefinite election generally—the rationale you use here don’t fit the French case, as no one has tried to stay on forever, or even if they tried they would face strong rivals. What aspects of the French system (or others?) allow it to function without abuse, and what aspects of Latin American politics (weak political institutions, etc.?) make it a bad idea?
S:
Unfortunately, the column length (it was supposed to be less than 1,000 words) was restrictive, so I focused on Chirac as the single example because I think it made the point of how easily an unpopular president can be reelected under TRS (two-round runoff system). Yes, I'd oppose any incumbent seeking to bend the rules to allow for future reelections not previously allowed (this would, of course, include Uribe).
My opposition isn't so much against seeking reelection (since some countries do allow reelections), but the expansion of reelection when reelection is not allowed. This point wasn't clear, so let me make it here. Liberal democracy has historically developed through seeking to limit or constrain the power of the state & those in power. So the tradition has been to reduce the power of executives (who originally were monarchs) ; to place that power in legislatures (a dispersal of power from one person to many persons).
Most countries that developed presidential systems in the 1800s (specifically in Latin America) moved towards no reelection (the banner cry of the Mexican Revolution) as a means to reduce the potential for the abuse/corruption of power. Moving in the opposition direction (towards reelection or, worse, indefinite reelection) has generally been a mark of dictators (the list can include Peron, Vargas, Mussolini, and many others).
You also mention local elections. I'm certainly *NOT* ignoring those. Nation-wide municipal elections were introduced in Bolivia w/ the 1994 Ley de Participación Popular (LPP). Today, there are 321 municipal governments in Bolivia. Each of these is governed by a council elected (through a modified form of proportional representation); the council then elects an alcalde. The smallest municipalities have three council members, the largest have as many as eleven (always an odd number, for obvious reasons). In addition, the LPP formalized the creation of local "comités de vigilancia" (neighborhood associations) that have legal status, can seek money from the municipal government for community projects, etc. In addition, 20% of the national budget is given out to municipal governments on a per capita basis. This is in addition to any money the government also spends through the departmental "corporaciones de desarrollo" (e.g. CORDEPAZ, CORDECRUZ, etc). So I don't think Bolivia (or I) have ignored the issue of local government & democratization at the local level.
The question of free & fair voting in Bolivia hasn't been an issue in decades, at least by all international accounts.
But here my question becomes: If reelection is good at the presidential level, why did Hugo Chávez specifically rail against it for local governments? He even argued that it would help create "caudillos"! It's ironic that he thinks indefinite reeleciton of the presidential office is democratic, but reelection for local offices is not. I don't think we can explain that away by claiming it is some nuanced theory.
Finally, the Venezuelan recall election proviso isn't the only one in the world. I know Chávez often claims so. But it's not. California recently had a recall election (in which the governor, Gray Davis, lost). Several US states (though not the federal government) have recall election provisos. Additionally, in parliamentary systems, recall elections are used quite frequently. They're called "votes of no confidence". It's also important to note that in the Venezuelan 2004 recall election, there were numerous reports by international organizations about intimidation of voters (not to mention those who signed the recall petition!) & other problems that fall under the category of "free & fair" elections.
This has nothing to do w/ my support or non-support of "Washington" policies (or whatever). There are serious issues to be raised w/ indefinite reelection. I've raised some of them. But the response I get from chavistas tend to deliberately ignore the key issues: If reelection is good, why not reelection for local level government? Why is reelection necessary (i.e. is there no other capable leader in the movement/party)? What about the advantages of incumbency? And a number of others.
Greg:
Perhaps I was wrong, but I thought France didn't allow more than one immediate reelection (I'll check w/ Shugart on that).
But you raise some important issues. What makes presidentialism less likely to be "abused" in France, than in Latin America?
I don't think it's culture (I don't think Greg thinks so, either). I think it's an institutional issue. France, unlike most countries in Latin America, has strong political parties. Strong, institutionalized parties place checks on their own members. This is part of "horizontal" accountability. Latin America has tended to have weak parties, themselves dominated by individual people. We can think of Chávez, Perón, Haya de la Torre, Paz Estenssoro & Sánchez de Lozada, etc. In Bolivia, for example, parties have generally collapsed shortly after the death of their caudillo (this was the experience of CONDEPA & ADN).
It's interesting that Chile (the country w/ perhaps the most consolidated democracy in South America today) has strong political parties. Even w/in the Concertación, which has governed since the transition to democracy, the institutionalized strength of the rival Socialist & Christian Democratic parties plays a powerful role in constraining presidential executives.
One of the key problems in Venezuela is that Chávez has consistently weakened his own party, making himself the dominant player in a movement that is frequently defined merely by his own personality. Hence, "chavismo", which is like "peronismo" or "roldismo" (in Ecuador). That is the key problem. I suppose that indefinite reelection in a country like France, which has strong political parties, would be much less problematic than in a country w/ weak, personalized political parties.
I just checked w/ Matt Shugart. Yes, there are no limits on presidential reelection in France. But the term length was recently *reduced* (which fits my argument that democracies tend to limit presidential terms, not expand them) from seven years to five years.
Quoting from Greg's blog:
Miguel rightly points out that incumbents have a huge advantage, and in the Venezuelan case Hugo Chávez has increased state control in a number of areas, and so with each election will have far more resources than any opponent.
Well, how exactly are you quantifying resources here? The only thing you're quantifying here appears to be the Chavez government's superior command of state resources. That says nothing of the distribution of private wealth and resources, which is well understood to be pivotal in the balance of political forces.
Who controls more radio stations in Venezuela, for example? The opposition.
Newspapers? The opposition.
Where do these factors come into your analysis?
I'm not Greg, so I won't pretend to respond for him. But I certainly don't see why who owns what number of radio stations couldn't be included as a variable.