Politics, Political Parties, And Social Movements in Latin America Today

7/27/2019 Politics, Political Parties, And Social Movements in Latin America Today

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POLITICS, POLITICAL PARTIES, AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN LATIN

AMERICA TODAY

Talk delivered at a conference on Tendencias Mundiales y su Impacto en

Latino America, I Encuentor Venezuela en Boston

Boston University, June 28-30.

Not for quotation or circulation without permission.

Maxwell A. CameronDepartment of Political Science

The University of British Columbia

The new face of political power in Latin America today is perhaps

symbolized best not by the party organizer but by the social movement

leader. No politician better personifies the rise of social movements than

Bolivian President Evo Morales. He owes his power not to successful

maneuvering through smoke-filled backrooms, nor to the confidence of

colleagues who have selected him because of his instinct for power in the

daily verbal combat of parliamentary politicshe was, after all, expelled

from congress in 2002. Morales owes his power to years of organizing

social movements and accompanying them in their struggles to control

land, water, and gas, and to oppose the eradication of coca crops. It is true

that Morales leads a party, but the malapropist MAS (or Movement Toward

Socialism) is more of a political instrument for rural and indigenous

movements and unions than a real political party (Hochstetler and


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greatest oratorical heights as a convener of mass demonstrations. From

the moment that the Fox government tried to remove him from office as

mayor of Mexico City, AMLO demonstrated an uncommon ability to move

the masses in the streets. Later, when he failed to win the 2006 election,

he clogged the arteries of Mexico City with protesters. Just when AMLOs

career seemed on the verge of fizzling, Calderons decision to privatize

PEMEX has restored him to life. That said, the relationship between AMLO

and the PRD is extraordinarily fraught. The legitimate president of Mexico

(as it is now illegal in Mexico to call him) and his party allies dont appear to

be able to agree on the results of internal elections any more than they did

the results of the 2006 election.

Another hybrid is what Omar Sanchez (2008: 315) calls candidate-

centered movements. Rafael Correa, in one of the greatest practical

tributes to hyper-presidentialism in Latin American history, did not even

both to run a slate of candidates for congress when he ran for the

presidency in Ecuador. Correa has emerged as the evening and morning

star of Ecuadorian politics, but unlike Morales, his relationship with social

movements is ambivalent. In fact, CONAIE recently withdrew its support

for Correas constitutional proposal on the grounds that it does not provide

the kind of control over resources and territory desired by Ecuadors

indigenous movements.

The neoVelasquista Ollanta Humala, the top vote winner in the first round

of the election in Peru, built his candidacy on his brothers movement of

reservistsveterans of Perus war with Ecuador and the Shining Path who

felt betrayed by their nations political leadership. Unable to register his


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own party in time for the 2006 election, he borrowed another partythe

Union for Peru, or UPPall of whose incumbents were abruptly forced to

resign in the name of renewal.

Colombia has not been impervious to the anti-party trend. What are the

para-politicos if not the political wing of a social movement, the para-

militares, seeking to colonize the party system? Alvaro Uribe, who just the

other day offered us a perfect example of plebiscitary leadership when he

attacked the Supreme Court for investigating whether bribes were paid to

legislators for their vote to enable his recent re-election, is himself a

creature of the decay of the party system. The parties supporting him are

heterogeneous, inorganic coalitions (Sanchez 2008: 319) unlikely to

outlive their leader. Just this month the senate buried a political reform bill

that would have purged the congress of dozens of members linked to the

paramilitaries (32 of whom have been jailed, 30 more are under

investigation). But it would also have sanctioned parties with para-politicos

by taking away their seats. This was unpalatable to Uribe, because he

would have risked losing his legislative majoritythe key to the extensive

presidential powers that are at the core of his popularity.

If, as I claim, social movements are the new face of power, what are we to

make of this development? The first point I would make is that Latin

Americas so-called left turns began not in 1998 with the election of

Chavez, but much earlier. I would date the underlying tectonic shift that

produced the electoral earthquakes to the Caracazo, the uprising of the

Zapatistas, the water and gas wars in Bolivia, in other words, to a series of

social mobilizations that electoral left turns epiphenomenally reflect at the


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political level. These mobilizations have challenged the neoliberal

parameters of policy-making; and give voice to dissatisfaction with the

performance of democratic institutions.

There are some who celebrate the idea that citizens across the world have

shifted from older traditional forms of representation, such as political

parties and unions, to newer modes, such as social movements, informal

citizen groups and nongovernmental organizations (Chandoke cited in

Hochstetler and Friedman 2008: 1). Social movements are a new poder

moderador, which can sanction, hold accountable, even remove leaders

from power (Hochstetler and Friedman 2008: 7).

My objection to this line of reasoning is not: who elected the NGOs?

There are forms of representation outside the electoral arena: the lawyer

represents his client; the Red Cross represents prisoners of war; the

environmentalist represents nature or future generations. My point is that

these forms of discursive and political representation do not supplant or

replace parties. The political leaders who have emerged from fissures of

change (Evo, Chavez, AMLO, Humala, Correa) tend to be outsiders who

are hostile to political parties; they disrupt the functioning of party systems;

their preferred strategy is not to negotiate with existing forces, but to appeal

to the constituent power of the people, to take power by changing the

constitution. To quote Omar Sanchez again: Political outsiders atop

improvised electoral vehicles, and candidate-centered parties, are

capturing more and expanding spheres of political power, at the expense of

established political parties (2008: 316).


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Reviled as divisive, and dismissed as parasitic, parties often inspire more

contempt that any other democratic institution. But weak parties and party

systems undermine governability and legitimacy, invite corruption and

abuse of power, diminish responsiveness, and erode horizontal and vertical

accountability (that is, the checks and balances inherent in a system of

separation of powers). This, in turn, can create conditions propitious to

outsiders. In other words, outsiders are an effect of the system. They are

leaders who seek not to compete within the system, but to overturn it; they

are not interested in competition but in hegemony.

Under assault from outsiders, party systems may collapse, as in Peru

under Fujimori; Venezuela under Chavez; Ecuador under Correa. Today, in

the Andes, only APRA represents an established party. Of course there is

a difference between having a party in power and having a functioning

party system. In Peru, a substantial part of the electorate routinely votes

for outsiders (Fujimori, Toledo, Humala).

A common theme among today's political outsiders is the idea of

constituent power. This started with Chavez. Languishing in jail after his

failed coup attempt, Hugo Chavez contemplated taking his struggle onto

enemy territory and to seek power by means of elections. But this could

not mean submitting to the Venezuelas moribund democratic system. So

he hit on the idea of constituent power as a form of revolutionary power.

In an extended interview, he explained the distinction: In France in 1789

constituent power exploded. This is the power to constitute a people

against what is constituted, that simple. But this transformative power, as

against the established, constituted power, has to be very great. (Quoted


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in Blanco Muoz 1998: 530).

Chavez outlined a process starting with his election, followed by a

plebiscite to convene a constituent assembly, which would then assume all

power. It can remove the president of the republic, it can dissolve the

national congress, the CSJ, the tribunals, governors, it can dissolve the

legislative assembly. That is to say, everything that is constituted power, it

has the sovereign power, represented there, to dissolve it or ratify it.

(Quoted in Blanco Muoz 1998: 533). The constituent assembly should

demolish established power. Only then will it be a truly revolutionary.

(Quoted in Blanco Muoz 1998: 534).

The tension between constituted and constituent power is inherent in liberal

democracy, and it speaks to liberalisms insufficiencies. In my remaining

minutes I would like to outline two critiques of the theory of democracy as

the exercise of constituent power. The first line of criticism is the familiar

liberal or social democratic complaint about the lack of respect for the

separation of powers, the rule of law, the spread of corruption, and the

mirage of stability that comes from the performance of persons rather than

institutions. We see evidence for this in the increasingly erratic behavior of

Chavezwitness his about face on the intelligence law and sudden call for

FARC to seek peaceperhaps reflecting an accumulation of pressures

and tensions within a political system without self-correcting mechanisms.

This criticism takes representative democracy as its normative grounding

(Cameron, Beasley-Murray, Hershberg 2008). Yet one could say that the

separation of powers has always been weak in most of the countries of the


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region; the rule of law unevenly applied, corruption endemic, and instability

the norm. Why should new leaders representing previously excluded

sectors respect what established elites long neglected? I think a more

persuasive critique interrogates the idea of the people as a constituent

power. There are five key problems.

First, the constituent assemblies operating in the region tend to be

sovereign as long as they obey the executive. Con Chavez, el pueblo

manda. If Venezuela is a democracy, the people rule with Chavez or

without him. If a leader is needed to enable a people to constitute itself

then the leader is the real constituent.

Second, constituent assemblies should write constitutions not govern.

There is a basic conflict of interest when those who design institutions also

exercise power.

Third, constituent assemblies should be truly deliberative. Alberto Acosta,

the leader of Ecuadors constituent assembly has insisted that if the new

constitution is going to bring about a better democracy it must be achieved

through a democratic process. He proposed postponing elections in

Ecuador to allow the constituent assembly to work beyond the initial July 29

deadline. Correa sacked him and replaced him with a yes-man who

approved 33 articles in just three hours.

Fourth, a constituent assembly should be plural: not just a reflection of the

will of MVR, MAS, Alianza Pas.


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Fifth, it should have legitimacy. Evo Morales tried to respect basic

constitutional rules in designing the Bolivian constitution, and he undertook

broad consultations, but in the end he found himself with a draft that was

approved only by the MAS, with out the requisite 2/3rds support, and a

series of referenda for autonomy led by crescent moon prefectures, who

have mobilized broadly based social movements against the central

government. They now reject Morales proposed recall elections in August.

Morales finds himself in the curious position of having to insist that the

prefects respect legality.

To conclude, I argue that participation and representation are not

antimonies; the choice is not either the one or the other. They are mutually

reinforcing, and interdependent. The new face of power in the future

should be Janus-headed. One face should be an organized and vibrant

civil society; the other should be powerful representative institutions.

Parties are as essential to building this new power as social movements.

Sources:

Cameron, Maxwell A., Jon Beasley-Murray, and Eric Hershberg (2007).Left Turns: An Introduction. Paper presented at a workshop on LeftTurns: Progressive Parties, Insurgent Movements, and Alternative Policiesin Latin America, Simon Fraser University, April 18-19, 2008.

Blanco Muoz, Agustn (1998). Habla el Comandante. Caracas: CatedraPio Tamayo/CEHA/IIES/FACES/UCV.

Fernandez, Sujatha (2007, March 22). Political Parties and Social Changein Venezuela, Venezuelanalysis.com.


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Hochstetler, Kathryn and Elisabeth Jay Friedman (2008). Can Civil SocietyOrganizations Solve the Crisis of Partisan Representation in Latin

America. Latin American Politics and Society, Vol. 50, no. 2.

Romero, Simon (2008, June 28). Colombian President Calls for Election,The New York Times.

Sanchez, Omar (2008). Transformation and Decay: the de-institutionalization of party systems in South America, Third WorldQuarterly. Vol 29, no. 2, pp. 315-337.

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Politics, Political Parties, And Social Movements in Latin America Today