actually existing democracy in Mexico is untenable. If not try the "flight forward" regression will lead to the worst of all possible worlds
Democracy violated
Prior to 2000, and just to avoid creating unnecessary divisions between right center or left, was politically and morally acceptable among critics of the political system who was then Mexico simply demand "democracy without adjectives" (Enrique Krauze, 1986). However, since then it has flowed under the bridge a lot of water policy, and what it is today is just to know what kind of democracy is that we really have as a step to arrive at which we really need and deserve. Today, a democracy without adjectives would shun the diagnosis, because what is needed are adjectives, as many as be useful to know how we can leave the undeniable political crisis in which we live. In any case, it is clear that all the adjectives today can be used to identify the nature of democracy that actually exists in Mexico are not what we imagine the past nine years.
Just published a book of Alberto Aziz Nassif and Jorge Alonso, researchers at the Center for Research and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology, entitled Mexico, violated democracy (CIESAS-Porrua, 2009). Here we already have a first adjective to our democracy, violated, ie damaged. However, during the reading of the work in question appear other epithets such as, emerging democracy, democracy in trouble, without including democracy, democracy that is not consolidated or collapsed, democracy signs of exhaustion, unsatisfactory democracy, democracy deteriorated and eventually democracy irrelevant. The heartbreaking, and alarming, is that every one of the terms of this list of negative characteristics of the Mexican situation is fully justified by the analysis.
The guards who did not keep
Aziz and Alonso do, among other things, a description of the origins and evolution of the institutional guardians of our democracy-IFE, TEPJF and IFAI, which leads to the conclusion that although in the early these guardians, the IFE in particular, fell short of the circumstances, it has long ceased to be the case, especially regarding the effects of behavior in the 2006 presidential election. Parties, institutions where the interests of its leaders were imposed oligarchies values, according to their platforms, were screened-captured and perverted the guards without being responsible for preserving the independence of these institutions resisted the contrary, cooperated with comfortable in this degradation since the interest overcame institutional staff. However, the central problem of our democracy, if it still qualifies as such-is not only in the low professional and moral quality of the Mexican political class but also in our social structure and the dominant political culture. Include or
not included, that is the question
The fundamental difference between the PRI's authoritarian regime and other authoritarian regimes in Latin America appeared in the same time was that ours was relatively inclusive and other remarkably exclusive. This ability to co-opt the PRI had the same thing to a conservative Catholic Marxist and quasi-fascist, and the whole range of ideologies or attitudes that can be found between these ideological extremes, is what largely explains the flexibility and adaptability of the system created by the Mexican Revolution. In contrast, the supposedly democratic system that has formed after the departure of the PRI's "The Pines" has proved very exclusive.
A central part of the work of Aziz and Alonso is dedicated to exploring a point of great theoretical and practical solution very difficult: to what extent can a democratic society where the majority or a substantial part of its members lack the material and cultural means to live and develop as citizens and that, in practice, are excluded from citizenship in a substantive sense.
According to the latest official figures published by-the-Coneval, poverty in Mexico reached a high point just before the end of the PRI regime in 1996, but thereafter began to decrease a little. However, in 2006 there was a turning point and for 2008 and would rise again. The latest figures show they are living in food poverty and 18.2 percent of the population in poverty of 25.1 percent capacity in poverty and 47.4 percent equity.
Is it really possible and viable democracy without inclusion? The authors endorse the position of Amartya Sen, Bangladeshi economist and Nobel Prize in Economics in 1998, an expert on the subject and defines poverty as "capability deprivation." From this perspective, the poor, which in our case are almost half the population are simply not in a position to fully exercise that citizenship that, in principle, today offered political democracy. So what good are half of Mexico to topics in this book are fully discussed, as are the party system, Congress, electoral reforms, elections, the IFE, TEPJF and other acronyms that are supposed to be the heart of the network institutions of our democracy?
A weak citizenship
The authors dig into a number of indicators to measure the strength, power, citizenship, ie that factor is, at the same time, origin and rationale of democracy . These are the voting rates of participation in associations, the willingness to protest, and so on. The problem is that all these indicators point to the fact that citizenship in Mexico is weak, only a minority behaves fully as citizens. A minority is now not so small as he found the historian Francois-Xavier Guerra in the Porfiriato, but not as big as it should be to prevent Mexico from experience in the foreseeable future a regression in democracy. Obviously, the weakness of civic participation is directly correlated with poverty and exclusion described above and with the absence of the rule of law and a pervasive public corruption.
The 2006 or the key moment
Choice in 2000 led to a peaceful electoral victory, and above all, legitimate, but with a very similar institutional framework, that of 2006 ended with one that, so different was its opposite, conflicting and polarizing and that left the victor, and the system itself, a legitimate question, which ultimately proved an obstacle to governance.
Aziz and Alonso for the election of 2006-an electoral tie between left and right, turned out to be the turning point of contemporary Mexican political process, that instead of leading to democratic consolidation and stability eventually lead to a Deadlock or almost. And the crisis situation which requires that the changes were not made when it was relatively easy to make-in the Fox government will have to try now, with a minority government, questioned and a distressing financial situation.
The current situation is characterized by a tension between tendencies and inertia. "The first can have a democratizing and second profile [only] have a future in a restoration." But is it possible to restore? The work does not address their own assumptions. The Mexico that gave rise to the PRI and its long and for a while semilegítima "soft dictatorship" and vanished. An attempt to restore the old century XXI not lead to the "authoritarian stability" of the past but something highly dysfunctional and terribly unsatisfactory. The Mexico policy Salinas Streets or even just not possible, try to restore what was, the result would be worse than we had then or now. Alonso
Aziz and develop a scholarly discussion about the nature of contemporary democracy. Identified two major paradigms. One is the minimalist style of Joseph Schumpeter, where democracy is basically "a method of institutional arrangement to achieve applicable administrative policy decisions." Another is the maximalist, the Thomas Marshall, for whom the reason for democracy is its commitment to civil rights, political and social. In Mexico today the least we can ask is democracy that aspires to the maximum.
Note: The author of this column are going away for a few weeks and will not appear Citizen Agenda.
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