The aim of this book is to explore what appears to be the most revolutionary component of the new and contradictory political processes occurring in Latin America. We refer to the opportunities of participative democracy based on a constituent power and the expansion of popular sovereignty in several Latin American nations. Beyond the political and social reforms registered in government programs, popular sovereignty and constituent power could be the difference between progressive governments simply qualified as a continuation of the old populism or the possibility of opening something new rooted in the national popular. This power is the basis of the revolutionary process and constituent power. In addition to regional analysis on social movements, the text includes studies on Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic. In short, the contribution of this book to the literature consists of taking a two-track approach to the study of social movements, i.e., combining bottom-up and top-down strategies to explain the resurgence of movements that are remapping the political landscape of the region.
This book is also a reflection on what was believed to be a safe port of arrival for humanity but, in fact, became a colossal failure. However, as it usually happens with crises, something new emerged. The world of real socialism collapsed as a by-product of its own unsurmountable conflicts and the world of Fordist and Keynesian capitalism entered a terminal crisis. In this context neoliberalism was born and became the dominant mode of thought. This is captured in Francis Fukuyamaâs assertions about âThe End of Historyâ in a celebrated lecture at the John M. Olin Center at Harvard University (Fukuyama 1989, 1992). Undoubtedly, neoliberalism reflected what had become a dominant thought in the world.
According to Fukuyama, the defeat of real socialism and the classic project of social democracy revealed that social evolution inevitably ended with the advent of liberal and representative democracy. The long queues of people in Moscow waiting to buy a Big Mac and a Coca Cola as well as people of the most diverse backgrounds in the world wishing to adopt the Western capitalist way of life demonstrated that a new reality had arrived. This movement sketched the establishment of democratic capitalist societies as irreversible and eternal. History had ended. Historical facts would obviously continue to occur, but none would transcend the established parameters of liberal and representative democracy and the market economy. Thus, the world ran the risk of turning itself into a monotonous and boring reality.
The end of history thesis as a closed totality was not new. Giambattista Vico had proposed a circular view of history (Vico 2002). Similarly, Roger Garaudy underlined the differentiation that existed in Hegelâs thought: His method seemed an open totality, but his philosophical system was a closed one that ended in the objectification of the universal spirit. In turn, this objectification reached its highest point in Hegelâs thought and Prussian monarchy (Garaudy 1964). Along the same lines, Auguste Comte conceived history as an evolution that peaked in the positivist era (Comte 1979a, b), while Herbert Spencer proposed that the industrial era was the highest point of social evolution (Spencer n.d.). Fukuyama is wrong when he affirmed that Marx thought that social evolution ended with a communist society. Marx never said any such thing. Irving Zeitlin (1993) emphasized that Marx, as a child of the Enlightenment, thought about the infinite perfectibility of humans, gave humanity a degree of freedom in history, and conceived social transformation as eternal.
Over a quarter of a century has passed since Fukuyamaâs assertions, but what seems amazing is that, despite the obvious flaws of his claims, he became a world celebrity. This is worth highlighting because his proposal captured the dominant thoughts and feelings that prevailed during the postâCold War period. The moment was a mixture of euphoria and wishful thinking with an academic touch. It is ironic that he gave his lecture in the summer of 1989, shortly after an event that had great repercussions in Latin America. We are referring to the âCaracazo,â an uprising that occurred in Venezuelaâs capital and other important cities in February 1989. This revolt began a process of social and political struggles that led to the ascendance of Hugo ChĂĄvez to the presidency of Venezuela in 1999. ChĂĄvezâs inauguration as President of Venezuela was followed by the elections of leaders who challenged the idea of the end of history. These elected leaders included Luiz Ignacio Da Silva (Lula) in Brazil (2002), NĂ©stor Kirchner in Argentina (2003), TabarĂ© VĂĄzquez in Uruguay (2004), Evo Morales in Bolivia (2005), Rafael Correa in Ecuador (2006), Daniel Ortega Saavedra in Nicaragua (2006), and Mauricio Funes en El Salvador (2009). What is significant about these electoral processes, however, is that their programs sought, in different ways, to keep their distance from the prescriptions of the market economy.
During the past three decades the infallible truths of the neoliberal economy have been challenged in light of the results this economic system has delivered. It is worth recalling the neoliberal promise: Once the forces of the market are unleashed from the stifling straitjacket of state interventionism, the economy will prosper to such an extent that increased productivity will trickle down social prosperity to the entire society. Periodic economic crises such as the one that began in 2008, with its devastating social effects, have put neoliberal claims in doubt. For example, David Harvey has registered 12 debt crises and rescues between 1973 and 2009 (Harvey 2010: 231â232). He places the last one between 2007 and 2010, but its time period is still a matter of discussion because of lingering effects in parts of Western Europe and the USA. In Latin America, the unfulfilled promises of neoliberalism have unleashed political processes that peaked with governments commonly known as âprogressiveâ. In fact, the crisis of neoliberalism has provoked the emergence of a postâneoliberal willpower in the region, but not a definitively established postâneoliberal reality as of yet. Notwithstanding, the mere appearance of a postâneoliberal resolve challenges the simplicity of marking the end of historical development.
However, challenging the paradigm proposed by Fukuyama does not end with the issue of the market economy. It also encompasses what Huntington (1994) called the dominant paradigm of democracy, which refers to the procedural and elitist model that Schumpeter advocated in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (Schumpeter 1942), a book that constituted a seminal contribution for subsequent elaborations on democracy and democratic transitions. Schumpeter proposed a democracy strongly restricted to elections of popular representatives and governments comprised of elites specialized in governance. Despite different interpretations, this vision of democracy would reappear in the work of Robert Dahl (1993), Norberto Bobbio (1996a, b, 1999), Giovanni Sartori (1991), as well as in Guillermo OâDonnell and Phillipe Schmitter (1994). The ideas presented in these texts expressed a vision of democracy promoted by those identified with neoliberal thought. Accordingly, politics was not meant for participating citizens who would follow the ups and downs of public administration and political parties. Rather, it rests on the idea that not all citizens had the appropriate level of knowledge to dedicate themselves to politics, nor did they have the time and vocation to regularly concentrate their interests on public affairs. As such, politics and government should be a job for specialized elites.
This neoliberal conception of politics and public administration was congruent with the idea of political participation. Participation was conceived in electoral terms and thus restricted to Election Day. This idea influenced how people thought about democratic transitions that were seen as passages from authoritarian to democratic regimes. Democratic regimes were the by-product of free and fair elections and the power of elected officials was supposed to be greater than the power of unelected ones. However, this conception of democracy tended to leave civil society out of the equation and, as such, it was criticized. According to this critique, democracy should not only be the result of pacts between opposing factions of the elite or determined by the correlation of forces between âhardlinersâ and âsoftlinersâ within the authoritarian regimes.
C.B. Macpherson was one of the scholars who studied democracy and critiqued the Schumpeterian vision. In The Life and Times of Democracy, Macpherson (1977) postulated the need for democracy to be participative. This work proved prophetic of what was to come at the turn of the twenty-first century. In fact, in recent years, we have observed how new political actors have been emerging and increasingly emphasizing participative democracy in the Latin American political process. Citizens are no longer conceived as mere spectators, but as actors with influence, even if they do not dedicate themselves exclusively to politics. The idea of popular sovereignty, strongly grounded in the active participation of the vast majority of the population, challenges the neoliberal democratic paradigm. For example, the concept of constituent power, proposed in recent years by Antonio Negri (1992), became influential in the political processes that took place in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador. More importantly, in 1997, President Hugo ChĂĄvez noted in his inaugural speech that he read Negri in jail (1992â1994) and that his book was one of the theoretical sources that helped him charter the course of the Bolivarian Revolution (ChĂĄvez FrĂas 2007; Azzellini 2015).
The concept of constituent power has its roots in liberal thought and starts off by asserting that the idea of sovereignty resides with the people. This old affirmation became radical in the context of the Schumpeterian neoliberal idea of democracy. To make democracy real requires a certain level of active and autonomous participation by the subaltern sectors of society, something neoliberal governments do not allow. The ideas of participative democracy and popular sovereignty as the source of constituent power have notably influenced the perception of Latin American political processes. The democratic transitions that took place in the region were actually passages from authoritarian or military regimes to elected governments in free and fair elections. These transitions are now examined in terms of their restrictions to the formalization of citizensâ participation and the social inequality that undermines the basic foundation of democracy. In Central America, particularly in Guatemala and Honduras, the democratic governments began establishing constitutions including âarticles written in stone,â that is to say, those that could never be reformed. Whoever tried to change them would be accused of âtreason to the homelandâ and removed from their posts. If we begin with the fundamental idea of liberal democracy that people are the source of sovereignty, then popular sovereignty should have the power to reform each and every article of a constitution. The liberal conception of democracy strongly influenced political developments in Honduras. For example, President JosĂ© Manuel Zelaya had proposed to install ballot boxes in the November elections of 2009 so the Honduran people could express if they agreed or disagreed with the initiation of a constituent process. However, the process could not even be started because the Honduran military and the dominant elite overthrew President Zelaya in June 2009.
Debates on the Latin American political processes have not been restricted to issues of democracy and democratic transitions. An important scholarship has emerged concerning the influence of social movements on the dynamic of change. In the 1980s and 1990s an important group of scholars explained social movements in terms of political processes and social context (Tilly et al. 2001) while a second group emphasized culture and identity (Slater 1985; Ălvarez et al. 1998). However, at the turn of the twenty-first century, a third group of scholars expanded these theoretical approaches and developed a rich scholarship that threw light on the dynamic of social change. It was also highly critical of neoliberal economic policies. Most of these works concluded that social movements contributed significantly to the emergence of the so-called progressive governments in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador (Caetano 2006; BorĂłn and Lechini 2006; LĂłpez Maya 2008, 2010; Stahler-Sholk et al. 2008; Ondetti 2008; Silva 2009; Mestries et al. 2009). More recently, a new wave of scholarship has proposed that Latin Americanâs contemporary social movements are nonelitist, popular, and horizontal. âHorizontalism here connotes the flattening of relations of power that promote equity and equality within society and the social movementsâ (Stahler-Sholk et al. 2014). According to this approach, the aim of resistance movements is not to take power to make change, but rather to Change the World without Taking Power (Holloway 2002; Reyes 2012; Becker 2011; Zibechi 2012). In contrast, our approach proposes that engaging in power politics is essential for constituent power (social movements) to challenge and change constituted power (the state and its institutions). Taking power and building a new society requires revolutionary changes both âfrom above and from belowâ simultaneously. These are processes that take time and they include advances and setbacks.
In our book, the concepts of constituent and constituted powers provide the theoretical framework to explain the dynamic of change in Latin America. The book begins with Dario Azzelliniâs theoretical chapter on Constituent and Constituted Power: Reading Social Transformation in Latin America. The discussion of the concepts of constituent and constituted powers, demonstrates how these powers are operating in the cases of Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador. However, Venezuela is the focus of Azzelliniâs analysis. He bases his interpretation on Antonio Negriâs concept of constit...