By Douglas Chalmers
Columbia University2000
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION | In judging the new democracies emerging in Latin America, it is important to look beyond the elected bodies, according to Douglas Chalmers (right), an expert on Latin America and a professor of political science at Columbia University. In an interview with Fathom, Chalmers discussed some ways that the proliferation of non-governmental groups might serve various needs of the new democracies in Latin America.Douglas Chalmers: We often think in looking at new democracies in Latin America that what's necessary is to set up an election and get the Congress running. In a country like Mexico, that's very important, but it's really not enough. You have to look at nonelected bodies, as they may be called, at various kinds of organizations and practices that really regulate and that organize all the other kinds of activities that are going on beyond the election itself.
The elections are very brief. They only register votes. They're extremely important, but they only register the will of the people or the interests of the people at one time--in the Mexican case, once every six years.
Fathom: So it is not enough just to look at how the elected body is functioning?
Chalmers: There are demands constantly emerging throughout the system. The Congress itself, of course, is there all the time in order to respond to these demands. And that's very important and necessary, and much better than a military regime or an authoritarian regime. But it may be 300, 400 people who are there whose skills probably relate mostly to being effective politicians in a local town or something of the sort.
In order to understand how policies relating to social security, to welfare, to international trade, to all the kinds of things that a modern government must deal with, you have to see and understand how all these other demands are processed, and it requires a much richer and much greater variety of organizations and structures. And if those aren't working, then the democracy doesn't work. If the Congress is running nicely and the elections are held, but the Congress is not paying attention to all the diverse interests that are in the society, then it's not democratic--even though it may look like it is, formally.
Fathom: Is this typical of Latin America, or can you say the same thing about the United States?
Chalmers: I think it's true of any modern society, because it comes from complexity, not from backwardness or something of this sort. The United States has been in that position for a long time, and has a long history of dealing with popular organizations, professional organizations, special interest groups, that kind of thing. We're very familiar with that, and we have our own way of dealing with it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
There are a lot of complaints about special interests now. Latin America traditionally had a very statist, corporatist culture and set of institutions that came from the old Roman law and French administrative tradition, which is very centralized. It was very unusual to have popular organizations, special groups of one set or another, in Latin America. These are now developing because it's impossible for the state to deal with all the problems. So it's a very important issue in Latin America now.
They're building a new democracy in many countries in Latin America, and in building that we have to pay attention to how they manage that problem. Many people would like to look at the United States and say, well, we could be just like the United States, but if you read the press, if you listen to the campaign rhetoric, you know that the United States is not necessarily very good at managing the special interests, as they call them--the PACs and the campaign financing. We've had a lot of complaints about special interest groups in regard to this. We have a very complex system, and it works. But it isn't ideal, and many Latin American countries are looking for new ways of doing this anyway, so it's a challenge for them.
Fathom: Is this issue ignored?
Chalmers: People are not paying attention to it. It's not that they're ignoring it; it's that their focus has been very heavily someplace else, and that someplace else is the establishment of free elections and of an operating congress and the judiciary right now--on what I call the constitutional institutions of the societies.
Attention has been paid to things like NGOs (non-governmental organizations) or special groups that are emerging, but the focus was so exclusively on understanding those in the process of dismantling the authoritarian regime. So Amnesty International and the human-rights group Madres of the Plaza de Mayo--which is an organization of the mothers of the disappeared in Argentina--these made headlines, and it was very important.
There's been some very good work on human-rights organizations. "Human rights" have traditionally been kinds of code words for groups that have been formed in order to undercut the power of the military governments or dictatorships of one sort or another. So attention has, in fact, been focused on civil-society organizations and networks, but that attention has been almost exclusively on their role in the transition to democracy, and not on their role as part of the ongoing democratic system that results.
Fathom: How is this an opportunity for people who have not yet been incorporated in government?
Chalmers: Civil-society organizations include private organizations, nonprofit groups, and they include neighborhood organizations, women's groups, non-governmental organizations. "NGO" is a controversial, fuzzily defined category these days. But it suggests the wide range of groups not in the official structure of government that I'm talking about.
The traditional or older forms of interest representation, to use a general term, before the emergence of NGOs, and the institutions that I'm worried about, were on the one hand "clientelistic" organizations--based on personal relations with the local boss, to be simple about it. Or they were corporatist organizations, state organizations that reach out and assign people a role in the system. And then there were political parties.
Historically, political parties have been seen as being the modern form of popular representation. Americans used to be self-conscious about the fact that their parties were so weak and fuzzy-minded. Latin Americans who believe themselves more strongly tied to Europe than to the United States in their practice thought of parties as the future.
But parties are very crude instruments for representing interest. For example, women have not played a very important role at all in Latin American party systems. Neither did they in state-run corporate institutions. So women formed their own groups, they formed groups in alliance with others, they most particularly now form groups with the backing of international supporters, which is possible in this world of NGOs and other civil organizations. It's much more possible than it was with the other forms, with parties or with corporatist institutions or clientelistic organizations. So it's a leap forward.
Indigenous movements are another example of representation that depends on civil associations. In Mexico right now, the change of government will, I suspect, allow the Chiapas indigenous movement to convert itself from guerrillas to a normal actor--different, but more like Native American organizations in the United States. Parties or corporatist institutions wouldn't be able to absorb them. So their opportunities are heightened partly by the form of organization. People can form organizations and go to Washington or go to Mexico City or go to Buenos Aires or wherever and have an impact.
Now, this is the strength of this kind of organization for new people coming up. It's the weakness, too, because if you and I were to form an organization and go to Washington, nobody would pay any attention. We could form the organization, but we need some way of gaining access and being heard. Women's organizations face that all the time. And there is a new and more complex problem. If the new growth of civil associations makes it possible for groups to be represented, what decides which groups will thrive and which will not? The next question goes beyond the form of organization, and asks what makes it possible for some to create strong organizations, to gain access and to have an impact while others flounder and are isolated and ignored.
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