State and Society in Conflict; Comparative Perspectives on Andean Crises

Abstract

[...]there is the suggestion expressed in Chapter 3 by Ann Mason and Arlene Tickner, that 'transnational flows and processes slice through national spaces and connect a complex array of civil society actors, religious and ethnic associations, business and finance organizations, local government, and criminal structures' (p. 76). In their introduction, the editors do not really address this issue of the alleged duality of state and society, but clarify their position by interpreting the state as, first and foremost, the executor of policies (such as a security regime focused on anti-drugs measures, neoliberal reforms, and establishing a political regime of [poorly installed] representative democracies) that often were imposed from abroad, leading to deteriorated relations with society and 'a failure to incorporate, represent, and respond to vast segments of the population for which the state is increasingly distant, if not alien' (p. 2). [...]Deborah Yashar's article (Chapter 7) is excellent. [...]in Chapter 10, Miriam Kornblith reconstructs the quest for 'genuine' democracy in Venezuela, both explaining the rise of Chavez, and offering a critical assessment of his contribution to this goal.

- State and Society in Conflict; Comparative Perspectives on Andean Crises, edited by Paul W. Drake and Eric Hershberg. Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006.

It is a promising way of capturing the contemporary political and social turbulences affecting the Andean region: coining it as a conflict between state and society. But at the same time, it triggers an important question the authors must also have anticipated: is there such a thing as a clear-cut split, or even distinction, between the state and society? There is, to begin with, the Marxian assertion that the state is not the expression or institutional regulative system of the whole of 'free wills' in society, who collectively decided that some entity should adjudicate, govern and secure each and everyone's liberties and activities. Additionally, there is the idea that the state should be analysed as a plethora of agents, interests and strife, and that, on the other hand, society should be analysed as co-constituted by internalized and routinized - legislation, regulation, and legal identities and prerogatives, or, for example, by state presence. Finally, there is the suggestion expressed in Chapter 3 by Ann Mason and Arlene Tickner, that 'transnational flows and processes slice through national spaces and connect a complex array of civil society actors, religious and ethnic associations, business and finance organizations, local government, and criminal structures' (p. 76). In their introduction, the editors do not really address this issue of the alleged duality of state and society, but clarify their position by interpreting the state as, first and foremost, the executor of policies (such as a security regime focused on anti-drugs measures, neoliberal reforms, and establishing a political regime of [poorly installed] representative democracies) that often were imposed from abroad, leading to deteriorated relations with society and 'a failure to incorporate, represent, and respond to vast segments of the population for which the state is increasingly distant, if not alien' (p. 2).

This, however, leaves the question of the societal sectors inducing and supporting these policies unaccounted for. Additionally, it misses, as one of the contributors, Jo-Marie Burt proposes, 'a relational perspective on state and society [... providing ...] insights about the nature of contestation over the forms and scope of state and citizenship and [... helping to ...] illuminate the mechanisms and processes that shape political outcomes' (p. 223). The issue is symptomatic for a not fully coherent, somewhat conceptually ambivalent compilation of contributions - contributions which nevertheless are very worthwhile and insightful.

The book consists of 10 chapters, of which the first one is an introduction by the editors. In it the authors highlight the limited space for manoeuvre Andean governments had during the last decades due to foreign pressures and influences, and connect these to the traditionally weak institutions and party systems, the enduring inequality and exclusion characterizing the continent, and the subsequent increasing tendency to take semi-authoritarian ways out. They emphasize that the crises in the Andean countries should not be addressed as individual cases, but comparatively. Next, they identify the main dimensions of the crises: the lack of a national project, the absence of a convincing alternative economic model, and, thirdly, a contemporary 'trend towards unorthodox modes of participation' (p. 17), boosting social movements which, however, remain 'rather blunt instruments, frequently incapable of representing their constituents to the state in an institutionalized and enduring manner' (p. 19). This brings us to the fourth dimension: '[t]he inadequacy of regular forms of political participation has enflamed the crisis of governability and of democracy' (p. 20). They finalize with a caveat on the differences between the northern and central Andes and with a brief sketch of the crises in the countries covered in this volume: Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. One remarkable feature of the analytical contours sketched in the introduction is the apparent aspiration to restore more regimented and 'calmer' forms of political participation. The 'unmediated forms of participation' and 'uncontrolled popular mobilization' (17) are, on the one hand, praised for increasing political participation (p. 17) and for providing creative, necessary and valuable channels for the expression of discontent (19), but they are on the other hand diagnosed as having 'exceed(ed) new forms of institutionalization' (p. 20). There seems to be a bit of ambiguity here: the pursuit of a new institutionalization is supported much stronger than the unavoidable mayhem accompanying such a process. The authors fear the process might 'elicit authoritarian outcomes' (p. 31). Should not the present, justified and forceful criticism towards the 'state's severely eroded ability to carry out even its most basic functions' (p. 22) and the carving out of innovative mechanisms to partake in decision-making be given a bit more credit - and should not the 'creativity' be given a bit more credence? May 'the contemporary crisis of representation [not be ...] a necessary condition for the creation of radically new forms of political representation and participation [...]', as the book's contributor Donna Lee Van Cott (p. 183) reminds us?

Due to space limits, not all remaining contributions can be discussed here. Mason and Tickner's Chapter 3 is a notable one, elaborating how transregional features, in particular 'security', co-shaped the current crises. Drugs defined as a security threat, they argue, was one of the key elements in the configuration of a 'regional security architecture built on U.S., [and] not necessarily Andean, objectives' (p. 79). They additionally address the spillover of the Colombian conflict, transnational crime involving drugs, arms and money laundering, and the drug-related increased U.S. military presence in the region, concluding that 'national-level problems are made more intransigent as they are exacerbated and even transformed by transregional security dynamic and the involvement of extranational nonstate actors' (p. 92).

Chapter 5 by Eric Hershberg left me somewhat puzzled. His account of how in Colombia the 'second-generation-reforms' in the 1990s were thwarted by popular (political) opposition focuses on the fact that the first generation reforms of opening up to external markets and the liberalization of trade and capital flows had been implemented 'with comparatively little open dispute' (p. 137) mainly because of exclusionary policy-making (p. 150), whereas even the most modest second generation reform 'is likely to prove highly conflictive' (p. 139). The point is elaborated in a curious way, in which on the one hand the 'stalemate' between honouring democracy and having to count with the expanded political space for domestic actors (p. 134) versus the urgent pursuit of these reforms is spelled out, and on the other hand these reforms are presented as considered by policy makers as 'essential to meet the challenges of globalization'(p. 135), as an 'ambitious agenda for refashioning the institutions that help to configure relations between state and society' (p. 137), as 'carefully designed policies' (p. 139), and as fostered by 'technocrats who plead, hardly without reason, for the need to enact painful reform (p. 152). It is, to begin with, disputable whether the outcome of this stalemate can and should be coined a 'policy paralysis [... which] may well have the unanticipated consequence of further eroding legitimacy' (p. 152. In the second place, have the intentions and possible outcomes of these second generation reforms ('the dismantling of inherited mechanisms for financing and delivering an array of public goods, ranging from education to healthcare to retirement pensions', p. 138) really been so imperative, so inoffensive for the poorer Colombians; were the pains fairly distributed, and was the resistance to them in Colombia really so mistaken?

Finally, Deborah Yashar's article (Chapter 7) is excellent. She focuses on explaining the emergence of indigenous movements in Ecuador and Bolivia, comparing them with Peru, highlighting three factors: changing citizenship regimes, transcommunity networks and political associational space. She additionally delves into the protagonism of these movements in recent political events in both countries, and ends with arguing that these movements have proposed 'alternative methods of implementing democratic accountability' (191) - instead of being coconstitutive of the current democratic crisis. In the first section of the chapter her analysis is superb, so it is a pity that there are a few slips in her text. Her claim that indigenous movements decisively contributed to the toppling of several presidents (pp. 190, 209) is debatable where she includes the fall of Lucio Gutiérrez of Ecuador in 2005; most observers agree that it was, in the main, the Quito middle classes that pulled this off. Her account of Bolivian developments, especially where she discusses the networking and associational space, should have highlighted much more the crucial impact of the Ley de Participación Popular, launched in 1994, conspicuously by a neoliberal administration, resulting in an extensive decentralization of the country's political-administrative structure due to which the municipality became a significant political arena. This law also allowed indigenous communities to be represented by their traditional authorities, thus opening up local government to indigenous participation.

Additional chapters cover a range of subjects. Jeremy Adelman, in Chapter 2, talks about the Andean states as 'unfinished', meaning that important swaths of society still fail to accept 'underlying rules' of nationhood (p. 41). Chapter 4, by John Sheanan, addresses poverty and economic dilemmas of the Andean countries, and Chapter 6, by Donna Lee Van Cott, argues that indigenous movements have turned the current crisis into an opportunity to gain prominence in the countries' political and public debates. In Chapter 8, by Jo-Marie Burt, a meticulous analysis of how changing state-society/citizenship patterns have influenced the ways societal mobilization came about in Peru is presented. Francisco Gutiérrez Sanín, in Chapter 9, offers an analysis of why in particular national congresses in Ecuador and Colombia are also critically evaluated in both countries. Finally, in Chapter 10, Miriam Kornblith reconstructs the quest for 'genuine' democracy in Venezuela, both explaining the rise of Chavez, and offering a critical assessment of his contribution to this goal.

All contributions make worthwhile reading, are written by scholars who know their trade, and do not hesitate to take a stand. As a whole however, this compilation is not balanced: not in the application of the conceptual point of departure, not in the scope, and not in the varying intentions of the different author's contributions.