
On this occasion, we invite you to read the chosen article of the month in the light of the busy last weekend, the resignation of Minister Guzmán and the long talks in Olivos. We ask you to focus on two paragraphs, to close with our usual final reflection:
"The biggest risk is that not only the parties fail. That would be the least of it. It is also the democratic system that fails".
"In a society plunged into economic and social recession, the future is no longer guaranteed. Citizen participation is declining and distrust and disappointment are on the rise".
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Wild scenarios for pluralist democracies
✍l Enrique Zuleta Puceiro*.
In the theory and technique of strategic scenario design, "wild scenarios" are those scenarios that are considered outside of all the variables considered in the construction of strategic scenarios. They are scenarios that go beyond what is normally foreseeable. As such, they burst in and are abruptly installed. They force us to rethink a problem from scratch and to look for evidence that allows us to overcome the impact on the variables taken into account until now. In the international strategy studies of the 1970s, a wild scenario was, for example, the possible sudden death of Fidel Castro. In the strategies of the 1980s, such a scenario was the one that arose from the highly improbable idea of a collapse of communism. In the first case, it was a scenario that never happened, and in the second, it precipitated, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a substantial alteration of everything that had been thought since the Second World War.
The outcome of the recent Colombian elections is a scenario of this kind, as was the case with the virtual political disappearance of the Chilean Concertación and the subsequent outcome of the Chilean constituent process, the disappearance of the three major Mexican parties and the victory of Lopez Obrador's Morena in Mexico, the elections in Peru, Ecuador and other Central American cases, to mention but a few of those offered by the chequered landscape of today's democracies in Latin America. No previous theory, no even remote evidence could have come to speculate on the sudden disappearance of the party system and the emergence of a group of disruptive leaderships capable of imposing a new agenda, absolutely new.
It is this type of scenario that is once again emerging from the Colombian case. It is once again clear that most of the ideas about the relationship between economic development and democracy that have inspired the paradigms of political development since at least the 1960s have failed miserably.
Reality has once again overturned the assumption that economic development is the automatic path to a process of modernisation, and hence to the gradual consolidation of pluralist political regimes inspired by economic freedom, open political systems and the rule of law. This was the idea that for decades inspired all the development aid action of the United States, the European Union and global multilateral organisations, from the Alliance for Development to the so-called Washington Consensus and, especially in the cases of Chile and Colombia, with the enthusiastic and unconditional support for the open-minded experience of the Chilean Concertación or the Colombia Plan.
The star experiences of Chile and Colombia belie these conventional assumptions. Economic prosperity has proved insufficient to successfully manage the fruits of growth. On the contrary, it has deepened inequalities and social asymmetries, generated an agenda of unsatisfied basic needs and exasperated a climate of social rejection that has won over the middle sectors of society. Indignation has been channelled in the form of increasing levels of social and political polarisation, and has ended up forcing the search for desperate solutions that seem to push political systems back to ground zero, with increasingly worrying prospects.
The problem does not seem to lie so much in the legitimacy of democracy understood in terms of aspiration and moral valuation, as in its capacity and efficiency to accredit tangible results. It is a crisis of the validity and effectiveness of its promises and, above all, of the performance of professional politics.
After decades of promise and frustration, it is now clear to any citizen of the world that efficiency is not the preserve of democracies. In fact, a good number of autocratic countries are at the forefront of the development process and defy the idea that democracy is a cure, an education or a meal. Social inefficiency delegitimises political power, destroys its moral authority and opens the door to processes of political decomposition and the generation of authoritarian alternatives that return us to the state of nature.
The Colombian election has made the party system disappear, as happened recently in experiences as dissimilar as Macron's France, Lopez Obrador's Mexico, Castillo's Peru or most of the democracies of Eastern Europe, examples that Argentina's hitherto resilient system of coalitions should consider with the utmost attention, prudence and sense of reality, especially in times of maximum inefficiency as revealed by the successive governments of the last few years.
Equal causes may well produce equal effects. What determines the strength of a political system today is, above all, its ability to guarantee the future sustainability of social balances.
The biggest risk is that it is not only the parties that fail. That would be the least of it. The democratic system also fails. The vacuum that opens up is filled by personalistic leaderships, which gain social support precisely because of their ability to question the foundations of the democratic system. In a society that no longer shares common values that transcend political life, anything goes. In particular, the negation of all rules of the game, the cancellation of adversaries and the enthronement of a new Olympus of gods, symbols and collective illusions.
In a society plunged into economic and social recession, the future is no longer guaranteed. Citizen participation is declining and distrust and disappointment are on the rise. In this context of political alienation, the reasons to kick the board are multiplying. Particularly if the professional leadership is enclosed in a closed circle of self-satisfaction, ennobled by a false illusion of success.
These are wild scenarios, which defy all prognosis or strategic foresight. As such, they are unfortunately beyond the perceptive possibilities of a political class that is forgetful and lacking in comparative vision. Democracy is a rare plant, whose cultivation is increasingly difficult, especially under extreme conditions such as those in today's international system, already in the throes of a new cycle of globalisation.
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What would be a "wild scenario" in Argentina: the resignation of President Fernández, the inauguration of Vice-President Fernández, the impossibility of either of them to govern due to death and/or incapacity? What is the real weight of their figures, by presence or absence, to configure a "wild scenario"?
And even without this scenario unfolding, what should the opposition's attitude be towards a government that lacks any plan and is adrift, or with the north of old categories that have failed all over the world?
Is the opposition not a partner, by action and omission, in the advent of a "wild scenario", which, like any "black swan", is also unpredictable?
Shouldn't the opposition make certainties available to the citizenry? A short, medium and long term (macro micro) government programme that brings hope and a certain relief to so much uncertainty? That proposes a future horizon and at the same time gives the possibility of starting a conversation, at all levels of our society, about Argentina's potential and the basic measures that must be taken to get out of our decadence?
Shouldn't the opposition be responsible enough to look at Latin America as the mirror it holds up, and be aware that without the renewal that winning an election implies, with the social licence of having proposed a government programme, with suitable teams and ministers, any joker who, as a channel for collective dissatisfaction, can run a short and effective campaign, will win the elections in Argentina?
Is the role of the opposition to be a conglomerate of people who declaim decency, goodness and suitability while they watch the fire from the comfort of their armchairs, because "in Argentina a year and a half is an eternity"?
We invite you to write with your own reflections to hola@planpaisargentina.org. Every opinion counts and adds up.
We read them.
*Published in The Chronicler
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