An incomplete note about institutionalism

By Weekly Archive On Mar 17, 2009

The
results of the referendum conducted in Venezuela on Feb. 15, 2009,
mark a relevant moment for the process of building a socialist
institutionalism within new coordinates. In this case, it is the
topic known in political sciences as "alternancy," linked
to the regulation of change in the exercise of a power legitimized by
the electoral process. The concept is taken from biology, and we
could view it also as "alternation," a term perhaps less
contaminated by imprecise use.

One
of the pillars of the tradition of democratic thought has to do with
the intention to disassemble the concentration of uncontestable
authority that translated into the proposal to divide the powers of
the state, a proposal made by Montesquieu, which became one of the
dogmas of the liberal system. Let us not forget that, in the economic
field, the bourgeoisie began to press for fragmenting political
power: to take away independence from absolutism, so the interests of
capital might place themselves in the scheme of power. To place
obstacles in the path of despotic authoritarianism was the most
progressive option at the time, a historical accomplishment of the
bourgeoisie.

Let
us move closer to contemporary times and look at liberal democracy
today. Another concrete expression of the exercise of control over
the authoritarian excesses of political power is materialized in
alternancy. It is the principle that the representative mandates won
at the polls cannot be made lifelong; instead, their limitation in
due course is contemplated.

This
philosophy is valid both for the parliamentarian regimes and the
presidential systems, although it is in the latter where it acquires
a greater significance because they permit, during the exercise of
the presidential mandate, the greatest concentration of authority.
Were it not because it is limited to a fixed term, the presidential
regime could open itself to uncontrolled authoritarianism; the space
for an option is supposedly offered by a limitation to the mandate
and the need for a new election.

The
terms in which alternancy has been implemented are very dissimilar —
between non-reelectable mandates 4 years long and reelectable
mandates 7-to-14 years long. The formal element that can imply a
basic difference in the sense of alternancy lies in whether
alternancy is adopted as obligatory or optional.

An
ideal alternancy is the real possibility to replace a leader through
the polls (by popular will) whenever the leader does not respond with
his actions and decisions to the interests of the people, even when
the ruling classes feel happy because they’ve economically benefited.

But
if alternancy is understood and exercised as an obligation, it can
become its opposite. In other words, the instrument to interrupt a
program of transformation of social justice and equity, of
sovereignty and ecological recovery, whenever the program goes
against the interests of local oligarchies and the transnational
capital deposited in the country.

It
is evident that the February referendum did not remove alternancy
from Venezuela’s electoral stage but instead hindered the possibility
that it might be used against the people’s interests. Beyond the fact
that it was locally important, I consider that the approved reform
puts the debate on the table in terms of transition toward a
socialist democracy, starting from the institutionalism that should
be its own. I mean a debate that encompasses the entire region, that
applies to the more radical and more moderate regimes alike, and the
future of a democracy that responds to the demands of the people in
neighboring countries.

This
turn of events is less significant for Cuban socialism, if we look at
local scenarios. Not because Cuba is opposed to it (on the contrary,
it is obvious that the success of the February referendum is a
success in the eyes of Cubans) but because the extreme radicalness of
the revolutionary change on the island swept away alternancy. And
along with alternancy, it swept away all the inherited
institutionalism. For 17 years, the country was ruled by a
considerably brief Fundamental Law and managed by a Council of
Ministers in which all the powers of the State were concentrated, a
State still formally defined as presidential.

This
remarkably long institutional provisionalness can conceal, hide or
rationalize the explanation of numerous functional arbitrarities but
it never worked with, or became allied with, the forces of capital
against the people’s interests. And it never gave signs of a crisis
or the breakdown of a consensus, something that could have been
expressed in many ways.

When
political behavior and legal rules provided Cuban socialism with an
institutional legitimacy in the mid-1970s, the design tended to link
sovereignty with continuity. Neither the division of powers nor the
competition for power based on opposing political and economic
proposals, nor an alternancy in the executive posts appeared on
Cuba’s institutional agenda. They were not in the 1992 Constitutional
Reform and are not in today’s order. A principle of consensus-based
unity that must buttress the system’s defense and resistance to the
unceasing attacks and erosion caused by the blockade rises above any
institutional initiative regarding changes in the system’s course.

This
leading tendency to continuity can also explain the excessive
duration of the posts of functionaries whose competence was never
proven because of the limitations imposed by the emergencies
themselves, or by organic or functional insufficiencies. The minister
who remains in his post for a quarter of a century may have remained
there because of proven efficacy. But he also may have remained there
because he learned the bureaucratic rules to stay in the post. And I
think that this is what happens with greater frequency.

What
critics call manifestations of Stalinism in the Cuban case, could be
defined as the effects of the defensive sclerosis of a system of
management whose standards age as its leaders age.

The
institutionalism adopted in the 1970s, drenched in the formalisms and
limitations of the Soviet experience, with limited spontaneity,
contracted and imprecise in terms of its own definitions, was not
lacking in virtues, where the inspiration for independence and
sovereignty that the Revolution had rescued in 1959 found expression.

I
apologize for not writing longer and more encompassing lines. Perhaps
I don’t have to apologize, because the reader might thank me for my
brevity.

I
want to stress that, from the first juridical and structural
expressions, the principles of performance accounting and
revocability were incorporated into institutionalism, regardless of
responsibility or posts. There’s nothing in Cuban legislation that
says a functionary is exempt from accounting for his performance or
being unremoveable. In the first place, I think those are essential
principles of the new democracy, that democracy that does not exist
and we want to build, as inherent to the projects of 21st-Century
socialism.

If
the voters do not have the right to demand an accounting of the
elected functionary’s performance, and if the elected functionary
does not have the duty to provide it (periodically or upon demand),
then there will be no democracy. If the voters, at any level, lack
the proper mechanisms to revoke the mandate of the people they
elected, when such revocation is pertinent, there will be no
democracy. I say democracy without a surname, for a reason.

A
split in the powers of the State is not lacking in importance, as
Montesquieu pontificated, but when the power of the State is resumed
in one direction it does not endanger democratic security, it seems
to me. The existence of a principle of flexible alternancy that
allows the continuation of a social project is more democratic than
the consecration of a dogmatic alternance. And greater democracy
implies that all the State’s offices are subjected to a system of
individual accounting and revocability.

I
think it is a real achievement that the Cuban socialist experiment
incorporated flexible alternancy to the institutions it created in
1976. At the same time, it is most unfortunate that — more than
three decades later — we continue to refer complacently to these
principles as if they were an abstract achievement, applied only to
the lower levels of the people’s power, as if they constituted a
secondary and expendable mechanism.

Not
even the 1992 Constitutional Reform introduced advancements in this
important aspect, which was seen (with conformism) like something
already accomplished. The incompleteness of the Reform was then
acknowledged and eventual, frequent reforms were promised that might
allow a gradual improvement in the Fundamental Law. No other reform
has occurred in the past 17 years.

Despite
everything, performance accounting and revocability are two ideas
that appealed to the imagination of the Cuban people. There they are,
a lot more present than any other operational figure can show. They
are part of a conviction, and the hopes they represent add decisive
weight to the consensus over the project of a socialist transition in
Cuba.

Aurelio
Alonso, a Cuban politologist, is deputy editor of the magazine Casa
de las Américas.