Abstract
In the 1980s, political rights and electoral democracy were achieved in most Latin American countries. The weakness of political parties and civil society organizations has nonetheless prevented disadvantaged groups from influencing politics. The crisis of representation and absence of institutionalized links between state and society is today at the core of the democratic dilemma in Latin America. Philip Oxhorn’s book Sustaining Civil Society: Economic Change, Democracy, and the Social Construction of Citizenship in Latin America makes a significant contribution to the debate on democracy and citizenship in Latin America. The book sets out to explain the paradoxical convergence of unprecedented political rights and weak civil and social rights under the current market-oriented development model.
Oxhorn formulates a theory that he calls the social construction of citizenship, which entails a reinterpretation of Marshall’s classical approach to the expansion of citizenship rights. Whereas Marshall sees the development from civil rights to political rights and finally to social rights as part of the evolution of modern capitalism, Oxhorn argues that civil society’s participation and struggles in the public sphere explain the evolution of citizenship. He emphasizes how different development models create distinctive conditions for civil society to organize and influence politics. Democracy requires what he calls “citizenship as agency,” in which citizens through civil society organizations participate actively in the social construction of citizenship.
The developmentalist state was characterized by a sort of top-down populist rule in which popular sectors were incorporated selectively and partially (p. 39); social rights were extended while political rights were restricted. In the 1980s the market-centered development model altered state–society relations and introduced what Oxhorn calls “neopluralism”: a market-centered form of incorporation of citizens. Neopluralism is characterized by multiple forms of and arenas for societal participation, but also by factors that undermine democratic citizenship. These adverse factors are economic insecurity, inequality, segmentation of educational systems, insecurity, and a generalized “crisis of representation.” These factors have made it difficult for popular sectors to aggregate interests and have, thus, fragmented civil society. Without a strongly organized civil society, it has become difficult for popular sectors to make effective use of their political rights and to participate in the social construction of citizenship. In a context in which civil society is unable to promote democratization, Oxhorn emphasizes the importance of strengthening political parties and state institutions for mitigating neopluralism’s adverse impacts on democracy.
In the second half of the book, neopluralism’s effects on civil society are analyzed through case studies of Bolivia, Chile, and Ecuador. Oxhorn justifies the selection of cases by arguing that these cases represent different preconditions for dealing with the challenges of neopluralism. Bolivia, with widespread poverty, weak state institutions, and a weak party system, had the most difficult starting point. Chile, in contrast, has been in a significantly better position because of its strong state and institutionalized party system. Mexico is a unique case, characterized by durable corporatist structures in combination with economic liberalization.
In the case of Bolivia, Oxhorn analyzes the outcomes of the Popular Participation Law (LPP) introduced in 1994. LPP was an attempt to promote “citizenship as agency” through decentralization and the incorporation of indigenous groups in the administration of health care, education, and infrastructure. However, it was also an attempt to dissolve corporatist group representation and introduce individual, liberal rights (pp. 152-153). Oxhorn concludes that the results have been disappointing. Rather than promoting “citizenship as agency,” LPP has combined elements of co-optation and controlled inclusion (p. 173). In both Chile and Mexico, social programs have targeted poor families. Social welfare has in that way become disconnected from collective identities and interests and, thus, does not create incentives for collective action (p. 104).
The lack of incentives to participate is also explained by the lack of institutional mechanisms for influencing the design of social programs. In Chile, for instance, citizens are involved primarily in the execution of the programs at the local level (p. 124). In Chile, the strong political parties could have constituted channels for popular influence. Parties are, however, generally vertically structured and are not very responsive to the demands from popular sectors. In Mexico, the persistence of corporatist structures has constrained collective action and created a unique form of interest intermediation with authoritarian elements. Similar to the Bolivian government, the Mexican government has tried to marginalize the role of previously powerful unions through individually oriented social programs. In other cases, the government has co-opted corporatist labor organizations, and the private sector has used them as “agents of labor control” (p. 202). As a consequence, the capacity of civil society to channel the demands of popular sectors has been weakened. Paradoxically, at the same time as civil society in general lacks influence over politics, the number of organizations has grown in Mexico. However, most organizations are small, and many of them are externally funded nongovernmental organizations with weak roots in society (p. 218).
As mentioned previously, this book is an important contribution to the literature on civil society and citizenship in Latin America. Various scholars have analyzed the shift from a state-led to a market-centered development model in terms of citizenship and participation. The distinct contribution of this book is to be found in the explanation of how altered state–society relations have undermined the capacity of popular sectors to make effective use of their political rights and to participate in the social construction of citizenship. Oxhorn thus explains how and why citizenship rights are evolving in a particular way in Latin America. Moreover, the manner in which he links theoretical arguments with rich empirical analysis is also impressive.
Although the book is an extraordinary achievement, it also tends to overlook some issues. First, Oxhorn’s class-oriented focus leads him to neglect the importance of ethnic identities for counteracting the fragmentation in civil society produced by neopluralism. In Bolivia and Ecuador, for example, indigenous identity has been essential for articulating collective interests in relation to neoliberal reforms (see Yashar, 2005). In Bolivia, the MAS party came to power in 2005 in close collaboration with civil society organizations. Despite resistance from the elite, the government has implemented reforms aimed at restructuring state–society relations and expanding citizenship rights. Second, a related issue is the importance of rural conflicts in the analysis. In countries such as Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru, market liberalization has opened up for the extraction of natural resources on indigenous people’s land, which has produced numerous instances of mobilization and conflict in which civil, social, and collective rights are renegotiated. In all, Oxhorn underestimates the importance of ethnic identities and natural resource conflicts for the capacity of rural groups to aggregate collective interests in relation to neoliberal reforms. Even though this does not profoundly affect his argument, these struggles are at the core of the social construction of citizenship and could, therefore, have been discussed. These conflicts also illustrate the complexity of and differences in the impacts of neopluralism on different groups. Oxhorn does, however, leave room for new research regarding the specific implications of neopluralism in rural areas.
Third, Oxhorn argues that neopluralism is characterized by weak institutionalized links between state and society; outbursts of social frustration are, therefore, channeled through instances of mobilization. For instance, he discusses the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca, a popular uprising in Mexico that challenged both the regional and the federal states in 2006. He also mentions the social mobilization in Bolivia that led President Sanchez de Lozada to resign in 2003. Oxhorn sees these forms of social mobilization as temporary coalitions of fragmented groups; mobilizations are rarely translated into durable political influence that could generate long-term structural changes (p. 225). However, he could also have problematized the way in which mobilization in combination with institutionalized political participation can be an effective strategy for disadvantaged groups to pursue their demands, even under democratic rule. The Ecuadorian indigenous movement has, for instance, combined contentious and party politics (Van Cott, 2005, pp. 99-100). Even though the Bolivian mobilizations in 2003 did not lead to any immediate structural changes, they are part of the substantial political and social changes in more recent years in which state–society relations are being redefined. Mobilization and direct action can, thus, be seen as part of the multiple strategies and arenas that disadvantaged groups use for pursuing their interests and influencing politics. Finally, in Oxhorn’s view the participatory budget process in Porto Alegre epitomizes “citizenship as agency” (p. 233); the outcome of the process strengthened civil society and citizenship. However, he also argues that the success behind this project was based on unusually favorable conditions of effective collaboration among PT as a political party, civil society, and the local government. However, as the analysis of LPP illustrates and as other scholars have demonstrated (see Schönleitner, 2004), this form of participatory democracy is difficult to establish in contexts of great socioeconomic inequality. The question is whether the participatory democratic ideal may be doomed to failure in a context such as that in Latin America.
To conclude, despite these shortcomings, Oxhorn’s book makes an essential theoretical contribution that encourages us to reinterpret Marshall’s theory from the perspective of inequalities produced by the expansion of capitalism. It is a must-read for anyone interested in politics and democracy in Latin America.