Bureaucratic Authoritarianism: Argentina 1966-1973 in Comparative Perspective
354
Bureaucratic Authoritarianism: Argentina 1966-1973 in Comparative Perspective
354Hardcover(First Edition)
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| ISBN-13: | 9780520367425 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of California Press |
| Publication date: | 05/28/2021 |
| Edition description: | First Edition |
| Pages: | 354 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d) |
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Bureaucratic Authoritarianism
Argentina 1966-1973 in Comparative PerspectiveBy Guillermo O'Donnell
University of California Press
Copyright © 1988 Guillermo O'DonnellAll right reserved.
ISBN: 0-520-04260-3
Chapter One
Theoretical and Historical Background to the Study of the Bureaucratic-Authoritarian StateArgentina between 1966 and 1973 serves in this book as a case study of the implantation, social impact, and collapse of a type of state I have termed bureaucratic-authoritarian (BA). The first section of this chapter introduces some of the basic concepts to be used and elaborated upon as we examine the Argentine BA and compare it with similar cases. The remainder of the chapter outlines the decisive antecedents to the BAs implanted in Argentina and other Latin American countries during the 1960s and 1970s, beginning with the emergence of the popular sector as an important actor during the period that followed the collapse of oligarchic domination. Both the ambiguous relationship of this process to the issues of citizenship and political democracy (section 2) and the largely concomitant process of the transnationalization of Latin American economies and societies (section 3) are analyzed.
The processes of popular activation and social and economic transnationalization gave rise to crises that formed the more immediate antecedent to the BAs. The fourth section contains a general discussion of crises. The fifth section distinguishes among various types of crisis in order to lay the groundwork for analyzing the ones that, at varying levels of intensity, preceded the implantation of the BAs. The sixth section summarizes attributes that define the BA and distinguish it from other forms of authoritarian rule. The seventh consists of a brief excursus defining the social and political actors whose conflicts and alliances constitute a central theme in this study.
1. On the Capitalist State and Related Themes
The BA is a type of capitalist state, and should therefore be understood in the light of the distinctive attributes of capitalist states in general. The most important characteristics of such states, and of other concepts to be used throughout this book, are delineated in this section.
A. State and State Apparatus
The basic (though not the only) network of social relations in a capitalist society, and the one that characterizes it as capitalist, is the one formed by its relations of production. These relations are established in one of society's basic cells: the workplace and work process. Ordinary consciousness views these relations as exclusively economic, but closer inspection reveals that they are constituted by other aspects as well. One such aspect is the coercive guarantee they contain for their effectiveness and reproduction. The state, according to the view set forth here, is a part, or more precisely an aspect, of these relations: the one that supplies its coercive guarantee. The state, as the guarantor of the capitalist relations of production, is (no less than their economic aspects) a necessary and primordial part of these relations. In addition to guaranteeing their effectiveness and reproduction, the state also organizes the capitalist relations of production by articulating and buffering the relationships among classes and by providing elements necessary to their "normal," unchallenged reproduction.
It is crucial to underscore that the state is the guarantor not of the immediate interests of the bourgeoisie, but of the ensemble of social relations that establish the bourgeoisie as the dominant class. It is a capitalist state, not a state of the bourgeoisie. Insofar as it guarantees and organizes capitalist social relations, the capitalist state guarantees and organizes the social classes inherent in them-including the dominated classes, although what the state guarantees in respect to them is their reproduction as such, i.e., as dominated classes.
Some important consequences stem from the fact that the state is the guarantor and organizer of the capitalist relations of production, and not of the immediate interests of the bourgeoisie. It is particularly important to recognize that the state, even in opposition to the concrete demands of the bourgeoisie, may assume a custodial role with respect to the dominated classes. The general interest of the bourgeoisie as a whole-the effectiveness and reproduction of the social relations that ensure its condition as a dominant class-entails the placing of constraints on the microeconomic rationalities of its members. The processes set in motion by such rationalities, if left unchecked, could culminate either in the physical extinction of the working class or in its recognition of the exploitative character of its relationship with the bourgeoisie. The demystification of capitalist exploitation would undermine a fundamental support of ideological domination: the commonsense perception of the relations of production as freely agreed upon, purely economic, and nonexploitative. In turn, the disappearance of this perception would lead to a generalized challenge to these relations and the domination inherent in them.
Up to this point I have discussed the capitalist state on an analytical level upon which one might also situate, for example, the concept of class or of capitalist social relations. Just as one cannot see "the bourgeoisie," one cannot see "the state." But at a concrete (that is, nonanalytical) level, these categories are objectified in social actors, among which are the institutions or apparatuses of the state. I have argued that the capitalist state is primarily and constitutively, one aspect (which must be comprehended analytically) of capitalist social relations. The state, in this fundamental sense, is a part of society; society is the more basic and inclusive category. But in terms of the concrete social actors who are the bearers of these (and other) social relations, the state is also an apparatus, or a set of institutions. Just as the commodity is an objectified moment in the global process of the production and circulation of capital, the institutions of the state are an objectified moment in the global process of the production and circulation of power. Like the commodity, these institutions are of great importance and have crucial effects of their own. But it is wrong to confuse them with the whole state and thereby lose sight of the state's foundations at the very heart of society.
Ordinary consciousness reduces the capitalist state to its institutions, just as it isolates the commodity from its origins in the production and circulation of capital. The limitation of commonsense perceptions to the concrete-fetishized-appearance of the state and capital is the principal cloak behind which class domination (and with it the domination of the state) is concealed and protected. More precisely, the fetishized appearance of the state apparatus as the "whole" state underlies the illusion that this apparatus constitutes a "third" social actor, unbiased and external to the relations that link the capitalist to the worker. Actually the state, as we have seen, is a constitutive part of those relations. This appearance of externality is what allows the state to operate as the organizer of capitalist society: because the state seems to stand apart from society, it can proclaim itself, and will usually be perceived, as the unbiased guardian and agent of a general interest. But the state is the agent of an interest that is general but partialized: that of the effectiveness and reproduction of certain-intrinsically unequal-social relations. It is by no means, however, the agent of a general interest that is impartial with respect to the structural positions of the social classes.
B. Nation
The state serves a general interest, which is the general interest of the effectiveness and reproduction of the social relations that constitute both the dominant and the dominated classes. The discourse emitted by the state apparatus claims, however, that it serves an undifferentiated general interest: that of the nation. The nation is the arc of solidarities that postulates a homogeneous "we" that is distinct from the "they" of other nations. The effectiveness of the state's coercive guarantee is based on its control of the means of coercion in a territory whose boundaries mark the limits of the nation's arc of solidarities. It is for these reasons that the state is, or tends to become, a national state: its territorial boundaries delimit the scope of its coercive supremacy, and it is the undifferentiated interest of social actors qua members-of-the-nation that the state apparatus claims to serve.
C. Pueblo
The custodial role of the state with respect to the dominated classes can lead to recognition of the pueblo, i.e., the least favored members of the nation. Pueblo is an inherently ambiguous category, certain conjunctures the poor and weak who constitute the pueblo may channel explosive demands for substantive justice that conflict with the state and the basic social relations, or pact of domination, that it guarantees and organizes. By articulating such demands, these actors may come to identify themselves not just as pueblo but as dominated classes who self-consciously consciously challenge the system of social domination. But in other circumstances the identification pueblo may inhibit the formation of class identities, serving instead to define its members as subordinate actors in processes whose main protagonists are dominant class fractions struggling among themselves.
D. Citizenship
Just as each social actor appears abstractly free and equal before the market, commodities and money, citizenship embodies another moment of abstract equality. In a political democracy, the state institutions ground their claim to the right to command and coerce on the basis of the free wills of the members of the nation as citizens. The image of a society made up of equal citizens abstracted from their actual positions in society is in various senses false, but, just as the concepts of state, nation and pueblo harbor ambiguities, this image of citizenship contains a side of truth as well as one of falsity. On the one hand, the image of a society composed of free and equal citizens usually provides optimal cover for the social domination embodied in the capitalist relations of production. On the other hand, citizens in a political democracy enjoy, on the basis of their abstract equality, the right to organize around goals they are (in principle) free to define, as well as the right to be protected from and compensated for arbitrary acts by the state institutions or other social actors. Moreover, citizenship and political democracy entail mechanisms and entitlements that often permit the dominated classes to carve out social and political spaces from which to articulate demands and realize interests that are both objectively and subjectively important to them. Furthermore, as we shall see, the mechanisms and opportunities associated with political democracy may at certain conjunctures provide the dominated classes institutional channels and resources through which the foundations of social domination may be shaken and, eventually, destroyed. Thus, as with the other categories already analyzed, the specific implications of citizenship and political democracy cannot be determined a priori; they depend on circumstances that must be recognized and assessed through detailed historical analysis.
E. Regime and Government
Two other categories need to be defined: regime and government. The regime is the set of effectively prevailing patterns (not necessarily legally formalized) that establish the modalities of recruitment and access to government roles and the criteria for representation and the permissible resources that form the basis for expectations of access to such roles. These criteria may be derived from classical democratic theory (citizenship, parties and party membership), from articulations of interests in society (as in the case of corporatist representation), and/or from membership in certain state institutions (such as in highly militarized regimes). The government is the set of persons who occupy the top positions in the state apparatus in accordance with the rules of a given regime, and who are formally entitled to mobilize the resources controlled by the state apparatus (including those on which the coercive supremacy of that apparatus is based) in support of their directives or prohibitions. In other words, the government is the apex of the state apparatus, and the regime is the network of routes that lead to it.
The concepts outlined in this section will serve to structure and orient the remaining portion of the chapter, in which we shall examine some processes that made a decisive contribution to the implantation of bureaucratic-authoritarian states in Argentina (1966 and 1976), Brazil (1964), Chile (1973), and Uruguay (1973).
Type of regime and type of state usually correspond closely but not exactly. A regime that is democratic or competitive, or, in the terminology of Robert Dahl, "polyarchic" (cf. esp. Modern Political Analysis [New York: Prentice-Hall, 1966]), implies universalistic criteria of representation (citizenship) and of patterns of social representation-i.e., patterns that are not determined unilaterally by incumbents of the state institutions. Such a regime is incompatible, for example, with a bureaucratic-authoritarian state (as defined below). On the other hand, an authoritarian state can coexist with a regime made up of a single party, a dominant party (Mexico), two formally authorized parties (Brazil prior to 1979), or no party at all (Chile today), and can impose more or less rigid constraints on corporative representation, with differing biases with respect to the various social classes.
2. Pueblo in Latin America
A. Pueblo
Most populations in Latin America forged their national identities much more as a pueblo than as a citizenry. At various times-and not only through the so-called populisms-sectors that previously were excluded from all forms of political participation (except as subordinated members of clientelistic systems) burst forth as a pueblo. They were recognized as members-of-the-nation through demands for substantive justice, which they posed not as dominated, exploited classes but as victims of poverty and governmental indifference. The disadvantaged sectors (los pobres) who constituted the pueblo saw themselves (and were proclaimed by the political leaders who sought their support) as embodying what was most authentically national, and they contrasted these national orientations and aspirations to the "foreignness" of the ruling oligarchies and their international allies.
Los pobres were not the main protagonists in the process by which they themselves became members-of-the-nation. From Getúlio Vargas's image as the "father of the poor" to the more mobilizing discourse of Eva Perón, the pueblo emerged as both a part and a consequence of a broad alliance.
Continues...
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