Civil Society and Social Movements: Building Sustainable Democracies in Latin America

                This post is a summary of a book with the complete title above published in 2008 at  http://idbdocs.iadb.org/wsdocs/getdocument.aspx?docnum=1555501

              Over recent decades, the political and social landscape of Latin America has been transformed by the impressive growth of civil society organizations (CSO) and civic activism. These citizens organizations have become an important and vibrant way to mobilize political energy and social aspirations of the least powerful. Their impact are examined under the still changing political environment in Latin America. In newly formed democracies, CSO are involved in the process of consolidating democratic institutions. In effective, working democracies, CSO seek to deepen democratic institutions by promoting wider political engagement and expanded social and economic opportunities. These cases show how CSO have given birth to independent community leadership, taught people how to organize themselves and to design and implement new approach to social problems. Against this backdrop, CSO are almost certain to play an expanding role in shaping Latin America's future political and social landscape. A post-dictatorship "rebirth" of Latin America democracy was celebrated at the 1994 Presidential Summit of the Americas. On subsequent reflection, Jorge Castaneda noted that "the region today faces an increasingly unpredictable future. People blame democracy for economic stagnation, or at least for failing to deliver economic growth. We see that dissatisfaction with governments was not without cause. Many citizens who lacked confidence in their governments reacted by forming or joining new social movements and citizens' organizations. CSO espouse concerns with human rights, environmental threats, treatment of women, opportunities for indigenous people, overcoming rural poverty, housing for low-income families, promoting small enterprises and local employment, participatory government budgeting. These concerns are each important in defining democracy, and the values that sustain these organizations are the foundations of democracy's historical heritage. What is Civil Society? Civil society, its citizen constituents and its organizations, are the prime focus of this work. Contradictory conceptions of civil society are easily found, both as to the definition and to the importance of its interaction with political society. The idea of "civil society" is inherited from Greek and Roman philosophers, but has become an important element of contemporary political thought. Among other encomiums, it has been credited with "bringing down dictatorship of every possible description. Edwards calls attention to what civil society can achieve. For example, Cato institute sees CSO as "fundamentally reducing the role of politics in society by expanding individual liberty." Meanwhile, the World Social Forum contends that civil society is "the single most viable alternative to the authoritarian state. To the World Bank is the key to "good governance and poverty-reducing growth." CSO are defined by the IDS as "an intermediate sphere between the State and the household." Even if we agree with that, the definition borders are still murky. When a fuller effort is made to determine which groups are, practitioners most often insist that CSO do not include: 1) Government institutions and political parties. 2) For-profit, market-oriented business (although associations of business are part of CSO). 3) Families and kinship groups. 4) Violence-oriented associations. What is Democracy? There is no simple definition for democracy, and inevitable quibbles surround the concept. Like obscenity, we may have trouble defining it, but we certainly know it when we seeit. Government is defined as the social institution with a monopoly on the power of coercion. Such power does not confer wisdom, but it does explain Churchill's well-known aphorism: "Democracy, we know, is but one of many forms that government may take. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all wise." Athenians prided themselves on their discovery of democracy. Democratization is an "open-ended, long-term and complex process," that may be compared to science in that the process is never complete, always open to new tests and improved ideas. Within these boundaries, political analysts have identified two operating models of "democracy": the adversarial and the deliberative. In a adversarial democracy, each party with access to the public decision-making process seeks maximum benefit from each exhange as it is negotiated in the political "marketplace." Participating approach the process with non-negotiable preferences, and are adversarial in all political dealings. In contrast, the "deliberative" or participatory democracy model emphasizes continuity and process. It is messy but has proved durable. Personal and groups preferences are defined and defended on the grounds of thier contributions to general welfare, rather than on ideological grounds. A "public agenda" emerges from the deliberative process that would not have been designed by any of the contending groups acting alone. Although a few countries in the region, most notably Uruguay and Costa Rica, follow the "deliberative model", the adversarial model better characterizes more Latin America countries. The differences between these forms helps explain the differences in growth of civil society and its organizations, and the evolution of the roles of CSOs in shaping forms of governance. Educational efforts are only a part of what is needed to increase citizen engagement and strengthen democracy. Community organizations, social movements and advocavy/service NGO effect their governments and public policy when they are able to gain access to the halls of power. In broad terms, the interaction of civil society with political process impacts governance in at least four ways: 1) by influencing public policy and decision making. 2) By enhancing performance of state agencies. 3) by achieving greater transparency and information about official acts and actors. 4) by fostering social justice and the rule of law.

130th Birthday of Gyorgy Lukacs - Part II

                            This post is a summary of a chapter of a book published at  http://www.palgrave.com/resources/sample-chapters/9781137372819_sample.pdf. The second summary is from the book, "The Theory of the Novel," published at  https://analepsis.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/georg-lukacs-the-theory-of-the-novel.pdf . The third summary was published at http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/27375-georg-lukcs-reconsidered-critical-essays-in-politics-philosophy-and-ae

        Gyorgy Lukacs (1885-1971) was without doubt one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century. His views on philosophy, aesthetics and literary criticism exerted an immeasurable influence on intellectuals in Europe. Thanks to the impact of his 1923 book "History and Class Consciousness," with its philosophycal content and political message, Lukacs became known as one of the founders of Western Marxism and its principal representative. In all fields of culture, politics and indeed, in everyday life, we are witnessing the advance of irrational beliefs and the agressive attacks of forces hostile to reason and democracy. We face a situation in which the values of rationality need to be strengthened, just as Lukacs in his day considered the defence of such values to be one of his major tasks. Lukacs argues that the lack of transparency and "objective irrationality" of the social whole collide with the rationality of the systems of production and social organization and with the rationality of the now indispensable scientific research. Without a doubt Lukacs' work in the literary field is dominated by criticism. The most obvious sign of a continuity connecting the various periods of lukacs' work is his literary taste, which remained unchanged throughout his life. He always directed his attention to the canonized authors of world literature, in aprticular to the great realists of the 19th century, in whom he saw the protagonists of "art's struggle for freedom"  and the interrelated actors of an ideal progression of historical development.

           The method of "The Theory of the Novel" depends to a larger extent on whether the chief protagonist's soul is 'too narrow' or 'too broad' in relation to reality. This highly abstract criterion is useful, at most, for illuminating certain aspects of "Dom Quixote", which is chosen to represent the first type. "The Theory of the Novel," was the first book belonging to the 'intellectual sciences school in which the findings of Hegelian philosophy were concretely applied to aesthetic problem. We have already recognised the dangers that arise from abstract nature of the novel; the risk of overlapping into lyricism or drama, the risk of narrowing reality so that the work becomes an idyll, the risk of sinking to the level of mere entertainment literature. The irony of the novel is the self-correction of the world's fragility: inadequate relations can transform themselves into a fanciful yet well-ordered round of misunderstandings and cross-purposes, within which everything is seen as many-sided, within which things appear as isolated and yet connected, as full of value and yet totally devoid of it, as abstract fragments and as concrete autonomous life, as flowering and as decaying, as the infliction of suffering and as suffering itself. The outward form of the novel is essentially biographical. The fluctuation between a conceptual system which can never completely capture life and a life complex which can never attain completeness because completeness is immanently utopian, can be objectivised only in that organic quality which is the aim of biography. The novel comprises the essence of its totality, and thereby raises an individual of one who must create an entire world through his experience and who must maintain that world in equilibrium, the epic individual owed his significance to the grace accorded to him, not to his pure individuality.  The objective structure of the novel shows a heterogeneous totality, regulated only by regulative ideas, whose meaning is prescribed but not given. That is why the unity of the personality and the world, a unity which is dimly sensed through memory, yet which once was part of our lived experience. A natural consequence of the paradoxical nature of this art is the fact that the really great novels have a tendency to overlap into the epic. The events in Dom Quixote are almost timeless, a motley series of isolated adventures complete in themselves, and while the ending completes the work as a whole as to its principle and problems, it does so only for the whole and not for the concrete totality of the parts. It was Cervantes the intuitive visionary of the historical-philosophical moment, his vision came into being at the watershed of two historical epochs; it recognised and understood them, and raised the most confused problematic into the radiant sphere of a transcendence which achieved its full flowering as form. The relationship between the objective and subjective worlds is therefore maintained in adequate balance: the hero is rightly conscious of the superiority of the opposing outside world, yet despite this innermost modesty he can triumph in the end because his lesser strength is guided to victory by the highest power in the world; the forces of the imaginary and the real correspond with one another; the victories and defeats are not contradictory to either the actual or the ideal world order. When this instinctive sense of distance, is lacking, the relationship between the subjective and the objective worlds becomes paradoxical, because the active soul, the soul that matters from the point of view of the epic, is narrowed, the world likewise becomes narrower for that soul than it is in reality. But since this reduction of the world and every action which follows from it and which is aimed only at the reduced, all that opposes the soul must come from, sources which are heterogeneous from it. Thus action and opposition have neither scope nor quality, neither reality nor orientation in common. The narrowing of the soul of which we speak is brought about by demonic obsession by an existing idea which it posit as the only.  The greater closeness of 19th century literature to certain organic natural conditions, made it possible for that literature to be creatively polemical. Tolstoy, who was an essentially novelist of disillusionment, created a form of novel which overlaps to the maximum extent into the epic. The paradoxical nature of Tolstoy's historical situation, proves better than anything else how much the novel is the necessary epic form of our time.

              Lukacs's work and intellectual legacy, always complex and provocative, have in fact never wanted for attention, but in the past few years new impetus for re-engaging with his book has come from litearary studies, where his theory of literary realism and his implacable opposition to literary modernism in all forms resonate with neo-realist aesthetics, and from social and political theory, where  Axel Honneth's recent re-appropriation of the central concept of reification, and how well the concept might survive transplantation into theoretical climates far different than lukacs own.The anthology's third section,"Perspectives on Critical Theory," continues this contrastive work: refers to criticisms of the shortcomings of discourse-theoretical revision of the projects of critical theory in order to suggest that Lukacsian thought, offers help in addressing the charges of formalism.The revised version emphasizes an open history as the site of "a nonmechanistic emergence of a qualitatively new form of consciousness and a corresponding social practice as the concrete embodiment of effective human freedom," An updated Lukacsian world history is left with nothing but the classical idea of Enlightenment, the idea of enlightening people about their real conditions of existence and the application of this knowledge to the field of politics and the social practice of citizens. If today it strike us as outrageous it is because, despite the 'democratic' spirit of our age, we have, to a great extent, lost faith in the power of deliberate agency.

130th Birthday of Gyorgy Lukacs

                      Tomorrow, April 13th, the master of the theory of literature would complete 130th years-old. So, this post is a tribute to him, His writings help the people to understand better and consequently appreciate more this noble art called literature.  This post is a summary of four articles. The first was published at  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gy%C3%B6rgy_Luk%C3%A1cs. The second was published at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lukacs/#AesReaWorArtCloTot. The third was published at http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/virtualit/poetry/critical_define/crit_marx.html. The fourth was published at http://newleftreview.org/II/91/franco-moretti-lukacs-s-theory-of-the-novel

                Gyorgy Lukacs (1885-1971) was a Hungarian philosopher, writer and literary critic. He developed and contribute to Marxist Theory with developments of Karl Marx's theory of class consciousness. He was especially influential, because of his theoritical developments of realism and of the novel as a literary genre. Lukacs was born in Budapest, to the Banker József and his wife Adele, who were a wealthy Jewish family. He studied at the Budapest and Berlin, and received his doctorate in 1906. Lukacs developed Leninist ideas in the field of philosophy. His major works in this period were the essays collected in "History and Class Consciousness"(1923). Altough these essays display signs of what Lenin referred to as "ultra-leftism", they provided substantive philosophical basis. In 1925, he published a critical review of the historical materialism. He advocate a democratic government of the proletariat. After Lukacs' strategy was condemned by The Communist International, he retreated from active politics into theoretical work. During the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, Lukacs was present at debates of the anti-party, while remaining part of the party apparatus. In Lukacs' view, the parties could win social leadership only by persuasion instead of force. In addition to his standing as a political thinker, Lukacs was an influential literary critic of the 20th century. His important work in literary criticism began early in his career, with "The Theory of the Novel" (1916) a work in literary theory, an investigation into its distinct characteristics. Lukacs literary criticism includes the well-known essay, "Kafka or Thomas Mann?" in which Lukacs argues for the work of Thomas Mann as a superior attempt to deal with modernity, while he critises Kafka's brand of modernism. Lukacs was opposed to the formal innovations of modern writers like Kafka, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, preferring the traditional aesthetic of realism. "The Historical Novel", is his most influential work of literary history. In it he traces the development of the genre of historical fiction. The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars brought about a realisation of the constantly changing, evolving character of human existence. This new historical consciousness was reflected in the works of Walter Scott, whose novels use representatives characters to dramatise social conflicts and historical transformations. Lukacs argues that Scott's new brand of Historical Realism was taken up by Balzac and Tolstoy, and enabled novelists to depict contemporary social life not as a static fixed types, but rather as a moment of history, constantly changing, open to the potential transformations. Although abstraction can lead to the concealment of objective reality, it is necessary for art, and Lukacs believes that realist authors can employ it "to penetrate the laws governing objective reality, and to uncover the deeper, hidden, mediate, not immediately perceptible of relationships that go to make up society" After a great intellectual effort, Lukacs claims a  realist can discover these objective relationships and give them artistic shape in the form of a character's subjective experience.

               According to this conception of art as a mode of reflection, the function of a art is to present humans with the totality of the objective, historical reality within an "homogeneous medium". The medium of  specific form of art establishes laws that allows the work of art to adequately present the whole world of humanity from a specific standpoint. For this reason, such works of art allow us to comprehend the universal aspects of our existence and to consciously participate in the collective life of humanity. A successful work of art can thus have the effect of "catharsis", transforming the "whole person" of everyday life into a "person as a whole", the person who realizes their humanity by acquiring a sense of self-consciousness regarding the richness of human relations that constitute the historical development of humankind. Lukacs' commitment to a conception of the work of art as a closed totality, structured by the laws of its medium and objectively reflecting the development of humanity in the mode of mimetic evocation, has considerable implications for his own judments as an aesthetic theorist. However, as far as Lukacs' commitment to realism reflects the demand that works of art should present a totality of meaning that is not alien to the life of individuals, but rather overcomes the alienation they suffer from in everyday life, it expresses an intuition that sustains Lukacs work from the beginning: the desire for an overcoming of the tension between human life and the objective social forms that constitute modern society.

                Marxist criticism is a type of criticism in which literary works are viewed as the product of work and whose practitioners emphasizes the role of class and ideology as they reflect, propagate, and even challenge the prevailing social order. Two critics stand out: Mikhail Bakhtin and Gyorgy Lukacs. Bakhtin viewed texts in terms of discourses and dialogues. Lukacs appreciated realistic novels that broadly reflected cultural totalities and were populated with characters representing human types. In Germany, critic Belfort Brecht critized Lukacs for his attempt to enshrine realism at the expense of poetry and drama, which Lukacs ignored. Theodor Adorno attacked Lukacs for his dogmatic rejection of nonrealist literature and for his elevation of content over form.

              When Lukacs is still mencioned nowadays in connection with the study of the novel, it is either for "Theory of the novel" or for "The historical novel", The second is a very useful book, written by a serious professor. The first it is an essay, where the critic is always talking about the ultimate question of life. And in fact, whenever this book talks about the novel, the reader senses that through the oblique refraction of books, something much more momentous is at stake. But what? What is the ultimate question that the Theory of the novel is trying to address? An initial answer could be: it is the transformation of social existence, at some unspecified moment between Dante and Cervantes, into a world of convention whose abnormality Lukacs tries to captures through the metaphor of the nature. Nature, because the embracing power of convention subjects the social world to laws whose regularity can only be compared to that of physical nature: strict laws, without exception or choice, that are, this is the decisive passage, the embodiment of recognized. What "The Theory of the Novel" has to say. But just as important as what the book has to say is the way it says it. But what kind of book is this? Certainty, no one that worries solely about knowledge. Make no mistake: there is plenty of knowledge in the pages of the "Theory" dispensed in countless well-wrought allusion by its prodigiously author. Yet that is not the book is about, It is not after knowledge: it is after meaning. After meaning, by way of its style. The style of the essay: reflection plus emotions. It is the heat of emotions that extracts meaning from this world that has become rigid and alien. 'Every art form' we read in the Theory, is defined by the metaphysical dissonance of life. Lukacs, too, placed a methaphysical dissonance as the foundation of his book, and then tried to resolve it with the prodigious plasticity of his style. Beauty and knowledge together, was a miracle that would not be repeated. But perhaps, the future of literary theory lies in accepting its fundamental dissonance without lookinf for a resolution.

Reforming Democracy

                  This post is a summary of three articles. The first with the incomplete title above and was published in June of 2014 at  http://www.theglobalist.com/reforming-democracy-and-the-future-of-history/, The second was published at https://www.ndi.org/citizen-participation . The third is a review of the book, "Reforming democracies," written by Douglas Chalmers former director of the Institute of Political Science at Columbia University and was published in January of 2013 at.  http://cup.columbia.edu/book/reformingdemocracies/9780231162944

              In 1975, a report, "The Crisis of Democracy," prepared by the Trilateral Commission, signaled the pessimism and defeatism prevailing in Western democracies at the time about the future and sustainability of democracy. The report reflected a deep economic downturn, as well as social and political turmoil. The crisis of democracy was tightly connected with concerns about "monopoly capitalism," rampant materialism and corruption. Four decades later, democracy is again in a state of crisis. This comes as somewhat of a surprise, given that successive waves of democratization have touched every region of the world over the past 40 years.  What is becoming evident now is that an opposite trend has emerged. In the early 1990's, the end of the Cold War had brought the revalidation of democracy with greater vigour as the most representative form of government. Yet this exuberance has been counterbalanced with criticism of its failings and shortcomings. Democracies guarantee political freedom, the rule of law, human rights and a platform for citizens to engage in the political process. Yet, in practice, democracies feature numerous inadequacies. Inequality, disempowerment, lack of opportunity, infringements of civil liberties, ethnic, social and cultural discrimination, corruption and opaque honor titles systems are all present, and apparently not antagonistic to democracies. As Joseph Stiglitiz, economist professor at Columbia University has noted, "the rich do not need to rely on government for education or medical care or personal security, they can buy all these things for themselves. In the process, they become more distant from ordinary people, losing whatever empathy they may once have had." Corporate financing of political campaigns have reinforce this, hijacking the democratic process. It further alienates voters who feel they are excluded from a process that is beyond their control. The role of money in politics is worth as a major problem with democratic governance. Its effects are truly worrisome, especially when there is little transparency and regulatory mechanisms to limit the distorting role of money in politics. Finally, the sense of disillusionment with democracy in its current form has been reinforced with disclosures of large-scale government surveillance, violations of privacy and civil liberties. The claim of sweeping authority over the right to collect personal data is harmful to core liberties. Overseeing the overseers and keeping states' need to know in balance with the safeguard of privacy and civil liberties remains a challenge. Opinion polls across many continents reflect this current dissatisfaction with democracy. These forms of disillusionment indicate the need to embrace a paradigm that goes beyond political freedom and addresses the human need for dignity. Democracy guarentees political freedom and rights. A greater emphasis on human dignity and a governance model that places dignity at the center can halt the current disenchantment with democracy. Dignity means more than absence of humiliation. As a basis for government, it commands institutions and policies that comply with nine dignity needs: reason, security, human rights, accountability, transparency, justice, opportunity, innovation and inclusiveness. Creating institutions that upholds these needs would better address three key attibutes and motivators of human nature: emotionality, amorality and egoism. To make this work in practice requires recommendations to amend current democratic systems. To make them more sustainable requires a stronger focus on, and application of, eight criteria of good governance: 1)Participation. 2) equity and inclusiveness. 3) The rule of law. 4) Separation of powers. 5) Free, independent and responsible media. 6) Government legitimacy. 7) Accountability and transparency. 8) Limitation of the distorting effect of money in politics.

               Deepening democracy so it can provide tangible improvements to people's lives is an overarching objective of citizen participation. Making democracy work requires informed and active citizens who understand how to voice their interests, act collectively and hold public officials accountable. Citizens must understand ideas about citizenship, politics and government. They need knowledge to make decisions about policy choices. They also need to have the desire to exercise their rights, and they need the political space to do so without unreasonable resistance or harassmment from authorities or others. Any citizen participation program, including support of civic and voter education, budget oversight and government monitoring, help citizens master the techniques needed to initiate action, solve complex problems and become leaders in their own right. It is need programs to activate and empower citizens and civic groups, establish strong civic cultures and achieve an appropriate balance of power between citizens and government. Citizens around the world desire accountable and responsive political institutions. It is important share experiences and offers a range of options, so that leaders and activists can select those practices that work best. Also is important promoting solidarity among democratic activists and helping them share lessons with one another. Democracy's credibility and sustainability depends, to an degree, on how it works in practice, and what it delivers. Democracies must be able to move beyond elections and forming institutions and begin to successfully tackle issues related to security, jobs, human rights, well-being and human development. Democracy should facilitate economic growth and deliver the means for people to achieve a better life, while protecting fundamental rights and ensuring that citizens are free from oppression and arbitrary government intrusion. Helping democracy deliver requires a greater focus on the practice of democracy. Democratic practice emphasizes collective action and inclusive, evidence-based decision making. It also emphasizes access to information, a voice for citizens and accountability measures and mechanisms. Government planing, budgeting and spending are potential opportunities for citizens to participate in government. Citizens should be able to access information, influence priorities and hold public officials accountable. To help citizens participate, processes begin with citizens advocating for freedom of information legislation to create mechanisms through which budget information can be accessed. Citizen participation programs usually involve assistance to NGOs or community organizations. Programs also helps groups that organize themselves around issues, such as good governance, health, education, or public safety. 

               In Reforming Democracies, Douglas Chalmers offers a thoughtful and challenging critique of the basic concepts informing our understanding of 'liberal democracy.' He begins with questions about the interests that should be represented, including those of no only citizens but also 'quasi-citizens' who play a critical role in the functioning of the politics. He challenges us to move beyond the conventional analysis of party and interest-group linkages between the people and decision makers and to take into account dynamic and informal relationship outside of these traditional channels. Finally, he urges us to look more directly at decision-making as a deliberative as well as a bargaining process. Underlying all of these challenges is an affirmation that 'democracy' should be conceived not only in terms of procedural norms but also in terms of its capacity to govern in the public interest. In this book, Chalmers builds on decades of teaching and writing as a political philosophy too. He takes us to neglected places in the democratic decision-making process and argues that we need new institutions to regulate these places, to facilitate action, benefit the people, and adapt continually through linkages that convey information and accountability. These new ideas will make you think.