Democracies in Development: Politics and Reform in Latin America - Part II

             This post is from the same book from last week, the book with the title above. Now the summary is from Part III, with the title of, "Citizen Participation and Democracy." It was published

http://publications.iadb.org/bitstream/handle/11319/441/Democracies%20in%20Development.pdf?

              Since 1978 a growing number of Latin America's countries have adopted mechanisms for direct citizen participation. Often referred to as institutions of direct democracy, these mechanisms are a means of political participation through direct and universal suffrage. Their aim is to involve citizens directly in the decision-making process rather than having elected representatives make all of their decisions for them. As a ideal, direct democracy has appeal, but do such mechanisms function well in practice? History shows that in early Greece and some medieval urban communes, experiments in direct democracy were short-lived and incomplete. However, experiments in Italy, The U.S. (at the subnational level) and specially Switzerland demonstrate the potential of direct democracy as a mechanism for giving expression to the popular will. Consultations have become increasingly common across Europe, with such mechanism having been introduced recently in Denmark, France, Ireland, Norway, and Sweden. However these experiences do not necessarily provide insights into how similar institutions operate in Latin america. Segments of the electorate view direct democracy mechanisms as valid for improving the quality and depth of political representation, boosting participation, and strengthening the letitimacy of democratic institutions. As a result, a debate has opened with respect to the potential benefits and risks of these institutions. Critics suggest that D.D. may undermine institutions of representative democracy, and that they may be used by an authoritarian president to circumvent snd thereby weaken the legislature and political parties. Defenders of D.D. contend, however, that institutions of D.D. can enhance the legitimacy of the political process and lead to greater social integration. In addition, they point out that there is not a contradiction between D.D. and representative democracy. There is no reason, why D.D. can not complement, rather than supplant or weaken representative democracy. Several countries allow citizens to propose legislative initiatives, provided a certain percentage of the population backs the petition. The constitutions of some countries, including Brazil, also stipulate that if the legislature rejects a bill introduced by popular initiative, a certain percentage of the citizens may request that it be put to a referendum. Civil society's use of D.D. has centered on efforts to control and restrain rather than to create and innovate. In part this distinction reflects the fact that, despite provision for implementing these mechanisms, initiatives are not easy to carry out. They require the convergence of political will around a relevant, motivating issue and the development of a social movement to carry the process forward. There is no clear evidence that the use of D.D. has either improved ot damaged the performance of political systems around the world. In most Latin America countries both the use and impact of D.D. has been limited. These mechanisms have been used for a variety of reasons, ranging from demagogic manipulation to the defense of traditionalists interests and the implementation of reforms sought by voters. Their results have been mixed and, at times, unanticipated. An assessment of the impact of D.D. in the region should take into account how recently they have been adopted. With the exception of Uruguay, D.D. are a relatively new feature of Latin America democracy. Hence, more time is needed to evaluate their effects and their scope of application. In general, democracy will be strengthened to the extent that use of D.D. is rooted in and contributes to strenthening citizenship. This is possible only when efforts to reinforce democracy include civic education to support the development of values associated with the exercise of political participation beyond its electoral form. In societies such as those of Latin America, where poverty is persistently high, the use of D.D. may help offset the worrisome trend towards delegitimization of the political system. Because D.D. institutions provide an additional means for political expression, they can be a valuable way for people to signal their frustations to those in power. At the same time, it is important to avoid the danger of these mechanisms being used for demagogic purposes, hence clear limits should be established regarding the types of issues that they may be used to address. While the exercise of D.D. can strengthen political legitimacy and open channels of participationthat bring together citizens and their representatives, the primary institutions for articulating and aggregating citizens preferences remain political parties and congress. These institutions themselves need to be strengthened in order to improve the quality and legitimacy od democratic representation. Finally, it is important to recognize that whatever their impact, D.D. mechanisms are likely to remain part of the democratic system. Our main concern, therefore, should be to determine how and when to use them and for what purpose.

Democracies in Development: Politics and Reform in Latin America

                               This post is a summary of a book published with the title above in 2007 by Inter-American  Development  Bank  Office  of  External  Relations  and  Harvard  University  at http://publications.iadb.org/bitstream/handle/11319/441/Democracies%20in%20Development.pdf?

                Beginning in the late 1970s, a process of transformation, the movement from authoritarian to democratic regimes, was initiated in parallel with economic reforms that changed the previously state-centered and protectionist model. Similar to the previous period, reform design was treated as a technical problem rather than one inherently related to the institutional and political features of the processes through which such reforms were to be adopted and implemented. Democratization has entailed a real redistribution of political power. First, political rights and freedoms have advanced, allowing free elections to become an important factor in the political process. But, free elections, though necessary, are an insufficient condition for democracy to function and responf effectively to the expectations of the majority. It is essential to develop policies and programs that are responsive to the will of citizens. This process, of aggregating preferences and expectations and resolving conflicting interests is affected by the structure of intermediate institutions such as, political parties, legislative bodies and civil society organizations. It is in these institutions that many democracies still face limitations. The weakness of such institutions, as well as of judicial and accountability agencies, is a key factor in the region's continued political instability. Because of their very nature, these institutional reforms are considerably more complex and difficult to implement than typical macroeconomic measure. Enhancing the management of public sector institutions, creating a more independent and effective judiciary, and establishing regulatory framework usually involves coordination and agreement among a wide array of public institutions and societal sectors, as well as a series of legislative and bureaucratic actions. If the benefits of institutional change end up being overly concentrated on relatively narrow interests, then larger societal groups will suffer. For instance, administrative reforms of the public sector, such as enhancing governmental transparency, controlling corruption, and establishing a professional civil service, require incumbent politicians to relinquish instruments of power and to open up their conduct and decisions to more intense public scrutiny. Thus, it is clear that politics matters in the process of creating, implementing, and sustaining sound institutions and adopting public policies that work to the benefits of all citizens. More precisely, however, it is the quality of democracy that matters. Not only is the exercise of democratic freedoms and civil rights intrinsically valuable in expanding the range of possibilities and choices open to citizens, it is also instrumental in identifying and conceptualizing citizens needs and building the policies and institutions that will most effectively address them. Public policies need to be adopted and implemented in a way that fully considers the views of diverse civil society organizations, without falling captive to any particular group or narrow set of interest. This require that citizens have opportunity to express their preferences and influence decision making, and that representative institutions have the capacity to effectively aggregate these preferences into consensual policies with broad bases of social support. Ensuring accountability in practice requires attention to a wide range of capabilities and structures in an array of organizations and legal and procedural areas. Not only must public officials and agencies be compelled to fully and accurately disclose their decisions and budgetary accounts, but a diverse body of independent, motivated, and capable people must monitor the information provided, detect improprieties, determine legal responsibility and impose sanctions when appropriate. At the same time, a participant, vibrant and well-organized civil society, and a pluralistic and independent media are essential to monitor government activities, expose abuse of power and violations of human rights, raise public expectations of state performance, and bring political pressure to bear so that overseeing institutions can take the appropriate remedial actions. An ombudsman is generally an independent investigator authorized to receive complaints from citizens, make the state answerable for its abuses of authority or failures to protect citizens rights, and provide compensation to victim for damages caused by ineffective or unfair governmental actions or human rights violations. The concept of the ombudsman's office has its roots in 19th century in Scandinavia, where was created to monitor public administration and provide citizens with a instrument to defend their rights. In order for democracy accountability to gain legitimacy, the public must see investigations are consistent with ethical and legal standards. In each case, the agency must possess and be capable of exercising the political autonomy required to earn the respect of the citizenry. Similarly, an evenhanded analysis must start with an acknowledgment of the wide gap between Latin America legal authority and their real world performance, independence, and authority. While it is true that these horizontal accountability agencies can help surmount the deficit of democracy, their institutional and cultural context may contribute to their failure. When operating in unfavorable national and cultural context. institutions that are sophisticated from the standpoint will have a limited impact if not accompanied by sistematic civil education and public campaigns against abuse of power, governmental corruption and mismanagement. It must not been forgotten that the importance of accountability institutions lies as much in their contribution to overall democratic development and civil education as in the particular legal outcomes they might achieve.

140th Birthday of Thomas Mann

             One week ago, on Saturday, 6th of June, the German writer Thomas Mann would complete his 140th birthday. He was a human rights defender, a democratic voice when many thought, wrongly that dictatorship was the solution. The answer is never less democracy, on the contrary. This post is a summary of five articles. The first was published at https://en.wikipedia.org/title=Thomas_Mann. The second was published  at  http://www.editoreric.com/greatlit/authors/MannT.html. The third was published at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coming_Victory_of_Democracy. The fourth was published at https://www.nytimes.com/books/97/09/21/reviews/mann-obit.html. The fifth was published at http://www.vqronline.org/ways-preserving-democracy

               Paul Thomas Mann (1875-1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels are notted for their insight into the psychology. His analysis and critique of the European and German soul, modernized German and Biblical stories, as well as the ideas of Goethe, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. His mother, Julia da Silva Bruhns, was born in Petrópolis, a Brazilian of German and Portuguese ancestry who emigrated to Germany when was seven years old. In 1930, Mann gave a public address in Berlin titled  "An Appeal  to Reason", in which he strongly denounced National Socialism. This was followed by numerous essays and lectures in which he attacked the Nazism. During the W.W. II, he made a series of anti-Nazi radio speeches. They were taped in the U.S. and sent to London, where the BBC transmitted them, hoping to reach German listeners. In 1905 he married Katia Pringsheim. The couple  had six children.                                                            His first great work and still his mostly highly regard, Buddenbrooks (1901), follow the fortunes of a promiment German family over several generations, like many English, French or Russian novel of the 1800s. A realistic novel in the tradition of Dickens, Balzac and Tolstoy. At the same time, Buddenbrooks has been admired for its clear-eyed, quietly ironic detachment from its subjects, and has been cited as a model for many a great family history to come in 1900s.John Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga comes to mind, along with countless novels of multi-generational conflict into the current era. No wonder this novel has repeatedly been adapted for films. By the end of the First World War, Mann's thoughts were shifting from his high-purposed intellectual notions toward more down-to-earth progressive and political ideas. In the post-War period he became a spokesman for democracy and humanism in the Germany. His novel, The Magic Mountain (1924), portrays a fight with the forces of enlightenment and rationality on one side and reaction and irrationality on the other, presaging the clash with nazi-fascism that was soon to engulf Europe. His next major work, Joseph and His Brothers (1933), retells the Bible story as a conflict between freedom and tyranny. The Holy Sinner (1955) is a fanciful account of the life of Pope Gregory, in a style that later, as practised by Latin America writers, might be called Magic Realism.

            The Coming Victory of Democracy(1938), this book by Thomas Mann, contains the abbreviated text of a lecture series delivered by the author from February to May in 1938, which was broadcast all over the U.S. Mann's intent was to rally support in North America for fighting the Nazism regime in Germany. In the text, the German expatriate author explains his moral, political, and artistic reasons for desiring and predicting the victory of democracy over the nazi-fascism of his own native country.

           Thomas Mann was probably the greatest of modern German novelists. In his homeland, his fame had grown steadily since his novel Buddenbrooks was published in 1901, when he was 26 years old. In Europe his name was linked with the intellectual movement that sought to bring closer harmony among people. Students of German literature found that, in his philosophy, he was highly Germanic and at the same time a citizen of the world. They considered him an heir of Goethe in expressing the German soul, of Heine in tenderness and beauty and of Kant in profundity. He made a considerable contribution of his talent to the political causes he held dear, although he liked to point out that his noncreative political activity influenced him in his own work but did not distract him. Mann foresaw the major cultural problems of this century many years before they become acute  ans before they were made a subject of open conflict. His devotion to democratic principles made him one of the personalities of the Weimar Republic. When the idea of political democracy was vanishing before the onslaught of dictatorial rules, Mann hesitated to give up his literary domain for the political battlefield. But with the rise of nazism in 1933 and with the ruthless persecution that marked the Hitler regime, his political consciousness awoke. The more the Nazi movement grew the more outspoken became the writer, and more he sided with the anti-Nazi forces. He wrote in 1938, "the opportunism and the glow of false dawn in the nazi-fascist tendencies are tainted magic, nazi-facism is so false that honorable youth throughout the world should be ashamed to have anything to do with it." Thomas Mann and his wife went to Switzerland to settle in 1953, after  spent fifteen years in the U.S.
             Within the dictatorship countries no opposition is permitted to exist. The dictators maintain as their necessary stock in trade an aggressive front that claims success and continuos victories over democracy and ruthlessly stamps out contrary views. Only democracies have civil liberties. By its very nature democracy must entertain the expression of conflicting ideas and ideologies. To this degree itis defenseless against even the doubt that is inspired about existing institutions. Doubtless this author is correct, however, when he insist that, "the power of the democratic states to avoid war does not depend om armaments. It depend on our recovering the capacity to appear formidable, which is a quality of will and demeanor."
              

                    

Education and Economic Growth: From the 19th to the 21st Century

                    This post is a summary of three articles. The first published with the title above http://www.cisco.com/web/strategy/docs/education/eeg_what_research_says.pdf. The second was published at http://www.shiftingthinking.org/?page_id=58. The third was published in 2009  at https://wbi.worldbank.org/wbi/stories/building-21st-century-knowledge-economies-job-growth-and-competitiveness-middle-east-%E2%80%93-high-

               The research summarized in this article shows that schooling is necessary for industrial development. The form of schooling that emerged in the 19th century generates specific cognitive, behavioral and social knowledge that are critical ingredients for the way industrial societies organize: production, daily life in cities, the size and fitness of the population for work, the creation and use of knowledge. Therefore, it is documented that: schooling is a necessary but not sufficient for the spectacular feats of industrial development in the 20th century. The intricacy of the relationship between schooling and economic growth is confirmed by the technical economics literature. Economists have demonstrated that both individuals and societies gain from the investments made in schooling. That education is an essential ingredient of prosperity is at once obvious and contentious. This article offers one way of arriving at a single overarching generalization about the relationship between education and economic growth. The hypothesis is that making investments in all the elements of a school system (teachers, buildings, books, ICT, testing, etc.) and then forcing young people to attend them is a necessary but not sufficient condition for expanding the GDP. However, the argument here is that the specific cognitive, behavioral and social knowledge, that is the basic result of a specific form of schooling introduced in the 19th century, played and continues to play a crucial role in industrial development. The evidence is overwhelming. Where industry triumphed so did GDP growth. Historical estimates for the year 1900 put participation rates in primary education at under 40% in most parts of the world, except North America and Western Europe, where the rate was around 70%. The relationship between economic growth and education has been one of the central threads of economic analysis. Both Adam Smith in the 18th century and Alfred Marshall in the 19th century, addressed the question of how investments in education influence the wealth of nations. But the historical record and the evidence collected by some social scientists are less definitive regarding the link between industrial societies and economic growth. There are examples of well schooled societies, the former Soviet Union that failed to match the growth rates of Europe, Japan and U.S. Crucially it is how the specific cognitive attributes generated by schooling is used is that one of the main distinguishing features between the low growth societies and the higher growth ones. The 20th century was the education century. For the first time in human history the majority of the world's population learned to read and write. The introduction and spread of compulsory schooling made this happen. The 20th century also demonstrated that this is indispensable for economic prosperity and social well-being. For the 21th century we know is that there are signs in the world around us already that point to an even more significant role, and potential payoff from investing in learning. Taking this overall positive environment for education spending over the next twenty years, the calculations assume that education spending will gradually converge to 6% GDP. Stll, taken that education will be whole, the amount of spending is impressive and certainly means that education as a will be a very dynamic part of global, regional and local economies. There will be significant activity in areas like: teacher training; educational infrastructure like libraries, schools, etc; processes of educational management. Furthermore, it is clear that the transformation of this sector towards greater personalization and co-production, if it occurs, will entail major efforts in all parts of today's school systems. If supply side constraints emerge, such as finding a sufficient number of qualified teachers. Management methods, organizational models that alter how schools work can also be expected to strive to make the change to "best practice". Right now there is no way to tell if there will be changes in the composition of the economy or in the role of schooling, but is possible that the strong positive relationship between what people know and the wealth of society, already evident from the industrial era, could become even clearer in the future.

             The late 20th century was a period of major social and economic changes. It was also a time in which there were big changes in knowledge. This period is now known as the beginning of the Knowledge Age, to distinguish it from the Industrial Age. The Knowledge Age is a new, advanced form of capitalism in which knowledge and ideas are the main source of economic growth ( more important than land, labour, or other 'tangible resource'). As a result, new kinds of workers, with new skills are required. Knowledge is now thought of being like a form of energy, as a system of networks and flows. It is produced, not by individual experts, but by 'collectising intelligence', that is groups of people with complementary expertise who collaborate for specific purpose. Knowledge Age workers need to be able to assess new information quickly. They need to be adaptable, creative and innovative, and to be able to understand things as a sytem or 'big picture' level. Most importantly, they need to think and learn for themselves. Education is, of course, about much more than simply preparing people for work. It has other important goals: for example, developing social and citizenship skills, providing equal opportunity, and building social cohesion. Expressed this way, these are 20th century goals. What might these goals look like in the 21st century context.

             We can learn from several countries that took the risk of redefining their future during the last two decades. For example, in Finland, Ireland, Korea, and Singapore, innovation and the use of knowledge were critical succcess factors. Increasing the quantity and quality of knowledge in the economy made them agile in adapting to economic shift and demands, and better able to participate in international networking so they could take advantage of new information and opportunities. They raised the quality of their education system at all levels. They promoted innovation where creativity could flourish in apllied research, attracting investment to support new ideas. They made large investment in the ICT infrastructure and in using the internet for education and e-government. Also these countries have governments that people can trust. They were therefore able to implement speedy reforms, gain commitment of leadership, and coordinate key sectors, and communicate among all stakeholders.