State and Society in Conflict; Comparative Perspectives on Andean Crises

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State and Society in Conflict; Comparative Perspectives on Andean Crises by Paul W. Drake;

Eric HershbergReview by: Ton SalmanRevista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe / European Review of LatinAmerican and Caribbean Studies, No. 85 (October 2008), pp. 137-140Published by: Centrum voor Studie en Documentatie van Latijns Amerika (CEDLA)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25676336 .

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European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 85, October 2008 | 137

contemporary processes in other Latin American countries such as Bolivia. Thevolume under review thus also raises some questions that require future research.

Willem AssiesUniversiteit van Leiden

Notes1. Andres Guerrero, La desintegracion de la administration etnica en el Ecuador , in Jose Almeida et

al (comp.) Sismo etnico en el Ecuador. Quito: CEDIME, Abya Yala, 1993.2. William Roseberry (1994) Hegemony and the Language of Contention , inGilbert M. Joseph, and

Daniel Nugent (eds), Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of RuleinModern Mexico. Durham: Duke University Press, 1994.

3. Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniel Nugent (eds), Everyday forms of State Formation: Revolution and the

Negotiation of Rule inModern Mexico. Durham: Duke University Press, 1994.

- State and Society in Conflict; Comparative Perspectives on Andean Crises, edited by Paul W. Drake and Eric Hershberg. Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh

Press, 2006.

It is a promising way of capturing the contemporary political and social turbulences affecting theAndean region: coining it as a conflict between state and society. But at the same time, it triggers an important question the authors must alsohave anticipated: is there such a thing as a clear-cut split, or even distinction, between the state and society? There is, to begin with, theMarxian assertion that thestate is not the expression or institutional regulative system of the whole of free

wills in society, who collectively decided that some entity should adjudicate, govern and secure each and everyone s liberties and activities. Additionally, there isthe idea that the state should be analysed as a plethora of agents, interests andstrife, nd that, on the other hand, society should be analysed as co-constituted by

-

internalized and routinized -legislation, regulation, and legal identities and pre

rogatives, or, for example, by state presence. Finally, there is the suggestion expressed inChapter 3 by Ann Mason and Arlene Tickner, that transnational flowsand processes slice through national spaces and connect a complex array of civilsociety actors, religious and ethnic associations, business and finance organizations, local government, and criminal structures (p. 76). In their introduction, theeditors do not really address this issue of the alleged duality of state and society, butclarify their position by interpreting he state as, first and foremost, the executor ofpolicies (such as a security regime focused on anti-drugs measures, neoliberal reforms, and establishing a political regime of [poorly installed] representative democ

racies) that often were imposed from abroad, leading to deteriorated relations withsociety and a failure to incorporate, represent, and respond to vast segments of thepopulation forwhich the state is increasingly distant, ifnot alien (p. 2).

This, however, leaves the question of the societal sectors inducing and supporting these policies unaccounted for. Additionally, itmisses, as one of the contributors, Jo-Marie Burt proposes, a relational perspective on state and society [... providing ...] insights about the nature of contestation over the forms and scope ofstate and citizenship and [... helping to ...] illuminate the mechanisms and processes that shape political outcomes (p. 223). The issue is symptomatic for a notfully coherent, somewhat conceptually ambivalent compilation of contributions -







138 |Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe 85, octubre de 2008

contributions which nevertheless are very worthwhile and insightful.The book consists of 10 chapters, of which the first one is an introduction by

the editors. In it the authors highlight the limited space for manoeuvre Andeangovernments had during the last decades due to foreign pressures and influences,and connect these to the traditionally weak institutions and party systems, the en

during inequality and exclusion characterizing the continent, and the subsequentincreasing tendency to take semi-authoritarian ways out. They emphasize that thecrises in the Andean countries should not be addressed as individual cases, but

comparatively. Next, they identify themain dimensions of the crises: the lack of anational project, the absence of a convincing alternative economic model, and,thirdly, contemporary trend towards unorthodox modes of participation (p. 17),boosting social movements which, however, remain rather blunt instruments, frequently incapable of representing their constituents to the state in an institutionalized and enduring manner (p. 19). This brings us to the fourth dimension: [t]heinadequacy of regular forms of political participation has enflamed the crisis of

governability and of democracy (p. 20). They finalize with a caveat on the differences between the northern and central Andes and with a brief sketch of the crisesin the countries covered in this volume: Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and

Bolivia. One remarkable feature of the analytical contours sketched in the introduction

isthe

apparent aspirationto restore more

regimentedand calmer forms of

political participation. The unmediated forms of participation and uncontrolled

popular mobilization (17) are, on the one hand, praised for increasing politicalparticipation (p. 17) and for providing creative, necessary and valuable channelsfor the expression of discontent (19), but they are on the other hand diagnosed as

having exceed(ed) new forms of institutionalization (p. 20). There seems to be abit of ambiguity here: the pursuit of a new institutionalization is supported muchstronger than the unavoidable mayhem accompanying such a process. The authors

fear the process might elicit authoritarian outcomes (p. 31). Should not the pre

sent, justified and forceful criticism towards the state s severely eroded ability tocarry out even itsmost basic functions (p. 22) and the carving out of innovative

mechanisms to partake in decision-making be given a bit more credit - and shouldnot the creativity be given a bit more credence? May the contemporary crisis of

representation [not be ...] a necessary condition for the creation of radically newforms of political representation and participation [...] , as the book s contributorDonna Lee Van Cott (p. 183) reminds us?

Due to space limits, not all remaining contributions can be discussed here. Mason and Tickner s Chapter 3 is a notable one, elaborating how transregional fea

tures, inparticular security , co-shaped the current crises. Drugs defined as a security threat, they argue, was one of the key elements in the configuration of a re

gional security architecture built on U.S., [and] not necessarily Andean, objectives(p. 79). They additionally address the spillover of the Colombian conflict, transnational crime involving drugs, arms and money laundering, and the drug-relatedincreased U.S. military presence in the region, concluding that national-level

problems are made more intransigent s they are exacerbated and even transformed

by transregional security dynamic and the involvement of extranational nonstateactors

(p. 92).Chapter 5 by Eric Hershberg leftme somewhat puzzled. His account of how in







European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 85, October 2008 | 139

Colombia the second-generation-reforms in the 1990s were thwarted by popular(political) opposition focuses on the fact that the first generation reforms of open

ing up to external markets and the liberalization of trade and capital flows had beenimplemented with comparatively little open dispute (p. 137) mainly because of

exclusionary policy-making (p. 150), whereas even the most modest second generation reform is likely to prove highly conflictive (p. 139). The point is elaborated in a curious way, inwhich on the one hand the stalemate between honour

ing democracy and having to count with the expanded political space for domesticactors (p. 134) versus the urgent pursuit of these reforms is spelled out, and on theother hand these reforms are presented as considered by policy makers as essentialto meet the challenges of globalization (p. 135), as an ambitious agenda for re

fashioning the institutions that help to configure relations between state and society (p. 137), as carefully designed policies (p. 139), and as fostered by technocrats who plead, hardly without reason, for the need to enact painful reform(p. 152). It is, to begin with, disputable whether the outcome of this stalemate canand should be coined a policy paralysis [... which] may well have the unanticipated consequence of further eroding legitimacy (p. 152. In the second place, havethe intentions and possible outcomes of these second generation reforms ( the dis

mantling of inherited mechanisms for financing and delivering an array of public

goods, rangingfrom education to healthcare to retirement

pensions , p. 138) reallybeen so imperative, so inoffensive for the poorer Colombians; were the pains fairlydistributed, and was the resistance to them inColombia really somistaken?

Finally, Deborah Yashar s article (Chapter 7) is excellent. She focuses on ex

plaining the emergence of indigenous movements inEcuador and Bolivia, comparing them with Peru, highlighting three factors: changing citizenship regimes,transcommunity networks and political associational space. She additionally delvesinto the protagonism of these movements in recent political events in both countries, and ends with arguing that these movements have proposed alternative

methods of implementing democratic accountability (191) - instead of being coconstitutive of the current democratic crisis. In the first section of the chapter heranalysis is superb, so it is a pity that there are a few slips in her text. Her claim thatindigenous movements decisively contributed to the toppling of several presidents(pp. 190, 209) is debatable where she includes the fall of Lucio Gutierrez of Ecuador in 2005; most observers agree that itwas, in themain, theQuito middle classesthat pulled this off. Her account of Bolivian developments, especially where shediscusses the networking and associational space, should have highlighted muchmore the crucial impact of the Ley de Participation Popular, launched in 1994,conspicuously by a neoliberal administration, resulting in an extensive decentralization of the country s political-administrative structure due towhich the municipalitybecame a significant political arena. This law also allowed indigenous communities tobe represented by their traditional authorities, thus opening up local government toindigenous participation.

Additional chapters cover a range of subjects. Jeremy Adelman, in Chapter 2,talks about the Andean states as unfinished , meaning that important swaths ofsociety still fail to accept underlying rules of nationhood (p. 41). Chapter 4, byJohn

Sheanan,addresses

povertyand economic dilemmas of theAndean

countries,and Chapter 6, by Donna Lee Van Cott, argues that indigenous movements have







140 |Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe 85, octubre de 2008

turned the current crisis into an opportunity to gain prominence in the countriespolitical and public debates. In Chapter 8, by Jo-Marie Burt, ameticulous analysis

of how changing state-society/citizenship patterns have influenced the ways societal mobilization came about in Peru is presented. Francisco Gutierrez Sanin, inChapter 9, offers an analysis of why in particular national congresses in Ecuadorand Colombia are also critically evaluated inboth countries. Finally, inChapter 10,

Miriam Kornblith reconstructs the quest for genuine democracy inVenezuela,both explaining the rise of Chavez, and offering a critical assessment of his contribution to this goal.

All contributions make worthwhile reading, are written by scholars who knowtheir trade, and do not hesitate to take a stand. As awhole however, this compilationisnot balanced: not in the application of the conceptual point of departure, not in thescope, and not in the varying intentions f the different uthor s contributions.

Ton Salman

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

- Women and Politics inChile, por Susan Franceschet. Boulder, CO, Lynne Rienner (2005).

Latinoamerica ha avanzado en la inclusion de las mujeres en la arena politica. Sinembargo, vale la pena detenerse amirar la forma y los contenidos que los distintoscontextos politicos permiten a lasmujeres en su ejercicio de la politica, para entender asi en que consiste dicha inclusion. En Women and Politics inChile, Franceschet analiza desde la ciencia politica diferentes dimensiones socio-historicas queponen en contexto la participacion politica de lasmujeres en el Chile de hoy, donde aun falta mucho por avanzar.

Este libro se centra en la evolution la participacion en politica de la mujer en

Chile durante gran parte del siglo XX. La historia de participacion femenina querevisa aqui Franceschet va desde 1932 hasta nuestros dias, dividiendo el periodo entres grandes etapas: la primera, revisa desde 1932 hasta el golpe de estado en 1973;la segunda, aborda el periodo de la dictadura entre 1973 y 1990; y la tercera, analiza el periodo democratico entre 1990 en adelante. La autora analiza y reconstruyeel periodo basicamente desde entrevistas a mujeres que han tenido algun tipo de

participacion en la historia social o politica en Chile. Tambien incluye en el analisis datos de information secundaria y una importante revision bibliografica sobre

politica y genero en Chile.El libro destaca que si bien los cambios en la participacion femenina en Chile

evidencian un cambio sustantivo en la extension democratica hacia las mujeres,este mismo cambio muestra que los avances en tal redefinition han sido lentos, yno necesariamente incluyen, en la practica, un reconocimiento de lasmujeres comoactores politicos iguales. Las mujeres pueden entrar mas facilmente a la baja politica, pero no asi a la alta politica. Y cuando ingresan como representantes de poderejecutivo o legislativo es mas probable que sean de clase media- alta y portadorasde un discurso de modernization y cambio a nivel socio-institucional. En conse

cuencia, resultapertinente preguntarse por

el rol quejuegan

lasmujeres

cuando

ingresan en la politica formal. ^,Las mujeres estan ahi como un medio o como un





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State and Society in Conflict; Comparative Perspectives on Andean Crises