Myth of Civil Society: Social Capital and Democratic Consolidation in Spain and Brazil, The

Latin American Politics and Society, Summer 2005 by Hilbink, Elisabeth

Once again, the contrast Encarnación draws between Spain and Brazil is stark and very real, but one is forced to wonder what broader structural factors might account for the very different nature and performance of state institutions in the two countries. From what sources, for example, do the military and the regional bosses derive their enormous power in Brazil? And why, if Encarnación is correct, did Opus Dei technocrats in Spain prove to be so independent, pragmatic, and even progressive, while their equivalents in Latin America (the Chilean case comes to mincl) were strongly allied with authoritarian institutions and orthodox neoliberal economics? I pose these questions somewhat rhetorically so as to emphasize the structural roots of the political institutions that Encarnación highlights.

The third and final dimension of Encarnación's argument regarding the sources of social capital is the strength of political parties and the party system. Where parties are able to integrate and represent society, he holds, they will have the capacity to promote cooperation and moderation. In Spain, political parties, beginning with the revived Communists and Socialists, proved to have the necessary legitimacy and capacity both to represent the interests of average citizens and to tame more radical demands. Both leftist parties modeled and encouraged moderation and trust in the transition and, by acting as parent organizations, managed to coordinate and integrate demands from diverse groups in civil society. Brazil's political parties, in contrast, are notoriously weak, and its party system fragmented and volatile. As noted, Brazilian politics has traditionally been organized clientelistically and, at least until the rise of the Workers' Party (PT) in the late 1980s, there have been no programmatic parties with a strong national following. Therefore, groups in civil society have generally avoided alliances with political parties, preferring to attempt direct appeals to, or confrontations with, the state. The well-known result has been the incapacity of Brazilian politicians to generate consensus and promote collaboration to pursue the public good. Brazil remains trapped in a vicious cycle of mistrust, zero-sum competition, and, in many areas, policy failure.

Few readers would argue with Encarnación's characterization of the role parties have played in the two countries; yet, again, his argument begs the question of why and how these political institutions have developed and performed as they have. In addition to their very different social and economic characteristics, the geopolitical location of the two countries strikes me as crucial. For example, although the Socialists and Communists were vilified and persecuted under the Franco regime, they could count (clandestinely or in exile) on the intellectual and political support of their counterparts in surrounding post-World War II democracies (especially France and Italy). At the same time, Franco regime elites had incentives emanating from Europe to accommodate leftists, along with successful examples of how to integrate them into capitalist development models. Brazil, by contrast, was squarely within the U.S. sphere of influence, where the specter of a Cuban-style revolution provoked a brutal response. Far from having incentives to accommodate or even tolerate the left, military regime leaders in Brazil (as elsewhere on the continent) were trained and encouraged by the continental superpower to stamp out or silence Marxist "subversives."