On the Chilean "transition" part 2

While Agüero argues that the Chilean transition is still an unfinished process, leftist intellectual and academic M. A. Garretón contends that the transition is long over. Indeed, he is uncomfortable with the term itself and instead prefers to talk about the consolidation of an "incomplete democracy" and of a "stalled democratization." For Garretón, also in dialogue with transitology literature, there are three types of processes of democratization, even though they cannot be seen as existing in a "pure" state: The first ones are democratic foundations (existing for the first time). The second ones are properly transitions, "the passage from a formal military or authoritarian regime to a basically democratic regime, however incomplete or imperfect the latter may be" (42). The third type are democratic reforms. Using this typology, he goes on to affirm that the Chilean transition "ended some time ago," even though the problem of the quality of democracy persists, and argues —in a quite irritated tone— that claiming that the transition is still going on, or is unfinished, means that we are aiming at too perfect of an objective, rendering the concept of transition useless altogether.

The Chilean transition, according to Garretón, was triggered by the 1988 plebiscite and ended with the inauguration of the first democratic government in March of 1990.Even though he is completely opposed to the idea that the transition has not taken place, or that we are still under a transition, he seems to contradict himself in other parts of his argument, when he says that the end of the transition involves overcoming authoritarian enclaves. In this way he takes issue with the interpretation of the transition as a "transformism" put forward by his former intellectual collaborator and co-author Tomás Moulian, claiming that Moulian is driven by a nostalgic and dogmatic perspective, still "dreaming" of a transition between modes of production (this allows Garretón to situate himself along the lines of "political realism"). For Garretón, two problems can be identified in Chile's incomplete democracy: the persistence and consolidation of institutional and ethical-symbolic "authoritarian enclaves" and the fact that the national state is no longer the referent for decision-making processes, making democracy virtually irrelevant.The factors that make democracy flawed are the institutional and representational weakness of the democratic regime, the cultural weakness due to the lack of basic societal consensus (the "illusion of consensus", plus the deep seated fear of disagreement and conflict), and the deterioration of the state as a referent for national cohesion (147). However, he claims that the transition was successful in other areas such as building of a stable political coalition and the administration of the economy. In any case, he argues that the unresolved problems of the Chilean transition are "inherent to any transition and were unavoidable" (149) and that for that reason "cannot be criticized" (150).

On the other hand, Garretón is not ingenuous, he does challenge the idea that Chile has achieved a successful "double transition" to democracy and to market economy. But, he radically disagrees with the view represented by Moulian that emphasizes the continuity of the neoliberal model inherited from dictatorship. He argues that both of these perspectives conflate democracy with an economic system, either with "free market" or with socialism. He distances himself from these views and accuses them of being ideologically driven (implicitly suggesting that his perspective would then be "uncontaminated" by ideology), challenging the idea that any given economic system leads to a particular political system altogether, arguing that these two realms are not mutually determined, and that democracy has a value on its own right.For this reason he also takes issue with Marxists analyses coming from CEPAL, as they would make democracy a dependent variable of economic dynamics (class-based conflicts, domination, foreign interests, etc.) in an immutable, deterministic manner that does not leave room for historic specificity or variation, nor makes the study of other aspects of society necessary.

Garretón contends that the problem is that there are different ethos confounded in the notion of democracy, resulting in different assessments of processes of democratization. From a liberal ethos, democracy is equated to "freedom"; while from a socialist ethos, democracy is identified with social equality; and finally, from a communitarian ethos, democracy means belonging to a community. As a result of a series of brutal dictatorships throughout the region, democracy came to be equated in Latin America with the end of the dictatorships, even if this would not necessarily put an end to capitalism or exploitation. Democracy conceived as what is not dictatorship implies of course a narrow definition, that does not specify what kind of society a democracy should be. Yet, he also notes that democracy has been invoked as an ethical principle to be extended to other areas such as school, family and gender relations, what Garretón sees as a necessarily "metaphoric" extension since democracy refers only to the institutional political regime based on competitive elections between political parties (showing his own narrow conception of democracy).

The process of democratization was then successful in terms of replacing the authoritarian regime for a system of competitive electoral politics; however, Garretón himself seems to suggest that despite the existence of political parties, the mechanisms that channel citizen's interest in their programs are flawed, citizens are for the most part excluded from decision-making. Garretón shows great concern with the fact that democracy, or any other political regime for that matter, have become irrelevant since the state has been displaced as the referent for citizenship and decision-making by national and transnational de facto powers. Historically, under the national-popular project, political practice in Chile was formulated as the field of negotiation of social rights between the citizens and the state. When that model of society was dismantled after the military coup and replaced by an authoritarian neoliberal model, the meaning of citizenship was transformed, and political practice deemed unnecessary: under this model, citizens are considered only as expected to obtain services and goods in the market according to their individual capacity. So, politico-institutional order: democratic, but flawed and irrelevant. Socioeconomic order: independent from politics. Cultural-symbolic order: flawed, filled with challenges, such as making the state a referent for politics and for national unity. Transition, over and unquestionable. Democracy, incomplete.

Also sympathetic but moderately critical of the governments of the Concertación is political scientist from FLACSO, Justo Tovar."La Negociación de la Transición Democrática en Chile (1983-1989)." Estudio de caso no. 42, Universidad de Chile. Departamento de Ingeniería Industrial. Santiago de Chile, 1999. He agrees that what Chileans have witnessed is a series of limited changes that still do not to lead to an "authentic democracy." Furthermore, he documents how the dictatorship was formulated as a process that involved three distinct phases: of "recuperation," characterized by the military coup and the establishment of the 1980 constitution; of "transition," with a mixed government formed by elected civilians and designated actors; and of "normalization," when the congress would be formed completely by elected members, but the armed forces remained as the guarantors of the new institutional order and of national security. These logics were explicitly formulated by Jaime Guzmán already in 1979, when he talked about the need to create a reality such that "if the adversaries ever get to govern, they see themselves so constrained to take actions not very different than one would pursue." (Jaime Guzmán, "El Camino Político." Revista Realidad, Año 1, n. 7, Santiago de Chile, 1979. http://www.revistarealidad.cl/archivos/1979/diciembre_n_7/numero7.htm (My translation).)

Tovar emphasizes the transactional nature of the transition, driven by a pragmatic search for areas of consensus and the exclusion of "divisive issues," but acknowledges the complex scenario and the precarious conditions for negotiation the political actors faced then. Writing in 1999, he goes on to conclude that the transition has not finished, but disagrees with the perspectives that only emphasize continuity, arguing that is undeniable that there have been advances towards democratization as a process, such as the reform on municipal elections and the progressive ability of civilian presidents to have an influence on the promotion and removal of military personnel. Moreover, he criticizes Moulian's thesis, claiming that the transition was always formulated at the political-institutional level, and not as a confrontation of antagonistic models of society. Tovar acknowledges however, that social reconciliation is one of the most unsolved aspects of the transition.

The following examples help us illustrate the kind of constraints that democratic governments faced in the post-dictatorship:

In May 1995, another incident re-staged and made evident the power that the military still held. DINA (Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional: Pinochet's intelligence agency, responsible for most of the human-rights violations under dictatorship through Operación Condor and Operación Colombo) director Manuel Contreras received a sentence along with another military officer, Pedro Espinoza, for the killing of Orlando Letelier, a case that was not covered by the 1978 Amnesty Law and which involved a US citizen (Letelier's secretary Ronni Moffitt). Also in a defiant attitude and with the complicit help and protection of the military, they both resisted imprisonment for many months, and eventually negotiated to do their time in a luxury prison specially constructed for them (“Punta Peuco”) and under the custody of military (rather than civilian) guards. If yet technically the case ended on a judicial success of trying and convicting Contreras and Espinoza, symbolically the incident made evident once more the little power and authority that civilian governments had over Pinochet's collaborators.

And then, in 1998, by the end of Frei's administration, Pinochet stepped down as army commander and became a Senator for Life in the National Congress. In another example of what Alexander Wilde calls the "expressive politics" of the transition, many members of the congress received him on his first day as a civilian with banners, booing him. For many, this was an unbearable reminder of his impunity, granted by the way that the transition had been 'pacted' a decade before. When some legislators from the Concertación made an attempt to impeach Pinochet, Frei's government opposed such measure, fearful that it would result in a political destabilization and that it would discredit the whole transitional process initiated with the previous administration.