Creating a workers' public sphere

Juan B. Justo's analysis of state and society

pp. 71-107

in: Nicola Miller, Reinventing modernity in Latin America, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008

Abstract

Latin America has a long history of trying to make its founding ideal of popular sovereignty a reality.² In societies that became notorious, especially in the mid-twentieth century, for investing all hopes of modernization in the state, the term civil society only acquired celebrity status during the 1980s,³ but the debates that lie behind it have been periodically revived throughout Latin America's independent history. The enduring question has been how to reconcile constitutional democracy, economic efficiency, and social inclusion. The options available for doing so have often seemed to be limited to liberalism (now neoliberalism) or populism (now, too, in neo-mode), both of which have distinct drawbacks. Latin American liberalism has historically sustained a restricted set of democratic procedures and a degree of (erratic) economic success, but has done little to address social exclusion. Populism has a more positive record on inclusion, from which it draws a degree of legitimacy, but it tends to be even more limited than liberalism in commitment to democratic rights (it draws its life-blood from national elections, but has often shown scant regard for local democracy or for niceties such as the separation of powers) and has not proved particularly impressive on economic efficiency either.