PFHCSC: Evaluación

Copio el mensaje del blog de Enrique:

Queridas y queridos alumnos,

Ya está disponible el borrador del texto para la evaluación. Les ofrecemos una disculpa por el retraso pero nos ha tomado más de lo anticipado poder estructurar el trabajo de manera coherente y encontramos que teníamos muchas cosas que decir, resultado de todo el trabajo que realizamos con ustedes en el curso.

Como lo  platicamos en clase la tarea será que ustedes revisen el texto y elaboren un dictamen o cuando menos una objeción a el. Mínimamente su trabajo deberá contar con los siguientes elementos:

1. Un párrafo describiendo el mérito del texto. No se trata de una repetición de la síntesis del texto, sino más bien en sus propias palabras decir cual es el problema central que el texto trata, cuál es su tesis central y cuál es su argumento.

2. Un párrafo argumentando una objeción al texto. Preferentemente la objeción debe ser interna. Eso quiere decir que aún aceptando los supuestos del trabajo, explicar que el trabajo no logra su propio propósito o es incoherente con el, o derrota su propio propósito.

3. Un párrafo recuperando otros aspectos que les parezca n problemáticos.

4. Sugerencias al texto

5. Comentarios adicionales si los hay.

Otra opción para realizar su trabajo final es que en vez de realizar una objeción realicen un dictamen del texto. Para ello tienen que llenar a conciencia, con honestidad intelectual y generosidad académica un formato como el siguiente.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gso7c2gys3i2ft4/Formato%20dictamen%20Luis%20Enrique%20Camacho.docx?dl=0

Quienes quieren ser evaluados por favor escriban a mi correo para recibir una copia del texto lo antes posible. No lo puedo publicar aquí porque luego cuando el editor corra el programa antiplagio, va a salir que ya estaba publicado aquí.

Muchas gracias por su participación en el curso y por su ayuda en este texto. Francisco y yo estamos contentos con el resultado y estamos en deuda con ustedes.

Feliz año!

PFHCSC: Semana 14, ¿Qué se puede hacer?

Semana 14: Controlling Corruption Through Collective Action, Mungiu-Pippidi

Central Idea: “In order to place effective checks on these officials [who act as patrons or gatekeepers for corruption in patrimonial regimes], thereby creating real accountability, there must exist at the grassroots level an active and enlightened citizenry rather than simply dependent clients or disempowered individuals” (103).

·         “Democratization is increasingly producing a new type of regime—one in which rulers who monopolize power and treat the state as their own patrimony are succeeded by competing political groupings or parties that practice similarly nonuniversal allocation of public resources based on patronage, nepotism, and the exchange of favors. (…) Despite the presence of political pluralism and contested elections in these societies, ethical universalism fails to take hold as the main rule of the game, and winners of the political process, in turn, treat the state as the major source of spoils, feeding off the public resources that they divert toward their clients” (101). Political competition in itself (maybe also economic competition) does not in itself solve particularism, patrimonialism or corruption. Competition does not ensure that a set of rules oriented at maximum social welfare will exist or even develop.

·         “It seems that ethical universalism becomes an institution (a widespread norm endorsed by the majority) rather than a mere ideology of the enlightened when 1) a significant part of society shares the belief in the superiority of ethical universalism over particularism as a mode of governance, and 2) enough individuals are also willing to act on this belief to make it a reality. This does not necessarily require an absolute majority, but rather a majority of active public opinion, including a fraction of the elite” (104). Public opinion (defined as that of the media and an active citizenry) can shape what the rules are when they act as watchdogs and are not relegated to being clients of the government. Mungiu-Pippidi focuses on what she considers to be a set of rules called “ethical universalism”, but it may be more a matter of justice than of ethics, as she also calls it “an optimal equilibrium that maximizes social welfare” (109).

·         Civil society must “have the permanent capability to exercise normative constraints, and not be forced to rely solely on the vertical accountability provided by elections” (109) through the extensive use of civil associations and political participation. In parallel, “the media must be pluralistic and must carry out their watchdog duties effectively and credibly in order to generate normative constraints. The media must promote ethical universalism as the chief principle of governance and denounce governments captured by private interests” (110). This ensures that there is one set of rules for everyone, and that the government cannot rely on its authority or clientelistic relationships with the citizenry or the media to circumvent them.

The “normative constraints” cited by Mungiu-Pippidi are (103-104):

·         Values: “A prevailing social norm of ethical universalism based on values such as fairness and honesty”

·         Social capital: “A widespread habit of engaging in formal or informal collective action around shared interests, purposes, and values”

·         Civil society: “A dense network of voluntary associations (including the NGOs in the Western understanding of the term, but also unions, religious groups, and the like)”

·         Civic culture: “Sustained participation and political engagement of the people, for instance through the media or social movements”

Mungiu-Pippidi tests her central thesis empirically and finds a “significant positive relationship between control of corruption and:

·         “the number of associations (CSOs) per capita that explains 54% of the total variation, controlling for either human development or GDP per capita”

·         “freedom of the press” (67%), via Freedom House’s index

·         “Number of internet connections” (71%), used as an indicator of individual autonomy and access to information

·         “Protestantism is the major religious denomination” (61%), which seems to be relevant due to its “egalitarian ethos, which may have worked indirectly to support a general orientation toward ethical universalism, literacy, and the promotion of individualism”.

·         Joined in an OLS regression, these four variables account for “nearly 78% of the cases” and 84% “when outliers are eliminated” (107).

These percentages refer to how much of the variation in countries’ measure in the World Bank Institute’s control of corruption indicator can be traced to these four characteristics, both individually and as a group.

Mungiu-Pippidi then goes on to explain the problems faced by external donors when financing anticorruption projects in developing countries. These are:

·         Insufficient concreteness: “Far too many projects deal with corruption in general, with a focus on “raising awareness”, while only a handful directly attack corruption in a specific organization or branch of government” (113).

·         Poor contextualization: “To challenge corruption, one must understand how it works in a specific environment. Importing anticorruption policies from developed to less-developed countries, where institutional fit is poor, cannot succeed” (113).

·         Confusion between civil society’s role as a watchdog over the government and a deliverer of services for that same government: “If civil society is funded by the government or asked by its donors to carry out joint programs with the government that it is supposed to monitor, it risks jeopardizing its critical oversight role, and a client-patron relationship may emerge instead” (113).

·         Lack of a local focus: “As normative constraints in corrupt societies are more often exercised against whistleblowers than against corrupt officials, it is essential that donor groups provide political support and take their cues from local actors rather than trying themselves to direct the creation of domestic forces in favor of change” (114).

Regarding a possible concept of corruption as it relates to particularism and patrimonialism, Mungiu-Pippidi says that “in a society dominated by particularism, it is more convenient for individuals to try to accede to the privileged group or to become clients of influential patrons tan to engage in a long-term battle to change the rule of the game to ethical universalism. In such societies, there is no tradition of association between equals, since trust is particularistic and is built on clans, patrons, and clients. Attempts to change this are bound to have high costs with few immediate returns. Any progress toward ethical universalism would threaten the existing order, and the predators and patrons who would fight against such progress are likely to be greater in number, richer, and better placed in the society than in the new horizontally structured associations” (109).

PFHCSC: Semana 13, Corrupción y Estado de derecho: El caso de Dinamarca

Semana 13: The Road to Denmark, Mungiu-Pippidi

Central Idea: “The historical road to the contemporary state should not be seen as a linear progression toward less patrimonialism on the one hand and more democracy and accountability on the other. As welfare and development tasks shift from the community to the government, there is an accompanying increase in corruption opportunities and a loss of traditional systems of self-control over common goods” (75). It does not make sense to copy the current structures of anticorruption achievers, as this does not take their development or social context into account. It is more useful to look at their historical development, as previous forms of contemporary anticorruption achievers are more similar to current middle and low-income countries and their governments.

·         The analyzed cases (Denmark, Great Britain, France) took different routes, but their specific context in the 18^th and 19^th centuries allowed for the rule of law, an autonomous bureaucracy, and political socialization of new groups to be achieved before their governments attempted to enfranchise their entire populations. This situation is rare in the world at large, especially in countries where free elections are achieved before the rule of law or political accountability.

·         Modern states have more responsibilities than their predecessors, as well as the added responsibility of seeking the common good if they are liberal democracies. “It may be freer of traditional privilege, more merit-oriented, and more objective, but it also has far more tasks to perform than people or traditional communities used to undertake before by themselves and far more resources as well” (75).

Three different routes to good governance and corruption control are analyzed in the following successful cases:

-          The Danish model. An enlightened despot centralized power and gradually replaced the traditional nobility with middle-class bureaucrats who are sworn in directly by the king and rely on income from their public office (i.e. their loyalty to the king) to sustain themselves, later setting this arrangement into a constitution. This process was gradual and took about 160 years (from the creation of the absolute monarchy under Frederick III in 1660 to the Congress of Vienna in 1815, when only about 10% of Danish civil servants were nobles and it was mandatory for them to hold a law degree). It gave good results by creating a context where the government is accountable to civil society because it needs it to form its bureaucracy, and civil society is accountable to the government because civil society only has power by participating in the government’s meritocratic system. However, the process may only be an option for smaller polities with clearly delineated borders (such as island nations or Asian monarchies).

-          The Revolutionary model. Example: France. The French Revolution seeks to do away with favoritism and particularism in favor of meritocracy and equal representation, as it is considered that corruption is a part of human nature that must be prevented instead of punished. The main difference between this model and the others is that an overhaul of the system happens, the bureaucracy’s ties to local systems of governance remains by allowing the government to be managed by an elite. While it achieves an overhaul of the old system (l’Ancien Regime), it leaves the political system open to factions and patronage, mostly with local ties that remain similar to the old regime. Similar to the United States, it included “phases of intense politicization, public resources spoiling, and favoritism –challenges very similar to those facing today’s middle-income developing countries” (74). The process took about 80 years (from the first attempts at transparency in Louis XVI’s Estates General, which directly caused the French Revolution in 1789, to the creation of the Third Republic in 1870, when the republican form of government was established and attention was directed at colonial expansion).

-          The Reform model. Example: Great Britain. Especially after the colonial reconfiguration brought on by the Seven Years War in the 1760s (when Great Britain gained Canada and India from France and Portugal), it was clear that the British model of private colonialism was not getting as many resources to the government’s coffers as it should. This led to parliamentary oversight reform that changed the colonies’ political status (first by taking them from the private companies that managed them and making them Crown colonies, then by turning them into Dominions of the Crown) and began the creation of a professional civil service. Given the legislative basis of these changes, they took around 50 years to complete (from the 1780s to around 1840, when the British Raj was formally established in India) and involved active participation by a “parliament and the local civil society that debated, investigated, and gradually adopted reforms to foster public integrity” (72).

Instead of taking these specific contexts into account, modern anticorruption studies focus on recommending that countries enact a set of institutions (also called “pillars”) that are presumed to fight corruption by just existing at the same time. These are:

·         An elected legislature

·         An honest and strong executive

·         An independent and accountable judicial system

·         An independent auditor general (usually subordinate to the legislature)

·         An ombudsman

·         A specialized and independent anticorruption agency

·         An honest and nonpoliticized civil service or bureaucracy

·         Honest and efficient local governments

·         Independent and free media

·         A civil society able to promote integrity

·         Responsible, honest corporations.

·         An international framework for integrity. For example, being a party to international treaties and standards on anticorruption practices. (76)

The main problem with assuming that the mere existence of these institutions will fight corruption lies in the fact that each of them was developed at a different point in time in the above models.

·         Bureaucracies had a relatively small role in earlier European politics, as civil service posts were filled by appointed citizens and seen as a civic duty, not as a job that would allow anyone to make a living. Denmark changed this in the 17^th century, but it took more than a century for it to become an entrenched practice.

·         Independent judiciaries were also relatively recent, with Great Britain being the leader in the field and only creating its current judiciary around the mid-19^th century. Even then, it had to count on a specific equilibrium between the judiciary being professional and respected, and coexisting with a government that was willing to give up some of its power to the judiciary. “An independent judiciary did not lead to the historical development of control of corruption, but seems rather to have been a result of it, its development determined mostly by politics” (78).

·         Montesquieu’s separation of powers was a popular idea since the 18^th century, but it was difficult to implement. Having separate and independent executives and legislative bodies is a relatively recent development in Europe.

·         General auditors and ombudsmen were also a relatively recent creation in 18^th and 19^th century Sweden, respectively, and they worked due to specific contexts. While their powers are relatively limited (“It relies upon a reputation for impartiality and integrity, but formally has remarkable few powers; the ombudsman can make recommendations but cannot reverse decisions” and “the auditor was the arm of the sovereign who checked on his subjects, not the arm of an elected legislature who checked on government” (78)), they were successful in Sweden “because of demand from strong political challengers and public opinion sensitive to issues of corruption and abuse. In other words, there was high demand for government accountability that reflected the existence of a powerful opposition challenging the existing equilibrium. Similar to judicial independence, these institutions were a result of specific historical Western transitions to control of corruption rather than their cause” (79).

México es uno de los casos en los cuales la mera existencia de estos pilares no ha garantizado una lucha anticorrupción efectiva. Esto se debe a dificultades relacionadas con la evolución específica del arreglo social mexicano, así como la respuesta de sus instituciones políticas al mismo a través de la Constitución de 1917.

·         México posiblemente ha tenido momentos en los cuales encaja en los tres modelos descritos por Mungiu-Pippidi. El modelo danés del déspota ilustrado que después busca profesionalizar al servicio civil y plasmarlo en la constitución posiblemente puede observarse en las acciones de Porfirio Díaz antes de la Revolución Mexicana. Las reformas traídas por el Maximato tras la Revolución, especialmente las relacionadas con el reparto agrario y la nacionalización de recursos, así como gran parte del siglo XX bajo el PRI, posiblemente pueden verse como acordes al modelo revolucionario. Finalmente, es posible que la interacción actual entre organizaciones de la sociedad civil y un gobierno no enteramente dispuesto a soltar parte de su poder en aras de luchar contra la corrupción encaje en el modelo reformista visto en Gran Bretaña. Las primeras dos etapas se han suspendido semiabruptamente, mientras que la tercera posiblemente esté en curso.

·         La separación de poderes no se logró después de 1917 debido a que el sistema priísta dependía directamente de que el presidente tuviera la lealtad de su partido y el control de las demás ramas del gobierno. Tampoco se ha podido lograr tras la transición democrática debido a que el arreglo constitucional está diseñado para permitir el escenario anterior, y como se vio con Vicente Fox, incluye un federalismo altamente volátil en el cual los gobernadores no están comprometidos a un grado mínimo de rendición de cuentas hacia la federación ni hacia sus ciudadanos.

·         Similarmente a Suecia, la Auditoría Superior de la Federación se creó para que el gobierno supervisara a sus propios burócratas (particularmente para que la Cámara de Diputados supervisara al Ejecutivo), mas no para que el gobierno se supervisara a sí mismo. La reforma de 1999 bajo Zedillo cambió este arreglo, mas no el contexto en el cual la ASF queda subordinada a estándares desventajosos al momento de armar casos contra cualquier ente auditada. Si bien la ASF quedó menos aislada con el Sistema Nacional Anticorrupción, este contexto no cambió.

·         La creación de un servicio civil de carrera en México no sucedió hasta 2002, y desde entonces se ha cooptado por prácticas patrimonialistas donde se abusa de la cláusula de excepción (es decir, que un contratado puede saltarse los estándares del Servicio Profesional de Carrera si sus superiores declaran que es necesario hacer una excepción en su caso) y, sobre todo tras la casi desaparición de la Secretaría de la Función Pública, se le ha dejado de supervisar por al menos tres años (desde 2013).

·         El papel de los medios de comunicación, las corporaciones y la sociedad civil promotora de la integridad ha sido debilitado por una participación activa del gobierno en las tres esferas. El gobierno financia a los medios de comunicación a través de un enorme gasto en publicidad oficial y, tras las reformas del sexenio de Salinas, participa activamente en el sector privado con joint ventures y licitaciones negociadas antes de ser competidas. Ante este escenario, la sociedad civil queda dividida entre una sobrecarga de información sesgada por publicidad oficial y una dependencia de financiamiento del gobierno, aunque no formen parte del sector público.

·         Finalmente, si bien México ha firmado tratados internacionales contra la corrupción en los marcos de la Organización de las Naciones Unidas y la Organización para la Cooperación y el Desarrollo Económicos, no ha quedado claro hasta qué punto los gobiernos mexicanos de después del año 2000 están comprometidos con su implementación. Si bien los compromisos legales de incluir las medidas acordadas en las leyes mexicanas sí se han llevado a cabo, se ha reportado desde 2015 que no es así con la implementación de esas mismas leyes. Tampoco queda claro qué otros tipos de participación en el ámbito internacional podrían llevar a un “international framework for integrity”.

Para la siguiente clase, leer:

“Controlling Corruption through Collective Action” de Alina Mungiu-Pippidi: https://www.dropbox.com/s/3ddzz7fp75709z8/Mungiu-Pippidi_Controlling%20corruption%20through%20collective%20action.pdf?dl=0

1.       ¿Por qué Mungiu-Pippidi dice que la competencia no ese en sí misma un antídoto para el particularismo o para el patrimonialismo?

2.       ¿Por qué la interacción entre las cuatro ataduras normativas lleva a empoderar el universalismo ético?

3.       ¿Cómo es que las ataduras normativas pueden pasar a convertirse en normas de gobernanza?