Military action imposing a no-fly zone over part of Libya, would only crystallize a divided Libya, without an aggressive political and diplomatic campaign. Such a campaign should aim at promoting the conditions for a peaceful and free regime change in Libya.

Sergio Abranches

Military action can only be a means to a clear political goal. It has to support, rather than lead or replace a political and diplomatic strategy. In the case of Libya, I can identify only one sensible political goal: to create the conditions for regime transition under the control of the Libyan people. Such a goal implies an effective political and diplomatic work, mainly conducted by legitimate Arab governmental and civil leadership. This diplomatic offensive should seek to both convince Gaddafi to stop bloodshed by stepping down, and to empower Libyan society to choose the path towards a transition that could express the free will of the majority. Libya has other leadership than Gaddafi. Some are already known and active in tribal life and in the opposition. Others have emerged from the rebellion itself, as has happened in Egypt. Social mobilization is a demiurge of  legitimate, spontaneous leadership.

If political rulers sympathetic to the Gaddafis do want to help, they should negotiate with them a true cease fire, and an exit solution. It is pretty clear that there is no good, durable, legitimate solution with the Gaddafis in power. Arab supporters of the no-fly zone should start immediately political talks with the rebels, to identify leaders and spokespersons to articulate a political alternative. Dissidents with good credentials could also have an important role in this process of simultaneous regime transition and nation building.

These rather spontaneous, mass upheavals happened in countries dominated by ruthless dictators for several decades. Organized civil society has been dismantled through repression; persecution, imprisonment, torture, and execution of opposition leaders; censorship, among other authoritarian methods. Indoctrination through massive propaganda, content-controlled education, and in some cases religious manipulation, have demobilized society and acquired “alienated support” to the regime. Disillusionment, discontent and rage against the brutal regime, and the dismal economic performance led the youth to rebel. Social media helped to spread the word, and accelerate mobilization. Contagion not only took the rebellion beyond the country’s borders, but also across generation boundaries.

In a crucial sense these are societies with strong states but without civil societies, especially organized civil societies. Amorphous societies they are to a certain extent. Civil society rises or reemerges from the rebellion itself. That’s the major demiurgical effect of revolutions and rebellions.

When some persons start to create voluntary community councils, to manage necessary services be it on occupied streets and squares, like in Egypt, be it in entire cities, like in Libya, there is a spontaneous process of organization of a reborn civil society. In this movement of emergence of a new, more active and conscious civil society, new leaders are also spontaneously identified, and legitimated. These are the forces upon which Arab and North African democracies could be built. But they need political and diplomatic support, not only military protection.

The no-fly zone divided Libya into two territories, the one centered on Tripoli, controlled by Gaddafi, and the other based on Benghazi, controlled by the rebels, and protected by UN forces under the no-fly zone. A situation reminiscent of Italian occupation, in the 1940’s, when Rome divided the country into Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. The rebels control the several cities of what once was Cyrenaica, as Benghazi, Ajdabiya, and Tobruk.

Such an outcome wouldn’t be either stable or acceptable. A new armed confrontation would be awaiting the lifting of the no-fly zone. The rebels would hardly be able to establish regular, well trained armed forces capable of opposing Gaddafi’s. A united Libya was one of the few durable outcomes of decolonization, under King Idris. The military coup that raised the young colonel Muammar Gaddafi to power maintained and strengthened unification. A divided Libya would only be acceptable and legitimate as a result of the free choice of the Libyan people, never as the outcome of military action.

The necessary political and diplomatic action required to maintain all choices open to the Libyan people to make in the process of regime transition is too timid so far, vis à vis military operations. I would say that political action is clearly lacking, while military intervention is already moving to phase two.

Sergio Abranches

I was lucky enough to have had a bright and modest professor while at Cornell, decades ago, called Eldon (Bud) Kenworthy. He wrote a clever little essay on the use of “little well-known cases” to support fragile hypothesis in comparative politics. I would say that little well-known cases have been widely used to feed myths, especially about people from politically closed countries allies of Wester democratic nations. I recalled Bud’s paper reading about Gaddafi’s son, considered the more “liberal and modern” of the tyrant’s heirs. The same who confessedly ordered Tripoli’s bombing.

Kenworthy wrote about the misuse of wrong appraisals of the Argentinian dictator Juan Perón, and Brazilian dictator Getulio Vargas’ roles in their countries’ politics to support fragile hypothesis about governance in the underdeveloped world. He might disagree with my interpretation that the ignorance or naivete supporting unconfirmed analysis ends up by feeding convenient myths. Let it be registered that the myth-making thing is of my own.

Bud Kenworthy was by far the best guy I met while in Cornell and the memory of our conversations came very strong, yesterday at night, when I was reading my Twitter timeline. I retwitted a tweet by the UK journalist @Ian_Fraser, with a link to Saif Al-Islam Alqadhafi’s thesis for a doctorate in philosophy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. The same one who confessedly ordered government airplanes to attack civilians on the streets of Tripoli, saying they were supposed to bomb arms depots. Fraser got the link via @kairyysdall, Kai Ryssdal, who got it via @carney, John Carney, head of NetNet the new CNBC’s blog on finance. I browsed the dissertation yesterday night here.

The convenient myth of the bloody tyrant’s good son worked perfectly for Saif Al-Islam Alqadhafi. He was said to be the most “westernized”, “modern”, and “liberal” of the family. A few press profiles of Saif Al-Islam tell it all.

“The eccentric Libyan leader’s son, Saif al-Islam, has emerged as the key broker in Tripoli’s detente with the West”.

“Drawing a line between reform and greater participation by Libyans in governance, Saif al-Islam al-Qadhafi, Muammar al-Qadhafi’s son and heir apparent, called for a more robust civil society, judicial reform, greater press freedoms and respect for human rights in a major speech August 20.”

“The second-oldest son of “Brother Leader” Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi would appear to be out of his mind. Reared by the military dictator who admitted responsibility for the Pan Am flight 103 bombing, Saif al-Islam el-Qaddafi believes democracy can take root in Libya.”

“Unlike his father, Saif al-Islam is a product of the new media-savvy generation.”

“Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi plain talker,  with an eye on the main chance. (…) Two years ago his star was in the ascendant but he announced last summer that he was quitting politics and devoting himself to promoting the growth of civil society.”

Many saw him as the future leader of Libya’s liberalization. It is likely that the larger contribution for this “good guy” mythology came from his friendly rapports with Western leaders, particularly in the UK. But his LSE education and the doctorate in philosophy were a valuable tool for this impersonation as the pro-civil society, enlightened son of a dictator. His lectures and speeches in prestigious academic environments may have helped.

He was advised by top professors of Philosophy and Political Science. On his thesis he thanks the four academics who advised him directly and “gave generously of their time” to assist him “to clarify and refine” his arguments. Professor Nancy Cartwright, of LSE’s Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method and at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). She is currently the President of the Philosophy of Science Association and was President of the American Philosophical Association (Pacific Division). A fellow of the British Academy, of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and of the German Academy of Sciences. David Held, perhaps the most globally influential british political scientist, author of important books on democracy and globalization, and global governance. He is the Graham Wallas Professor of Political Science at LSE, and Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Global Governance. Alex Voorhoeve, Senior Lecturer of the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at LSE, he studies “liberal egalitarianism”, and the “economy of soul”. He published “Conversations on Ethics” in 2009. Joseph Nye, one of the most influential authors on international relations. He wrote “Soft Power: The Means To Success In World Politics”. He holds almost every prize a political scientist can get. His most recent book is “The Future of Power”.

Saif Al-Islam, was the main “speaker” on a “Special Ralph Miliband event”, in May 2010, chaired by professor David Held. It was part of the Public Lectures at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His lecture’s title was “Libya: Past, Present, and Future”.

Ralph Miliband was one of the top new left political scientists of Europe, and his sons David e Ed Miliband both served on Gordon Brown’s cabinet. The lecture was given at an event with the trade mark of left liberal thinking. Less than one year after this lecture he became the author of the most bloody crackdown on protesters of the cycle of uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East. He did not need any philosophical, political scientific or ethical training to order the bombing.

His dissertation was about: “The Role of Civil Society in the Democratisation of Global Governance Institutions: From soft power to collective decision-making?” I’ve browsed the thesis last night. Not bad at all.

But the fact that he read and perfectly understood progressive liberal and social democratic authors did not prevent him from ordering the massacre of his own people. Now it is clear that the presumed heir, and philosopher of global democratic governance has, at the end of the day, an authoritarian personality and as merciless as his father’s.

A few excerpts from his dissertation’s summary would help to grasp what he wrote about:

“This dissertation analyses the problem of how to create more just and democratic global governing institutions, exploring the approach of a more formal system of collective decision-making by the three main actors in global society: governments, civil society and the business sector. (…) The thesis focuses on the role of civil society, analysing arguments for and against a role for civil society that goes beyond ‘soft power’ to inclusion as voting members in inter-governmental decision-making structures in the United Nations (UN) system, the Bretton Woods institutions, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and other institutions.”

He also says that the

“thesis explains and adopts three philosophical foundations in support of the argument. The first is liberal individualism; the thesis argues that there are strong motivations for free individuals to seek fair terms of cooperation within the necessary constraints of being members of a global society. (…) Secondly, it supports a theory of global justice (…). Thirdly, the thesis adopts and applies David Held’s eight cosmopolitan principles to support the concept and specific structures of ‘Collective Management’.”

Let’s see if I’ve got it right: global and participative governance beyond soft power could (and perhaps on this case ought to) tolerate bloody tyrannical governance at the domestic level. Global justice is compatible with lack of any justice at the nation-state dimension. We can build a democratic, egalitarian, and fair system of global governance having as active members of this multilateral regime all sorts of authoritarian and dictatorial governments.

Believe it or not.

Sergio Abranches

Today I saw a Retweet that reminded me of something I thought, and afterwards wrote about, many years ago. The RT by @paulegina (a.k.a Paule Wendelberger), a US citizen born in Haiti, living and working for more than 20 years in Germany (www.wendelberger.com), quoted a Tweet by @wsteffie (a.k.a Stefanie W) conveniently located in “Cyberspace”. Her bio is both a demand and a statement of belief: “human rights for all, and social democracy can work if we all act responsibly.” Her Tweet reads: “@TIME is just teaching us about American Democracy: Ask the people to vote & then screw them!”

The Tweet was about Time Magazine choosing Mark Zuckerberg rather than Julian Assange as Person of the Year. The Twittersphere reports that Assange, Wikileaks mentor and principal person, got 382,000 votes against 18,000 to Mark Zuckerberg, founder of  Facebook. Time magazine’s ranking based on the poll confirms.

But the recollection the RT brought to my mind has nothing to do with TIME’s choices. It was about the view of US democracy on Stefanie W’s Tweet, and the fact it gets an approving quote from another person from the USA living in an European social democracy.

Both Zuckerberg and Assange are controversial characters of their own. Zuckerberg’s nomination is not without merit. Facebook is an important addition to network life. And so is Wikileaks, to network life and journalism. However, Assange’s achievements and predicament this year clearly make him the winner, regarding both relevance and news content. The choice of Person of the Year by a news magazine would seem outright.

I know, the “democracy thing” was to be the lede and I have not spelled it so far. The “democracy thing” is a paradox: there seems to be a permanently high degree of dissatisfaction with how democracy works everywhere at any time; but no society has yet come up with an alternative regime. One that ensures at least as much freedom as a mature democracy does, and works better overall than existing democracies.

I met this paradox almost physically many years ago when I was at Notre Dame University for a brief tenure as senior visiting fellow of the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies. I was a young scholar, had gotten my PhD four years before. A group attending a Congress of the International Political Science Association decided to organize this conference on comparative democracy. We should compare democracies, or the “democratic problem”, in Latin America, the US and Europe. I wrote a critique of liberal democracies called “Neither citizens nor free persons: the political dilemma of liberal democracies”. It was a defense of social democracy. The essay was inspired by a paradoxical sequence of feelings I had when I arrived in Chicago, on my way to South Bend. Brazil was slowly moving out of a two-decade long period of military rule. Several friends of mine were still in exile. A few were killed by the ruthless authoritarian government. Being free to speak my mind, to openly discuss issues that were dangerous to bring to public debate in Brazil made me feel exhilarating. After a few hours discussing the shortcomings of US democracy and listening to US liberals’ (in the US sense) complaints about democracy under Ronald Reagan, I though: “well it is far better than a dictatorship, but it doesn’t seem to be enough.”

As I see it today, US Democracy has become far more progressive with Barack Obama than it was with George W. Bush. In the previous administration there were clear and dangerous setbacks for democracy, both domestically and globally. Obama has a tolerant and open-minded political personality. I’ve been to the US several times since 9/11, and the whole environment shows less stress and uneasiness now. I have friends in Germany that are convinced social democracy is not working there. I have heard from British people that democracy is utterly dysfunctional in the UK. The attitude of the Courts on Assange’s case does not bode well to British democracy. The French have always complained about French democracy, and continue to do so. French society is again “enragée” with its democracy and government. Talk to Italians about their democracy, especially after Berlusconi got the vote of confidence, and one’ll probably get a torrent of Italian imprecations as answer. Last year I’ve spent a few months in Toronto, and have been to Montréal. Canadians are not happy with their democracy. I will spare you opinions about Latin American democracies.

Are we dissatisfied with our democracies or with our governments? The right answer is both. But more with the governments, than with democracy in itself. The problems with governments we all know. They’re usually related to economic and territorial management, pressing current domestic issues, foreign affairs. The problems with democracy are more difficult to grasp, they are less tangible. Democracy nonetheless seems in disarray everywhere.

Part of the problem comes, very likely, from a permanent mismatch between desire, or, more properly, expectations and the performance of democracy. In other words, frustration with what democracy has managed to deliver is rampant. Democracy is a process and, as such, it can improve or decay. Usually it does have ups and downs. It seems fair to say that it is on a phase of decay. There is no final stage for the process of “democratic development”. It is a moving target. And it depends on the engagement of civil society to make any progress towards this target. Democracy decays when civil society is not engaged, is not aiming higher.

Democracy has not adapted yet to the new technological revolution – of which Facebook and Wikileaks are an offspring – to globalization, climate change, new waves of migration and a basketful of new issues and processes that will be the building blocks of this century’s history.

Adam Przeworski, born in Poland, a US Citizen, and very successful scholar, now teaching political science at NYU, was at the conference in Notre Dame. During the discussions, to my amazement, he reacted to my paper saying he couldn’t understand why I didn’t stress the role of the party as one of the major elements of the dilemma of liberal democracies. I did not understand, at the time, how someone could envisage democracy without political parties. At the time I believed that political parties were an essential element of democracies.

My first impression was that Adam invested against the party because it clearly was an instrument of oppression and privilege in communist regimes. This discussion took place seven years before their demise. It was also an instrument of oppression and privilege in authoritarian regimes. Like in Mexico, when the PRI was the only party. The party machinery and the state apparatus were intertwined. That much I was prepared to admit: party bureaucracies having promiscuous and non-competitive linkages to the state structure were a clear and present danger to democracy. I was also prepared to accept Peter Bachrach’s concept of “democratic elitism”, or E. E. Schattschneider’s idea of a semi-sovereign people. I have read their books in graduate school, and dealt with them in my essay. But I was not prepared to toss parties in the garbage can of political history.

It took me some time to understand that there was a deeper truth to Adam’s argument. The political party is an outdated technology of representative democracy. A necessary contraption, perhaps, before the advent of the network society. Today they do belong into the garbage can of political history. But, again, what will replace the parties? Will parliaments still make sense without parties? Is deliberation better than representation, even when we know how unequal is the distribution of knowledge, information, and education? Is legitimate and democratic deliberation possible in the absence of civic education, or in a situation it is declining? A civic culture, or social capital, or whatever one likes to call this “spirit of citizenship” is a sine qua non for truly democratic and participatory deliberations. This sentiment of belonging and togetherness, of collective responsibility is indispensable to what Machiavelli has called the “virtuous republic”. Today we would call it full-citizenship, or responsible citizenship, aware of both its rights and obligations, capable of a high degree of self-government.

Yes, back to Utopia to fight dystopias. We ought to fight democratic decay. That much is clear. We’ve got to bring to political life the new technologies and practices we use in our private and collective everyday life to our own benefit, our new forms of socializing, debating, exchanging ideas, seeking knowledge information and references.

So it has to do with Zuckerberg, Assange, Facebook and Wikileaks after all. We have, in several ways, a more democratic social exchange in the network society than in political society. We’ve got to bridge this gap moving towards more political democracy. But let’s not fool ourselves: we all live in a private and collective world of micro-tyrannies, prejudice, and exclusion. These social micro behaviors are also present in the Websphere. We won’t have more political democracy without democratizing private and collective life. We’ve got to take the network society to higher levels of openness and equal exchange. Nobody will do that for us. Certainly not the power-holders in both government and opposition. Political parties will not be a part of this (re)volution, they don’t belong into this future.

This process of permanently improving democracy, preventing its decay, and transforming it from the inside out, from top to bottom, to design a legitimate and functional regime for this century is a task for us all. It is a global endeavor. A collective challenge. A network mission. We have the technology and the dissatisfaction to begin with. But can we do it?

PS.

I know tons of theories have been written about this “democracy thing”, the network society, and everything else. But I am afraid we have been theorizing too much among ourselves, like a tribe of pundits, and have lost the praxis, as a collective body.

Last weekend, central urban areas of Rio de Janeiro were once again a theater for war among drug gangs fighting to take each other’s control of drug fiefdoms. The police intervened and the battle became a tripartite one: gangs fighting each other and the police fighting both.

Sergio Abranches

There is nothing new in this brief report, only a new death-roll, and the hard fact that this tragedy has become a routine event of city life.

Some more facts. A police helicopter was downed, three of the six policemen in aircraft were killed by the explosion. The third one died today at the hospital. The helicopter was very likely hit by an anti-aircraft shot from one of the gangs.

The Brazilian military have the monopoly over the use of heavy military guns and assault weaponry, as well as the power to regulate third party use. They have denied permission for Rio’s police to mount a heavy machine gun on an armored helicopter to cover their people in action on the ground.

But they are totally silent and complacent about the fact that criminals do use such weaponry to kill innocent people and policemen. Weapon not rarely stolen or smuggled from military bases.

They are planning to spend an awful lot of money on air fighters to defend Brazil against unlikely external threats. At the same time, the frontier base up the Rio Negro, on the Amazon, next to Colombia, doesn’t have even a single powerful boat to prevent drug traffickers to come down the river from the border with their loads of cocaine paste. They simply see the traffickers to accelerate their powerful four motor boat and leave the military staring powerless at the river foaming behind it.

Over three days of street combat in Rio, 21 people were killed, (roughly half the number killed on the suicidal bombing in Iran this week) several injured. There was, again, controversy about police action. Some claim it may have caused the death of at least three innocent people. There are obvious difficulties in separating criminals from innocent bystanders in action. But there is also clear signs of faulty intelligence and neglect of early-warning signs that might have led to preventative measures, saving lives.

This violence (homicides) is killing three times more young people from 15 to 25 years old, of which 97% male, and 83% black males.

Cut to a slum or popular neighborhood.

Action: One looks at any slum or poor neighborhood of any Brazilian metropolitan cities and sees the signs of neglect, absence of public authority, basic services, aesthetic degradation, garbage spread all over.

No wonder they’re becoming the fiefdoms of drug-lords or paramilitary militias, often formed by active policemen, monopolistically providing paid illegal, services such as access to cable TV, the Internet, light, gas, and, obviously, security.

Cut to any street of Ipanema, Gávea or Leblon, upper middle class neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro. All three are circled by growing slums.

Action: One doesn’t look close uphill, where they are. One should now look at the streets below. One then sees what bus drivers are doing: crossing red lights, driving dangerously, disobeying the most elementary transit laws. One looks again, and will likely see police around taking no action. One more look to see a bus parked irregularly, the driver pissing on the sidewalk, aloof to pedestrians, or admonitions.

Public transportation is a public concession, hence a service city government licenses private companies to explore. They should be severely punished for disobeying rules, and even more, for breaking the law. But they aren’t. City governments have more pressing issues to attend to.

One moves to the door of a private school where wealthy children are educated. Students are arriving or leaving school. One sees tens of SUVs, and expensive cars irregularly parked, most conducted by paid drivers, transforming the neighborhood transit into a chaotic series of transgressions. One looks again, to see the police giving protection to the elite’s drivers violating sociability rules, and organizing transgression, not enforcing the law.

Cut. Move to a busy street in Ipanema.

One asks how many people walking on the streets have been victims of petty robbery, armed robbery, car theft. Many will answer affirmatively. One asks how many went to a police precinct to register the occurrence. Only victims of  car theft will answer affirmatively, because it is a necessary step to get insurance money.

People who did complain about purse or wallet thefts, petty robbery incidents, only do it once. The regular answer the get from the police is “we have bigger problems to deal with, problems like yours happen at every minute”.

Sociability is gravely compromised in the neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro. But it is almost impossible in the slums and poor communities. The innocent, working population in these areas is a victim of public neglect, and subject to what I once called tyrannical banditry. They use a well-known strategy of social control that combines in variable dosages actual violence (summary executions, demonstration killing, beating, torturing, and several forms of harassment); threat of violence; and private favors substituting for public service. They use the unattended needs of the population they are tyrannizing on their own benefit, the same way clientele politics does.

Cut to a few years back.

Action: B. a former assistant of mine, today an excellent police reporter for a local newspaper, drives her car uphill, crossing a slum, where a black friend of hers lives. They are both doing voluntary church work at the time. As they work after hours, she drives him home. That saves him about and hour and a half if he were to go by bus. To her it is a 30 minute detour. She drops him at the farthest point she can go with her car, and drives back downhill.

There comes a youth on his motorcycle carrying a bicycle across the hear rack, so that one wheel goes out to the left, and the other to the right. The way is too narrow. She couldn’t drive pass him without hitting the bike. There are no sideways, nor sidewalks. She stops. He goes on, accelerates, and breaks down the side mirror of her car.

She moves away. A few meters downwards she’s stopped by a large, shirtless black men, on his shorts, holding a 9mm automatic pistol. He asks her what happened. She said, “nothing important, just an accident”. He replied, it was no accident, but an aggression, and added that he knew she was a “straight girl”, doing “cool community work”, and that she deserved to be respected. She thanks him and says she’d like to leave. He says no. Tells her to leave the car blocking the narrow street and walk back uphill with him.

She has no way out, so up she goes. He takes her to a house, with an empty large room, like a meeting room without furniture. A solitary working table lies at the center, where the boss is seated, with two 9mm pistols each next to one of his hands. A brief dialogue ensues, with the first one telling him what happened. The boss asks who did it. “Johnny”, the other answers. “Summon him”, demands the boss.

Johnny comes light speed. He confirms his doing, and the boss says: “You know what to do.” The boy says “yes”. He apologizes. Apologies accepted. The boss says: “not enough”. “She has to fix her car,” and asks her how much would it cost to fix the car. She says it was an old car, no compensation required. The boss asks his assistant, how much, and he estimates R$ 80.00 (about 1/3 of the minimum wage at the time). He boss looks at the boy, the boy takes the amount from his pocket and gives it to her. The boss says: “next time, you know the punishment,” and to her, “you can come and go safely around here. You’re doing good to my community. We have zero tolerance for such disrespectful behavior here.” The boy leaves. The large black soldier takes her to her car, other assistants open the way so that she can drive unimpeded out of the slum.

Zero tolerance to small aggressions, with people breaking the rules of sociability, vandalizing others’ property, that’s what sociologist James Q. Wilson would say public authorities should do. Fighting only grand thefts, organized crime, massive violence, is useless, it public authorities let disorder, transgression and disrespect become part of daily life and city culture. It only leads to cycles, where waves of even greater violence alternate with brief moments of peace at the shadow of the guns of both criminals and the police. It is not peace, just a moment of silence following the trauma of death.

This sort of context of crime and violence is a complex one. It is systemic. But complexity does not mean that solutions have to be grandiose. They often imply a daily routine of combating tolerance, laxity with the rules, and compromising.

Many intellectuals and professionals who address the problems of crime and violence, and not only in Brazil, say that the “broken windows” diagnosis is just right-wing ideology, not a working, or proven theory. That’s the wrong way to look into it. Malcolm Gladwell’s chapter on New York, in his book “The Tipping Point”, makes a good counterpoint to this argument. There is evidence that it works, but most important of all, democracy is about legitimate order, monopoly of the use of force by entrusted public authorities, also accountable for their doings. Disorder, impunity and corruption are anti-democratic. The enforcement of law and rules legitimately made is of the essence of democratic rule. The enforcement of laws and rules, made by bandits, enforced with violence at their will, defines tyranny. Like in the case of my former assistant.

Street violence and the tyrannical social structure imposed by drug lords to the popular communities across metropolitan Brazil are symptoms of a broader process of urban decay. Cities are uglier, dirtier, more disorderly; traffic is more violent and undisciplined; people don’t trust each other; the wealthy are building self-sufficient bunkers to isolate themselves from the “city”, and from “those others”, mostly “black others”. The number of armored private cars increases every month.

People discuss all these signs of decay, fear, distrust, and failed governance at dinner, casually, as if they were normal traits of contemporary living. Like a new job offer, or buying fashionables. Complacency kills, but no one seems to realize it.

It obviously kills far less within the well-to-do, the upper middle classes, than among the poor and the lower middle classes, living in the decayed neighborhoods at the borders of slums, and among poor, working, and lower middle class people living in the slums. They are not violence breeders, nor potential criminals. Poverty does not generate crime and violence. Neglect and disorder do. The poor, mainly black males are their victims.

Another argument is that the “broken windows” theory would lead to prejudice. Where there are fears of prejudice is because prejudice is already a trait of that society’s culture. Besides, it can be applied to overt prejudice and the treatment of minority groups. Violence stems from failed institutions and lack of civic pride. Democratic order, “fixing broken windows”, could help to contain violence, reduce fear, and to create livable streets and neighborhoods while making them more enjoyable, good looking, and sustainable.

If we keep our windows broken, our hearts will also be broken and we will have to survive under the shadow of the guns.

The Brazilian electoral law has set October 3 as the deadline for those who want to run in the 2010 general elections to decide on their party affiliation.

Sérgio Abranches

Over the last few days several important announcements came from government authorities, business and political leaderships either choosing a party, or changing party affiliation.

The Chairman of the Brazilian Central Bank, Henrique Meirelles has announced his affiliation to PMDB yesterday. PMDB is the clientele-politics, pork-barrel, catchall party that presently holds the larger share of seats in both the House and the Senate. The party has a pivotal role in President Lula’s coalition. President Lula has tried to convince him not to reenter electoral politics next year. He had been elected a House member in the 2002 elections, before being invited to head the Central Bank. He didn’t even take the oath of office as a Representative.

Lula asked his Central Banker to wait for the victory of his presidential candidate Dilma Roussef, promising Meirelles a very important role in the new government. It seems Meirelles has more confidence on his own electoral chances in his home state, than on the Ms. Roussef’s, who has been handpicked by Lula himself. Knowing that he was decided to get a party affiliation “to let the door open to a future candidacy”, President Lula asked him to join PMDB. Meirelles said he will annouce next March whether he will leave the Central Bank to run for office. He is expected to run for governor of this home-state, Goiás, or, alternatively, to seek a Senate seat.

Celso Amorim, Lula’s Minister for Foreign Affairs,  who masterminded the disastrous operation that led the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, to host ousted president Manuel Zelaya, has announced his affiliation to the Worker’s Party (PT). President Lula is one of the founding fathers of PT. Mr. Amorim was formerly affiliated to PMDB, but has never participated in elections.

PT, however, has lost more affiliates than it acquired. PMDB is also losing several important regional leaderships. Both parties are paying a high price for their protection to Senate’s Chairman, José Sarney (PMDB-AP), who has been charged of corruption and administrative wrongdoing during his tenure. Internal divisions regarding the party’s standing on the next presidential elections are also taking their toll from PMDB. Lula wants PMDB to support his candidate and offer the name for Vice-president on her ticket. But several party leaders are supporting São Paulo governor José Serra’s bid.

The most celebrated wave of affiliations involved the small Brazilian Green Party (PV). Former Environment Minister and Amazon Icon, Marina Silva, has joined the party last month, to run for the Presidency. Yesterday, several important business leaders, all well known for their support of sustainable business and social and environmental corporate responsibility, have also jointed the party. They are all adhering to Marina Silva’s presidential candidacy, rather than to PV’s former platform.

The party is going through a thorough internal power shift determined by Marina Silva’s arrival. This sudden emergence of PV to the frontline has been correctly attributed to the “Marina factor”. She attracted Guilherme Leal, co-chairman of the board of cosmetics firm Natura, to the party as a possible vice-presidential nominee. Also joined PV the executive-director of Klabin, a Brazilian paper and pulp giant, who acts as CEO of the NGO SOS Mata Atlântica (SOS Atlantic Rainforest); Ricardo Young, CEO of the Ethos Institute, dedicated to promote corporate social responsibility and ethical management among Brazilian firms; Fernando Simões, CEO of Latin America’s largest handcrafted art paper mill, among several other affiliations. The party is likely to account for the greater share of new affiliations due to the “Marina factor”. The presence of well-known business leaders on her campaign will also help to  respond to fears that Marina Silva would adopt an anti-capitalist, green socialist agenda as a presidential candidate.

PV’s new affiliates represent a clear change of the party’s ideological outlook and a move towards a new and sharper identity. As British political scientist Anthony Giddens contends in his new book, “The Politics of Climate Change”, green is no longer the other shade of red. Several green parties, the German being the most noticeable case, have been created by former communists and socialists disillusioned with communism and dissatisfied with the conservative policies of social democratic parties. But now, they all have developed their own ideas, and a far better focused green view. They are becoming far more differentiated from socialist and social democratic parties, and proposing a new, broader, more systemic view of economy and society, having the climate change challenge, and the transition to a low carbon economy at the core of their new outlook. Green is no longer anti-capitalist, although being highly antagonistic to consumerism. The idea is to change capitalism, rather than to replace it with old socialist models.

The Chairman of FIESP, the Federation of São Paulo State Industry, once the country’s most powerful trade association, Paulo Skaff, joined the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB). He  will probably run for governor of São Paulo. The party is likely to have Rep. Ciro Gomes as a presidential candidate. The latest polls show Ciro Gomes ahead of Lula’s candidate, Dilma Roussef, but still behind São Paulo governor, the social democrat José Serra (PSDB), who has been the forerunner on all polls until now.

These party shifts and new affiliations are pointing towards a very competitive, hard fought election in 2010, at all levels. The presidential election will probably be the most competitive of the last 15 years. Elections for the House and the Senate may likely have the greater number of contested (open) seats of the last 4 elections. State elections are also posed to be highly competitive all over the country. Democracy thrives on uncertainty, so does the risk of inevitable surprises.

Sergio Abranches

When major parties are dominated by nihilists, party and leaders loose contact with real life. They’re like zombies haunting parliamentary culture. Through their actions, democracies may be corrupted, and public policy go astray.

President Hugo Chávez, of Venezuela, signs a law that imposes absolute censorship of opinion through the media, shuts down several radio and TV stations. All the independent media is under imminent risk of takeover.

The authoritarian move against democracy has two main starting points: a coup against the incumbent government and the crackdown or takeover of the independent media. Hugo Chávez has inaugurated a new mode of antidemocratic takeover: manipulating democracy’s own institutions, like the Legislative and the Judiciary branches, to destroy the foundations of democratic rule and establishing an authoritarian regime. He cannot be blamed for leading a coup against any legitimate ruler. He was elected. However, after his election he intervened on the institutions of democracy to place them under his absolute control. Since the beginning he has maneuvered to silence the media, shutting down TV stations, newspapers and radio stations. He jailed journalists and media owners without a due process of law.

Now, with the institutions entirely devoid of checks and balances, and the opposition dispossessed of the means for legitimate action against his abuses of power, he imposes an intentionally ambiguous and totalitarian law. It turns any expression of opinion through the media into a potentially “mediatic delinquency”, liable to prosecution and imprisonment.

People are protesting on the streets and will very likely be violently repressed. Chávez says he has taken this action because the people clamored for it. He also said it was time to give the media back to the people. The government is also saying it is a simple regulatory initiative. The new law de facto revokes the Constitution’s rule on freedom of expression and freedom of information.

With this move against freedom of the press, actually a more general action against freedom of speech, Chávez establishes a fully authoritarian regime in Venezuela.

A good op-ed piece by dissident Teodoro Petkoff (in Spanish) here.

Hugo Chavez says its time to give the media back to the people (in English): here.

Venezuela bill threatens media crackdown here.

Venezuela begins shutdown of 34 radio stations here.