Much like parts of Europe, widespread distrust of politicians has erupted into popular protest. How can the centre-left channel this discontent?
The widespread protests that have taken place in Chile in recent weeks have not been witnessed since the return to democracy in 1990. Hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets in Santiago and other cities. The movement is being led by university student unions, who demand an increase in the quality and funding of higher education. They are aware that in many cases, the massive levels of debt they must carry upon graduation correspond neither with the quality of the training they receive, nor with their future earning potential.
Even more noteworthy was that at precisely 9pm on the evening of 4 August, the protest became truly national. Using a method popular during the dictatorship, millions of Chileans showed their support for the students by banging pots and pans on their balconies, in their gardens, and in the streets. Today, President Sebastián Piñera’s popular support has fallen to historic lows, just 26%, while 53% have an unfavourable view. A whopping 62% of Chileans say they do not trust him.
What’s really happening in Chile?
On the one hand, Piñera is paying the price of the country’s success. International indicators such as PISA and TIMMS show that educational levels have improved in the last decade. The ‘products’ of this improved educational system today feel politically and intellectually empowered to demand more. On the other hand, as the country passes the $15,000 mark in GDP per capita, Chileans cease to feel increasing satisfaction from material progress. Are Chileans entering the uppermost level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, self-actualisation?
The first observation that may be made is the government’s inept political handling of the situation. This is recognised even by its own supporters. For over a year, the former education minister, Joaquín Lavín, had stated that the government was working on a master plan to modernise the sector. When the student demonstrations began, the government dithered and finally announced an improvised and underfunded plan which satisfied no one. While education affects everyone – students, parents, employers, government – the Piñera approach has been to demonise the movement, to try to marginalise the students by portraying them as radicals or simply as street thugs. The strategy makes it difficult for the students to go to the negotiating table. The government thus avoids having to confront the issue in detail, which involves a reevaluation of the dominant role of the private sector in education, and the students remain on the street.
The result is a kind of deadlock, a hardening of positions. The low poll numbers and the apparent mishandling of the students forced the president to shuffle his cabinet, moving Mr. Lavín to a different ministry and changing the tone of the cabinet from technical to political. The lesson it had apparently learned: politics matters.
Perhaps most worrying is that the government’s low approval ratings do not translate into support for the centre-left opposition, united within the Concertación. This represents not only a rejection of the Chilean political class, but of representative democracy itself. In this sense, what is taking place in Chile is not too far removed from events in Spain and elsewhere. The lack of trust in representation – and the idea that technology makes traditional representation increasingly anachronistic – has inspired calls for plebiscites and other forms of direct democracy.
Having been formed in the wake of the previous wave of mass demonstrations, and having gone on to successfully win four consecutive presidential elections, how can the centre-left coalition channel the discontent in the face of such distrust? There are several lessons:
1. Ideology matters. The Chilean experience shows that issues of public policy work best when designed with some guiding principles in mind. When the Concertación implemented health care reforms that aimed for universal coverage or early childhood education policies which ensured that even the poorest had increased access, the policies were successful and popular. In those areas where the market was left to its devices, where policy was totally removed from a set of guiding progressive principles, the results were less positive.
2. Democracy matters. Once public policy proposals are offered, they enter an arena to be debated, discussed, dismissed or applied. All these things take place with certain rules which we call democracy. When voters take to the streets it is a sure sign that that representative relationship has broken down. The challenge for politicians in Chile and in Europe is to regain, and to deserve to regain, the responsibility for carrying out these debates. Why do we need to elect someone to express our political preferences when we may do so a hundred times a day through Twitter and Facebook? Chile urgently needs to upgrade its democratic institutions, starting with the uncompetitive and unrepresentative electoral system that was established by the military in 1988.
3. Leadership matters. It may be that the generation that set the current set of rules is simply unable to imagine what the future institutional setup will look like. It may be that new leadership is needed. In Chile, by emphasizing a new leadership style and through the novelty of being the country’s first woman president, Michelle Bachelet seemed to meet some of those requirements. Although now based in New York, heading UN Women, Bachelet remains Chile’s most popular political leader. Polls have also given good approval ratings to Bachelet’s former finance minister, Andrés Velasco, who has announced his interest to run for high office in 2013. Velasco, together with politicians like Senator Ricardo Lagos Weber, represent a generational shift in Chilean politics – people who were too young to be highly active in politics during the dictatorship and who, like the students who are unafraid to tackle formerly taboo subjects, appear to be less marked by the trauma of those years.
However popular these leaders may be, the institutional constraints to deep political change remain in place in Chile. If real change is to take place in education, for example, constitutional reform will be needed, and for that a two-thirds supermajority is needed in Congress. Change will not come about without the elected representatives accepting that, even with people demonstrating on the streets, politics does indeed matter.
Francisco Javier Díaz is a senior fellow at CIEPLAN
Robert Funk is professor of political science and deputy director at the University of Chile’s Institute for Public Affairs
Image: elibertaria 2011
Tags:Chile , Francisco J. Díaz , Robert Funk , Policy Network , anti-politics , political distrust , social democracy , education protests , Sebastian Pinera , Michelle Bachelet , Andres Velasco , Ricardo Lagos Weber
The widespread protests that have taken place in Chile in recent weeks have not been witnessed since the return to democracy in 1990. Hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets in Santiago and other cities. The movement is being led by university student unions, who demand an increase in the quality and funding of higher education. They are aware that in many cases, the massive levels of debt they must carry upon graduation correspond neither with the quality of the training they receive, nor with their future earning potential.
Even more noteworthy was that at precisely 9pm on the evening of 4 August, the protest became truly national. Using a method popular during the dictatorship, millions of Chileans showed their support for the students by banging pots and pans on their balconies, in their gardens, and in the streets. Today, President Sebastián Piñera’s popular support has fallen to historic lows, just 26%, while 53% have an unfavourable view. A whopping 62% of Chileans say they do not trust him.
What’s really happening in Chile?
On the one hand, Piñera is paying the price of the country’s success. International indicators such as PISA and TIMMS show that educational levels have improved in the last decade. The ‘products’ of this improved educational system today feel politically and intellectually empowered to demand more. On the other hand, as the country passes the $15,000 mark in GDP per capita, Chileans cease to feel increasing satisfaction from material progress. Are Chileans entering the uppermost level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, self-actualisation?
The first observation that may be made is the government’s inept political handling of the situation. This is recognised even by its own supporters. For over a year, the former education minister, Joaquín Lavín, had stated that the government was working on a master plan to modernise the sector. When the student demonstrations began, the government dithered and finally announced an improvised and underfunded plan which satisfied no one. While education affects everyone – students, parents, employers, government – the Piñera approach has been to demonise the movement, to try to marginalise the students by portraying them as radicals or simply as street thugs. The strategy makes it difficult for the students to go to the negotiating table. The government thus avoids having to confront the issue in detail, which involves a reevaluation of the dominant role of the private sector in education, and the students remain on the street.
The result is a kind of deadlock, a hardening of positions. The low poll numbers and the apparent mishandling of the students forced the president to shuffle his cabinet, moving Mr. Lavín to a different ministry and changing the tone of the cabinet from technical to political. The lesson it had apparently learned: politics matters.
Perhaps most worrying is that the government’s low approval ratings do not translate into support for the centre-left opposition, united within the Concertación. This represents not only a rejection of the Chilean political class, but of representative democracy itself. In this sense, what is taking place in Chile is not too far removed from events in Spain and elsewhere. The lack of trust in representation – and the idea that technology makes traditional representation increasingly anachronistic – has inspired calls for plebiscites and other forms of direct democracy.
Having been formed in the wake of the previous wave of mass demonstrations, and having gone on to successfully win four consecutive presidential elections, how can the centre-left coalition channel the discontent in the face of such distrust? There are several lessons:
1. Ideology matters. The Chilean experience shows that issues of public policy work best when designed with some guiding principles in mind. When the Concertación implemented health care reforms that aimed for universal coverage or early childhood education policies which ensured that even the poorest had increased access, the policies were successful and popular. In those areas where the market was left to its devices, where policy was totally removed from a set of guiding progressive principles, the results were less positive.
2. Democracy matters. Once public policy proposals are offered, they enter an arena to be debated, discussed, dismissed or applied. All these things take place with certain rules which we call democracy. When voters take to the streets it is a sure sign that that representative relationship has broken down. The challenge for politicians in Chile and in Europe is to regain, and to deserve to regain, the responsibility for carrying out these debates. Why do we need to elect someone to express our political preferences when we may do so a hundred times a day through Twitter and Facebook? Chile urgently needs to upgrade its democratic institutions, starting with the uncompetitive and unrepresentative electoral system that was established by the military in 1988.
3. Leadership matters. It may be that the generation that set the current set of rules is simply unable to imagine what the future institutional setup will look like. It may be that new leadership is needed. In Chile, by emphasizing a new leadership style and through the novelty of being the country’s first woman president, Michelle Bachelet seemed to meet some of those requirements. Although now based in New York, heading UN Women, Bachelet remains Chile’s most popular political leader. Polls have also given good approval ratings to Bachelet’s former finance minister, Andrés Velasco, who has announced his interest to run for high office in 2013. Velasco, together with politicians like Senator Ricardo Lagos Weber, represent a generational shift in Chilean politics – people who were too young to be highly active in politics during the dictatorship and who, like the students who are unafraid to tackle formerly taboo subjects, appear to be less marked by the trauma of those years.
However popular these leaders may be, the institutional constraints to deep political change remain in place in Chile. If real change is to take place in education, for example, constitutional reform will be needed, and for that a two-thirds supermajority is needed in Congress. Change will not come about without the elected representatives accepting that, even with people demonstrating on the streets, politics does indeed matter.
Francisco Javier Díaz is a senior fellow at CIEPLAN
Robert Funk is professor of political science and deputy director at the University of Chile’s Institute for Public Affairs
Image: elibertaria 2011
Tags:Chile , Francisco J. Díaz , Robert Funk , Policy Network , anti-politics , political distrust , social democracy , education protests , Sebastian Pinera , Michelle Bachelet , Andres Velasco , Ricardo Lagos Weber
