How Post-Democracy Is Oscillating Between Good Governance and Caudillismo

* Article: La postdémocratie. Entre gouvernance et caudillisme. Ahmet Insel. Revue du MAUSS 2005/2 (no 26), pages 121 à 136

URL = https://www.cairn.info/revue-du-mauss-2005-2-page-121.htm

Summary

From the Reading notes of Michel Bauwens, 2007:

Some authors, like Jacques Ranciere, think we have entered a period of post-democracy. It looks like bottom-up horizontal policy- making, but its undermining of representative democracy in fact hides power structures.

Examples are :

1) The role of polling

2) The process at arriving at the EU constitution

3) Chavez in Venezuela

Post-democracy is often

1) Independent of elected officials

2) But based on consultation of chosen representatives of civil society.

This can make it an easy tool of lobbying groups.

These principles are often denoted by the concept of ‘good governance’, and are seen as a alternative to both state reform and social change. They are now supported by the World Bank and other institutions. Participation is often restricted to non-elected leaders. It is a means of techno-cratic governance, based on efficiency and which avoids the ‘forces from below’. By blurring the public/private distinction, it is a means for further privatization of the economy.

It is in fact a market democracy.

But there is another form of post-democracy, which is both against classic liberal democracy and this new global govenance, i.e. Caudillismo.

Venezuela’s model of a ‘participatory and plebiscitary regime’ is this other pole. Chaez was partly inspired by Norberto Ceresole, author of the book, “Caudillo, Ejercito, Pueblo. El modelo Venezolano, o posdemocracia’. In this model, says Ceresole, the leader gets an imperative mandate for change from the people. He must undertake radical structural change.

This new model is dangerous because of the fusion people – leader, and because the leader is prone to corruption by power. His power is based on both a highly structured army, and on the enrollment of the unorganized masses in the neighborhood councils. For Insel, this is not a recipe for autonomy.