How democracies Are Born

CAMBRIDGE Most of life is clearly behind the facts. The challenge is to understand events and trends earlier, especially when it comes to destroying democracy.

In their book Brilliant “how democracies die,” Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblat use international experience to examine the question. In recent cases, such as Hungary, Poland, Turkey and Venezuela, or in older cases as Italy, Germany, Argentina or Peru, the cause was, not the loss or overthrow of elected governments, but the actions of elected leaders.

Modes Operadi It's suddenly similar. An elected populist demagogue eliminates or weakens the balances of his authority by undermining the independence of courts and other troops, by seriously damaging the freedom of the press, planting a playground that is easier to win, and by delegateing or inmate political occupants.

Venezuela offered many of the lessons that Levitsky and Ziblat quote: her democracy is already a corpse. The question there is how to revive it is a complicated challenge from the country's continued hyperinflation and humanitarian disasters. Should Venezuela interrupt the restoration of democracy and focus on the exclusion of President Nicolas Maduro and the revival of the economy, or should democracy be restored before handling economic issues?

This question showed the fundamental contradictions of liberal democracy, finally considered by Dani Rodrik. After all, classical liberalisation is based on equal protection of infallibility rights such as life, freedom and property, while demorcacy is based on majority order, which can affect minority rights, including capitalists, undertaken and very skilled people. That's what Maduro did.

Historically, liberalisation has preceded democracy in Europe. As Jan-Weerner Mueller argues in his book “Contraventing Democracy”, combining two principles, extending privileges at the end of the XIX century, was made for a unstable complex. On one hand, it is the danger of what Fared Zechariah has called “Liberal democracy”: elected governments that do not respect civic rights. On the other hand, it is what Yascka Monk calls, “liberalism”: regimes protecting individual rights and legal equality, but delegate public policy making to unelected technocratic troops like central banks or European Commissions.

In most countries, the well-being of most depends on the welfare of capitalists, entrepreneurs, managers, and professionals organizing production and creating jobs. But these elites don't do that unless their property and civil rights are protected. Communism can be seen as an attempt to eliminate dependence on these elites by organizing state production. But the exclusion of these elites causes lack of financial capital and expertise. Thus, a basic deal at the core of liberal democracy is recognition of the rights that key minorities have and are fundamental to generating vast benefits.

What happened in Venezuela can be seen as a two-step process in which liberalism is first destroyed to take power over the production elites. This has been achieved through an almost-abundance of property rights, which caused massive excesses of those who could organise production. Not by chance, this process coincided with an oil boom and massive external borrowing.

The abundance of dollars convinced the ruling click that the state could replace production elites, nationalization, or other forms of collective property. He could not, but a flow of Iria imports disguised the spectacular ineffectiveness of state-led production. As the entertainment continued, the system could tolerate free elections -- thus becoming an unliberal democracy.

But when the oil price fell in 2014, the mask was removed, and the economy collapsed. In December 2015, voters elected the opposition National Assembly by two-thirds, signaling Maduron that even a very nonliberal democracy would not suffice to hold power. At this point Venezuela became a dictatorship.

How can democracy be reborn? Taking on the humanitarian crisis, Venezuela lost a rapid economic recovery, which is impossible instead of property rights that is legal to be restored. But how is this possible in the context of a majority rule? What will contain a future electoral majority that will not recapture assets after an economic recovery, as happened in Zimbabwe along and after the 2008-2013 co-existence agreement? And how can the system create permanent property rights without touching the narco-bords' claims that it was stolen from Chevezi and Maduro?

Levitsky and Ziblat warn that democracy requires political competitors to refrain from highly co-operative action. Such a system, based on recognition and acceptance, was formalised in Venezuela in 1958, through what is known as the Punto Fijo Pact, which stabilised democracy for 40 years before Chavez denounced and destroyed it. These pacts cannot extend accession to organizations that oppose democracy.

Spanish democracy died in the 1930 ' s because the system of a joint accession between fascists, liberal conservatives and Communists was impossible. Democracy in West Germany after World War II called for the process of densification that prevented the outlook that had led to disaster. As Frederick Taylor said in his book The Social Rejection of Nazi ideology did not happen overnight. He called for joint political action. After all, in 1952 25% of the Germans still had a good view of Hitler, and 37% thought their country was better off without the Jews.

Similarly, in modern Venezuela, it is impossible to restore liberal democracy if the current regime is allowed to return and expropriate again. Venezuela's recovery depends on its capacity to translate the current catastrophe into a new social set of patterns: “should never again be...”

It would not be the first time in Latin America that young taboos were raised from economic ruins. In Perry, the lessons of hyperinflation during Alan Garzia's first presidency have reinforced the macroeconomic sustainability of 25 years, despite a weak party structure.

In Venezuela such social teachings would be more difficult than those in Germany. Unlike Hitler, Chavezi died before the economic masks were removed, making it easier to denouncing Maduro without touching the idea of chavism the ideology from which the actual disaster actually emerged.

In the end, there can be no sustainable democracy in Venezuela if it has to co-exist with a large totalitarian party, which can rely on funds from corruption and the elites who deliver money. And such coexistence would take away the possibility of economic recovery that would last for a while, because it would limit the credibility of individual rights. To ensure liberal democracy, Venezuela must exorcise not only its regime and gels, but also the outlook it put in power.

♪ Periscope, taken from Project Syndicate