Democracy, Agency, and The State Theory With Comparative Intent by Guillermo O'Donnell

OXFORD STUDIES IN DEMOCRATIZATION
Series editor: Laurence Whitehead
..................
DEMOCRACY, AGENCY, AND THE STATE

OXFORD STUDIES IN DEMOCRATIZATION
Series editor: Laurence Whitehead

Oxford Studies in Democratization is a series for scholars

and students of comparative politics and related disciplines.
Volumes will concentrate on the comparative study of the
democratization processes that accompanied the decline and
termination of the cold war. The geographical focus of the
series will primarily be Latin America, the Caribbean,
Southern and Eastern Europe, and relevant
experiences in Africa and Asia
OTHER BOOKS IN THE SERIES
Regime-Building:
Democratization and International Administration
Oisı́n Tansey
Rethinking Arab Democratization:
Elections without Democracy
Larbi Sadiki
Accountability Politics:
Power and Voice in Rural Mexico
Jonathan A. Fox
Regimes and Democracy in Latin America:
Theories and Methods
Edited by Gerardo L. Munck
Democracy and Diversity:
Political Engineering in the Asia-Pacific
Benjamin Reilly
Democracy and the State in the New Southern Europe
Edited by Richard Gunther, P. Nikiforos Diamandouros, and Dimitri A. Sotiropoulos
International Democracy and the West:
The Role of Governments, Civil Society, and Multinational Business
Richard Youngs
Democratic Accountability in Latin America:
Edited by Scott Mainwaring and Christopher Welna
Democratization: Theory and Experience
Laurence Whitehead
Democracy, Agency,
and the State
Theory with Comparative Intent
..................
GUILLERMO O’DONNELL
1
3
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Contents
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List of Tables vi
Introduction 1
1. The Democratic Regime (or Political Democracy),
and Citizenship as Agency 13
2. Agency: Origins, Concomitants, and Expansion 31
3. The State: Definition, Dimensions, and Historical Emergence 51
4. The Varying Referents of the State: Nation, People, Citizenry 73
5. The State as Law: Contributions and Ambivalences 93
6. The Multiple Faces of the State and its Underlying Unity 115
7. Dialogics, Agency, and Democracy 133
8. An Overview of Latin America 145
9. Social Context, Options, and Convergences 167
10. The Conundrums of Globalization and Legal Pluralism 183
11. Conclusion 203
Bibliography 217
Index 255
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List of Tables
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1. For the benefit of whom the government rules (%) 150
2. Perceptions of the progress (or lack thereof) of reduction
of corruption in the state (%) 151
3. Perceptions of the good use (or not) that the state
makes of its fiscal income (%) 152
4. Trust in the police (%) 153
5. Trust in political parties (%) 156
6. Trust in Congress (%) 157
7. Trust in the Judiciary (%) 158
8. The courts punish those who are guilty without looking at
who they are (%) 159
9. Opinions about equality before the law (%) 160
10. Preference for democracy I (%) 161
11. Preference for democracy II (%) 162
12. Trust in the electoral court (%) 163
13. Responses about a “decisive leader” (%) 164
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Introduction
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1.
This is a book of political theory; it deals with several aspects of democracy

and the state, individually and within their relationships. Its point of depar-
ture is my belief that those relationships are as important as they are relatively
neglected, and that their examination helps us to take a fresh look at both
democracy and the state. The basic argument is that democracy, even in its
partial version as a political democracy, entails a view of the human being as
an agent who has achieved the title to be recognized, and legally backed, as the
holder of rights to not only political but also civil, social, and cultural ones.
This entity, the human being as an agent/citizen, grounds as its micro-
foundation the empirical and normative aspects of democracy. This ground-
ing reverberates, among other spheres, on democracy, on the state, and on
their intertwining. I pursue these reverberations throughout this volume.
As the subtitle indicates, this book also has a comparative intent. It hopes to
open the way for disciplined empirical and comparative enquiries—which,
I hasten to warn the reader, are in themselves beyond the scope of this present
volume. It is also a morally and politically motivated book, geared by concern
for the many flaws of contemporary democracies—especially, but not exclu-
sively, in Latin America—and the cruel social realities that underlie these
flaws.
The book’s origination began with a personal story, which I allow myself to
tell briefly in the following section.
2.
I have always been voraciously interested in politics. In my youth this interest

led me to become a politician, first as a student leader in the National
University of Buenos Aires—but I quickly discovered that I was an irredeem-
ably bad one. By then I had earned a law degree, following what, at that time,
2 Introduction
was a typical path toward a political career, and also as a way to support my
family. These studies allowed me to learn some political theory in the Law
School, the only kind of institution that in those times offered some related
courses. But these courses, of constitutional and comparative law, were for the
most part formalistic recitations of legal texts—terribly boring. So after
abandoning any hope of becoming a politician and tired of being a practicing
lawyer, in 1968 I decided to go to the United States to study political science.
I went to Yale, attracted by the constellation of scholars who at that time were
teaching there: Robert Dahl, Karl Deustch, Robert Lane, Harold Lasswell, and
Douglas Rae, among others. Furthermore, I was fortunate that in the same
year I commenced my studies, David Apter came to Yale from Berkeley—he
was to become my main mentor and generous friend. In addition, the
departure of Deustch to Harvard was more than compensated by the arrival
at Yale of other great scholars friends and future friends: Juan Linz and Alfred
Stepan.
Privileged by such a milieu, some brilliant classmates and a wonderful
library, I concentrated totally on my political science studies. Those times,
the late 1960s, were shaken by the Vietnam War and the increasing opposition
to it in the United States, the events of May in Paris, and other unsettling
incidents of this kind. They were also times when the behavioral approach
that had been pioneered among others by Dahl was fading and the structural
functionalist theories of Talcott Parsons and their applications to political
science and political sociology—under the guise of modernization and polit-
ical development theory—had gained currency. It was good for graduate
students such as myself that none of the Yale faculty shared these views,
with the partial exception of Apter, whose own version of modernization
theory significantly differed from that of the mainstream anyhow. It gave me a
great opportunity to study and discuss my obsessive interest in the kind of
authoritarian rule that was emerging in South America, and how this related
to the travails of democracy—something I had learned to cherish through the
already abundant political misfortunes of Argentina. This interest of mine
was fostered by Apter, who had studied “bureaucratic systems” on the basis of
his research in Africa;1 by Linz, who had recently written his memorable
paper on “Authoritarian Spain,”2 and by Stepan, who came to Yale fresh from
his Columbia Ph.D. dissertation on the Brazilian military and the authoritar-
ian regime that in that country was inaugurated in 1964.3
1
See Apter 1967 and 1971.
2
Linz 1964.
3
Published in Stepan 1971.
Introduction 3
Given that I arrived in Yale two years after the Argentine coup of 1966,
charged with the interests mentioned above, these scholars and their work
were a most valuable source of learning and inspiration. Later on, in 1972,
I published my first book, Modernization and Authoritarianism. Studies in
South American Politics (Berkeley: Institute of International Studies), thanks
to Apter’s generous support as my mentor and director of the series that
published it. I labeled the emerging regimes “bureaucratic-authoritarian,”
uniting the terms that had been used, respectively, by Apter and Linz, but
defining the meaning of this awkward term as a type of authoritarian rule
specific to the South American cases I dealt with.4 In so doing I was arguing
against two lines of interpretation. One, broadly based on modernization and
political development theory, because it could not account, except as odd
deviant cases, for the emergence of those authoritarianisms in the more
modernized, industrialized, and urbanized countries of South America. The
other line of interpretation saw those cases as just another expression of
traditional authoritarianism or, from the other side of the ideological spec-
trum, as cases of “colonial, dependent fascism.” When soon afterwards Chile
and Uruguay, in 1973, and once again Argentina, in 1976, fell under this kind
of rule, these unfortunate events helped to draw attention to my book;
including the concerns I had expressed in it about the likelihood of its future
emergence.
The research and reflections I undertook at Yale were academic activities.
But as I returned to Argentina in late 1971, in the midst of the collapse of the
bureaucratic-authoritarian regime inaugurated in 1966, my work was obvi-
ously—at times too obviously—part of agitated, and increasingly violent,
conflicts. From then on follows a personal story that included leaving Argen-
tina for Brazil in mid-1979, starting in 1982 as academic director of the
Kellogg Institute of International Studies of the University of Notre Dame,
since then sharing my time between Notre Dame, Brazil, the Center for
Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, two year-long stays in the
United Kingdom as visiting professor at the Universities of Cambridge and
Oxford, and increasingly Argentina, to where I have returned and hope now
to stay permanently.
I do not want to bother the reader with further details of this story. I revealed
part of it because I want to highlight some points that are relevant for the contents
of this book. The first is that my studies of bureaucratic-authoritarianism led me
4
I pursued this topic in another book, O’Donnell 1988. I first published it in Argentina in
1983 after having basically completed it several years before, but I could not publish it before
because of the highly repressive conditions until then prevailing in my country (for recollections
of this period see Chapter 7).
4 Introduction
to research the kind of state that supported and enacted this kind of rule, and to
examine the literature that at the time existed on the state. A second point is that
during those studies, while living under a particularly vicious version of this kind
of rule in Argentina from 1976 until mid-1979, I did not stop thinking, and
hoping for its counterpoint, democracy. The third point is that when the South
American transitions came I had already written some pieces on this topic,5
and from then on I devoted myself to the study of the newly emerged democracies
and, increasingly, to what I argue is the necessary democratic critique of these
and, for that matter, all democracies;6 this led me to a period of study of
democratic theory, which I had begun at Yale. The final point is that these studies
helped me acknowledge the crucial importance of the law for democracy; thus,
after some thirty years of neglecting legal theory I found myself rereading theorists
I had studied at the Law School and expanding them with less formalistic,
contemporary ones.
These points permeate the present book: the memory of bureaucratic-
authoritarianism and the persuasion that, in spite of many flaws of existing
democracies, nothing could be worse than a return to authoritarian rule; a
view of the state that, in addition to its bureaucracies, includes, among other
co-constitutive dimensions, the legal system; the conclusion that in addition
to a regime and the political citizenship it entails, democracy should be
understood as including other dimensions of citizenship—civil, social, and
cultural—as well as complex relationships with the state in which it is
embedded; the view that, even though democracy should be the object of
careful analytical and empirical study, it also has an intrinsic moral dimen-
sion. And, infusing all of the above, my conviction that a proper understand-
ing of democracy not only as a set of institutions and practices but also as a
powerful normative force, demands recognizing that, starting from old ori-
gins, it is grounded on the idea that the citizen is an agent, a being endowed
with practical reason and capable of moral judgment; this condition makes
the citizen a carrier of the legal “personality” that underlies and grounds his/
her various rights. Throughout this book I argue that this idea infuses not
only the various aspects of citizenship but also other topics that are basic for
5
This initial work was reflected later on in the volume that I co-edited with Philippe
Schmitter and Laurence Whitehead (1986), especially in volume IV of this work (Tentative
Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies), that I coauthored with Schmitter. Some of my
writings of that time, including the paper I originally wrote for that project, are collected in
O’Donnell 1999. Another collection, of even older studies that were originally circulated
as samizdats during the extremely repressive 1976–78 bureaucratic-authoritarian regime in
Argentina, has been published in Spanish under the indicative title of Catacumbas (O’Donnell
2008).
6
Some of these more recent works I collected in O’Donnell 2007a.
Introduction 5
the conceptualization and practice of democracy, the state, and their inter-
connections.
3.
Among the lessons I learnt at Yale was that there is much valuable knowledge
available in the great academic institutions of the Northwestern part the
world. But I also became persuaded that this knowledge should not lead us
to omit investigating the historical specificity of countries situated in other
parts of the world. In fact, the recent emergence of regimes that are or claim to
be democratic has generated important challenges to the theories of democ-
racy and democratization that prevailed until quite recently. There is, to begin
with, confusion and disagreement on how to define democracy. Some of these
disagreements are unavoidable, but confusion is not. The need for conceptual
clarification is shown by the proliferation of qualifications and adjectives
attached to the term “democracy” that has been registered and fruitfully
analyzed by Collier and Levitsky 1997.7 Most of these qualifiers refer to
newly emerged democracies, suggesting the vacillations, in the comparative
literature as well as in national and regional studies, about the criteria by
which given cases may or may not be dubbed democracies.8 The main reason
for these vacillations is that many new democracies, and some older ones, in
the South and the East, exhibit characteristics that are discordant with those
that, according to the theory or expectations of observers, a democracy
“should have.” This presumption, however, is problematic if the core concept
itself is not clear. As Hart (1961: 14) said, “a definition which tells us that
something is a member of a family cannot help us if we have only a vague or
confused idea as to the character of the family.”9
Adding to this problem, we face a historical/contextual issue. Practically all
definitions of democracy are, naturally enough, a distillation of the historical
trajectory and present situation of the Northwestern countries.10 However,
7
For relevant further discussion see Newey 2001 and Collier et al. 2006.
8
A step further in the needed conceptual clarifications is the growing recognition of a
subtype, not of democracy but of authoritarianism, the “electoral authoritarianisms” discussed
in the pioneering work of Karl 1986, and in the recent work of Diamond 2002, Levitsky and Way
2002, and Schedler 2006, as well as the discussion of democraduras by Whitehead 2002.
9
Actually, this author discusses definitions of the law, but he might as well have referred to
democracy.
10
With considerable license, I use this term as a shorthand for referring to the early
democratizing countries located in the Northwestern quadrant of the world, excluding the
6 Introduction
the trajectories of other countries that nowadays may be considered demo-

cratic differ considerably from the former ones. In this case, a theory of
adequate scope should assess these differences, per se and as to how they
may help identify specific characteristics of democracy and generate subtypes
across the whole universe of cases. Thus the present study is based on the view
that current theories of democracy need some revisions, even if this entails
loss of parsimony. Such revisions may yield conceptual instruments appro-
priate for achieving a better theory of democracy (and consequently of
democratization) in its various incarnations. With this book I hope to
contribute to this task.
4.
Perhaps the best way to guide the reader through the pages that follow is to
point out the main aspects I discuss in each chapter.
1. I begin in Chapter 1 with the institutional core of democracy, the regime
and its concomitants, political citizenship and the “political” rights and free-
doms attached to it. There I propose to add to the usual list of characteristics
of elections, two that are sometimes omitted, mainly because they are consid-
ered obvious in the Northwest but are not so in other regions: that those
elections should be decisive and institutionalized.
2. Another argument of this chapter is that in the democratic regime its
individual unit is not the voter but the citizen, understood as a legally enabled
and backed agent. A related point is that as carriers of (at least) political
rights, citizens are holders of legal personality, and that this condition is a
legally-enacted one that, for its effectiveness and action ability, is independent
of inter-subjective recognitions. This condition underlies the present exten-
sion of what I call the universalistic wager that embodies the change from
authoritarian rule and oligarchic democracies to inclusive democratic re-
gimes. These observations conclude the theme of Chapter 1.
Southern European ones, that followed historical paths quite different to those of most of their
Northern neighbors. A complicated case is the United States, with its considerable past and
present differences in relation to most European countries; thus after some doubts I decided to
include the United States in the set I am trying to delimit, but added in Chapter 4 some
comments and qualifications. Furthermore, even though I believe that at the level of general-
ization I refer to “Northwestern countries” is by and large warranted, when some significant
differences exist, especially in relation to Germany, I comment on them, also in Chapter 4.
Introduction 7
3. That the citizen/agent is the core individual unit, the micro-foundation

of democracy, has implications I explore in Chapter 2. There I argue that
contemporary democracy owes a huge debt to a conception of human agency
that has had long elaboration in some currents of moral philosophy and legal
theory. Further examination in this chapter of the rights and freedoms
entailed by a democratic regime shows two additional aspects. One is that
the “political freedoms” it contains actually are part of much older civil rights,
the evolution of which helps us understand the emergence and expansion of
ideas of agency and its legal backing. The other aspect is that what I call the
internal and external boundaries of those freedoms are theoretically undecid-
able, something that should be explicitly theorized, especially because it helps
us to understand the peculiar tensions, dynamics, and open-endedness of
democracy.
4. Another point, first noted in Chapter 1 and pursued in Chapter 3, is that
already at the level of the regime we find the state. One aspect of this presence
is widely recognized by the literature, as the territorial delimitation of the
electorate. But we find two other aspects entailed by the definition of a
democratic regime: one, as the legal system that enacts and backs the rights
and freedoms sanctioned by this regime; and second as (at least) the subset of
its bureaucracies that act in ways consistent with the effectuation of said rights
and freedoms. These considerations lead me in Chapter 3 to offer a concep-
tualization of the state, an entity sometimes neglected by democratic theory
or, if acknowledged, reduced to its bureaucracies and to its role as the above
mentioned territorial delimitation. In this chapter I argue that in addition to
those bureaucracies the state should be recognized as a legal system, as an
attempted focus of collective identity, and as filter in relation to its “outside.”
I argue that these four dimensions of the state, provided they are understood
as historically contingent, are useful for its proper conceptualization. I pursue
this matter with a summary discussion of state-making. In addition, in
Chapter 3 and later, I underline some intrinsic tensions between democracy
and the state, even of the more fully democratized states. These considera-
tions, in turn, are part of an argument that runs through the book, that the
relationships between democracy and the state require more attention than
they have received.11
11
I first made this argument in chapter VII of O’Donnell 1999 (first published 1993), based
on a critique of theories of democracy that I see as too narrowly centered on the regime. Some
valuable works discuss relationships between democracy and the state, although as the
present work itself will make clear, we have much work ahead. See Alford and Friedland 1985,
Cavarozzi 1996, Diamond 1999, Fishman 1990, Garretón 1994, González and King 2004,
8 Introduction
5. Contemporary states usually have a collective identity as their referent,

variously predicated as nation(s), people(s) and/or a citizenry. I discuss
various aspects of this matter in Chapter 4.
6. Another constitutive aspect of the state is the legal system that normally
penetrates and contributes to give order and “previsibility” to manifold social
relationships. I discuss this matter in Chapter 5, including several issues
related to the ways and degrees to which a democratic rule of law may (or
may not) exist.
7. However, at this point I note that the four dimensions of the state I
predicate are insufficient for its proper conceptualization. In Chapter 6, I argue
that another necessary angle is the examination of the various faces that the
state shows, with special attention to the ones it often presents to poor,
excluded and/or discriminated sectors of a population. These aspects impinge
not only on the workings of the state but also on the quality and, at the limit,
the very existence of democracy. In this chapter I also discuss some ambivalent
faces of the state that unavoidably result from bureaucracy and capitalism.
8. The preceding discourse is closely linked to my discussion in Chapter 7
of the personal experience of living under a terrorist state and, contrariwise,
of the dialogical communicative networks that are congenial to human
agency, and the crucial contribution that a democratic social context provides
to the practice and flourishing of those networks, including the possibility of
re-appropriating the true meaning of the powers and authority held by states
and governments.
9. At this stage of the book I felt I had to provide some comparative
context to various observations I had made thus far. Hence, Chapter 8 con-
tains a broad overview of some background conditions and of the present
political situation of Latin America. But this overview is not meant as a
substitute for the comparative work that several scholars are nowadays un-
dertaking and to which I intend to contribute with a future book.
10. A corollary of the preceding is that, if citizens are agents, then the issue
of the options available for enabling their agency is a matter directly relevant
for a political theory of democracy, not just for other social sciences or
exclusively normative theories. In discussing this matter in Chapter 9, I find
an important convergence: that of a similar view of human agency among
democracy (as here conceptualized), and the main currents of human rights
and human development, even if the respective views do not overlap
completely. From this perspective I discuss processes that may be politically
involved in broadening agency-enabling options.
Gunther et al. 2007, Iazzetta 2006, Linz and Stepan 1996, Mainwaring 2006, Mariani 2008,
Mazzuca 2007, Nun 2000, and Oszlak 2007.
Introduction 9
11. The preceding chapters lead me, in Chapter 10, to the complex issue of
the conflicts and possible accommodations between, on one hand, citizenship
and a universalistic conception of agency and, on the other, the presently high
and increasing globalization and pluralism, and consequently differing iden-
tity-recognition expectations. I begin by commenting on the welcome variety
of democracies that are emerging. But on several matters of multiculturalism
and legal pluralism I find myself unable to offer clear-cut solutions; albeit
with some caveats, I conclude in dubio pro-agency, without ignoring the sharp
disagreements existing on this and related matters.
12. Throughout these chapters I question, in a comparative mood, an
implicit assumption of quite a few mainstream democracy and democratiza-
tion studies centered on the regime. Naturally, reflecting the situation of
Northwestern countries, the assumption of these studies is that the respective
countries have a high degree of internal homogeneity. This means presuppos-
ing that if the national regime is democratic, then subnational regimes are
also democratic, and that the legality of the state extends over practically all
regions and social relations; I argue that these assumptions are untenable for
many democracies existing in other parts of the world, and that this fact
ought to be empirically taken into account and duly theorized.
13. In the final chapter, after taking a look back to the road we have
traversed, I detail the reasons (some picked up from the existing literature
and others derived from the analyses of this book) why democracy, even
democracies that exhibit serious flaws, is preferable to any other type of
political rule. There I also emphasize the need to recognize that democracy,
regime, and state are linked in ways that create some structured, unsolvable
tensions. I further argue that, despite the practical and theoretical complica-
tions they raise, those tensions are to be celebrated, insofar as they underlie
the peculiar historical dynamics and openness that differentiates democracy
from all other types of political rule.
Throughout this volume there is a guiding thread. It is that even at the
partial side of democracy entailed by a democratic regime and its concomi-
tant political citizenship, we should be aware of the immense moral and
political importance of the recognition it entails of the citizen not just as an
agent, but as one who is legally sanctioned and backed. This is the product of
a long and conflictive history that has combined with manifold factors across
time, regions, and cultures that raise many important, and some perplexing,
issues. This book does not contain answers to all of those issues, but I would
like to believe that it provides a useful standpoint for their further empirical
and normative examination, based on the crucial fact that in and with
democracy, the political power and authority exercised in and by a state can
10 Introduction
only be validly conceived as emerging from citizens/agents. The corollaries

and concomitants of this fact permeate the discussion of the topics that
occupy this book: the regime and its attached political rights; the various
dimensions of the state and their underlying unity; the referents and faces of
the state; the options and dialogical spaces entailed by the social enactment of
agency; the conflictive relations between the equalities of political and civil
citizenship, on one side, and the inequalities continually generated by, espe-
cially, bureaucracy and capitalism, on the other; and the diversity and plur-
alisms that agency itself entails and generates.
After those incursions, in the Conclusion I come back to agency as the
ground of the empirical and normative import of democracy. Along the way,
I was forced out of my discipline, political science, toward various themes that
are discussed by rich and complex literatures that I have benefited enormous-
ly from studying. I have used these literatures selectively, guided by the
specific interests that inspire this book, hoping that their respective scholars
forgive me for not having fully discussed them, something that was beyond
the scope of this book and, I confess, in some subjects also beyond my own
qualifications as a fascinated traveler but not a specialist in the landscapes
those scholars cultivate.
5.
I have been carrying this book mentally for some ten years. Some of its themes
I tangentially approached in books I co-edited and in my personal contribu-
tions to them,12 and in a series of variously published essays that I collected in
two volumes, already cited. I would like to think that these writings have an
entity of their own, but I also saw them as ways of approaching the themes of
the present book.
Along this journey I have greatly benefited from discussions and exchanges
with many friends and colleagues in places and institutions that have included
the University of Notre Dame and its Kellogg Institute for International
Studies, the Center for Advanced Behavioral Studies in the Social Sciences,
the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, and more recently the Escuela de
Polı́tica y Gobierno of the National University of San Martn, Argentina. I shall
make no attempt here to list the many individuals to whom I owe a significant
intellectual debt at those institutions, as well as others I encountered in
12
In Tokman and O’Donnell 1998, Méndez, O’Donnell, and Pinheiro 1999, and O’Donnell,
Iazetta, and Vargas Cullel 2004.
Introduction 11
various meetings and seminars, but I am sure many of them know of my

appreciation. Yet for the final push in the termination of this book the
contributions and encouragement of some colleagues were so important
that it would be extremely unfair to omit them here; I refer to Scott Main-
waring and Rev. Timothy Scully C.S.C. at Notre Dame and the Kellogg
Institute; Laurence Whitehead and Desmond King at Oxford University;
Marcelo Cavarozzi and Mara Matilde Ollier at the National University of
San Martı́n; and through various encounters here and there, Ernesto Garzón
Valdés.
And, indeed, there is another person that I want to mention very especially:
my wife, companion, colleague, and critic, Gabriela Ippolito-O’Donnell. She
has supported and inspired me wonderfully, and sometimes suffered with me,
during the length of time and the many journeys—physical and intellectual—
that it took me to write this book. It is to her that I lovingly dedicate it.
Buenos Aires, October 2009
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1
..................
The Democratic Regime (or Political
Democracy), and Citizenship as Agency1
In this chapter I deal with the very core of democracy, the component without
which democracy cannot possibly exist—the regime. After reviewing some
definitions of democracy (Section 1.1), I discuss themes that result from the
definition I propose of a democratic regime or a political democracy, terms that
I use indistinctly; the kind of elections it entails (1.2), the political freedoms
and rights that surround and make possible that kind of regime, and some of
the issues raised by the “undecidability” of those freedoms (1.3); what I call
the universalistic wager to which every citizen in a political democracy is
willingly, or not, submitted, a point that helps me define the concept of
political citizenship (1.4); and our first encounter with the state, as an
indispensable co-constituent of political democracy (1.5). Furthermore,
along these analyses I detect an entity, the citizen as an agent. This I argue
is an absolutely crucial aspect of democracy. This topic opens the discussion
in Chapter 2, and then I pursue it throughout the book as an axial component
of the various topics I deal with.
1. 1. ON SOM E DE FINITIONS O F ( POLITICAL )

D E M O C R AC Y
An examination of some influential definitions of democracy offers a useful

entry point into my analysis. I start with Schumpeter 1975 [1942] and his
famous definition; it has been critically examined by a number of scholars but
it might be worth revisiting it. After stating that “Democracy is a political
1
The present chapter and the following one are extensively revised versions of work
I previously published (chapter I of O’Donnell 2007a). I indulge in this partial repetition
because the points I make in this volume are necessary for a proper understanding of the
chapters that follow.
14 The Democratic Regime, and Citizenship as Agency
method . . . a certain type of institutional arrangement for arriving at political—

legislative and administrative—decisions,” Schumpeter offers his famous defi-
nition of the “democratic method”: “that institutional arrangement for arriving
at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means
of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote”; ibid. 242. This is the paradig-
matic “minimalist” definition of democracy. However, Schumpeter does not
stop here. First, he clarifies that “the kind of competition for leadership which is
to define democracy [entails] free competition for a free vote”; ibid. 217. In the
same breath, he introduces a caveat when, after commenting that “the electoral
method is practically the only one available for communities of any size,” he adds
that this does not exclude other, less than competitive “ways of securing
leadership . . . and we cannot exclude them because if we did we should be left
with a completely unrealistic ideal”; ibid. 271. Significantly, this sentence ends
with a footnote that reads “As in the economic field, some restrictions are
implicit in the legal and moral principles of the community”; ibid. 271, n. 5.
The meaning of these assertions, in contrast to the definition Schumpeter
offered shortly before, is rather nebulous. The reason is, I surmise, that the
author realized that he is close to opening a can of worms: if the “competition for
leadership” has something to do with “the legal and moral principles of the
community,” his definition or, equivalently, his description of how “the demo-
cratic method” works, turns out not to be so minimalist as an isolated reading of
the famous definition might indicate.
Furthermore, Schumpeter realizes that, in order for the “free competition
for a free vote” to exist, some conditions, external to the electoral process
itself, must be met. As he puts it: “If, on principle at least, everyone is free to
compete for political leadership by presenting himself to the electorate, this
will in most cases though not in all mean a considerable amount of freedom
of discussion for all. In particular it will normally mean a considerable
amount of freedom of the press”; ibid. 271–2; italics in the original. In
other words, for the “democratic method” to exist, some basic freedoms,
presumably related to “the legal and moral principles of the community,”
must be effective, and as Schumpeter italicizes, for “all.” Finally, when this
author looks back at his definition and his cognate statement that “the
primary function of the electorate [is] to produce a government,” he further
clarifies that “I intended to include in this phrase the function of evicting [the
government]”; ibid. 272, also 269 and 273. Thus, albeit implicitly, Schump-
eter asserts that he is not talking about a one-off event but about a way of
selecting and changing governments over time; consequently, his definition
slips from an event—elections—to an enduring regime.
We should also notice that, in the pages that follow the passages I have quoted,
Schumpeter proposes several “Conditions for the success of the Democratic
The Democratic Regime, and Citizenship as Agency 15
Method.” These conditions are: (1) Appropriate leadership; (2) “The effective
range of policy decision should not be extended too far”; (3) The existence of “a
well-trained bureaucracy of good standing and tradition, endowed with a strong
sense of duty and a no less strong esprit de corps”; (4) Political leaders should
practice a good amount of “democratic self-control” and mutual respect; (5)
There should also exist “a large measure of tolerance for difference of opinion,”
for which, going back to his above-mentioned footnote, our author adds that a
“national character and national habits of a certain type” are apposite; and (6)
“All the interests that matter are practically unanimous not only in their alle-
giance to the country but also to the structural principles of the existing society”;
ibid. 289–96. These assertions are far from clear, either in themselves or in
relation to the consequences foreseen by Schumpeter for the absence of the
conditions he proposes. First, he does not tell us if each of these conditions is
sufficient for the “success of the democratic method” or if, as it seems reasonable
to interpret, it is the joint set of those conditions that suffices. Second, he omits to
tell us if “lack of success” means that the “democratic method” would be
abolished, or that it would lead to some kind of “diminished democracy.”2 If
the proper answer to this question is the first, then we would have to add to
Schumpeter’s definition the vast array of dimensions I have just transcribed, at
least as necessary conditions of the object being defined. This would make his
definition anything but minimalist. If, on the other hand, the proper answer is
that some kind of diminished democracy would exist, then Schumpeter, against
his claim that he has fully characterized the “democratic method,” has failed to
offer a typology that would differentiate full and diminished kinds of democracy.
These clarifications, caveats, postulations of necessary conditions, and allu-
sions to a regime occur in the pages that immediately follow the famous defini-
tion. There is no doubt that Schumpeter’s view of democracy is elitist: “The
voters outside of parliament must respect the division of labor between them-
selves and the politicians they have elected . . . they must understand that, once
they have elected an individual, political action is his business and not theirs”;
ibid. 296. But an elitist definition of democracy is not necessarily minimalist.
Indeed, the various qualifications Schumpeter introduces imply that his defini-
tion of democracy is not as minimalist, or narrowly centered on the “method,” or
process, of elections, as its author and some of his commentators took it to be.3
I have discussed Schumpeter’s definition because the ambiguity it contains
also runs through contemporary ones that are deemed to be “Schumpeterian,”
that is to say minimalist. Among these definitions, Przeworski’s (1998: 10) stands
2
As elaborated by Collier and Levitsky 1997.
3
Of course, several authors have criticized from various angles Schumpeter’s proposal. For a
recent detailed and pertinent critique see Mackie 2009.
out for its sharpness: “Democracy is a system in which parties lose elections.
There are parties: divisions of interests, values, and opinions. There is compe-
tition organized by rules. And there are periodic winners and losers.” More
recently, Przeworski and collaborators have offered a similar definition, which
they explicitly label as “minimalist”: Democracy is “a regime in which govern-
mental offices are filled as a consequence of contested elections. Only if the
opposition is allowed to compete, win, and assume office is a regime demo-
cratic . . . [this], in turn, entails three features, ex ante uncertainty, . . . ex post
irreversibility . . . , and repeatability”; Przeworski et al. 2000: 50–1. Notice that,
in spite of its limitation to elections, the irreversibility and, especially, the
repeatability of elections in which “the opposition has some chance of winning
office as a consequence of elections” imply the existence of additional condi-
tions, à la Schumpeter, for this kind of elections to be held at all. At the very
least, if the opposition is to have such a chance, some basic freedoms must also
exist. In turn, Huntington (1991: 7) says that he is “following in the Schum-
peterian tradition” and defines democracy “[As a political system that exists]
to the extent that its most powerful collective decision-makers are selected
through fair, honest, and periodic elections in which candidates freely compete
for votes and in which virtually all the adult population is eligible to vote.” But
he adds that democracy “also implies the existence of those civil and political
freedoms to speak, publish, assemble, and organize that are necessary to
political debate and the conduct of electoral campaigns.” Similarly, Di Palma
(1990: 16) tells us that democracy is “premised . . . on free and fair suffrage in a
context of civil liberties, on competitive parties, on the selection of alternative
candidates for office, and on the presence of political institutions that regulate
and guarantee the roles of government and opposition.”4 For his part, even
though Sartori (1987: 24, 98, 110) centers his attention more on “a system of
majority rule limited by minority rights” than on elections, he adds that an
“autonomous public opinion . . . [and a] polycentric structuring of the media
and their competitive interplay” are necessary for democracy to exist. Finally,
even though they use a different theoretical perspective, Rueschemeyer, Huber
Stephens, and Stephens (1992: 43) concur: democracy “entails, first, regular,
4
Diamond, Linz, and Lipset (1990: 6–7) offer a more extended but similar definition:
democracy is “[a] system of government that meets three essential conditions: meaningful
and extensive competition among individuals and organized groups (especially political parties)
for all effective positions of governmental power, at regular intervals and excluding the use of
force; a ‘highly inclusive’ level of political participation in the selections of leaders and policies, at
least through regular and fair elections, such that no major (adult) social group is excluded; and
a level of civil and political liberties—freedom of expression, freedom of the press, freedom to
form and join organizations—sufficient to ensure the integrity of political competition and
participation” (italics in the original).
free, and fair elections of representatives with universal and equal suffrage,
second, responsibility of the state apparatus to the elected parliament . . . , and
third, the freedoms of expression and association as well as the protection of
individual rights against arbitrary state action.”5
Another definition is offered by Dahl (1989: 120), who says that “poly-
archy” (or equivalently in my terms, political democracy or a democratic
regime) consists of the following: “1. Elected officials. Control over govern-
ment decisions about policy is constitutionally vested in elected officials.
2. Free and fair elections. 3. Elected officials are chosen [and peacefully removed]
in frequent and fairly conducted elections in which coercion is comparatively
uncommon. 4. Right to run for office [for] practically all adults. 5. Freedom of
expression. 6. Alternative information, [including that] alternative sources of
information exist and are protected by law. 7. Associational autonomy. To
achieve their various rights, including those listed above, citizens also have a
right to form relatively independent associations or organizations, including
independent political parties and interest groups”; ibid. 233 passim. This
definition has the advantage of not only stipulating some attributes of elections
(clauses 1 to 4) but also explicitly listing certain freedoms deemed necessary for
elections to be democratic (clauses 5 to 7); they are dubbed “primary political
rights . . . integral to the democratic process”; ibid. 170.6 Furthermore, Dahl’s
definition has the virtue of being usefully but not excessively detailed, which
helps us to distinguish political democracy from other kinds of political rule.
Yet as with the authors mentioned above, it would be wrong to interpret this
definition as minimalist or, as Dahl does, to oppose the object of his definition
to some idealized view of apposite democracy. Nonetheless, efforts to define
democracy from Schumpeter through Dahl provide an important basis for
thinking about democracy as a political regime; one issue that remains to be
discussed is if these definitions refer to democracy tout court or to just an aspect
of it, political democracy.
In contrast to prescriptive definitions, the ones I have referred to have the
important advantage of offering an empirical basis for identifying and in
principle characterizing democratic regimes; furthermore, they identify as-
pects that are crucial for the definition of such a regime. Specifically, they
include two elements. First, competitive elections for most top governmental
positions (with the exception of high courts and the armed forces, and
5
With the second attribute these authors introduce a new element, which refers to the state,
not just the regime. But this need not occupy us at the moment.
6
Slightly rephrasing Dahl, I call these freedoms of expression and association, and of access to
alternative sources of information that surround a democratic regime; of course, and as we will
see below, this is not an exhaustive list.
eventually central banks); in relation, these definitions refer (sometimes

implicitly) to a regime that endures over time; the elections to which they
refer to are not supposed to be one-off events. Second, they add some
surrounding conditions, stated as freedoms deemed necessary and/or suffi-
cient for the existence of that kind of elections.
1.2. FAIR, DECISIVE, AND INSTITUTIONALIZED

E L E C TI O N S
Concerning the electoral component, I stipulate that in a democratic regime

elections are reasonably7 competitive, free, egalitarian, decisive, inclusive, and
institutionalized; for brevity, from now on I will call (reasonably) fair elections
those that have the joint conditions just stated. If elections are competitive,
voters face at least six options: choose party A; choose party B; do not vote; vote
in blank; cast an invalid vote; or adopt some random procedure that determines
which of the preceding options is to be followed. Furthermore, the (at least two)
competing parties must have a reasonable chance to let their views be known to
all (potential and actual) voters. In order to be a real choice, the election must be
free, in that citizens are not (at least physically) coerced when making their
voting decisions and actually voting. Furthermore, in order for the election to be
egalitarian, each vote should count equally and not be falsified.8 Finally,
I propose to add another condition to these elections: they must be decisive,
in several senses. Firstly, those who turn out to be the winners attain incumbency
of the respective governmental roles. Secondly, elected officials, based on the
7
The qualifier implied by the term “reasonably” (which I will leave implicit in further references
to fair elections) results from the fact that nowhere have the conditions for fully fair elections have
been met. Among many other reasons count the effects of social inequality and consequent
unevenness in the access to economic resources and the media; barriers sometimes posed to the
electoral participation of parties that otherwise would express salient social cleavages; and, more
broadly, the implications of the undecidabilities of political freedoms I discuss below; for discussion
of some of these matters, see Elklit and Svensson 1997 and Munck 2006.
8
I am asserting that, at the moment of vote counting, each vote should be computed as one
(or, in the case of plural voting, in the same quantity as every other vote). In saying this I am
glossing over the complicated problem resulting from electoral rules that specify that votes cast
in some districts weigh more, in some cases significantly more, than in other districts. Obvious-
ly, at some point over-representation may become so pronounced that semblances of voting
equality are eliminated. In relation to Latin America and the over-representation of some
districts in the countries where the problem is more acute, Argentina and Brazil, see Leiras
2007, Mainwaring 1999, and Snyder and Samuels 2001; I confess myself unable to judge a priori
at what point these inequalities are so big as to entail the lack of reasonable democraticness of
elections.
authority assigned to these roles, can actually make the binding decisions that
the legal/constitutional framework normally authorizes.9 Thirdly, elected offi-
cials end their mandates in the terms and/or under the conditions stipulated by
that same framework.10
Competitive, free, egalitarian, and decisive elections imply, as Przeworski
(1991: 10) pointedly says, that governments may lose elections and abide by
the result. This kind of election is a specific characteristic of a democratic
regime, or political democracy. In other cases elections may be held (as in
communist regimes, or for the selection of the Pope, or even in some military
juntas), but only a democratic regime has the kind of election that meets the
above mentioned criteria. But the attributes already specified say nothing
about the composition of the electorate. There have been oligarchic democ-
racies, those with restricted suffrage that satisfied the attributes already spelled
out. But as a consequence of historical processes I will examine in the following
chapter, democracy acquired another characteristic, inclusiveness: the right to
vote and to be elected is assigned to all citizens of a given country.11
There is another crucial characteristic of political democracy: elections are
institutionalized. Above I noted that many definitions of democracy implic-
itly refer to a series of elections that continue into an indefinite future. That is,
practically all actors, political and otherwise, take for granted that elections
will continue being held in the indefinite future, at pre-established dates (in
presidential systems) or according to pre-established occasions (in parliamen-
tary systems). In cases where these expectations are widely held, elections are
institutionalized and are “the only game in town” for accessing top govern-
mental positions.12 These cases are different not only from authoritarian
ones, but also from those where, even if a given election has been fair, it is
9
I refer to the fact that in some new democracies there are de jure “authoritarian enclaves”
(Garretón 1983 and 1987) or “reserved domains” (Valenzuela 1992), or de facto ones that
impose, usually by the armed forces, such restrictions. Chile and Guatemala count, respectively,
as examples of this problem.
10
As I noted in the Introduction, these additional conditions, quite often omitted by the
literature, are an indication of the need to consider the specificities of democracies outside of the
Northwest. In this region it is assumed that once fair elections produce a winner, they will be
decisive in the sense I define in the text. However, as until recently Latin America showed, quite
often this was not the case, when the “wrong party” won the elections.
11
Another stipulation needs to be made, although it is a structural precondition of elections
rather than an attribute of them. I refer to the existence of an uncontested territorial domain
that defines the electorate. Several authors have conveniently noted this matter; among others
Linz and Stepan (1996: 16–37), Offe 1991, Przeworski et al. 2000, and Schmitter 1994. I will
return to this topic in Chapter 3.
12
As said by Przeworski (1991: 26) and Linz and Stepan (1996: 5). Actually, these authors
refer not to elections but to democracy in general as the “only game in town,” but the nuance
implied by this difference need not be discussed at this point.
not widely expected that similar elections will continue to occur in the future.
Only when elections are institutionalized do relevant actors adjust their
strategies to the expectation that such elections will continue to be held,
rather than invest in resources other than elections as means to access the
highest positions of the government.13
One of the terms I have used, regime, requires definition. Slightly adapting the
one Schmitter and I offered (O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986), by regime I mean
The institutions and processes, formal and informal, and explicit and implic-
it, that determine the channels of access to top governmental positions, the
characteristics of the actors who are admitted and excluded from such access,
the resources and strategies that they are allowed to use for gaining access, and
the identification of the main, or more salient, institutions of the state in
which it is located.
This is a generic definition, that applies to democratic and non-democratic
regimes. According to it, the regime is a mediation between society and the
state, as it links them by providing the channels for accessing the top positions
of the latter, the government. We will see below that the democratic species of
a regime contains other components.
1. 3. A FIR S T LO O K AT PO L IT ICA L RIG HTS

AND FREEDOMS
It seems obvious that for the existence of fair elections, especially as they
involve expectations of indefinite endurance, such elections cannot stand
alone. For the effectiveness of the right14 to participate in elections, as well
as in cognate activities such as supporting political parties or attending
electoral rallies, some surrounding freedoms must hold and—very impor-
tantly—continue to hold between elections. Otherwise, the government in
turn could quite easily manipulate or even cancel future elections. Let us
remember that for Dahl the relevant freedoms are those of expression,
13
Even if actors anticipate that elections at t1 will be fair, if they believe that there is a
significant likelihood that elections at t2 will not be fair, by a regression explored in prisoners’
dilemmas with fixed numbers of iterations, agents will likely make this kind of extra-electoral
investment already at t1.
14
To avoid clumsy repetitions and clarifications, I reserve the term rights for the participa-
tory ones of voting, trying to be elected, and taking part in activities related to elections. Instead,
as already noted, I keep the term freedoms for those that surround fair elections. But please note
that, as will be clear later on, this does not mean that I consider the latter as purely individual or
negative.
association, and access to information, and that other authors posit, more or
less explicitly and in more or less detail, similar ones.
We first notice that the combined effect of the freedoms listed by Dahl and
other authors cannot fully guarantee that elections are fair. For example, the
government might ban opposition candidates from traveling across the coun-
try, or subject them to police harassment for reasons allegedly unrelated to
their candidacy. In such a case, even if the freedoms above listed held, we
would hardly conclude that these elections are fair. This means that those
freedoms are not sufficient for guaranteeing reasonably fair elections. Rather,
they are necessary conditions that jointly support a probabilistic judgment: if
they hold, then ceteris paribus there is a strong likelihood that elections will be
fair. Let us further note that the freedoms that surround fair elections are
inductively derived. They are the result of an empirically-grounded assess-
ment of the impact of various freedoms on the likelihood of fair elections.
This judgment is guided by the intention of finding a core set of political
freedoms, so that its listing does not slip into a useless inventory of every
freedom that might have some conceivable bearing on the fairness of elec-
tions. The problem is that, since the criteria of inclusion of some freedoms
and of exclusion of others results from an inductive judgment, there cannot
exist a theory that a priori establishes a firm and clear line between included
(necessary and, ideally, jointly sufficient) conditions, on one hand, and
excluded ones, on the other; these matters are undecidable. This is one reason
why there is not, and it is very unlikely that there will ever be, a priori and/or
general agreement about which these political freedoms and their scope
should be. I surmise that the implicit hope to avoid the conundrums of this
undecidability is the main reason for the persistent attraction of minimalist
definitions of democracy—and for the no less persistent failure of these
definitions to stick just to elections. The can of worms that Schumpeter
tried to avoid is still with us.
So far, I have discussed what may be called the external boundaries of
surrounding freedoms that make fair elections likely; i.e. the issue of which
freedoms to include and exclude from this set. But there is another problem,
which reinforces the somewhat skeptical conclusion already reached. Let me
call it the issue of the internal boundaries of these freedoms. All of them
contain a “reasonability clause”;15 the freedom to form associations does not
include creating organizations with terrorist aims; freedom of expression is
limited, among others, by the law of libel; freedom of information does not
require that ownership of the media is not an oligopoly; etc. How do we
15
Of course, this matter has generated an enormous literature among legal theorists. In
Chapter 5, I return to some aspects of this literature.
determine if these freedoms are effective or not? Surely, some positive or

negative cases are unproblematic. Yet there are others that fall in a gray area
between both poles. The answer to these again depends on inductive judg-
ments, not about the degree to which the feeble or partial effectiveness of
certain freedoms still supports, nor, the likelihood of fair elections.16 Once
again, there is no theoretical basis for a firm and clear, a priori and/or
generally agreed upon, answer to this issue: both the external and the internal
boundaries of political freedoms are theoretically undecidable.17
A further difficulty is that the internal boundaries of the freedoms listed
by Dahl, and of others that also are potentially relevant to fair elections, have
undergone significant changes over time. Suffice to note that certain restric-
tions to freedom of expression and of association that in countries of the
Northwest were considered quite acceptable not long ago, nowadays would
be deemed clearly undemocratic.18 Having this in mind, how demanding
should the criteria we apply to newly emerged democracies (and to older
ones outside of the Northwest) be? Should we apply the criteria presently
prevalent in the latter region, or the criteria used in their past, or make in
each case a reasoned assessment of these freedoms in terms of the likelihood
of effectuation of fair elections? It seems to me that the latter view is
the more apposite, but it sends us back squarely to the issue of the undecid-
ability of the respective freedoms, further complicated by their historical
variability.
I conclude that there is, and there will always be, disagreement in academia
and, indeed, in practical politics, concerning where to trace the external and
the internal boundaries of the freedoms that surround, and make likely, fair
elections. This is not a flaw of the attempts to list these freedoms. They
are very important, per se and because they are crucial factors—necessary
conditions—for the existence of a regime centered on fair elections, and as
such are worth listing. It is intuitively obvious, and it can be empirically
16
Even though they are rather gross operationalisms of the underlying concepts, rankings of
countries in terms of attributes of the kind I have been discussing, such as the ones proposed by
Freedom House, are widely used even if of course they do not escape the problems of external
and internal boundaries I note in the main text. Furthermore, other actors use different criteria.
For example, many governments use very lenient criteria (basically, the holding of national
elections, without looking closely at whether or not they have been fair) for certifying as
“democratic” other countries, especially if the latter have friendly governments. Other actors,
in contrast, demand effective and widespread respect of a broad series of human rights,
irrespective of their presumable influence on the existence of fair elections.
17
For discussion of undecidability, albeit from a theoretical perspective different from the
one I adopt here, see Mouffe 1993 and 2000.
18
For instance, Holmes and Sunstein (1999: 104) note that “What freedom of speech means
for contemporary American jurisprudence is not what it meant fifty or one hundred years
ago . . . rights are continually expanding and contracting.”
established, that the lack of some of these freedoms (say, of expression,

association, or movement) eliminates the likelihood of fair elections. On the
other hand, the inductive character of these listings, and the related problem
of their external and internal boundaries, show their limitations as theoretical
statements, per se and in their inter-subjective persuasiveness. These limita-
tions make this matter undecidable, in the sense above noted; consequently,
instead of ignoring such limitations, or artificially trying to fix the external
and internal boundaries of these freedoms, a more fruitful avenue of enquiry
consists of thematizing the reasons and implications of this conundrum.19
I believe, and will further argue in the Conclusion, that this problem should
be seen as an indication of a great virtue of democracy: its open-ended
character, that among other things means that the “proper” drawing of the
external and internal boundaries of these and other freedoms is a matter of
perpetual political deliberation and contention.
Although there is much terrain ahead, with the preceding discussion of the
regime and its concomitants we have reached a point that is important in itself
and because it places us, so to speak, on a promontory from which other paths
to be pursued can be discerned. I believe it is convenient to include in the
definition of political democracy three kinds of components: one, fair elec-
tions; two, the positive, participatory rights of voting and eventually trying to
be elected, jointly with taking part in activities related to the exercise of those
rights; and third, despite their undecidability, a set of freedoms that surround
and are necessary supports for the likelihood of such elections and their related
participatory rights. This criterion is not minimalist à la Schumpeter. It
disagrees with focusing exclusively on elections and leaving implicit their
institutionalization and decisiveness as well as their related rights and sur-
rounding freedoms. On the other hand, the criterion I am proposing is limited,
in that it disagrees with including a highly detailed, and ultimately inexhaust-
ible and analytically barren, listing of potentially relevant freedoms. This
criterion I propose is restricted also in the sense that it refuses to introduce
prescriptive notions into the definition of a democratic regime.20
Although we have yet to see that other factors, not located at the level of the
regime, must also be included for reaching an adequate characterization of
political democracy, I believe that the criterion I have proposed is useful for
19
Albeit in a different context (concepts of equality), Sen (1993: 33–4) puts it well: “If an
underlying idea has an essential ambiguity, a precise formulation of that idea must try to capture
the ambiguity rather than hide or eliminate it” (italics in the original).
20
I emphasize this term because, as we shall see, this does not entail excluding normative
dimensions and respective theories from the analysis of democracy more broadly conceived.
Here I am only concerned with reaching an analytically convenient definition of part of this
matter, a democratic regime, or a political democracy.
several reasons. The first being conceptual and empirical, because it allows us
to generate a set of cases that are different from the varied set of countries that
are not democracies, whether because they are various sorts of openly
authoritarian regimes, or because they hold elections but not ones that are
fair.21 The second reason, also conceptual and empirical, is that once such a
set is generated, the way is opened for the analysis and comparison of
similarities and differences among subsets of cases of democratic regimes.
The third reason derives from both practical and normative reasons: the
existence of this kind of regime, in spite of flaws that may remain, entails a
huge difference in relation to authoritarian rule. At the very least, the avail-
ability of these rights and freedoms generates the possibility of using them as
areas of protection and empowerment for the expansion or achievement of
other rights. A fourth reason is that it was in demand for this type of regime
and its freedoms that throughout history people have instigated and taken
innumerable risks. In addition to sometimes mythical hopes about other
goods that the achievement of fair elections and political freedoms would
bring about, the demand for those elections and freedoms was at the core of
the great mobilizations that have often preceded or accompanied the inaugur-
ation of democracy.22 The fifth and final reason also derives from empirical
and normative implications. Survey data as well as impressionistic observa-
tion suggest that, whatever additional meanings they attach to the term
“democracy,” most people in most places include some basic political rights
and freedoms, jointly with elections that, in their view, are reasonably fair. It
may well be for this reason that in common parlance, in the language of
politicians and journalists, as well as according to some scholarly definitions,
the existence of those attributes suffices for calling a country democratic. This
entails such a positive normative connotation that it is a synecdoche; i.e.
naming the larger part, a country, by an attribute of one of its components, its
regime.
21
However, some cases fall into a gray zone between these two sets. This fact has given rise to
the literature on “electoral authoritarianism” or “hybrid regimes” I mention in the Introduc-
tion. Yet proper clarification of the definition of a democratic regime should minimize this
problem or at least make clear in each case its more problematic aspects.
22
The crisp conclusion that Klingeman and Hofferbert (1998: 23) reach in their study of
survey data on post-communist countries also applies elsewhere: “It was not for groceries that
people in Central and Eastern Europe took to the streets in 1989 and 1991. It was for freedom.”
Welzel and Inglehart 1999, on the basis of another study of a broad set of survey data, conclude
that “liberty aspirations” are central for a majority of respondents in new democracies; see,
concurrently, Rose and Mishler 1996.
1 . 4. AG ENCY A N D T H E IN S T IT UT IO NA LIZED WAG ER
We saw earlier that in a democratic regime each voter has at least six voting
options. But this is not the only right assigned by political democracy to its
citizens. Each one also has the right to try to get elected. That she may want or
not want to exercise this right is irrelevant in relation to the fact that, by
having the right to be elected, each citizen carries with her the potential
authority and enormous responsibility of participating in governmental de-
cisions that are binding over the territory of a state, including the eventual
application, or the threat of application, of physical coercion. The carriers of
these rights and of the freedoms I discussed in the preceding section are
political citizens. The important point of these rights and freedoms is that they
define the citizen as an agent. In the present context, this definition is a legal
one; those rights and freedoms are assigned by the legal system of a political
democracy to all citizens in the territory of a state, with exceptions that are
themselves legally defined. This assignment pertains to all citizens, irrespec-
tive of their social condition and “ascriptive” characteristics other than age
and nationality. In a political democracy, agency entails the presumption of
capacity to make choices that are deemed sufficiently reasonable as to have
significant consequences, in terms of the aggregation of votes and of the
incumbency of government and/or state roles. Individuals may not exercise
these rights and freedoms, yet the legal system of a democratic regime
construes them all as equally capable of effectuating them and their correlated
obligations. The legally-backed and universalistic23 attribution of agency
effected by political democracy is a crucial fact, by itself and because of its
multiple reverberations, to which I will return throughout this book.
Perhaps because this attribution of agency has become so commonplace in
the Northwestern countries, we tend to forget what an extraordinary and
recent achievement it is—a theme that will occupy us in the following
chapter. Seen from this angle, political democracy is not the result of some
kind of consensus, or individual choice, or social contract, or deliberative
process. Democracy is the result of an institutionalized wager. By such a wager
I mean that the legal system assigns to every individual manifold freedoms,
rights, and obligations, including the ones entailed by the democratic regime.
Individuals do not choose these freedoms, rights, and obligations; at their
birth (and in some senses, before) they find themselves immersed in a web of
23
Although this may dubbed a “bounded universalism.” As we will see in Chapter 4 when
discussing the nation and its referents, it is limited to those who share the attribute of
citizenship, not to all adult inhabitants.
social relations, including many sanctioned and backed by the legal system of
the state.
The attribution of those rights, freedoms, and obligations is universalis-
tic:24 everyone is expected to accept that, barring exceptions detailed by the
legal system, all others enjoy the same political rights, freedoms, and obliga-
tions that each one has. What is the wager? It is that, in a democracy, every ego
must accept that every citizen may participate—by voting and eventually by
being elected—in the act, and fair elections that determine who will govern
them for some time. It is an institutionalized wager because it is imposed on
every ego independently of his will: ego must accept it even if he believes that it
is a serious mistake or risk to allow certain individuals to vote and be elected.
Ego has no option but to take the chance that the “wrong” individuals and
parties are chosen as the outcome of fair elections. This is the wager: ego has to
take that risk25 because it is entailed, and backed, by the legal system of a
political democracy. Ego may dislike or even strongly object to the fact that
alter is assigned the same freedoms and rights of voting and being elected that
she has—yet for ego this is not a matter of choice; it is a legally institutional-
ized fact. By birth or nationalization, and in many respects by sheer residence
in a country, both ego and alter acquire rights and obligations toward all
others and the state.
Thus, we have found another characteristic specific to contemporary polit-
ical democracy: it is the only type of regime that is the result of an institu-
tionalized, universalistic, and inclusive wager. All other regimes, whether they
include elections or not, place some kind of restriction on this wager or
suppress it entirely. New or old, beyond their founding moment democratic
regimes are the result of this wager, and are profoundly imprinted by this fact.
I insist: the wager is institutionalized; it is a legally enacted and backed
institution to which everyone is expected to acquiesce within the territory
delimited by a state that contains a democratic regime. By itself, this may not
support the moral obligation to accept a democratic regime and obey its
incumbents,26 but it is nonetheless a demanding expectation, textured in the
legal system and backed by the power of the state.
24
In addition to the qualification introduced in footnote 23, this assertion merits another:
even though it holds for political freedoms and rights, it does not in terms of civil and welfare
legislation enacted having in view various kinds of disadvantaged sectors. I discuss this matter in
Chapter 2.
25
In the following chapter we shall see, however, that in the Northwestern countries this risk
was tempered by various institutional arrangements.
26
But it is a good starting point; I leave the discussion of the normative justification of
democracy for the Conclusion.
This expectation defines broad but operationally important parameters for

individual rationality: ignoring, curtailing, or denying the rights and free-
doms that the wager assigns to alter normally generates negative conse-
quences for the perpetrator. In ego’s interactions with alter, at least in the
sphere contoured by fair elections, it is in principle in his interest to acknowl-
edge and respect alter’s rights. This interest may be reinforced by altruistic
or collectively oriented reasons, but in itself entails the legally-backed obliga-
tion to recognize others as citizens, i.e. carriers of rights and freedoms
identical to ego’s. In Chapter 7 we will see that, under a propitious social
context, this is the nutshell of dialogical networks that nourish a public
sphere, as it consists of mutual recognitions based on the universalistic
assignment of certain rights, freedoms, and obligations to individuals legally
construed as citizens/agents.
Notice we have reached two points through the preceding discussion. One
is a definition of political citizenship as the individual correlate of a democratic
regime. It consists of
Individuals who carry the legal assignment of the rights (and correlated
obligations) entailed by the wager; i.e., to participate in fair elections by freely
voting and being elected and taking part in cognate participatory activities;
they are also the carriers of some surrounding freedoms (such as expression,
association, access to free information, and free movement) necessary for the
effectuation of those rights.
This definition allows me to complement the generic one of regime I offered
above. A democratic regime, in addition to the already noted characteristics of
all regimes, is one in which
Political citizens have the legally sanctioned and backed right to participate in
fair elections that decide, by means of competition among political parties or
equivalent organizations, who will occupy most top governmental positions
at (at least) the national level, try if they so wish to be elected to those
positions, and enjoy, during and between such elections, some surrounding
political freedoms, also legally sanctioned and backed.
The status of political citizenship is a mix. It is ascriptive in that (excepting
naturalization) it pertains to individuals by the sheer fact of their being born
in a given territory (ius solis) or lineage (ius sanguinis). It is potentially
enabling, in that individuals may want to use those rights and freedoms for
undertaking a variety of actions. It is universalistically bounded, in that within
the jurisdiction delimited by a state, it is assigned in the same terms to all
adults who meet the nationality criterion. It is a formal status, as it results
from legal rules that in their content, enactment, and adjudication satisfy
criteria that are specified, in turn, by other legal rules. Finally, political
citizenship is public. By this I mean, first, that it is the result of laws that must
satisfy carefully spelled out requisites of publicity and, second, that the rights,
freedoms, and obligations it assigns to every ego imply, and legally demand,
mutual recognitions among all individuals, irrespective of their social posi-
tion, as carriers of such rights, freedoms, and obligations.
1 . 5 . A FI R S T E N C OU N T E R W I TH TH E S TAT E
An important point to note is that with the preceding analysis we have gone
beyond the regime and run into the state, in three senses: one, as a territorial
entity; second, as a legal system that enacts and backs the assignment of the
corresponding rights, freedoms, and obligations;27 and, third, as at least28 the
set of state bureaucracies that acts in basic consonance with the implementa-
tion of those rights, freedoms, and obligations. The democratic regime, the
wager and political citizenship presuppose each other, and they together
presuppose the state.
1. 6 . A PA RT IA L C ON C LU S I ON
In this chapter we have traversed a rather straight road. In so doing I proposed

a definition of a democratic regime, or a political democracy, as well as some
criteria that I find useful for characterizing such a regime. We have looked, as
it were, at the bare anatomy of democracy; of course the actual functioning
of democracies is populated not only by individual citizens, but also by
collective entities such as political parties, unions, social movements, interest
associations, ethnicities, corporations, various bureaucracies, and others.
For this reason as well as because of various undecidabilities we have to
continue exploring, no definition of democracy will be forever or completely
peaceful. Democracy has a “floating meaning,”29 but this does not authorize a
27
Of course, these assertions entail that I consider the legal system as part of the state; I
substantiate this point in Chapters 3 and 5.
28
By “at least” I want to indicate that other sectors of the state bureaucracy may be unrelated
to, or not act in consonance with this kind of elections; I return to this matter in Chapter 5 in the
context of a discussion of the estado de derecho.
29
As asserted by Whitehead 1997 and 2002 in his discussion of this matter. That democracy
is the archetypical “essentially contested concept” (Gallie 1956) is fruitfully elaborated by Collier
et al. 2006; see also Newey 2001.
conceptual Babel. Rather, it demands proposing definitions that, by being as

clear as possible, allow academic and political discourses to be aware of what
is the referent being defined by each one and, on that basis, to articulate the
disagreements that undecidables and diverging values unavoidably originate.
In proposing my definitions and related criteria I left behind several interest-
ing places; since they give a fuller meaning of the journey we have just started, we
will return to them as we travel onwards. As a first step in this direction, in the
next chapter I deal with the emergence and evolution of the idea of agency, the
concept I have emphasized that crucially underlies democracy.
..................
2
..................
Agency: Origins, Concomitants,
and Expansion
While analyzing the democratic regime we found two components that are
indispensable for its existence but that drove us beyond it. This is a seriously
complicating factor, which may persuade us to keep theories within the rather safe
haven of the regime itself; but it is also interesting, because it will guide us in our
excursions to aspects of democracy other than those contoured by the regime. The
first component is located at the micro-level: it is the individual unit, the micro-
foundation of democracy tout court, not the voter but the citizen and, underlying
him/her, the agent that grounds and gives substance to citizenship. This topic will
occupy us in the present chapter, although we return to and further develop it
later. The other component, located at the macro-level, is the state and its various
faces and dimensions, with which we will begin dealing in Chapter 3.
I start with some general considerations about agency (Section 2.1),
followed by a look at the history of its conception, emphasizing its origins
in the sphere of civil rights, understood in the sense of the European law, as
rights that pertain basically—but not exclusively—to the “private” sphere
(2.2). Then I move to examine how this conception was expanded to political
rights (2.3). Along this path we find the origins and basic founding principles
of one of the great currents that have converged into contemporary democ-
racy, liberalism, not just as a political doctrine but also as embodied in
constitutionally-based regimes (2.4). Then I explore the expansion of social
rights (2.5) and conclude with a brief remit to the problématique of the state.
2.1. SOME BACKGROUND 1
In the Northwest for a long time many social sectors were excluded from voting,
let alone being elected: peasants, blue-collar workers, domestic workers (and, in
1
I am a political scientist persuaded of the crucial importance of history for understanding
and eventually explaining political phenomena. Here and in the two following chapters
32 Agency: Origins, Concomitants, and Expansion
general, non-property-owners and poorly educated individuals), blacks in the

United States, indigenous peoples in the latter country as well as in many others,
and, indeed, women. Only during the twentieth century, and in several countries
in relation to women as late as after the Second World War, did political rights
become inclusive.2 On the other hand, at various times, in some cases before the
countries of the Northwest did it, countries in the South and the East adopted,
often abruptly, inclusive suffrage. But the many variations of “tutelary” or
“façade” democracies that there emerged, and of course openly authoritarian
regimes, meant the factual denial of the democratic wager.
Everywhere the history of democracy is the history of the reluctant accep-
tance of the wager. The past of the Northwest is punctuated by the cata-
strophic predictions,3 and sometimes the violent resistance,4 of privileged
classes and sectors opposing the extension of political rights and freedoms to
other, “undeserving” or “untrustworthy” ones. In other latitudes, by means
sometimes even more violent and comprehensively exclusionary, this same
extension has also been repeatedly resisted. What were the arguments for this
refusal? Typically these were lack of autonomy and responsibility of those who
claimed such rights—in other words, denial of their agency. Only some
individuals (whether they were highly educated and/or property owners, or
a theocracy, or a political vanguard, or a military junta) were deemed to have
the requisite moral and cognitive capabilities for participating in political life.
Only they were seen as sufficiently invested (in terms of education, property,
revolutionary work, or patriotic designs) to have adequate knowledge and
motivation for responsibly making collectively binding decisions. Of course,
revolutionary vanguards, military juntas, and the like generated authoritarian
regimes, while in the Northwest the privileged generated, in most cases,
oligarchic, non-inclusive democratic regimes for themselves and political
exclusion for the rest. It was only after numerous and hard struggles that
I undertake historical excursions during which, since I rely on secondary sources that often
make their points better than I could, I transcribe what these sources say, at times more
extensively than is usual in books such as the present one.
2
In spite of rather frequent assertions to the contrary, not even in terms of universal male
suffrage is the United States an exception to this. The early existence of this suffrage at the
federal level was made purely nominal by the severe restrictions imposed on African Americans
and indigenous peoples (including the elimination of many of the latter), especially but not
exclusively in the South. Due to this, I agree with authors who date the achievement in this
country of inclusive political democracy to the Second War World or as late as the 1960s, in the
aftermath of the civil rights movement; see especially King 2005 and 2007, González and King
2004, and Griffin 1996 (I return to this topic in Chapter 4).
3
See on these resistances Hirschman 1991, Hermet 1983, and Rosanvallon 1992.
4
See Goldstein 1983.
Agency: Origins, Concomitants, and Expansion 33
the formerly excluded were accepted as political citizens; only then did the
democratic wager became inclusive.
I wish now to recall that, as I argued in the Introduction and discussed in
Chapter 1, there is a central idea underlying democracy and, consequently, the
argument of this book: human agency. This idea involves complicated philo-
sophical, moral, and psychological issues.5 For the purpose of the present text,
however, it suffices to assert that an agent is a being endowed with practical
reason and moral discernment; i.e. she uses her cognitive and motivational
capabilities to make choices that are in principle reasonable in terms of her
situation and goals, and of which, barring conclusive proof to the contrary, she is
deemed to be the best judge.6 This capacity makes the agent a moral one, in that
normally she will feel, and will be construed by relevant others as a purposive
being responsible for her choices and in principle the direct consequences that
ensue from these choices. Of course, the literatures that deal from various angles
with this topic offer various qualifications to those which I have stated. Although
this is important, it does not prevent us from advancing further; the next step
consists of looking at how this conception of agency emerged.
2 . 2 . T H E L E G A L , P R E - P O L I T I C A L C O N S TRU C T I O N
OF AGENCY
The idea of agency I have sketched here became the core of the legal systems of
the Northwestern countries well before democracy. This idea is not only a
moral one; in the preceding chapter I mentioned that in democracy it is
legally sanctioned and backed. Very importantly, this fact entails the recogni-
tion of an agent as a legal person, a carrier of subjective rights7 who, according
also to legally-defined criteria, can validly claim against others and the state,
including by accessing the courts. This is the very basic right to have a legal
5
I found particularly useful works that, albeit from various perspectives, pay attention to the
linkages between the moral and philosophical issues entailed by agency, on one hand, and legal
and political theory, on the other, such as Cooke 1999, Dahl 1989, Garzón Valdés 1993b and
2000, Gewirth 1978 and 1996, Guariglia 1992, Habermas 1996, Held 1987, Hösle 2004, Raz 1986
and 1994, Taylor 1985.
6
As Dahl (1989: 108) puts it, “The burden of proof [of lack of autonomy, the term this author
uses, O’D] would always lie with a claim to an exception, and no exception would be admissible,
either morally or legally, in the absence of a very compelling showing.” Of course the original,
forceful assertion of this point was made by J. S. Mill 1985 [1859].
7
On this concept and its entailed legal personality see especially Ferrajoli (1995: 37 and
passim), and Habermas (1996: 28 and passim) (this author comments that this attribution
entails the legal recognition of the ability of the individual “to rule himself ”).
“personality”; it underlies all other rights, including those reviewed in the

preceding chapter—these rights could not be possibly assigned to individuals
lacking this attribute. Fuller (1964: 162) aptly puts the basic reason for this
assignment: “To embark on the enterprise of subjecting human conduct to the
governance of rules involves of necessity a commitment to the view that man
[sic] is, or can become, a responsible agent, capable of understanding and
following rules, and answerable for his defaults.”8
This right to legal personality, one that underlies all others as their basic
support, should be considered a constitutive right of democracy.
2 . 3 . E M E RG E N C E A N D EVO LUT I O N O F AG E N C Y
The institutionalized, legally-backed recognition of agency took a long process.

It had its forerunners in the great creationist religions—Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam—according to which we are all equally sons/daughters of God,
responsible to Him for what we do and omit in our lives. From a different
angle it was pursued and elaborated by Cicero and the Stoics, especially their
conceptions of a cosmopolis in which the principles of natural law had been
imprinted on all human beings. But these were not subjective rights;9 their initial
elaboration in this direction received crucial contributions later on, from the
work on legal theory done in the medieval Church and universities. In this
process the “reception” of Roman law around the late eleventh century was very
important, especially as compiled in the great Corpus Juris Civilis of Byzantium
emperor Justinian. It was started by jurists at the University of Bologna and their
influence on other European centers of learning, as well as by Church’s can-
onists.10 These changes were closely related to what some historians consider
a true renaissance that took place in Southern Europe in the twelfth century.
Black (1988: 588–9) considers this period as the one in which took place the “rise
of individualism in Europe,” expressed in: “[A] profound change in social
8
Honneth (2008: 114) concomitantly remarks that “[E]very community based on modern
law is founded on the assumption of the moral accountability of all its members.” In turn,
expanding specifically to the political sphere Waldron (1998: 341) comments that “The identi-
fication of someone as a bearer of rights expresses a measure of confidence in that person’s
moral capacities—in particular his capacity to think responsibly about the relation between his
interests and the interests of others.”
9
Tierney (1997: 46) comments that “[S]toic philosophers knew of a natural moral law,
accessible to human reason, but they did not derive from it a doctrine of natural rights”
(emphasis added). For a useful overview of the Stoics’ conceptions see Horowitz 1974.
10
On these matters see Berman 1993, Gordley 1991, Oakley 1984, Stein 1999, Strayer 1970,
Tierney 1982 and 1997, Tuck 1979, and Villey 1968.
attitudes . . . [including] greater individual self-awareness, and a more self-

conscious relationship between individual and community.”11 This was further
expressed in the nominalism of William of Ockam, and at the end of this period
was given highly influential formulation by the sixteenth-century Catholic
scholastics of the “Salamantine school,” Francisco de Vitoria and successors,
and by the Northern European “natural rights school” led by Protestant Hugo
Grotius and his own successors; these authors took a decisive step when daring
to argue that their views on natural rights did not need to be grounded on
religious revelation but could be found in the rational examination of human
nature. But it was a contemporary of Grotius, Thomas Hobbes, who took the
even more decisive step of offering a thoroughly individualistic and secular
definition of those rights: “The right of nature, which writers commonly call
juris naturalis, is the liberty each man hath, to use his own power, as he will
himself, for the preservation of his own nature.”12
These were, of course, some of the first clear movements toward modernity.13
They entailed the formulation of a new “ontology of the individual,”14 which
meant the emergence of “the idea of autonomy, understood as the ability to
impose obligations upon oneself, not as an effect of the moral law but as the
foundation for all morals”; Haakonssen (1991: 21), states, as a consequence,
During the 17th and 18th centuries established conceptions of morality as
obedience came to be increasingly contested by emerging conceptions of
morality as self-governance . . . centered on the belief that all normal in-
dividuals are equally able to live together in a morality of self- governance.
At this point I must change the direction of my discussion. The topics I have
discussed upto here deal with issues of—broadly defined—moral philosophy.
Yet the emerging view of the human being as a carrier of natural—subjec-
tive—rights that could be identified and justified by properly exercised
reason, were also intimately linked to legal issues. As in his great book on
legal history Berman (1993: 35) asserts, as early as “[T]he 12th century the
writings of the canonists were permeated by doctrines based on individual
11
For an interesting argument linking these processes to the first spurt of the emergence of
capitalism see Mielants 2007.
12
Hobbes 1991: 1.14, 84:51.
13
The converging influence exercised on these conceptions during this period by the
scientific ideas of Bacon, Galileo, Descartes and especially Newton, bears more than the passing
reference that I can make here. After noting the movement against Aristotelianism that the new
analytical and experimental scientific methods entailed, von Wright (1993: 177) comments that
as a consequence “Nature is object, man is subject and agent” (italics in the original). See also
Cassirer 1951, and Gay 1966a and 1966b.
14
As said on page 5 of an important work on these matters, Taylor 1989; see also Taylor 2007
and Schneewind 1998.
intention and individual will in areas like the law of tort, the law of contracts,
the law of marriage.” Concurrently, Pennington (1993: 288) comments that
“[A] doctrine of individual and inalienable rights first surfaced in Western
legal thought in the 12th and 13th centuries. . . . These norms were building
blocks upon which were constructed rights of property, obligations, marriage,
and due process.”15 It was in this period that reached mature elaboration what
came to be called the “will (or consensus) theory of contract,” and the view of
agency it entailed; as Gordley (1991: 7–8) puts it,
The late scholastics and the natural law lawyers had recognized as fundamen-
tal the principle that contracts are entered into by the will or consent of the
parties . . . [In contrast to Aristotelian/Thomist conceptions, O’D] making a
contract was regarded simply as an act of will, not as an exercise of a moral
virtue. The parties were bound simply to what they willed, not to obligations
that followed from the essence or nature of the contract.16
Perhaps I should add that the generalized acceptance of this quite revolution-
ary view about contracts is agreed among legal historians in relation to civil
law (i.e. Continental European) countries, but there is disagreement
concerning the common law countries. However, Hamburger (1989: 257),
who defends the view that this influence was also strongly felt in England
(albeit somewhat later, in the seventeenth century), transcribes from a book
written in 1603 by William Fulbecke a passage that nicely summarizes this
theory: “The chief ground of contracts is consent so that the persons which
contract must be able to consent, so consent groweth out of knowledge and
from a man’s free will, directly by sufficient understanding. . . .”
Irrespective of these differences, it is clear that an individual who can enter
into the rights and obligations entailed by a contract is not only presupposed
to have the practical reason that makes him a free willing being, but also holds
the legal personality that grounds the validity and actionability of such rights
and obligations—not a thing, or a slave, or serf, or minor, or, at those times, a
woman17—but a legally defined, backed and enabled being.
15
I already noted the importance of the “recovery” of Roman law. As Berman (1993: 245)
argues, this law “had achieved a very high level of sophistication in the field of contracts.” From a
different theoretical perspective Anderson 1974 agrees, adding that Roman law conceptions of
free disposition of land were also fundamental.
16
See, concurrently Berman 1993, Lieberman 1998, and van Caenegem 1992. According to
these authors, the “virtues” exercised in the making and implementation of a contract were
basically of liberality (generosity), commutative justice (giving to each his due part by exchang-
ing things of equal value), and/or of fidelity (keeping promises).
17
In the Prussian and Napoleonic codes and many that imitated them, as well as in Anglo-
Saxon common law, and in most countries well into the nineteenth century, women were
almost completely legally equivalent to minors and mentally disabled persons; see among others
MacKinnon 1989, Tigar and Levy 2000, and Walby 1994 and 1996.
It is important to notice that these early formulations of agency were

confined to relations in the private realm—they referred to contracts, to the
disposal of property, to (male dominated) family law, and to various commer-
cial transactions. They were grounded on Roman law, which was “[A] highly
individualistic law. It encouraged freedom of contract without any recognition
of the inequality of bargaining power.”18 It took several centuries until the
concepts of this kind of law, and with them the ideas of agency they contained,
were transferred to the political sphere. As Bobbio (1987: 11–12) put it,
Public law as a systematic body of norms came into existence later than
private law; actually only in the era of the formation of the modern
state. . . . The two fundamental categories of European public law . . . were
derived from private law: the dominium, understood as the patrimonial
power of the monarch over the territory of the state, and . . . the imperium
which stands as the power of command over subjects.
As already noted, it was in the late sixteenth century that a highly elaborated
theory of agency grounded in subjective rights was proposed by Hobbes and
Grotius. Later on, this same view of agency permeated the worldview of the
Enlightenment; in spite of their differences on other matters, it was accepted
and further elaborated by Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Pufendorf, Barbeyrac, and
others. In addition, and crucially for the present discussion, this view was
inserted at the core of legal theory by the work of medieval jurists, and later on
by continental authors such as Domat and Pothier, whose work also influ-
enced Blackstone, Bentham, and other jurists in the common law tradition, as
well as, and even more so, the great French and Prussian codifications of the
first half of the nineteenth century, that in turn shaped the legal systems of
many other countries in the Northwest and beyond.19
I noted that these views of individual agency and its corollary of the “will
theory of contract” run counter to Aristotelian/Thomist conceptions of
contract. More generally, those views ran against the latter’s conception of
the law, which in its organicistic outline nowadays is still influential in some
non-Northwestern countries.20 For this conception the law is about the just
ordering of the polis, within which every part is assigned its proper, propor-
tional, place. The maxim suum cuique jus tribuere expresses this architectonic
conception of justice, and of the law as its instrument: there are no individual/
subjective rights, but rights and duties that are assigned, for the sake of the
18
Stein 1999: 122.
19
On these influences see Gordley 1991 and Lieberman 1998.
20
For discussion of these organicistic conceptions with reference to Latin America, see
Stepan 1978.
just ordering of the whole, to each of the social categories that compose an
organically conceived society.21 The emergence of the idea of agency and its
subjective rights meant a Copernican inversion: the law does not any longer
conceive its mission as properly assigning the parts of the societal whole, nor
consequently aims at effecting overall social justice. Instead, as the nominal-
ism of Ockam and later on of Hobbes asserted, the law refers to what they
deemed to be the only truly existing entities, individuals. The mission of the
laws is to enact and protect the potestas of individuals, their capacity to
exercise their will in spheres not prohibited by those laws. The individual,
construed as a carrier of subjective rights, is the object and purpose of the
law22—in this view, if eventually a good social order results, it is (as later on,
congenially with this view, would be asserted in relation to the market by
Mandeville, Adam Smith, and others) a by-product of the aggregate conse-
quences of the effectiveness of subjective rights.
Even though the preceding reflections may look rather remote from a
theory of contemporary democracy, this is not the case. To show this, there
is nothing better than invoking Max Weber and the colossal effort he under-
took to explain the emergence and unique characteristics of capitalism in the
Northwest. We know that Weber did not assign privileged explanatory status
to any of the dimensions he used. His view is relevant in the present context
because he paid close attention to legal factors, seeing them as acting in a
counterpoint fashion with the emergence of states and capitalism. Although
we will look at this matter in more detail in following chapters, here I note
that Weber made the important point that the emergence of what he called
formal-rational law (a repository, I hasten to add, of subjective rights) cannot
be attributed mainly to the demands of the bourgeoisie since, as he pointed
out, a modern, fully capitalist bourgeoisie did not exist at the onset of that
process.23 Rather, this emergence must be accounted for by the centuries’ legal
work I have sketched, the role of the legal professionals who took up this work
and, especially, the interests of the main employers of these professionals:
21
As St Thomas Aquinas wrote: “Since every part bears the same relation to its whole as the
imperfect to the perfect, and since one man is a part of that perfect whole which is the
community, it follows that the law must have as its proper object the well-being of the whole
community. . . . Law, strictly understood, has as its first and principal object the ordering of the
common good” (quoted in Kelly 1992: 136). Contrast with Hobbes’s definition transcribed
above.
22
After mentioning Aristotelianism, referring to Hobbes’s and Spinoza’s conception of
rights, Kriegel (1995: 39) comments that “by contrast [these authors think] of rights as the
attributes of an individual, a manifestation of his potentialities in the state of nature. In lieu of a
realist and objectivist theory of law, we are confronted with a subjectivist and naturalist view.”
23
Weber (1978: 847 and passim).
rulers engaged in state-making and consequently interested in improving

their credit and tax revenues, as well as in subjecting to their control the
population of the territories they aimed to rule. For these purposes it was
crucial to eliminate organically conceived status orders (especially feudal ones
and autonomous cities, as well as the broad jurisdiction that canon law
claimed), and with them Aristotelian/Thomist views of the law. Those rulers
found in the universalizing character of subjective rights an effective conduit
for the assertion of their command over all individuals in their territory.
The process of legal construction of individual agency was anything but
linear and peaceful, and unfolded in a mutually dynamizing relationship with
another process. This was the full emergence of capitalism. As both Weber
and Marx recalled, in most of the Northwest the mutual reinforcements of
state-formation, development of capitalism, and expansion of formal-rational
law had, among other consequences, the abolition of serfdom and other kinds
of indenture, and the consequent availability of “free” labor.24 This freedom is
the subjective right to enter into contracts, whereby individuals dispossessed
of means of production sell their labor force. The worker of capitalist social
relations is an early legal person, carrier of the rights (few, initially) and the
obligations that he, as fits an individual legally construed as an agent, has
“freely” agreed with the employer. This is also true of criminal responsibilities,
which ceased to be collectively attributed to the clan, the family, or the village,
and were transferred, as again fitted agency, to individuals.25
At this point I wish to emphasize that the construction of subjective rights,
including those entailed by the labor contract, were the result of the processes
I have sketched, not of liberalism or political democracy, both of which
emerged well after this construction had become, in the Northwest, widely
24
Steinfeld (1991: 5) discussing indentured labor argues that: “Less and less did these legal
forms of the employment relationship rest on antiquated medieval assumptions that labor was a
resource of the community. More and more they rested on a particular legal construction of the
idea that individuals owned themselves and were free to dispose of their energies in the market
place.” But this only happened in the Northwestern countries and, even among them, with the
important exception of slavery in the South of the United States. Later on, in other parts of the
world, state-making and the expansion of capitalism did not have these characteristics and
consequences.
25
Lacey (2001: 255) asking “Where the conditions of [criminal] responsibility are to be
sought?” responds that “They reside . . . in fundamental aspects of human agency: in capacities
for knowledge, awareness, reflection, deliberation, and choice, which justify holding people
responsible for their conduct.” This author adds that this was based on (ibid. 251): “The idea of
the self-determining moral agent, equipped with distinctive cognitive and volitional capacities
of understanding and self-control, and of a universal human personhood underpinned by these
features. . . .” The acceptance of this view, and consequently demands for rationalized criminal
law and procedures was another important theme of modernity, transposed to legislation by the
influence of Bentham, Montesquieu, Voltaire and, especially, Beccaria.
diffused and highly elaborated legal doctrines.26 The same is true of the
construction of property as individual, exclusive, and marketable.27 Looking
at this story from a convergent angle, we may note that, as states and
capitalism generated territorially bound markets, they further added, before
political democracy came to the fore, a dense texture of subjective rights.28
2. 4. DE R IVATIO N S : PO L IT ICA L RI G HTS
During the processes just sketched, many began to argue that the legal construc-
tion of an agent carrier of subjective rights, as it omitted the actual conditions of
their exercise and excluded other rights, backed and greatly helped to reproduce
extremely unequal relationships between capitalists and workers.
The result of contractual freedom, then, is in the first place the opening of
the opportunity to use, by clever utilization of property ownership in the
market, these resources without legal restraints as means for the achieve-
ment of power over others. The parties interested in power in the market
thus are also interested in such a legal order . . . coercion is exercised to a
considerable extent by the private owners of the means of production
and acquisition, to whom the law guarantees their property . . . In the
labor market, it is left to the “free” discretion of the parties to accept the
conditions imposed by those who are economically stronger by virtue of
the legal guarantee of their property.29
But this construction contained explosive corollaries. First, if ego is attributed
legally enacted agency in spheres of life that are, for him and in the aggregate
for the whole society, extremely important, a question that follows is: why
should this attribution be denied in other spheres and, at any event, who
should have the authority to decide it?
26
Tilly (1997: 87) notes that during the early modern period in several parts of Western
Europe “Strict wage labor displaced the arrangements of indenture, apprenticeship, slavery, and
household incorporation under which most subordinate workers had previously labored.”
27
Janoski (1998: 200) says that “[In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries] universalistic
legal rights for men’s claims to property are protected by courts well before political and social
rights.”
28
As Alford and Friedland (1988: 240) note, “The rise of the state progressively constituted the
individual as an abstract legal subject with rights—specified independently of social structure—
before the law, responsible for his or her actions.” Rosanvallon (1992: 107–11) concurs: “The
history of the emergence of the individual may be understood as part of the history of civil rights.”
29
The author of these lines is not Marx, but Weber (1978, 730–1), who adds that “Freedom
of contract and propositions regarding legitimate property derived therefrom obviously belong
to the natural law of groups interested in market transactions, i.e. those interested in the
ultimate appropriation of the means of production”; ibid. 871.
The answer to this question is the history of the further expansion of

subjective rights, including the right of suffrage up to its present inclusiveness.
This history was written by manifold conflicts at the end of which, after having
died in their thousands in war for their respective countries30 and exchanged
revolution for the welfare state,31 the classes dangereux were finally admitted as
participants in the democratic wager—they gained political citizenship. A
second issue proved no less explosive, even if until today it is much less settled
than the previous one: if agency entails choice, which capabilities and actual
options may be consistent with each individual’s condition as an agent?
While these issues were being posed, other important processes took place.
One, which we will examine in the next chapter, is that the map of Western
Europe and North America was quite firmly drawn as a consequence of
successful, and often cruel, state-making. Another was the further expansion
of rights in the civil sphere, in the double sense that already recognized rights
and duties were further specified and that new ones were added. These
processes meant that, when sometime in the nineteenth century most
countries of the Northwest adopted non-inclusive democracy, an overwhelm-
ing part of their male population had been assigned a series of subjective
rights that regulated numerous parts of their lives.32 These were not—
not yet—the political rights of the democratic wager. They were civil
rights, subjective rights that pertained to the “private” sphere. They have
been summed-up as “civil citizenship” by Marshall and, more recently, as
“bourgeois rights” by Habermas.33 I have discussed this matter, including my
30
See Bendix 1964, Levi 1997 and 1999, and Skocpol 1992. As Tilly (1998: 67) notes,
“Advocates of the expanded electorate argued specifically that men who could fight for the
patrie should also be able to vote for its governors.”
31
This generalization ignores important country variations that are not central to my
present discussion. But in all cases it is worth noting the vigorous educational efforts aimed
at making these sectors “deserving citizens.” These efforts had in the long run important
democratizing consequences, but for examples of their initially defensive bent see Rosanvallon
1992. It is also of interest to note the great attention that Condorcet, Locke, Rousseau, Adam
Smith, and other members of the Enlightenment looked to education as a way to make possible
agency in the political and economic spheres.
32
As Tilly (1994: 7) says in relation to France, “With the Revolution, virtually all French
people acquired access to state courts . . . rights expanded, in company with obligations to
attend school, serve in the military, reply to censuses, pay individually-assessed taxes, and fulfill
other now-standard duties of citizens.” This also became true, somewhat later or earlier, in the
other Northwestern countries.
33
Marshall (1992 [1950]: 10–11) defined them as “The rights necessary for individual
freedom—liberty of person, freedom of speech, thought and faith, the right to own property
and to conclude valid contracts, and right to justice.” As this author added, those rights entail “A
claim to be admitted to a share in the social heritage, which in turn means a claim to be accepted
as full members of society, that is, as citizens” (ibid. 6). On Habermas’s formulation see 1996: 28
and passim.
reservations about the developmental typologies proposed by these authors,

in previous work.34 Here I stress that, when full political inclusion became an
issue, in the Northwestern countries there already existed a rich repertoire of
legally enacted and elaborated criteria concerning the attribution of agency in
the private sphere to a vast (male) number of individuals.35 Obviously, the
scope of these rights was, by our contemporary standards, limited. But it is
also true that, by this process of expanding assignment of subjective rights, the
ground was prepared for the extension of concepts, legislation, jurisprudence,
and ideologies originating in civil citizenship to political and social citizen-
ship; Held (1995: 67) makes this point well:
[Civil citizenship] was a significant step . . . in the development of politi-
cal rights; for when the individual agent was recognized as an autono-
mous person—that is, as a person able to reflect upon and take decisions
about the basic conditions of life—it was easier to think of that person as,
in principle, capable of political responsibility.
2 . 5. L IB E R A L I S M A N D M O D E R N C ON S T I TU T I O NA L I S M
At this point in time we can only artificially separate liberalism as a political

doctrine from the history I have sketched. Once again, Hobbes made the
decisive turn; his contractualism posited that the power of the sovereign
came, as it were, from below him, and that this attribution was made by
individuals, not by status orders, tradition, theocrats, or whatever. Surely,
Hobbes’s sovereign would not subject himself to a constitution, and was not
at all a democrat. But shortly thereafter Grotius and, more fully and memo-
rably, Locke, added another crucial component of liberalism: that those
individuals were carriers of rights that not only predated the sovereign but
that also gave them the agency with which they could properly agree to their
social contract; this in turn explicitly meant that the basic responsibility of the
political power thus constituted was to safeguard those rights.
The strength and impact of this formulation largely springs from the fact
that many of the freedoms that from its inception liberalism seeks to protect
34
O’Donnell 2004, although I hasten to add that this criticism does not invalidate the
analytical usefulness of these concepts; see also Nun 2000 and Turner 1992.
35
Regh (1996: pp. xxi–xxii) says that “In the social-contract tradition going back to Thomas
Hobbes . . . the legal constitution of society on the basis of individual rights appeared as a
plausible extension of the contract relationship that governed the bourgeois economy. The
economic institutions of contract and ownership already entailed a view of legal persons as free
and equal, and thus as bearers of equal rights”; see, concurrently, Kronman 1983: 144.
are the same subjective rights that previously had detailed elaboration and
legal implantation as civil ones. Liberalism expanded these rights and free-
doms but, consistently with its own premises, it defined them as individual
ones.36 It was as advocates of these kinds of rights, too, that liberals demanded
and obtained constitutions—whatever else they do, constitutions protect
freedoms and subjective rights.37
The main reason for erecting the protections of liberalism was fear of the
consequences of the absolutist power of kings. But the first liberals were also
aware of other dangers. One, the anarchy and violence of European religious
and civil wars that set the experiential background of Hobbes’s and Locke’s
work. Two, the dangers of democracy, as portrayed in the purported excesses
perpetrated in the antiquity in some Greek cities and, later on, during the
period of terror of the French Revolution, were exercised in the name of reason
and the citoyen. We should also remember that the framers of the United
States’ Constitution wanted to build a republic, not a democracy; that after the
French Revolution and Napoleon, the dominant voice in France was Benjamin
Constant, who proclaimed the (liberal) “freedoms of the modern,” against the
manifold risks of the “freedoms of the ancient”; that Fustel de Coulanges
influenced generations of European intellectuals with his description of La
Cité Antique (1984 [1864]) as a setting where freedom was in permanent
danger; and that as he grew older Tocqueville saw the democratic equality he
had observed in the United States as ever more threatening to his cherished
values; and even J. S. Mill wanted to curb the extension of the suffrage—as well
as innumerable other manifestations of a liberalism that perceived in the mobs
of antiquity (and in Rousseau and the Jacobins) a danger no less serious, and
ultimately not different, from the anarchy that Hobbes had tried to exorcise.38
These were the constitutions that first institutionalized the wager, albeit on
the basis of a restricted citizenship. These developments meant that, when in the
Northwest the inclusive wager was finally accepted, at least some members of the
ruling classes and sectors could feel that this decision was not a jump into the
void. By then governments were already constrained by highly elaborate subjec-
tive rights, some of which were enshrined as constitutional rules. These were, in
addition, representative systems, which cancelled the fear of direct democracy
36
Thus, as Flathman (1996: 24) comments, the First Amendment of the United States’
constitution “[I]mplicitly posits for a self-enacting, individuating, self-overcoming, or free
spirited individuals.” The same is true of the French Declaration of the Universal Rights of
Man. Further on we will see that this is also true of various recent international covenants and
declarations.
37
Here I cannot discuss other (power-enabling) aspects of law and constitutions; see further
on this topic Chapter 5.
38
On the bad reputation that democracy had for many centuries see the valuable book of
Dunn 2005.
and mob rule. Other institutional safeguards that also have roots in the past
(although their history differs from the one I told here) had been already
adopted or were gaining wide currency, especially the imposition of time limits
on government officials.39 As a result of this “process of constitutionalization”
the relation between rulers and ruled “became to be considered a legal relation-
ship . . . [that is to say one] defined and regulated by, and subordinated to
knowable legal rules.”40 These institutional arrangements converged to shape
the core institutional principle of political liberalism: government must be
limited, because it refers to carriers of rights enacted and backed by the very
legal system that the state and the government must themselves obey.
As a result of this long and complex historical trajectory, contemporary
democracy is based on the idea of agency as legally sanctioned and backed;
furthermore, as institutionalized by the inclusive wager, those individuals are
citizens, and are the source and justification of the powers of states and their
governments.41 These are, I note again, elaborations in the political sphere of
the early subjective rights of agency that I have traced. In this sense, it is no
exaggeration to assert that contemporary democratic legislation has meant
the constitutionalization of natural rights42—the agent that was invented a
long time ago in moral and legal theories now inhabits, more fully rounded in
terms of the rights of which she is the carrier, the core of modern democratic
constitutions. As Ferrajoli (1995: 859) says: “The great innovation from which
the estado de derecho was born was the positivization and constitutionaliza-
tion of these rights.” This in turn entails correlative duties of the state to at
least safeguard those rights; consequently, as this author points out (ibid.
862), “The constitutional declaration of the rights of the citizens entails the
constitutional declaration of the duties of the state” (my translation).
This is, in a nutshell, the constitutional framework of political democracy.
The fact that in the Northwest it was in place when the inclusive wager was
adopted, mitigated the perceived risks of this decision. As Sartori (1987: 389)
notes, “It is certainly not fortuitous that democracy came back to life as a
good polity (after millennia of condemnations) in the wake of liberalism”; in
39
For discussion of these institutional aspects and its historical currents, see Manin 1995 and
Novaro 2000.
40
Tarello 1976: 143.
41
Jones (1994: 88) puts it well: “Political authority is authority wielded over, and on behalf of
human individuals with rights.”
42
Habermas (1988: 230) says it succinctly: “The moral principles of natural law have become
positive law in modern constitutional rules.” See concurrently Bobbio 1989, Ferrajoli 1995, and
Garzón Valdés 1993b. Surely the ultimate legal distillation of this constitutionalization is the
German Basic Law, which in article 1, part 1 establishes “The respect and the protection of the
dignity of man as the guiding principle of all state action”; furthermore, these rights are declared
to be “prior to and irrespective of their official recognition by the state.”
the same vein, Dunn (1992: 248) comments that by these processes democra-
cy was made “friendly” to the state (and, I add, to capitalism). We see, then,
that the wager, in addition to being inclusive is, at least in countries where
constitutionalism effectively holds, a tempered wager: the entrenchment of
subjective rights (including the constitutionalization of many, the time lim-
itations of incumbency at the top of the state, the obligation of government
and state officials to subject themselves to the law, and the institutionalization
of fair elections diminish the stakes of every election. Consequently, as Bobbio
(1984: 6) says, “The liberal state is the antecedent, not only historical but also
legal, of the democratic state.”43
From the previous assertions it follows that when the inclusive wager was
accepted, even if initially on a restricted citizenship basis, a momentous
change had occurred. Until then the legitimacy of many types of political
rule purported to be “descending” to their subjects from some kind of
religious, dynastic, traditional or military origin and justification; in turn,
when as in feudalism legitimating appeals were made by the consent or
acceptance of the ruled, they referred to organistically and/or collectively
conceived corporations or status orders. Instead, in these respects the liberal
and partially democratized state meant a revolution of huge consequences, in
that it claimed to be an “ascending one,”44 emerging from and justified by the
free decisions not just of individuals, but of individuals construed as legally
equal agents. As Bendix (1964: 94) notes, “The French revolution [and the
United States’ independence, O’D] brought about a fundamental change in
the conception of representation: the basic unit was no longer the household,
the property, or the corporation, but the individual citizen.” As this happened
and the democratic wager was universalized, modern democratic regimes
were born, and with them the extraordinary innovation of attributing to
the whole citizenry the origin and justification of the powers and authority
of the state and their governments. So came into being one of the great riddles
of modernity, which Furet (1998: 65) refers to as
[A] single question . . . that crops up continuously and is never truly
solved. . . . That question, which was posed very early on by all the great
Western thinkers from Hobbes to Rousseau and from Hegel to Tocque-
ville, was as follows: What kind of society should we form if we think of
ourselves as autonomous individuals?45
43
Ferrajoli (1995: 858–9) further notes that “[T]he modern state was historically born as an
estado de derecho, well before than as a democratic state” (my translation).
44
For elaboration of these ascending and descending metaphors see Bobbio 1987: 89 and
passim.
45
As Eisenstadt (2000: 5) also comments, in those times “The premises on which the social,
ontological, and political order were based, and the legitimation of that order, were no longer
2.6. DE RIVATIONS: FURTHER CIVIL RIGHTS

A ND N EW S OC I A L R I G H T S
I hope it is by now clear that in their origin, their conception of agency, and in
their legal definition, political rights are part and parcel of civil rights; these
are the historical inaugurations and are actually nowadays the most frequent
areas of exercise of freedoms such as expression, association, and movement.
Above I noted that an issue raised by the presumption of agency refers to
whom and to what degree the consequent rights are to be extended. In the
Northwest, in addition to the expansion of political rights, the answer to that
issue branched out in two directions. One focused on civil rights, especially
but not exclusively, in the—broadly defined—area of contract. A series of
legal and jurisprudential criteria were then elaborated for voiding, redressing,
or preventing situations where there exists a “manifestly disproportionate”46
relationship among the parties and/or where one of the parties may not be
construed—because of duress, fraud, mental incapacity, etc.—as having lent
autonomous consent to the contract.47 These tutelary measures rest on a basic
criterion of fairness, which is a corollary of the idea of agency: agents are
supposed to relate to each other as such agents, i.e. without suffering degrees
of inequality or coercion, or for whatever reason lack of sufficient options or
capabilities, that cancel their autonomy and/or the availability of a reasonable
range of choice. Through these legal constructions, the fairness requirement
of creating a minimally level playing field among agents was textured (albeit
partially)48 into the legal systems of the Northwestern countries. Consequently,
taken for granted. An intensive reflexivity developed around the basic ontological premises of
structures of social and political authority.”
46
As stated in section 138 of the German Civil Code.
47
The evolution of the theory and practice of contractual relations is another long and
complex story. See Dagger (1997: 21 and passim) for the evolution from the strictly individual-
istic “will theory” of contract that I have discussed until now, to a more “relational” view.
Wightman 1995 discusses the related issue of the emergence of the concept of “duress” as
overriding the presumption of valid consent and thus the validity of the contract. See also
Feinberg (1986: 249–56) for discussion of the consequences of “unequal bargaining positions”;
for further details see Atiya 1979, Habermas 1996, van Caenegem 1992, and Trebilcock 1993. For
seminal discussions of this legal evolution see Durkheim 1984 [1893] (approvingly, elaborating
his influential argument on the “non contractual elements of contract”), and Weber 1978 (quite
critically).
48
Because as Marshall (1992 [1950]: 27) put it, “Civil rights gave legal powers whose use was
drastically curtailed by class prejudice and lack of economic opportunity”; yet these changes
were not inconsequential, because “What matters [of the extension of these rights, O’D] is that
there is a general enrichment of the concrete substance of civilized life, a general reduction of
risk and insecurity” (ibid. 33).
to the prior legal imprinting of universalistic conceptions of agency, there were

added various substantive legislative and jurisprudential considerations of
fairness; these included lifting or at least alleviating the stern prohibitions
against unionization entailed by individualistic, obviously pro-capitalist legis-
lation such as the French law Le Chapelier (1791), the Prussian Civil Code
(1794), and the various British and United States common law prohibitions
against (workers’) “combinations.” As Bobbio (1992: 69–70) comments, these
changes and additions contradicted the earlier legal constructions of a generic,
abstract individual, and began to take into consideration “the diversity of their
various social status, on the basis of several criteria of differentiation . . . that do
not allow equal treatment or protection . . . [this was a process] of multiplica-
tion by specification” (my translation).
The second direction in which the issue of agency and its relationship to
options branched out was in the emergence and development of welfare legisla-
tion, where the “multiplication of rights by specification” became even more
notable. Here again the value of fairness owed to agency stood out, albeit usually
focused on social categories, not on individuals as in civil law. Through another
long and convoluted process that I cannot detail here, the newly accepted
participants in the wager exchanged their acceptance of political democracy—
including the tempering of the wager by the safeguards I noted above—for
political citizenship and a share in the benefits of the welfare state.49 Further-
more, the new demands and welfare policies broadened the state, not only in
legal terms but also by the numerous state institutions that were created and/or
expanded for dealing with the new actors and issues.50 During these processes
became quite manifest and widespread “[A]n aggressive and more practical
humanism, which intended to redraw the boundary between natural and man-
made evils, and to bring many more of the sources of human suffering and
frustration into the political domain.”51 Consequently, as Bendix (1964: 77) said:
49
Perhaps I should clarify that the initial motivation of some welfare policies was pre-
empting popular challenges or attaining rather narrowly defined sectorial benefits. But these
initiatives would not have existed had they not appealed or responded to widespread and
intense feelings about the unfairness of sharp inequalities and of severe risks along the life
course and in the workplace. As, in the paradigmatic case of social welfare initiation from above,
Bismarck put it, “If there had been no Social Democracy and if many people had not feared it,
even the modest progress which we have now achieved in the field of social reform would not
have been made”; quoted in Goldstein 1983: 346.
50
As discussing these matters Levi (1999: 127) put it, “What is particularly interesting is how
the standard of fairness that emerges produces a demand for institutions designed to enforce
this standard.”
51
Hampshire 2000: 83. Actually, this author imputes this emergence solely to Marxism, but
other currents such as other socialist ones as well as left liberal, social-Christian and syndicalism
were also influential.
“The juxtaposition of legal equality and social and economic inequalities

inspired the great political debates which accompany the nation-building of
nineteenth century Europe. These debates turn on the types and degrees of
inequality or insecurity that should be considered intolerable and the methods
that should be used to alleviate them.”
These political processes were demands for the recognition of agency, and
in all forceful moral demands also appear for the consequent recognition of
the rights and dignity of their actors; in various works Honneth has correctly
stressed the crucial moral component of these demands: “[M]otives for social
resistance and rebellion are formed in the context of moral experiences
stemming from the violation of deeply rooted expectations regarding recog-
nition” (2008: 163; see also Honneth 1995 and 2007). This led to struggles for
further rights, and newly gained rights gave both a platform and a renewed
horizon for further struggles.52 This is why, summarizing his valuable studies
on this matter, Tilly (1998: 55) asserts that “Rights [are] historical products,
outcomes of struggle,” and adds (1999: 415–17) that “[C]itizenship in general
emerged as a product of contention, often violent contention. . . . As a conse-
quence of its historical origins and continuous negotiation, existing citizen-
ship is always incomplete and uneven.”53 Thus, in the midst of not a few
defeats and reversions, whether by demands and threats, or as a consequence
of pre-emptive decisions by rulers, various social rights were acquired in the
Northwest, albeit in different sequences, timing, and configurations—these
differences are illustrated by the important variations nowadays observable in
the welfare systems of these countries. These advances did not achieve at all
the ideal of social and economic equality, but gave to many, at least in most of
the Northwest, a basic floor of capabilities that allow them, when and if they
wish, to exert their agency in the political realm.
52
As Rothstein (1998: 2) asserts, “[S]ocial welfare programs . . . are not just instrumental
arrangements; they are also, and in a high degree, expressions of definite moral conceptions.”
For his part, Touraine (1994: 101–2) adds that these struggles were held not only for specific
demands but also for “defending general principles, such as freedom and justice.”
53
About these struggles, see also Bendix 1964, Rueschemer, Huber Stephens, and Stephens
1993, Marshall 1950, Turner 1992, and Przeworski and Sprague 1988; for a general comparative
approach see Epp 1998. In reference to Latin America and some of its characteristics see Berins
Collier 1999, Dagnino et al. 2006, Huber, Rueschemeyer, and Stephens 1997, and Eckstein and
Wickham-Crowley 2002 and 2003; with a focus on regimes and the working class, see the
comprehensive work of Collier and Berins Collier 2002.
2.7. TOWARD A MACRO-LEVEL OF ANALYSIS
The first chapter focused on a middle-level of analysis, the regime. The

present one has moved at the micro-level of agency and some its concomi-
tants. Now we need to focus on more macro-level themes, the state (Chapter
3), the nation (Chapter 4), and the law (Chapter 5).
..................
3
..................
The State: Definition, Dimensions,
and Historical Emergence
In this chapter and the two that follow we move into a macro-level of analysis.
The topic is the state, a multifaceted entity that requires a two-pronged
method of study: the first, to disaggregate it in aspects or dimensions that
may be useful for its theoretical and empirical study and, second, afterwards,
to trace its unity as such a phenomenon by means of elements that the first
step has generated. In the present chapter I propose a definition of the state
and discuss some of the constitutive dimensions that are entailed (Section
3.1). Since the state is a species of the broader genus of complex associations,
I engage in an analytical exercise about general characteristics of such associa-
tions, hoping that it may highlight, for the benefit of the present and further
chapters, commonalities and specific differences between the latter and the
state (3.2). The state, at least the modern state as defined here, is an historical
product, which first emerged in some countries of the Northwest; the history
of these processes is important not only per se (3.3) but also because it has
influenced, both by diffusion and by sheer exercise of power by Northwestern
countries, state formation in the rest of the world. Finally, I briefly discuss
some important Northwestern cases that have departed in significant ways
from the modal pattern of this region (3.4).
3.1. O N T H E D E F I N I T I O N O F T H E S TAT E
I begin defining what I mean by the state:

A territorially based association, consisting of sets of institutions and social
relations (most of them sanctioned and backed by the legal system of that
state), that normally penetrates and controls the territory and the inhabitants
it delimits. Those institutions claim a monopoly in the legitimate authoriza-
tion of the use of physical coercion, and normally have, as ultimate resource
for implementing the decisions they make, supremacy in the control of the
52 The State: Definition, Dimensions, and Emergence
means of coercion over the population and the territory that the state
delimits.
The reader has surely noticed the Weberian lineage of this definition. Howev-
er, it bears commenting that it specifies and interprets Weber’s definition in a
somewhat important point. Despite oft quoted passages in which this author
asserts that the state “successfully upholds the claim to the monopoly of the
legitimate use of physical force” (Weber 1978: 54, among several similar
formulations, italics in the original), I believe that an interpretation that is
theoretically more fruitful and better adjusted to the whole of Weber’s con-
ceptions is that what the state claims is the monopoly in the legitimate
authorization (i.e. legally-validated) of the (direct or indirect) use of physical
force, and only as a consequence of this it usually, but in fact not necessarily,
also claims the monopoly in the legitimate use of that force.1
I am not engaging in the rather useless exercise of trying to determine what
Weber “really” meant; after close reading of the relevant passages I believe that
in this matter he was ambiguous, if not inconsistent; thus, the passages
I transcribe below point quite clearly in the direction of my interpretation
and run against the more common ones.
[O]nly certain political communities, viz. the ‘states’ are considered to be
capable of ‘legitimizing’, by virtue of mandate or permission, the exercise
of physical coercion by any other community. For the purpose of threat-
ening and exercising such coercion, the fully matured political commu-
nity has developed a system of casuistic rules to which that particular
‘legitimacy’ is imputed. This system of rules constitutes the ‘legal order’,
and the political community is regarded as its sole normal creator . . .
Weber 1978: 904. (Single quotation marks are Weber’s.)
[T]he modern concept of the state as the ultimate source of every kind of
legitimacy of the use of physical force . . . [and] the rationalization of the
rules of its application which has come to culminate in the concept of the
legitimate legal order.
Ibid. 909.
Thus I believe that a better interpretation is that the degree to which a state
monopolizes the, legitimate or not but actual, use of physical force is a
contingent factor, to be empirically determined; actually, this Weber does in
numerous parts of his works. Instead, every state claims simply to monopo-
lize the legitimate authorization, directly or indirectly and successfully or not,
of the use of means of physical coercion, or force. As Weber himself makes
1
A remarkable term paper written for a graduate seminar I taught at the University of Notre
Dame made me aware of this difference; see Márquez 2006.
The State: Definition, Dimensions, and Emergence 53
clear, among others in the passages just quoted, in the modern state the only
possible source of validity, the legitimation of that authorization, are its legal
rules. This is not just a scholastic exercise. It bears directly on the constitutive
importance of the legal system of the state, a dimension that is deeply
intertwined with, but analytically distinct from what its bureaucracies do
and do not do, including the application of physical coercion; in Chapters 5
and 6, I examine this matter further.
Another characteristic of my definition is that it incorporates the topic of
power, in terms of the great concentration of power (more precisely, powers)2
entailed by the emergence and functioning of a state. The state both processes
and condenses powers emerging from society (local, international, and trans-
national) and generates its own, as a result of which it returns to society
various kind of policies, as well as sometimes highly relevant omissions. The
various weights of the social condensations and of the state’s concentrations
of powers, across various state agencies and policy areas, is a complex matter
that has to be empirically gauged and about which the present level of analysis
here has little to say.3
From the definition, I have proposed results that the state may be usefully
disaggregated in at least four dimensions. The first and most obvious, is the
state as a set of bureaucracies. These bureaucracies, often complex organiza-
tions, have legally-assigned responsibilities for the protection or attainment of
some presumed aspect of the common good. I will refer to this dimension and
the degree to which those responsibilities are fulfilled, as the efficacy of the
state.
The state is also a legal system, a network of legally sanctioned and backed
rules that penetrate and co-determine manifold social relations, both in
society and within state bureaucracies. Nowadays, especially in democracies
and as a result of the processes we examined in the preceding chapter, the
2
As Weber (1994: 311) put it, “Just like the political associations which preceded it histori-
cally, the state is a relationship of rule [Hersschaft, O’D] by human beings over human beings.”
For apt general discussions of Weber’s views on the state see Axtman 1990 and Boucock 2000.
On his part, Bourdieu 1994 and 1999 usefully added that the state is also a big concentration of
symbolic power; with a focus on Latin America see on this matter Loveman 2005 and Oszlak
2006.
3
Some of the literature, especially the neo-Marxist as formulated by Poulantzas 1970 and
1978, dealt with this matter at a high level of generality, by means of the concept of the “relative
autonomy” of the state; for interesting discussion of the Marxist literature on the state see
Thwaites Rey 2007. Yet despite yielding valuable insights this approach has not being capable of
going beyond some rather vacuous generalizations; for discussion see Przeworski 1990. On its
part, the related concept of “embedded autonomy” proposed by Evans 1995 has been very
helpful in terms of studies of political economy and economic development; on the literature
about the “developmental state” in addition to Evans’s op. cit. see Kohli 2004, Rueschemeyer
and Evans 1985, and Woo-Cumings 1999.
connection between state bureaucracies and the legal system is very close: the
former are supposed to act according to capacities and responsibilities that
are legally assigned to them by pertinent authorities—the contemporary state
mostly expresses itself in the language of law. I will refer to this aspect as the
degree of effectiveness of the legal system of the state.
Together, state bureaucracies and law are supposed to generate, for the
inhabitants of their territory, the greater common good of the general order-
ing and foreseeable future effectiveness of social relations. By doing this the
state (more precisely, the officials authorized to decide and speak on its
behalf) claims to take care of the welfare and guarantee the historical conti-
nuity of the population of the respective territory. This claimed contribution
leads to a third dimension of the state, that of being, or attempting to be, a
focus of collective identity. Typically, state officials, especially those who occupy
positions at its institutional apex, claim that their state is a state-for-the-
nation or (without discussing at this moment details that will occupy us in the
following chapter) a state-for-the-people, or the citizenry. With such dis-
courses, echoed in innumerable ways, the apex of the state promotes the
generalized recognition of an “us” that expresses a distinctive collective
identity that, it is usually asserted, should prevail over other, more differen-
tiated identities and interests emerging from various social cleavages. This
dimension I will refer to as the degree of credibility of the state.
There is still a fourth dimension. The state is a filter that tries to regulate
how opened, or closed, the various spaces and boundaries are that mediate
between the inside and the outside of its territory, market, and population.
Some of those boundaries are the ones that demarcate that population and,
under a democratic regime, its electorate. Other spaces are less sharply
contoured; some of them are jealously guarded; some are more or less
effectively controlled by various types of policies; others never had barriers;
and some have lost them, overwhelmed by the winds of globalization. Yet
every state attempts, or claims to attempt, to establish various filters for the
welfare of its population and the economic actors located in its territory. This
is the filtering dimension of the state.
There is another aspect of the state, but in its valence it is not, as the former
ones, a historically contingent dimension; it is an institutionally attributed
characteristic. I refer to the fact that a state is a state when other states in the
international system, as well as, in recent times, the United Nations and other
international organizations, recognize it as such, quite independently of the
valence it has acquired in the previously mentioned dimensions.4
4
This is an aspect usually discussed under the heading of “sovereignty”; see Krasner 1988
and, for more contemporary aspects, Cohen 2008a.
I emphasize that these four dimensions should not be attributed a priori to

a state; they are tendencies that—perhaps fortunately—no state has fully
materialized, and which some states are far from having reasonably achieved.
In respects to the state as a set of bureaucracies, their actions may deviate from
even attempting to fulfill the responsibilities that have been assigned to them;
the legal system may exhibit per se and/or implement serious flaws, and/or it
may not extend to various social relations or regions; in relation to the state as
a focus of collective identity, its credibility may not be plausible for large parts
of its population; and the state may have largely abdicated its condition as a
filter oriented to the welfare of its population. These cases we may interpret as
indications of low state capacities that, as we will see further on, seriously
impinge, among other things, on the functioning and quality of a democratic
regime. At any event, these dimensions of the state are historically contingent;
consequently the degree of their achievement must be empirically assessed.5
Now I note a point that deserves elaboration: the organizational dimension
of the state is for the most part bureaucratically ordered. By bureaucratic
I mean hierarchical social relationships of command and obedience that are
prescribed by formal and explicit rules. This hierarchical character is inherent
to most social relations entailed by the state apparatus. This seems to me true
in spite of the attempts of the “New Public Management” and network
“governance” approaches to eliminate or at least greatly reduce the hierarch-
ical character of state institutions, by introducing concepts of neo-classical
market economics and private management. These approaches enjoyed wide
influence in the 1990s; in Latin America this was due in no small part to the
influence of the World Bank and other international financial institutions; but
nowadays this influence has declined under the increasing discovery of its
many negative consequences, both in terms of the efficacy and coordination
of state institutions and of the unequalizing effects of their reduction of
citizens to the mere category of customers. This has led to the “rediscovery
of bureaucracy” (Olsen 2006) as an indispensable component of many state
institutions and tasks, irrespective of reforms that have tended, and in some
cases succeeded, to make those institutions more flexible and responsive to
the populations they attend to. Nowadays it seems clear that the reforms
that those moves have propitiated have succeeded (or failed) in varying
degrees depending on policy areas, countries, and state organization features.
Pending an adequate evaluation of these innovations, see the authoritative
discussion of those two “models” and the “Weberian” one (i.e. bureaucratic-
ally organized) by Olsen 2008; this author concludes that, in addition to the
5
See in this respect the pioneering article on “stateness” of Nettl 1968.
continued importance of bureaucracy, there is no theoretical or empirical

basis for generally asserting the superiority of either model.6
Yet it is a fact of modern life that the predominantly hierarchical character
of this dimension of the state is in itself inegalitarian, both for those who work
in these bureaucracies and often for those who interact with them. In general,
this character increases when it operates in relation to groups and individuals
that are discriminated against and/or are submitted to sharply unequalitarian
relations in society. I am persuaded that the encounters between citizens and
state bureaucracies are an important aspect of the quality of democracy (and
of political life in general), well beyond the dimensions entailed by the regime
itself.7
At this point we need other definitions. By government I mean
The locations at the apex of the state apparatus which are accessed through
the regime and allow their incumbents to make, or authorize other state
officials to make, decisions which are normally issued as legal rules binding
over the population and the territory delimited by a state.8
Now I specify the characteristics of a state of a country that contains a
democratic regime, to be added to the more general ones specified above:
1. It is the part of the legal system that enacts and backs the fair elections,
participatory rights and the surrounding freedoms of the regime; 2. the set of
bureaucracies that implement and protect said rights and freedoms; and 3. the
unit that delimits the electorate—the political citizens—of the regime. Char-
acteristics 1 and 2 are entailed by the definition of a democratic regime;
characteristic 3 is a necessary condition for the existence of this regime.9
Yet, obviously, the system of representation is far from exhausted by the
channels of access offered by the democratic regime. Other mediations of
interests, powers, and identities influence the decisions and omissions of the
government and the state institutions. Economic national and transnational
6
See also Olsen 2004, 2005, and 2006. For similar conclusions on the basis of the experience of
the United States see Ketll 2009. See also Dussauge Laguna 2009, Heredia and Schneider 2003,
Martı́nez Vilches 2007, and Kjaer (2004: 233), who stresses the “continued importance of state and
hierarchy.” See also the recent critical review, focused on Latin America, of Dussauge Laguna 2009.
7
I discuss this matter in O’Donnell 2004 as well as in chapter 6 of the present book. For an
innovative empirical exploration see Vargas Cullel and Gutiérrez Saxe 2001, and for comments
about this relationship see Ippolito 2004.
8
These rules are not necessarily mandatory on a universal basis. The increasing use of laws
addressed to specific sectors or constituencies requires this caveat; however, all laws are
supposed to be valid over the whole territory of the given state.
9
This is a first approximation to this concept; I elaborate on it in Chapter 5, where I discuss
the legal dimension of the state.
interests, international institutions of various kinds, the members of state

bureaucracies and governing officials’ own interests and views, and popular
demands and social movements, among others, complexly influence those
decisions and omissions.10 Despite the great empirical difficulties entailed,
this makes it necessary to ask to what extent do the channels of representation
provided by the democratic regime weigh in the decisions and omissions of
government and state? In this respect, we should take into account that it is
from the democratic regime that springs the main source of authority of
public policies (and, in the aggregate, of the credibility of state and govern-
ment); that is, the claim to echo the preferences and aspirations of the
citizenry sensibly. Other policy inputs, public or concealed, legal or illegal,
even if they may allegedly result in beneficial public policies, lack this properly
democratic ex ante legitimation. The result, in all democracies, is that the
regime is only part of the decisional processes and the inputs of influence to
which government and state are subject.
The foregoing presents important practical questions: To what degree (and
in what periods and policy areas) do the inputs resulting from the regime
weigh over other influences? What is in each case and time the strategic
selectivity11 of the state institutions, and in what policy areas is it more
pronounced? To what extent does the authority that is usually invoked in
the sense of somehow representing the aspirations expressed through the
democratic regime correspond to reality? Under what circumstances would
policies that deviate from those aspirations and/or from promises made
during the electoral process be acceptable?12 These questions cannot be
answered here, in what amounts to a discussion rooted in general terms.
But it can be surmised that only in strongly negative cases can the questions
be answered with sufficient approximation anyway. Unfortunately, these cases
have been lacking in the recent democratic experience of part of Latin
America. During this experience, the regime inputs have been weak and
discontinuous, captured by interests that sometimes it is hard to claim that
they pursue some kind of common good. These facts have not helped the
10
This fact, documented in policy studies, has been captured by the concept of “partial
regimes” of Schmitter 1992, and in the reflections on “mixed regimes” offered by Strasser,
especially 1990 and 1999; for a concurrent perspective see Mazzuca 2002 and 2007. Bobbio 1984
includes this fact among the “unfulfilled promises of democracy.”
11
The term under quotation marks belongs to Jessop (2002: 40), who defines it as “the ways
in which the state considered as a social ensemble has a specific, differential impact on the ability
of various social forces to pursue particular interests and strategies in specific spatio-temporal
contexts through their access to and/or control over given state capacities—capacities that
always depend for their effectiveness on links to forces and powers that exist and operate beyond
the state’s formal boundaries.”
12
For—inconclusive—discussion of this matter see Manin et al. 1999.
efficacy, effectiveness, and credibility of these states and their governments;

furthermore, these same facts sometimes have evinced a state that in some
countries almost completely failed to operate as a reasonably beneficial
filter.
The preceding reflections serve as an indication of a central concern of the
present text: that, in Latin America, democratically elected governments and,
more generally, states that contain a democratic regime, have very little
power for actually ruling on many important matters or, indeed, for making
advances in the democratization and welfare of their countries.13
3 . 2. A N A NA LY T I C A L D I G R E S S I O N O N
C O M P L E X A S S O C I AT I O N S
With the exception of truly exceptional cases,14 every authority of an associa-

tion claims that its decisions, as well as its very existence, is for the good of
its members. The authorities base this claim on the expectation of being
regularly obeyed. When they do this, they create divisions between their
association and its members on one side, and all those who do not belong
to the former, on the other—us and them. Some associations, which may be
loosely called “democratic,” add that the claim of the authorities to be obeyed
stems from the fact that its members have freely decided that they be such
authorities.
Associations of some complexity become organizations, endowed with
legal personality, buildings, statutes, offices, seals, printed forms, and the
like. Thus a basic pattern of social differentiation is usually generated,
among those who devote themselves to matters that presumably are of general
interest, and those who do not. As a consequence a center emerges, from
which some individuals claim to have the right to speak in the name of the
association, and to invoke its common good as the basis and motive of their
decisions. The existence of such a center is normally consistent with my
interests as a member of the association; I have this interest irrespective of
whether I participated in its creation, or voluntarily entered a pre-existing
one, or I am compelled to membership, such as in a state or, in some
countries, a union. I wish to enjoy my freedom and the goods the association
provides—practice sports in a club, ensure that my rights as a worker are well
13
Here I paraphrase an observation of Malloy 1985. Of course, the obstacles to further
democratization do not result exclusively from the weakness of the state.
14
Actually, I can only think of concentration camps.
represented by a union, share in goods our gang has stolen, or be the citizen of
a state that functions reasonably well. In those cases I want the existence of
such an association and its center not just for today; ceteris paribus I want it
for as long as I foresee myself as its member. Furthermore, even though I may
not care for everyone, if I do for some (say, members of my family or some
fellow citizens) I also wish the association to extend over an undetermined
length of time.
Hence, in many situations it is in our interest to accept the existence of
spheres of decision-making that take care of two basic tasks. One, to furnish
the common goods the association is supposed to provide, and solve some
collective actions problems. Second, to make decisions that are binding to all
members—otherwise free-riding would be hard to prevent and the associa-
tion would tend to dissolve. These rational desires lead to creating, entering
into, or accepting associations that exercise various powers over us. In and
with them, whether they are democratic or authoritarian, beneficial or harm-
ful, we continually produce and reproduce, actively or passively, hierarchical
social relations. When the associations become minimally complex, they
generate leadership roles specialized in making collectively binding decisions;
normally we want the authorities to have enough power to make such
decisions, whether it is all of us meeting in an assembly, or elected represen-
tatives, or individuals chosen by lot, or a single individual.
Usually we also wish that the authorities of the association be enabled to
speak for it, internally and externally—internally, because the very meaning of
the association would fail if its authorities could not appeal to its members
with the expectation of being obeyed, especially in cases when some members
disagree with a given decision. In these cases, the authorities typically argue
that they are acting for the common good of the whole association, not only
for the members who agree with their decision. Externally, the authorities
address those who are not members of the association, claiming to represent,
or embody, the “us” formed by its members. When the leaders of a union,
a political party or a government address others, they typically claim to
represent their whole association, not a mere aggregate or majority of its
members.
In both cases, internally and externally, the authorities exhibit an elaborate
self-image of the association; the official version of the collective entity, the
“us” they claim to represent. As Hösle (1998: 90) asserts, “Every social unit
has a descriptive concept of itself; the more complex units also have a normative
one” (italics in the original). In large and complex associations, in which face-
to-face encounters with everyone are impossible, the normative concept that
the center formulates about itself and the association usually becomes the
main medium by which we recognize each other as part of an “us.” The

attempts at developing a system of collective recognition lead to tracing the
boundaries of the association—“us” and “them,” by means of various markers
of belonging: national IDs, documents of appointment and authorization, the
colors of a sports club, the tattoos of a juvenile group, and many others.
The overall result is power. That some individuals have the recognized right
to decide and speak for the association has important consequences. As a
member, I am interested in what is said and who says it in the name of the
association, particularly because in large and complex ones the leadership
roles become highly specialized. Furthermore, as Weber noted, the incum-
bents of these roles develop an interest in normalizing—basically, by means of
formal rules—their own authority, thus increasing the probability that their
decisions are regularly accepted and implemented. This generates internal
rules, handbooks of procedure, personnel regulations, censuses, maps, stat-
utes, constitutions, and the like.15 The consequence of these impulses toward
formalization is the bureaucratization and legalization of the association:
unions, professional associations, universities, corporations, sport clubs
and, indeed, countries establish rules and hierarchically ordered institutions
formally charged with contributing to the achievement of the purported goals
of the association and the normalization of its functioning.
The bureaucratization of an association is concomitant with its legaliza-
tion: various kinds of rules are enacted with the purpose of regulating the
relationships among its leaders and members. In addition, as the association
becomes more complex, the leaders develop a strong interest in controlling
the behavior of its officials, as the principal-agent literature attests.16 When an
association establishes control over a territory, it becomes the modern phe-
nomenon we call the state. The state has a special characteristic: it dynam-
ically externalizes its legality. In contrast to other associations, the state
attempts to control manifold aspects of the workings of other associations,
groups, and individuals in the territory it demarcates; the modern state
penetrates, especially through its legal system, innumerable social relations.
Yet these movements toward formalization do not spring from above
alone. From below, as a non-leading member of the association, I have an
interest that counterbalances my understanding that there exists an effective
15
On the “normalizing” efforts by states see Bourdieu 1989, 1996, and 2004, and Scott 1998;
of course, the origin of these observations is Foucault, especially 1979 and 1991.
16
Before this literature Weber (1978: 264) argued that: “Every form of authority requires the
existence and functioning of an administrative staff. . . . For the habit of obedience cannot be
maintained without organized activity directed to application and enforcement of order . . . histor-
ical reality involves a continuous, though for the most part latent, conflict between the chiefs and
their administrative staffs for appropriation and expropriation in relation to one another.”
decision-making center. This consists of being protected from decisions that I

may consider arbitrary or seriously damaging or that contradict my view of
what the association should be, or exclude me from its benefits. Consequently,
I tend to support the formalization of the association, as long as it includes
ways of making its decisions reasonably responsive and predictable, and that
eventually allow me recourse against them. This is particularly true in asso-
ciations, such as the state, where exit is very costly.17 But I may only effectuate
this interest if somehow I am recognized as a full member of the association;
if I am, at least in some broad sense, its citizen, a carrier of rights that I can
make effective against both the authorities and my fellow members of the
association. Otherwise I am a subject, a being submitted to authoritarian
relations through which the leaders, without my voice or consent, make
decisions that are binding on me and that, in the case of the state, are backed
by physical coercion.
The preceding entails that, especially in complex associations, the state
indeed included, we are faced with a crucial dilemma: my rational wish to
belong to an association that is effective, versus my no less rational wish to be
protected from decisions that in my judgment may be in some sense damag-
ing or seriously inappropriate.18 The obvious conclusion is that the same
power I want it to possess has to be somehow controlled. Yet the same
problem holds for whatever solution may be adopted: since none of us can
be safely presumed to be angelic altruists, the motivations of those who
control the powerful, and the powers that must be attached to the former if
they are to be effective controllers, are also suspect. The formula Quis custodiet
ipsos custodes? summarizes this enigma.19
We see here one of the great ambivalences of social life, and one of the great
challenges for politics. We constantly produce and reproduce hierarchical
and often formalized social relations. We normally accept these relations
because they are a condition of social life, especially in modern times; they
are necessary for matters we greatly care about, such as the furnishing of
17
It is interesting to note that in Babylon, classic Greece, and early republican Rome the
demands for written law came originally from the poor, who saw in it a protection against the
rich and powerful; see Varga 1991.
18
In modern times, Locke 1965 [1690] was the first to sharply raise this issue and make it a
centerpiece of his political views.
19
Dunn (1992: 249), who describes this issue as a “conundrum,” puts it in different but
converging terms: “Democracy . . . seeks to provide, if with necessarily imperfect success, at least
some degree of remedy for [the hazards derived from political power], short of simply
abandoning the practice of public action. Unlike anarchism, it cleaves to the practice of public
action because it views the state of nature . . . as generically far more dangerous than vertical
subjection to such authority.”
collective goods and the solution of collective action problems and, more
generally, for a liveable degree of order and forseeable future effectiveness
of social relations. Yet these desirable hierarchical and formalized social
relations can become Frankenstein’s monsters that oppress us by empowering
big and petty tyrants. These hierarchies and their rules are both constraints on
and enabling conditions of our freedom. Their absence sends us to a Hobbes-
ian state of nature, while the exaggeration of their oppressive side sends us to
a Kafkaesque world. The oscillations toward these extremes have been—and
still are—one of the deepest and more long-standing concerns of humanity.
The definition of what is, or should be, a proper balance between these poles
has varied and will continue varying across time and space, and no stable
solution is ever to be expected. This is one of the reasons for the importance
of democracy; but we have other topics to discuss before returning to this
subject.
3 .3 . A H I S TO R I C A L OV E RV I EW O F S TAT E - M A K I N G
I N T H E N O RT H W E S T
The state (as above defined) is a modern phenomenon. It emerged in the

Northwest after violent and protracted struggles, and after some rulers made
several important achievements. One of them was the expropriation of other
political associations (feudal lords, cities, and some bishoprics and religious
orders) of the control of most means of physical coercion. Another achieve-
ment consisted of the expropriation, against those associations, of the means
of administration. By this process, successful state-makers created bureau-
cracies of salaried officials subordinated to their power. Weber (1978: 315)
summarizes this well:
The development of the modern state is set in motion everywhere by a
decision of the prince to dispossess the independent, “private” bearers of
administrative power that exist alongside him, that is all those in person-
al possession of the means of administration and the conduct of war, the
organization of finance and political deployable goods of all kinds. The
whole process is a complete parallel to the development of the capitalist
enterprise through the gradual expropriation of independent produ-
cers. . . . Thus in today’s “state” (and this is fundamental to concept) the
“separation” of the material means of administration from the admin-
istrative staff . . . has been rigorously implemented.
These processes entailed eliminating, or at least marginalizing, traditional

kinds of administration, increasingly substituting in their own courts the
noblesse de robe for the—patrimonial and hereditary—noblesse d’epeé.20
Furthemore, as Bourdieu 1996 adds, these changes meant that state-makers
progressively attributed to themselves the power of appointment to state
roles, while before most of the high positions were occupied ex officio by
members of the nobility or clergy.
At the centre of these changes there began to emerge a Rechsstaat, or Estado
de Derecho. In its more formal21 original expression, in Prussia, the intention
of the rulers was not at all democratic; rather, obeying the logic delineated in
the preceding section, the legalization and bureaucratization of the state was a
consequence of the interest of the rulers in normalizing the internal workings
of that state and its relations with its principal interlocutors, the Junkers and
the bourgeoisie, as well as making a legally-validated claim to monopolize the
authorization of the use of physical coercion. As a consequence, Prussians
continued to be political subjects—not citizens—but in many civil and
commercial relations (as well as in some aspects of criminal law) adult
males could expect to be treated in accordance with legal rules that were
previously sanctioned, were valid over the whole territory, and were adjudi-
cated by a supposedly impartial judiciary—this topic is of course part of the
process of extension of civil rights I discussed in the preceding chapter.
Still another achievement of successful state-makers was closely related to
the preceding ones, but had characteristics and sequences that did not always
coincide with them. I refer to the expropriation, from those same associations
as well as from the Catholic Church, of the means of legality and judicial
adjudication. Various kinds of customary, feudal, urban, and religious laws,
many of which overlapped and conflicted in complex ways in relation to both
territories and individuals, were progressively annulled, absorbed or margin-
alized by legislation emanating from the political center.22 This also happened
20
The classic analyses of these processes are Weber 1978, 1994, and 1995, and Hintze (in
Gilbert 1975) and, for a useful overview, Poggi 1978. From different but concurrent perspec-
tives, the works of Anderson 1974 and Elias 1973, 1974, and 1975 are relevant for these matters.
For recent valuable contributions see Axtman 1990, Bourdieu 1996, 1999, and 2004, Downing
1992, Ertman 1997 and 2005, Giddens 1985, Mann 1993, Mazzuca 2001, Rabb 2006, Silberman
1993, Spruyt 1994, and Tilly 1990. Authors working within a rational choice perspective have
also made interesting contributions to this topic; see especially Levi 1997 and 1999, North 1981
and 1991, and North and Weingast 1989.
21
I say “more formal” because even though this is not often recognized (except of course by
British scholars), ideas of the rule of law or, perhaps more exactly, about a state ruled by law (and
by law issued by a representative institution, Parliament), had gained acceptance in England
since approximately the sixteenth century.
22
On the patchwork of legal jurisdictions in medieval times see Bloch 1964.
with merchant law, the lex mercatoria, that had developed in medieval cities;
the “absorption” and uniformity of this law gave great impulse to the expansion
of capitalism, not only to that of the state. The state-makers, with the crucial
assistance of jurists, saw this legalization as “a mean of the political power for
asserting a uniform central will over the whole of the community”; Varga 1991:
334. As I have noted, this process occurred first in the sphere of private law and
later in public law, which jointly “gave the means for establishing a bureaucratic
state, with which the princes could countervail the independence of the feudal
lords”; Stein 1991: 91.23 Since then the law would not be seen as an emanation of
the community, or tradition, or religion; it was considered an expression of the
will of the ruler.
This legal work, part of which I referred to in the preceding chapter, began
before the processes of state-making which I discuss here. But it was very
important to lay the ground for the unfolding of both the state and capital-
ism, including the creation of what Weber (1978: 829) called “ecclesiastic
corporation law.” This was a momentous invention that had roots, as much
else in this matter, in imperial Roman law; it was initially elaborated by the
canonists to account for the great institutional complexity and the claimed
universalism of the Catholic Church. Weber argued that this was the “first
institution” (anstalt) since “[I]t was here that the legal construction of public
organizations as corporations had its point of departure.” It meant assigning
legal personality to the Church as a whole embodied in Rome and the papacy,
as well as to many of its institutions spread across Europe, all of them
conceived as corporate entities distinct from its members, and consequently
able to claim rights and acquire obligations other than those of the latter. The
invention of corporate legal personality was rapidly claimed by cities strug-
gling to keep or gain autonomy from princely rulers; since then “[C]ertain
persons designated according to rules are regarded from the legal point of
view as alone authorized to assume obligations and acquire rights for the
organization”; Weber 1978: 707. Indeed, this conception was also adopted by
commercial enterprises, which found it valuable for superseding various types
of association that since antiquity had aimed at minimizing and sharing risks,
and obtaining working capital. Of course this was immensely helpful for the
expansion of capitalism; but, no less importantly, it was also the foundation
of theories of the state as an abstract entity distinct from the person of the
ruler that were first proposed by Hobbes and Bodin.24
23
Although it should be added to this citation that the same “countervailing” purpose held
in relation to the Church and autonomized cities. See Bellomo 1995, Bourdieu 2004, Keohane
1980, and Varga 1991.
24
On this aspect of Hobbes’s thought see Skinner and Strath 2003; on Bodin’s, Keohane
1980, and Portinaro 2003.
Actually, the processes of reformulation of legality and of expropriation of

its means had another important concomitant: it also entailed dispossessing
other powers of judicial authority, by locating in the state-makers’ courts the
ultimate right of appeal in various kinds of judicial causes; with this it further
advanced the tendency to monopolize the valid authorization of physical
coercion, not just its actual exercise.25
The law that emerged from the center was jurists’ law: increasingly written
in the vernacular but using technical language, and aiming at resolving the
innumerable gaps and inconsistencies that the preceding legal systems
evinced. This culminated, in continental Europe, in the rationalist and
unifying pathos that generated the first great codifications, the Allgemeines
Landrecht (1794) of Frederick of Prussia and, shortly thereafter, the Napo-
leonic civil and commercial codes of 1804.
At least in terms of the civil rights of the male population of most of the
Northwest, these processes of state-building consisted not only of a marked
bureaucratization but also of an increasing homogenization of the legality of
the state over its territory. Of course, these processes were contemporary,
albeit complexly related, with the full emergence and expansion of capitalism.
A crucial connection was furnished by the expansion of the state: it estab-
lished the authority of the political center and its bureaucracy, and sanctioned
legal rules that guaranteed private property (including the property of means
of production), the marketability of land, and the freedom of contract
(including the sale of labor force). Furthermore, the processes of state-making
created a politically protected economic space,26 and (in another crucial
expropriation of former authorities) a unified currency, both of which were
highly instrumental in the expansion of capitalism. This, in turn, helped the
other great expropriation of the times, the one emphasized by Marx, that of
the direct producers from the ownership of the means of production.
Of the historical processes I have summarized, and to some of which I
return in the following chapters, there are some aspects I want to stress. One is
that beneath the contemporary map of Europe lies a cemetery of failed states,
those that were defeated and/or absorbed by the ones presently existing.27 The
numerous wars that punctuate this period helped to generate bureaucratized
25
On this parallel process Strayer (1970: 61) comments that “The most typical expression of
internal sovereignty was the right to give final judgment in a high court.” See also Bourdieu 1999
and Stein 1999.
26
This was closely related to the mercantilist policies that, beginning with England, were
generally adopted at the time. As Weber (1995: 248) put it: “It was the [economically, O’D]
closed national state that gave to capitalism its chance of development.” See also Polanyi 1967
[1943].
27
As Tilly (1975: 15) says, “The Europe of 1500 included some five hundred more or less
independent political units, the Europe of 1900 about twenty-five.”
states interested in extending and legalizing their domination over popula-

tions that provided the soldiers and taxes indispensable for their survival.28
The second point is that these events also entailed the aggressive expansion of
the legality issued by the emerging center. This was perceived by the rulers and
their helpers as crucial for homogenizing the population in at least two senses:
one, erasing local political and legal autonomies, and consequently creating a
unified economy that would contribute to the ever increasing fiscal needs of
the center; another, promoting a collective identity directly referred to the
emerging state, thus differentiating “its” population from that of other,
competing states. Still a third aspect needs emphasizing because, as Gorski
1999 and 2003 argues, it has been neglected by most authors. I refer to the
impact that the various churches during the Reformation and the Counter-
Reformation had by promoting, in alliance with kingdoms and principalities,
the religious uniformity and social disciplining of the populations under their
control. These efforts, undertaken by all the contending churches albeit with
different timing and characteristics, found expression in the peace of Augs-
burg (1555), which consecrated the principle cuius regio eius religio, that
purported to homogenize the respective populations under a single secular
and religious rule.29
As mentioned before, these were also the times of the emergence, with
Bodin in France and Hobbes in England, of theories of sovereignty, and with
them of conceptions of the state as an artificial but very real entity, separate
and above society as well as distinct from the person of the ruler. Further-
more, according to those theories, the carrier of sovereignty, usually a king,
had the right and duty to pursue the defense and prosperity of the kingdom
without moral or religious constraints; raison d’etat30 was the principle
followed in this “age of absolutism.”31 Perhaps nothing expressed this better
than the firm grounding that won legal positivism, and with it the displace-
ment, now both private and public law, of Aristotelian/Thomist conceptions.
Legal positivism was distilled in the dictum Autorictas non veritas facit legem
and Quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem.32 Concomitantly, since the
28
See especially Downing 1992, Giddens 1985, Mann 1993, and Tilly 1985 and 1990.
29
And, indeed, the numerous cruelties that were perpetrated almost everywhere during the
efforts to implant the “true” religion.
30
Raison d’etat was defined by a seventeenth-century author, Chemnitz, as “A certain
political consideration in all public matters, councils, and projects, whose only aim is the state’s
preservation, expansion, and felicity; to which end, the easiest and promptest means are to be
employed” (quoted by Foucault 2000: 314, italics in his original). See on this topic Viroli 1992.
31
The expression is from Beloff 1962, a somewhat aged but still useful book for this theme.
32
“Authority, not truth, is what makes the law,” and “What has pleased the prince has the
force of law.” The latest expression was taken from the Digest, one of the compilations of Roman
law produced by emperor Justinian; see Stein 1999 and Strayer 1970.
sixteenth century, and more firmly after the great codifications and to some
extent until today, the prevailing doctrine has been that law is that which is
enacted by properly authorized individuals occupying legally specified roles
in the state; consequently, in parallel with a process even broader than the
ones I mentioned above—secularization—law ceased to be conceived as the
expression of tradition or a higher moral or religious order.33
Still another process took place that was parallel, interactive, and concur-
rent in its consequences with the already depicted ones. This consisted of the
efforts—often no less brutal than the ones exerted on other issues already
discussed—by state-makers to impose a single language in their territories
(since this topic is closely related to a parallel one—efforts at nation build-
ing—I postpone its discussion to the next chapter).
We have seen the main motives and impulses from the center. On their
part, those subject to these states—both dominant and subordinated classes
and sectors, albeit of course with important variations among them—also
contributed their own impulses. Following the logic I sketched in the preced-
ing section, those classes and sectors demanded (and sometimes received as
pre-emptive measures from the rulers) legal rules and institutions that would
protect their lives and goods from arbitrary decisions of the state. In relation
to the bourgeoisie, as Weber said (1978: 847), it
[H]ad to demand an unambiguous and clear legal system that would be
free of irrational administrative arbitrariness as well as of irrational
disturbance by concrete privileges, that would also offer firm guarantee
of the legally binding character of contracts, and that, as a consequence of
all these features, would function in a calculable way.
It was thus in the interest of enlightened state-makers to implant the policy
of “formal legal equality and objective formal laws” that “resulted in the
memorable alliance between the rising states and the sought-after and
privileged capitalist powers that was a major factor in creating capitalism”;
Weber (1978: 353).34
33
Consistently, as van Caenegem (1992: 125) asserts, the principle cuius regio eius religio was
progressively replaced by the dictum “one state, one [legal] code.” That this narrow legal
positivism has been questioned in recent times does not need to occupy us at this moment.
34
North (1991: 33) makes basically the same point: “There was continuous interplay
between the fiscal needs of the state and its credibility in its relationships with merchants and
the citizenry in general. In particular, the evolution of capital markets was critically influenced
by the policies of the state because, to the extent that the state was bound by commitments that
it would not confiscate assets or in any way use its coercive power to increase uncertainty in
exchange, it made possible the evolution of financial institutions and the creation of more
efficient capital markets.”
On the other hand, subordinated classes and sectors had to traverse the
slower and more convoluted processes that I began discussing in the preced-
ing chapter. In these efforts they were helped by Germanic and medieval
traditions of contractualism and representation of status groups, including
the reverberations of the Roman (and later on medieval) often invoked
principle of Quod omnes tangit omnibus tractari et approbari debet.35 Howev-
er, this and similar principles and traditions were interpreted in the sense that
the “everyone” that was referred to were privileged sectors as represented in
corporate associations. The end of absolute monarchies and of descending
conceptions of power would have to wait until the processes, mentioned
in the preceding chapter, of expanding demands based on the recognition
of agency and its consequent claim to ascending views of political power took
place.
3. 4 . N OT E S O N S O M E E XC E P T I O N S
Now I need to comment on some important exceptions to the preceding

overview. One is Germany and its national unification that occurred in 1871:
significantly later than most of the other Northwestern cases. But it is only a
partial exception, because in 1834 Germany basically achieved through the
Zollverein (customs union) a unified market and, in contrast with most other
Northwestern countries, it had had for some time prior a common language
and, indeed, an increasingly strong national identity propelled by Fichte,
Herder, and other influential intellectuals. Furthermore, and arguably no
less important, already before unification, as Ziblatt (2006: 114–15) notes,
by 1815 “Administrative reforms across nearly all the German states spawned
concentrated, specialized, professional, and societally embedded bureaucra-
cies across the German political landscape . . . [thus] the basic prefectoral-
inspired institutions of modern administration were already in place through-
out all of the German states.” The union of these units (many small and some,
such as Prussia and Bavaria, large) was historically unique, in the sense that
most of them had already gone quite a long way in their respective processes
of state formation as described in this chapter.36
35
“That which affects everyone should be treated and approved by everyone.”
36
This, as Ziblatt notes, is a contrast with Italy, where at its unification only Piedmont had
undergone such process, and for that matter less fully than most German states. I add that even
though Spain had formal unity and international recognition as such, it was not until the
twentieth century that its political center won significant control over most of its territory.
But a fuller exception is, of course, the United States. Since the pioneering
work of Skowronek 1982, reinforced by the influential book of Skocpol 1992, it
has been broadly accepted that courts and parties to a large extent substituted,
at least until the late nineteenth century, for a weak and for many purposes
territorially and bureaucratically absent central state. This was due to complex
reasons that I cannot discuss here, but which included slavery and the forceful
elimination and/or displacement of indigenous peoples,37 and later on the
discriminatory treatment of various immigrant newcomers.
This was closely related to the politically and socially exclusionary char-
acteristics of the “racial order” in—mainly but not exclusively—the Southern
states of this country.38 Briefly, due to a significant extent to the works of
Desmond King and collaborators, it is becoming clear that the problématique
of state formation in the United States was not only about courts and parties,
however important they were.39 There were also active and very influential
states, but they were provincial and municipal ones. These states controlled
since the inception of this country—and to a comparatively large extent until
today—many aspects of social life. As Gerstle notes,40
[Those local states held a doctrine of] police power that was rooted in
both Anglo-American common law and continental European jurispru-
dence . . . [which] endowed state governments (but not the federal gov-
ernment) with broad authority over civil society for at least the first 150
years of the nation’s existence . . . [including] the role of state govern-
ments in the regulation of race, sexuality, and morality. . . . [On this basis]
state legislatures passed thousands of laws during this time to regulate all
kinds of economic and social activities, from conditions at the work-
places and in tenement houses to drinking, gambling, and other “vices.”41
Furthermore, detailed state and municipal rules governed many commercial
and, to great disadvantage of workers, labor activities, including prohibitions
against their “combination.” Local states were also effective in supporting
existing inequalities by, among other policies, the pervasive prohibition of
37
On the latter see Robertson 2005 and Stannard 1993.
38
Any reference to this topic begins with the classic book of Key 1949. In addition, I have
found extremely useful Bensel 1990, Hattam 1992, Hill 1994, Kousser 1974, Skowronek and
Glassman 2007, and Smith 1997 (but see also the references in the following footnotes of this
section).
39
See King 1999, 2005, and 2007, as well as González and King 2004, King and Smith 2005,
King and Tuck 2007, King and Lieberman 2008, King et al. 2009, and Jacobs and King
forthcoming 2010.
40
In Jacobs and King 2010; I am quoting, with the author’s permission, from the paper he
presented at the Oxford University conference from which his collective volume originated.
41
In other parts of his text this author cites other aspects of “improper moral behavior” such
as “theatergoing [sic], prostitution, and vagrancy.”
interracial sex and marriage. As Gerstle (op. cit.) adds, in more recent times
and in addition to pre-existing restrictions:
Twenty states and territories, between the 1880s and the 1920s, strength-
ened their bans on interracial sex and marriage or added new ones. These
laws appeared not only in Southern states but in Northern and Western
ones as well . . . Until 1967, the right to ban racial intermarriage was
deemed to lie well within the police power of state governments to
regulate society in the people’s interest. Until that almost exact same
moment as well, this police power was interpreted by the courts to mean,
too, that state governments possessed the right to ban contraception and
a variety of “unnatural” sexual acts.
Indeed, these provincial and municipal states were activist ones, by means not
only of local courts but also, and very importantly, of rule-making and the
direct exercise of police powers.42 Only late in the nineteenth century did a
distinct national state begin to emerge, with professionalized personnel in
some of its bureaucracies and the national reach of some of its legislation.43
But this emergence, that accelerated throughout the twentieth century, did
not, as it did in the European Northwest, erase or marginalize pre-existing
local powers and jurisdictions. Rather, that expansion has coexisted with a
variety of complex arrangements across policy areas and local states that have
left to the latter a scope and degree of authority unknown to the rest of the
Northwest (with the exception of Switzerland, a case I cannot discuss here);
those localized arrangements preserved for a long time various exclusionary
practices, not only in relation to slavery and its sequels but also to several
streams of migrants into this country.44
42
For further valuable contributions on these matters see Grossberg 1985, Moran 2001,
Novak 1997 and Pascoe 1996. On the crucial role of the law, not just of courts, in these processes
see Skrentny 2006. On comparative views about the eventually anti-democratic, sometimes
oppressive consequences of excessive federalism and/or decentralization even under overall
national democratic conditions, see Amoretti and Bermeo 2004.
43
This does not detract from recognizing the important role that, especially by the turn of
nineteenth century, the United States’ Supreme Court had in issues that reinforced for a long
time the existing patterns of social and political exclusion. I refer in particular to rulings such as
Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896) that consecrated a system of racial apartheid in the
southern states; Lochner v. New York 198 U.S. 45 (1905), in which the Court decided that the
New York state had no right to pass a law limiting the number of hours that employees in
bakeries could work per day, arguing that no state should interfere with the freedom of workers
to enter into employment contracts of their own choosing; and Coppage v. Kansas, 236 U.S.
(1915), invalidating the prohibition of contracts which made non-membership in a trade union
a condition of employment.
44
See especially Johnson 2007 and Weir 2005. In O’Donnell and Whitehead forthcoming
2009 we make an attempt at comparing the patterns of state formation in the United States and
Latin America, with emphasis on their similarities and in contrast with the modal patterns of
state formation in the European Northwestern countries.
I cannot say more on this topic, in part because of my lack of expertise but also
because this is at present an exciting frontier of research; we know of some
pioneering, ongoing research that will soon be followed by some very enlightened
work.45 For this to happen it was necessary that the research I quote in the
preceding footnotes dispels the wrong notion that there has not been a significant
role of the state in the historical formation of the United States, as well as to
correct the too limited one that this formation has been basically the product of
just courts and parties.46 Actually, and to my strong agreement, a crucial depart-
ing point of this literature is its criticism of the reduction of the state to just a set
of central bureaucracies—a view that I examine in Chapters 5 and 6.
3 . 5 . M A S C U L I N E , A B S O R B I N G , A N D J E A LO U S
One way or the other, the state that resulted was, and is, absorbing and
masculine. Absorbing, because it regulates manifold social relations. Mascu-
line,47 because this was (and largely still is) the gender of those situated at its
apex, which at its origins reflected its social and ideological basis on a
paternalistically defined family. Although in the Northwest this characteristic
has been attenuated (but by no means eliminated), in other regions it still
persists by means of many formal and informal discriminatory practices. The
state is also jealous, in its attempts to create and reproduce widespread and
exclusive collective identities; this moves us on to a look at the nation, the
people, and the citizenry: the referents that states and their governments
claim to serve. This is the task of the following chapter.
45
I refer especially to the collective volumes, already cited, King et al. and Jacobs and King,
both forthcoming 2010, and which I regret not having at hand in their final versions when
making the last revisions to the present book.
46
An overview of the literature that precedes the current stream of research and of the main
issues it raises, jointly with a summary anticipation of the matters discussed in the already cited
collective volumes is in King and Lieberman 2008.
47
Corrigan and Sayer (1985: 12) speak of “the pervasive masculinity of the state.” For
discussion of this bias see especially Fraser 1989, Mackinnon 1989, Tigar and Levy 2000, and
Walby 1996.
..................
4
..................
The Varying Referents of the State:
Nation, People, Citizenry
4 . 1. B AC K TO T H E A NA LY T I C A L D I G R E S S I O N
In the preceding chapter I mentioned that the state is absorbing and mascu-
line; it is also jealous. In the analytical digression of Section 2.2, I noted that
the leaders of complex associations normally claim that their decisions, and
even their very existence, are oriented to achieving the common good of the
whole association and of its members. In so doing, leaders usually aim to
create and reproduce a collective identity, an “us” of members who recognize
themselves as such members, and thus as distinct from all “them”; those
members, and the postulated collective identity they are supposed to share,
are the usual referent of the discourses from the top of the association. The
state (as defined in the preceding chapter) is no exception to this, but it has
peculiar characteristics that demand specific treatment. Among these char-
acteristics, it is worth noting that the referents of the state are the inhabitants
of a territorially delimited association; there it claims the monopoly of the
legitimate authorization of the use of physical coercion, and its legality is
externalized, extending to innumerable social relations, including those that
regulate other associations. These are specific characteristics of the state.
Another characteristic is the usual claim from its apex that the collective
identity postulated should take precedence over others resulting from various
social cleavages and/or other less encompassing associations. Furthermore, in
the case of a state that lodges a democratic regime, most of those inhabitants
are political citizens.
This matter raises many complex issues, starting with the various meanings
attached to the typical referents of the state—nation, people, and citizenry—
in different countries, time periods and, indeed, strands of the literature. The
terminological Babel that results forces me to propose some criteria that
I hope will help clear some—but by means all—of the resulting conceptual
ambiguities; this is the topic of Section 4.2. In the next section (4.3) I look at
74 The Varying Referents of the State
typical discourses from the state and their relationship to the collective
identities that are postulated, and promoted, from its apex and various—
broadly conceived—intellectuals. This leads me to look at one aspect of this
matter, the heavily symbolized rituals of the presentation of the state to its
referents, and its persistent attempts at socializing the inhabitants in pre-
eminent loyalty to the conjunction state-referent(s) (4.4). After this section
I deal with some complicated, and indeed in an important sense, conflictive
intersections between nation (and other collective referents) with democracy
and with the conception of political citizenship that springs from it (4.5).
These intersections have powerfully forced the emergence of what nowadays,
if not a world of nations, certainly is a world of states: a topic I examine in
Section 4.6. Those intersections also reverberate on another referent, the
people, or lo popular, that I discuss in Section 4.7. Finally, I draw some
conclusions (4.8) that open the way to the study of another dimension of
the state, its legal system, which I undertake in Chapter 5.
4. 2 . S O M E D E F I N I T I O N S
As I did in the preceding chapters, I begin by defining concepts that are crucial
for the analyses that follows. Looking across countries, the more common
collective referent of the state is the nation. I define it as
An arc of solidarities, a discursive and political construction that posits a
historically-constituted and collective “we” established on a territory that it
occupies and demarcates, or that it wishes to occupy and demarcate, and that
is usually claimed as entailing expectations of loyalty above and beyond other
identities and interests of its members.
Another common referent of the state is the people. This term has several
meanings.1 One is similar to the nation’s. A second meaning, quite common
in Anglo-Saxon countries, is less collectivistic and refers to the inhabitants,
especially those who are citizens, who are under the authority of a state.
A third meaning of people designates a subset of the population as the only
1
Other uses that are not directly relevant here spring from colonial times from traditions of
the Kingdom of Castille and Spanish America, where pueblo(s) (the people/s) were various
collectively conceived pre-national entities, especially towns and their rural hinterland; the term
also referred to some semi-autonomous comunidades indı́genas (indigenous communities); see
Annino 1994, Chiaramonte 2004, and Guerra 1999 and 2003.
The Varying Referents of the State 75
“true” or “authentic” members of the state, often those who are argued to
be an excluded or marginalized or victimized part of that population.2
Still another referent of the state is the citizenry, sometimes used in a
sense equivalent to the first meaning of people (and consequently also to
the meaning of nation), and sometimes to the second, more individualistic
one.
These are discursive formations that have strong performative implica-
tions; they aim at creating and recreating, and quite often succeed, the
collective identities they invoke. These formations mix and change in highly
complex ways, and every case requires close empirical analysis.3 They are
ideological and political constructions with which the state, especially those at
its apex, aim at closely linking themselves with its population. These dis-
courses and their eventual collective identifications are the outcome of his-
tories, memories, rituals, myths and, in some periods, efforts at political
mobilization. As Suny (2001: 892, 864) puts it,
[N]ational identity is an act of subscription to a continuing community,
with a past and a future, a shared destiny . . . [N]ations are congealed
histories. They are made up of stories that people tell about their past and
thereby determine who they are. . . . Whatever actually happened is far
less important than how it is remembered. What is remembered, what
has been forgotten or repressed, provides the template through which the
world is understood.4
2
I have struggled with the terminological morass provoked by the varied meanings of nation,
people, and citizenry, all highly disputable terms that have a deeply political and ideological
character. In an effort to alleviate the resulting expository problems, in sentences where the
referent may not be entirely clear I use the clumsy expression “nation/people/citizenry” to
indicate that I am talking about all these terms jointly; also in other contexts where it seems
clear that I am jointly referring to the three of them, I use the more generic words “country” or
“population.” On the other hand, when I use the term “nation” alone, I refer to it as above
defined, and consequently also to the first meaning of “people.” Finally, “society” is a sociological
concept that, even though it may refer to the same empirical universe as the former terms (if
applied to the population linked to a given state) is more politically neutral and provides a
different analytical perspective; this is the term that will predominate when I discuss the legal
dimension of the state.
3
See Breully 2003, Calhoun 1997, Finlayson 1998, Grimson 2008, Maı́z 2002, Ozkirimili
2005, and Suny 2001.
4
The classical statement on the selective remembering and forgetting typical of national
histories was made by Renan 1882. For recent views see Gillis (1994b: 7), who comments that
“National memory is shared by people who have never seen or heard of one another, yet who
regard themselves as having a common history. They are bound together as much by forgetting
as by remembering. . . . New memories require concerted forgettings.”
This “constructivist” view contrasts with versions of “primordialist” nation-

alism that argue for a kind of trans-historic, organicistic, and pre-political
conception of the nation or the people.5
4 . 3. O N R E F E R E N T S A N D D I S C O U R S E S F RO M
T H E A P E X O F T H E S TAT E
We know that some states include more than one nation, some nations lack a
state, and others, whether they define themselves as a nation or ethnicity or
religious identity, are contained in states where other collectives are dominant
and/or oppressive. On the other hand, in most cases states try to be, and to be
widely recognized as being, states-for-the-nation/people/citizenry, entities
primarily devoted to the common good of their collective referent(s). Of
course, this claim has generated terrible tragedies, by means of the cruel
elimination (or the often also cruel attempts at “assimilation”) of other
nations and collective identities.6 In most cases, in Latin America and else-
where, states have preceded nations, and after emerging have striven, some-
times too successfully, to create one.
Of course, not all states encompass just one nation. There are what Stepan
2008 calls “state-nations” (in contrast to nation-states), ones in which several
distinct culturally and often times politically mobilized identities exist or
claim to exist. Indeed there exist quite a few of these cases, that this author
calls “robustly politically multinational,” some of them reasonably successful
democracies, such as Canada, Spain, Belgium and, outside of the Northwest,
India and, to my mind increasingly so, the United Kingdom. I cannot enter
into a detailed analysis of the fruitful contribution of this author, which came
to my attention during the final revision of the present book. Yet I wish to
point out that it seems to me that in these and similar cases we have two layers
of national identity: first, the several ones that coexist under a single state and
that have important, and at times conflictive repercussions in the overall
political scene and that, as Stepan op. cit. points out, heavily influence
5
Well criticized by Maı́z 2002 and 2003, Stavenhagen 1996, and Yack 1999. This is part of a
broader discussion on which I need not enter here; I refer to debates between “primordialists,”
“ethnoculturalists” and “modernists.” For reviews see Smith 2001, Breully 1993, and Maı́z 2003.
6
This has not been the only but surely is an important reason why “The history of states in
Europe is, in part, the history of the most abominable violation of human rights”; Held (2001:
431). For reminders of this violence see Canovan 1996 and (Anthony) Marx 2003. Obviously the
whole of the Americas is no exception to this, although in contrast to Europe the main victims
have been indigenous peoples and peoples of African origin.
institutional arrangements such as the type of federalism they adopt. But

there is a second level, somewhat overlooked by this author but that I surmise
it would be wrong to ignore, the one anchored at the level of the state that
somehow encompasses those nationalities. Often important overall identities
and consequent loyalties are expressed at this level too. This is evident in
international conflicts and in some of the state-level rituals and ceremonies I
discuss below; but it also shows up on many other occasions, such as when
whole populations fervently rout for their “national” team in international
sport competitions. This means that these countries are not properly nation-
states, but still the second layer of identities and loyalties sometimes make
them look very much like ones.
The cases just mentioned are ones where in some way or the other the
coexisting nationalities, even if often with great trouble and with almost never
fully institutionalized arrangements, have been able to elaborate a modus
vivendi that allows not only internal peace but also reasonably successful
democracies. Referring again to Stepan (op. cit), he correctly points out that
there are other cases, outside of the Northwest—in Africa and parts of
Southern Asia—where such solutions have not been available. They are
characterized by either violently attempting to impose one nationality or
ethnicity over the others, or by states that have almost completely abandoned
actually ruling their population—and, I add, sometimes move back and forth
from these alternatives.
One way or the other, even in cases of almost nominal existence of a state,7
the claims from its apex have at least two components. One is the delimitation
of an “us” with respect to multiple “others.”8 The other consists of claiming to
be the main instance of protection, interpretation, and effectuation of the
common good, or main interests, of “its” nation/people/citizenry, however
more or less pluralistically conceived. The jealous state aims at creating a
broadly and firmly shared collective identity, and to be recognized as a bene-
ficial filter from its outside. The discourses from the state demand our loyalty,
usually beyond and above identities and interests that derive from various
social divisions. At the limit those discourses demand that we go to war for
our country; in daily life, they demand our acquiescence (if not necessarily
our normative loyalty) to the decisions made by its officials. The claims are
7
Which, as I mention below, may basically derive from its recognition by other states and
some international organizations, without much substance in terms of the effectiveness of the
four dimensions of the state.
8
Arguably nothing signifies this better than the invention of the passport; see Torpey 2000.
For this delimitation, the work of cartographers during periods of state-making was extremely
important; see Alliès 1980, Baud and Schendel 1997, and Escolar 1997 and 2007; for some Latin
American cases, see Escolar 1998 and Radcliff 2001.
based in, and gain credibility from, the two great contributions that a
functioning state makes: one, to be the main articulator and guarantor of
the social order, so that it furnishes the great public good of the order and
foreseeable effectiveness of manifold social relations; and, second, to be the
institutional and symbolic embodiment of the historical continuity of “its”
nation/people/citizenry, whether or not it is constituted by one or more
nations or peoples.
4 . 4. R I T UA L S , L A N G UAG E , A N D S O C I A L I Z AT I O N
The discourses of the nation/people/citizenry are repeatedly enacted in ri-

tuals, anthems, flags, monuments, stories of great military victories and
heroic defeats, and ceremonies, from the trips of Negara in Bali9 to royal
coronations and presidential inaugurations. As Kertzer (1988: 67–175) notes,
these rituals have the great ideological advantage of “producing bonds of
solidarity without requiring uniformity of belief [thus helping] the struggle of
the privileged to protect their positions by fostering a particular view of
people’s self-interest.”
Of course, the discursive and ritual attempts of the state to intimately link
itself with “its” population are helped by the unification of the language read
and, hopefully also, spoken in the territory.10 England was exceptional in that
already in the thirteenth century English had substituted for French and Latin
as both its widely shared and official language; also Germany well before its
unification had a single language—a fact that greatly helped its unification.
For its part, however, by the time of the French revolution “[s]ix million
people in France relied on ‘foreign’ languages and dialects: Flemish, Celtic,
Basque, German and thirty patois”; thus in 1792 the principle of “one people,
one nation, one language” began to be harshly implemented. Even later,
already in the nineteenth century, in Italy at the time of its unification there
9
On Negara see Geertz 1980. These are part of the “supreme fictions through which [the
social order] lives”; Geertz 1985: 33. On these rituals see also Balibar 1991, Cannadine 1983,
Geertz 1985, Gillis 1994b, Hobsbawn 1983a, 1983b and 1992, Lukes 1977, and Ozkirimli 2005.
10
This is a facilitating but certainly not a necessary condition. Among others Canada,
Belgium, and Switzerland, and to some extent Spain and India, have managed to accommodate,
not without conflicts that never seem definitively settled, bi- and even multi-lingual commu-
nities, whether they claim or not to be a distinct nationality. But as already noted, especially
outside the Northwest, this has proved a major hindrance for both successful state-making and
democratization.
existed dozens of languages, which prompted the dictum of Massimo d’Aze-

glio: “We made Italy, now we must make the Italians.”11
In the sixteenth century, these processes were helped by the rapid diffusion
of printing.12 As Guibernau (1996: 67) comments, “The crucial factor in this
process was that, for the first time, the language in which the people of a
discrete area spoke and thought was the same as that in which the ruling
strata, the intellectuals and the clergy wrote and read.” One consequence was
that the law enacted from the center could then be written, applied, and
invoked (if not usually in its technicalities) in a language shared by most of
the population.
These developments, plus of course the spread of education, especially that
of children, were great vehicles for the transmission of visions of each country,
its glories, and the reasons why identification with it should be a source
of pride and pre-eminent solidarity. Smith (1991: 16) comments that “com-
pulsory, standardized, public mass education systems, through which state
authorities hope to inculcate national devotion and a distinctive, homoge-
neous culture, is an activity that most regimes [i.e. states, O’D] pursue with
considerable energy.”
Graff (1987: 276) adds useful detail:
The school’s task included not only national and patriotic sentiments but
establishing unity in a nation long divided by region, culture, language
and persisting social divisions of class and wealth. Learning to read and
write involved the constant repetition of the civic national catechism, in
which the child was imbued with all the duties expected of him: from
defending the state, to paying taxes, working, and obeying the laws.
Most states have tried very hard to impregnate their referents with their
discourses and rituals, and to socialize the population in a shared collective
identity and subsequent loyalties. Consequently, “as they created uniform and
standardized categories of citizens and their duties, states created national
languages. As they created national languages, nationally-certified cultural
forms came along with them. As these forms were created, other forms were
relegated to the categories of ethnicity, dialect, and folklore” (Tarrow 2000: 2,
who also comments, ibid. 7, that “the idea of a single linguistic group for
every state is a peculiarly recent one”).13
11
Cited by Tarrow 2000: 7.
12
See Eisenstein 1983.
13
On France see (Eugen) Weber 1976 and Robb 2007; more generally see Gellner 1983,
Hobsbawn 1983a, and Mann 1993.
In various guises the discourses, rituals, and socializing policies of and from
the state—as well as from varied assortments of intellectuals14 including ar-
tists15—constantly invoke, and try to recreate, a primary loyalty from the popu-
lation it claims to serve. An important aspect is that according to these discourses
we are all equal in our condition not only as citizens but also as members of
the nation or people, and that this condition entails an obligation of pre-eminent
loyalty to a state that in those discourses—particularly but not exclusively
the primordialist ones—claims to be the privileged interpreter, if not the very
embodiment, of the country’s population and their most vital interests.16
This dense and insistent symbology is anything but politically innocent. As
Ozkirimli (2005: 32–3, 17) argues,
[T]he discourse of nationalism is about power and domination. It legit-
imates and produces hierarchies among actors. It authorizes particular
formulations of the nation against others, thereby concealing the frac-
tures, divisions and differences of opinion within the nation. [This en-
tails, O’D) an effort to reduce the importance of objective differences
within the group while emphasizing the group’s uniqueness vis-à-vis
outsiders.
Concurrently Billig (1995: 71) comments that “National histories are continu-
ally being re-written, and the re-writing reflects current balances of hegemo-
ny.”17 Furthermore, these discourses unavoidably assert a division between those
who rule—purportedly devoted to the common good—and those who do not,
14
Historians, ethnographers, and poets have had well-documented influence in the formu-
lation and redefinition of ideas about people, nation, and nationalism.
15
In addition to artists proper who have defined “national” versions of various arts,
architects deserve special mention. Their work on the design and monumental adornments
of—especially—capital cities, have contributed to imbuing them with great importance as
symbolic embodiments of the state and the nation/people.
16
Habermas (1998a: 111–13) comments that “Belonging to the ‘nation’ made possible for
the first time a relationship of solidarity among persons who had been previously been strangers
to one another.” However, both this author and Anderson 1991 (in his well-known argument
about the “horizontal comradeship” postulated by discourses of the “imagined community” of
the nation) fail to recognize that, especially in countries that are highly unequal, this is not as
much articulated horizontally as “vertically,” through appeals from a center that aims to
reproduce the hierarchical subordination of its population. For apposite criticism of Anderson’s
argument from the perspective of, respectively, Asia and Latin America see Chatterjee 1993 and
2008, and Lomnitz 2001.
17
Calhoun (1997: 23) adds that “Nationalist rhetoric posits whole categories of people
without reference to their internal differentiation, or claims priority over all such internal
differences.” In a similar sense, albeit from different theoretical perspectives see Canovan
1996, Greenfeld 1992, Finlayson 1998, Hutchinson 2001 and Tamir 1995, as well as the authors
cited in the preceding footnote. For discussion of these matters concerning Argentina and Brazil
see Grimson 2008 and Segato 2007.
supposedly immersed in their private affairs; in so doing these discourses, while

proclaiming the homogeneity of the population and the position of the state
standing above society, tend to reinforce the distribution of power and inequal-
ity that exist in society and state.18
Insofar as these discourses are by and large successful (i.e. as long as the
state is credible and consequently succeeds in being a widely shared focus of
collective identity), the nation/people/citizenry that recognizes itself in the
mirror of those discourses is a great reservoir of political power and energies.
Canovan (1996: 73), who usefully stresses this aspect, argues that
[T]he most significant feature of nationhood is its role in generating
collective power, its capacity to create an “us” that can be mobilized and
represented, and for which a surprising number of people are prepared to
make sacrifices. Despite all the economic, cultural and military trends
pushing us in the direction of cosmopolitanism, this continues to be a
stubborn fact.
In turn Breuilly (1993: 1) comments that “Nationalism is, above and beyond
all else, about politics and politics is about power.” These are discourses of
political leaders and various kinds of intellectuals offering a vision that denies
or subsumes inequalities into a view of equality as members and in a sense co-
owners of the nation or people. These discourses evoke a solidary collectivity
that transcends the individuality of its members; significantly, the family is
quite often metonymically evoked as the proper image of the nation—“our
great family,” to which its members owe primary love and loyalty.19 When
reasonably successful, these invocations naturalize the nation (or in some
cases “the people”). Belonging to it, accepting the dominant views about its
history, glorifying its heroes and founders, and even using the nation as a
framework for understanding one’s place in the country and in the world,
become common sense notions.20
18
Bourdieu (1989: 21) comments that “Objective relations of power tend to reproduce
themselves in relations of symbolic power. In the symbolic struggle for the production of
common sense or, more precisely, for the monopoly over legitimate naming, agents put into
action the symbolic power that they have acquired in previous struggles and which may be
juridically guaranteed.”
19
In addition to the already noted masculine traits of the state, these national (and often
citizen) discourses usually evince a strong gender bias—paradigmatic images of the patriarchal
family included. See Canovan 1996, Fraser 1989, Lister 1997, Mackinnon 1989, Stolcke 1997,
Ozkirimli 2005, Walby 1994 and 1996, and Yuval-Davis 1997. For discussions focused on Latin
America see Dore and Molineux 2005, and Rı́os Lobos 2008.
20
Ozkirimli (2005: 33) notes that “National values are no longer seen as social values and
appear as facts of nature—they become taken for granted, common sense, and hegemonic”; see
also Billig 1995 for discussion of “banal nationalism,” as well as Calhoun 1997 and Finlayson
1998.
Thus appears the solemn face with which the state presents its official
version, and tells us that its power is ultimately for the good of us all. As
Kertzer (1988: 62) commenting on Durkheim says, “There cannot exist a
society that does not feel the need to proclaim and assert at regular intervals
the collective sentiments and the collective ideas that constitute its unity and
personality.” That these discourses are not politically innocent is also evinced
by an aspect I want to stress because it is not always recognized in the
literature on the nation. In many countries, what is to be the proper discourse
about the nation and/or the people has been, and is, one of the most hotly,
and sometimes violently, disputed political issue. Finlayson (1998: 112) notes
that these discourses “will take on varying ideological forms depending on the
elements with which it is articulated . . . for ‘the national’ is not merely one
part of political contestation, it can form a discursive field within which
contestation occurs.” These are part of what Bourdieu (1989: 22) called “the
struggle for the production and imposition of the legitimate vision of the
social world.”
In some countries such as the United States, these struggles may have partly
receded from memory, but even in a no less modern and democratic country,
France, the disputes among Catholic/monarchists and lay/republicans about
which is the nation and history to be celebrated, resonate until today. This is
even more true outside the Northwest, where the memories of antagonisms
during independence or decolonization, and of inward and outward looking
political and cultural parties and movements, are often the subject of sharp
debates.21
4. 5 . T H E C O M P L E X I N T E R S E C T I O N O F NAT I O NA L I T Y
W I T H C I T I Z E N S H I P A N D D E M O C R AC Y
Now we should pause to examine an aspect that will complicate the analysis
I undertook in Chapter 1. It is that citizenship has two sides. One is the
citizenship entailed by the democratic regime, with the universalistic rights
it attaches to individuals of electing, being elected, and in general participating
in political activities protected by freedoms of expression, association, move-
ment, and the like. The other side of citizenship derives from nationality. It is
21
There are important variations even within each region. In Latin America, for example,
Brazil, Chile, México, and Uruguay seem to have settled into a generally accepted view of their
national histories. In contrast, in Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru these issues are still deeply
divisive.
an “ascriptive” status, acquired by the fact of belonging, whether by jus solis or

jus sanguinis, to a given country. Even earlier, as Preuss (1996b: 536–8) notes,
beginning in Athens, passing through the Italian republics, and continuing
into the censitaire liberal democracies of the nineteenth century, “Citizenship
was a status of eminence by which a distinguished class of individuals22 were
recognized as having a particular stake . . . in the polity.” Only later, with the
subsequent expansion of the democratic wager, did citizenship reach most
adults. This citizenship was assigned as an attribute of nationality by states
that, for reasons both domestic and international, strived to control and elicit
the loyalty of their population. Since then citizenship refers not only to the
member of a democratic demos; it is also a synonym of nationality, which
“denotes the legal belonging of an individual to a particular state . . . [and thus]
defines the category of persons that sovereign states recognize as legitimate
objects of their respective sovereign powers”; Preuss 1996b: 538.23
The ascriptive nature of this face of citizenship means that “the state is not
and cannot be a voluntary association. For the great majority of the popula-
tion, citizenship is an attributed status.”24 The modern state, this peculiar
association—non-voluntary, based on a territory, supported in its monopoly
of the legitimate authorization of physical coercion, highly bureaucratized,
densely legalized and externalized, and usually purporting to be a state-
for-all-of-us—is the crucially concomitant, historically crystallized, democratic
regime.
In Chapter 2, I asserted that the democratic regime is the first one that bases
its authority on the citizenry, but now I have to introduce some caveats.
Political citizenship and its rights are the maximal (although by no means
insignificant) abstraction of political life, as they refer to individuals who,
irrespective of their social positions, are construed as such citizens, and hence
as equal in a series of legally-defined dimensions. Instead, the nation (or
people) is usually claimed as a concrete, encompassing and solidary collectiv-
ity. Its meanings evoke a territory often idealized as the quasi-sacred “proper-
ty” of the nation, and the container of its members;25 these meanings also
invoke a historical continuity that it is the duty of all to revere and guarantee,
and foster into the future. The result is that in many situations the discourses
of the nation (or people) come across as more concrete than those that invoke
22
And, in addition, all of them men.
23
See also Stolcke 1997 for discussion of “nationality as regulation of the access to
citizenship.”
24
Brubaker 1996: 32.
25
For interesting reflections on the relationship between territory, nation, and citizenry see
Escolar 1997 and 2007. I am grateful to this author for having made me aware of the political
and ideological importance of the territory.
the citizenry. This shift of reference from citizenry to nation was already
visible in France during its revolution. It has been less marked, and more
mixed with discourses of citizenship in Britain, the United States, and other
countries of Anglo-Saxon origin. But even in these, as well as in most others,
an attentive ear can detect the collectivistic meanings of nationhood showing
up again and again over the more abstract ones of citizenship.
At any event, the convergence of political democracy and a state that
claimed to be a national state, had extremely important consequences.
However mythical the principle of popular or national sovereignty, it tended
to link states and governments intimately with their populations, irrespec-
tive of how the latter were called in those discourses. This is significant
because, as some authors have pointed out,26 a blind spot of some currents
of democratic theory is the omission to consider empirically, and theorize,
that political democracy was born, has continued existing, and has spread
throughout the world with and in the context of states that claim to be
states-for-the-nation/people/citizenry.27 As Habermas (1998a: 114, 111)
reminds us,
[T]he modern idea of the nation . . . [is] the new, legally and politically
mediated, form of community. The nation or Volkgeist provided the
cultural basis of the constitutional state . . . [Furthermore] belonging to
the “nation” made possible for the first time a relation of solidarity
between persons who had previously been strangers to one another.
It was due to this intersection that “Democracy was born with the sense of
nationality. The two are inherently linked, and neither can be fully under-
stood apart from this connection.”28 This has been a powerful linkage: the
members of the purportedly sovereign community may claim self determina-
tion, the right (often seen as ancestral) to inhabit and exclusively control a
territory; they may also feel entitled to demand that the discourses of the state
and government about primarily serving their common good are truthful,
thus pointing to one of the dimensions of the state, its credibility. Further-
more, that linkage provided a necessary component for a democratic regime:
26
Gray (2000: 123) argues that “[T]he sovereign nation-state is the great unexamined
assumption of liberal thought”; this entails neglecting the “fundamental functionality” (Maı́z
2002b: 14) that the nation has had for the emergence and workings of democracy. Canovan
(1996: 1–2) adds: “Nationhood is actually a tacit premise in almost all contemporary political
thinking. The current discourses of democracy, social justice and liberalism all in their different
ways presuppose the existence not just of a state, but of a political community . . . [these
discourses] tacitly assume that nation-states can be taken as given.”
27
There are significant exceptions, albeit by mostly recent works, noted in footnote 11 of the
Introduction.
28
Greenfeld 1992: 10.
it delimits its electorate—no such regime can exist without this delimitation
because, as Fishkin (1991: 78) asserts, “One cannot use democratic decision-
rules without some prior basis for determining the boundaries of the state
within which they are to be applied.”29
Still, what may be called the nationalization of citizenship is still, as it was
in the past, a privilege, albeit now shared by many more individuals. Even if
the inclusive wager has extended this privilege to most adults in the territory
of a state that houses a democratic regime, it leaves standing an “interior
outside”: those inhabitants who for whatever reason are not nationals. This
creates nagging problems, particularly in the current times of great waves of
migrants and exiles; I deal with this matter from the broader perspective to be
provided in Chapter 9.
4. 6 . A WO R L D O F S TAT E S
Another aspect of the intersection of the state with the nation/people/citizen-

ry, and in some cases also with democracy, was that it was propelled by, and
further propelled, the dominance of Northwestern countries in the interna-
tional arena. Once this arrangement was available and had showed its poten-
cy, other countries sooner or later adopted it, autonomously or due to
decisions of Northwestern countries.
As a result, at least the formal trappings of the modern territorially-based
state have spread everywhere, together or without democracy—constitutions,
ministries, embassies, flags, anthems, and the like exist everywhere.30 As a
consequence, we may not live in a world of nations,31 but we certainly live in a
world of states; as Brubaker (1996: 21) asserts, “[This] is a world in which
nationhood is pervasively institutionalized in the practice of states and the
29
Calhoun (1997: 71) concurs from another angle: “Whether expressed as ‘nation’ or ‘people’,
reference to some recognizably bounded and internally integrated population was integral to
modern notions of popular will and public opinion.”
30
This seems to be a case of institutional isomorphism, as argued by Meyer and others; see
especially Meyer et al. 1997 and Meyer 1999, the imitative adoption (transnational in the present
case) of institutional patterns that are judged to have been successfully tried in previous
occasions or settings. Yet, as these authors comment (Meyer et al. 1997), “Decoupling [between
the transplanted models and local realities, O’D] is endemic because nation-states are modeled
on an external culture that cannot simply be imported wholesale as a fully functioning system.”
In this context the pioneering work of Riggs 1964 on “prismatic” societies and states deserves
mention.
31
As the well-known book by Rustow 1968 is titled.
workings of the state system. It is a world in which nation is widely, if

unevenly, available and resonant as a category of social vision and division.”32
These states have very different characteristics but, even if in some cases
quite doubtfully, all claim to represent and be the authorized voice of their
population, however defined as a citizenry, or as one or several nations or
peoples or ethnicities. The international practice of mutual recognitions
among states—and more recently also by some public international organiza-
tions—has greatly contributed to supporting, and with a few exceptions
reproducing, a world system of states. This in turn has reinforced—for better
and for worse—the tendency of states to present themselves as the only valid
voice of a homogeneously postulated population.
4. 7 . T H E P E O P L E A N D LO P O P U L A R
Now I turn to the fourth meaning of people. It is “The . . . idea of the people as
the commoners—the mass of humble, ordinary citizens, as opposed to upper-
and middle-class elites . . . [that] is always available to fuel populist appeals
against the advantages of the rich and powerful.”33 In turn, a noted author on
this and related themes, defines the people as “a component that is partial but
that aims, however, at being conceived as the only legitimate totality”; Laclau
2005b: 107.
According to these discourses there exists a “true” nation or people, usually
made up of those considered to be the underprivileged and/or the somehow
excluded or discriminated part of a nation that may formally exist but is still
to be made in its true nature against rulers, dominant classes or ethnicities
and, often, their foreign allies. In other cases, leaders of self-proclaimed
nations, based on feelings of distinctive collective identity and long-standing
grievances, seek autonomy from the state in which they find themselves.
There is another side to this matter. Even though the main content of the
discourses about the nation tends to deny or subsume existing inequalities, as
those discourses postulate the equality of all as members of the nation, they
open up opportunities for demands for substantive justice. If all of us are told
again and again that we are equal as such members, how is it possible, and
acceptable, that some suffer severe deprivations and inequalities? Such claims
may become forceful, massive demands; this is particularly the case if they
are made in the name of the people, the “true” nation, thus denying the
32
For similar views from a noted scholar of international relations see Ruggie 1995.
33
Yack 2001: 522; see also Tamir 1995.
homogeneity posited by the usual discourses from the state. In this connec-
tion it bears taking into account that in the Northwest the struggles I
mentioned in Chapter 2 were held not only as subordinated classes demand-
ing their rights as citizens but also as moral demands qua authentic members
of a nation, the very referent most often invoked by the rulers.
What we demand as members of an oppressed or excluded people (el
pueblo, or lo popular, as used in Latin America) evidences divisions and
conflicting interests that the homogenizing discourses of the nation obliter-
ate.34 In these cases, despite efforts from the apex of the state and its allies to
build the credible image of an homogeneous nation, the struggles that ensue
bear witness at how problematic—and conflictive—these matters can be.35
Successful invocations to the nation create important reservoirs of political
energy and support. But conflicts about its proper definition, including who
“really” belongs to it and what is its “true” history, may breed harsh conflicts,
putting into question one of the crucial dimensions of the state, its credibility
as a true agent of the common good.
At any event, the state—its apex, its officials, its social allies, and its
intellectuals—expects, and sometimes is willing to harshly demand, identifi-
cation with its own official, always mythologized, version of the nation. This
makes the nation a dangerous ideological sponge. The feeling of belonging to
the nation slips easily into nationalism, what Smith (2001: 20) calls “the
theory and the ideology of the nation,” the proud and sometimes aggressive
assertion of the distinctiveness and superiority of, and sometimes the mani-
fold injustices suffered by a given nation. Discourses of nationhood and
nationalism have readily mixed, and continue mixing, with ideologies of
imperialism, racism, xenophobia, and similar, and have authorized horrors
perpetrated both by states and by movements aiming at creating their own
state. As Calhoun (1997: 3) says, “Nationalism comes in manifold forms,
some benign and reassuring, and others terrifying” because, as Ozkirimli
(2005: 100) argues, “all forms of nationalism carry with them the seeds of
evil and even the most moderate forms can easily be converted to virulent
ones under propitious conditions.”
Surely, in some cases the discourses of the nation may become “civic,” in
the sense that they do not appeal to an organicistically and chauvinistically
34
On this topic and the related one of populism see the valuable early contribution of
Weffort 1980 as well as the interesting work of the noted author on the topic (although I disagree
with his theoretical framework) Laclau 1994, 2005a, and 2005b. See also Aboy Carlés 2003,
Arditi 2004, Canovan 1999, Trocello 2008, Sigal and Verón 1986 and, for a useful recent
collective volume, Panizza 2005.
35
These discourses of the “people” reappear again and again, even in the contemporary
Northwest, nowadays mostly with a right wing and xenophobic intonation; see Mouffe 2005.
conceived entity, but to citizens who are accepted in their individuality and
diversity.36 Yet, even though nowadays some states do not attempt to elimi-
nate or “assimilate” cultural or ethnic minorities, I am skeptical about the
resilience of this kind of discourse. It is worth remembering that the motto of
the country that is usually considered the epitome of this kind of nationalism,
the United States, is de pluribus unum, and especially that, as in the past and
nowadays, when its leaders feel that the country is threatened (whether by
international powers or by “unfit” migrants), they tend to make, with wide-
spread echo, chauvinistic appeals of practically unconditional loyalty to an
organicistically postulated nation. Furthermore, the country where the idea of
civic, or “constitutional” nationalism is said to have originated,37 Germany, it
can be argued, is such a case of nationalism, but for only what is, in terms of
historical time, a short period.
Furthermore, it is worth remembering that the countries that nowadays are
considered to hold civic versions of nationalism began with harsh exclusions
of in some cases large religious, linguistic, and/or cultural groups. In the
purported original countries of this kind of nationalism, Britain, France, and
the United States, rulers discovered that the enforcement of the “proper”
boundaries of the nation was a powerful means for establishing their domi-
nation. In this cases, as (Anthony) Marx (203: 74) argues,
Political actors learned that exclusion of a group could serve to unify and
cohere a sufficient core constituency to preserve the state and make it
governable . . . [they did this by] embracing, exacerbating, or manipulat-
ing some form of cultural prejudice against an “outgroup” whose exclu-
sion would unify a core. Then, strategy and prejudice would coincide to
produce exclusive unity, pursued in a manner that linked state author-
ities (or pretenders) to the populace.38
Indeed, arguing that, even though it has had time to “mellow,” in its origins
nationalism in the United States, France, and England was violent and anything
36
About this kind of nationalism see especially Habermas 1998a and Tamir 1993. For critical
analysis see Canovan 1996, Marx 2003, and Yack 1999: 108 who, mentioning the United States
and France, comments that “The possibility of intolerance and paranoia in a truly ‘civic’ nation
is far from academic or hypothetical.”
37
I refer to Habermas, especially 1998a.
38
Actually this author is referring to Britain and France but his assertions apply to other
countries of the Northwest. He lays stress on the religious conflicts of the sixteenth century on,
terms of their role in identifying groups to be excluded or marginalized in the respective
countries; similar processes of exclusion, albeit not always based on religious factors, and in
ways often extremely cruel, applied to the indigenous populations of the Americas and, later on,
to various kinds of immigrants, forced and voluntary.
but “civic,” Canovan (1996: 3) comments that “Machiavellian skeletons lurk

behind the serene assumption that the collective power and solidarity that
sustain democracy, justice, and the rule of law can be taken for granted.” It is
worth adding that even more Machiavellian skeletons lurk around the violence,
racism, religious fanaticism, and other horrors that punctuate the imperialism
in which, often mobilized by racist and chauvinistic versions of nationalism,
several Northwestern countries engaged during or after their own processes of
state and nation building.
Still, it is worth recalling that in the Northwestern countries the combined
nature of citizenship (active and potentially participative from the side of the
democratic regime, and ascriptive and in principle passive from the side of
nationality) has sometimes helped in the struggles that various classes and
sectors undertook for the recognition of rights to both sides of citizenship.
For most of those struggles the state has been a fundamental point of
reference, whether for traditionally conceived rights or for rights reinter-
preted or invented in the heat of these processes. Sometimes the ground of
the demands was the stipulation of present or aspiring citizens as members of
a nation or a people, and often mixing all these categories. The aim, and at
times the consequence, was not only to inscribe the respective rights in the
legal system but also to transform or create state institutions authorized and
disposed to safeguard and implement those rights.
In this sense, and of course not without ups and downs and differences
among countries, in the Northwest the nation state has been an important
factor in the reduction of inequalities, in the extension of civil rights, and in
the achievement by many in its population of a basic level of social rights. As
Vogler (1985: p. xii) comments: “Insofar as inequalities between classes have
been reduced [in the Northwest, O’D] . . . this has occurred within nations, as
a result of the state’s ability to regulate politically market forces at the national
level.”
The state has been a crucial place of concentration of powers towards which
and from which many struggles have taken place. This presupposes a kind of
state that, even if partially and intermittently, expresses relations of power
that make possible the achievement of rights and freedoms, sometimes
against the preferences of dominant classes and sectors. During the long
journey entailed by these processes, in the Northwest the state and the regime
broadened, admitting as legitimate participants sectors and classes previously
excluded. This broadened state became stronger by increasing its efficacy, its
effectiveness, its credibility, and the refinement of its filtering. Furthermore, a
regime that was broadening at the compass of these same processes became a
channel of representation of the whole of the citizenry.
4 . 8. S O M E C O N C LU S I O N S
The discussion in this chapter raises a point that I wish to emphasize: it is the
emergence, first in the Northwest and later on in other parts of the world,
albeit with characteristics and limitations that in relation to Latin America I
will examine in Chapter 8, of a unique and peculiar combination. Manifold
processes, including uneven but real advances in democratization, meant that
sooner or later political authority could not any longer be justified on
tradition, religion, dynasty, and the like; it could only be justified with a
referent external and distinct to the state and rulers; a population variously
appealed as a nation, a people and/or a citizenry. Once traditional sources of
legitimacy weakened, even under restricted types of democracy, rulers had to
claim not only that they existed and ruled for the common good of that
referent; they had to make, or accept, the more momentous claim that it was
from that referent that they derived their authority and powers.39 More or less
simultaneously, geopolitical reasons of demarcation and defense of territory
and population converged with newer democracies and their own institution-
al need to clearly identify their voting population: thus modern states became
the container of both the demos of political democracy and of the nation/
people. Furthermore, since the members of these referents were posed as the
source of the authority exercised at the apex of the state, both state and
territory could be argued as belonging to those members. Already in the
United States’ independence “the people”40 and in the French one les citoyens,
and less sharply but also clearly in the previous English “Glorious Revolu-
tion,” this intimate link between state/territory and its population was widely
asserted. Yet, who were those who “owned” state and territory? In France,
urged by fears of the subversive implications of how citizenship had been
conceived at the height of its revolution, soon it was argued that the holder of
such ownership was a collectively conceived nation that could only express
itself through mechanisms of political representation.41 In England first and
39
Commenting on these processes, Grimm (2005: 451) summarizes the consequences: “[T]he
bearer of state power was replaced. The nation took the place of the monarch. Rule could therefore
not be legitimated by one’s own but only be a derived right. . . . The political system therefore had
to be organized in a way that established a relation of legitimation and responsibility between
those who possessed the ruling powers and those who exercised them, as much as possible
preventing their misuse.”
40
For discussion of the “invention of the people” in the United States and Britain see Morgan
1988.
41
From among many studies of these topics I found particularly useful Rosanvallon 1992
and 2000.
later on in the United States, less socially radical revolutions made clear from
the very beginning, as epitomized by Federalist n. 10 (Madison et al. 1987)
and the very Constitution of this country, that a less collectively conceived but
still carefully institutionally mediated “people”42 was the source of state
authority and the holder of exclusive rights to the territory. The territory, in
these and later cases in other parts of the world, became not just a physical
space but the signifier of myths and memories that concurred with the
discourses of the state to delineate the specificity (manifold claimed virtues
and not a few historical grudges included) of a particular country in relation
to others.
With its differences across cases and time, notwithstanding the exception of
some countries particularly fragmented in terms of nationalities, ethnic or
religious convictions, and irrespective of whether it pre-existed the state or
was created by it, the nation/people is also the citizenry of a political democ-
racy. All these categories or some combination of them have become, almost
universally, the referent from which the powers and authority of state and
government are supposed to emerge, to the benefit of the citizenry.
In this sense, the confusions and overlaps I have noted among terms such as
nation, people, citizenry, and cognates express the existence and historical
continuity of populations that are the symbolically sedimented owners of
both state and territory and, under political democracy, also the source of the
power and authority exercised over them. In these cases there has been a
threefold convergence of (territorial) states cum nation/people cum democra-
cy/citizenry. This explosive trilogy, a product of modernity and state-making,
first emerged in the Northwest and then expanded, albeit with various timings
and characteristics, to the rest of the world. As Greenfield (1992: 10) argues,
The location of sovereignty within the people and the recognition of the
fundamental equality among its various strata, which constitute the
essence of the modern national idea, are at the same time the basic tenets
of democracy. Democracy was born with the sense of nationality. The
two are inherently linked, and neither can be fully understood apart from
this connection.
These remarks substantiate one of the arguments of this book: it is crucial for
the study of both democracy and the state to explore their inter-relationships,
but for this purpose it is wrong to see the state as exclusively a set of bureau-
cracies.
42
For a critical recent review of the various safeguards thus built in the United States see
Dahl 2004.
From the discussion of the present chapter emerges another point I want to
emphasize. It is that there is no such thing as a neutral, purely technically
geared, state. States condense, process, and generate relations of power that
exist both in society (domestic and an increasingly transnationalized one) and
in its own institutions. Further discussion of this topic will have to wait until I
have dealt with other matters; but before proceeding, in view of the discussion
of the preceding and the present chapter, I propose a new right, one that to
my knowledge has not yet been recognized by political or legal theory. It is
that we, as citizens and/or as members of a nation/people, have a right to the
state, but not to any kind of state; we have a right to a state that, achieving
reasonably satisfactory scores in its four dimensions, becomes a co-builder
and promoter of reasonable versions of the common good, as well as of the
various aspects of citizenship entailed by democracy.43 This kind of state is an
anchor and promoter of citizenship. It is the only institution in which the
rights of citizenship can be inscribed (in the legal system) and implemented
(by relevant bureaucracies). Rights do not exist in the air or just in discourses.
Rights exist, may be demanded, and cannot be easily reversed only when they
become an effective and broadly recognized part of the legality of the state,
and when its bureaucracies orient their performance to upholding their
existence. These assertions take us on to the next chapter, where I turn to
another dimension of the state—the legal one—and its own relationship with
democracy.
43
This assertion is inspired in Vezzetti 2003. With convergent arguments, see Bobbio 1991
and Ferrajoli 1995, who argue that under an estado de derecho the citizens have not only private
but also public rights in relation to the state.
..................
5
..................
The State as Law: Contributions
and Ambivalences1
In the preceding chapters I made several references to the legal dimension of

the state, but postponed its fuller discussion until now. To begin with, I note
that in one of those instances when language betrays power relationships, the
decisions made at a center (the “orders given”), are deemed to usually “create
order,” in that those commands are supposed to be regularly obeyed and
stabilize the given context of interaction. Acquiescence affirms and repro-
duces the social order. Social relations, including those of daily, pre-conscious
acquiescence to political authority, are based, as Weber 1978 asserted, on
tradition, fear of punishment, pragmatic calculation, habituation, and/or the
effectiveness of law. In particular, the latter entails the assumption, usually
borne out by exemplary evidence, that such law will be, if necessary, enforced
by an authority endowed with the pertinent powers.
The law is a constitutive dimension of the state, the one that provides the
underlying texture that supports both the social relations of society and those
of the state institutions themselves. This underlying presence is not external
or a posteriori; it is constitutive of manifold social relations. As Bobbio (1989:
47) said, “[T]he state through law, is also a form of social organization and
as such cannot be dissociated from society and from underlying social relations.”2
In the present chapter I begin, in Section 5.1, with a discussion of defini-
tions of the rule of law, or estado de derecho. Then I draw some corollaries and
consequences of this conception (5.2). After a rather formal examination of
this matter in those sections, I look at some sociological aspects of the rule of
law, or lack of it (5.3). This topic leads to the discussion of a relationship that
is quite problematic, that of bureaucracy and legality (5.4). Concluding this
1
What follows in this chapter is not intended as a treatise on the law, for which I am not
qualified. Rather, it is a reflection on the connections between the state-as-law and some aspects
of democracy.
2
See also Hösle (2004: 71 and passim), as well as Skrentny (2006: 237) who notes that
“Scholars would do well to recapture the classical vision of a state constituted by and immersed
in law and legality.”
94 The State as Law
chapter (5.5), I draw some corollaries that invite us to look at the various faces
of the state and, behind them, at its principle of unity. This is the theme of
Chapter 6.
5.1. O N T H E RU L E O F L AW O R E S TA D O D E D E R E C H O
What has been termed the rule of law or estado de derecho (or rechtsstaat or
equivalent terms in other languages) has been subject to various definitions in
different times and countries; in fact, even today the usual meaning of the
English and Latin language terms are not synonymous.3
Actually, the basic idea derives from classic Greece, most explicitly Aris-
totle, who argued for the well-known formula that political entities should be
those ruled by laws, not men. It was continued by European medieval con-
ceptions and the natural law theorists I mentioned in Chapter 2, and later on
found expression in the British parliamentary-based regime. This is the idea
that political rule should be sub lege, submitted to previously enacted legal
rules, which found elaborate expression in the Prussian Rechtsstaat. But this
conception need not be democratic; it may apply, as it did in Prussia, to
institutionalized authoritarian regimes and/or to ones, like the old British
one, that excluded or severely restricted political citizenship. We will see that
under democracy the rule of law has other, additional characteristics; yet all
definitions have a common core: the legal system is a hierarchical one (usually
crowned in constitutional norms) that aims at, although it never fully
achieves, completeness: the relationships within legal rules are themselves
legally determined; rulers must submit to those rules as everyone else; and
there is no moment in which the whim of an actor may justifiably cancel or
suspend the rules that govern her/his performance—nobody, including the
highest placed officials of the state, is de legibus solutus.
In the usual definitions of the rule of law other characteristics are added.4
Among the various listings of such characteristics here I adopt the one
proposed by Raz:
3
For instructive comparisons between these legal systems and the respective terms see
Chevalier 1994, Dı́az 2002, and Grote 1999.
4
Quite recently there have various attempts to operationalize the rule of law. Unfortunately
most of these attempts have been driven by the interest of relating various operationalizations to
issues of economic growth, with little attention to democracy and its varying characteristics and
quality; furthermore, as Haggard et al. 2008 comment in their detailed discussion of (basically
economic) indicators, these are “barely correlated” to the scantier ones focused on issues of
democracy. For this reason, in a brief but quite thorough review of measurement attempts,
The State as Law 95
1. All laws should be prospective, open and clear; 2. Laws should be
relatively stable; 3. The making of particular laws . . . must be guided by
open, stable, clear, and general rules; 4. The independence of the judici-
ary must be guaranteed; 5. The principles of natural justice must be
observed (i.e., open and fair hearing and absence of bias); 6. The courts
should have review powers . . . to ensure conformity to the rule of law;
7. The courts should be easily accessible; and 8. The discretion of crime
preventing agencies should not be allowed to pervert the law.5
Points 1 to 3 refer to general characteristics of the laws; they pertain to their
proper enactment and content, as well as to a behavioral fact: the laws must be
possible to be followed, which means that they should be properly publicized
and not place unreasonable cognitive or behavioral demands on the addres-
sees. The other points of Raz’s listing refer to courts and only indirectly to
other state institutions. Point 4 requires specification: that the independence
of the courts (even if by itself it is a rather murky idea6) is a valuable goal is
shown, a contrario, by the often servile behavior of these institutions in
relation to authoritarian rulers. But this independence may be misused
for fostering sectorial privileges of the judicial personnel or unchallenged
arbitrary interpretations of the law, as well as by lack of adherence to the basic
principles of the democracy that, in contrast to authoritarian rule, confers
upon judges such independence.7 Obtaining this is a tall order everywhere,
including indeed Latin America.8 In this region even harder accomplishments
Rı́os-Figueroa and Staton (2009: 22), suggest that until further progress has been achieved
“there is more to gain from focusing our measurement efforts on the subcomponents of the rule
of law . . . than pursuing measures of the overarching concept.”
5
Another influential definition is Fuller 1964; Krieger (2005: 194) usefully elaborates: “[Y]ou
have central elements of the rule of law when the law in general does not take you by surprise or
keep you guessing, when legal institutions are relatively independent of other significant social
actors but not of legal doctrine, and when the powerful forces in society, including the govern-
ment, are required to act, and come in significant measure to think, within the law; when the limits
of what we imagine our options to be are set by the law and where those limits are widely taken
seriously—when the law has integrity and it matters what the law allows and what it forbids.” For
further apposite reflections on this matter see Dallmayr 1992 and Krygier 2001.
6
On this matter see especially Larkins 1996.
7
As Garzón Valdés (2003b: 32) argues, “[Under a democratic regime] judges must have a
firm internal commitment to the basic norms of the system . . . and a manifest impartiality with
respect to the conflicts of interest that she/he must decide” (my translation).
8
Even though I return to this matter in Chapter 8, here I note that some of the deficiencies of
the rule of law in Latin America are documented in the studies contained in the volume co-
edited by Méndez, O’Donnell, and Pinheiro 1999. For recent works that elaborate on failures of
the police and the judiciary in Argentina and Brazil see Ahnen 2007, Auyero 2007, Brinks 2008,
Domingo and Sieder 2001, Eaton 2008, Fruhling and Tulchin 2003, Gargarella, Domingo et al.
2006, Hammergreen 2007, Hinton 2005, Holston and Caldeira 1997, Mahon 2003, Pinheiro
et al. 1994 and 1998, Stanley 2003, Urban 2001, and Waldman 1998. The negative overall picture
is not helped at all by the lynchings, quite frequent in some countries (on arguably the worst
96 The State as Law
are implied by point 6, especially with respect to overseeing the legality of

actions of presidents who see themselves as electorally empowered to do
whatever they see fit during their terms.9 The denial to the vulnerable and
excluded of the rights entailed by points 5 and 7 is amply illustrated, among
others, by the works I cite in footnote 7. The same goes for point 8, especially
regarding the frequent impunity of the police and other security agencies in
some countries, as well as of violence perpetrated by private actors together
with the sometimes indifferent, if not complicit, attitude of the police and the
courts towards these acts.
At this point we should notice that the English language expression “rule of
law” and the type of definition I have transcribed, do not contain direct reference,
as estado de derecho and equivalents do, to state institutions other than courts.
This is not surprising given the respective traditions, especially the strong role
that the courts have played in the social and political history of the United States,
and to a significant extent also of Britain. Nevertheless, the whole state apparatus
and its officials are supposed to submit to the law, and in fact many transgressions
of legality are committed within state bureaucracies and/or during their interac-
tions with the individuals they are supposed to serve. Furthermore, not only
when state officials but also when private actors violate the law, the rule of law
is truncated; whether those officials perpetrate unlawful acts on their own or de
facto license private actors to do it, does not make much difference, either for the
victims of such actions or for the effectiveness of the law.
A corollary of these reflections is that, when conceived as an aspect of the
theory of democracy, the rule of law or the estado de derecho should be
conceived not only as a generic characteristic of the legal system and of the
performance of courts, but also as the legally based rule of a state that houses a
democratic regime.10 Yet it may be a partially democratized state, because it
also contains parts of legislation and bureaucracies that are ineffective or
plainly authoritarian in relation to various rights and freedoms. These failures
of democratic legality may include that it does not extend over a territory that
instead has—in some cases large—regions actually ruled by various sorts
of informal legality; and/or civil rights, that even though universalistically
case in this respect, Guatemala, see Snodgrass Godoy 2006). For pertinent general reflections on
these matters see Garzón Valdés 2002, and Neves 1994.
9
In O’Donnell 1999, chapter VII, I analyze, under the concept of “delegative democracy,” this kind
of practice and conception of political rule, a topic to which I return in Chapter 8 of the present book.
10
For convenience here I transcribe the definition of this concept that I offered in Chapter 3:
“It is the part of the legal system that enacts and backs the participatory rights and the
surrounding freedoms of the regime; 2. the set of bureaucracies that are assigned to implement
and protect said rights and freedoms; and 3. the unit that delimits the electorate—the political
citizens—of the regime.”
The State as Law 97
assigned, are actually denied to many; and/or access to the courts and other
pertinent state institutions that is denied to, or is extremely difficult for many;
and/or legislation that is repressively applied to some while the privileged ignore
or transgress it with impunity; and/or institutions of horizontal accountability11
that cannot or refuse to discharge their responsibilities; and/or that the law itself
and court rulings entail discriminatory or exclusionary criteria; etc.
Consequently, as Craig (1997: 196) says, “The rule of law is a political ideal
which a legal system may lack or possess to a greater or a lesser degree.” No
country, in good measure for reasons I discuss in the following section, has
ever achieved such an ideal—if it ever could be clearly and consistently
formulated. There are however approximations toward that ideal. In an
increasingly democratized state, improvements in all or at least some of the
above mentioned dimensions are achieved. These developments, largely
pending in democracies outside of the Northwest,12 stop short of a proper
rule of law; and even if achieved, still leave pending the enactment and
effectiveness of social rights that furnish the whole population—whether
citizens or not—with goods basic for the adequate exercise of their agency;
also, these developments often stop short of making the state bureaucracies
reasonably accessible, transparent, and responsive to the population at large.
As long as it approximates fulfilling those characteristics, the state gets closer
to becoming, not just a partially democratized one, but an estado democrático
de derecho; one that enacts a properly democratic rule of law by sanctioning,
supporting, and helping to implement a broad set of the political, civil, social,
and cultural rights of its population. For reasons we will see below, the full
achievement of this kind of state is a normative horizon, never fully achieved;
yet still provides conceptual and empirical guidance for detecting and asses-
sing changes in its direction. This is useful because the conceptions and
practice of the rule of law and/or the estado de derecho have been anything
but static. Although in different sequences and with different degrees
of completeness, most countries have had several layers of various kinds
of rights sanctioned. Even though this assertion entails some complicated
comparative matters, for the time being suffice to note that most civil rights
11
I have discussed issues of accountability (especially what I call its “horizontal” version) in
papers collected in chapters II, III and IV of O’Donnell 2007. For a convergent discussion of
“autonomous audit agencies” highlighting manifold deficiencies of these controls in new
democracies see Santiso 2007 and 2009.
12
In relation to Latin America, based on a comparative study of various kinds of rights,
Foweraker and Krznaric (2002: 29–59) conclude that: “In stark contrast to the rising trajectory
of the political-institutional variables, [civil rights] remain flat throughout the period of the
third wave [of democratization] . . . the institutional attributes of democratic governance ad-
vance while individual and minority rights languish.” See also Foweraker and Landman 1997.
98 The State as Law
(and their derived political freedoms) basically entail the negative duty of the
state not to abrogate or severely curtail them, while participatory political
rights as well as most social rights entail the positive duty of the state
to furnish the conditions necessary for their exercise and enjoyment. The
widespread enactment of the former and limited existence of the latter were
characteristic of the early liberal, partially democratized state that we saw
emerge in Chapter 2; the diffusion of several sets of political and social rights,
as well as the rather recent recognition of various cultural rights, mean
changes in the direction of a more fully democratized state.13
Now I elaborate on an assertion I have already made. In contrast to all sorts
of authoritarian rule (where there is always a “somebody,” personal or insti-
tutional, who can unilaterally declare itself above the law), in democracy law
is indispensable to the rulers,14 in that they are prohibited from changing or
ignoring it at their whim; they can only do it by following procedures that are
themselves legally ruled. This leads Preuss (1996a: 24) to assert that “only if
the bond between governors and the ruled obligates the ruler . . . and if it
cannot be revoked unilaterally by the ruler, is it possible to form a reliable
institutional structure of government in which the governed are recognized as
the ultimate source of political authority.”
This is why a crucial attribute of a legal system that pretends to be a
Rechsstaat, or estado de derecho, especially one that approximates a truly
democratic one as defined above, is to be a system that “closes,” in the already
noted sense that every legal rule and state official is subject to rules that
cannot be ignored, transgressed, or unilaterally disposed of.15 Some authors
have argued that empirically this “gaplessness” is a fiction. Yet it is a useful
one, particularly in relation to the aspects of public and constitutional law
that deal with the organization and authority of the top institutions of the
state, in that it sanctions the indisponibility of the law for the rulers. This is
why Raz (1994: 252) asserts that we are dealing with “a legal system rather
than a haphazard collection of legal rules . . . [and this underlies, O’D] the
formal unity of the system.”
This has important consequences. One of them is that rulers and, in
general, state officials have rights (including in some cases the application
of physical coercion) that are different and in some situations prevalent from
the ones we have as citizens. Yet those rights are assigned exclusively for
13
For useful analysis of these and related matters see Ferrajoli 1995.
14
On the indisponibility of the law see Habermas 1988 and 1996.
15
See concurrently albeit from various perspectives Alchourron and Bulygin 1971, Boucock
2000 (commenting Weber), Dallmayr 1992, Garzón Valdés 1993, Hart 1961, and Kelsen 1967.
The State as Law 99
discharging the duties that the respective institutional positions establish.

Thus Raz (1995: 38) makes the important point that
[T]he rights of judges, of members of the legislature, and of all other legal
officeholders are justified by the interests of the office. . . . The ultimate
justification of the rights depends on the fact that in serving the interests
of the officials they protect and promote the interests of the community
as a whole; they promote and protect common goods.16
With this we have found another difference between political democracy
and all other kinds of rule: in the latter there is always a patrimonialist
component, whereby there is no clear distinction between the above men-
tioned rights and their correlative duties, and their de facto use for purposes
other than public service. The indisponibility of the law under democracy is,
in turn, the basis of the mechanisms of accountability, both vertical and
horizontal, to which rulers and state officials are supposed to be subject.
Furthermore, even though we saw in Chapter 2 that the law, and constitu-
tions in particular, are protective of individual rights, this is not the whole
story. Law and constitutions also enable and empower to act individually and
collectively, as they define and normalize social relations, thus facilitating
social and political interactions.17 As Holmes (1995: 6) puts it, “[C]onstitu-
tions not only limit power and prevent tyranny, they also construct power,
guide it toward socially desirable ends, and prevent social chaos and private
oppression. . . . a constitution is an instrument of government. It establishes
rules that help put democracy into effect.”18 An important reason for this is
that, as Hardin (1989: 115) notes, “It is through constraint that we are enabled
in our strategic interactions with others to achieve outcomes that require joint
action.”
The preceding underlies one of the great contributions of the legal system
to democracy: it sanctions and backs a peaceful way to solve the paramount
problem of who will make binding decisions at this complex and dangerous
association, the state, and how they will be made. This is a paramount issue
16
In another work (Raz 1986: 5) adds, “Political authorities do not have a legitimate interest
of their own. The only interest a government is entitled to pursue is that of its subjects.” Ingram
(1985: 276) draws the corollary of this arguments, quoting a 1944 ruling of the United States
Supreme Court in Steele v. Louisville & Nasville R. Co., 323 US 192, 202: “It is a principle of
general application that the exercise of a granted power to act in behalf of others involves the
assumption toward them of a duty to exercise the power in their interest and behalf.”
17
For useful overviews of different conceptions of the constitution see Bellamy 1996,
Castiglioni 1996, and Grote 1999.
18
Holmes proposes an analogy with chess. Its rules constrain how we may move each piece,
but without them we cannot play chess. As Hart (1961: 28) put it sharply: “Law facilitates as well
as limits conduct.”
100 The State as Law
because, in contrast to the subject’s heteronomy entailed by authoritarian

rule, under democracy we are all construed as agents, entitled not only to have
preferences about public matters but also to act on them (such as express
opinions, associate, vote, try to be elected, and the like). Preferences often
differ, and sometimes enter politics as issues that somehow have to be
decided. These are what Waldron (1999: 212) calls “the circumstances of
politics”: “The [unavoidable] existence of disagreement and the need, despite
disagreement, to set a up a common framework which [applies] at least as
much to issues of rights as they apply to what is usually regarded as the more
modest agenda of legislative politics.”19 For this basic social need, democracy
furnishes two unique and crucial ingredients: one, fair elections that provide a
peaceful way of deciding who will occupy authorized positions; and, two,
public policies based in properly sanctioned legal rules and on the indispon-
ibility of those rules for the rulers. Consequently, as MacCormick (1996: 182)
comments, “Legislation is a way of settling common rules on matters that
could be forever indeterminate as between autonomous moral reasoners.”
This means that democracy provides a mechanism of decisiveness and (at
least in principle) a reasonable guarantee that important preferences and
interests of its members receive consideration. This is a consequence of a
unique characteristic of democracy that I stressed in Chapter 1: its universal-
istic and legally backed assignment of agency to all citizens.
This is why we need procedures that are fair, that is, available to all, as well
as legally backed and institutionalized (i.e. stable, well known and broadly
acquiesced). In this sense Waldron (1999: 160) comments that “to engage in
politics is to subscribe to procedural principles . . . that might yield outcomes at
odds with my own substantive convictions.” Consequently, as Soper (1996:
222) says, “Procedural claims are the state’s implicit fall-back response to the
possibility that content claims may be wrong . . . fair procedures are an ines-
capable part of the claim to justice.” Furthermore, a democratic regime entails
institutionalized expectations: one, that whatever is decided in an election, it
will not cancel the rights entailed by this regime; another, that there will
continue to be other occasions for again voting in fair elections. If this is the
case, the losers may value the fact that, by keeping their allegiance to democratic
19
Waldron (1999: 213) adds that “It follows that theories of rights as much as theories of
public policy need to be complemented by theories of authority, whose function it is to
determine how decisions are to be taken when the members of a community disagree about
what decision is right.” However, in this and other interesting and concurrent contributions
from Anglo-Saxon authors (such as Raz 1986 and 1994), a theory of the state seems to me
seriously lacking.
The State as Law 101
procedures, they will not help destroy the rights and freedoms that they,
together with the temporary winners, enjoy.20
At any event, under democracy, particularly the more a given case ap-
proaches the ideal of democratic rule of law, the very condition as an agent of
every citizen originates an unsolvable tension. On one hand, the law aims at
stabilizing social relations by, among other things, trying to make as precise
and accessible as possible descriptions of the events or relationships that fall
under its purview, by regularizing court decisions by means of (more or less
strictly conceived according to different countries) doctrines of stare decisis,
and by making it difficult to change the law itself. On the other hand, a
very important right—actually, another one that deserves to be added to the
listings I discussed in Chapter 121—is to have available legally-ruled proce-
dures for participating in attempts to change the law, as well as proceedings
for contesting extant judicial or administrative interpretations of a given law,
or the validity of the law itself. Thus, in democracy, even under a partially
democratized state, the same law for which there are many good reasons to
desire its stability is also always contestable. Concurrently, in a text worth
quoting at length, MacCormick (1999: 174–5) says that
[T]he relative indeterminacy of the law . . . the dialectical or argumenta-
tive character of legal proceedings is a built-in feature of a constitutional
setting in which citizens are able to challenge the allegations of fact and
the assertions of law on the basis of which government agencies . . .
threaten to coercively intervene in their lives or affairs. A vital part of
the guarantee of liberty . . . is that the opportunity to mount such a
challenge on fair terms and with adequate legal assistance be afforded to
every person. And yet the same governing conception [of the rule of
law, O’D] calls for relatively clear and determinate law in the form of
pre-announced rules . . . [The resultant contests] are not pathological,
they are an integral element in a legal order that is working according to
the ideal of the rule of law.
Consequently “Law’s certainty is then defeasible certainty.” (Ibid. 176)
In this connection it is worth adding that the effectiveness of a legal system
is a function of its interconnections. At one level, of, say, a judge dealing with
20
These remarks entail a criticism of some recent theorizations according to which acquies-
cence to democracy is rather narrowly governed by a calculation of the physical and economic
costs that would ensue from rebellion against the result of a given election (for a statement of
this position see Przeworski 1998). This position ignores that one may have a strong interest in,
and good normative reasons for, maintaining the kind of congenial social context that most
likely would be eliminated by such rebellion and its foreseeable consequences.
21
Or at least be considered a corollary of the right to legal personality that is entailed by
agency and its legally-grounded recognition under political democracy.
a criminal case, her authority would be nil if it were not joined, at several
stages of the process, by the police, prosecutors, public defenders, etc., as well
as by, eventually, higher courts and prisons. At another level, in terms of
relations internal to the regime and the state, I noted that a democratic legal
system entails that no state official is supposed to get away with unlawful
actions by escaping the legal controls in place. In both levels the legal system
presupposes what Linz and Stepan (1996: 37) call an “effective state”;22 in my
own terms, it is not just a matter of legislation but also of a network of
state institutions that operate in the direction of ensuring the effectiveness of
a legal system that is itself democratic—as we will see, the weakness of this
aspect of the state is one of the most serious flaws of many democracies
outside the Northwestern quadrant of the world, including most of Latin
America.
There is still another aspect that needs a mention. It is that the interweaving
of the state and society by means of the lawful dimension, contributed by a
state that houses a democratic regime, is the foundation of the distinction
between a public and a private sphere. This is an instance of the legal idea of
proper definition of the boundaries of social units. The distinction between
public and private spheres has been criticized on the basis of empirical
evidence that there exist many grey areas of interpenetration between the
state and society. This is indeed true, but that “state” is seen as basically
consisting of its bureaucracies, forgetting its public-legal dimension, and in so
doing tending to make invisible the public sphere.23 As I will elaborate in
Chapter 7, the public sphere is that formally occupied by officials of the state,
elected or not, and variously populated by actors and discourses that claim to
articulate matters of general interest.24 As I mentioned, those officials
have specific rights, but they are exclusively justified by being needed to fulfill
22
See in a converging sense the interesting discussion about the different quality of various
state bureaucracies in Evans and Rauch 1999; see also Olsen 2004 and 2005, and Oszlak 2006.
Furthermore, although from a different perspective (they do not conceptualize the state as such)
other authors, especially March and Olsen 1995 and Tommasi and Spiller 2007, concur on the
importance of a properly functioning state in terms of the kind of policy-making that is
supportive of democracy. For their part, belatedly some international financial institutions
seem to have discovered parts of the state, mostly through their calls for “good governance.”
23
The various dimensions of the state and the complex relationships they establish with
society mean that there is no single, or invariant, or “natural” boundary between state and
society. Jessop (2002: 37) argues that the various boundaries between the economy and the
political, the public and the private, and the domestic and the external are “discursively
constituted, institutionally materialized, structurally coupled to other institutional boundaries,
[and] essentially contested and liable to change”; see also Mitchell 1991 and Migdal 2001. I agree
with these authors, except that I add that those boundaries are not only discursively, but also
legally traced.
24
The origin of this concept is of course Habermas 1962.
the duties attached to their offices. Here the law imprints another moral
dimension, in addition to the one entailed by the conception of the
citizen as an agent. This second dimension was stressed by the republican
tradition, in its demand for the selfless devotion of rulers to the common
good.25 Contemporary law repeats this demand in manifold ways and rules—
impartiality, honesty, fairness, primacy due to the common good, etc.26
Under democracy, the view that the authority of those officials has its source
and justification from the citizenry leads with special force to the expectation
that such authority should be used exclusively for their good, however more
or less specifically and disputably defined. Of course, that same view underlies
the panoply of legally-enacted sanctions that are supposed to follow violations
of said duties.
This is an exacting demand placed upon state officials.27 In turn, various
actors can appeal to public opinion and, eventually, to pertinent state institu-
tions, the public/private distinction, and thus gain the chance of promoting
certain policies, punishing corruption, redressing colonization by private
interests, etc. These discourses and demands are a recurrent feature of the
workings of democracy; Bourdieu (1996: 28) comments on “[T]he very real
effects of the mandatory reference to the values of neutrality and selfless
devotion to the public good that was demanded with increasing force to
officials of the state as [part of] the history . . . that invented and imposed the
official representation of the state as a place of universality and service of the
general interest.” Lies, hypocrisy, and concealment of information are recur-
ring features of political life while, at the same time, compelled by legal rules
and by sometimes widely held normative expectations, state officials repeat-
edly proclaim their compliance with those rules.28 Consequently, referring to
25
I have discussed this tradition in O’Donnell 2007a, chapters I and II, where I argue that
republicanism, liberalism, and democracy proper have historically mixed in contemporary
democracies, in complex and quite often contradictory fashion. For discussions of republican-
ism see Skinner 1990 and 1998; see also, in partial divergence with the former, Pettit 1997.
26
Dworkin (1986: 164), writing on “ideals of ordinary politics,” says that “It requires
government to speak with one voice, to act in a principled and coherent manner toward all
its citizens, to extend to everyone the substantive standards of justice or fairness it uses for
some.” This author adds that this is “the virtue of political integrity” (ibid. 166).
27
As Luban (2001: 192) says, “The commitment to bind the governed only through general
rules that also bind the lawmaker establishes the moral relationship of reciprocity between
governors and governed.” On his part Ferrajoli (1995: 925) forcefully argues that “[B]ecause
state officials are charged, precisely, with the public function of applying the law . . . this is
equivalent to their acceptance of the legal order . . . [this is] a self-obligation that is freely
accepted,” and thus generates not only their legal but also moral obligation to follow the law
(my translation).
28
Garzón Valdés 1995 properly comments that when the inconsistencies are severe, there
emerges “a network of complicity based on secrets and on a permanent rhetorical acceptance to
the legal order.” On related topics see also Garzón Valdés 2002.
minimalist definitions Stoelting 1998 remarks that “The normative element

which Schumpeter had discarded remains a point of reference in any public
political discourse.”
As we will see in Chapter 7, under authoritarian regimes, particularly those
of a highly repressive variety, the resulting or suspected discrepancies are a
matter of rumor and silent resistance; there is no legal recourse against the
discrepancies, and if some recourse formally exists, there is no assurance that
it will be upheld. Instead, under democracy, perceived discrepancies make
possible individual and collective actions of horizontal voice and accountabil-
ity, as well as of social accountability, by various means, sometimes including
legal ones, social movements and associations, and political parties bring
those discrepancies into public light.29 It is a remarkable indication of the
moral importance of the republican values embodied in the respective legal
rules that, with the occasional exemption of particularly crooked rulers, they
and other inhabitants of the public sphere stubbornly assert acquiescence to
those values.30 Of course, the variations in the perceived discrepancies are a
crucial element of one of the dimensions of state (and their governments) that
I identified in Chapter 3, namely, their credibility.31
But the law is not just written rules, formalized and subject to the often
arcane interpretations of professionalized knowledge. The law also has organ-
izational expressions, highly ritualized and institutionalized, especially in
contemporary democracies. Congress is supposed to be the place of debate
and enactment of the main laws of the land; and the judiciary the place where
various conflicts of interest are argued and ultimately decided. Of course,
these organizational embodiments are part of the state’s bureaucracy; with
their buildings and their own rituals and symbols, they embody, and rein-
force, the basic separation that the rituals of the center posit—that is, a sphere
where those who occupy it are supposed to orient their actions toward
contributing to the common good, while the rest go about their private
interests. Yet, as happens with other aspects of the state, congress and the
judiciary are also the organizational embodiments of a broader phenomenon,
29
For the concept of social accountability see Smulovitz and Peruzzoti 2000 and Peruzzotti
and Smulovitz 2006; see also chapters II and III in O’Donnell 2007a.
30
I should clarify that, even if the expectation is particularly strong—and in some cases
actionable—under democracy, it seems to be a permanent feature of political rule. Witness the
expectation of political systems of antiquity that the “good King” would rule for the welfare of
his subjects, not only for his grandeur.
31
This of course includes the belief that it exists something close to the rule of law. As in his
classic study of the English “Black Act” Thompson (1975: 263) put it: “The essential precondi-
tion for the effectiveness of the rule of law, in its function as ideology, is that it shall display an
independence from gross manipulation and shall seem to be just.”
the underlying legal system—later on we will see some implications of this

assertion.
5 . 2. S O C I O LO G I C A L A S P E C T S
In the preceding section I argued that a reasonably effective legal system

makes the huge contribution of backing and texturing the social order. In
addition, if it is permeated by the rights entailed by a democratic regime,
and if the respective state institutions are committed to implementing and
protecting those rights, the legal system makes a no less huge—indeed
necessary—contribution to the very existence of such a regime. But this is
far from the whole story, even if some of the contemporary rhetoric on the
rule of law does not go much beyond this point.
We saw that in terms of political, and to some extent also civil rights, under
a democratic regime the law enacts and backs a series of universalistically
assigned equal rights; in this sense the law is a crucial dimension of equality,
and indeed, of potential equalization. This dimension is very important, even
if sometimes dismissed as merely “formal.” Arguing against such a view, the
German socialist and sociologist Franz Neumann (1986 [1936]: 444) said that
“Equality before the law is merely formal or negative . . . but it does contain a
minimum guarantee of freedom and must not be discarded” . . . and “Ratio-
nal law, after all, serves also to protect the weak” (ibid. 261).32
Yet, even in cases that approximate a truly democratic rule of law, the law
also enacts and backs many unequal social relations. To begin with, inequal-
ities are intrinsic to the social relations of capitalism (and, for that matter, of
any other kind of socioeconomic arrangement thus far known in history),
including of course the relations of employment, however tempered some of
their grossest inequalities in some countries by the processes we examined in
Chapter 2. The same is true of the hierarchical relations that structure most
bureaucracies, both public and private. These unequal relations texture and
organize society no less profoundly and effectively, and sometimes more
powerfully, than the egalitarian rules I mentioned before. Consequently, as
it textures and as a result co-constitutes society, the state, including its legal
dimension, embodies and backs relations of power that result from, and are
expressed in, various inequalities, and in so doing greatly helps the continued
reproduction of those relations. Yet this important fact does not preclude the
32
For useful discussion of Neumann’s contributions see Scheuerman 1996 and 2001, and
Cotterrell 1996.
reality of two fundamental aspects, already noted but worth repeating. First,
the resulting order usually is truly an order, in the sense of generalized social
predictability and enabling of manifold social relations; second, even if it does
not extend to other social relations, the equality sanctioned in terms of
political citizenship is crucial, in terms of the exercise of the rights entailed
by the workings of political democracy—including as we saw the contest-
ability of the law—and of the individual and associational freedoms it backs.
Equalities and inequalities backed by law, complexly interlaced and with
varied weight depending on countries and periods; this is the contradictory
and dynamic nature of both state and society even under democracy.
In fact, even though we may not be aware, we have a general interest in an
appropriate rule of law, one that at least satisfies some of its basic elements as
above identified. This is true also for relationships with bureaucracies, both
state and private, whether we are parts of or interact with them. As to these
interactions, it does not necessarily mean that they be in any proper sense
democratized; rather, it is a matter of receiving fair and respectful treatment,
based on rules that recognize that we are agents everywhere, even when placed
in hierarchically subordinate positions. Some of these expectations do not
depend much on individual rights and actions. In their condition as workers,
or as consumers, or as members of ethnic or religious groups, the more
effective ways are often based on collective actions backed, under political
democracy, by legal rules that recognize the legitimacy of such actions.
Returning to Chapter 2, I recall that the overcoming of strictly individualistic
views of contract and legal personality was one of the more important, and
hardest won, issue posed in the Northwest by workers and later on by other
social actors.33 A concomitant development was the progressive legalization
of the workplace; it recognized that, at that very core of society, structurally
unequal relationships should be regulated in ways that make the worker
something more than a mere subject of those relationships. Of course, this
legalization has not equalized the workplace, but contrasts both with the
conditions that prevailed at the outset of capitalism in the Northwest and
with the ones today existing in quite a few parts of the rest of the world. These
advances were not obtained only as an outcome of relations within the
workplace; rather, they were mainly consequence of changes occurring at
the macro-level of society and politics, by means of parties, unions and, in
33
In this sense, and showing the perpetual ambiguity of the law, while the law Le Chapelier,
the British Combination Act, and many judicial adjudications in the United States attempted to
prevent, often coercively, the collective organization of the workers, business corporations early
obtained recognition of their legal personality; see the interesting history of this topic in
Micklethwaite and Wooldridge 2004; see also Bendix 1964, and Tigar and Levy 2000.
general, of the uneven but significant influence of values of fairness applied to

the agency of everyone. Surely the workplace is a social setting where power is
particularly operative; witness the regressions that have occurred during the
past two decades, in what may be termed in some cases—quite abundant in
Latin America—a severe “de-legalization” of the workplace.
Now I mention an issue closely linked with the one I have just discussed. It
is that the law is never applied truly equally across social divisions, even if
some countries have taken measures to ameliorate this flaw by means of
easing the access to courts, creating special courts for small or special claims,
creating reasonably well funded and staffed public defendants, and the like.
But even in these cases Holmes’s (2003: 21) assertion that “No state, however
liberal or democratic, treats all citizens equally before the law” holds true.34 As
a consequence, particularly in countries where the rule of law is truncated,
“Law can become highly predictable for the privileged strata while remaining
maddeningly erratic for the less well-off ”; ibid. 22. Thus, the famed “legal
security” is often relative; it may be security for certain rights—say, property
ones—and deep insecurity for others, say civil rights of the vulnerable or
excluded. In this context Dowding and Hees (2003: 282, 288) pertinently
assert that
The extent to which rights exist is not all-or-nothing when it comes to
respecting or exercising those rights . . . ” [And] “we say that a right exists
materially if it is being respected, which means that the material existence
of a right depends on the efforts of the state to protect those rights and on
the ability of its population to exercise them.35
The problem I have noted is compounded by another one: implementing
rights, practically any right, requires complex institutional arrangements, and
these arrangements cost money. Because of this, not only because of bias or
neglect, some rights are not enacted, others are weakly or selectively imple-
mented, and actually only some are more or less fully so. Partly as a conse-
quence, Holmes and Sunstein (1999: 104) comment that rights are not static,
they “are constantly expanding and contracting under the impact of legislative
34
More generally, Trubek (1977: 539) mentions the “perennial problem of the sociology of
law: the gap between the law on the books and the law in action.” Hence, “a significant feature of
legal life in liberal capitalist societies is the simultaneous assertion and negation of basic ideals of
equality, individuality, and community”; ibid. 544. See also the quite dismal conclusions on this
matter reached in the classic article of Galanter 1974, and the no less dismal update by Gross-
man et al. 1999.
35
Ferguson (1995 [1767]: 166) was already aware of this matter: “It is not in mere laws, after
all, that we are to look for the securities of justice, but in the powers by which those laws have
been obtained. . . . Statutes serve to record the rights of a people . . . but without the vigor to
maintain what is acknowledged as a right, the mere record . . . is of little avail.”
and adjudicative action.” These authors focus on a rich country—the United

States—when describing the selectivity in the enactment and implementation
of rights that results from various institutional and economic constraints;36
of course, these constraints are more acute the weaker or poorer the state is.
There is in addition the plain fact that there is no such a thing as, literally,
“the rule of the law.” What actually exist are decisions made by authorized
officials facing situations quite often amenable to various legal and/or factual
interpretations, or judges who may not be willing to fairly apply the existing
law, and/or be socially prejudiced, and/or who have legal conceptions that
depart from basic democratic principles or values.37 This is why political
struggles are often fought in the terrain of what is the law to be written, or of
which should be the interpretation of a given law. The law, as the whole of the
state of which it is a part, is impregnated with power relations, and with
interests, values, and ideologies that are the prism through which the law is
interpreted and applied. Yet there are significant variations across countries in
the degree to which the law is applied in ways that are consistent with
democracy and agency. We saw that in some countries, by means of the
extensive implantation of civil rights, as well as a varied but quite effective
sets of social rights (as well as some cultural ones), the democratization of the
law, and with it of the state as a whole, has registered important advances; this
has furnished for many, but by no means all, a basic floor, or threshold, of
agency-enabling capabilities.38
On the other hand, once sanctioned, when the originating power relations
have faded away, legal rules as well as state institutions have continuing effects
of their own: by extension or restriction of their originally intended scope,
they shape social relations unforeseen at their onset. These “institutional
lags”39 are also often fields of political struggles, as they reconfigure social
36
Krygier (1997: 129) usefully adds: “Think what the state must provide just to allow citizens
to sue each other, let alone the state itself. And then expect, and then to get, a fair trial. And then
to have a decision enforced. None of these rights is just a negative protection, freedom from
interference from others. They are constituted by state decisions, underwritten by state provi-
sion, and made good by state intervention. . . .”
37
As Houtzager and Crook (2001: 4) say, “People do not encounter legal rules; they
encounter interpretations of legal rules”; concurrently, see Fuller 1964 and Postema 1994. Of
course, this is one of the central topics of the discipline of the sociology of law.
38
Although not even these countries are exempt of the above noted reversibility of rights.
Witness the already mentioned reversals of some social rights, and the recent suspension or
cancellation of important rights produced by anti-terrorist legislation and its interpretations by
some courts and bureaucracies. I return to this topic in Chapter 10.
39
This term is from Mann, who comments (1993: 52) that “States institutionalize present
social conflicts, but institutionalized historic conflicts then exert considerable power over new
conflicts.” For concurrent observations see Dagnino 1994, Oszlak and O’Donnell 1984, Pierson
1993, and Skocpol 1992.
and intra-state relations in ways that static and formalistic views of the law are
unable to capture.
5 . 3. B U R E AU C R AC Y A N D L E G A L I T Y
The state is far from the only producer of bureaucracies. At least for those of
us who live in modernized societies and have formal employment, a good part
of our lives is spent as members of some kind of bureaucratically organized
entity.40 Living in and of, and/or somehow depending upon these bureau-
cracies is dangerous: within them mini despots often loom over us. In general,
bosses waver between, on one hand, their interest in having uncontrolled
power over their subordinates and, on the other, their wish to adequately
motivate them and, as I noted in Section 2 of Chapter 3, normalize the
controls of their performance. On their part, subordinates have a clear interest
in legalizing their relationships with their bosses.41 A crucial line lies where it
is recognized that individuals are not divested of rights when they enter into
bureaucratically subordinate relationships. This is part of the process of
legalization of the workplace I already mentioned; it amounts to the recogni-
tion that there is a general right to have rights, and that consequently if
necessary such rights should be guaranteed by authorities outside or above
the respective bureaucracies. This has marked important progress in the
effectiveness of citizenship and in the overall quality of social life—but only
in those countries where these rights have not only been sanctioned but also
effectively backed and implemented.
But what interests me at this point are the state bureaucracies. Their
spectacular growth almost everywhere has created a phenomenon unforeseen
by original theorists of the rule of law and of democracy. I refer to the myriad
rules that have the form and many of the consequences of law, issued by state
bureaucracies. This “administrative law” sanctions, defines, redefines, and
sometimes hinders many rights and obligations. Consequently, as Gordon
(1999: 344) asserts: “The celebrated constitutional principle of the ‘rule of law’
40
Cotterrell (1996: 454) comments on: “[P]roblems of private power which are of no less
significance for individual security, in particular the power of corporate capital to shape the lives
of individuals, as consumers and employees as well as citizens” (italics in the original).
41
As well as, of course, of the expansion of rights in other bureaucratized places in society,
such as those of members of educational institutions, professional associations, large NGOs,
and even sport clubs.
has become, over a wide range of practice, rule by administrative regulation.”

This means that many state bureaucracies have become in fact co-legislators
with parliament as well as co-adjudicators with the judiciary.42 Even though
the rules and decisions of the former are supposed to be ultimately subject to
judicial/constitutional controls, there is ample evidence everywhere that the
effectuation of those controls by citizens is often difficult and costly. This
problem is compounded by the perennial temptation for bureaucracy of
secrecy and toward projecting authoritarian relations within and outside of
them.43
As a consequence, we are submitted to manifold obligations resulting from
rules and decisions that sometimes are even difficult to know (thus violating a
basic precept of the rule of law, its accessibility to those addressed), only
partially compensated by rights that are difficult to effect.44 Yet once again,
even if the preceding comments are basically true everywhere, there are
significant variations across countries. In the case of many Latin American
states, their weakness is often expressed in frantic quasi-legislation issued by
various and sometimes conflicting bureaucracies. Added to authoritarian
tendencies that are fed by the great social distance that separates the deprived
and excluded from those bureaucracies, this shapes one of the faces of the
state—and certainly an ugly one—that will occupy us in the following
chapter.
Still, whatever the cross-country differences, as long as bureaucratic co-
legislation and co-adjudication are important aspects of social life, it seems
clear that this factor, jointly with others I discuss in the present section, bears
directly on the effectiveness and extent of the rights of citizenship, and
consequently on the quality of democracy. Yet the theories of democracy
that center exclusively on the regime, precisely because due to such centering
they ignore the state, often overlook this issue.
42
Concurrently, Cotterrell (1995: 455) comments that “Regulation now takes a wide variety
of forms and is expected to do so. . . . The lines between law and administration and between
legal and technical standards seem to become increasing hazy, and this development is no longer
seen as a matter of aberration . . . The diversity and flexibility of contemporary regulatory forms
make the practical meaning of the Rule of Law increasingly indeterminate.” See also Selznick
1992 and Simon 2000.
43
An author who was quite obsessed with bureaucracy and its increasing importance, Weber
(1978: 992) pointed out that “Bureaucratic administration always tends to exclude the public, to
hide its knowledge and action from criticism as well as it can.” For concurrent observations see
Habermas 1996: 992 and passim, and Mashaw 1985.
44
For pertinent reflections on this matter and its impingement on the democratic regime see
Strasser 1999.
5 . 5 . S O M E C O RO L L A R I E S
I argued in the present chapter that political theory should recognize that the
legal system is an intrinsic part of the state. I also argued that the law is always
a contested terrain, a matter of argument and conflict that only in part is
played on the basis of legal/juristic reasons. As Hösle (2004: 464) comments,
“Law legitimates political domination and becomes one of its means of
organization; political domination guarantees the coercive character of law.”
That the law is an expression and a great source of power was also asserted in
his inimitable style by Bourdieu (1986: 837–8), who said:
Law consecrates the established order by consecrating the vision of that
order which is held by the State. It grants to its actors a secure identity, a
status, and above all a body of powers (or competencies) that are socially
recognized and therefore productive. . . . Law is the quintessential form of
the symbolic power of naming that creates the things named . . . It confers
upon the reality which arises from its classificatory operations the maxi-
mum permanence that any social entity has the power to confer upon
another, the permanence which we attribute to objects.
We should remember that from very early times subordinate classes and
sectors have struggled for the publicity of the law as well as for winning at
least partial control of its text and interpretation.45 In turn, dominant sectors
and their allies have tended to impose formalistic, naturalized, or reified
conceptions of the law as the expression of a superior rationality that properly
sanctions the existing social order. In modern times struggles for democracy
and its expansion were largely struggles for rights to be inscribed in law and
implemented by appropriate state bureaucracies. Democracy and its rights
provide the main way by which some equalizing results can be achieved
against the structured tendencies toward the inequality of bureaucracy and
capitalism, as well as of gender, various discriminations, and other social ills.
45
On the principle of time of the law see Bobbio 1989, Iazzetta 2006, and Garzón Valdés
1993a. The latter author comments that, as stated by the “right of access” established by the
German Fundamental Law (art. 5, par. 1), the principle includes the procedures previous to the
sanction of those measures. This is close to Kant’s “transcendental formula of public law
[that] . . . all actions affecting the rights of other men are unjust if their maxim is not reconcil-
able with publicity.” In contrast, it is tempting to remember the absurdity of the “secret laws”
issued, among other authoritarian regimes, by Stalinism and the Argentine military Junta of
1976–1983.
But equalizing efforts are hard, and their achievements are never guaranteed
in their continued effectiveness.46 However, this is not as desperate as Sisy-
phus having each time to pick up the rock at the bottom of the mountain;
some areas of equalization may be (and have been) conquered and further
expanded, and even in bad times they can be defended, especially if they are
supported by the rights of political democracy.
Incidentally, the preceding helps to approximate a definition of a strong
state. If we accept that it is wrong to conflate the state with its bureaucracies
and, consequently, to see its relations with society as zero-sum, we realize that,
irrespective of the size of its apparatus, a strong state is that which is densely
interweaved with society through the effectiveness of its legality, and by bureau-
cracies that regularly operate in the direction of supporting and implementing
that legality.47 This kind of state generates and guarantees the public good of a
social order that is reasonably predictable, both because of its routinely as-
sumed reproduction and of the expectation of enforceability of the rights and
obligations it sanctions. Such a state has significant infrastructural power,48 in
the sense that it tends to score high in its four dimensions; consequently, its
policies as well as its very existence are usually and widely acquiesced, if not
supported. Of course, this is an ideal-typical description, but the more actual
cases move in this direction, the stronger are not only the state but also society.
Conversely, when systems of privatized power actually rule and/or when
generalized uncertainty prevails about social and political relations; both the
state—irrespective of the size of its apparatus—and society are weak.
As a conclusion to this chapter I want to stress the fundamental ambiguity
of the state in all its dimensions. On one hand, provided that its four
dimensions perform reasonably well, the state enables very valuable public
goods; furthermore, if it is interwoven with a democratic regime, the state
enacts and backs egalitarian rights and freedoms of civil and political citizen-
ship (and, in some fortunate countries, also rights of social and cultural
citizenship).49 On the other hand, both through its legal system and the
46
As Honig (2001: 800) comments: “In fact, most constitutional battles are never finally
won. . . .” [there is the danger of forgetting] “that we must take them up again and again. Rights
are not dead instruments, they are live practice.”
47
Concomitantly, in a comparative study Muller and Skaaning 2009 found that what I am
calling a strong state is particularly necessary for the effectiveness of the rule of law and social rights.
48
On this concept and its opposite—despotic power—see Mann (1993: 59 and passim). For
discussion of state capacities from more institutionally focused angles see Alonso 2008, Grindle
1997, and Huber 1995.
49
Famously positive views on the state and its legality were articulated by Durkheim (1983:
64), who I believe was basically right when he asserted that “It is the State that has rescued the
child from patriarchal domination and family tyranny; it is the State that has freed the citizen
from feudal groups and later from communal groups; it is the State that has liberated the
craftsman and his master from guild tyranny.”
hierarchical (as well as quite often) authoritarian bent of its bureaucracies,

including in contemporary times strong technocratic components, the state
condenses and guarantees many social relationships that are intrinsically—
and powerfully—inegalitarian.50 This is a basic, constitutive antinomy of
social life. At the level of the law, it is expressed by its inherent tensions
among several values. One of these tensions, between the stability and the
contestability of the law, I mentioned above. Another tension, already noted
by Aristotle and implicit in my discussion in Chapter 2, found in processes of
legal transformation, is between its aspects of formal and universalistic
equality, on one hand, and of fairness and substantive justice, on the
other.51 But these antinomies fully manifest themselves, and may be politi-
cally mobilized, only under the rights and freedoms of democracy, even if it is
a democracy that enables political rights and little of civil, social, and cultural
rights. The antinomies may be regretted by a linear mind; but they should be
celebrated, as they express tensions that inherently constitute both society and
state, and can be mobilized by individual and collective actions that make for
the dynamic of social life, and of democracy, an always open horizon of hopes
and possibilities.52
We have yet to consider that, in addition to what I discussed in this and
preceding chapters, the state is a lived experience; its many faces are a crucial
component of social reality and of the state itself. In the following chapter I
explore these matters.
50
In the following chapter I deal with another area of inequality backed by the state,
capitalism.
51
Bendix (1964: 112) puts it well: “The basic and anguishing dilemma of form and substance
in law can be alleviated but never resolved, for the structure of legal domination retains its
distinguishing features only as long as this dilemma is perpetuated.” See also Cotterrell 1995.
52
I return to this topic in the Conclusion.
..................
6
..................
The Multiple Faces of the State
and its Underlying Unity
In this chapter I focus on the prismatic character of the state, the various faces
it shows in various circumstances to various groups and individuals. I begin
in Section 6.1 with a brief description of some of those faces, and discuss
some of the answers that have been offered to make sense of this puzzling
variety. In 6.2, I propose where and how to find the underlying unity of the
state, in a cascade of authorizations dispensed by its legal system. The
considerations in this section are quite abstract and generic; thus, in 6.3
I return to a more sociological perspective, exploring faces that the state
shows depending on varying circumstances, especially those related to high
levels of inequality. The picture I present in this section leads me to return to
some topics I began to discuss in the preceding chapter from a basically legal
point of view, but here, in 6.4 I take a new look at them in terms of the
behavioral implications of fulfilling the obligations attached to the role of
state official. Then I shift topic to examine another aspect that may well be
considered an aggregate, almost universally imposed face: the one that the
state exhibits as a capitalist one; through this face it legally sanctions
structured relations of inequality that relate in complex ways with other,
egalitarian ones, that an at least partially democratized state also sanctions
(6.5). In turn, this assertion demands that I return to previous chapters to
highlight the importance of the historical construction of the workers as legal
persons, not only as ones who could enter capitalist social relations, but also
in terms of their parallel acquisition of other civil and social and, especially
political rights (6.6), but I note that this parallelism only occurred in the
Northwest, not in other regions. I conclude this chapter (6.7) with a brief
recapitulation and an image of the several positions in which the state tends
to appear, which may account for the difficulties in reconstructing its overall
character and unity.
116 The Multiple Faces of the State
6.1. M A N I F O L D FAC E S
The state is everywhere and nowhere. We saw in Chapter 4 that we run into
the state when from its apex rulers speak in rallies and in the mass media,
as well as when buildings, flags, anthems and military parades are displayed
in the celebrations of governmental inaugurations, the birth and death
of founding fathers, and other public ceremonies. These events display
the official face of the state, ritualizing its marriage with “its” citizenry/
nation/people, trumpeting that the state and its government are for us,
for the good of all of us. These rituals and the values and memories they
evoke are re-enacted and further glorified, again and again, in schools and the
media—and, indeed, even in the singing of the national anthem at sport
events.
In Chapter 5 we also found the state, albeit less visibly, when it textures
through its legality innumerable social relations. We encounter the state when
we pay taxes or apply for a driver’s license, as well as—although perhaps
unaware that the state is also “present”—when we obey a traffic signal, go to a
public hospital, or have our children attend a state run or subsidized school—
and in so many other occasions: especially if we live in an urban setting.
Furthermore, even less visibly, we also encounter the state and its legal system
when we sign a contract, an act in which the parts assume that some legal rules
govern its content and execution, as well as eventual claims of malfeasance,
duress, and the like.
These are some of the manifold faces of the state. Phenomenologically, it
appears as a series of individuals holding offices, often inhabiting buildings
and using seals and credentials that certify them as having a claim to make
decisions in and by which they invoke the powers and authority of the state.
The state shows itself in a bewildering variety of individuals and offices.1 This
is, as it were, the “lived state” that has recently elicited fruitful attention from
authors writing from mainly an anthropological, ethnographic, or symbolic
perspectives.2
These varied faces have led to a bifurcation of views about what the state is.
Some political scientists and macro-sociologists have been captured by the
1
Mann (1993: 53) puts is well: “Under the microscope, states ‘balkanize,’ dissolving into
competing departments and factions.”
2
See Abrams 1997, Bratsis 2002, Coronil 1997, Das 2004, Das and Poole 2004, Escalante
Gonzalbo 2004, Gupta 1995, Lomnitz-Adler 1992 and 2001, Loveman 2005, Migdal 2001,
Navaro-Yashin 2001, Poole 2004, Runciman 2003, Scott 1998, Steinmetz 1999, Verkaaik 2001,
and Wilson 2001. I will return to some of these works as I proceed with my discussion.
The Multiple Faces of the State 117
solemn faces of the state, impregnated with the signifiers of its proclaimed
unity and of its link with a nation/people/citizenry predicated as a homo-
geneous entity. On the other hand, to many who adopt a (broadly defined)
anthropological perspective, the true reality of the state is its atomized,
ultimately evanescent face of daily encounters with some of its officials.
Both ways of looking make important contributions to the understanding
of the state.
In preceding chapters I made abundant use of history, political science, and
sociology for the understanding of the macro-side of the state, but some of
these visions tend to exaggerate the unity of the state, and sometimes derive a
functionalist view of its existence and performance. On the other hand, there
are many studies of concrete aspects of the state, especially of its institutions
and of public policies; these studies are very valuable, but rarely depart from
the institutions and/or policies they study toward a conceptual reconstruction
of the state of which they are a part. Couched in terms that equate to
anthropological views, they tell us a lot about how the power of the state is
exercised along manifold encounters with society; but these views do not
seem to have found the analytical instruments for reconstructing the unity of
the entity to which they refer.
This raises some questions. The very first is, is there something that exists
that may even be called “the state?” The second question, assuming that some
kind of positive answer is given to the first one, is what gives unity to the
multifarious array of phenomena that may be identified as being, or as being
part of, the state? The plain fact, the one we all experience, is that what we
encounter are individuals performing roles in state institutions; furthermore,
from different social locations we experience different sights, from luxurious
governmental offices to dismal jails, and from bureaucrats smiling at the
powerful while maltreating the poor. The state not only has many faces, it
shows different faces to different individuals.
This kaleidoscopic appearance led some social scientists, especially those
inscribed in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, to the apparently obvious conclusion:
there is no state—all that appears is an array of buildings, bureaucracies, and
officials undertaking myriad different tasks. So what there is may be called a
government, or an administration, or a series of public policies that should
be empirically grasped in its diversity without improperly attributing some
kind of unity to them. A less skeptical step is to adopt a view that
I have already criticized: the state is what we can reconstruct in its more
visible aggregate, a set of bureaucracies and its subsequent roles and officials.
But this step does not provide a criterion for finding the overall unity of the
state; the usual recourse is to appeal to some kind of neo-Weberian assertion,
in the sense that what characterizes this entity is its bureaucracies, as well as
their territorial character and their supremacy in the control of the means of
physical coercion.
This view, which I have partially incorporated in my own definition of the
state, is correct but insufficient. It accounts for some institutions of the state,
but not for all them: state owned or run schools and universities, state banks,
industrial and commercial corporations, various kinds of licensing and con-
trol institutions, and other parts of the state do not fit within this definition.
More importantly, it ignores other dimensions of the state that, if my argu-
ments in the preceding chapters are not wrong, are no less constitutive of the
state than its bureaucracies. One consequence of the reduction of the state
solely to the latter tends to wrongly posit it in a purely external relationship
with society, which in turn quite often leads to see the state in a structurally
zero-sum relation with society. On their part, the anthropological view-
point—even though it provides rich information about the symbolic and
micro-faces of the state—as already noted, does not seem to carry the
theoretical baggage necessary for, as it were, developing its level of analysis
toward a construction of the concept of the whole state. As a consequence,
some of these latter viewpoints have run into a skepticism that is the mirror
image of the macro one above mentioned: there is no state, just masks of
political domination that, as its instrument or expression, project the illusion
of an inexistent unity.3 For treating this enigma, I will follow the lead of
Hobbes, who pioneered in arguing that the fact that the state is an artificial
entity does not make it an illusory one; rather, one has to trace the links that
constitute the unity of this entity and allow to attribute to it, and to its
authority, actions undertaken by certain individuals.4
6.2. C A S C A D E S
I believe that the clue for finding the unity of the state results from one of
the constitutive dimensions, its legal system. As pointed out by Hösle, a
philosopher who elaborates on the rich German tradition on this topic, the
3
An influential statement of this view is in Abrams (1977: 63) who argues that instead of the
state we should speak of “politically organized subjection . . . [because] . . . the state is the
distinctive collective misreprsentation of capitalist societies. . . .” (ibid. 75); thus “The state is
not the reality behind the reality of political practice. It is itself the mask which prevents our
seeing political practice as it is” (ibid. 82); similarly see Mitchell 1991 and Verkaaik 2004. A good
critique of these works from an anthropological perspective is Coronil 1997. Of course, the
influence of Foucault’s work on governmentality and state effects (see especially Foucault 1991
and 2000) is strong in these works.
4
On this point see Skinner and Strath 2003.
state is what he calls a juristic entity. It is one that, through its legal system, has
some behaviors of its officials attributed to the authority and power of the
state. The decision made by a given individual only becomes imputed as a
state act because certain rules define that such an act by such an individual,
having fulfilled certain legally prescribed requisites, qualifies as an “official”
(i.e. state) decision. As Hösle (2004: 498) says:
The state exists as a social as well as legal structure only so long as certain
people perform certain acts—although they perform these acts with the
consciousness that they are contributing to an order that, in accord with
its ultimate meaning points beyond their own existence and that is legally
structured. Juristic persons may be conceived neither as fictions nor as
really existing entities independent of the human beings who support
them—they are schemata of imputation that as such be actualized
through the concrete behavior of real individuals on one hand, and on
the other make it possible to evaluate precisely their behavior. The fact
that the state has certain rights always means that certain persons have
corresponding rights, not as private persons, however, but as persons
exercising a certain office.5
The “schemata of imputation” is the chain of legally-dispensed authorizations
that creates the real, albeit underlying unity of the state. The legal/juristic
dimension of the state is the one that gives the state its unity, the thread that
links its parts. On the other hand, against excessively legalistic interpreta-
tions,6 this dimension is not the whole state. It is that part that puts in front of
us individuals who have, in their interactions with us, the plus of having a
certain range of their activities legally defined as part and emanation of the
state’s power and authority. In the preceding chapter we saw that this aspect
determines the special rights and obligations of state officials. They have them
because and only insofar as they are necessary for discharging the duties
assigned to the roles the officials perform in the respective state institutions.
Here the link between rights and obligations is correlative: for example, the
right that a certain individual has to deprive me of my freedom is derived
from his obligations as a judge in the criminal case to which I am submitted.
In short, in one of its constitutive dimensions the state includes a cascade of
legally-dispensed authorizations; this is what gives the state its empirical and
conceptual unity. Every official of the state is such an official because he has
been appointed (or, in some cases, elected) to that role by means of a legally
formalized procedure; in turn, this procedure has given the right to make such
appointment to another individual (or to the citizenry, in the case of elected
5
In a similar sense see Bourdieu 2004.
6
The arguably most paradigmatic of these legalistic views was proposed by Kelsen 1945 and
1967.
officials), placed in a hierarchically superior position in the bureaucratic
structure of the state. And this latter individual, in turn, owes her own role
to a similar process, in what is often a long chain of legally-dispensed
authorizations. Such a chain is continuous, independently of the unitary or
federal character of the state, insofar as the authorizations dispensed in the
latter states by local authorities derive from the overarching constitutional
structure of such a state. Furthermore, we should notice that this cascade is a
unique characteristic of the modern state, the manifestation of its legal
dimension and the consequence of the various expropriations that, as we
saw in Chapter 3, were part and parcel of its emergence.
6.3. S H OW I N G VA RY I N G FAC E S
I mentioned that the state shows different faces depending on with whom
their officials interact; we also saw in the preceding chapter that justice is
nowhere truly equally dispensed across social sectors and classes. Further-
more, everywhere but more so in highly unequal countries, the rich and
privileged encounter few faces of the state, and those few are often quite
friendly. Some are so friendly that they involve the selective use of state
institutions by some of the rich and powerful, who are experts in obtaining
subsidies, privileges, and exemptions extremely hard to justify in terms of
minimal social equity. On the other hand, when this is not the case, the rich
and powerful often undertake elaborate strategies to elude most state bureau-
cracies: dwellings in well-guarded (by private personnel) developments or
apartment buildings; private health insurance; private schools and universi-
ties; private transportation; and the like.7 And sometimes, when encountering
the state for reasons other than the search for some kind of advantage is
unavoidable, as when applying for drivers’ licenses or for passports, a phone
call to an influential official, or paying a gestor (as they are called in Argentina)
or a despachante (as in Brazil), obviates long queues and the bad tempered
faces that often populate the other side of the counter. In addition, when the
rich and powerful have to deal occasionally with the police or the courts, they
often expect and demand privileged treatment, if not sheer impunity.8
7
This “ghettoization” of the rich and privileged has been abundantly documented by social
scientists and journalists. In relation to some Latin American countries see among others
Caldeira 2000 and Svampa 2006.
8
As a shady Argentine businessman, José Yabrán, once said: “To be powerful is to have
impunity.” That this is impunity from the law but not from other dangers is exemplified by the
fact that this individual was murdered; the circumstances have not been clarified.
Everywhere the picture is different for the poor and excluded, especially
those living in marginal rural regions and in some peripheries of large cities.
Scholars, journalists, and human-rights and legal-defense organizations have
documented the manifold problems, and sometimes horrors, that follow this
marginalized population’s encounters, not only with various “security forces,”
but also with indifferent and distant bureaucrats of various sorts. There are
counter-examples to this but, at least in Latin America, even under demo-
cratic regimes, it is more the rule than the exception. Indeed, these are serious
denials of the agency and the rights of citizenship of those individuals.
Furthermore, many of them belong to huge and growing informal markets
that are to a large extent a depository, not only of deep poverty but also of pre-
and proto-capitalist, even servile, social relations. Many of these people live
under such deprivation that, barring exceptional individuals and social move-
ments, their overwhelming concern is survival; they do not have opportu-
nities, material resources, education, time, or even energy to do much beyond
this. These deprivations mean that these individuals are materially poor, while
the previously listed ones entail that they also are legally poor. Material and
legal poverty is the actual condition of important parts of the population of
democracies, new and old, East and South. This is what in previous work led
me to assert that this kind of situation entails a low-intensity citizenship.9
Yet, at any event in some of these situations, even through an ugly face, the
state in a sense is still there. But that presence is evanescent; there may be
some buildings and individuals who claim state-authorized powers; but the
state as a legal system has evaporated—or never taken hold. In these situa-
tions various kinds of informal or traditional law exist, and the absence
of state law is sometimes substituted for by, among others, various types of
communal assemblies, rural and neighborhood associations and coopera-
tives, and Aymara aillus or similar indigenous associations.10 Yet another
kind of legality may prevail, sometimes complexly relating to the former.
I refer to what is plainly a mafia law that includes bosses who tightly control
“their” territory, collect “taxes,” charge “custom duties” for various traffics,
and apply a kind of “justice” that often includes the death penalty—these are
the “brown areas” I discussed in my work cited in footnote 9. Still, even in
these cases “the law” may be still there, albeit in a perverse fashion, as when
some bosses invoke their condition as state officials and occasionally use state
law as a discretionary weapon for asserting their power and the interests they
defend.
9
I refer to chapter IX in O’Donnell 1999, first published in 1993.
10
For the particularly interesting and complex case of Bolivia see Gray Molina 2006.
These are situations at the outer margins of the state, where its legal system
reaches only as far as state officials, quite often members of the mafias that
actually rule, invoke segments of the law for exerting discretionary power over
the population. This kind of situation has been studied by some anthropol-
ogists, who have looked at “the workings of a translocal institution that is
made visible [far away from the center, O’D] in localized practices,” thus
correctly concluding that “[A]ny theory of the state needs to take into account
its constitution through a complex set of spatially intersecting representations
and practices” (Gupta 1995: 375, 377). Concurrently, reporting on political
bosses in a recondite part of the Peruvian mountains, the gamonales, Poole
(2004: 50) argues that their power
Is closely allied with—and in some cases one and the same with—the
“long arm” of the law. . . . From the gamonal ’s (and the peasant’s) per-
spective, then, there is little distinction between the margin and the
center of the juridical state: for the gamonal the essence of the “law”
resides in its necessary privatization and, hence, infraction, just as the
sovereign’s power resides in the exception. Seen from this perspective, the
‘law’ as guarantor of rights always already contains within it the threat of
an arbitrary power even when physical violence may not be present.11
As already noted, the preceding puts serious doubt on two usual assumptions
in the mainstream democracy and democratization literature, that if there is a
democratic regime at the national center, state legality would be effective
throughout the territory, as well as that all subnational regimes also would be
democratic. Unfortunately, the reality of many contemporary democracies is
more complex than that: there are vast gaps in their legality and some of the
subnational regimes are authoritarian.12
It is worth noting, on the other hand, that situations such as the ones I have
depicted do not usually lead to chaos; they are a kind of order, but of a rather
perverse kind. Escalante Gonzalbo (2004: 40) perceptively notes the impor-
tance that the “intermediaries” have in these situations, whether invested or
not of state roles; they are the ones who “negotiate the selective infringement
of the law [so that] when they are effective . . . they manage to locally achieve
political stability and produce order, albeit at the cost of interfering with the
rigorous application of the law. In other words, their presence is an obstacle
for the effectiveness of the logic of the state, but it is also indispensable.” It is
11
See also Coronil 1997, Das 2004, Loveman 2005, and Wilson 2001.
12
This practically and theoretically significant issue, to which I have already referred, has
been raising an interesting literature; see among other works worth mentioning Behrend 2008,
Gibson 2004 and 2005, Snyder 1999, and Trocello 2008.
because of this that there “cannot be expected the same behaviors from all
citizens, because the same laws have very different consequences for different
groups.” This is why, in those regions and as consequence in good measure
in countries as a whole, “For more than two centuries [including not a few
cases and regions under contemporary democracies, O’D] a minimum of
governability has been achieved at the expense of the Estado de Derecho”;
ibid. 39 (my translation).
A further consequence is that these flaws and problems not only impinge on
the four dimensions of the respective states. They also have serious conse-
quences on the workings of the institutions of the regime itself. These regions
have authoritarian rulers who control extended territories, and elect to the
national parliament representatives who can be presumed to basically obey the
neo-patrimonial, if not mafiosi, patterns prevailing among the powers they
represent in the national arenas. Consequently, even if one’s interest is the study
of just the regime, it is necessary to get rid of the above mentioned assumptions,
all of which entail a presumption of a high degree of intra-national homogene-
ity that does not fit many countries outside the Northwest.
6.4. T R A N S I T I N G RO L E S
Perhaps the immersion of most of us (at least among the likely readers of this
book) in basic assumptions of modernity makes it difficult to understand
how unnatural is a behavioral pattern that concerns some classic sociolo-
gists:13 our constant daily switching between various roles. In the same day we
may be husbands, parents, drivers, pedestrians, employees, tax payers, and a
whole host of other roles. Normally we move quite easily from role to role, in
each of which we unconsciously adopt conventions and behaviors that allow
us to perform them in ways that usually lead relevant others to perceive us as
reasonably well-adapted individuals. But as modernity generated highly com-
plex organizations other, more complicated, role transitions were also de-
manded. Specifically, we saw that being a state official is supposed to impose
an exacting set of obligations: especially their primary dedication to that part
or aspect of the common good to which, however minor the official’s role, he
has been put in charge by the cascading hierarchy of authorizations that
affected his appointment. Prior to entering his office or sitting at his desk,
13
The changes of roles and conceptions of roles, as well as the assumptions and behaviors
that followed them at the compass of the emergence of modernity found classic analysis in the
work of Elias 1973, 1974, and 1975, and Simmel 1950 and 1968 among others.
he has performed a series of roles in which he has enacted his identity
and interests as a private person; but when he goes into his state role, his
obligations toward the aspect of the public interest he is to serve are supposed
to take precedence over his other roles and consequent interests.
During my incursions as an amateur anthropologist I have made two
observations. One concerns how widely it is assumed in some countries
that the taking over of a state role will be properly performed, and how strong
is the condemnation when it is found out, both in minor cases and in scandals
that reach the media, that this has not happened. The second observation is
how difficult such a transition is in countries where such an assumption is not
generally or deeply held. If I am poorly paid, and/or if I owe my job to a boss
who expects me to hand over to him goods I handle at work as a form of
recompense; and/or if my family and friends expect—actually, demand—that
I use my job to dole out goods they feel I owe them, then why on earth
shouldn’t I do it? Moreover, why shouldn’t I do it when everyone around me,
including my bureaucratic superiors, are doing it, and I could be risking my
job by refusing to do it? As the chain of legal authorizations we saw above and
superimposed on it (as it is the one that makes the relevant actors state
officials), this is a second chain of authorizations, but it is one that links
those officials while they undertake particularistic, anti-legal behaviors; some-
times these particularistic chains may extend from low echelons to the highest
realms of the respective state institutions.
These are particularistic practices, manifested not only in sheer corruption
but also in nepotism, clientelism, discriminatory application of legal rules,
abusive use of the perks of office, and others. These behaviors entail an extra-
limitation; i.e., going beyond the limits of the behavior prescribed by the rules
that establish the rights and obligations of the respective state officials. This
means that in the resulting interactions there is still a state official (and
probably also an office and a building), who can do what he is doing precisely
because he is such official. But even though in this sense the state as thus
embodied is still “present,” the state as a legal system has evaporated because
of a perverse privatization, by which the public aspect of the state as law is
“sold” by means of particularistic transactions.
The other side of this coin is what may be called infra-limitations. I refer to
state role obligations that are omitted or grossly underperformed. Laziness,
indifference toward the respective duties and tasks, passive protest for poor
pay and working conditions, prejudice, and other reasons concur with an ugly
portrait that has been drawn by many observers and victims. Part of the
problem is that, once more, this additional ugly face of the state is much more
often presented to the poor and discriminated than to the others.
As I argued in the preceding chapter, the idea of legal limitations assigned
by the law to many social relations and, with special care, to the relations
that are supposed to govern the behavior of state officials, is a unique
characteristic of the modern state; this is especially true under democracy
and the distinction between the public and the private spheres it postulates.
This idea is alien to various kinds of patrimonial states, as well as to the neo-
patrimonialism entailed by the examples I presented above. In these cases that
distinction is blurred or simply ignored: the powers resulting from being an
official of the state can be indistinctly used for private advantage or for
attaining some aspect of the common good—and sometimes, as I also have
observed, for both purposes at the same time, and with good conscience.
Truly, there is a split everywhere between the pays réel and the pays légal, as
shown by the fact that these terms originated in one of the earliest democ-
racies, France. But nowhere is the split so deep and visible as in the situations
I depicted above. Extra and infra-limitations severely infringe on the legally-
prescribed obligations of state officials; of course, they also hinder the work-
ings of the state in its four dimensions, including its credibility, both in
relation to those who have good reasons for seeing it as alien and hostile,
and to those who benefit from those infringements. Cynicism from both sides
of this social equation results, including in relation to some of the state
institutions—such as the legislature and the judiciary—through which a
democratic regime works; it is not surprising that those failings of the state
reverberate into how the regime actually functions.
6.5. T H E O B L I Q U E FAC E O F C A P I TA L I S M
Now we must deal with another face of the state. Since its emergence capital-
ism has been a world-wide phenomenon, and today it is even more so.
Contemporary capitalism has many localized varieties,14 but its vigorous
spread throughout the world always entails vast exchanges of objects, services,
and currency (and, indeed, individuals), undertaken mostly by organizations
(business corporations and in some cases also state institutions) that operate
by means of employment relations by which the workers—and nowadays in
many cases also the managers—do not own the organization nor its means of
production. This is well known. Yet, even though capitalism has deeply
changed since its emergence, throughout the world it is more than ever the
14
Even among highly developed countries there is an interesting “variety of capitalism,”
discussed among others in Hall and Soskice 2001 and Hollingsworth et al. 1994.
main mode of production and exchange in the economy and, consequently
and to a significant extent, also of the overall articulation of societies.
Yet the preceding does not mean that capitalism is nowadays the only mode
of production and exchange. Rather, the farther away we move from highly
developed centers, it combines with various artisanal, pre-capitalist or even
servile modes. Some of those engaged in these modes are almost completely
excluded from capitalist circuits, and their workers often are among those
who suffer deepest poverty. Other modes, that include many who work in the
informal economy and their employers (whether or not they use capitalist
relations of employment),15 are a peripheral albeit economically important
part of capitalist centers and corporations. There is ample evidence of the
subordinated linking of these modes to core capitalist circuits; the latter have
spread by the search by transnational corporations, outside their original
markets, for cheap and legally unprotected labor—this is an intrinsic feature
of the dynamic, world-expanding and unequalizing tendency of capitalism.
So, even if recurrently shaken by crises, capitalism reigns supreme, both in
itself and in its recurrent subordination and transformation of other modes of
production and exchange, and consequently also of patterns of overall social
organization. In Chapter 3 we saw the crucial role that in the Northwest was
played by the emerging state for the expansion of capitalism. This led to
countries becoming quite homogeneously capitalist; this did not happen in
most of the rest of the world, where the implants of capitalism have coexisted
with pre-existing modes that proved more resilient and extensive than those
of the Northwest. Still, with few exceptions, and whether democratic or
authoritarian, contemporary states sanction, back and guarantee capitalist
relations of work, exchange and production, irrespective of how extensive and
dynamic these relations are in each country.
Now we need to take a step back in time. With the emergence of the
modern state there occurred for the first time in history a clear separation
between physical/political and economic coercion. This was part and parcel of
the diffusion of capitalist social relations, where the economic coercion
entailed by the need to sell labor force by individuals dispossessed of means
of production corresponded to an actor, the entrepreneur/employer, who was
distinct from the emerging apparatus of the state. This emergence, against
some neo-Marxian interpretations, was not “caused” by capitalist relations of
production; suffice to remember what I recount in Chapter 3 about various
patterns of state-making. Yet I believe that those interpretations are right in
arguing that, at the rhythm of the expansion of its bureaucracy and legal
15
I return to this topic in Chapter 8.
system, the state increasingly appeared, including capitalist social relations, to
be acting on the basis of, and enacting objective and impartial legally-based
rules. Later on this was reinforced when democracy emerged, even if initially
in its non-inclusive version; from then on rulers had to claim the origin and
justification of their power and authority on a referent external to the state
(the citizenry or the nation or the people, according to the variations
I discussed in Chapter 4). Furthermore, as this authority referred to indivi-
duals carrying rights that it was beyond the reach of the state to abolish, the
ensuing constitutionalization meant that from then on the state was supposed
to speak exclusively in the language of the law. In turn, the lack of physical
coercion in the establishment of the labor contract was the basis of the
apparent equality of the parts that we saw in Chapter 2 that took time and
many struggles to partially correct.
It is important to realize that from the preceding it follows that the state is
the guarantor of capitalist (and other) social relations, not of the concrete
social actors that enter into them. Yet, by doing this the state guarantees the
reproduction of the social condition of the respective actors. In this sense the
law is the most formalized (and an extremely effective one) contribution of
the state to the stability and reproduction of society, its equalities as well as its
inequalities. Furthermore, especially under democracy the law is also the face
of the state that puts its bureaucracies in the position of impartially imple-
menting rules that have been enacted by procedures that conform to the legal/
constitutional architecture of a democratic regime;16 this may be effective and
consensual because normally it is substantially true, even if it greatly helps
reproducing complex mixes of equalities and inequalities.
In addition, the ensuing ratification of the given social order is fostered by
the myriad daily decisions with which the bureaucratic Penelope works a yarn
that is a mirror image of yesterday, and in which the existence of the given
social order is repeatedly presupposed. Thus, speaking of the state officials
Bourdieu (1996: 27) says that “by producing a performative discourse about
the State, under the appearance of saying what the State is, they make the
State what it is” (my translation). This includes, I add, the state’s backing and
guaranteeing of manifold social relations, egalitarian and not.
The kind of state I discuss in this book is at least partially democratized; it is
also a capitalist state that, in the same way that it houses and backs a
democratic regime, houses and backs capitalist social relations and the social
16
In this context Hunt (1993: 26) notes that “It is important to stress that the legal rules do
not create the social relations that make up capitalist society. But by stating them as principles
and by enforcing them, the law operates not only to reinforce these relations but also to
legitimize them in their existing form” (italics in the original).
actors of this mode of production and exchange. For being such a state it does
not need, as some interpretations have claimed, to have officials cunningly
figuring out how to help capitalism and capitalists. It does not need, either, to
be always “right” in promoting the interests of capitalism and capitalists, nor
to be controlled at its realms by representatives of the latter.
A state that is among other things capitalist does not preclude that some of
its policies may hinder the reproduction of capitalism and harm capitalists.
Cognitive limitations, time constraints, costs of gathering and analyzing
information, ideological biases, and the perceived need to balance capitalist
interests with other interests and goals, determine that states are not only nor
unfailingly pro-capitalist. On the other hand, in the daily reproduction of
their main social relations, in their legality, and in the routine behavior of
their bureaucracies, states and governments enact widespread assumptions
about what is the normal functioning of the economy—and such normality is
of an economy that functions under capitalist parameters. What is an eco-
nomic crisis is thus defined with reference to those parameters, aside of course
from the social or political manifestations of the crisis.17 That states and their
governments may or may not succeed in getting back the economy (and,
indirectly, society, too) to “normality,” does not detract from the positioning
of the state, short of true revolutions, as a backer and guarantor of capitalist
social relations.
The preceding means that in its historical and structural configuration the
state backs and guarantees the actors and social relations of capitalism, but at
the same time attends to issues arising from its other, multiple and intersect-
ing dimensions and faces—including, in the cases that interest in this book,
being a state that houses a democratic regime and addresses a referent
variously construed as a citizenry, a nation, or a people. Furthermore, this
same state contains many complex, hierarchically ordered bureaucracies; in
fact, through its legality the state also sanctions and backs hierarchical
relationships in many bureaucracies, including private ones. As I noted
above, these relationships are inegalitarian, and many nurture authoritarian
tendencies.18 This problem is serious because in most bureaucratic contexts we
are not properly citizens, in that we do not have the rights of participation—to
elect and elected, basically—sanctioned as central components of political
democracy; but this only highlights the importance of tracing and validating
17
In Oszlak and O’Donnell 1984 we discuss this and related matters.
18
I believe that Shapiro (2003: 4) is right when he argues that even though hierarchies may
be “legitimate,” they “should generally be presumed suspect and be structured so as to minimize
the likelihood that they will atrophy into systems of domination”; in a similar sense see also
Shapiro 1996: 11 and passim.
the idea of agency into the manifold sites where it is at stake. We are agents
everywhere, and as such even in subordinated positions we carry rights
emerging from the consideration and respect due to our condition as such
agents—we saw echoes of this principle in the legalization of the work place.
6.6. T H E WO R K E R A S A L E G A L P E R S O N
The story I summarily told in Chapters 2 and 3 about the Northwest entailed
a remarkable convergence that now I want to stress. In what in historical
terms amounted to a short period, there occurred processes that not only
converged in time and space but also by and large dynamized each other.
I refer to state-making; the creation of increasingly powerful state bureau-
cracies; the extension of the legality of the state; the linking of states with
“their” citizenry, nation, or people; the initial conceptions of the rule of law in
England and Prussia, and the posterior extension of these conceptions into
the constitutionalization of political rule; the concomitant emergence of
initially restricted democracy; and, indeed, the full expansion of capitalism.
I discussed in Chapter 2 the long process of construction of the idea of agency,
including the progressive extension of legal personality and some civil rights,
later transported on to the political sphere as rights and freedoms entailed by
a democratic regime. But legal personality and civil rights were not only
precious preceding conditions of political rights and citizenship: they had
similar importance as building blocks of capitalism. We saw the emergence
from ecclesiastic law of the concept of the business corporation, the sharpness
and broad scope that the adoption of Roman law gave to the concept of
private property and the states’ creation of protected markets and uniform
laws across their territory. These were important contributions to the expan-
sion of capitalism, to which now I add another: the construction of the worker
as a legal person, a carrier of (initially few) civil rights that included his right
to “freely” sell his labor force to the capitalist.
As capitalists lacked (but as other kinds of economic enterprise in some
parts of the world still have) recourse to physical coercion for putting people
to work, and since this related to the emergence of a state in the posture
of impartially backing its own legality, the construction of the worker as a
legal person that entered into the labor contract was the counterpart of
capitalism—no such contract without the legal personality of both parts
nor, as with any contract, its backing by the state. For this to occur, the
previous moral and legal work on ideas of agency and civil rights was a very
useful background condition: as it was done in relation to political rights,
these conceptions and constructions were transported from civil rights to the
sphere of capitalist social relations. Thus, capitalism could not but create its
own Frankenstein monster, as its legally entitled workers and various political
allies vigorously struggled for the expansion of their initially restricted rights;
at least in the Northwest with these struggles further impulses were given to
both democratization and the dynamism of capitalism. That this was not
entirely the case in other parts of the world will occupy us later on.
6.7. R E C A P I T U L AT I O N
Great national celebrations, edifying stories taught in schools, encounters

with state officials. Big or small, friendly or nasty, present or absent in its
legality, in centers and in peripheries, the kaleidoscopic faces of the state are
part of its lived sociological reality, and demand not only that we recognize
them but also that we reconstruct them. This is not only a major challenge to
a theory of the state; it also bears direct relationship with the theory and
practice of democracy, as the various faces of the state have strong influence
on what kind—or quality—of democracy there is, if any.
This issue has been recognized in a volume mostly based on anthropological
studies, several of which I cite above. In an argument that merits lengthy
quotation, the editors note in their Introduction:
[T]he ambiguities of the state as both illusory as well as a set of concrete
institutions; as both distant and impersonal ideas as well as localized
and personified institutions; as both violent and destructive as well as
benevolent and productive. Modern forms of state are in a continuous
process of construction, and this construction takes place through invo-
cation of a bundle of widespread and globalized registers of governance
and authority . . . the study of the state and its practices must discern and
explore . . . their localized meanings, genealogies, and trajectories as they
appear couched in mythologies of power, as practical, often non political
routines or as violent impositions. . . . 19
We have looked at many faces of the state; perhaps we may reconstruct them
with a broader image. That the state is such a problematic entity to grasp is
largely due to the fact that each of its dimensions and faces appear differently.
The state as a set of bureaucracies tends to appear in front of society. As an
attempted focus of collective identity, when we are appealed as those for whom
19
Hansen and Stepputat 2001: 5.
state and government devote their tutelary efforts, the state appears above
society. As a filter of and from manifold others, it appears around us. And as a
legal system, the state is inside society. This image points to both realities and
mirages, perceptions that may be more or less realistic, and more or less
widely shared or ignored; it also points to the disputability of the various,
and changing, positions from which the state appears. In addition, those
dimensions of the state appear in some occasions as highly localized and at
others as extremely distant.
The possibility of critical examination of some of those perspectives and
positions I discuss in the coming chapters. For the time being I note that the
prismatic faces of the state should not lead us to deny its entity; rather, they
stress the need to find the thread that knits its unity—its legal dimension and
the cascade of authorizations that thus derive.
..................
7
..................
Dialogics, Agency, and Democracy
I begin this chapter with a racconto of a particularly sad and cruel period in
my country, Argentina, which I believe sets a useful contrast for appreciating
some characteristics of democracy (Section 7.1). This contrast leads me to the
discussion of dialogical appeals and networks of discourse (7.2). The argu-
ment that these networks are essential for the exercise and flourishing of
human beings as agents occupies me in 7.3. Yet the potentialities of these
networks may be cancelled by the ever present danger of reification—I discuss
this topic in relation to the state (7.4).
7.1. A M E M O RY O F V E RY B A D T I M E S
The present section of this chapter is based on notes that I wrote—finding out
later that other people were doing the same in countries under similar
circumstances—in a private diary during the years 1976 to mid-1979, when
I lived in Argentina under an extremely repressive rule.1 Since then these
notes have traveled with me everywhere; now I return to them because I
believe that there is an epistemological gain in dealing with situations that are
the almost exact opposite of democracy. I wrote these notes in the hope that
someday the situation we were going through would be terminated; thus,
I dwelt not only with the horrors of the time but also with what they suggested
a contrario. Because the circumstances condemned us to a very private life,
these reflections center on individual, micro-aspects that, however far they
1
During those years myself and a few colleagues worked in what we often called “the
catacombs,” a research center (Centro de Estudios de Estado y Sociedad, CEDES) that we
created in mid-1975, already persuaded that highly repressive times were coming and hoping
to maintain a small space of freedom in the midst of such circumstances. This allowed us a tiny
milieu in which we could freely express ourselves. Expelled from the universities and with our
books “disappeared” from libraries and bookstores, we published some mimeographed texts
that circulated as authentic samizdats. Some of these texts were quite soon published abroad;
later on I reprinted some of them in chapters II, III and IV of O’Donnell 1999, and others were
resurrected after some thirty years in O’Donnell 2009.
134 Dialogics, Agency, and Democracy
may seem from normal political life, I believe are relevant for a more rounded
theory of democracy and its links with the state.
In Dilemmas of Pluralist Democracy, Robert Dahl 1982 remarks that one’s
haircut can hardly be imagined as a relevant concern for a government. He is
right.
However, in Argentina, approximately between 1976 and 1979, the length
of hair was minutely regulated for students, teachers, public employees, taxi
and bus drivers, and other occupations. The rules specified that the lower line
of hair should be two centimeters above the collar of the shirt (which of
course had to be buttoned and with a tie), and should cover only the top rim
of the ear. Also, it goes without saying that the length of skirts was to be below
the knee, and that slacks were prohibited for women in schools and work-
places. Non-insignificant sanctions were established for transgressors, who
were sometimes pointed out as such by diligent passers-by. Persons like me,
who were not occupationally forced to comply with those regulations, at
times were confronted with hostility because of our improper way of wearing
our hair or our unbuttoned shirts. On the other hand, when it became clear
that the regime was collapsing, just before national elections were held, The
New York Times (November 7, 1983: 7) registered with surprise that in the
campaign rallies could be seen great numbers of (especially) young men with
long hair and young women with slacks or short skirts. Of course, this only
became visible when many people came together. This happened in the
context of celebrating that for the first time those youngsters were going to
be able to vote; clearly, the minimal quantitative contribution of each of their
votes had for them the enormous significance of being part of the act—fair
elections—that signified the end of a dreadful dictatorship.
The state inaugurated in Argentina by the military coup of March 1976 not
only applied enormous repression; it did it in a terrorist way. I mean violence
that was exercised by unidentifiable groups (although it was clear that they
belonged to, or were authorized by the “security forces”—in the circum-
stances quite a euphemism). They chose their victims with criteria that were
difficult to predict, and which did not allow any legal recourse; in fact, among
the groups that suffered more murders were lawyers who courageously
presented writs of amparo for some who were “disappeared” by those thugs.
Furthermore, and as later on became internationally known, the terrorism of
this state expressed itself in purposively failing to acknowledge its victims:2
they just “disappeared,” leaving a horrible doubt about their fate.
2
This was an egregious case of perverse learning. The leaders, at the time of the Argentine
armed forces, knew that in Chile the Pinochet government had paid heavy international costs
Dialogics, Agency, and Democracy 135
It was not easy to live in Argentina during those times—particularly if you
were known not to support that state. It was lonely, sad, and frightening. So
many friends and acquaintances “disappeared,” others in exile, and still
others—many—retreated into deep silence and careful avoidance of encoun-
ters with individuals they felt would somehow endanger them. One knew that
if the terroristic violence were to be unleashed, it would be—typically—
during the night, in absolute solitude and impotence, and with no rights to
be claimed or institutions to be appealed to. The consequent fear myself and
others associated with some recurrent words: loneliness, cold, and darkness.
In Hobbes’s depiction of the state of nature, and in novels, from Kafka to
Latin Americans such as Carpentier, those feelings come up again and again.
Reading through my experience, cold-fear is the expression of the social
loneliness imposed by the politics of terror, with no possible public appeal
to (those we earlier designated as) “them”—values, institutions, congenial
individuals—with reference to which it is possible to sustain a minimally
satisfactory social life. On the other hand, the feeling of darkness expressed
the acute cognitive limitations entailed by the eradication of public spaces
provoked by the terrorism of the state and the subsequent silence of society—
there was practically nothing but the propaganda of the rulers and the rumors
that circulated about new horrors that had been perpetrated.
When confronted with a terrorist ruler (whether it is a state all the way to a
violent father), one is deprived of basic textures of sociability, and conse-
quently divested of crucial social supports. Loneliness, fear, cold, darkness—
this is the experience of terrorized human beings. In a hard but exemplary
way, in those circumstances it became the turn of we members of privileged
social origins, to suffer the fear of arbitrary and extreme violence that has
been and still is the experience of many, even under some democratic regimes.
This we should never forget; it commits us morally forever as intellectuals and
citizens.
The very repressive condition of the times (and indeed, as I found out later
on, the selective memory of some) makes it impossible to know how many in
Argentina experienced the situation in the way I have described it. What
seems clear is that, with few exceptions,3 everyone who disagreed wore a
mask. Thus, in daily encounters you could not usually recognize those others;
for publicly killing and torturing a lot of people. Feeling more astute than their Chilean
colleagues, the Argentine leaders decided that the way to avoid those costs was by committing
all sorts of horrors in a clandestine way. Sadly, for the initial two or three years they basically got
away with this, although later on they paid by being submitted to trials for human rights
violations; some of these trials are being held even today.
3
Among whom count the “Mothers of Plaza de Mayo” and some militants and lawyers of
human rights organizations, some of whom paid for their courage with their lives.
this hindered recognizing yourself as a carrier of shared values that entailed
refusal of the overall situation. In that world with few mirrors, collective
identities were severed, whether totally (leading in such cases to the complete
privatization of the respective lives), or by relying on the imaginary (i.e. the
presumption that there should be quite a few “like me” who have also opted
to conceal their feelings and opinions). In other cases, which in my impres-
sion were not just a few, acceptance of the terror (if not of all its dreadful
features, which only later became fully known) was expressed in statements to
the effect that “order had to be imposed” and that those who were victims in
cases that somehow became known “must have done something.”
Loneliness, darkness, and cold were not only the result of fear of violence
on one’s body but also of how hard it was to socially verify one’s public self—
one’s own values and social identity. Based on this experience, I concur with
Hobbes 1991 and Shklar 1989 in their depiction of the horror of this kind of
state of nature: brutish, dangerous and lonely, in a very real sense sub-human.
Not “too much noise” or “overload” but silence is the worst nightmare of
human associations. The limiting risk of democratic authority is decisional
paralysis. But the limiting case of authoritarian rule is—literally—madness,
destructive omnipotence that breaks the social mirrors with which it might
trace some paths back to reality; of this there are many examples in history,4
including the amazingly distorted view of the world that precipitated the
rulers of the time, and the country, into the Malvinas/Falklands war.
The deep silence from society that results from extremely authoritarian,
terrorist rule is a case of monological structure of discourse. Such structure is
one where only the center (from the repressive parent to the repressive state)
is entitled to speak; one may at most plead for the benevolence of the ruler—
there are no citizens, just rulers and subjects. Authoritarian rulers try to
monopolize the discourses that define us individually and collectively: they
tell us that they know what is good for us, and who and what we should be,
and in case of non-compliance they threaten a rage from which there is no
safe harbor.
In contrast, a dialogical network of discourse is one where we are entitled to
two things. One, to speak to the center by autonomously asserting our
identity and interests, using what in previous works I dubbed “vertical
voice.”5 Second and no less important, to speak among ourselves, whether
because we want to associate to undertake some joint action, and/or because
we intend to present some kind of collective vertical voice to the center, and/
4
For pertinent reflections on this matter see Gald 2002.
5
Chapter IV in O’Donnell 1999.
or simply because we wish to communicate among ourselves. This, that in the
above-mentioned essay I called “horizontal voice,” is exactly what despotic
rule most represses and fears. You can humbly plead to the ruler and partici-
pate in ceremonies where you cheer him and his great accomplishments. But
you can never demand rights, much less do it collectively by joining your voice
to others—during those years in Argentina this meant almost certain death.
7.2. D I A LO G I C A L A P P E A L S A N D N E T WO R K S
A dialogical network of appeals entails that we can co-constitute a public

sphere by addressing others and the rulers about matters we deem significant,
as they refer to values, identities, and/or interests of alleged public impor-
tance.6 We can address, vertically, a “superior” authority and, horizontally,
other members of our association; such association is not fully egalitarian
(since a superior authority exists) but is also non-authoritarian (since it
allows dialogical, not just monological appeals). Such dialogical network
satisfies some conditions for a democratized entity; but it still lacks a crucial
component of a democratic one: we must have the right to engage in those
appeals, and hold freedoms that protect and enable us to exercise such a right.
The individual and collective exercise of legally backed dialogical appeals,
both vertical and horizontal, is a fundamental aspect of democracy. From this
angle, a citizen is she who, freely bringing in her various identities and
interests, is entitled to reside and express herself in these networks of dis-
course, deliberate with others, and act in consequence, including matters
included in the agenda of governments. The availability of these networks is
a great public good, a social attribute of democracy, independent of the fact
that some individuals may not care about it. The importance of this public
good can be better grasped when one has experienced the appalling public
bad of a despotic, monological structure of discourse. The more these rights
are used and the more the resulting dialogical networks are criss-crossed by
diverse appeals and deliberations, the richer is the public sphere and the
consequent deliberations of a democracy.7 Surely these networks intersect
6
Of course I am alluding to the seminal contribution of Habermas 1962 and the large
literature it generated, including the important work of Cohen and Arato 1992. For relevant
discussions principally focused on Latin America see Cunill Grau 1997 and 2008, and Rabotni-
kof 2005.
7
I am persuaded that, the more extensive and intensive these deliberative instances are, the
better the quality of a democracy is. Yet, in contrast to what some proponents of “deliberative
democracy” argue, I do not think a good idea to propose it as a substitute for the institutional
with manifold institutions and practices that sometimes enable but often
obstruct their potentiality, even more so if they occur in societies marked by
deep inequality and poverty; yet the absence of such networks shows a
contrario their immense, even if sometimes only potential value.
Furthermore, nowadays an increasing number of those networks constitute
public spheres that are not linked to the territoriality of states and hence to
their citizenship; they provide avenues for participation in multiple fora,
some highly formalized, some informal. This is fostered by the current
processes of globalization, but it is perhaps useful to recall that it is not
entirely new—for example, the trans-European république des letters, in the
sixteenth century, was already active, and highly influential. The increase in
the number and variety of those networks has led some authors8 who, as part
of their interesting depiction of this phenomenon, assert that as a conse-
quence new demoi have emerged that are acquiring similar importance to the
demos of the political regime, as well as offering new patterns of participation
and even of “representation”. As a metaphor of the increasing importance of
those networks and of the engagement they sometimes generate, I find this
assertion useful; surely this remarkable expansion has, by and large, enriched
public spheres and dialogical networks, and intersects in many complex ways
with states. But I believe that this should not lead to destroying crucial
differences between the democratic demos and the asserted demoi, beginning
with the fact that it is basically in state-anchored citizenship (directly or in
some cases indirectly such as, in some matters, being a citizen of a country
member of the European Union) that actionable rights are acquired;9 further-
more, it seems clear that having such rights is quite often an enabling factor
for participating in the demoi, and that in cases where international networks
or organizations claim to help deprived people in any region of the world, it is
precisely for the acquisition of some of those rights that they most often
aim—a topic to which I return in Chapter 10.
At this point, I find it useful to recall what I said about the freedoms that
surround a democratic regime in the first chapter. In the perspective of the
present chapter they turn out to also have a collective, or social, dimension:
mechanisms discussed in the present book, nor as a normative model from which to judge
the latter.
8
For these views see Bohman 2007 and Warren and Urbinati 2008.
9
In addition, however meritorious many of these networks or organizations are, in many
cases it is not clear at all how and to whom they may be accountable, nor what it actually means
to “represent” (something that the authors just cited in my opinion take too much at face value)
those for whom they claim to act and/or speak. For discussion of this topic in relation to
Argentina see Ippolito-O’Donnell 2009b.
freedom of expression, association, belief, access to non-censored or mono-
polized information and the like are threads that sustain and help reproduce
dialogical networks of discourse. Remember that this kind of freedom results
from the public, universalistic, and legally-backed recognition that all mem-
bers of society are agents, and as such equal in their dignity and in their right
to have rights. That we have such freedoms enables us to participate in
dialogical networks and consequent deliberations because, in democracy,
even in the sometimes despised “formal” political democracy, we are con-
strued as being such equal agents.
7.3. E XC U R S U S O N A D I A L E C T I C
What we are—from our early relation with our parents until death—is to a
large extent the result of social interactions, which shape and reshape our
identity throughout our lives. This symbolic space of multiple recognitions is
human life, a life that can only be lived as such in society. In order to be
ourselves, to have an identity, we must project it into an interactive symbolic
space and—if disorder, disorientation, or fear are not to result—we must
receive it back, recognized in regular agreement with an identity that is the
sedimentation of multiple past iterations. The dialectics of identity and
recognition have been discussed by authors who agree on this view despite
holding quite different theoretical conceptions.10 For example, drawing on
Mead, Berger and Luckman (1966: 132) argue that these processes are “a
dialectic between identification by others and self-identification, between
objectively assigned and subjectively appropriated identity.” Further on,
these authors, drawing on Simmel, argue that “The individual apprehends
himself as being both inside and outside society. This implies that the
symmetry between objective and subjective reality is never static”; ibid. 134.
This is what, commenting on Hegel, Taylor (1978: 78) calls “the drama of
human recognition,” which means that, even though at the risk of alienating
10
Just to name a few among the classics, I refer to Adam Smith and Hume, and in particular
Hegel, who begins his memorable section of the dialectics of the master and the slave by saying
(1977 [1807]: 139): “Self-consciousness attains its satisfaction only in another self-consciousness.”
More recently the classic works of Mead 1934, Simmel 1950 and 1968, and Vygotsky 1978 have
been very influential among contemporary authors; see especially Honneth 1995 and 2007, as well
as Cooke 1999, Habermas 1988 and 1992, Hösle 2004, Lechner 1981, Ricoeur 1996 and 2006, Reis
1984, and Taylor 1989a. Despite their differences, these authors agree, although obviously not
always with these terms, that the human being is constituted in the symbolic order when s/he is
named and recognized as such being by significant others.
ourselves in our moments of extroversion and thus losing our identity,
“integral freedom cannot be attained by an individual alone. It must be shared
in a society which sustains a culture that nurtures it and institutions which
give effect to it.” Thus “the human spirit is condemned to an odyssey—why it
first finds its way to itself only on a detour via a complete externalization in
other things and in other humans” (Habermas 1988: 153)—except that, I add,
there is no Ithaca, no point of arrival in the horizon.
Concomitantly, according to various contemporary works on genetic and
developmental biology and psychology, a “dialogical engagement with other
minds” (Tomasello 1999: 174) is a crucial component of human learning and
culture. In turn Donald (2001: 150) asserts that “Socially isolated humans do
not develop language or any form of symbolic thought and have no true
symbols of any kind . . . symbols evolved to mediate transactions between two
or more brains, rather than of the operations of single brain.”11 This is
because, as in a major work on this topic Tomasello (1999: 5–6) says,
human beings are differentiated from all other species by
a very special form of social cognition, namely, the ability . . . to under-
stand con-specifics as beings like themselves who have intentional and
mental lives like their own. . . . This understanding of others as intention-
al beings like the self is crucial in human learning because cultural
artifacts and social practices . . . invariably point beyond themselves to
other outside entities: tools point to the problems they are designed to
solve and linguistic symbols point to the communicative situations they
are designed to represent . . . [The result is that] the overwhelming weight
of the empirical evidence suggests that only human beings understand
conspecifics as intentional agents like the self and so only human beings
engage in cultural learning. (Italics in the original)
As the sources I have mentioned indicate, we are constituted in our humanity
and culture by language and symbols that invite us, at a very early age,12 to
recognize others as purposive beings and in that same act we normally begin
to recognize ourselves to be so too; this allows us, as it were, to come back
from the other toward ourselves with an enriched sense of our own identity.
11
This author (ibid. 254) adds that “The great divide in human evolution was not language
but the formation of cognitive communities in the first place. Symbolic cognition could not
spontaneously self-generate until those communities were a reality.” Because (ibid. 324): “The
human brain is the only brain in the biosphere whose potential cannot be realized on its own. It
needs to become part of a network before its design features can be expressed.” From a
concurrent philosophical perspective on the “social nature of autonomy” see Crittenden 1992.
12
The contributions of Piaget (see especially 1932) deserve special mention in this respect;
on this author see Flavel 1963. For another influential scheme that bears on the point I am
making see Kohlberg 1981 and 1984; on this author see Reed 1997.
This is a seminal moment for the acknowledgement that those others who
seem to be like me may well have rights and interests equivalent to the ones
I may feel entitled to claim—herein lies, in nuce, the possibility of later (onto-
and sociogenetic) recognition of agency.
The richness and variety of referentials is a necessary condition, or at least
an extremely helpful facilitator, for the unfolding of a mature, equilibrated,
realistic personality. A mature personality (or organization, for that matter) is
characterized by high levels of complexity, flexibility, and many-sidedness,
together with the articulation of these characteristics by a strong center. This
is a strong center not in spite of but because it is open to, but not over-
whelmed by, its context. It can identify and empathize with others without
losing, rather enriching, its own identity. Iterated re-appropriations and re-
elaborations of identity through dialogical networks are the road to fuller and
more realistic and, hence, more mature human beings—as it is also the road
toward more open, responsive, and accountable democratic states and in-
stitutions. Indeed, these characteristics are the reverse of the inflexibility and
closure of both the authoritarian personality13 and the authoritarian state.
7.4. O N T H E P E R M A N E N T R I S K O F R E I F I C AT I O N
The processes I depict above are unending and potentially reversible: it is

always possible that they are interrupted at a moment of extroversion, as
when we lose from sight the true origin and justification of the authority
claimed by the state, and we thus perceive it as a radically different “them”
standing in front and above us. Such a perception entails naturalizing the state
and its government, a reification that is analogous to the objectification, or
fetishization of capital (and commodities) denounced by Marx. As he put it
(1961 [1844]: 87), capital then appears as “[T]he externalization of the worker
in his product [which] implies not only that his labour becomes an object, an
exterior existence, but also that it exists outside him, independent and alien,
and becomes a self-sufficient power opposite to him, that the life he has lent
to the object affronts him, hostile and alien.” As a consequence Marx (1970
[1845–6]: 54) asserts that
13
As originally argued in the well known book of Adorno et al. 1950 and pursued, especially,
by Altemeyer 1981 and 1996. For recent discussions of this literature see Coolens 2006 and
Martin 2001.
The social power, i.e. the multiplied productive force, which arises through
the co-operation of different individuals as it is determined by the division
of labour, appears to these individuals, . . . not as their united power, but as
an alien force existing outside them, of the origin and goal of which they
are ignorant, which they cannot thus control, which on the contrary passes
through a peculiar series of phases and stages independent of the will and
the action of man, nay even being the prime governor of these.
Furthermore (ibid. 53),
This fixation of social activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves
produce into an objective power above us, growing out of control,
thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations, is one
of the chief factors in historical development until now.
Marx referred to capital, although his reflections may well apply to other
entities, especially the state. This extension was to some extent made by Engels
(1978 [1884]: 209) who, referring to the state and its officials, said that “In
possession of public power and the power of taxation, the officials now
present themselves as organs standing above society . . . [they] pose as some-
thing outside and above [society].”
Later on, as Honneth 2008 elaborates, the concept of reification was reinstated
by Lukács 1972 [1923], as the attribution of naturalized, purely external and as it
were autonomous existence to social entities that are actually the product of
human action. This is alienation,14 forgetting the true origins of entities we have
generated through our social interactions, accepting them as radically different
and external to us and tending to put us as their mere subjects.
In terms of the topic of this book, this has an important truth: those who
exercise power over us in the state and government are an-other of us, an
alterity that often poses as having its own origin and justification indepen-
dently of us. But this posing is—should be—just a moment in the overall
process of the production and circulation of power. In order to overcome
such reification, one has to go back to the sphere of production of the powers
exercised by those entities; i.e. the human actions from which they emanate.
This is especially feasible, although far from guaranteed, when those actions
are performed by the legally entitled citizens of a democracy.
The sheer posing of this matter witnesses the potential that was garnered
when some human beings could say to each other that the King was naked
and drew conclusions about that amazing fact. I insist on this matter because
14
This term derives from the Latin alienus, meaning something that belongs to another
person or place. As Honneth 2008 notes, Marx’s use of this term and its cognates, reification and
fetishization, has roots in Feuerbach’s view of religion as such alienation.
I am persuaded that the issue of reification of the state is a very important
one, irrespective of what one thinks of the Hegelian/Marxian origins of the
idea. For example, from another theoretical perspective Berger and Luckman
(1966: 89) usefully comment that
[R]eification is the apprehension of the products of human activity as if
they were something else than human products . . . [it] implies that man
is capable of forgetting his own authorship of the human world. . . . It
is experienced as . . . an opus alienum over which he has no control. . . .
Human meanings are no longer understood as world-producing but as
being, in their turn, products of the “nature of things.”15
I wish to insist that this is the view of the state (and government) as a set of
bureaucracies that stand in front and above society, and seem to somehow
derive their powers from their tutelary role over us, an image reinforced by
the rituals that we saw in Chapter 4. This leads to perceptions that veil the
underlying realities of the social world and, indeed, obstruct the understand-
ing of the grounding of democracy on citizenship and agency, and the crucial
subsequent fact that citizens/agents are the source and ultimate justification
of the authority and powers of state and government.
The reification of the state is a grave and permanent risk, and to avert it we
would do well to recognize it, and tell others about this; the exercise of
citizenship, and ultimately the very meaning of democracy, is the permanent
re-dis-covery and dialogical communication of this crucial fact.16 No state
can ever be fully democratic—we saw this in the preceding chapters. Democ-
racy or, better, democratization is an unending movement, always alienable
and reversible, towards more dense dialogical networks inhabited by more
firmly entitled agents; it consists of the continuing critical re-appropriation of
the true origin, meaning and justification of the powers secreted by society,
and condensed, processed, and returned by the state and the government—
the practice of democracy is an act of collective self-pedagogy.
I will return to these topics in the Conclusion. But before in the following
chapter we must take a quick look at Latin America and, in Chapter 9, examine
an issue closely linked to the ones I discuss here: the options that may be
available, or not, for the effectuation of agency in the social and political realms.
15
Referring to the state from an anthropological standpoint, Coronil (1997: 116) adds that
“The state’s reification is both the effect and the condition of its manifold objectifications. . . .
Like money and capital, the state is not just a thing or an idea, but a complex ensemble of social
relations mediated by things or thing-like objectifications of social practice.”
16
Durkheim (1983: 89) noticed this: “[A] democracy may, then, appear as the political
system by which the society can achieve a consciousness of itself in its purest form. The more
that deliberation and reflection and a critical spirit play a considerable part in the course of
public affairs, the more democratic the nation.”
..................
8
..................
An Overview of Latin America
At this point I need to return to what I said in the Introduction. This is a book
of theory with comparative intent; in it I hope to open avenues for some
theoretical discussions, as well as for empirical and comparative research,
especially but not exclusively focused on Latin America. This task, however, is
beyond the scope of the present book, so I intend to undertake it in the future
volume mentioned in the Introduction.
Yet, in order to provide some comparative context to my analysis, in the
preceding chapters I made several references to non-Northwestern countries,
especially Latin American ones. Recall that in Chapter 1, on the basis of past
experience in this region, I proposed to add the characteristic of decisiveness
to democratic elections. In Chapter 2, I contrasted the quite extensive set of
civil and social rights achieved in most countries of the Northwest with the
significantly more limited and uneven record of Latin America in these
matters. In Chapter 3, in the context of discussing the four constitutive
dimensions of the state, I noted that, with few and partial exceptions, the
Latin American state has historically evinced, and continues evincing, poor
scores in all those dimensions; this observation led me, still in that chapter, to
express, as a matter of serious concern, the scarce powers that those states—
and their governments—have for further democratizing their societies and,
indeed, themselves. In Chapter 4, discussing the nation and its cognates,
I mentioned some important differences between the Northwest and the rest
of the world in terms of their respective patterns of state and nation. In Chapter
5, when discussing the legal system, I mentioned several of its deficiencies in
Latin America. This is closely related to the discussion of various faces of the
state that I undertook in Chapter 6, where I stress the ugly and at times the
plainly absent face that the state often shows to poor and/or excluded sectors of
the population, as well as the varied ways in which capitalism has spread in the
world. In turn, I began Chapter 7 focusing on a specific country, my own,
Argentina, as a cruelly contrasting example of the agency-grounded values of
democracy and the dialogical networks they nurture.
Now, in the present chapter I go back to those observations and put them
into a broader picture. Yet, and to repeat, what follows is not intended to be
146 An Overview of Latin America
more than an overview that hopefully will help to put in some perspective the
challenges and specifics of democracy and, especially, of democratization in
countries marred with deep poverty and inequality, as well as uneven capit-
alisms and poorly functioning states.
8.1. A N H I S TO R I C A L A N D C O N T E XT UA L R E F E R E N C E
The states in the Northwest that survived the Darwinian struggles of the
seventeenth to the nineteenth century accomplished quite successfully the
four dimensions of the state that I have specified. Of course, these have been
relative achievements; they were and continue to be subject to setbacks and
limitations, including the constant stumbling against the inequalities gener-
ated by capitalism and bureaucracy. Yet the positive value of these achieve-
ments can be assessed by contrast with countries that have not advanced
much in all the state dimensions—and some have even regressed in them.
Although not exclusively, I am referring to Latin America. It seems to me fair
to insist that, with few and partial exceptions, in this region we have states that
should be assigned low scores in the four dimensions I proposed in Chapter 3.
The inefficacy of many of their bureaucracies has been amply documented.
The uneven, intermittent, and socially biased penetration of the legal system
is less often noted1 but no less important. Also important is the low, and in
some cases decreasing credibility of these states and their governments as
effectors of the common good of their population, and as willing and reason-
ably skilled filters.
Even though there have been valuable contributions,2 we still lack sufficient
knowledge about state formation in Latin America, per se and in relation to
the emergence of nations and of conceptions of citizenry, the people and lo
popular, and the timing of these events in relation to stages of capitalism and
1
As already mentioned, I discussed this matter in O’Donnell 1993, reprinted as chapter VII
in O’Donnell 1999. Recently, among the conclusions of a study on state-formation in Latin
America, and in contrast with the Northwest, Centeno (2002: 275) notes that in Latin America
“The establishment of successful political authority over large territories has been the exception
and not the rule.”
2
In addition to the sources I cite in the rest of the present section, see from various angles
Annino 1994, Annino et al. 2004, Bertoni 2001, Botana 1994, Cavarozzi 1996, Chiaramonte
1997 and 2004, Dunkerley 2002, Guerra 1992, 1999, and 2003, Halperı́n Donghi 1973, 1983 and
1985, López Alves 2000, Mahoney 2003, Murilo de Carvalho 1982, Oszlak 1981 and 1997,
Posada-Carbó 1995 and 1998, and Whitehead 1994. The seminal book by Cardoso and Faletto
1979 is also relevant, even if it does not directly deals with the state. Sábato 1999 provides a
useful survey of part of this literature; see also Miller 2006.
An Overview of Latin America 147
its expansion in this region. In the Northwest, in a relatively short historical

period, several processes converged: ultimately successful state-making, includ-
ing the establishment of a high degree of legal and de facto control over territories
and populations; political democratization until its expansion by means of the
universalistic wager; the widespread introjection of ideas of nationhood and,
often, of mobilizing and aggressive nationalism; and the vigorous expansion of
capitalism. These processes did not just converge; they dynamized each other in a
history of success in terms of the power and affluence of those countries, even if
marked by sometimes terrible violence and not a few setbacks.
In these respects the history of Latin America has been more disjointed. It
has also been more varied: there have been significant differences in demo-
graphics, pre-existing colonial institutions and indigenous civilizations, main
export products, and the stages of capitalism during which various regions
were incorporated into the world economy. These differences, in turn, had
important consequences in terms of how economies, class structures, ethnic
relations and, indeed, states were shaped. In fact, many of these countries had,
since independence, governments that, without almost any state apparatus
and with uncertain frontiers with other emerging states,3 tried to rule popu-
lations that often did not recognize themselves as members of a same nation
or country;4 formally democratic (or liberal) constitutions that in its premises
contradicted widespread and strongly held collectivistic or organicistic con-
ceptions; capitalist social relations implanted in parts of the territory but
scarcely diffused in others; and political centers that, instead of imposing the
overall legal and political homogenization achieved in the Northwest, wound
up pacting the coexistence of their more or less constitutional patterns with
the subsistence of patrimonial kinds of rule in often large parts of their
territory. As Annino (1993: 230) comments,
The perception that the leading groups had of the difficult processes of
formation of the national state was fundamentally dual: a political-
constitutional space not very extensive, identified with the main urban
areas, surrounded by another much more extensive and non-constitu-
tionalized space, that encompassed the rural areas.5
3
Of course Brazil and its territorial continuity is an exception to this. But still I believe that
the characterization I am making of the general features of the Latin American state also applies
to this country.
4
Guerra (1999: 47) comments that in Latin America “[The] state is not the point of arrival of
the nation, but the starting point for its creation. . . . Independence precedes both nationalism
and the nation” (my translation).
5
For apposite discussion of the reasons of this pattern see Mazzuca 2001, who places
emphasis on the different sources of taxation between Northwestern states (their own popula-
tion) and Latin American ones (foreign trade), as a crucial factor for the weakness and poor
The resulting structural heterogeneity of Latin America—noticed by many

students of the region—shows up today not only in its economy, society, and
demography, but also in its state bureaucracies and its legality. As noted, there
are some variations, past and present, within this region;6 yet all the Latin
American states reflect the deep heterogeneity of their societies. Big or small
in the size of their bureaucracies, these states are weak. Some of them have
been weak since their beginnings, and some have recently weakened, oddly
enough, under democracy. Truly, in the past some of these states were
efficacious repressive machines, but neither at those times nor after have
they managed to achieve the minimum that a reasonably strong state does:
to socially cohere and legally normalize their societies and nations. The great
theme, and problem, of the state in Latin America is that, again with partial
exceptions,7 it does not penetrate and organize its whole territory, its legality
is truncated, and the legitimacy of its coercion is challenged by its scarce
credibility as a state-for-the-nation/people/citizenry and as a beneficial filter.8
This is a state that, by itself and due to extra-regime inputs that operate
over it from dominant classes and sectors, both national and transnational,
has historically resisted its broadening despite periods of, basically vertically
controlled, populist incorporation. Nowadays, even under democratic re-
gimes and the increasing consciousness of rights I comment upon below,
this state is constricted, in the sense that it is often deaf to the demands and
interests of large parts of its population. Furthermore, when subordinate
classes and sectors manage to inscribe some rights in the legal system,
following a long-standing tradition of the region it is not unusual that those
rights turn out to be a dead letter—letra muerta. And if they are not, as
Whitehead 2004 notes, they are quite prone to reversal. These flaws have
territorial reach of the latter. See also in this sense Centeno 2002. See also López Alves 2000 and
2001, who interestingly adds the kind of wars and of political mobilization of the rural poor that
took place in the nineteenth century as relevant factors for state formation and its variations in
this region.
6
In terms of early state formation, Chile stands out as the exception; in the sense that it followed
patterns rather similar to the modal ones of the Northwest. On the other hand, a recent valuable
assessment of the poor workings of the state in the Andean countries and their relationship with
their, in most cases, shaky democracies is Mainwaring 2006 and Mainwaring et al. 2006. More
broadly for Latin America, albeit with emphasis on Argentina, see Iazzetta 2006.
7
These exceptions are basically Chile, Costa Rica, and Uruguay, and in some respects they are
only partial. On the other hand, it is hardly an accident that these countries are usually classified
as those that have a better quality of democracy and function in ways that are closer to patterns
typical of the Northwest.
8
This may be called a “rudimentary state,” a label that Elias (1996: 97) applied to Weimar’s
due to its failure to monopolize violence. However, Latin America has not reached the situation
of state failure that recent literature discusses; on Africa see the excellent study by Herbst 2000;
see also Rotberg 2004 and Zartman 2006.
serious consequences in terms of social and economic development. They also

have serious political consequences, because this kind of state and the govern-
ments that parade at their apex have limited capacity for democratizing
societies in which a long history of poverty and inequality demands persistent
efforts in which a broadened, stronger state would have to play a central role.
8.2. S O M E C O N T E M P O R A RY F E AT U R E S
A state of low efficacy, effectiveness, credibility and filtering may coexist with
reasonably fair elections and some political rights and freedoms. But, large or
small, this state scarcely functions as a propeller of the extension of civil and
cultural rights and, even less so, of social rights. This state does not appear to
be truly a state-for-the-nation/people/citizenry; and often, the same may be
said of its respective governments. Thus, almost all Latin Americans perceive
that the state is oriented to favor the rich and powerful, as shown by Table 1.
This perception of a heavily biased state is also of a corrupt one. The same
source reports another highly skeptical view of a salient problem in these
countries, namely, widespread corruption and lack of progress in reducing it.
This is shown in Table 2.
This negative judgment9 is reinforced by responses to the 2008 Latinobar-
ómetro, where 68.6 percent of Latin Americans respond that they believe that
state officials are corrupt, with a high of 80.8 percent in Honduras and a low,
but still substantial 45.6 percent in Uruguay. These views quite obviously link
with the opinion that the biased and corrupt state spends its income badly, as
shown in Table 3.
Notice in this Table that the responses in the three countries that are
reputed to have democracies that resemble more closely the ones in the
Northwest (Chile, Costa Rica, and Uruguay), even if less abysmal than in
the rest, also evince a strongly majoritarian view: the Latin American state is
scarcely credible.10
9
In addition, another important source of data, the Latin American Public Opinon Project
(LAPOP), after a detailed study of their own surveys reaches the rather dismal conclusion that “By
most measures, it appears that corruption remains widespread and in recent decades has increased
in the region” (LAPOP 2006). For analysis of this matter based on these data, see Seligson 2002.
10
In addition, 75.20% Latin Americans do not think that the criteria for collecting taxes is
fair (these responses are quite homogeneous throughout the region, with a high of 88.90%
Ecuadorians and a low of 63.90% Hondurans expressing this view); data from Latinobarómetro
2003. These views are probably related to the fact that Latin American countries are the ones
Table 1 For the benefit of whom the goverment rules (%)
2006
To the benefit of the For the good

Country interests of the powerful of the people
Argentina 76.3 23.7

Bolivia 59.9 40.1
Brasil 62.0 38.0
Colombia 69.1 30.9
Costa Rica 76.9 23.1
Chile 71.9 28.1
Ecuador 88.4 11.6
El Salvador 85.2 14.8
Guatemala 80.5 19.5
Honduras 79.3 20.7
México 67.2 32.8
Nicaragua 84.9 15.1
Panamá 82.8 17.2
Paraguay 83.4 16.6
Perú 79.3 20.7
Rep. Dominicana 74.6 25.4
Uruguay 50.1 49.9
Venezuela 45.8 54.2
Source: Latinobarómetro 2006, in answer to the question: “Would you say that the country is governed by
some powerful interests in their own benefit, or is it governed for the good of the people?” (“¿Dirı́a Ud. que el
paı́s está gobernado por unos cuantos intereses poderosos en su propio beneficio, o que está gobernado para
el bien de todo el pueblo?”). I am very grateful to Corporación Latinobarómetro and its director, Mrs Marta
Lagos, for having facilitated my access to these valuable data.
This state of low credibility also appears to most respondents as one that
cannot be trusted in one of its basic responsibilities protecting the safety of its
inhabitants by means of the police. Most Latin Americans do not trust this
institution (notice that with the exception of Chile in all other countries more
than 50 percent of respondents in Table 4 express distrust), widely reputed as
corrupt and prone to illegal violence.
These are data on individuals who are very skeptical about the claims of
their states to exist and decide for the good of all, including the custodial role
that rely more on (mostly regressive) indirect taxes and less in direct (basically income) taxes in
the world. This kind of system is at best neutral in relation to the pre-tax income distribution.
Table 2 Perceptions of the progress (or lack thereof) of reduction of corruption in the
state (%)
2006
Country A lot Some Little Nothing
Argentina 2.9 26.1 36.4 34.7

Bolivia 8.6 40.4 33.4 17.6
Brasil 9.9 31.1 32.0 27.0
Colombia 24.5 31.3 27.2 17.0
Costa Rica 9.9 30.9 32.4 26.8
Chile 8.8 32.2 35.4 23.6
Ecuador 2.5 20.4 31.3 45.7
El Salvador 7.1 19.0 31.0 42.9
Guatemala 5.2 27.4 36.1 31.3
Honduras 12.2 26.2 28.1 33.5
México 6.0 32.1 32.9 29.1
Nicaragua 14.0 18.9 30.5 36.6
Panamá 6.4 30.7 27.6 35.2
Paraguay 3.6 14.0 31.8 50.7
Perú 5.3 25.9 31.6 37.2
Rep. Dominicana 10.8 40.6 30.7 17.9
Uruguay 10.9 45.4 25.5 18.1
Venezuela 23.0 29.5 21.6 25.9
Source: Latinobarómetro 2006, in response to the question: “How much do you think the reduction of
corruption has progressed in the past two years?” (“¿Cuánto cree Ud. que se ha progresado en reducir la
corrupción en las instituciones del Estado en estos últimos dos años?”).
of the police, the institution arguably more relevant for their daily lives,
especially of those who are by far more frequent victims of violence, the
poor. And, despite differences across countries, everywhere the poor are a
large proportion of the population of Latin America. Estimates for the first
years of the present decade vary11 depending on source and methodology;
there are around 40 percent of poor and 15 percent of indigents in the total
11
In Latin America, the remarkable dearth of data of minimal reliability or just their lack
(except for some economic data, basically macro, that is of direct interest to international
financial organizations and some finance ministries), is in itself an indication of the deficiencies
of the Latin American states. In a research project I am currently engaged in, we found that with
the partial exceptions of Brazil and Chile, the respective governments, and consequently
manifold social actors, simply do not have information that should be, to say the least, useful
for adequate policy-making and its discussion.
Table 3 Perceptions of the good use (or not) that the state makes of its fiscal
income. (%)
2005
Country Yes No
Argentina 24.10 75.90

Bolivia 15.00 85.00
Brasil 12.90 87.10
Colombia 21.70 78.30
Costa Rica 12.30 87.70
Chile 41.30 58.70
Ecuador 12.10 87.90
El Salvador 32.40 67.60
Guatemala 14.60 85.40
Honduras 21.30 78.70
México 14.80 85.20
Nicaragua 15.50 84.50
Panamá 14.00 86.00
Paraguay 18.30 81.70
Perú 10.60 89.40
Rep. Dominicana 24.70 75.30
Uruguay 56.40 43.60
Venezuela 42.60 57.40
Source: Latinobarómetro 2005, in response to the question: “In general about taxes. Do you trust that the
income from taxes will be well spent by the state?” (“En general respecto de los impuestos? Tiene Ud.
confianza en que el dinero de los impuestos serán bien gastados por el Estado?”).
population of Latin America; this of course is related to the highest regional

levels of inequality in the world, estimated for that same period at a Gini
coefficient of 0.535.12
Furthermore, and no less relevant for the access to citizenship and its rights
and obligations, is the fact that in 1995, 55.7 percent of the urban working-age
population were in the informal market. Worse, this percentage has been
growing; it was 40.2 percent in 1980, 47.0 percent in 1985, and 52.1 percent in
12
The best single source of data are the reports of the Economic Commission for Latin
America (several years). A recently published source that usefully gathers information from
several international organizations is Organization of the American States 2007.
Table 4 Trust in the Police (%)
2006
Country A lot Some Little None
Argentina 3.4 25.9 43.2 27.4

Bolivia 3.1 30.1 37.6 29.2
Brasil 12.4 30.1 35.4 22.1
Colombia 15.7 27.2 34.2 22.9
Costa Rica 6.5 30.3 34.4 28.8
Chile 17.4 46.0 24.8 11.8
Ecuador 2.0 16.4 43.2 38.4
El Salvador 10.5 23.0 39.3 27.2
Guatemala 3.9 16.3 39.4 40.4
Honduras 17.2 22.9 30.4 29.6
México 7.8 23.5 34.5 34.2
Nicaragua 14.2 24.1 31.0 30.8
Panamá 13.8 38.7 29.3 18.2
Paraguay 4.5 21.3 30.5 43.7
Perú 3.9 26.6 37.9 31.6
Rep. Dominicana 10.8 35.4 32.3 21.5
Uruguay 12.9 37.5 32.3 17.4
Venezuela 14.3 34.4 28.5 22.8
Source: Latibarómetro 2006, in response to the question: “How much trust do you have in the Police?“
(“Cuánta confianza tiene usted en la Policı́a?”).
1990 (data from Thorp 1998: 221 and passim).13 In recent years this percent-
age has probably diminished to about 5 percent, but its absolute numbers
have likely increased; furthermore, that proportion is higher, and indeed for
poverty and indigence, in the rural sector, for which estimates are rather
rough guesses; once more, the lack of minimally reliable data on these topics
is an appalling indication of state deficiencies. Anyhow, the general situation
this information depicts is very serious, not only in terms of the curtailed
access that it entails to basic social rights that come with formal employment,
but also because the vast economy that underlies the informal labor market is
a huge source of drainage of the taxes that a reasonably efficacious state could
use for advancing those and other rights.
13
Mesa-Lago 2008 reports that the regional average of informal urban employment was 43%
in 1990 and 47% in 2002, while in 2002–4 poverty incidence in the total population was 41.7%.
These data highlight one of the specificities of this region as compared with
the Northwest. In the latter, the expansion of the state and capitalism included
the increasing incorporation of urban workers, and even many rural ones, to the
formal labor market; this greatly helped the extension of social and other rights I
noted in Chapter 2. In contrast, referring to a previous period of Latin America,
1950–1980, Portes (1994: 121) makes the important observation that “contrary
to its course in the advanced countries, self-employment did not decline
with industrialization but remained essentially constant during this thirty-
year period”; as I noted, this is still true if not worse nowadays, propelled by
high rates of growth of the working-age population.14 It goes without saying that
these facts create great obstacles to the extension of the various dimensions of
citizenship and, with this, of further democratization in these countries; Mesa-
Lago (2008a: 2) comments, these facts mean “creating a formidable challenge to
social insurance to maintain and expand its coverage because most informal
workers are legally excluded or have voluntary coverage.” Obviously, this situa-
tion hinders the acquisition of basic social rights for many people, but this is not
the only consequence; it also curtails the expansion of political citizenship, as it
creates fertile ground for pervasive clientelistic practices.
On the other hand, the period after the spurt of democratization of the
1980s has seen, albeit under quite different policy orientations, the access of
the higher classes and segments of the middle sectors to levels of consumption
that mimic, and sometimes exaggerate, those of the Northwest. The notoriety
of this kind of consumption, enhanced by the mass media, contrasts with the
continuing poverty of the rest of the population. As to the latter, the govern-
ments of this period, however, have made policies that reduced (albeit to still
unsatisfactory levels) infant mortality, raised life expectancy, and expanded
primary and secondary education (although the quality of those advanced
varies in close consonance with class differences and the overall inequality in
each country).15
14
On the Latin American informal labor sector see Altimir 1998, Centeno and Portes 2006,
CEPAL 2007, Mesa-Lago 2008b, Portes and Haller 2005, Rakowski 1994, and Tokman 1992 and
2004.
15
On these and related topics see especially annual reports of the Economic Commission for
Latina America. I add that, as reported by this source (2009), in a publication that unfortunately
reached me too late to use it in the present book, there have been some positive developments
during the years 2003 to 2007. In this period, mainly propelled by the favorable situation of the
international economy and an ongoing demographic transition that is reducing the proportion
of minors in the total population, average poverty decreased to 32% and of indigence 12.9%,
jointly with a parallel decrease in infant mortality and a small diminution of inequality as
measured by the Gini index while social expenditures increased, albeit quite slightly on average.
However, as this source indicates, the apparent tendency may have been reversed in 2008, and it
is not clear that it could resume in the foreseeable future.
In such a context, political democracy and its universalistic and equalizing

dimensions seem to be left floating in a fragmented and unequal society that is
loosely linked to a state that performs poorly in its four dimensions. This tends
to deprive social life of a sense of collective orientation, of the feeling that the
state is a rudder that can give it direction. By the same token, as the state at
times seems to disintegrate in the banality of its incapacities and in the frequent
scandals of its corrupt colonization, politics itself tends to share in that banality.
8.3. S T R A N G E A N D F L AW E D Y E T S U RV I V I N G
D E M O C R AC I E S
The ‘crisis of politics’ (or of ‘representation’) is often mentioned in the world

but probably nowhere more than in contemporary Latin America. It is indeed a
crisis, but political democracy, even with its many flaws, imprints on contem-
porary Latin America some peculiar characteristics. One is that even though
several presidents have been ousted, this has been through institutional chan-
nels, without the military coup that was almost routine in previous times.16
This relates to the fact that, as Cheresky (2006: 183) notes, in practically all of
these countries elections “have become the almost undisputed source of politi-
cal power.” Furthermore, in many countries the weakening of parties and party
systems, as well as the increasing influence of the mass media and opinion polls,
mean that many national elections have become extremely competitive.
These democracies have up to now survived severe crises of various kinds.
Yet this has not meant the strengthening or increase in the trust of parties and
another crucial institution of the democratic regime, congress. Rather, as we
can see in Tables 5 and 6, respectively, an overwhelming majority of Latin
Americans express distrust of parties and Congress.17
Furthermore, concurrently with what we saw in relation to the police, most
Latin Americans distrust the judiciary, even if on average it scores slightly
better than parties and Congress (see Table 7).
Consistently with these answers, few Latin Americans believe that the
courts punish those who are guilty, as shown in Table 8.
These responses point to problems that have serious consequences that go
beyond the sphere of politics proper: another overwhelming majority of Latin
16
For analysis of these cases see Pérez Liñán 2007.
17
Consistently with these views, Latinobarómetro 2008 reports data that have been quite
stable in its surveys along the present decade. Only 57% of Latin Americans agree with the
statement “Without Congress there can be no democracy” (“Sin congreso nacional no puede
haber democracia”), and 56% with that same statement in relation to political parties.
Table 5 Trust in political parties (%)
2006
Country A Lot Some Little None
Argentina 1.1 11.7 31.0 56.2

Bolivia 1.7 16.0 32.4 49.9
Brasil 4.2 18.6 36.1 41.1
Colombia 3.8 14.5 39.3 42.5
Costa Rica 3.7 22.7 31.1 42.5
Chile 2.6 21.9 35.4 40.0
Ecuador 0.8 7.0 29.0 63.3
El Salvador 3.2 12.7 35.7 48.4
Guatemala 2.2 14.1 36.4 47.3
Honduras 11.3 15.5 26.4 46.8
México 5.7 23.9 36.0 34.4
Nicaragua 4.7 13.9 29.3 52.1
Panamá 5.6 18.0 32.2 44.2
Paraguay 2.6 11.0 29.3 57.1
Perú 1.3 18.8 38.6 41.3
Rep. Dominicana 5.0 25.0 40.5 29.5
Uruguay 4.9 28.9 37.5 28.7
Venezuela 12.3 29.1 34.1 24.4
Source: Latinobarómetro 2006, in response to the question: “How much trust do you have in the political
parties?” (“¿Cuánta confianza tiene Ud. en los partidos polı́ticos?”).
Americans opine that the state fails not only in the efficacy of the police and
judiciary but also in the effectiveness of its legal system in guaranteeing a
reasonable degree of equality before the law—this is shown in Table 9.
However, despite and to some extent also because of these critical percep-
tions and the obvious flaws that underlie them, in contemporary times many
Latin Americans have been willing to demand various kinds of rights vigor-
ously. Even if they hold those views about the state and basic institutions of
the regime, still a majority declare a preference for democracy and the
subsequent rejection of authoritarian alternatives. Thus, under the above
mentioned circumstances quite a remarkable average (63 percent) of Latin
Americans assert that, even though it may have flaws, they prefer democracy
(see Table 10); and an even higher average (75 percent) explicitly prefer
democracy to an ‘authoritarian government’ (see Table 11).
Table 6 Trust in Congress (%)
2006
Argentina 3.7 22.2 39.6 34.5

Bolivia 4.2 30.0 36.9 28.8
Brasil 8.4 24.3 36.8 30.5
Colombia 6.9 22.8 37.9 32.3
Costa Rica 5.8 25.8 36.2 32.3
Chile 3.5 27.7 39.8 29.0
Ecuador 0.3 5.7 27.9 66.1
El Salvador 4.3 15.5 37.4 42.8
Guatemala 3.3 17.3 38.4 41.0
Honduras 13.4 19.3 30.5 36.8
México 6.3 23.5 37.1 33.1
Nicaragua 5.0 13.9 30.6 50.5
Panamá 3.7 18.4 37.3 40.5
Paraguay 3.6 12.5 32.7 51.2
Perú 1.3 18.3 36.4 44.0
Rep. Dominicana 7.2 34.5 39.1 19.3
Uruguay 8.7 40.9 34.1 16.3
Venezuela 24.4 34.3 19.6 21.7
Source: Latinobarómetro 2006, in response to the question: “How much trust do you have in the national
Congress/Parliament”? (“¿Cuánta confianza tiene Ud. en el Congreso Nacional/ Parlamento?”).
Yet, respondents who express majoritarian preference for democracy also

express widespread mistrust with respect to the very institution that is
supposed to oversee the fairness of such a basic element of democracy as
elections are—the electoral courts, variously denominated in these countries.
See Table 12 and its obvious implication of suspicion of fraud and other
irregular acts in most countries, with the partial exception of Uruguay.
Surveys in other democratic countries exhibit significant proportions of a
mix of skepticism, if not cynicism, toward basic political institutions jointly
with majoritarian support or approval of democracy, but Latin America is an
extreme case of this mix. This pattern, as well as other data,18 some of which
18
In addition to the rich mine of data of the source I use here, Latinobarómetro, another
valuable source is the already mentioned LAPOP. Also, for analysis of data up to the early 2000s
see Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo (PNUD) 2004.
Table 7 Trust in the Judiciary (%)
2006
Argentina 4.3 27.9 43.7 24.1

Bolivia 4.6 34.0 39.4 21.9
Brasil 14.7 31.4 36.5 17.4
Colombia 11.8 27.1 42.0 19.1
Costa Rica 10.7 35.0 38.3 15.9
Chile 3.6 30.0 40.2 26.3
Ecuador 0.8 14.4 33.6 51.1
El Salvador 7.6 21.5 38.5 32.4
Guatemala 4.2 24.0 48.2 23.5
Honduras 15.2 18.0 32.1 34.6
México 8.2 31.4 36.8 23.7
Nicaragua 8.7 16.8 36.2 38.3
Panamá 6.6 34.5 36.3 22.6
Paraguay 5.5 14.1 39.7 40.8
Perú 2.5 16.6 39.8 41.1
Rep. Dominicana 12.8 44.2 29.8 13.2
Uruguay 15.2 42.6 29.8 12.4
Venezuela 23.0 37.6 24.0 15.5
Source: Latinobarómetro 2006, in response to the question: “How much trust do you have in the judiciary?”
(“¿Cuánta confianza tiene Ud. en el Poder Judicial?”).
I present below, create enigmatic problems of interpretation. Several research-

ers are presently working on them and I hope to contribute to this task in my
future book, but here I cannot go beyond displaying some of the more salient
aspects of the enigma.
In this democratized but scarcely formally institutionalized setting, various
segments of the population do demand rights, sometimes in ways that entail
vetoes to public policies by means of unruly demonstrations and other acts of
collective protest. These massive processes have unfolded simultaneously and
sometimes jointly with a true explosion of judicial actions that are interest-
ingly inconsistent with the general views about the judiciary, which we saw in
Table 5. Some of these initiatives invoke broad class actions and/or collective
interests, some basic civil and/or cultural rights, and some the punishment of
widely publicized acts of state violence and/or corruption. These are impor-
tant new phenomena that are eliciting attention from an abundant literature,
Table 8 The courts punish those who are guilty without looking at who they are (%)
2005
Country Strongly agree Agree Disagree Strongly disagree
Argentina 5.8 19.6 51.0 23.6

Bolivia 4.7 34.2 49.2 11.9
Brasil 20.8 25.1 19.6 34.4
Colombia 10.1 35.4 45.7 8.8
Costa Rica 12.2 36.2 35.9 15.7
Chile 4.8 25.9 52.3 17.0
Ecuador 4.1 27.2 47.2 21.4
El Salvador 5.0 22.5 43.8 28.7
Guatemala 6.5 24.0 40.7 28.8
Honduras 9.5 25.5 34.8 30.2
México 6.1 29.6 48.4 15.9
Nicaragua 11.5 20.6 44.5 23.4
Panamá 5.3 18.6 48.6 27.5
Paraguay 1.5 22.8 44.3 31.3
Perú 4.8 25.1 54.0 16.0
Rep. Dominicana 13.4 29.2 39.8 17.6
Uruguay 7.7 45.7 40.0 6.6
Venezuela 16.3 31.6 38.3 13.8
Source: Data from Latibarómetro 2005 in response to the: question “Would say that the judicial system
punishes the guilty without caring who they are?” (“Ud. dirı́a que está muy de acuerdo, de acuerdo, en
desacuerdo o muy en desacuerdo con la siguiente opinión: El sistema judicial castiga a los culpables sin
importar quienes son?”).
not only from academics but also from various NGOs.19 These actions express
and enact a vast array of demands that include among other intensely articu-
lated issues various gender and reproductive, ethnic, gay, environmental, and
health rights—this, in some countries and periods has entailed an explosion
of demands that are poorly if at all aggregated and politically processed by
political parties and legislatures. Of course, much remains to be achieved in
these and related matters, but these actions, both those that are extensive and
those focused on the judiciary, evince a broad diffusion of the consciousness
19
About these events of “social accountability” I refer to the proponents of this concept,
Smulovitz and Peruzzotti 2000, and Peruzzotti and Smulovitz 2006; see also, on the judicializa-
tion of some of these demands, Domingo 2006, Domingo and Sieder 2001, Gargarella et al.
2006, and Sieder 2002.
Table 9 Opinions about equality before the law (%)
2005
Country A lot Some Little Nothing
Argentina 4.6 13.9 44.1 37.3

Bolivia 5.9 15.0 40.2 38.9
Brasil 11.4 12.5 48.7 27.4
Colombia 10.3 21.0 46.3 22.4
Costa Rica 18.5 19.0 38.8 23.6
Chile 4.9 15.0 49.0 31.2
Ecuador 3.3 10.7 58.5 27.4
El Salvador 17.4 12.1 30.9 39.6
Guatemala 4.1 14.0 44.8 37.1
Honduras 23.0 9.2 39.5 28.3
México 10.5 12.2 40.6 36.7
Nicaragua 19.4 12.2 26.0 42.4
Panamá 12.1 16.4 37.8 33.7
Paraguay 7.6 12.2 28.2 52.0
Perú 7.3 11.9 48.6 32.2
Rep. Dominicana 10.5 12.3 35.0 42.1
Uruguay 10.4 39.5 35.3 14.8
Venezuela 22.1 24.7 36.8 16.4
Source: Latinobarómetro 2005, in response to the question: “Would you say that the (nationality) are equal
before the law?” (“¿Dirı́a usted que los (nacionalidad) tienen igualdad ante la ley?”). The same source, on the
basis of the general report on its 2008 survey, makes clear that negative responses to this question have
remained stable during the decade. In terms of the Latin American average they have been 28% in 2002, 27%
in 2003, 28% in 2005, and 30% in 2008.
of rights among what, in quite a few of these countries, are vast segments of
the population.
In their scope, intensity, and characteristics of mobilization, these processes
are big news for Latin America; they entail an important extension of democ-
ratization, especially in terms of willingness to invoke and mobilize the
political rights of the democratic regime for the sake of demanding other
rights, often by social sectors and classes that before democratization had all
kinds of rights severely curtailed. On the other hand, in some Latin American
countries these processes operate in the face of a rather peculiar emergence. It
is that some political leaders, including several past and present presidents,
hold a strong anti-institutional bias, including acute skepticism about basic
institutions of the democratic regime. They conceive of democracy and their
Table 10 Preference for democracy I (%)
2006
Country Strongly Agree Agree Disagree Strongly disagree
Argentina 28.1 59.0 10.7 2.1

Bolivia 20.6 60.3 16.2 2.9
Brasil 40.6 41.8 12.6 5.0
Colombia 19.4 58.9 18.9 2.8
Costa Rica 25.4 59.0 12.3 3.3
Chile 29.0 50.1 17.7 3.2
Ecuador 13.3 57.7 23.8 5.2
El Salvador 20.2 47.8 25.7 6.3
Guatemala 15.9 59.8 21.0 3.3
Honduras 18.1 55.9 19.3 6.8
México 16.6 57.0 21.7 4.7
Nicaragua 28.6 46.1 21.5 3.9
Panamá 29.9 54.9 12.3 2.8
Paraguay 13.5 45.4 28.0 13.0
Perú 12.9 62.1 20.7 4.3
Uruguay 48.0 41.4 8.4 2.2
Venezuela 32.7 60.8 5.5 1.1
Average Latin America 63.0 29.0 6.1 1.9
Source: Latinobarómetro 2006, in response to the question: “Are you in strong agreement, or in agreement,
or disagree, or strongly disagree with the following statement: democracy may have problems, but it is the
best system of government?” (“¿Está Ud muy de acuerdo, de acuerdo, en desacuerdo o muy en desacuerdo
con la siguiente afirmación: La democracia puede tener problemas, pero es el mejor sistema de gobierno?”).
own rule in a caesaristic, super-majoritarian and hyper-presidentialist way.

They are democratic, as they are elected in reasonably fair elections and
during their tenure some basic political freedoms remain effective (however,
some presidents who start in this way slip into authoritarianism, such
as Fujimori in Peru, and for that matter Putin in Russia, and as Chávez is
doing nowadays in Venezuela). These are what I have termed delegative
democracies.20 These leaders (and their followers) believe that the fact of
their reasonably fair election authorizes them to govern as they see fit for
what they deem best for the country; consequently, various institutions of
20
For delegative democracy see O’Donnell 1999, chapter VIII. On “horizontal accountabili-
ty” I refer again to chapters II, III, and IV in O’Donnell 2007a.
Table 11 Preference for democracy II (%)
2006
Democracy In some circumstances, Indifferent

Country preferable autoritaritarian preferred
Argentina 75.0 16.5 8.5

Bolivia 65.5 19.7 14.8
Brasil 54.4 21.4 24.2
Colombia 56.0 16.5 27.5
Costa Rica 80.9 9.5 9.6
Chile 58.9 14.0 27.1
Ecuador 59.0 22.7 18.3
Salvador 58.7 16.8 24.5
Guatemala 44.9 38.1 17.0
Honduras 57.7 13.3 29.0
México 61.8 17.5 20.8
Nicaragua 63.8 15.9 20.2
Panamá 59.9 20.6 19.4
Paraguay 43.0 31.8 25.2
Perú 60.1 21.7 18.2
Uruguay 73.8 21.4 4.9
Venezuela 80.5 9.9 9.6
Average Latin 75.9 12.4 11.8
America
Source: Latinobarómetro 2006, in response to the question: “With which of the following sentences are you
more in agreement: Democracy is preferable to any other form of government; in some circumstances an
authoritarian government may be preferable; or to somebody like myself it is the same whether it is a
democratic regime or a non-democratic one?” (“¿Con cuál de las siguientes frases está Ud. más de acuerdo:
La democracia es preferible a cualquier otra forma de gobierno; En algunas circunstancias un gobierno
autoritario puede ser preferible a uno democrático o a la gente como uno nos da lo mismo un régimen
democrático que uno no democrático?”).
responsibility and accountability, both those constitutionally prescribed

(such as congress and the judiciary) and those that have been added by
legislation in most countries (ombudsmen, accounting offices, autonomous
prosecutors, and the like) are seen as nagging obstacles that these rulers try
hard, and often succeed, to cancel, co-opt, or otherwise neutralize—this is
what makes these democracies delegative, not representative.
It is significant that not only in the countries where delegative leaders
have accessed national government, many Latin Americans express opinions
compatible with this kind of political rule; see in Table 13 the high proportion
Table 12 Trust in the Electoral Court (%)
2006
Country Much Some Little None
Argentina 6.7 31.0 34.9 27.4

Bolivia 16.8 43.6 29.8 9.7
Brasil 29.4 35.7 24.2 10.7
Colombia 11.3 27.6 41.3 19.7
Costa Rica 26.5 37.2 26.0 10.3
Chile 20.7 39.1 29.6 10.6
Ecuador 2.1 11.5 33.3 53.1
El Salvador 11.9 20.6 36.4 31.1
Guatemala 15.8 30.4 35.9 17.8
Honduras 22.9 24.7 27.9 24.5
México 20.7 31.5 26.0 21.8
Nicaragua 16.2 22.1 30.3 31.5
Panamá 29.8 42.9 17.1 10.2
Paraguay 9.1 20.4 37.2 33.3
Perú 9.1 41.4 35.4 14.1
Rep. Dominicana 9.4 34.9 30.3 25.3
Uruguay 27.9 49.5 18.2 4.4
Venezuela 34.6 29.8 17.5 18.1
Source: Latinbarómetro 2006 in response to the question “How much do you trust the electoral court?”
(“¿Cuánta confianza tiene Ud. en el Tribunal Electoral?”).
(a remarkable 74 percent of Latin Americans) who strongly agree or agree

with “rather than political parties or congress what we need is a decisive leader
who would solve the problems of the country.”21
On the other hand, countries such as Brazil (but only after Collor’s failed
presidency), as well as the democracies that as already mentioned bear more
resemblance with Northwestern ones (Chile, Costa Rica, and Uruguay) have
21
But notice that the percentage of responses that agree strongly and agree to a clearly
authoritarian statement (“I wouldn’t care if a non-democratic government arrives to power if it
solves the economic problems” (“No me importarı́a que un gobierno no democrático llegue al
poder si resuelve los problemas económicos”)) is significantly lower than the ones in Table 13: an
average of 53% for Latin America, with a high of 69% for Paraguay, and a low for Uruguay of 31%;
anyhow, the percentages of other rather old democracies are disturbingly high, Chile 49% and
Costa Rica 54%, similar to the larger countries, Brazil (57%), and México (61%), and higher than
one that since democratization has undergone several serious crises, Argentina (43%).
Table 13 Responses about a ‘decisive leader’ (%)
Country Strongly agree Agree Disagree Strongly disagree
Argentina 24.0 44.8 22.5 8.7

Bolivia 17.7 58.9 17.8 5.5
Brasil 58.1 24.5 7.7 9.7
Colombia 25.2 56.8 16.5 1.5
Costa Rica 28.5 39.7 17.8 14.1
Chile 22.4 49.6 20.2 7.9
Ecuador 17.8 46.8 24.9 10.4
El Salvador 28.6 49.7 12.4 9.3
Guatemala 14.7 42.3 25.5 17.4
Honduras 24.0 60.2 13.2 2.6
México 28.0 51.7 15.8 4.6
Nicaragua 24.9 64.5 8.1 2.5
Panamá 23.9 53.6 15.1 7.5
Paraguay 44.2 42.3 9.7 3.8
Perú 22.8 56.8 17.1 3.4
Uruguay 17.9 41.6 21.9 18.6
Venezuela 34.8 35.9 18.2 11.1
Average Latin America 26.7 48.2 17.0 8.1
Source: Latinobarómetro 2003, in response to the question: “Are you in strong agreement, or in agreement, or
disagree, or strongly disagree with the following statement: Rather than political parties and Congress, what
we need is a decisive leader who undertakes to solve the problems?” (“Está Ud muy de acuerdo, de acuerdo,
en desacuerdo o muy en desacuerdo con la siguiente afirmación: Más que partidos polı́ticos y Congreso lo
que nos hace falta es un lı́der decidido que se ponga a resolver los problemas.”).
been free of the delegative “option”; but this has not exempted them from the
massive popular demands and the judicial actions I mention above; further-
more, as is shown in Table 13, a majority of the respondents in these countries
also express preference for the “decisive leader” option.
These preferences on one hand, and on the other the preferences for
democracy we saw in preceding tables, are part of the enigma to which
I refer above. Pending the necessary analyses of this matter, what for the
time being seems clear is that in Latin America there has emerged a new
situation. It may be summarized by the titles of two texts by a distinguished
student of this matter: it is a “new citizenship” immersed in “politics after [the
crisis of political] parties” (Cheresky 1999 and 2006), free to choose among
competing electoral candidates almost without party and class loyalties;
however, the image of such citizenship needs correction in relation to the

dependence entailed by widespread clientelism, as well as various practices of
pressure and co-optation of social movements and unions.22
Nowadays, we have political democracies that have resisted relentless crises
without breaking down; a diverse political citizenship; national regimes that
at times coexist with subnational ones that are authoritarian; a state that in
most countries continues failing in all its dimensions; sharp inequalities, as
well as persistent poverty and indigence; a very uneven extension of civil and
cultural rights, jointly with little progress and in several countries regressions
in social rights;23 and in some countries regimes that in a sense are democratic
but display the anti-institutional biases that make them delegative, not
representative. And we also have a citizenship that, despite the negative
impact of the vertical controls noted above, is more conscious than ever of
some rights and at least sometimes more willing to demand and exercise
them, even if often outside the institutional arenas furnished by the regime.
This is the longest period of democracy in Latin America; it is also, in the
characteristics I have succinctly depicted, a new democratic situation unfore-
seen by the literature, including those of us who worked on transitions from
authoritarian rule.
Another positive side of political democracy in Latin America is that it has
facilitated the emergence of movements and parties of originary peoples, after
centuries of oppression, discrimination, and political exclusion; they have
great importance in some countries, Ecuador and especially Bolivia, where a
government largely based on those movements presently rules.24 This concurs
to show that in some important senses even these flawed democracies do
matter, as they have provided a less repressive context and in most countries
the constitutional or at least legal recognition of a series of rights of indi-
genous peoples and communities, further helped by the support of various
international networks and agencies.
In synthesis, in the situations discussed in this chapter appears an aspect
that I wish to stress: various political rights of democracy (association,
expression, and the like) have been used and invoked for instigating a demand
for a variety of rights, in ways that begin with voting and mass mobilizations
all the way to court actions. As with the literature about state formation in the
22
For discussion of these “vertical controls” see Ippolito-O’Donnell 2009a and 2009b.
23
As mentioned in Chapter 4, on the basis of an extensive study and data base on the
implantation of rights in Latin America, Foweraker and Krznaric (2002: 29–59) found that little
has happened beyond the generalized achievement of political rights. See also Foweraker and
Landman 1997.
24
See Assies 2001 and Assies et al. 2001, Gómez 2002, Gray Molina 2006, Sieder 2000 and
2002, Stavenhagen 1996, Van Cott 2000, 2005, and 2008, and Yashar 2005.
United States, the study of the characteristics of most contemporary Latin

American democracies is a recently opened frontier of research; this emerging
problématique has already elicited valuable studies that explore it;25 much
remains, however, to be understood before drawing safe assessments of the
full contours and future prospects of this situation.
25
See especially Cavarozzi and Abal Medina 2002, Cavarozzi 1996 and 1997, Cheresky 1999,
2006 and 2007, Garretón 2000, Garretón et al. 2003, Gibson 2004, Hagopian and Mainwaring
2005, as well as the earlier contributions of Weffort 1989 and 1992.
..................
9
..................
Social Context, Options,
and Convergences11
In Chapter 7, I noted that a necessary or at least an extremely helpful condition

for nourishing the dialectics of identity, recognition, and socialization is the
availability of dialogical networks of discourse. This is one reason why democ-
racy matters beyond its purely political aspects; it matters for the existence,
reproduction, and eventual expansion of those networks, and with them for
the active exercise of citizenship in many social areas. It is there that the very
agency presupposed by political democracy, is acquired, reproduced, and re-
elaborated—and sometimes lost. That said, we leave the micro-level we looked
at in Chapter 7 and—after the overview of Latin America we undertook in
Chapter 8, which showed some serious macro-level problems—we will be
looking at the macro-level here in more detail. In Section 9.1 I discuss some
relationships between dialogism and political freedoms with their overall
social context, pointing out the inherently social dimension of some “individ-
ual” freedoms. This reasoning leads to the discovery (9.2) of a very important
convergence, within democracy (as here conceived), human rights, and con-
ceptions of human development; I argue that this convergence springs from
the fact that all these currents are grounded on a similar conception of the
human being as an agent. In turn, these conceptions unavoidably posit
the complex issue of what may be the minimal conditions, or options, for
the effectuation of the values posited by those currents (9.3). This section
highlights the importance of the availability of the rights and freedoms of
political democracy, plus whatever civil rights may be available, for the uphill
struggles that deprived sectors must wage for attaining those conditions. But
those struggles mix with some phenomena that have forever existed but have
significantly increased in recent times, the various dimensions of pluralization
and globalization—this topic occupies us in the coming chapter.
1
The present chapter is based in part in O’Donnell 2004.
168 Social Context, Options, and Convergences
9.1. O N T H E S O C I A L C O N T E X T
We saw in Chapter 1 that many authors agree that the availability of free,
pluralistic, and non-monopolized or censored information is a necessary
condition for the existence of a democratic regime. For example, among the
attributes listed by Dahl is that “alternative sources of information exist and
are protected by law.”2 Notice that this is not strictly an individual right:
having this kind of information is a social given, independent of the will of
single individuals, who may or may not want to use that information. On the
other hand, the right to the availability of free and pluralistic information is
the collective, social side of the coin of the individual freedoms of expression
and association; the individual and the social aspects of both kinds of free-
doms presuppose, complement, and stimulate each other.3
Accessing free and pluralist information and its cognates, the freedoms of
expression and association, as shown by the enormous attention paid to them
in legal theory and practice,4 span over innumerable social areas, well beyond
the regime. To be effective, this freedom presupposes two greatly facilitating,
if not necessary, conditions. One is a social context congenial to the existence
of a diversity of values, beliefs, lifestyles, and opinions; the other is a legal
system that backs this diversity and, through it, the existence and continued
transformation of a diverse social context and a dialogical public sphere.
As in Chapter 1, here we find a boundary problem: it is theoretically
undecidable where, and on the basis of what criteria, we may trace a clear
and firm dividing line between aspects of the freedom of alternative informa-
tion that are necessary for political democracy to exist, and those that are not.
For example, in a given country discussion might be allowed about political
matters, but the issues may be narrowly defined. If, say, the public discussion
of gender or sexual diversity rights were censored, or if groups promoting
agrarian reform were prohibited from accessing the media, we would not
consider this freedom satisfied. Yet, in the not-too-distant past of the North-
western countries this kind of restriction was not considered problematic.5
2
Dahl 1989: 221.
3
Raz (1984: 87) asserts that these “general beneficial features of society are inherently public
goods . . . generally of benefit to individuals.”
4
This implication also springs from the argument I made in Chapter 2, in the sense that
these rights had their historical and legal origin, as well as their most frequent sphere of exercise,
in civil rights.
5
Thus Holmes and Sunstein (1999: 104) comment that “Rights . . . are constantly expanding
and contracting . . . What freedom of speech means in contemporary American jurisprudence is
not what it meant 50 or 100 years ago.”
Social Context, Options, and Convergences 169
Furthermore, as we saw with the boundary problems of other freedoms, this

one poses a complicated comparative question: would it be appropriate to
apply to new democracies the criteria that nowadays Northwestern countries
use, or should we accept more restrictive criteria such as those applied by the
latter decades ago—or is there an alternative? And, to what extent may
cultural, religious, and other specificities warrant in some countries restric-
tions that may be considered unjustified in others? As I argued in Chapter 1,
there are not, and will never be, a priori or abstract theoretically grounded
criteria that would once and for all mark a clear dividing line on these matters.
Now we need to advance a bit more in the analysis. First let us go back to
the political relationships demarcated by a democratic regime. We saw that in
this sphere individuals are legally construed as agents; they are political
citizens who can vote and try to be elected, and hold the legal personality
that underlies their political rights and freedoms; this is true by definition of a
democratic regime, whatever the differences among them. Yet for voting
being a real choice, it stands to reason that citizens need a reasonable, non-
insignificant degree of free, plural, and competitive information. In addition,
if, say, Jane decides to try getting elected, she will need to activate some of her
rights and freedoms, such as expressing opinions and associating with parties
and other citizens. These are entitlements that each one may or may not
decide to utilize. Peter may not care if they exist, and even believe it to be
wrong that other individuals have them; yet we saw that in a contemporary—
i.e. inclusive—democratic regime, the wager assigns these rights and free-
doms universalistically, independently of the preferences of single individuals.
This reasoning relates to an argument that Joseph Raz has fruitfully
developed. The effectiveness of freedoms such as the ones I have mentioned
is a public good, because
The interest of individuals in living in an open society is not confined to
those who desire to benefit from it as producers or consumers of infor-
mation or opinion. It extends to all who live in that society, for they
benefit from the part of others in the free exchange of information and
opinion.6
Raz goes on to argue that this is the main reason why these rights are usually
entrenched as constitutional ones. Whether we agree or not with this partic-
ular point, it is clear that Jane’s rights would be ineffectual if there did not
exist a social context that is congenial to her purposes (say, one that does not
discriminate against women entering into politics). Without a diverse social
6
Raz 1986: 253. Sen (1999: 31) concurs: “Individual freedom is quintessentially a social
product.”
context, the effectiveness of political rights is seriously hampered. When such

a social context exists, it benefits everyone, even those who do not recognize
its worth.
There are many valuable lives to be chosen, but each of us can only opt for
one or very few of these lives. Agency and the freedom to choose among
options is at the root of social diversity.7 I may not recognize it, but the
various lives others have lived and are living, lives different than mine, greatly
enrich me.8 Furthermore, that these others are agents invites me to accept
and celebrate, not just tolerate9 (except cases that the legal system establishes),
that they have chosen lives other than the one I live. When these mutual
recognitions are widely practiced, its aggregate result is a social context
that positively values diversity and inscribes the respective rights in its
legal system. On the other hand, such a social context offers what, as
I argued in Chapter 7, authoritarian rulers most strive to suppress: a public
sphere of dialogical networks of free discussion about matters of general
interest.
We have approximated some conclusions. One is that, if my life is enriched
by a diverse social context, I should recognize that it is my interest that all
individuals, or as many as possible, have the necessary conditions for freely
choosing their own functioning under the conditions established by law of an
(at least) partially democratized state. Another conclusion is that it is also in
my interest that these rights are inscribed in the legal system, clarifying and
backing them against hostile or indifferent views. A third conclusion is that
the social aggregate of these individual rights, when broadly and effectively
enacted, becomes the public good of freedoms that can be generally enjoyed.
A fourth conclusion is that, if these rights are truncated (e.g. if they are biased
or poorly sanctioned or effected), the diversity of the social context is
impoverished and, with it, the possibility of emergence of the rich, dialogical,
and deliberative public sphere of a democracy of high quality.
I have yet to further clarify the relationship between democracy and a
diverse social context. A first step is to reason a contrario. It is clear that
a democratic regime would not exist in a country where information is
closely guarded or closely censored. Positively, this reasoning shows that, as
7
On this point see the classic text by Berlin 1969; in a similar sense Raz 1994. Berlin’s work
has raised a series of interesting—and complicated—discussions about “value pluralism” (see
among others Gray 2000 and Newey 1998) which I do not need get into here.
8
As Raz (1986: 381) puts it: “A moral theory which recognizes the value of autonomy [i.e.
agency, O’D] inevitably upholds a pluralist view. It admits the value of a large number of greatly
differing pursuits among which individuals are free to choose,” because (Raz 1994: 119) “the
routes open to be used in our lives are both incompatible and valuable.”
9
On the limitations of sheer toleration as a proper moral attitude see Garzón Valdés 1997.
I surmised in Chapter 7, the freedoms of expression, association, movement,

and the like have two sides.10 One is the individual one I have mentioned. The
other side is that the effectuation of these freedoms is a social fact; it feeds
from, and at the same time generates, a social context the diversity of which
expresses—jointly with manifold cultural, religious, artistic, and other iden-
tities, values and practices—the effectuation of those freedoms. Now recall
that I first argued that some freedoms are necessary conditions for the
existence of a democratic regime; later on I asserted that these freedoms are
segments of broader, and older, civil rights. Here we further see that these
same freedoms—both their political and civil versions—have an inherent
social dimension: they cannot exist outside reasonably congenial social and
political institutions, legislation, values, and practices.
In synthesis, citizenship entails the legally-backed possibility of entering
dialogical networks of discourse. We address both rulers and others like us,
and in so doing we are co-operators of the interactions between a democratic
regime, the state, and the overall social context. Of course, there are important
variations across time and countries in the degree, the ways, and the inten-
tions with which citizens enter dialogical networks, if at all. These variations
are determined by many factors, but the one that is arguably the most
important, at least for a comparative study of democracy, is the options
that are actually available to many or most individuals. This matter occupies
me further on, after noting in the coming section an important convergence
that helps its broader understanding.
9.2. A N I M P O RTA N T C O N V E RG E N C E
Even if all of us are agents, as the discussions of the work of Gewirth show,11 it
is disputed if this entails, as this author argues, the moral obligation of
recognizing the agency of others. I believe, in agreement with this author,
that such an obligation exists; still, irrespective of opinions on this matter, in
preceding chapters I argued two points that seem independent of those
discussions and are partially concurrent with Gewirth’s view. One is that
agency is legally sanctioned as a basic attribute of political citizenship; the
10
I have mentioned Raz’s arguments in this respect; for valuable concurrent arguments
about the social side of rights see Garzón Valdés 1993b, Habermas 1996, Ivison 2008, and
Waldron 1999.
11
Among Gewirth’s works see especially 1978 and 1996; for discussions of these works, many
centered on the issue I note in the main text, see Regis 1984 and Gewirth and Boyland 1999.
other, that the legal system contains rules that demand that in numerous
social settings we do respect, de facto if not necessarily in pectore, the agency of
others. These are juridical expressions of ideas of fairness, and of the respect
and recognition due to agency; these ideas have greatly helped texture funda-
mental aspects of modern societies, prominently included in their legal
systems. That from several angles those legal rules enact the obligation of
respecting agency is in part the result of the processes I examined in Chapter
2, and has become an important achievement of democracy, even of democ-
racies that do not contain much more than the political rights without which
they would not qualify as such. Depending on countries and periods, the
scope of those legal rules may be more or less broad, and the degree of their
subjective acceptance more or less widespread; yet it is as if through the
historical processes of recognition of agency under democracy has emerged
a “semi-Gewirthian legislator”: it cannot demand moral acceptance of the
agency of others, but it can submit to negative consequences those who de
facto violate or deny agency in the numerous social locations it has juridified.
Put in a different but concurrent way, another process we also examined in
Chapter 2, the constitutionalization of the tradition of natural rights, has
meant the juridification of the moral conceptions of agency carried by that
tradition, with the consequent obligation of acknowledging it in numerous
social locations, both by the state and every individual under its jurisdiction.
Whatever the conclusions we may reach on this particular matter, insofar
as we recognize the human being as an agent, we are led to the issue of what
social conditions may or may not enable her agency. In Chapter 2 we saw this
issue posed through processes that occurred in Northwestern countries; now
we have to deal with it from a broader perspective. For this purpose it is useful
to begin noting a significant convergence: the one that exists among democ-
racy (as here understood), human rights, and human development. These
currents share a common grounding, the conception of the human being as
an agent.12 A being endowed with practical reason can expect to be respected
in her dignity as such a being; she can also expect the social provision of
conditions necessary for freely exercising the cognitive, moral, dialogical,
and sociability aspects of her agency. Submitting this individual to, say,
physical violence or to the recurring fear of it, or to privation of basic
needs, or ignoring the rights resulting from her citizenship, are all severe
12
Beetham (1999: 121) makes an argument that substantiates this convergence: “At a
theoretical level, the idea of human rights could only be entertained once the status distinctions
and privileges of traditional society had been eroded, and people could be defined as individuals
independently of their birth-determined social statuses.” As I argue in the main text, the same
grounding quite obviously holds for conceptions of human development.
denials of her agency. This view has been repeatedly asserted in the tradition
of human rights.13 In respect of democracy I have argued that, even looking at
one of its aspects, the regime, we see that agency is not only entailed but also
sanctioned and backed by legal rules. In relation to human development, its
concern with capabilities can only be understood as they enable functionings
adequate to agency. This is explicit in the work of Sen, who has been very
influential in the conception of human development adopted by the United
Nations Development Program (UNDP/PNUD). In Sen’s conceptualization,
what I am calling agency entails having a capability set, defined as “the set of
functioning vectors within his or her reach.”14 Those “capabilities are one way
of characterizing positive freedom, and they can be seen as rights—positive
rights to do this or to be that.”15 An adequate capability set allows individuals
to choose from among various functionings; according to Sen, this is the
positive freedom to decide, with reasonable autonomy, knowledge, and re-
sponsibility, the course of one’s life—in my terms, to be an agent.16
This conception is clear in the statement with which the 2000 United
Nations Development Program Human Development Report (2000: 1) begins:
“Human rights and human development share a common vision and a
common purpose—to secure the freedom, well-being and dignity of all
people everywhere.” Concomitantly, this organization (ibid. 16) defines
human rights as those “possessed by all persons, by virtue of their common
humanity, to live a life of freedom and dignity. They give all people moral
claims on the behaviour of individuals and on the design of social arrange-
ments.” Further, this report (ibid. 17) defines human development as
[T]he process of enlarging people’s choices, by expanding human func-
tionings and capabilities . . . It represents a process as well as an end. . . .
At all levels of development the three essential capabilities are for people
to lead a long and healthy life, to be knowledgeable, and to have access to
the resources needed for a decent standard of living. . . .
The rights and capabilities invoked by these three currents directly pertain to,
and, if effective, enable agency. This is their nexus. This is why each, or a
combination of some of them, may help the attainment of the other(s).
Clearly, there are no predetermined or necessary sequences in this matter;
13
Which, in addition, in terms of what is usually called the “first generation” of the rights it
postulates, shows extensive overlap with what here I call civil rights.
14
Sen (1985: 20–1).
15
Sen (1985: 16); see also this author 1984 and 1993.
16
Nussbaum’s writings on this matter are also relevant; see Nussbaum 1997 and 2002, and in
particular 1999 and 2000, where she usefully deals with the relation between this approach and
gender issues.
yet I believe that because of their common grounding there exists a strong
elective affinity among these three currents—they, so to speak, invoke each
other. But they do it from not fully convergent angles. The values invoked by
human rights and human development pertain to all human beings irrespec-
tive of nationality or physical location; instead, basically due to the ascriptive
side of citizenship I noted in Chapter 4, the rights of political democracy are
usually assigned on the basis of nationality. As a consequence, the trade-off of
the broader, truly universalistic, scope of human rights and human develop-
ment is the lack of direct enforcement of such rights; but this problem is being
ameliorated by various processes of international juridification and judicial-
ization. On its part, the more restricted scope of citizenship rights is counter-
balanced by the availability of an enforcement mechanism, the state and its
legal system; in turn, this restriction has been ameliorated by the extension of
civil rights to all inhabitants; by the adoption in some countries as domestic
law of some international covenants on—broadly defined—human rights and
human development; and by the assignment in some countries of some social
and even political rights to residents. These convergences, to which I return in
the following chapter, are being fostered by winds of globalization that spread
the views and values these currents harbor.
The driving force of these currents is ultimately moral: the belief that an
agent should not be deprived of any of the basic freedoms, rights, and
capabilities postulated by each of them. In this connection Sen (1992: 17)
makes the interesting observation that even in relation to theories of a
conservative bent:
It may be useful to ask why it is that so many altogether different theories
of the ethics of social arrangements have the common feature of demand-
ing equality of something. . . . It is also of considerable pragmatic interest
to note that impartiality and equal concern, in some form or other,
provide a shared background to all the major ethical and political propo-
sals . . . which continue to receive argued support and reasoned defense.
If a claim that inequality in some significant space is right (or good, or
acceptable, or tolerable) it has to be defended by reason . . . [when this is
the case the argument takes the form of showing this inequality to be a
consequence of equality in some other—more centrally important—space.
(ibid. 21; italics in the original).
This is a contemporary achievement. For a long time, most theories postu-
lated intrinsic human inequality; as I noted in Chapter 2, for centuries serfs,
workers, women, and many others were deemed to lack agency, and hence to
be intrinsically inferior to their “superiors.” I believe that the tendency noted
by Sen in all sorts of contemporary ethical theories to base themselves on
some dimension of human equality, is a reverberation of the processes of

recognition of agency in manifold social and political areas. In spite of the
many horrors of the past century and present times, the increasing indisput-
ability that all humans are in a fundamental sense equal is a very important
achievement. As a consequence, the view of agency postulated by democracy,
human development, and human rights is not, in the contemporary world, an
odd and isolated argument. Even in countries where this equality is factually
denied in various ways, the equalizing view of agency entailed by their
democratic regimes and legal systems is there, legally sanctioned and amen-
able to be mobilized for the conquest of still lacking rights.
9.3. O P T I O N S A N D T H E C O N U N D RU M O F P R I O R I T I E S
The preceding assertions gloss over discussions that center on equality and its
trade-offs with liberty. These are important issues that will forever engage
political conflicts and theoretical discussions. I cannot deal with this matter in
the present text. Here I have in mind situations that are, in an important
sense, previous to those discussions. In the Northwest, they usually deal with
the issue of which principles of liberty and/or equality should regulate with
what trade-offs the allocation of social goods once everyone, or most, have
attained a basic level of rights and capabilities.17 Instead, in many countries
outside that region the main problem refers to individuals who have not
attained that basic level. This poses a sad and somewhat different question. It
is whether there exist good reasons—before the predicaments of liberty vs.
equality under affluence are saliently posed—for asserting a universalistic
right to the attainment of a basic level of freedoms, rights, and capabilities.
I am persuaded that these reasons exist,18 and that their common grounding
is agency; they refer to a primary aspect of fairness, not full equality but basic
equalization. By equalization I mean that everyone may enjoy at least
17
Concurrently, Dasgupta (1993: 45n.) comments: “Much contemporary ethics assumes at
the start of the inquiry that these [basic] needs have been met.” This assumption is explicit in
the work of political philosophy that arguably has been the most influential in the last decades
in the Anglo Saxon world: Rawls 1971. His theory of justice is deemed to apply to countries
where “only the less urgent material wants remain to be satisfied” (ibid. 542); for a restatement
of this assumption see Rawls 2001. In turn, the same assumption is clearly entailed in the work
of Habermas, arguably the most influential contemporary continental European political
philosopher; see for example his great book of 1996. The issue that remains is what is to be
said about countries that do not meet this assumption.
18
See concurrently Shue 2004.
two things: firstly, as we saw when dealing with state institutions but now
generally, to be treated with the respect and consideration due to an agent;
and, secondly, to attain the social provision of a basic level consisting of
freedoms, rights, and capabilities that enable agency or, at the very least, not
to suffer deprivations that seriously hamper it.
Above this level we can, and should, have complicated and—why not?—
passionate disputes about the above mentioned trade-offs; yet whatever the
answers to these disputes, the question remains as to whether there are not
only moral duties to provide, but also rights to claim basic agency-enabling
rights and capabilities. On the other hand, as we saw in Chapter 1 and the
present one with political rights, the rights and capabilities implied by human
rights and human development can only be inductively derived; what could
be their basic (or minimum) level also is theoretically undecidable. How and
on the basis of what criteria may a firm and clear line be drawn above which
agency may be construed as enabled in terms of human development and
human rights? As with political rights, there is not, and will never be, a priori
and/or firm generalized inter-subjective agreement on this matter. And, as
with political rights, instead of artificially trying to set the respective external
and internal boundaries, the appropriate procedure is to analyze the reasons
and consequences of their undecidability.
A point sometimes made is that the rights and/or capabilities of these lists
are “equally fundamental.”19 Yet this is a problem, because it leaves us without
practical and analytical guidance: where to begin, if there are so many
deprivations of closely interconnected freedoms, rights, and capabilities? It
is also a problem because it offers an easy target for those who deny the
relevance and/or the conceptual import of the problématique of human
development, of human rights, and of a theory of democracy that goes
beyond the confines of the regime. The simultaneous undecidability and
great importance of these rights and capabilities is, admittedly, a conundrum.
One possibility, as I did with some examples in relation to political rights, is to
proceed a contrario, identifying conditions of such deprivation that there can
be little doubt concerning the denial of agency in terms of human develop-
ment or human rights.20 This is a useful step; yet it is a negative determination
that does not tell us at what point the basic options for agency may be
positively satisfied. Furthermore, as with political freedoms, the relevant
criteria for human development and for human rights have changed with
time. In the Northwest, this variability caused many conflicts in trying to
19
UNDP (2000: 12 and passim) for this and similar expressions.
20
Selznick (1992: 171) sensibly comments that “It is always easier to identify pathologies and
establish thresholds than it is to say objectively what is psychic health, maturity, or fulfillment.”
reach an agreed-upon sufficient set of these rights and capabilities; obviously,

this is even harder in countries that command far less resources and are more
unequal than the former.
The specific content of freedoms, rights, and capabilities, their degree of
specificity, their reach, the relative priority of some over others, and other
issues of this kind are and will be forever disputable—there are too many
views and preferences, too many theories of what is just and/or fair, and too
many social interests and positions for any of these issues to be clearly and
firmly settled. This matter is the ultimate undecidable, which condenses all
the ones I mentioned above. As Waldron (1999: 225–6) notes:
Any theory of rights will face disagreements about the interests it iden-
tifies as rights, and the terms in which it identifies it. . . . In addition,
theories of rights have to face up to controversies about the forms of duty
that they ground and the forms of moral priority they establish: absolute
duties, prima facie duties, lexical priorities, weighted priorities, agent-
relative side constraints, agent-relative prerogatives, and so on.21
This is a fact of social life. It should not be regretted; it is a consequence of
human agency and the diversity of life-projects, identities, views, interests, and
social locations it sustains. What is the answer to these problems and restric-
tions? I believe that it is in dubio pro-democracy, to proffer a bias for democracy,
even knowing that it is far from a magical formula for finding solutions. The bias
results from considering that the crucial issue is who decides, how, and on what
grounds, which rights are enacted and implemented, and with what intensity
and scope, while other rights are not sanctioned or remain a dead letter. Even if
based in universal characteristics of human beings, what claim-needs become
effective rights and achieved capabilities, to what extent they are implemented,
and with what trade-offs, is the result of social and political processes, always
motivated by moral reasons and demands. The mutual agency recognitions
entailed by political citizenship are crucial here. This is a space, a legally-backed
opportunity to be enacted by means of a dialogical participation that sustains
processes during which, as we saw in Chapter 7, identities and interests are
defined and redefined. Concurrently, Sen (1999: 11) asserts that
Our conception of needs relates to our ideas of the preventable nature of
some deprivations and to our understanding of what can be done about
them . . . Political rights, including freedom of expression and discussion,
are not only pivotal in inducing social responses to economic needs, they
are also central to the conceptualization of economic needs themselves.
21
O’Neill (1989: 197) agrees: “There is no unique way of accommodating different rights.
There are infinitely many ways of describing possible actions and hence indefinitely many ways
of picking out sets of co-possible, equal rights.”
Yet, as Shue (1996: 7) notes “No one . . . can fully enjoy any right that he is
supposed to have if he lacks the essentials for a reasonably healthy and active
life.” Consequently, “[I]t would be inconsistent to recognize rights referred to
life or to physical integrity when the means necessary for the enjoyment and
exercise of these rights are omitted.”22 These sadly obvious remarks lend drama to
arguments and struggles about which rights should be enacted in countries where
because of severe deprivations the very possibility of agency is at stake. Truly, in
some countries dynamic social and political movements have appeared; but with
some notable exceptions these movements and other kinds of demands tend
to be short-lived, even if some of them may cause, as in contemporary Latin
America, great commotion and some political adjustments at the national
and/or local level. Few issues thus raised get firmly into a policy-making
agenda that instead includes salient concerns for “public security” that often
entail the criminalization of poverty and, with it, regressions in the civil rights
of the popular sector, and/or temporary—and humiliating23—handouts of
some goods to segments (often clientelistically selected) of the popular sector.
As should be clear by now, we cannot know in advance the answer to the
questions posed in this section. It would be a presumptuous intellectualiza-
tion or a technocratic fallacy to try and predetermine a priori what mix of
rights and capabilities should be demanded by what deprived sectors or
classes in a given country and period. All we can do is try to clarify these
issues and insist on the at least potential importance of the rights and free-
doms that political democracy entails. In this connection, the undecidability
of their minimal sufficient set did not deter us from identifying some free-
doms about which we can confidently make an empirical, inductively derived,
causal proposition: if these rights lack, or if they are severely curtailed, then a
democratic regime and its component of political citizenship do not exist.
In the same sense, the impossibility of determining a minimal sufficient set
for human development and for human rights should not deter us from
establishing conditions that, on the basis of available knowledge, allow us to
confidently assert that they entail severely hampering agency. For example, in
terms of human development physicians and biologists know the minimal
nutritional requirements of various social categories, as well as the tragic
consequences that deprivation of the respective minima bring for their
22
See also Vázquez (2002: 102) who notes that “It would be inconsistent to recognize the
rights referred to life or to physical integrity when the means necessary for their exercise and
enjoyment are omitted” (my translation). On the cognate concept of personhood and the
consequent right to basic social provisions see Griffin 2008.
23
In addition to the dependency and exchange aspects stressed by the literature of clientel-
ism, Ippolito-O’Donnell 2004 and 2008 calls attention to the humiliations and the factual denial
of citizenship entailed by these exchanges.
victims and their offspring.24 In terms of human rights, we can, say, identify
practices of violence against women and children, police torture and other
mistreatments that clearly deny agency.25 In addition, we should realize that
the respective needs and deprivations are not only the suffering of individuals;
these are moral, social, and political ills, to be dealt with by the acknowledge-
ment of consequent social and political responsibilities.
On the basis of this kind of deprivation and their consequences, an
argument may be made that a country’s resources should be primarily
allocated to overcoming them.26 However, we can be guaranteed that alterna-
tive arguments will be made; say, for allocating those resources to improving
health and education services for the middle sectors, so a better trained and
healthier workforce improves economic growth rates that presumably will
also benefit in the medium run those who suffer more severe deprivations.
The second thing we know is that these are political questions, informed by
different values, ideologies, and social locations, and by more or less implicit
theories about the workings of a given society and, nowadays, increasingly
also about the workings of the whole world. These discussions define what the
socially “real” needs that a country faces, ignores, and eventually represses are.
Politics, democratic politics indeed included, is as much about consensus as it
is conflict. Pushing some issues into the public agenda, arguing that some
needs generate rights to be claimed to state and society, and debating about
24
For data and discussion of the situation of Latin America in this and related matters see
Bartell and Alejandro O’Donnell 2000. Generally see Dasgupta (1993: 474) who comments, “It is
often said that even when a person owns no physical assets she owns one asset that is inalienable,
namely labour power . . . [I] have revealed the important truth that this is false . . . Conversion of
potential into actual labour power can be realized if the person finds the means of making the
conversion, not otherwise. Nutrition and health-care are the necessary means to this” (italics in
the original).
25
Weale proposes a useful rule of thumb (1983: 35): “The basic criterion of a social
minimum . . . is that when it is satisfied persons should be able to meet the obligations that
are conventionally expected of all persons in that society as producers, citizens, neighbors,
friends, and parents.” This in turn is based on “the principle that government should secure
the conditions of equal autonomy for all persons subject to its jurisdiction” (ibid. 42).
Concurrently Miller (1999: 210) argues for “[I]dentifying needs over and above the biological
minimum by reference to shared social norms. Here the claim is that within each community
there will be a shared conception of the range of activities that together make up a normal
life . . . conditions that allowed people to lead a minimally decent life in their society.”
26
For arguments in this direction see Arango 2002, Nussbaum 1997 and 2002, Pogge 2008,
Sen 2000, and Vázquez 2001. In fact, the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social, and
Cultural Rights commits the signatory state “To take steps . . . to the maximum of its available
resources, with a view to achieving progressively the full realization of the rights recognized in
the Covenant by all appropriate means, including particularly the adoption of legislative
measures.” That many countries have failed to honor this commitment does not detract from
its present, and perhaps especially long-term, moral and symbolic importance; see in this
respect Beetham 1999.
the relative priorities of various kinds of needs and rights, all these are
conflictive matters—the more so the more unequal a society is, and the
more used to their privileges are its dominant sectors and classes.
At this point one of the intersections among democracy, human develop-
ment and human rights may be highlighted: except for exceptional indivi-
duals or circumstances, the effectuation of political rights and freedoms
requires that some basic capabilities and human rights have been achieved;
conversely, the struggles for achieving those rights and capabilities may
benefit from the empowerments furnished by political democracy.27 A disap-
pointed view would say that I have drawn a vicious circle. An alternative view
begins by recognizing democracy’s peculiar dynamics and historical openness.
The always possible extension or retraction of political, social, and civil rights
and—encompassing them all—the issue of the rights and capabilities that
enable agency, are the field on which political competition has been and will
continue being played.28
These are political processes that eventually lead to decisions enacted by the
state. History attests that no “full package” of these capabilities and rights has
ever been simultaneously enacted, not to say implemented. This shows that it
is wrong to ask for a priori specification of a minimal sufficient set of these
rights and/or capabilities; it also shows that it is unfair to dismiss claims that
do not purport to simultaneously achieve a full package of these goods.
History also attests that the resources necessary for achieving some of these
rights and capabilities have been disputed and redefined along conflictive
processes; various kinds of circumstances and political alliances have led to
prioritizing some claims over others that were arguably no less basic than the
former. Yet the rights of political citizenship plus whatever civil rights do
exist, and eventually appropriate political alliances,29 sharpen “the weapons of
the weak”30 for continuing their uphill and always open-ended struggles.
27
This interplay underlies one of the central arguments in the recent work of Habermas
(1996: 127) that of “[T]he co-originality of civic and private autonomy,” due to which: “The
institutions of the constitutional state are supposed to secure an effective exercise of the political
autonomy of socially autonomous citizens” (ibid. 176). Of course, as I noted, this author is
writing about countries that have achieved not-insignificant, albeit not complete, articulation
between those levels; here I have in mind countries where that achievement looms into the
future.
28
As Marshall (1992: 18) argued, “There is no universal principle that determines what those
rights and duties shall be, but societies in which citizenship is a developing institution create an
image of an ideal citizen against which achievement can be measured and toward which
aspiration can be directed. The urge forward along the path thus plotted is an urge toward a
fuller measure of equality.” See also Donnelly 1999.
29
For reflections on this matter, see O’Donnell 1998.
30
As expressed and analyzed in Scott 1985 and 1990.
Furthermore, if a country is poor and has an anemic state and a truncated

legal system, which sequences and trajectories would be adequate for moving
forward? In this respect I have an admittedly insufficient and at best medium-
term suggestion: at least in relation to Latin America, place more emphasis
than has been the case on the expansion of civil rights (as I have defined them
and in their overlap with human rights). The reason is that, probably even
more than they were in the Northwest, whatever civil rights are gained can
become important levers for further, fuller democratization. Civil rights not
only protect, they also empower by providing opportunities for attaining
further rights. Civil rights make possible (but I grant, just possible) for
various collective and individual actors to autonomously define their identity
and interests, helped by the rights and freedoms that a democratic regime
sanctions.31 Furthermore, extensions of civil rights initially based in the
utilization of political ones tend to reinvigorate the latter; this in turn opens
avenues for further struggles for other rights, including social ones.
In the next chapter I discuss some additional complicating factors, related
to the—broadly defined—processes of globalization currently under way.
31
Concerning these rights Marshall (1981: 141) persuasively argued that “They thus become
part of the individual’s personality, a pervasive element in his daily life, an intrinsic component
of his culture, the foundation of his capacity to act socially and the creator of the environmental
conditions which make social action possible in a democratic civilization . . . civil rights, though
vested in individuals, are used to create groups, associations, corporations and movements of
every kind.”
..................
10
..................
The Conundrums of Globalization

and Legal Pluralism
I begin this chapter with a personal story that has bred my skepticism about
the desirability, and possibility, of attaining a unique kind of democracy
(Section 9.1). There we have a first look at the great variety of human and
social forms that has for ever existed and has increased, in itself and perhaps
even more in its visibility, in present times. A first aspect of this variety is the
one accentuated by globalization, a complex and disputed topic that I discuss
below, albeit solely from the perspective of the themes dealt with in this book
(10.2); a related matter is pluralism, especially its version as legal pluralism
(10.3). These overviews complicate the argument about agency that I have
made throughout the preceding chapters; I deal with this issue in 10.4, albeit
in some respects quite inconclusively. However, I feel that it is still possible
to propose what I call some basic standards for any political democracy,
whatever its social and cultural context (10.5). Then a final section (10.6)
prepares us for the Conclusion of this book.
10.1. A RO U N D YA L E ’ S L I B R A RY
As I did in Chapter 7, here I begin with a personal experience that, even

though far less dramatic, also deeply impressed me. As I mention in the
Introduction, during 1968–1971, I was a graduate student of political
science at Yale University. It was there that I made an interesting discovery
early on in the library: books that purported to explain why Iberian
countries (Latin America, Spain, and Portugal) were not and could not
possibly become democracies, nor achieve sustainable levels of economic
development. The argument was that we Iberians shared a religion and a
culture marked by hierarchical views of authority and organic/corporatist
views of society. The main reason that underpinned this argument was
the lack of individualism, deemed to be an indispensable foundation for
184 The Conundrums of Globalization
democracy and economic development. The implication of these books was
not politically innocent: the various kinds of authoritarian regimes that
in those times ruled Iberia were argued to be the political form that “fit”
our culture, so they should be looked at positively by policy-makers in
Washington and other Northwestern capitals. Consequently, struggling for
democracy or trying to promote it in those countries was seen as not only
hopeless but also damaging for the interests of Northwestern countries as
well as for peoples who were supposed to be living quite happily under
authoritarian rule.
During my wanderings in the library I made another discovery. There
were also books making a remarkably similar argument about countries
seen as under the aegis of Buddhism or Confucianism, all of them, as Iberia,
supposed to be quite happily living under authoritarian regimes deemed
consistent with their religion and culture. Again, that these countries did
not support an individualist culture was the reason that supposedly made
democracy and, indeed, even sustainable economic development, “unnatural”
to them. Today, other books make similar arguments about Islamic countries—
about these matters there is nothing new under the sun, except that, in
addition, nowadays civilizations are supposed, and sometimes induced, to
clash. . . .1
Since those times I have worried if and to what extent presumed cultural
and/or religious incompatibilities with democracy are real or are the expres-
sion of ethnocentric bias, as they turned out to be in relation to countries that
in the recent past were dismissed in such an off-hand way. This indeed
inspired my avid interest and participation in the project “Transitions from
Authoritarian Rule,”2 as a way to look for paths toward democratization that
would not have to wait for the Greek calendas until achieving reasonable levels
of economic development and/or transformed cultures.
This is the perspective from which I approach the following sections. I limit
myself to some general observations, originating in the preceding remarks but
also distilled from the views I have presented in previous chapters in respect of
the universalism of human agency and the consequent duties of deference and
consideration toward it.
1
For a well informed study discussing and partially refuting the often presumed inherent
incompatibility of Islam and democracy but not ignoring many of the obstacles, see Sadiki 2009.
2
The results of this project were published in the four volumes of O’Donnell, Schmitter, and
Whitehead 1986.
The Conundrums of Globalization 185
10.2. N OT E S O N G LO B A L I Z AT I O N
In addition to the faces I discussed in Chapter 6, states have another one.

I refer to the one that has been imprinted on them by the processes of
globalization that have recently raised so much attention and debates. The
very fact that I have written this book means that I disagree with those who
argue that globalization, however defined, leads to the demise, or at least the
insignificance, of the state. It is on the other hand undeniable that several
aspects of economic, financial, and informational globalization are provoking
important changes in the institutional structure, and in the scope and goals of
policy-making of states. It is also undeniable that several aspects of globaliza-
tion are eroding hard-won rights of workers in the capitalist centers, and
more so of workers and various minorities in the rest of the world—one of the
reflections of these negative consequences appears in the high and increasing
size of the informal labor market to which I referred in Chapter 8; another are
patterns of international migration that are generating serious concerns, and
not just a few ugly chauvinistic reactions, in recipient countries.
On the other hand, other aspects of globalization are having beneficial
consequences that are clouded by blanket condemnations of this phenom-
enon. I refer to facts such as the increased capabilities that for social and
protest movements of various kinds by means of access to the internet, mobile
phones, text messaging, and web filming and photographing;3 the growth and
activism of international networks and organizations that support various
popular, indigenous, and ecological movements;4 the possibilities for the
spread of some kind of education through the internet; the possibility of
instant access to worldwide news, and information provided by some states
and public institutions—as well as other possibilities of accessing and com-
municating information.
These processes mean the transnational expansion of the dialogical
networks I mentioned before, and in principle if they do allow reasonably
fair participation, of the consequent public arenas. These are important but
not entirely new developments; the recent expansion has created new oppor-
tunities for participation and expression that are not territorially bound by a
state, but as I have already argued it does not make them equivalent, except in
a rather loose metaphorical sense, to the demos of a democratic regime.
3
I am aware that this has not bridged the digital divide between the rich and highly educated,
and the poor and excluded. Yet, it seems to me that those same facts are giving the latter, as well
as to their allies (see the next footnote) possibilities that hitherto were lacking.
4
On these “transnational advocacy networks” see Keck and Sikkink 1998, and Risse, Roop,
and Sikkink 1999.
In what directly interests me here—the impacts of globalization on the
state—I defer to some distinguished scholars. I begin with Agnew (1999: 84)
who, after noting many of those changes, concludes that anyhow “[S]tates
have a continuing and vital role to perform within the evolving world of
networks and flows.” This conclusion is reinforced by Held (1995: 441), who
argues that
Patterns of regional and global change are transforming the context
of political action, creating a system of multiple power centres and
overlapping spheres of authority—a post Westphalian order . . . [but]
economic globalization by no means necessarily translates into a dimi-
nution of state power; rather, it is transforming the conditions under
which state power is exercised . . . There are many good reasons for
doubting the theoretical and empirical basis of claims that nation-states
are being eclipsed by contemporary patterns of globalization.5
These matters pertain to one of the basic dimensions of the state, its filtering.
Surely the current patterns of globalization place exacting demands on this
dimension; yet it seems clear that the degree to which damaging consequences
of globalization are filtered out or ameliorated, while beneficial consequences
are allowed and promoted, depends to a significant extent on what kind of
state there is. This is made clear by Kahler and Lake (2004: 409–11), who
conclude that “the effects of globalization on governance at all levels are
more complex and contingent than many observers claim . . . globalization
is an important environmental change that is affecting states but its influence
and constraints are mediated by national politics and institutions.”6 Held
(1995: 441) concurs:
Indeed, any assessment of the cumulative impacts of globalization must
acknowledge their highly differentiated character since particular types of
impact—whether decisional, institutional, distributional, or structural—
are not experienced uniformly by all states . . . the impact of globalization is
mediated significantly by . . . specific government as well as societal strate-
gies for contesting, managing or ameliorating globalizing imperatives.7
5
Doornbos (2006: 43) sensibly adds: “In a dynamic perspective, we may need to see the state
as continuously reshaping itself as well as being reshaped.”
6
For further details see Kahler and Lake 2003. After a review of this and related matters,
Kjaer (2004: 204) agrees:“States are key filters through which global processes are molded.” For
other assessments, basically concurrent with the preceding ones, see Bouzas and Ffrench-Davis
2005, Diniz 2004, Evans 1997, Held 2002, Hurrell 2007, Reis 2004, Touraine 2000, Velasco e Cruz
2003, and Zimmerling 2004.
7
See Weiss 2005, who after studying the recent changes in the institutional structure of the
Italian state concludes that globalization has not at all diminished its “activism,” but rather
This is the point I want to raise here. Yes, globalization affects in many ways,
some negative but in others positive, the functioning of states and societies.
But this does not augur the demise of the state; strong states, not accidentally
many of them among those of the Northwest, seriously strive—including
reshaping their laws and bureaucracies—to digest and control negative con-
sequences, and also permit and promote positive ones.
Indeed, this is a major challenge for the disarticulated and fragmented
states that often exist in other parts of the world. Their flaws in their four
dimensions; their consequent weakness; the neo-patrimonial practices of
many who populate them; the consequent lack or demoralization of the
skilled and committed officials that could deal with the complex matters
raised by globalization—all paint a worrisome picture, in itself and because
it feeds an increasing inequality among countries. These flaws led in some
cases, as in Argentina during the 1990s, to an almost complete abdication of
the state’s filtering role, while enthusiastically praising an unconstrained
globalization; in other cases it leads to attempts at forbidding to little effect
most of the aspects of globalization.
Furthermore, I noted in Chapter 6 that, especially in Latin America and
other countries outside of the Northwest, the rich and powerful find many
ways to evade the state. This is also true in relation to the topic I am discussing
here; an important aspect of economic and legal globalization is the great
expansion of, as it was called before the emergence of the modern state, lex
mercatoria, private international commercial law.8 In this respect Jayasuriya
(2002: 445) mentions “[T]he tremendous growth of private international
authority . . . [entailing] the attempt to treat the market as a constitutional
order with its own rules, procedures, and institutions that operate to protect
the market order from political interference” (ibid. 452).9 This means the
extraction from the jurisdiction of states of important matters of foreign
investment, trade, intellectual property, and others. Yet two caveats are in
order. One is that state policies do make a difference. Going back to Argentina
displaced some of its manifestations to new or reformed areas of policy. From a different
perspective Meyer (1999: 57) agrees: “The modern state may have less autonomy than earlier
but it clearly has more to do than earlier as well.”
8
See on this theme Cutler 2001, and for further discussion Jayasuriya 2002 and Schneider-
man 2001. From the angle of the highly influential rule making and adjudication by interna-
tional organizations and quasi-judicial international courts concerning business regulation see
also Alvarez 2005; in this context the increasing importance of “alternative dispute resolutio-
n”(ADR) institutions bears special mention, tilted in favor of highly developed countries and
multinational corporations.
9
The author mentions international standards associations and international quasi-judicial
arbitration, to which should be emphatically added the credit rating agencies.
in the 1990s, the government passively accepted whatever external jurisdic-
tion was demanded by foreign and even domestic corporations—the country
is nowadays paying dearly for this abdication. By contrast, under a govern-
ment that in some respects was deemed (however properly or not, it does not
matter at this point) to share similar “neo-liberal” orientations, Brazil denied
that abdication of its jurisdiction to the same transnational corporations and
international financial organizations—and this did not interrupt the flow of
foreign investment into that country. The second caveat is that however
inescapable are some of these transfers of jurisdiction beyond the states
nowadays, as the example of some Northwestern countries shows, this does
not prevent their states making serious and innovative efforts to safeguard the
national economy and defend the rights of its citizens. As we saw, capitalism
needs a basically congenial state, and capitalists and their intellectuals have for
ever strenuously argued against rights and policies that seem to hamper its
untrammeled expansion. The resulting influences have, in quite a few Latin
American countries, consequences that express an aspect of poorly filtered
economic globalization. An example are the heavy expenses that, fostered by
intentions to attract foreign investment and pressures and grants from inter-
national financial organizations, have been lately made in judicial “hardware,”
such as buildings and computers. But in many cases this has been done mostly
in the branches of the judiciary that deal with matters of direct interest to
business and of repressively conceived “security” matters. On the other hand,
in contrast with this but in consonance with the different faces of the state
that I noted in Chapter 6, with some exceptions the judiciary’s facilities that
deal with ordinary people’s issues have been much less favored by such
munificence.10
The preceding creates new, and very complex, problems. But insofar as they
are understood and politically digested as such, not as a dismayed indication
of an overwhelming globalization or an impending “end of history,” those
problems generate, as other situations perhaps no less exacting did in the past,
challenges that states that want to claim credibility as custodians of the public
good should strive to meet. Admittedly, however, for most countries outside
of the Northwest these challenges are compounded by the fact entailed by
what I say above about lex mercatoria and cognates, but it is broader than that.
I refer to what in his excellent book Hurrell (2007: 11) notes:
10
Domingo 1994 argues that even though “business friendly” expenses may be useful for
fomenting investment, they tend to produce a “dualistic development of the justice system,”
centered on those aspects “that concern the modernizing sectors of the economic elite in matters
of an economic, business or financial nature . . . [while] other areas of litigation and access to
justice remain untouched, corrupted and persistently lacking in infrastructure and resources.”
See also Hammergreen 2007 and Shapiro 2003.
[T]he world order insofar as it is at all an order, is basically ordered by a
few very powerful states, directly and indirectly through their influence
in various international organizations . . . the way in which the structures
of governance that have developed within the international system reflect
and reinforce the broader patterns of inequality that mark the global
system.
In the coming section I return to other aspects of this problem.
10.3. N OT E S O N L E G A L G LO B A L I Z AT I O N A N D P LU R A L I S M
In the preceding section I postponed reference to other aspects of globaliza-

tion, those that entail the spread and the increasing juridification and judi-
cialization of international law in international courts and in the domestic
jurisdictions of some countries. Despite inconsistencies and frequent hypoc-
risy in the application of international law by various governments and
international institutions, I agree with authors who argue that this law sanc-
tions and advances throughout the world valuable views of universal ethics
that can be shared by many cultural and religious traditions.11 A partially
overlapping process is also of great importance: the emergence of a transna-
tional regime of (broadly defined) human rights, including not only the above
mentioned networks but also international covenants beginning with the
1948 United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and followed
by others on issues such as gender (1979 and 1999), torture and other horrors
(1984), racial discrimination (1965), rights of children (1989), and indige-
nous peoples (2007), among others.
In this respect Hurrell (2007: 63–4) argues that “International law has
become an increasingly important source of national law and is far more
commonly used in the adjudication of law at the national level” [as well as by
several international courts, O’D]. This is particularly true in relation to human
rights, which in many countries have been at least formally constitutionalized
and in some are applied or invoked by national courts. To quote once more
Hurrell (2007: 304), “Thus we have seen the emergence of an international and
transnational culture of human rights that involves a widely shared language,
an inclusive moral vocabulary, and an authoritative and well-developed
11
For discussion of this aspect see Philpott (2007: 17) who, while acknowledging various
debates and hindrances to its diffusion, argues to my mind correctly that the international law
tradition implies that “a universal ethic, one extending to all corners of the planet, [is] a worthy
aspiration . . . A planetary ethic is the very point of the tradition.”
normative structure from which very few groups are prepared to try and
exempt themselves.”12
Unfortunately this is not the whole story. Much of the positive develop-
ments I just noted took place from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s, jointly
with active international support for the transitions from authoritarian rule
that occurred in several countries outside of the Northwest. However, the
meaning, content, and consequences of international interventions and mod-
ifications in international law have changed quite drastically, particularly after
the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. After this attack, the United States’
government, with the support of a number of other governments, and under
the banner of the “war on terror,” took unilateral and promoted multilateral
actions that have seriously undermined the advances I just noted. Several
actions were promulgated by that government through the United Nation’s
Security Council, by means of an interpretation of its powers that as, Cohen
2008b argues, “usurped” crucial aspects of the authority of the General
Assembly. However, implicitly consenting to this extra limitation in 2005,
the Assembly approved the doctrine of “responsibility to protect” individuals
and groups from alleged human rights violations, even by coercive interven-
tion without the consent of the imputed states. Furthermore, and more
worrisome, the Security Council “has considerable freedom to interpret the
meaning of threats to international peace and security and there is nothing
that stands in the way of authorizing more expansive notions of preventive
and pre-emptive self-defence”; Hurrell (2007: 155).
Consequently, lately, the defense of human rights as well as the promotion
of democracy13 have been aggressively invoked (or selectively forgotten),
unilaterally or through the Security Council, in ways that quite often are
self-serving of the geopolitical and economic interests of the most powerful
countries; those that have seats in that Council and in other crucial interna-
tional institutions. A serious collateral damage is the mantle of suspicion that
has been thrown over the well-meaning and peaceful efforts to promote
human rights and democracy that continue to exist in the international
community.
12
Cohen (2008a: 580) concurrently comments that “[T]he [international] human rights
declarations and covenants were an important normative referent for domestic society and
social movement activists. They helped legitimate justice-based and democracy-oriented politi-
cal change, authorizing and empowering citizens’ movements to claim rights against their own
governments and to demand their legal and constitutional institutionalization.”
13
For criticism—to my mind well argued in respect of the present period—of the motives
and consequences of the resulting “coercive democratization and regime change” see Guilhot
2005.
Consequently, as Cohen (2008b: 457) argues:
We are confronted with the apparent necessity of a tradeoff between human
rights and human security, domestically and internationally. Worse, it
seems that the global protectors of “human security” under the “responsi-
bility to protect” doctrine, now tend to undermine rights, constitutionalism
and democracy, strengthening arbitrary domestic and global executive
power at the expense of parliaments, courts, and the rule of law.
This is wonderful for less than democratic rulers, “who are willing coopera-
tors in all of this. They are able to invoke obligatory Council resolutions to
push through rights-violating domestic laws, thereby expanding their power,
justified as compliance with international law”; Cohen (2008b: 463).14
However, I am persuaded that human rights and their international regime
have value that goes beyond the negative developments I have commented
upon. Yet I noted in Chapter 6 a limitation of these rights, in that they only
partially overlap with citizenship rights; this is due to the fact that, except if
sanctioned by state law and adopted by the judiciary, various human rights, as
well as human development ones, lack enforcement mechanisms. On the other
hand, the rights of citizenship are of more limited scope than human rights in
that in principle they apply only to citizens, not to all the inhabitants of a given
country. Consequently, as Ferrajoli (1995: 41) argues: “Presently . . . inequality
operates through the statalist mold of citizenship, the definition of which on
the basis of national and territorial belonging represents the last normative
limitation of the principle of legal equality.”15
14
For concurrent comments and analysis see Hurrell (2007: 161). Furthermore, this author
and Cohen (op. cit.) present a justified criticism of the Resolution 1373 Security Council of
September 2001 that created the Counter Terrorism Committee and established, as internation-
al law mandatory to all states and with severe worldwide consequences for those affected, ways
of placing persons in a terrorist list that violate elementary rules of due process, and which of
course is a most dangerous weapon in the hands of every government against their opposition,
particularly but not exclusively authoritarian ones. For details I refer the reader to these valuable
works and the literature they cite.
15
The resulting “citizenship gap” is discussed in the chapters contained in Brysk and Shafir
2004. Yet, against the somewhat pessimistic bent of these authors, I find it encouraging that in
many countries civil rights (that as I have argued include important human rights) are
universalistically recognized, while at least some political rights are being extended to foreigners
in subnational elections in some countries; see Banting and Kymlicka 2006, and especially
Baubock 2006 for useful details, including the concept of “residential citizenship” that has been
adopted for local elections in several European Union countries, as well as similar rights in a
number of other countries. Furthermore, as I note in the main text, some basic human rights
promoted in international arenas are being incorporated into domestic legislation and recog-
nized in domestic judicial adjudication. Yet I agree with these and other authors that there is still
much to be done in these matters.
Despite these and other limitations, these developments express what
I believe is a growing moral conscience of a humanity that despite (and
perhaps to some extent because of, too) so many events, policies, and decisions
that are outrageously contrary to basic values of human dignity and respect,
has been agreeing on the central importance of these values. They can only be
referred to agents, the kind of being recognized as such by many cultures and
world religions.16 This can only be grounded on an increasingly widespread
recognition of a shared humanity17 and basic duties of respect and consider-
ation due to it; what political democracy entails as legally sanctioned recogni-
tion of agency is a part, albeit a very important one, of this broader process.
In this context Kymlicka (2007b: 4) says that
[We may] think about global ethics as a two-level phenomenon. At one
level, we have a self-standing international discourse, such as human
rights, that seeks to define a minimum set of standards agreeable to all. At
the second level, we have a multiplicity of different ethical traditions,
each of which has its own account of what more, or what else, is needed
above and beyond human rights.
Of course, this author as well as the others in the volume in which this text is
included (Sullivan and Kymlicka 2007) are aware that the assertion about
minimum international standards is disputed. I do not see any clear-cut way
to solve those disputes; thus, it seems to me that the reasonable further step is
to act as these and other authors recommend, undertaking transcultural and
dialogues in a spirit of mutual understanding. As in this same volume Sullivan
(2007: 209) says: “[The] acknowledgment of the complexities of judgment
opens all participants to the imperative of dialogue and learning from others.”
The preceding argument demands attention to a closely related issue, legal
pluralism. We saw that capitalism has expanded through the whole world,
eliminating, transforming, or subordinating other modes of production and
exchange; we also saw that states emerged everywhere, carrying at least the
institutional trappings of the Northwestern ones. But both those capitalisms
and states, and later on in some countries democratic regimes too, are part of
societies that have been textured by different processes than the Northwestern
16
I find it significant that all world religions (with the arguable exception of orthodox
versions of Calvinism) consider the human being as morally accountable—i.e. as a carrier of
moral agency—in that they all see having our fate after death as in some way determined by
what we do and do not do in our present life.
17
In this connection the research on “human universals” is important. As Brown (2004: 47)
notes, several hundreds of these universals have been identified as existing “among all peoples
known to ethnography and history.” Indeed, these universals include many of what nowadays
are considered human and/or civil rights.
ones. One issue I have already noted and that follows from this refers to the
uneven extension of the legal system of these countries, in Latin America and
elsewhere. These are heterogeneous and fragmented societies, and various
aspects of their states, including their legal systems, reflect and in fact help
reproduce those characteristics. This has included the transplantation at times
of full legal codes, and at times of general legal criteria from the Northwest;
this was done in some regions, such as Latin America,18 by more or less
autonomous decisions of the respective states, in other regions by imperial
implantations of colonial law, and in other cases, many of which overlapped
with the preceding ones, by the survival, albeit transformed by contacts with
Western law and power, of various kinds of customary, traditional, or indige-
nous law. The result outside of the Northwest, in varying degrees according to
various regions, is the complexity entailed by what is termed “legal plural-
ism.”19 This pluralism is reflected in the legal systems of indigenous commu-
nities, as in the case in Latin America; in other parts of the world it appears in
the impact of some world religions, such as the Islamic, Jewish, and Hindu
ones, that in some countries where they have heavy or majoritarian weight, in
various civil rights matters (and sometimes commercial ones) rule their
followers by means of their own legal systems. In several countries these
systems are formally upheld as coexistent with state-sanctioned Western-
type civil and commercial law for other members of the population. While,
on the other hand and, to add to the complexity, the respective states sanction
as valid for everyone Western types of law in terms of the political rights and
freedoms of the whole population.20 Legal pluralism and its concurrent
phenomenon, multiculturalism, however praised or regretted it may be in
each of its manifestations, is an indication of the deep heterogeneity of many
of the countries that nowadays have states that house democratic regimes and,
consequently, at this level sanction the universalistic rights and freedoms of
18
On the historical characteristics of constitution making in Latin America see Negretto and
Aguilar-Rivera 2000.
19
On this topic see the pioneering work of Rudolph and Rudolph 1967, as well as Hooker
1975 and Berman 2007; on colonial law see Benda-Beckmann 2001, Brown 1995, Comaroff
2001, Mamdani 1999, and Merry 1994. In relation to Latin America see Gómez 2002, Sieder
2000 and 2002, Van Cott 2000, and Yrigoyen Fajardo 1999 and 2001.
20
A study focused on these matters would have to also deal with the situation of countries,
including Northwestern ones such as the United Kingdom, where the law of some Jewish,
Hindu, and Islamic communities de facto rule various civil and commercial matters concerning
their members. A full homogenization of state law exists nowhere (especially after intensive
international migration and various patterns of cultural diffusion), but still there are cross-
country differences worth taking into account; on dilemmas and conflicts facing Northwestern
countries on these matters, see Fetzer and Soper 2005, and Messina 2007; for broader examina-
tion of this issue see Benhabib 2004.
political citizenship; this heterogeneity has deep influence on characteristics
of both states and democracies that have been barely mapped.
These matters bear on a central argument of this book: the grounding
of democracy, including its partial version as a political democracy, on a
universalistic and legally-backed conception of agency. This is true, as for-
malized in the respective legal rules, in every country that has such a regime
and consequently enacts at least the political side of citizenship. Yet such a
view may be ignored, or denied, by individuals who, under a democratic
regime, are legally enjoined to recognize anyway, that everyone—irrespective
of gender, class, ethnicity, etc.—has equal rights to elect and eventually be
elected, as well as to carry the political freedoms that surround those rights.
Consequently, to understand what many contemporary democracies are and
how they actually function, we need to grasp how in each country the basic
principles of agency entailed by a democratic regime coexist with ways of
ignoring or denying them. Some of those denials are de facto expressions of
inequality held without much attempt at justification except ingrained con-
tempt for the poor and weak; but other denials spring from deeply felt
cultural and religious beliefs. There are good reasons why the de facto reasons
should be criticized without reservations, while the latter ones present the
challenge of finding out in each case to what extent and in what terms
democracy as here understood reaches convivial understandings with indi-
viduals and communities who hold conceptions that deny some aspects of
agency. This is part of the broader issue of multiculturalism, about which, as
implied by the preceding, I align myself among those who argue for both the
universalistic validity of ideas of agency as here delineated, and for the need to
find convivial terms with, and to learn valuable lessons from, those who do
not share it.21 This view includes one of the most hotly debated issues in this
matter, the universalism of basic gender rights.22
There is however one aspect that in the context of the present book deserves
to be highlighted. Particularly but not exclusively in Latin America, many
agonizing issues and many of the past and present horrors perpetrated for the
sake of state-building, economic development or, for that matter, sheer
prejudice, have come to light, and become salient issues, at the compass of
recent processes of democratization. As we saw in Chapter 8, the freedoms of
21
In addition to the ones already cited, I also agree with the basic thrust of the arguments on
this matter of Appiah 2006, Benhabib 2002, Dall 2001 and 2004, Franck 2001, Garzón Valdés
2003a, Kymlicka 2007a and 2007b, Lara 2002, Mendus 1995, Nussbaum 1999, Pagden 2004,
Philipps 2000, Riise 1999, Sen 1999, Stepan 2000 and 2001, and Touraine 1997.
22
See the, to my mind, forceful and at the same time properly nuanced statements in favor of
universalism in this matter of Lara, Nussbaum and Phillips, op. cit. in the preceding footnote.
See also Fraser 1989 and Hutchings 2007.
association, expression, and others that political democracies include, have
helped the emergence of movements and parties, not only of indigenous
peoples but also of other discriminated sectors—peoples of African and
Asian origin, women, gays, incarcerated individuals, etc. Of course, there is
a long way to go before solving these problems, but the present situation is
preferable to the silences and repressions imposed in the past. As I have
insisted, even with their serious failings, those democracies and the political
rights and freedoms they sanction do matter: they allow some of those issues
to come to light and make it possible for its victims to invoke their agency and
connect with national and transnational allies that otherwise would be much
harder to find.
Furthermore, even in the Northwest an increasing consciousness of rights
has fostered the emergence, and at times great salience, of issues of civil and
social rights that had been dormant for long, such as those related to sexual
identity, handicapped individuals, undocumented or illegal migrants, and
generally various kinds of discrimination. The view of the human being as
an agent has multiple and often unexpected corollaries; some of them may be
regretted as disruptive, but this has been historically the path toward the
achievement of valuable rights and freedoms.
10.4. AG A I N O N AG E N C Y 23
I want to stress at this point that from my discussion of the legal system and of
dialogism it follows that we enter into political citizenship as already con-
stituted social beings—we carry rights and obligations that texture our lives
since birth. We also carry into our political citizenship identities that have
been and continue being shaped by manifold interactions and factors, includ-
ing nation and eventually nationalism, kinds of social contexts, history,
culture, family, and in quite a few cases religion. The resulting identities
may be individualistic, while others may privilege various kinds of communal
and/or solidaristic affiliations. Political citizens are social beings, not monads
that enter into politics devoid of history, culture, and identities. The view that
the individual unit of democracy is the citizen/agent does not make it
individualistic; those units are social beings, pre- and reconstituted as such
along the various journeys they undertake in their lifetimes, and carriers of
rights and freedoms that have a social, not just an individual dimension.
23
This section and the following one are based in part on O’Donnell 2008.
Some versions of liberalism, beginning with Hobbes, are individualistic, in
the sense that they construe individuals as pre-socially located in the throes of
the terrors and loneliness of the state of nature. Other versions of this
intellectual current, starting with Locke and the rights he asserted were held
in the state of nature before entering into properly political compacts, as well
as, explicitly, J. S. Mill, share the view of a socially pre-constituted being.
Thus, against some misunderstandings, liberalism is not necessarily individ-
ualistic, even if some of its intellectual currents are. Of course, socialism, as
well as the many existing versions of solidaristic, communal conceptions are
not individualistic—and yet not many of them are compatible with the view
of agency I have presented.
To insist on a point, this view of agency is not just one that has been legally
enacted in some countries. It was inscribed in the moral conscience of
humanity by the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen,
by the Prologue and the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United
States, and as noted in the preceding chapter, by the 1948 United Nations’
Universal Declaration of Human Rights,24 as well by numerous subsequent
international covenants and declarations. Despite drawbacks and recent dis-
tortions, this present-day view of agency not only belongs to a good part of
the legal culture of humanity; it has been mobilized, again and again, as a
powerful moral argument in most varied circumstances and by carriers of no
less varied cultures. The consequent demands for individual and collective
freedom, and for the recognition of the respect due to the dignity of all, have
resounded, and continue resounding, throughout regions and cultures.
I hope by now it is clear that my discussion of citizenship and agency, and
the variety of lives it allows and fosters, means that democracy is hospitable to
different conceptions of the human being as an agent. The resulting human
variety percolates into specific characteristics of the state and the regime; this
makes it unjustifiable to believe that we will or should wind up at the final
“consolidation” of a single kind of democracy.
10.5. TOWA R D S O M E B A S I C S TA N DA R D S
F O R P O L I T I C A L D E M O C R AC I E S
Democracy is the only political arrangement that construes us as agents,

especially but not exclusively in the sphere of political rights; this is its crucial
24
Which, it is worth recalling, begins by declaring that “All human beings are born free and
equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience, and should act
toward one another in a spirit of brotherhood”; art. 1.
difference from all sorts of authoritarian rule. This construction entails, and
legally demands, the effectuation of a system of respectful mutual recogni-
tions as such citizens/agents in our legitimate diversity. As I mentioned, it is
disputed as to whether this recognition is a moral obligation; I believe it is,
but the relevant fact at this moment is that the obligation of mutual recogni-
tion is effected in many aspects of a democratic regime and of the legal system
of a state that contains this kind of regime. Among many other aspects, this is
shown by the prohibitions of state and private violence and discrimination,
the legal backing of the existence of political parties and multiple social
organizations and movements, the innumerable ways in which the legal
system backs the right to engage in dialogical networks, and in general the
innumerable associational and expressive manifestations that embody, and
reproduce, the social diversity and the public sphere accepted and normally
fostered by political democracy. None of these and many other legally pro-
tected rights would make sense without the mutual recognitions that, as
demanded by the legal rules of every democracy, all citizens/agents owe to
each other, whether they are located in society or in the incumbency of state
roles. At the core of democracy—agency and citizenship—is asserted the
dignity of everyone, not as abstract beings but in our socially and culturally
shaped identities and interests.
From the preceding results the restrictive and at the same time the free-
dom-enhancing characteristic of democracy. The restriction is that we are free
in our choices and identities insofar as we do not arbitrarily violate the rights
and freedoms of others who are as much agents as we are. The freedom-
enhancing side of democracy is that, within the broad parameters demarcated
by the restriction, we may shape and reshape our identities, live our cultures,
and express and enact our social and political identities and interests. Of
course, this broad space of freedom leads to disagreements and sometimes
conflicts with diverging views and interests, but as we saw in Chapter 5 these
are to be arbitrated by the non-violent and agent-respecting institutional
channels that a democratic regime and its legal system sanction. In turn,
this restriction/enhancement aspect of democracy is an opening for bringing
various personal and collective identities and interests into politics; democ-
racy houses various identities and cultures, although of course their charac-
teristics and relative weight varies across countries and time.
As I argued above, we enter into the citizenship of a democratic regime
carrying a dense network of social relations—many of them legally defined
and backed—and with them identities, collective affiliations, cultures, and
even religions that are usually strong and meaningful for us. This fact and
the beneficial diversity it entails is not a hindrance; rather, it is the reason
that underlies the positive value that we should attach to the existence of
various kinds of democracy and, with them, of the various paths for further
eventual democratization. In contrast, the isolated monad of individualistic
theories is an emasculated being that can only ground a restricted, linear,
and unidimensional view of democracy, according to which its individual unit
is the voter, not the citizen—it is surely no accident that the authors I mention
in the first section of this chapter shared, based on their individualistic con-
ceptions, an inability to conceive democracy other than based on that view.
From this perspective result some corollaries. One is that tradition, history,
culture, international location, and other macro-factors operate at the micro-
level of the citizen and jointly contribute to generate, returning to the macro-
arenas of politics, a variety of already existing democracies. The second is that
the consequent diversity is a valuable achievement of countries and regions
that impress on their democracies their own specific traits. The third is that,
consequently, no particular version of democracy has an a priori claim of
superiority from others. The fourth is that, irrespective of such variations,
even at the relatively narrow level of the regime, every democracy entails, and
legally backs, agents and their consequent dignity as moral beings—I insist
that only this kind of being can be, logically and legally, the carrier of the
rights and obligations of citizenship without which a democratic regime
simply does not exist.
Yet even if the preceding considerations lead to the rejection of a unique
model of a “best” democracy, they should not slide into moral or cultural
relativism. This is an issue hotly disputed from several angles. Although it
does not solve matters that go beyond the ones I am discussing here, I believe
that the grounding of democracy gives an answer. It is that every kind of
democracy should meet some conditions springing from the condition as
agents of its citizens. This includes, first, some basic obligations to be
demanded from every state that houses a democratic regime, such as to
implement fair elections and uphold the basic encompassing freedoms of
such a regime; second, to seriously and consistently strive to make possible for
everyone access to the legal, material, and social wherewithal necessary for
being active, enabled agents who can exercise the right to decide freely who
will rule them, and even the right to try to be elected; third, to unambiguously
establish that every individual is the carrier of a legal personality, and as such
the holder of a set of—at least—universalistically equal political and civil
rights and freedoms; fourth, to shield everyone from arbitrary and/or unlaw-
ful violence in all social locations, from the family upwards to the state and
private bureaucracies; fifth, to treat all individuals—in their interactions with
the state, and with other individuals and private organizations—with the
equal respect and consideration due to agents living under rules established
by law; sixth, that state officials actually recognize that the citizenry is
the origin and justification of the authority and powers they hold and,
consequently, perform their roles with integrity and dedication to the public
good; and seventh, that in so doing those officials subject themselves to the
constitutional and legal rules that determine their authority and consequent
duties and responsibilities.
Of course, considering the present situation of some countries these con-
ditions are quite ambitious. Yet I believe they entail a transcultural require-
ment, if not necessarily of explicit recognition of agency, of human decency as
expressed in the political sphere, one that can be formulated as entailing goals
that can be shared by many traditions, religions, and cultures, however diverse
they are and continue to be. These aspects may be seen as the proximate
normative horizon of democratization everywhere, a common yardstick with
which to lay a baseline for assessing the quality of democracies on a compar-
ative basis. It is beyond this yardstick that we may—and should—ask about
every democracy: are the expressions of legitimate differences reflecting
historical/cultural characteristics that we should in principle respect or are
they traits that challenge any chance of improving the quality of its realization
as a democracy?
As to the challenges, there are two obviously major ones. One is the way
and extent that may be assessed, and by whom, the state and government’s
efforts, or lack thereof, to fulfill the above stated requirements. The other is
the way and extent to which some agency-denying practices may be accepted
or tolerated as an expression of respect for the respective culture or religion.
In this matter I agree with the authors cited in preceding footnotes; basically,
I believe that some practices are intolerable,25 as they entail clear and grave
violations of agency, while others belong to a gray zone that should be
prudentially assessed by means of respectful dialogues among the relevant
parties. As to the former, I am persuaded they should be prohibited and
eventually redressed by application of state law, not without before engaging
in serious attempts at finding consensual but still agency-respecting solutions,
including consultations and in some particularly problematic cases opening
jurisdiction for international courts or mediators—in short, I believe that the
principle “in dubio pro-agency” should prevail. Indeed, this will not eliminate
some agonizing and highly disputed decisions; yet even if the process of
reaching such decisions may helpfully make clear to all parties the values
respectively involved, this is one of the moments in which politics shows its
tragic side, the need to achieve temporary closure by choosing among hard
25
See Kymlicka 1996. Even though much interesting work has been done since this article
was published, I still find useful the distinction he draws in this text among “the good, the bad,
and the intolerable.”
alternatives and facing heavy trade-offs. The problem is compounded by the
fact that some decisions may be made on the basis of prejudice and/or
damning interests nowadays including, as I noted above, states pursuing
goals other than the alleged protection of certain rights and/or promotion
of democracy. But accepting this risk, and knowing that decisions in these
matters will often leave problems and conflicts standing, seems to me
preferable to indifference or inaction in the face of severe violations of
agency.26
Furthermore, it is to be expected that alert domestic organizations, as well
as the international networks and the spread of the norms of international
law that I have mentioned as one of the positive aspects of present globali-
zation, will help prevent or contain some of the harms risked. As in other
matters I discuss in this book, in this one there are no easy, linear or abstract
a priori solutions. As Hurrell (2007: 12) says, “[T]he task is to think very
hard about the conditions under which moral principles and moral ideas can
be meaningfully and persuasively defended, justified, and criticized within
global society as a whole.” As Cooke (2006: 21) adds discussing what she
calls “context-trascending” ethical norms such as the ones I am invoking
here, the claims of their validity should be regarded as “open in principle to
interrogation on the basis of good reasons,” and their “assessments . . .
should be tied to open-ended, maximally inclusive, fair and public argu-
mentation” (ibid. 132).
10.6. A C O N C LU D I N G R E F L E C T I O N
I have argued that the state is an indispensable anchor of the rights of

citizenship, and reviewed how in some countries, through many efforts and
struggles, subordinated sectors and classes managed to inscribe in its legal
system, in addition to political rights, various civil, social, and cultural ones.
Nobody needs these rights more than those who are subordinated in society,
even more so those who in addition are submitted to acute patterns of
inequality, discrimination, and/or exclusion. And no entity can better bring
about those rights other than a state that in some real sense becomes a
state sincerely working for the needs of its citizenry/nation/people, regardless
of the variations imposed by time, region, and culture. Demanding that
26
Of course, I am aware that these assertions are polemical. Yet I believe that the moral
relativism entailed by extreme views of multiculturalism leads to situations even more prob-
lematic than the ones that are risked by the view I adopt here.
commitment is exercising the right to a state that I asserted in Chapter 4;
conversely it is the duty of a state (and the respective governments) that, by
housing a democratic regime, it acknowledges, de jure if not always de facto,
the citizenship and agency of its members—degrees in the achievement of the
four dimensions of the state do matter for many reasons, indeed including
democracy and citizenship.
We are now ready to propose some conclusions resulting from the journey
we have undertaken.
..................
11
..................
Conclusion
11.1. LOOKING BACK
We have traversed a winding road. In some segments we enjoyed reasonably

clear vistas, in others we veered off down roads led by scholars, specializing in
subjects beyond my own, and still in others we had to undertake tentative
incursions using maps that barely cover the terrain. We started (Chapter 1)
from a reasonably firm base: the democratic regime and the rich literature
focused on this regime and its main institutions. This base has the advantage
of allowing clarity of exposition, drawing reasonably clear-cut propositions,
and in general conforming to the linearity of language. It is a rather comfort-
able milieu to inhabit, where in addition there are always interesting vistas to
discover. Yet, starting with the discussion of the regime, we saw that it is far
from solely a way to freely decide who will govern for a certain period—
although this is of course extremely important. We also saw that democracy
is, no less fundamentally, a political arrangement that assigns certain rights
and freedoms to individuals who are, in the relevant context, construed as
citizens of the political unit to which the regime applies.
But this was a starting point, because on close examination we found in the
regime some aspects that sent us into two directions. One, at a micro-level of
analysis, citizenship and its underlying idea of agency; the other direction was
toward a macro-level, the state and its various dimensions. Furthermore,
while following these two paths we examined some relationships within the
three levels of regime, citizenship, and state. This complicated the analysis,
not only because each of these three levels of analysis has its own complexities
but also because they interact in various ways that, in addition, change across
time and space. Still, I hope it is clear at the present stage of this book that a
proper conceptualization of democracy, including its partial incarnation as a
political democracy, requires that we do not only stick to those three levels but
are also aware of historical legacies and comparative differences in all cases
under study. As I warned in the Introduction, this entails a broad agenda,
about which this book is limited to only suggesting some promising roads for
further conceptualization and research.
204 Conclusion
In this spirit perhaps I should insist that close examination of the demo-
cratic regime and the various characteristics with which these regimes exist in
the contemporary world shows, on the one hand, its crucial importance for
democracy and, on the other hand, its insufficiency even for a proper con-
ceptualization of the regime itself. In specifying the regime I found convenient
to add some characteristics additional to those usually stipulated by the
literature: that elections are decisive and institutionalized, and that they are
based on an inclusive wager (Chapter 1). Furthermore, later on (Chapter 5),
I criticized an often silent assumption of current democratic theories: that of
a high internal homogeneity of the respective countries, including what
refers to the actual reach of the legality of the state and the generalized
democraticness of subnational regimes.
In addition, behind the voter we discovered the basic unit, the micro-
foundation of democracy, the citizen and, with him/her, an agent. We also
found that this unit is legally sanctioned and backed; it is the holder of a legal
personality that supports various rights and freedoms—and very importantly,
this is a legal fact that holds universally in a state that houses a democratic
regime, irrespectively of the preferences of any individual. Still at the level of
the regime, encountering the state sent us in three directions. One, that
I mentioned quite briefly because it is generally recognized by the literature,
as the territorial delimitation of the electorate. But in addition we found
other dimensions of the state: as the legal system that sanctions and backs
the participatory rights and the surrounding freedoms of the regime, and as
the set of bureaucracies that, irrespective of how democratized are other state
bureaucracies, acts in consonance with the kind of elections as well as the
rights and freedoms entailed by the democratic regime. No such regime can
exist without these three state components (Chapter 1).
These findings propelled us toward both the level of the citizen/agent and
of the state. Because in my view the issue of legally-backed agency is so crucial
for—among other things—a proper understanding of democracy, I paid
attention to the emergence of this idea in the Northwest, and how it spread
from civil rights to political and social rights, and later on to cultural ones
(Chapter 2).
Then I moved to the state itself. This required some conceptual stipula-
tions, centered on proposing four constitutive dimensions of the state. This,
as with agency, led me to an historical excursion focused on the Northwest,
which in turn opened some comparative vistas that underlined significant
differences, in all those dimensions, with many countries outside that region
(Chapter 3).
This meant the need to examine the referent postulated by the state (and its
governments) as the entity for which it claims to exist and that it purports to
Conclusion 205
serve. This referent normally exists for every complex association, the state of
course included; in the latter it became indispensable when political rule
became constitutionalized (even if initially by restricted democratic regimes),
and consequently citizens were construed not as subjects of the state but as
the source and ultimate justification of its power and authority. and of the
respective governments (Chapter 4).
In looking at the state I paid attention to another of its dimensions, the
legal one, which I argued is no less constitutive of the state than its bureau-
cracies. Furthermore, insofar as this dimension sanctions and backs the
processes, freedoms and rights entailed by democratic regime (and rules at
least some of its bureaucracies), this may be considered a partially democra-
tized state. This provided a standpoint from which to project advances toward
a more fully democratized state and, at its horizon, a truly democratic rule of
law, or a estado democrático de derecho (Chapter 5).
Yet I had to immediately qualify in two main ways the resulting conclu-
sions. One is the abundant evidence that nowhere is the law applied equally;
however, I mentioned the particularly harsh ways in which this inequality
exists in very imbalanced countries, including some that nowadays have a
democratic regime (Chapter 5). The other qualification resulted from noting
a fundamental antinomy of the state and the society it textures. The law of
modern states sanctions and backs universally equal relations in many civil
rights; in addition, at least partially democratized states sanction and back the
universalistic rights and freedoms entailed by a democratic regime. This
creates areas of equality available for being invoked and eventually mobilized
by the carriers of the respective rights and freedoms; this is a huge achieve-
ment, particularly if contrasted with past (and some present) situations where
those attributions are absent. Yet the other side of the coin is also part of the
realities we want to grasp. It is that this same law sanctions and backs some
social relations that are inherently unequal, especially the ones resulting from
the capitalist mode of production and circulation, and those that rule the
internal (and sometimes the external) relations of the ubiquitous bureau-
cracies, public and private, with and under which most of us live—and also,
in not a few countries, gender, family and ethnic relations also (Chapters 5
and 6). This is a profoundly ambivalent reality that the theory of democracy
should not ignore, even if at the cost of complicating both theory and
practice.
I summarized my incursions on the state by proposing in Chapter 6 a
metaphor symbolizing its various faces: as a set of bureaucracies standing
“in front” of society; as a state-for-the-nation (or variations I discuss in
Chapter 4), “above”; as a filter, “around”; and as a legal system, “inside.”
These various—and varying across time and cases—faces are an important
206 Conclusion
reason for the difficulties in reconstructing the conceptual and practical unity
of the state, which I attributed to the cascade of legally-based hierarchical
authorizations dispensed by its legal system. In Chapter 6, after having made
use of fruitful contributions focused on macro-aspects of the state, I went to
micro-level ones, mostly anthropologic/ethnographic, to examine some faces
that states exhibit, especially in countries of high inequality and of poor
bureaucratic, and specially legal, presence of the state.
In turn, Chapter 7 begins with a personal story that demonstrates a
situation—a terrorist state and a monological structure of discourse—that
is the almost perfect opposite of democracy. By way of contrast I elaborate on
the crucial importance of the existence, and practice, of dialogical networks of
discourse, and the variety of deliberations, identities, and life projects they
entail and nourish. I further argued that entering into these networks is a
fundamental aspect of the exercise of agency and citizenship; it is through this
that we have the chance to re-dis-cover the true meaning of the authority
and powers that state and government exert over us. If and when enabled by
democratic rights and freedoms we can tell each other, in manifold public
spheres, about this fundamental fact; this is the best antidote to the perma-
nent risk of reification/alienation of the state. It is also propitious for the
spread of a “civic” kind of nationalism although, as we saw in Chapter 4, it is
always tenuously dependent on the absence of armed conflicts and/or severe
crises.
Then I once more shifted gears. I took in Chapter 8 what at that stage I felt
was a detour necessary for providing some broader context to the rather brief
comparative references I made in the preceding ones. Thus in this chapter
I provided an overview of Latin America, albeit basically from the perspective
of the issues I deal with in this book. As I noted in this chapter, however, such
an overview is not meant to substitute for the detailed work that lies ahead,
for others as well as for myself, especially considering the particularities that
the political democracies of this region are evincing.
Throughout these incursions we have followed a guiding thread, citizen-
ship and its underlying idea of agency. As we saw when discussing the history
of this matter in the Northwest, this very idea leads, almost ineluctably, to see
it at stake not only in terms of political but also of civil and social rights, and
lately also of cultural ones. This same issue leads no less ineluctably to others;
one concerns the social conditions that may enable, or hinder, agency, and
the other to what criteria should be applied, especially to countries that do
not furnish many of their inhabitants with such conditions. In looking at
this matter, I found an interesting convergence among democracy as here
understood, and the main intellectual currents on human rights and human
development, as all of them are grounded on a very similar conception of
Conclusion 207
agency. Dealing with this topic I found a problem into which we had already
come across when discussing the regime: the theoretical undecidability of the
criteria to be used for assessing the effectiveness of the values posited by these
intellectual currents, and the consequent need to theorize that undecidability,
not to ignore it or apply to it abstract, a priori criteria. In this terrain
I concluded that “in dubio pro-democracy,” albeit being aware that this
criterion does not by itself guarantee normatively or generally positive solu-
tions (Chapter 9).
Another issue is raised by the increased globalization and pluralism (in-
cluding legal pluralism) of the contemporary world, both in terms of what
role could and should states perform in such a context, and of the coexistence
of views and legal rules that assert agency together with some cultures
and views that ignore and eventually deny it. There I conclude that the state
is very far from its demise, even if now it has to undertake more complex
responsibilities. I also note that the contemporary world exhibits a variety of
democracies, something we should welcome for many reasons. And in terms
of the issues of agency, I argue that there are many cultures congenial with this
view, while in cases of conflict, although not ignoring the complexities of the
matter, I conclude in a position that may be stated as “in dubio pro-agency”
(Chapter 10).
Throughout these discussions in most chapters we found again and again
how important have been, and will continue to be, the struggles for freedoms,
rights, and democracy that under very diverse circumstances have been
undertaken by varied social sectors and classes. The resulting lesson is that
these rights and freedoms, and behind them the legally institutionalized
recognition of agency, are rarely graciously granted; they are hard won by
means of struggle that help both the emergence of democracy and its
expansion. In this respect, and having especially in mind countries where so
much is still to be achieved, I insisted that in the supportive role, once certain
rights have been achieved in any area, it acts as a springboard for struggling
for other rights.1 This was clear in the initial achievement of civil rights in the
Northwest, and it may become increasingly clear in the achievement of those
and other rights in the rest of the world.
So this is theory, but theory with a comparative intent. Democracies exist
in regions and countries that are profoundly marked y historical, structural,
and cultural specificities. As I argue in the Introduction, the spread of
1
Concluding an already mentioned comparative examination of this topic, Epp (1998: 197)
asserts that “The basic lesson of this study is that rights are not gifts: they are won through
concerted collective action.” See concurrently the excellent work that Tilly (especially 1998 and
1999) did on this and related matters.
208 Conclusion
democratic regimes in the world, as well as of cases that have dubious claims
to be such regimes, demands at least two investigations. One is careful
inspection of the concepts and assumptions of the concepts we carry in
such undertaking, knowing that most of them originate in the peculiar
historical experience of the Northwest. The other is a no less careful exami-
nation of the specificities of the regions or countries studied.
For this purpose, it is not a matter of bland eclecticism. At least in what
refers to democracy, I believe that it is useful to return to its very kernel. This
is that the specific difference of democracy in relation to all other types of
political rule is that those who do not govern are the source and justification,
not just the subjects, of political authority, and the ultimate judges about how
and whom should exercise that authority and its consequent powers. Even if
not extended to all, this subversive discovery was made some twenty-five
centuries ago in Athens;2 amazingly, it was lost until quite recently but has
continued resonating in manifold ways through history and continents. This
means that it is only under democracy that political authority has a point of
origin, a basic constraint and a point of destination. Its point of origin is the
aggregation of voting decisions in fair elections, by legally enabled citizens. Its
basic constraint is that, at the very least, the holders of political authority may
not act in ways that entail denial of, or aggression against, the agency of the
citizens. The point of destination is that what the state and the government do
is supposed to be geared by a common good construed as referring not to
subjects but to agents endowed with rights. These are universal aspects of
democracy, including its restricted version as a political democracy, or a
democratic regime. These aspects may not be fully acknowledged by states
and governments, the agency of its citizens may be more or seriously ham-
pered, individuals may or may not want to exercise their rights, and other
factors I mentioned throughout this book may hinder the functioning of each
democracy, as well as the effectiveness of important freedoms and rights. But,
still, those universal aspects are “there” as long as a democratic regime exists
and can be (and have been) mobilized, both as aspirations about a democracy
to be achieved or to be improved.
The preceding is an overview of the journey we have undertaken. Close to
its end, the comparative glances we have taken invite a return to a more
theoretical level. This return is inspired by two facts. One, that democracy,
every democracy, is perfectible. Two, that within the present panorama of
already existing democracies, some have particularly serious problems in a
series of dimensions—the workings of the regime itself, deficiencies of the
2
This is when was unforgettably made what Ober (2003: 9) calls “The startling claim that the
poor man had as much right to share in public life as his wealthy compatriot.”
Conclusion 209
state in its four dimensions, manifold consequences of extensive poverty and

high inequality and social heterogeneity, limited and uneven effectiveness of
certain rights and freedoms, and others we have observed during our journey.
Nowadays, in a few of these democracies voices are heard arguing that it
would be useless—or dangerous—trying to improve them or, from the other
pole of the ideological spectrum, that they are just masks for the perpetration
of harsh social domination. Yet the question that stands is: if, despite
admittedly serious problems, there is still something to democracy, to any
democracy, what is it that makes it preferable to any other type of political
rule?
11.2. BACK TO DEMOCRACY
So, then, why democracy, even if hampered by many flaws and existing only in
the relatively restricted version as a political democracy? I begin with argu-
ments that are quite consensual in the literature. One is that democracy is
valuable because it provides a peaceful way for deciding who will govern for
some time. Furthermore, elections provide the only political asset that is truly
egalitarian; as Verba et al. (1995: 516) point out, “[T]he vote is the only kind
of political activity for which there is mandated equality among those who
take part. All other forms of participation permit an activist who has the will
and the wherewithal to increase the amount of participatory input.”3 Another
positive aspect of democracy springs from the fact that there will always be
conflicts about rights and obligations, in themselves, in the scope of their
implementation, in their ordering, and in their trade-offs. Democracy allows
ways for resolving these conflicts in ways that are not only peaceful but also
are, as we saw in Chapter 5, both enforceable and reversible through legally
defined ways. Furthermore, insofar as those processes are ultimately regulated
by legal/constitutional rules that also sanction basic rights and freedoms of
the potential participants, these processes are fair. Consequently, they are a
substantive good; as Dahl (1998: 48) argues, “Democracy is not only a process
of governing. Because rights are necessary elements in the democratic political
institutions, democracy is also inherently a system of rights. Rights are among
the essential building blocks of democratic process of government.” They are
also a public good because in a democratic regime they are available in a non-
exclusionary way to everyone.
3
See also Dahl 2006; in relation to Latin America, Huber and Stephens 1999 make a similar
argument with reference to classes and sectors hampered by deep poverty and inequality.
210 Conclusion
The preceding are important—and to my mind sufficient—arguments for

favoring democracy over all other kinds of political rule. But they do not seem
to me enough for accounting for the great normative appeal that, under most
varying circumstances, democracy has exercised and continues exercising.
This matter is worth exploring. To begin with, because democracy entails
agency and legally sanctions and backs it, it opens congenial political and
social spaces for some central human aspirations: freedom, well-being and
respectful recognition. This is because, as an agent, I have the right to try to
control the social and political aspects that influence my life and its chances;
the rights and freedoms of democracy are helpful for democratizing various
social, not only strictly political areas, or at least for humanizing them in ways
consistent with agency—as in the workplace, relations in and with bureau-
cracies, and anti-discrimination actions, among many others. Let me call this
one the overall rights expanding reason for preferring democracy over any
other kind of political rule.
In particular, one of those rights is the participation in the election of those
who will make decisions that are mandatory and ultimately backed by
superior coercion. These are rights of legally-enabled agents, carriers of a
legal personality that holds for many social areas, well beyond those delimited
by the regime; even the—for some—trivial fact of casting a single ballot
among millions of others entails recognition of such agency and its rights.
As Waldron (1999: 114) notes, “[A]ccording equal weight for equal potential
decisiveness to individual votes is a way of respecting persons.”4 I label this
one the legally enabling reason.
Insofar as legislation, public policies, and judicial adjudications result from
processes that originate in fair elections and conform to the legal/constitu-
tional rules and guarantees of an at least partially democratized state, there is
prima facie obligation to accept the consequent decisions. A similar obligation
to act according to procedures and resources authorized by those same rules
holds when trying to change those who govern and the decisions they make.
Thus, the rights of democracy presuppose, in principle and barring publicly
and properly justified refusal, the acceptance of correlative duties, as befits
agents who are legally assigned both;5 this I consider the prima facie political
obligation reason.
4
Raz (1994: 152) concurs: “[T]he value of the right to vote largely depends on the symbolic
recognition of full membership in the community it expresses.”
5
Garzón Valdés (2002: 39) makes this point well: “In a democratic system, citizens must
simultaneously assume the double condition of subject and object of political decisions: those
who resign to the first condition are fatally reduced to the second one, and those who try to
claim only the first one become authoritarian actors” (my translation).
Conclusion 211
Because of the preceding, in democracy the typical claim of all kinds of

political authority that it is for all is complemented by the fact that it is from
all—as I have insisted, the citizens are the source and justification of that
authority and of the powers that emanate from it. Especially since it became
based on an inclusive wager, democracy is the only political arrangement that
contains this claim. Consequently, it is particularly amenable for making it
possible that the members of a society recognize that they are the source and
the justification of the authority and powers that coordinate, organize, facili-
tate, and sometimes oppress their lives. This I call the reason of proper source
and justification of state and governmental powers and authority.
In this perspective elections acquire special meaning. The paradox of
voting6 is correct from an individualistic standpoint yet it forgets that
through elections the most public and general of the powers that there are
in modern societies are collectively instituted. At the moment of elections all
of us are equal, and as such equals we institute those powers. Elections in
democracy are a moment, brief but recurrent, and intensely symbolized, of
“de-alienation” (or, equivalently, “de-reification”) of those powers. The
meaning of fair elections can be, at least momentarily, collectively appro-
priated by the citizenry, by making evident that the existing powers are not
really theirs, nor consequently should be for them7—it is an opportunity for a
collective self-pedagogy about the true meaning of political power and au-
thority. Surely this re-appropriation is only partially true, and after the
elections state and government may turn distant and, at times, hostile; but
it is still important, because elections stay as memories and anticipations,
and as institutionalized opportunities for new, and eventually mobilizing,
re-appropriations of the true meaning of the authority and powers of state
and government. This also results from the fact that democracy is the only
kind of political rule that legally sanctions and backs rights on the basis
of which it is possible to participate, individually and collectively, in horizon-
tal and vertical dialogical networks and the resulting public spheres and
deliberations, not only in the political realm but also, as already noted,
across society. This makes it possible to criticize the permanent tendency to
reification of all powers, not only the political ones.8 More broadly, as it
6
As initially formulated by Downs 1957 and later on elaborated and discussed by countless
contributions.
7
This meaning may be lost in the routine of taking for granted this kind of election in
countries that have long enjoyed a democratic regime; but we have only to look at the elation
with which so many people participated in elections during transitions from authoritarian rule
to find out the enormous significance of discovering that the King was naked and having the
freedom to act in consequence.
8
Kateb 1981 and 1992 correctly stresses these points.
212 Conclusion
legally backs those networks and spheres, democracy has the advantage of
facilitating the unveiling and with it the public discussion of the antinomies,
undecidables, and tensions inherent to political and social life. This is the
collective self-pedagogy or de-alienation reason.
By sanctioning civil and political rights, even more so if it also includes
social and cultural rights, democracy and the practices it allows are the best
possible basis from which to strive against the recurrently unequalizing
tendencies generated by capitalism and the hierarchical relations generated
in and by bureaucracies, public and private.9 These tendencies will never be
cancelled, but the dynamics opened by democracy make possible—it has been
possible in some countries—to achieve societies that provide at least a basic
level of welfare and respectful treatment for almost everyone. But these
achievements have reached a small portion of humanity and even there
remain to be perfected in many ways, and when they occur may be reversed,
at a particularly high cost in countries where not much has been achieved in
this respect. Those unequalizing tendencies present a continuing challenge to
democracy and its egalitarian dimensions, and as such should be theorized as
a fundamental aspect of every democracy. This is the potentially equalizing
reason.
11.3. A BELATED (NON) DEFINITION
A corollary of the preceding is that the interactions between regime, citizens,

and state should be acknowledged as a central issue for democratic theory and
practice. The efforts for enhancing the state in its various dimensions, includ-
ing the democraticness of its legal system and bureaucracies, are not necessary
only for economic growth and social order; they are also necessary for
democracy itself. Specifically, the legal enabling of citizens and the availability
of dialogical networks may not be indispensable for economic growth and
social order, but they are necessary for guiding, and maintaining, the state in
directions congenial to democracy and its expansion.
So this is the moment to offer my characterization, albeit not properly a
definition, of democracy. I proposed in Chapter 1 a definition of a democratic
regime, or a political democracy. This is a crucial component, without which
9
Touraine (1994: 16) is right when he asserts that democracy introduces a dimension of
equality in the midst of social inequality. Concurrently, Beitz (1989: p. xvi) pointedly remembers
that “ [W]e must keep in mind that historically a main goal of democratic movements has been
to seek redress in the political sphere for the effects of inequalities in the economy and society.”
Conclusion 213
no democracy can exist, at least in the context of a state. But I noted that this
is just an aspect of democracy. On the other hand, the historical variability
and the undecidability of the various political, civil, social, and cultural rights,
and as consequence the always open-ended character of democracy, prohibit a
rigid definition of it. Thus I believe that the proper object of inquiry, as well as
of political practice, lies more in democratization than in democracy. It
consists, beyond the core provided by the regime and its own eventual further
democratization,10 of the acquisition and legal backing of wider and more
solidly supported rights and freedoms that pertain to the civil, social, and
cultural aspects of citizenship and, more broadly, of the agency of everyone
irrespective of his/her positions as a citizen.
The degrees and characteristics of such expansions are a measure, however
difficult to calibrate empirically, of the degree of democratization, or the
quality of democracy of each case. Of course, those expansions (and, indeed,
retractions) have led, and will forever lead, to manifold conflicts and trade-
offs. But under political democracy those expansive possibilities are always
potentially available, and can be processed in agent-respecting ways. This will
not lead to the end of history, but provides the best political arrangement
for advancing toward decent societies, ones that respect everyone.11 This is
no more than a field of possibilities, except that it is uniquely offered by
democracy. A look at the present world may induce despair; yet, if I may recall
the experience of my country under a terrorist state, at least sometimes
hope on the resiliency and ultimately the political import of certain basic
agency-respecting values is not based on sheer illusion.
11.4. LOOKING FORWARD
In short, all aspects of democracy spill over every feature in which agency is at
stake. This may bother a linear mind. However, this is what gives democracy
its peculiar dynamic and historical openness. The undecidability of political
rights, the always possible extension or retraction of political, civil, social, and
cultural rights, and the issue of the options that enable agency, are the very
field in which political competition has been and forever will continue being
10
As the reader may have noticed, in part because this topic is being extensively and fruitfully
discussed by other authors and in part because of reasons of space, here I have not discussed
another important aspect of democratization about which much remains to be done in many
countries, that of the regime itself.
11
Here I allude to the formulation of Margalit 1996.
214 Conclusion
played. Naturally, some of the rules of this play are established by the regime,
but the struggles for limiting and expanding rights and for defining if there
should be, and at what levels and decided by whom, agency-respecting and
enabling conditions, are political and, indeed, moral struggles that take place
both inside and well beyond the regime. The driving force of those struggles is
that, politically, morally, philosophically, and legally, the rights and freedoms
invoked by democracy pertain to agents, beings endowed with practical
reason and capable of moral judgment. Human beings have the right to
have rights and, consequently, of being able to struggle for those they deem
proper for them and for others. This is the basis of the assignment of legal
personality; in turn, thus recognized agents are the legally-enabled citizens
that provide the micro-foundation of democracy and its main raison d’être. It
is on this basis that now I add another reason to the ones listed in the
preceding section. It is that democracy is the only kind of political rule that
inherently entails an open historical and normative horizon. The undecid-
ability of various rights and aspirations (including those postulated by human
rights and human development intellectual currents); the continuing de-
mands and redefinitions concerning agency-enabling conditions; the tensions
and antinomies of democracy in relation to the state and the society in which
it is embedded; and in general the aspirations for due recognition of agency in
manifold social locations, all concur to create an issue that both echoes and
feeds the peculiar dynamics of democracy.
This issue is the permanent disputes about what are the proper boundaries
of the political, including those of states and governments. About this matter,
recall from Chapter 2 that some struggles succeeded in introducing demo-
cratizing (and humanizing) changes in previous bulwarks of the “private.”
Eisenstadt (1999: 45) is on the mark when he says that “[T]he continual
struggle about the redefinition of the realm of the political . . . of what is
considered the appropriate scope of political action . . . has in itself consti-
tuted one of the major foci of democratic political contestation and struggle.”12
The struggles for redrawing the boundaries of politics and the state will never
end, as they express the unavoidable diversity of society. Because of this fact, as
well others I have summarized in the present chapter, democracy always
projects a horizon of both hope and dissatisfaction. It is more than a valuable
kind of political arrangement; it is also the notorious sign of a lack, of an always
12
Eisenstadt (2000: 129) adds that one of the “central aspects of the modern political process
[is] a continuing struggle over the definition of the realm of the political. Indeed, it is only with
the coming of modernity that drawing the boundaries of the political becomes one of the major
foci of open political contestation and struggle.” This is also one of the central points of Wolin
1961.
Conclusion 215
pending agenda that calls for the redress of social ills and for advances in the
manifold matters which, at a certain time and for a certain people, most
concern human well-being and dignity. This projection toward an unending,
undefined, risky, and hopeful future—the open-endedness reason why we
should prefer democracy—is why we should nurture it, not only taking into
account its advantages as I do above, but also, as I have also done, by critically
looking at its challenges and shortcomings.
In order to pursue the arduous task that results, the complex character of
democracy and its no less complex relationships with the state and society has
to be conceptualized and researched in the midst of the variety with which it
appears in the contemporary world. As I say in the Introduction, I hope that
this book serves as a useful step in this direction.
........................
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...........
Index
...........
Abrams, P. 118n.3 authorizations 115, 118–20, 123, 124,
absolutism 43, 66, 68 131, 206
accountability 34n.8, 97, 99, 104 autonomy 17, 64, 86
administration 62–3, 67, 68, 109–10,
117, see also bureaucracies Babylonian law 61n.17
agency 25, 31, 42, 44, 46–8, 97, 100, 107, Bavaria 68
108, 129, 139, 167, 169, 170, 195–6, Beetham, D. 172n.12
203, 204 Beitz, C. R. 212n.9
denial of 32, 172–3, 176, 199 Belgium 76
effectuation of 143 Bendix, R. 45, 47–8, 113n.51
emergence and evolution of 33–41 Berger, P. and Luckman, T. 139, 143
enabling rights and capabilities of 176 Berlin, Isaiah 170n.7
inequality and 121 Berman, H. 35–6
legally sanctioned 25–6, 171, 172, Billig, M. 80
173, 194, 204, 210 Bismarck, Otto von 47n.49
recognition of 68, 141, 172, 175 Black, A. 34
universalism of 100, 108, 184, 194, Bobbio, N. 37, 45, 47, 93
see also political citizenship; Bodin, J. 64, 66
universalistic wager Bolivia 150–3, 156–64, 165
Agnew, J. 186 bounded universalism 25n.23, 27
Alford, R. and Friedland, R. 40n.28 Bourdieu, P. 53n.3, 63, 81n.18, 82, 103,
anarchy 43, 44 111, 127
ancient Greece 61n.17, 94 bourgeoisie 41, 63, 67
Anderson, P. 36n.15 Brazil 9, 147n.3, 150–3, 156–64, 188
Annino, A. 147 Breuilly, J. 81
anthropology 117, 118, 122, 124, Brown, D. 192n.17
130, 206 Brubaker, R. 85
Apter, D. 8, 9 Buddhism 184
Aquinas, Thomas 38n.21 bureaucracies 15, 28, 92, 96, 106, 117,
Argentina 9, 10, 133–7, 150–3, 156–64, 118, 127, 128, 143, 204, 205, 212
187–8 administrative regulation 109–10
Aristotelianism 35n.13, 36, 37, 39, 66, German 68
94, 113 hierarchical 55–6, 60, 105, 112–13, 120
associations 17, 28, 58–62, 73, 109, 121 Latin American 110, 146, 148
Athens 208 legality and 109–10
Augsburg, peace of (1555) 66 state as set of 53–5, 55
authoritarian states 32, 104, 123, 133–7, bureaucratic-authoritarianism 3, 4, 9, 10
141, 161, 165, 170, 184, 190, 197 bureaucratization 60, 63, 65, 83
256 Index
Calhoun, C. 80n.17, 85n.29, 87 pluralism and 193
Canada 76 political rights and 129, 204
Canovan, M. 81, 89 private sphere and 31, 41
capabilities approach 173–8, 180 ‘public security’ and 178, see also polit-
capitalism 38, 39, 40, 45, 67, 130, 212 ical rights; freedoms; human rights
civil rights and 129–30 civil society 69
expansion of 64, 65, 126, 129, 146–7, clientelism 124, 154, 165
154, 192 coercion 51, 52–3, 61, 62, 63, 65, 67n.34,
inequalities of 105, 111 73, 98, 111, 118, 126, 127, 129
objectification of 141–2 Cohen, J. 190n.12, 191
state and 115, 125–9, 188 collective actions 59, 62
Castille 74n.1 collective identity 14, 54, 55, 66, 71,
Catholic Church 63, 64, 66 73–9, 82, 86, 130, 136, 197
Chávez, Hugo 161 Collier, D. and Levitsky, S. 11
Chemnitz, Martin 66n.30 Colombia 150–3, 156–64
Cheresky, I. 155 common good 53, 54, 57, 58, 59, 73, 76,
childrens’ rights 189 77, 80, 82, 84, 87, 90, 103, 104, 123,
Chile 9, 19n.9, 134–5n2, 148n.6, 149, 125, 137, 169, 188, 208
150–3, 156–64 common language 67, 68, 78–9
Cicero 34 Confucianism 184
citizenry 75, 127, 128 Constant, Benjamin 43
citizenship 10, 17, 41, 42, 48, 59, 61, 109, constitutionalism 42–5, 94, 98, 99, 101,
121, 203, 204 109–10, 172
ascriptive characteristics of 25, 27, consumption in Latin America 154
82–3, 89 contract(s) 39, 40, 46, 67, 106, 129
legal personality of 33–4, 36, labor 39, 127
129–30, 198 social 25, 42
nationalization of 82–5 will theory of 36, 37, 46n.47
Northwestern 89 contractualism 42, 68
poverty and 121 Cooke, M. 200
rights 138, 191, 200–1 Coronil, F. 143n.15
state as a promoter of 92 corporations 28, 129
state bureaucracies and 56 Corrigan, P. and Sayer, D. 71n.47
universalistic wager 13, see also corruption 96, 124, 149, 150, 151,
political citizenship; agency; 157, 158
dialogism Costa Rica 148n.7, 149, 150–3, 156–64
‘citizenship gap’ 191n.15 Cotterrell, R. 109n.40, 110n.42
civil law 36, 47 Coulanges, F. de 43
civil rights 65, 89, 96, 107, 108, 115, 167, Counter-Reformation 66
171, 174, 180, 206, 207, 212 Craig, P. 97
capitalism and 129–30 cuius regio eius religio 66, 67n.33
contracts and 46–7 cultural rights 97, 98, 149, 158–9, 165,
Latin America and 149, 158, 165, 181 206, 212
negative duty of the state 97–8 customs union (Zollverein) 68
Index 257
Dahl, R. 8, 17, 20, 21, 22, 33n.6, 134, functioning and quality of 55
168, 209 universalistic wager 45, 85, see also
Dasgupta, P. 175n.17, 179n.24 agency; political citizenship
decision-making 51, 56–62, 67, 85, 136 democratization 58, 90, 108, 130, 143,
decisive leadership 163, 164 154, 160, 181, 194, 198, 207–8, 213
decolonization 82 Deutsch, K. 8
democracy 15, 32, 74, 84, 85, 89, 90, 91, dialectics of identity and recognition
92, 113, 130, 210 139–41, 167
accountability 104 dialogism 136–9, 143, 167, 170, 171,
aggressive promotion of 190 177, 185, 195, 197, 206
basic standards for 198–200 Diamond, L., Linz, J. J., and Lipset, S. M.
characterization of 212–13 16n.4
convergence 167 Di Palma, G. 16
cultural/religious incompatibilities discrimination 71, 111, 169, 195
with 183–4 division of labour 142
dangers of 43 Domingo, P. 188n.10
definitions of 11–18, 21, 28–9 Dominican Republic 150–3, 156–64
delegative 161–2 Donald, M. 140
dialogical appeals 137–9 Doornbos, M. 186n.5
‘dignity of everyone’ at core of 192, Dowding, K. and Hees, M. 107
196, 197, 198 Dunn, J. 45, 61n.19
human rights and human Durkheim, É. 82, 143n.16
development 167, 173–4, 176,
178–80, 206–7 Economic Commission for Latina
Latin America 156, 157, 161–2 America 154n.15
minimalist definitions of 13–16, 17, Ecuador 150–3, 156–64, 165
21, 23 education 41n.31, 79, 154, 185
nationality and 84, 91 egalitarianism 115, 209, 212
‘new citizenship’ 164–5 Eisenstadt, S. N. 45n.45, 214
‘new’ democracies 19n.9, 22, 24n.22, elected officials 17, 18–19, 44,
169 see also state officials
political authority and 208 elections 14, 16, 209, 210, 211
positive aspects of 209–10 authoritarianism and 24n.21
reasons for preferring 210–15 decisiveness and 18–19, 23, 100
rule of law 94, 95, 96, 98, 99–101, 106, fair 17–23, 26, 27, 45, 100–1, 149,
109, 110, 112, 113 161, 198, 210, 211
social context 168–71, 198 institutionalization of 19–20, 23
struggle for 111, see also agency; fair rules for 18n.8
elections; state; universalistic wager electoral courts, trust in 157, 163
democratic regime 13–29, 54, 73, 82, 89, Elias, N. 148n.8
96, 100, 102, 122, 127, 160, 203–4 El Salvador 150–3, 156–64
definitions 13–18, 27, 56–8 Engels, Friedrich 142
fair elections 18–20, 161, 198, 210, 211 English language 78
258 Index
English law 63n.21 deprivation of 167, 174, 176–9
Enlightenment 37, 41n.31 effectuation of 180
environmental rights 159 fair elections 17–23, 26, 27, 45, 100–1,
equality 48, 105, 107, 139, 174–5, 205 149, 161, 198, 210, 211
estado de derecho 93, 94, 96, 97, 98, social context 27, 133–9, 168–71
123, 205 free-riding 59
ethics 174, 189 French Declaration of the Rights of
ethnic rights 159 Man 196
ethnocentric bias 184 French Revolution 41n.32, 43, 45, 84, 90
Evans, P. 53n.3 Fujimori, Alberto 161
Fulbecke, William 36
fair elections 17–23, 26, 27, 45, 100–1, Fuller, L. 95n.5
149, 161, 198, 210, 211 functionalism 8, 117
fairness 47, 103, 107, 172 Furet, F. 45
Falklands (Malvinas) War (1982) 136
federalism 77 Garzón Valdés, E. 95n.7, 210n.5
Ferguson, A. 107n.35 gender rights 159, 168, 169, 189, 194
Ferrajoli, L. 44, 45n.43, 191 geopolitics 190
Feuerbach, L. 142n.14 Germany 68, 78, 88
Fichte, J. 68 Gerstle, G. 69, 70
Finlayson, A. 82 Gewirth, A. 171
Flathman, R. 43n.36 Gillis, J. R. 75n.4
foreign investment 187, 188 globalization 54, 138, 167, 174,
formal-rational law 38, 39 185–9, 207
Foucault, M. 118n.3 Glorious Revolution (1688) 90
France 43, 66, 78, 82, 88 Gonzalbo, Escalante 122
Frederick of Prussia 65 Gordley, J. 36
Freedom House rankings 22n.16 Gordon, S. 109–10
freedom of association 17, 21, 22, 27, 46, Gorski, P. 66
82, 139, 165, 168, 171, 194–5 governance 55, 186
freedom of belief 139 government, definition of 56
freedom of choice 170, 197 Graff, H. 79
freedom of expression 15, 17, 20, 22, 27, Gray, J. 84n.26
46, 82, 139, 165, 168, 169, 171, 177, Greenfield, L. 91
194–5 Grimm, D. 90n.39
freedom of information 17, 21, 27, 139, Grotius, H. 35, 37, 42
168, 169 Guatemala 19n.9, 150–3, 156–64
freedom of movement 27, 46, 82, 171 Guerra, F.-X. 147n.4
freedom of the press 14 Guibernau, M. 79
freedoms 20–4, 25, 42, 56, 89, 96,
175–81, 198, 204 Haakonssen, K. 35
boundary problems 21–2, 168–9 Habermas, J. 41, 44n.42, 80n.16, 84,
capability approach 173 140, 175n.17, 180n.27
Index 259
Hamburger, P. A. 36C dialogical networks 138
Hampshire, S. 47n.51 Ferrajoli on 191
handicapped people’s rights 195 globalization and 187, 189
Hardin, R. 99 in Latin America 149, 152, 154–5
Hart, H. L. A. 11 legal system and 105–7, 120
health rights 159 Sen on 174
Hegel, G. W. F. 139 and the state 89, 120–3
Held, D. 42, 186 infant mortality 154
Herder, J. G. 68 infra-limitations 124, 125
Hinduism 193 institutionalism 25–6, 47, 51, 104,
history 75, 117 107, 118
Hobbes, Thomas 35, 37, 38, 42, 43, 64, intellectual property 187
66, 118, 135, 136, 196 intellectuals 74, 79–80, 81, 87
Holmes, S. 99, 107 international institutions 54, 55, 57
Holmes, S. and Sunstein, C. 22n.18, 107, international law 189, 190, 191, 200
168n.5 Internet 185
Honduras 150–3, 156–64 Islam 193
Honneth, A. 34n.8, 48, 142 Islamic countries 184
Hösle, V. 59, 111, 118–19 Italy 68n.36, 78–9
Houtzager, P. and Crook, R. 108n.37
human development 167, 172, 173–4, Janoski, T. 40n.27
176, 178, 180, 206 Jayasuriya, K. 187
humanism 47 Jessop, B. 57n.11
human rights 138, 167, 172–3, 174, 176, Jones, P. 44n.41
178–80, 185, 189–91, 206 Judaism 193
Hunt, A. 127n.16 judges 99, 101–2, 119
Huntington, S. 16 judiciary 65, 95, 104, 155, 158–9, 188
Hurrell, A. 188–9, 200 jurists 64, 65
hybrid regimes 24n.21 Justinian, Emperor 34
Iberians, democracy and 183–4 Kahler, M. and Lake, D. 186

immigrants 69, 70, 85, 88, 195 Kant, I. 110n.45
imperialism 87, 89 Kertzer, D. 78, 82
inclusiveness 18, 19, 21, 26, 31–2, 41, King, Desmond 69
42, 44–5 Klingeman, H.-D. and Hofferbert,
indentured labor 39n.24 R. 24n.22
India 76 Kriegel, B. 38n.22
indigenous peoples 69, 88, 165, 189, 195 Krygier, M. 95n.5, 108n.36
individualism 34–6, 183–4, 195–6 Kymlicka, W. 192
in dubio pro-democracy 177, 207
industrialization 154 labor contract 39, 127
inequality 81, 111, 126, 138, 174, 194, labor market, Latin America 152, 153,
205, 206 154, 185
capitalism and 105, 115 Lacey, N. 39n.25
260 Index
Laclau, E. 86 agency and 25–6, 171, 172, 173, 194,
Lane, R. 8 204, 210
language 67, 68, 78–9, 140 effectiveness of 101–2
LAPOP (Latin American Public Opinion equality and 156, 160
Project) 149n.9 hierarchical 94
Lasswell, H. 8 inequality and 105–7, 120
Latin America 55, 57, 58, 76, 95–6, 102, Latin America 95, 146, 156, 193
145–65, 178, 181, 187, 206 poverty and 121, 181
bureaucracies in 110, 146, 148 rights and 170, 209
bureaucratic-authoritarianism 3, 4, and the state 115, 116, 118–19, 121–2,
9, 10 124, 131
de-legalization of the workplace 107 legal theory 34, 37, 44, 168
globalization and 188 Levi, M. 47n.50
history and context of 146–9 libel law 21
legal system in 95, 146, 156, 193 liberalism 31, 39, 42–5, 196
Northwest and 145, 146, 147, 149, life expectancy 154
154, 163 Linz, J. 8, 9
opinion polls 150–3, 156–64 Linz, J. and Stepan, A. 102
state officials and the excluded 117, 121 Locke, John 42, 43, 61n.18
trust in Congress 155, 157, 162, Lukács, G. 142
163, 164
‘wrong party’ winning elections 19n.10 MacCormick, N. 100, 101
Latinobarómetro (2003) 164 Mann, M. 108n.39, 116n.1
Latinobarómetro (2005–6) 150–3, Marshall, T. H. 41, 46n.48, 180n.28,
156–63 181n.31
Latinobarómetro (2008) 149 Marx, A. 88
law 37, 63–5, 66, 70, 93–113, 120n.8, Marx, Karl 39, 141–2
129, 205 Marxism 47n.51
colonial law 193 mass media 154, 155, 168
commercial law 193 means of production and exchange 39,
common law 36, 37, 47, 69 40, 65, 126, 128, 192
corporation law 64 Mesa-Lago, C. 154
mafia law 121 Mexico 150–3, 156–64
leadership 14, 15, 163, 164 Meyer, J. 85n.30, 187n.7
Le Chapelier, J. 47 migration 185
legal globalization 187, 189–95 Mill, J. S. 33n.6, 43, 196
legality 66, 109–10 Miller, D. 179n.25
legalization 60, 63–4, 83, 106–7, 109, mixed regimes 57n.10
129–30 moral accountability 34n.8
legal pluralism 192–4 morality 35, 44, 69, 70, 174, 197
legal positivism 66–7 Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo 135n.3
legal professionals 38, 99, 101–2, 119 movements 28, 57, 104, 165, 178,
legal system 27, 28, 46, 53–6, 66–7, 92, 185, 195
97, 98, 115, 195, 205 multiculturalism 193, 194
Index 261
Napoleonic Code 37, 47, 65 mixed status of 27–8
nation, defined 74, 81, 86–8 social identities 195–6
national anthems 78, 85, 116 voters 18, 23, 25, 31–2
national identity 68, 75, 76–7 political democracy see democratic regime
nationalism 76, 79–81, 87, 88–9, political parties 18, 27, 28, 155, 156
147, 206 political rights 17, 19, 20–7, 31–2, 40–2,
nationality 82–5, 91 46, 83, 98, 115, 160, 176, 177, 180,
national memory 75n.4 196, 204, 212, see freedoms; elections
natural law 34, 94 political scientists 116, 117
natural rights 35, 44, 172 politics 81, 100
nepotism 124 polyarchy 17
Neumann, Franz 105 Poole, D. 122
New Public Management 55 Portes, A. 154
New York Times 134 poverty 117, 121–3, 138, 151, 154,
Nicaragua 150–3, 156–64 165, 178
nominalism 35, 38 power 53, 142, 143
North, D. 67n.34 administrative 62–3
complex associations and 59–60, 61, 62
Ober, J. 208n.2 informal 121–3
oligarchies 19, 32 limiting 99
Olsen, J. 55–6 nationalism and 80–1
O’Neill, O. 177n.21 police 69–70, 96
opinion polls 149, 150–3, 155 political 68, 81
Ozkirimli, U. 80, 81n.20, 87 relations 108
state concentrations of 53, 82, 89,
Panama 150–3, 156–64 91–2, 117
Paraguay 150–3, 156–64 symbolic 81n.18
Parsons, T. 8 Preuss, U. 83, 98
partial regimes 57n.10 printing, and language 79
paternalism 71 private sphere 31, 41, 42, 102–4, 125
patrimonialism 125, 147 property rights 40, 65, 107, 129
Pennington, K. 36 Protestantism 66
people, defined 74–5, 86–9, 90, 91, 92 Prussian Civil Code 37, 47, 63, 65, 68,
Peru 150–3, 156–64 94, 129
Philpott, D. 189n.11 Przeworski, A. 15–16, 19
Piaget, J. 140n.12 public policies 57, 100, 117
pluralism 167, 168, 189–95, 207 public sphere 27, 102–4, 125, 135,
police 69–70, 96, 150, 153, 155, 156, 179 137–9, 170, 197
policy-making 15, 178 Putin, Vladimir 161
political citizenship 25–8, 41, 56, 73, 74,
83, 94, 106, 112, 165, 177, 194 racial discrimination 69–70, 87, 189
definition of 27 Rae, D. 8
individuals 14, 43, 45, 198 raison d’etat principle 66
in Latin America 154 Rawls, J. 175n.17
262 Index
Raz, J. 94–5, 98, 99, 168n.3, 169, 170n.7, sexual identity 195
210n.4 sexuality, regulation of 69, 70
Reformation 66 Shapiro, M. 128n.18
Regh, W. 42n.35 Shklar, J. 136
regime 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, Shue, H. 178
22–8, 56, 203, see also democratic Simmel, G. 139
regime Skocpol, T. 69
reification 141–3, 206 Skowronek, S. 69
religion 34, 66, 88n.38, 192n.16, 193 slavery 39n.24, 69, 70
Renan, E. 75n.4 Smith, A. 79, 87
reproductive rights 159 social context 27, 168–71
republicanism 43, 103, 104 social contract 25, 42
Riggs, F. 85n.30 Social Democracy 47n.49
rights see civil rights; human rights; social differentiation 58, 154
political rights; social rights social insurance 154
Rios-Figueroa, J. and Staton, J. 95n.4 socialism 47n.51, 196
rituals 75, 77, 78, 85, 116 socialization 74, 109, 113, 140, 167
Roman law 36n.15, 37, 61n.17, 64, social movements 28, 57, 104
66n.32, 129 social order 93, 105, 111, 112
Rosanvallon, P. 40n.28 social relations 51, 53, 54, 55, 56, 59–61,
Rothstein, B. 48n.52 71, 78, 93, 101, 116, 121, 127–8,
Rueschemeyer, D., Huber, E., and 139, 147, 197, 205
Stephens, J. 16–17 social rights 31, 48, 89, 97, 98, 108, 115,
rule of law 94–105, 129, 205 149, 154, 165, 180, 204, 206, 212
rulers 38–9, 42, 43, 44, 63, 64, 87, 90, society 81, 82, 92
98, 116 sociologists 116, 117, 123
accountability 99 Soper, P. 100
authoritarian 123, 133–7, 160–1, 170 Southern Asia 77
common good 103 sovereignty 66, 84, 91
cuius regio eius religio 66, 67n.33 Spain 68n.36, 76, 183–4
delegative 161–2 Spanish America 74n.1
rule of law and 94, 98 state 13, 28, 31, 40, 67, 92, 115, 117, 118,
Russia 161 119, 131, 203, 204
ambiguity of 112–13
‘Salamantine school’ 35 and capitalism 115, 125–9, 188
Sartori, G. 16, 44 characteristics of 71, 73
Schmitter, P. 57n.10 complex associations 58–62
Schumpeter, J. 13–15, 21, 23, 104 credibility dimension of the 54, 55,
self-consciousness 139 57, 58, 89, 104, 188
self-employment 152, 153, 154, 185 dimensions of 51–8, 112, 118, 125,
Selznick, P. 176n.20 187, 208–9
Sen, A. 23n.19, 173, 174, 177 effectiveness dimension of the 54, 58,
serfdom, abolition of 39 62, 89, 102
sexual diversity rights 159, 168 efficacy dimension of the 53, 55, 58, 89
Index 263
embedded autonomy 53n.3 Suny, R. G. 75
faces of 14, 78, 85, 115–31, 205–6 symbolic cognition 140
filtering dimension of the 54, 55, 58, symbolic power 81n.18
89, 186
globalization and 185–9, 207 taxation, Latin America 149n.10
Latin America 146–9 Taylor, C. 139
legal system 115, 116, 118–19, 121–2, terrorism 21
124, 131 September 11th attacks 190
Northwestern hegemony 85–6 state 134–7, 150, 158, 197, 206
obligations of 44, 197, 198 Thomism 36, 37, 39, 66, see also
physical coercion monopoly 51, 52, Aquinas, Thomas
63, 65, 73, 83 Thompson, E. P. 104n.31
power and 53, 82, 89, 91–2, 117 Tierney, B. 34n.9
referents of 73–92, 204–5 Tilly, C. 40n.26, 41n.32, 48, 65n.27
reification of 142–3, 206 Tocqueville, Alexis de 43
territorial delimitation 51–2, 56, 73, Tomasello, M. 140
77, 85, 204 torture 179, 189
terrorism 134–7, 150, 158, 197, 206 Touraine, A. 212n.9
unity 115, 117, 118–19 transnational corporations 188
‘world of states’ 85–6, see also Trubek, D. 107n.34
authoritarian states; bureaucracies;
common good United Kingdom 47, 76, 84,
state-making 39, 41, 48, 62–71, 77n.8, 88, 90
126, 165–6 United Nations 54
state officials 44, 54, 57, 98, 115, 117, Counter Terrorism Committee
142, 187, 198–9 191n.14
accountability 99 Development Program (UNDP/
authorizations 119–20, 124 PNUP) 173
Bourdieu on 127 Security Council 190
obligation to the common good 103, Universal Declaration of Human
123 Rights 189, 196
public sphere 102–3, 125 United States 82, 84, 108
rule of law 96, 108 common law 47, 69
social inequality 120–3 Constitution 43
specific rights 98–9, 102, 119 exclusion from voting in 32n.2
transiting roles 123–5 independence 45, 90, 91
Steinfeld, R. 39n.24 motto of 88
Stepan, A. 8, 76, 77 state formation in 69–71
Stoelting, E. 104 Supreme Court 70n.43
Stoicism 34, 34n.9 ‘war on terror’ 190
Strasser, C. 57n.10 universalistic wager 13, 25–8, 32, 33,
Strayer, J. 65n.25 41, 43–5, 47, 83, 85, 147, 169, 192,
suffrage 17, 31–2, 41 204, 211
Sullivan, W. 192 Uruguay 9, 148n.7, 149, 150–3, 156–64
264 Index
Van Caenegem, R. C. 67n.33 development of capitalism 65n.26, 67
Vázquez, R. 178n.22 ecclesiastic corporation law 64
Venezuela 150–3, 156–64 legal system 67
violence 96, 179, 197, 198 welfare policies 47
Vogler, C. M. 89 Welzel, C. and Inglehart, R. 24n.22
voters 18, 23, 25, 31–2, see also Whitehead, L. 28n.29, 148
elections William of Ockam 35, 38
will theory of contract 36, 37, 46n.47
Waldron, J. 34n.8, 100, 177, 210 workplace, legalization of 106–7, 109,
warfare 43, 65–6 115, 129–30, 154
‘war on terror’ 190 World Bank 55
Weale, A. 179n.25 Wright, G. H. von 35n.13
wealthy citizens, and the state 117,
120, 187 xenophobia 87
Weber, M. 38, 39, 40n.29, 60, 93
on bureaucratic administration Yabrán, José 120n.8
110n.43
definition of the state 52–3, 62 Ziblatt, D. 68

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What is the focus of the Oxford Studies in Democratization series?

What is the focus of the Oxford Studies in Democratization series?

What information is provided about the state?

What information is provided about the state?

OXFORD STUDIES IN DEMOCRATIZATION

Series editor: Laurence Whitehead

DEMOCRACY, AGENCY, AND THE STATE

Oxford Studies in Democratization is a series for scholars

OTHER BOOKS IN THE SERIES

This is a book of political theory; it deals with several aspects of democracy

I have always been voraciously interested in politics. In my youth this interest

the trajectories of other countries that nowadays may be considered demo-

3. That the citizen/agent is the core individual unit, the micro-foundation

5. Contemporary states usually have a collective identity as their referent,

only be validly conceived as emerging from citizens/agents. The corollaries

various meetings and seminars, but I am sure many of them know of my

1. 1. ON SOM E DE FINITIONS O F ( POLITICAL )

An examination of some inﬂuential deﬁnitions of democracy offers a useful

method . . . a certain type of institutional arrangement for arriving at political—

eventually central banks); in relation, these deﬁnitions refer (sometimes

1.2. FAIR, DECISIVE, AND INSTITUTIONALIZED

Concerning the electoral component, I stipulate that in a democratic regime

1. 3. A FIR S T LO O K AT PO L IT ICA L RIG HTS

determine if these freedoms are effective or not? Surely, some positive or

established, that the lack of some of these freedoms (say, of expression,

1 . 4. AG ENCY A N D T H E IN S T IT UT IO NA LIZED WAG ER

This expectation deﬁnes broad but operationally important parameters for

In this chapter we have traversed a rather straight road. In so doing I proposed

conceptual Babel. Rather, it demands proposing deﬁnitions that, by being as

2.1. SOME BACKGROUND 1

general, non-property-owners and poorly educated individuals), blacks in the

“personality”; it underlies all other rights, including those reviewed in the

The institutionalized, legally-backed recognition of agency took a long process.

attitudes . . . [including] greater individual self-awareness, and a more self-

It is important to notice that these early formulations of agency were

rulers engaged in state-making and consequently interested in improving

2. 4. DE R IVATIO N S : PO L IT ICA L RI G HTS

The answer to this question is the history of the further expansion of

reservations about the developmental typologies proposed by these authors,

At this point in time we can only artiﬁcially separate liberalism as a political

2.6. DE RIVATIONS: FURTHER CIVIL RIGHTS

to the prior legal imprinting of universalistic conceptions of agency, there were

“The juxtaposition of legal equality and social and economic inequalities

2.7. TOWARD A MACRO-LEVEL OF ANALYSIS

The ﬁrst chapter focused on a middle-level of analysis, the regime. The

I begin deﬁning what I mean by the state:

I emphasize that these four dimensions should not be attributed a priori to

continued importance of bureaucracy, there is no theoretical or empirical

interests, international institutions of various kinds, the members of state

efﬁcacy, effectiveness, and credibility of these states and their governments;

With the exception of truly exceptional cases,14 every authority of an associa-

main medium by which we recognize each other as part of an “us.” The

decision-making center. This consists of being protected from decisions that I

The state (as above deﬁned) is a modern phenomenon. It emerged in the

These processes entailed eliminating, or at least marginalizing, traditional

Actually, the processes of reformulation of legality and of expropriation of

states interested in extending and legalizing their domination over popula-

Now I need to comment on some important exceptions to the preceding

This “constructivist” view contrasts with versions of “primordialist” nation-