5
The Political Returns of Democratic Governance
good, democratic governance. The contrasts have been glaring: Chile
and Brazil vs. Venezuela, Ecuador, or Honduras under Manuel Zelaya.
The Components of Governance
What explains these differences? First, there is the difference between
the scope of state or government activity, and the strength of state
power or its institutional capacity, a distinction highlighted by Francis
Fukuyama.
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In this context one can visualize much of Latin American
governance since the mid-20
th
century as ambitiously expansive in
scope. It attempts to construct a role for public governance in all the
nooks and crannies of societal life, assumes wide mandates, generates
layers of bureaucratic control, invokes a top-down rather that a
bottom-up notion of governance, and is misleadingly homogenous
with its centralized sense of regulation and enforcement. Most
often it desensitizes the role of the individual, let alone a role for
local communities in governance. Worse, by and large it dries up the
concept of accountability by elected officials. In practice, the strength
of the state to actually plan, execute, support and enforce mandates is
alarmingly weak.
This contrasts, for example, with U.S. political culture emphasizing
limited government and local control. While limited, the scope of
the state is accompanied by strength of governance, a capacity for the
enforcement of laws, and in tandem, citizen and community input.
Unlike a state with a wide scope of governance and a weak capacity or
strength, in the U.S. case there is an institutionalization of the capacity
to “do things” by people rather than always expecting government to
step in.
Another dimension beyond scope and strength relates to effectiveness
and success (or successful) governance.
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Success draws attention
to the outcomes of governance. Its more qualitative character
suggests a relationship between the success of governance and its
open, competitive, accountable and democratic character. However,
effectiveness and efficiency of governance is another matter, and
