Rationality, Sociology and the Consolidation of Democracy

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RATIONALITY, SOCIOLOGY AND THE CONSOLIDATION

OF DEMOCRACY

Fábio Wanderley Reis

Prepared for the conference on Micro-foundations of Democracy, Chicago,

April 29-May 1, 1988

I) Introduction. II) Some basic epistemological problems. III) Norms, autonomy and thedialectic of the institutional. IV) Rationality as related to identity and autonomy. V) Democratic consolidation as "character planning". VI) Przeworski, self-enforcement and institutions. VII) Contractarian democracy and the dual autonomy of political institutions.

VIII) What to do and incrementalism: 1. From a constitution to a better one. 2. The military:rules for the real game? 3. Corporatism and the state. IX) Conclusion: democraticconsolidation and rational choice.

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I - Introduction

In presenting the game of the Prisoners' Dilemma, writers sometimes

refer to the establishment of a pact as something that would radically alter the

situation and allow participants to avoid the dilemma. The impossibility for

the prisoners to communicate with each other is then seen as a defining

characteristic of the game: otherwise, it is thought, they would establish a pact

to cooperate and the dilemma would vanish.i That is clearly a wrong

assumption. Under the general postulates of calculating agents guided by self-

interested motivation, the establishment of a pact would represent but an

additional reason for each of them to act egoistically and play safe. For

prisoner A would then be led to evaluate the situation as involving a greater

probability that prisoner B would be willing to behave as a "sucker" -- or thatB would look at A herself as a likely sucker.

This, of course, is the difficulty associated with the much debated

Hobbesian theory of political obligation: whereas claiming to ground his

theory on considerations of a purely "prudential" or self-interested sort,

Hobbes is faced with the dilemma of collective action when trying to link the

transition from the state of nature to civil society with the setting up of a pact.

So, he is rather inconsistently led to resort to a law of nature to the effect that

pacta sunt servanda. Self-interest only does not seem to lead to viable or real

pacts, and Hobbes' recourse to coercion by the Leviathan might perhaps be

seen as an equivocal -- and still inconsistent -- expression of this dilemma.

I think this is the central issue in evaluating the prospects of the rational

choice approach in connection with the empirical problems of transitions to

democracy in such contexts as present-day Latin America and of the role to be

played in them by pacts of any sort. There is more to it, however: that issue

turns out to express the central difficulties, and perhaps the limits, of therational choice approach as such in the field of social sciences. Thus, the two

"sides" of the problematic to which we are invited by Adam Przeworski -- the

"substantive" side of specific questions of political theory and research and the

i See, for instance, Anatol Rapoport, Fights, Games and Debates, Ann Arbor, The University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 173-4 and 180.



epistemological one -- seem to be quite strongly entangled with each other.

A suggestive illustration of the difficulties of the epistemological bet of

the rational choice approach, in a context that is directly relevant to our

substantive concerns, can be found in the discussion of Mancur Olson's last book recently made by Jon Elster, one of the leading champions of rational

choice.ii Olson is concerned with "coalitions", which bear an obvious affinity

to "pacts". Elster draws attention to the articulation attempted by Olson

between the analytic focus presented in his classic on The Logic of Collective Action and some new propositions on the question of the determinants of

successful collective action in society as a whole. Such new propositions, in

Elster's reading, amount to affirming the importance of a stochastic process

whose operation, combined with those mechanisms emphasized in The Logic,

leads Olson to his basic conclusion, stated by Elster as follows: "stable

societies will accumulate special interest groups, converging toward a

somewhat biased sub-set of the whole population of potential interest

groups".iii A few pages below, toward the end of his article, Elster then goes

on to say that "it would be good if Olson would try to provide us with a

glimpse inside the black box where coalition formation takes place, instead of

resting the theory on a stochastic process that has little explanatory power".iv

Now, as acknowledged by Elster, Olson repeatedly claims to beresorting, at what one might call the "micro" level, to the argument introduced

in The Logic, where Olson would certainly sustain that there is a theory of

coalition formation -- the by-product theory of collective action. Moreover, it

seems hard to deny that the latter gives expression to the fundamental

assumptions of the rational choice approach, and this theory, or some variation

thereof, should probably be seen as the theory by someone inspired by such

assumptions. One is thus led to ask what it is that Elster's recommendation to

look inside the black box of coalition formation actually amounts to. I think

iii

Mancur Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1982. Elster'sdiscussion is contained in "The Contradictions of Modern Societies", Government and Opposition,19, 3, Summer of 1984, 304-311.iiii

Ibid., pp. 304-5.ivi

Ibid., p. 311.

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that it boils down to recommending a conventionally "sociological" or "socio-

psychological" approach, instead of a rational choice one. For rational choice,

based as it is on the assumption of rationality and on a correspondingly rather

schematic psychology, would seem to be necessarily "external" to any "black

box" that a descriptively richer approach might try to reach. Of course, thereis room for questions concerning the transition from the assumptions of

rationality and perhaps self-interested motivation at the micro level to the

aggregate effects, at the macro level, of micro-behaviors fitting such

assumptions. But it is hard to see in what sense Olson's stochastic process,

especially if coupled with the mechanisms pointed out by the by-product

theory, might be said to be more mysterious than the perversions and

contradictions in the relations between the micro and macro levels that lie at

the very core of theoretical efforts guided by the rational choice approach.

There seems indeed to be a black box here -- but the decisive question is

whether it can be openned up with the resources available within the strict

confines of the rational choice approach.

II - Some basic epistemological problems

The basic and most general assumptions of the rational choice approach

refer to intentionality or goal-seeking and rationality. The corresponding

model of explanation is perhaps put in a nutshell by the idea of someone whosays "I want it and I am going to get it". Besides the obvious element of

volition and a corresponding element of determination or commitment, the

model includes also the element of a concern with effectiveness, which

implies cognition and the search for a lucid diagnosis of the situation where

action is supposedly to take place. Quite clearly, the more informed, deliberate

and lucid the behavior or action, the more the characteristics of this model of

explanation are realized.

The motivation for resorting to such assumptions is often described in

the rational choice literature in terms of seeking to provide the "micro-

foundations of macro-phenomena", which naturally brings forth the problem

of alternative ways of analytically structuring the object of study of the social

sciences. One of these ways is, of course, the traditional opposition between

"infra-structure" and "super-structure". The usual form of understanding this

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distinction tends to link different kinds of action to each level or dimension, so

that the infra-structure would be the sphere of "material" or "economic"

action (of "work"), whereas the super-structure would be the sphere of an

assorted set of other types of action (those having to do with ideas, values or

beliefs of a more "lofty" nature, with religion, law, "culture" and so on).Whatever the interest that some similarly founded distinction may possibly

have from certain points of view, there are, of course, many confusing twists

associated with it. In one case, "real actions", seen as infra-structure, are

opposed to the super-structure of ideas, values or beliefs as such -- as if one

might have action of any sort without the presence of the latter elements.

Another way of looking at the same dichotomy, in which there occurs to some

extent a reversal of the previous way of looking at the relationships between

action and structure, is the one appearing in the probably dominant

"determinist" perspective in Marxist disputes on determinism versus

voluntarism: here, the "objectified" social context of action gets precedence

over action itself and explains it. In any case, having in mind the twists of the

opposition between infra-structure and super-structure, it would seem at least

as legitimate to speak of the "macro-foundations of micro-behavior" as of the

"micro-foundations of macro-phenomena" of the rational choice motto.

Of course, the central issue involved is the problem of the direction of

"causality", of where to look for the crucial "factors" or to which area or dimension of social reality to grant some sort of causal privilege. But the

relationships between the analytical effort at establishing "causality", on the

one hand, and, on the other, the distinction between "action" and "structure"

(the latter seen as something like an "objective" focus of causation) seem

rather more difficult to straighten than suggested by any prompt reading of

such dichotomies. It is certainly possible to argue, as does Elster, for a

distinction in which the level of intentional behavior is opposed to the level of

(objective) causality -- in turn divided by Elster into "sub-intentional

causality" and "supra-intentional causality".v But I think that, properly

understood, the assumption of intentionality and rationality necessarily leads,

of itself, to the establishment of an indelible linkage between those different

aspects, seen either as "dimensions" of social reality or "causal mechanisms".

vv

See Jon Elster, "Causality and Intentionality: Three Models of Man", appendix 2 to chapter 5 of Logic and Society, New York, John Wiley & Sons, 1978.

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There is clearly a sense in which action or agency "causes" social structure,

just as there is an equally clear sense in which action is shaped and

conditioned (and thus, at least in a flexible sense of the word, "caused") by its

context. Just as action produces structure ("congeals", as it were, into

structure), so structure (as the context of action) "rationalizes" action andmakes it intelligible as such. For structure is, in its connnection to the

mechanisms linked to both sub-intentional and supra-intentional causality, an

indispensable reference in the characterization of the effectiveness and

rationality itself of action.

This may look trivial in a certain reading, but I believe it actually has

important ramifications. Thus, much of the dispute between rational choice

and "conventional" ("sociological") approaches can be seen to amount to a

confrontation between two kinds of "ontological" models of social reality

which distinguish themselves from each other according to the status ascribed

to the "context" of action, particularly all that which can make the context a

sociologically interesting one -- and, it should be added, all that in which a

sociologically interesting context concurs to define the subjects of action

themselves. But I think we are not going to make real progress at the

epistemological level unless there is a clear understanding that the authentic

problems which present themselves at this level are not reducible to the

question of resorting to the appropriate ontological model.

What seems to me to be the really important epistemological problem

can be introduced by reference to the work of Jean Piaget, although Piaget

himself was led, I think, to some important mistakes in connection with it. As

is well known, Piaget applies Ferdinand de Saussure's distinction between the

"diachronic" and the "synchronic" to the problem of sociological explanation.vi

The diachronic dimension is linked by him with problems of genesis and

causality, whereas the synchronic dimension has to do with a-temporal and

necessary relations of logical implication. However, an important ambiguity

introduces itself in the use he makes of this distinction with regard to

sociological thought. On the one hand, sociology (as the science of society, by

contrast with the "exact" and natural sciences) is seen as a discipline in which

viv

Jean Piaget, " La Pensée Sociologique", in Introduction à l'Épistemologie Génétique, Paris, PressesUnivesitaires de France, 1950, t. III.

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according to their seemingly more or less "temporal", genetic or diachronic

character : the criterion applies whether we are dealing with material objects

proper or with physical or other events of any kind, including historical events

and so also "effective" or "real" actions by human agents. Actually, the point

of the idea of the transposition of real actions into a virtual or symbolic level(which Piaget uses to define logic itself) is that the inherent temporality of real

events and objects, and hence their permanent changes of state, may be

replaced by a-temporal ("synchronic" is not quite an adequate label) traits and

relations stemming directly from such manipulations -- and this is what

"reversibility" is all about, having to do with the construction of the

permanent object which, precisely, can somehow be manipulated or operated

with. As Piaget writes in connection with the crucial logical and mathematical

concept of "group", "the reversibility characteristic of the group supposes the

notion of object, and vice-versa": exemplifying with the rudimentary group

mechanisms of the sensory-motor level, "to meet an object again is to face the

possibility of a return (through displacement, whether of the object or of the

body itself): the object is nothing but the invariant element due to the

reversible composition of the group".viii In any case, a special and important

angle of the problem is that the implicative or logical has to do with the real

or virtual actions of the knowing subject herself , and not with any properties

of the objects or things upon which these actions are executed. Here is a

synthetic formulation of this aspect given by Piaget himself à propos of theconcept of group: "...the group concept is obtained (...) by a mode of thought

characteristic of modern mathematics and logic -- 'reflective abstraction' --

which does not derive properties from things, but from our ways of acting onthings, the operations we perform on them; perhaps, rather, from the various

fundamental ways of coordinating such acts or operations -- 'uniting',

'ordering', 'placing in one-to-one correspondence', and so on".ix

Now, the scientific method consists in the application of logic (so, of

the special type of abstraction referring to our own operations) to the specific

case of our "manipulation" of the "things" of a certain kind (field of

knowledge). The nomological aspect of science is, of course, linked directly to

viiiv

Cf. Jean Piaget, Psicología de la Inteligencia, Buenos Aires, Psique, 1960, p. 152.ixi

Jean Piaget, Structuralism, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971, p. 19.

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this: it has to do with the possibility of reproducing a certain event or

association of events, and of thus eliminating , at the limit, whatever there may

be of fortuitous (emergent, "temporal", diachronic) in the corresponding

occurrence. And the possibility of intersubjective control of the results

achieved in scientific work are also dependent on its nomological character thus understood -- and so on the possibility of reproducible, and somehow "a-

temporal" or "reversible", manipulation.

In turn, resorting to the scientific method in the specific realm of social

affairs means applying logic (again, that type of abstraction referring to our

own actions or operations) to our "manipulation" of a "thing" which happens

to be our actions themselves. We can thus have, in this case, a doublereflectiveness: we manipulate and construct theories, and occasionally reflect

on such manipulations and construct methods and approaches, seeking to

explain the actions of people -- which inevitably include as a crucial

component the nexus that acting people themselves attribute to their behavior.

And the "nexus" of our explanations not only has directly to do with the nexus

such as seen by the agents themselves, but also will only satisfy as such

insofar as our manipulations turn out to reveal that there is regularity or

lawfulness in the occurrence of the latter nexus.

I think all this has clear consequences for the dispute between rationalchoice and conventional "sociology". I will leave aside the question of the

possibility of actual "manipulation" in the sphere of society, which may be

taken here as a merely technical question whose solution can be seen to range

from the production of quantitative and perhaps strictly reproducible

observations to some sort of "counterfactual" historiographical work, for

instance. More important from the point of view of the present discussion,

however, are a couple of other points.

The first one concerns directly the problem of nomology, whose interest

can be appreciated if we consider the odd symmetry of a charge made by the

two sides of the current dispute against each other, which appears, for

instance, in two recent papers by Barry Hindess and Adam Przeworski. So,

Hindess accuses rational choice models of adhering to a postulate of

"homogeneity", as a consequence of which "stylised forms of rational

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calculation are uniquely defined for all actors within each category of actors

recognised in the model" -- all voters, all parties, all entrepreneurs --, which

would imply "structural determinism".x Przeworski, in turn, accuses

functionalists (and functionalist marxists) of viewing "all individual behavior

as an act of execution of the internalized society, with the implication that all persons exposed to the same norms and values should behave in the same

manner". Specifically, marxists "were satisfied with the intuitive belief that

people act out their class positions", and thought, anyway, that "what was

important about history happened at the level of forces, structures,

collectivities, and constraints, not individuals".xi

Looked at in the perspective I am trying to sketch, this symmetrical

interchange of charges can be seen as an equivocal expression of fundamental

problems and reduced in its import. The "regularities" that we have to resort

to in the social sciences are necessarily referred to the behavior of actorswithin environments (the latter including, of course, aspects which are

material, social, socio-psychological etc.). In principle, it is possible to start, in

our analytical "manipulations" in search of the sources of regularity in actions,

either from the characteristics of environments which somehow constrain the

actors or from the characteristics of actors themselves. But in any case

reference to the other pole is inevitable, and there will always be restrictive

and "homogenizing" assumptions at any given analytic level. The constraintsof an assumedly homogeneous environment can operate differently upon

different individuals (for instance, certain norms are more fully internalized by

some individuals than by others) -- and the scientific problem will consist

largely in establishing categories of individuals upon which such differential

operation occurs (for instance, more or less rational individuals, or individuals

more or less capable of autonomously processing relevant information of

various sorts so as to decide which principle of action to adopt). Conversely,

individuals assumed to be, say, homogenously rational will act differently

according to differences in the environments -- and the scientific problem will

then consist in establishing categories of environments that account for such

xx

Barry Hindess, "Rational Choice Theory and the Analysis of Political Action", Economy and Society, 13, 33, 255-77, quotations from pp. 263 and 267.xix

Adam Przeworski, "Marxism and Rational Choice", Politics & Society, 14, 4, 1985, 379-409,quotations from p. 382.

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differential behavior. Note, moreover, that this homogenizing procedure is, in

either case, a necessary step in the effort at recovering the nexus of behavior --

in the eyes of the agent and, consequently, also for the analyst. It is thus

possible to argue that full explanation would require a rather circular appeal

back and forth between action and context, or between "micro" and "macro".This much was recently argued in a convincing way by Raymond Boudon,

despite some confusions and unsustainable positions with regard to what

Boudon sees as the "nomological prejudice".xii

But there is more to all this. Consider again Piaget's distinction between

the genetic or diachronic and the implicative or synchronic. It seems clear

that, although the implicative (or logic itself) has its ultimate bases on "real

actions", it actually concerns action conceived in a certain way, which allows

for reversibility and requires the idea of the stable object liable to

manipulation, by contrast with changes of state and "some sort of Heraclitean

flux", to use another phrase by Piaget.xiii Of course, there is no reason for

"action" to be necessarily conceived in these terms: it may equally be thought

of as corresponding to impulse, irruption and emergence, or as having to do

with the spontaneity and fortuitousness that somehow belong to the level of

the genetic or diachronic. But it seems undeniable that the ideal of scientific

knowledge is inevitably related to logic and to the implicative and is

thus opposed , in this sense, to Piaget's "genetic". The latter, in the lastanalysis, is nothing but the flux to be somehow suspended and manipulated in

scientific explanation. There is no "genetic explanation" unless genesis itself is

transformed into "implication" through such manipulation -- whence the

consequence that "historical explanation" is real explanation only if it is

actually sociological (or, in any case, implicative and nomological)

explanation. And the sociological explanation with which Piaget is concerned

does not "oscillate" between causality and implication any more than any

other case of explanation (actually, no explanation does). Of course, there is

the possibility of conceiving of a sort of "objective causality" akin to the idea

of the genetic as opposed to the implicative, just as we can think of action as

xiix

Raymond Boudon, La Place du Désordre, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1984, especiallychapters 2 and 3.xiiix

Piaget, Structuralism, op. cit., p. 20.

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irreversible flux -- and the traditional confusions on the relationships of

"causation" and "induction" (or, in a way, of "nexus" and "regularity") in

scientific explanation are obviously related to this.xiv But such ontological

conceptions do not represent anything but a certain way of stating the initial

problem or challenge that scientific work has to face up to: the problem of how to account (implicatively...) for the "causalities", "geneses" or

spontaneous actions in question.xv And the opposition between intentionality

and causality in the field of social sciences loses much of its sharpness: the

point is how to treat even intentionality in terms of implication and nomology

(so, how to treat it "causally", as Hempel would rightly say, for there is no

way to deal analytically with causality without implication and nomology) --

and the idea of action as rational action seems an indispensable requisite for

that.

One of the consequences of the above for the dispute between rational

choice and "sociology" seems clearly favorable to rational choice in some of

its more orthodox versions: there is, of course, no point in seeking to recover

the emergent and irreversible aspect of concrete action as such -- and the

affinity of the "operational" character of the logical content of scientific

method to rationality makes the assumption of rationality with regard to the

acting object of the social sciences only natural and, in my view, impossible to

avoid. But a decisive counterpoint to this can be formulated in a few relatedxivx

This point suggests the convenience of a distinction between two senses in which the idea of anexplanatory "nexus" can be taken: first, the notion of nexus as some sort of "mechanism" which canactually be manipulated or shown at work; second, the notion of nexus as irreversible flux or "causation", more clearly linked to Piaget's "genetic" or "diachronic". Of course, many interestingand even crucial socio-scientific problems emerge in connection with the latter sense, and I actuallythink it is important to recover the notion of nexus as causation and resist the irrationalist ingredientof the fad which is prone to denounce such sins as "evolutionism" and "linear conceptions": in manycases, explanation requires that we be able precisely to point to the "linearity" (or logic...) that a process does exhibit. But the indispensable qualification is that for such explanation to besatisfactory as such, it cannot fail to be nomological and implicative -- even if only

"counterfactually" so, that is, by means of the artificial "production" of a plurality of instances to be"observed" or through the virtual or imaginary "manipulation" of a given instance. Some elaborationof these ideas in connection with such issues as Popper's anti-historicism and Perry Anderson'stheses on the "unique" concatenation of feudalism and the classical universe in the production of capitalism can be found in Fábio W. Reis, "Change, Rationality, and Politics", Kellogg Institute,Working Paper # 10, January 1984.xvx

I am thus certainly in agreement with Adam Przeworski ("Micro-foundations of Pacts in LatinAmerica", manuscript, March 1987, p. 2) in that we need "formalisms", and I don't see any reasonwhy such formalisms should be negatively described as "empty".

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propositions. First, if we are to adopt a schematic "operational" concept of

action in terms of rationality, an obvious form of "manipulating" action is the

manipulation of the context or environment of action; therefore, renouncing,

in the name of rationality, the aim of directly recovering action as ebullience

and spontaneity is not tantamount to giving up the aim of recovering therichness and complexity of the context of action. For action will be all the

more rational according to the degree of sophistication of its cognitivedimension, that is, of the amount of information processed with regard to both

its "objective" environment and the subjectivity of the agents themselves.

Correspondingly, methodological or analytical "manipulation" in connection

with the idea of rationality gets interesting (and, one must presume,

rewarding) in the social sciences as we go on to manipulate increasingly

complex aspects of the interlocking of actor and environment in rational

action. For, stripped of such complexities, it is possible to see that the model

of "rational" action turns out to be necessary for the study of behavior ingeneral, and actually to exhibit a better fit to the case of animal behavior than

to the case of human and social behavior. This view certainly applies to the

basic and rather tautological conception of rationality in which it is equated

with goal-seeking behavior per se, which includes just a bare minimum of

cognition to be found, one might argue, in (animal) life itself.

To sum up, then, there certainly is a sense in which, in accordance withthe more orthodox postulates of rational choice, action, or intentional

behavior oriented toward effectiveness and necessarily including a cognitive

or information-processing dimension (that is, rational behavior), is an

unavoidable assumption of any consequential attempt at explanation in the

social sciences -- and can thus be said to provide a "foundation" for whatever

is "structural" (in the sense of supra-intentional objectification) in society. But

I don't think it is possible legitimately to derive therefrom the aim of inventing society from scratch starting from merely calculating individuals, of deducing the former from the latter. For action is itself necessarily contextualized (just

as actors and their goals or preferences are socially conformed to a large

extent); hence, the evaluation of action from the point of view of effectiveness

and rationality involves an inevitable reference to the situation or environment

where it takes place (and the proper definition of the situation includes certain

crucial traits of the subjectivity of actors). And just as action can be more or

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less rational according to the volume of information regarding its situation

that is processed by the acting subject, so the evaluation of its rationality will

be more or less adequate according to the richness and sophistication of the

information concerning the situation of action that is available to the analyst.

Now, it seems clear, in my view, that the requirements thus established

for proper explanation cannot be met by the rational choice approach in what

it has of distinctive, and the resources of "conventional" socio-scientific

disciplines are no doubt needed for a proper handling of the social context of

rational action -- and so for the proper handling of rational action or of

rationality as such. Moreover, I think this can be seen to involve, from a

somewhat different point of view, a more sober and adequate appreciation of

what to expect of social science. Just as physics does not explain matter itself

and biology does not explain life as such, so the aim of social science is not --

contrary to the apparent assumptions of many rational choice theorists -- to

explain society as such. There is thus no need to adopt the "state of nature"

ontological postulates to which "methodological individualism" is frequently

equated, at least implicitly, in the relevant literature. The recipe would consist

rather in coupling the recourse to the indispensable analytic equipment

provided by the assumptions of intentionality and rationality with an

"ontology" that is social from the beginning and admits of all sociological and

socio-psychological elements which orthodox rational choice theorists want toabstract from: norms, institutions of various sorts in different stages of the

process of consolidating as such, interpersonal and intergenerational loyalty or

solidarity and thus groups of various kinds, interlocking of the definition of

personal identities with the variegated processes of constitution of collective

identities which also succeed or fail in different degrees, and so on.xvi

III - Norms, autonomy and the dialectic of the institutional

With the aim of trying to clarify my position on some basic

epistemological problems, I have so far restricted myself largely to a certain

xvix

These views are elaborated in Fábio W. Reis, Política e Racionalidade: Problemas de Teoria e Método de uma Sociologia "Crítica" da Política, Belo Horizonte, Edições RBEP, 1984; see also my"Change, Rationality, and Politics", op. cit. Przeworski ("Marxism and Rational Choice", op. cit.) isalso critical of the "ontological" postulates of rational choice.

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contrast between actor and environment. However, if we move to the

substantive political dimension of our theme, we have to consider the

problems deriving from the fact that there is a plurality of actors, and we are

led to strategic interaction. Here, intentionality and goal-seeking behavior are

perhaps properly described as assuming the form of the pursuit of interests, if we agree to apply this word, taking a suggestion from Jurgen Habermas, to

some form of affirmation of self in the interaction with others, and so to

relations involving confrontation and actual or potential conflict.xvii

Now, pacts have to do with the aim of regulating just this kind of

interaction, of mitigating its potentially belligerent content. This can only be

accomplished by means of giving strategic interaction some sort of

institutional translation or expression. An important part of the orthodox

conception of what to expect of rational choice with regard to this problem

amounts to going straight back to the point of view of some classic contract

theories: how would it be possible to ground in considerations of a strictly

"prudential" or self-interested nature on the part of rational agents the

establishment and enduring effectiveness of "pacts", "constitutions" or

whichever social and political institutions that may represent a solution to the

problem.

The difficulties involved begin to appear when we pay attention to thedouble-faced feature of the institutional dimension of social life, which reveals

itself in the deep ambivalence that marks the notion of the institutional and the

words corresponding to it in the literature of the social sciences. Whereas

"institutional" or "institutionalized" points, on the one hand, to the "artificial"

aspect or level of social reality, which is seen as liable to deliberate

manipulation and "institution-building" (and is sometimes despicably referred

to as the "merely institutional" for being seen, in connection with its

artificiality, as somehow less "real" or important), the very same words are

also used, on the other hand, to indicate those traits of social life which are

akin to Durkheim's idea of contrainte sociale, that is to say, which have to do

with society in its "objective" and "opaque" character, appearing as ready-

made and externally coercive in the eyes of individuals or even of any single

xviix

See, for instance, Jurgen Habermas, Théorie et Pratique, Paris, Payot, 1975, vol. II, pp. 104-5.

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generation. In other words: the very notion of the institutional expresses again

the ambivalences of the relationships between "infra-structure" and "super-

structure", and we have the institutional both as a context of action and as an

object of action. But perhaps the crucially challenging aspect, from a practical

point of view, lies precisely in the dialectic between those two features of theinstitutional: indeed, the "objects" of "institutional" manipulation (a rule, a

procedure, a constitution) only deserve "properly" to be designated as

institutions when they come to exhibit the consistency, objectivity and

coerciveness of the institutional as context. Otherwise, they are actually

nothing but "artificial" and more or less irrelevant products of largely futile

exercises. Of course, time is a crucial element of these relationships, for the

transformation of artificial creations into actual institutions requires a sort of

"maturation" which cannot take place without the transcourse of time. But

note above all that political action, if understood as constructive action by

contrast with the mere clash of interests, is of necessity deeply imbedded in

this dialectic: inevitably unfolding itself on the level of the institutional as

object and -- like any human action -- in the present, it necessarily involves an

inherently precarious bet regarding the future and the "context-impregnation"

of real institutions.

Now, the sphere of efforts directed at institution-building, or of political

action in its constructive form, appears in a certain light as being also thesphere par excellence of the deliberate and intentional in politics -- certainly

more so than routine strategic action, for it implies acting upon the context of

strategic action itself. It then turns out to be, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, a

sphere to which unquestionably belongs that which tends to be described in

terms of micro-behavior in the rational choice literature. Although we have

been considering some fluidities in the posture which links the micro-macro

opposition to epistemological "foundations", the idea of institution-building

behavior as "micro-foundation" may seem particularly odd, if looked at from

the ("substantive") point of view of political theory.

Nonetheless, I think this is the central issue: how helpful are the

assumptions characteristic of the rational choice approach when the questions

posed necessarily involve not only a widened time perspective, but also some

"contents" which, being associated with the transcourse of time, are deeply

15



impregnated with sociological and socio-psychological ingredients proper to

the institutional as context.

One particularly important issue in connection with the theme of

institutions concerns the normative ingredient inherent to them, whichintroduces several rather embroilled queries from the point of view of the

contribution of rational choice to the understanding of our substantive

problems. Of course, the idea of the institutional as object points above all to

the attempt at creating norms, whereas that of the institutional as context

points to norms which actually "layed roots" in society and became effective

as such. Now, there is a disturbing feature to norms, which is clearly related to

the dialectic of the institutional that I have just described. On the one hand,

norms are certainly an important factor of objective "causation" in society.

This is the aspect lying behind the fact that "norm-oriented behavior" tends to

be opposed to rational behavior in the current confrontation of approaches in

the social sciences. In terms of Elster's distinction between the levels of

intentionality and of two kinds of causality, it is probably appropriate to say,

by reference to this aspect, that norms are a salient element of the level of

supra-intentional causality, beside those elements concerning the aggregate

effects of behavior in a more direct way. An important question in this regard,

which is no doubt far from being settled, is the one of the extent to which it

would be necessary to suppose the presence of a stochastic element in theestablishment and operation of the normative dimension of society. It is

interesting to observe, for instance, that Piaget, in his above mentioned texts

devoted to the problem of sociological explanation within the framework of a

contrast between the causal or genetic and the implicative, attributes to norms

an ambiguous or intermediate status: they are described by him as partaking

of the realm of "regulations", which are distinguished precisely by the

presence of a probabilistic ingredient, as opposed to the more neatly causal

realm of "rhythms", on one side, and the wholly implicative one of "groups",

on the other.xviii Of course, insofar as pacts or coalitions are understood as

xviiix

Cf. Piaget, "A Explicação em Sociologia", op. cit., pp. 41 ff. and especially 60 ff. It is worthwhile toobserve in this connection that, in a recent attempt to study the emergence and stability of normsfrom the point of view of the theory of games, Robert Axelrod recognizes the "inherently probabilistic" nature of the approach, whence derive problems in using mathematics and thenecessity to resort to computer simulation techniques. See Robert Axelrod, "An EvolutionaryApproach to Norms", American Political Science Review, 80, 4, December 1986, 1095-1111,

16



necessarily involving norms, the proper clarification of such issues would

have consequences for the problem of the role of assumptions regarding the

operation of stochastic processes in the explanation of coalition formation --

the problem on which we have previously seen Elster in disagreement with

Olson.

On the other hand, however, norms are undeniably part of the

intentional , and turn out to fulfill a rather important and special role as an

element of intentionality. Let me insist a little with Piaget, who does not fail to

draw attention to the fact that, beside being "regulations", norms pertain also

to the level of the implicative: they are quite obviously a possible object of

relations of implication, of which we have the most accomplished

manifestation with the formalization that characterizes the field of law.xix

Clearly related to this implicative character through its relevance for the

hierarchization of chains of ends and means and of principles of action, there

is the fact that norms are indispensable for autonomy -- and autonomy, of

course, is intentionality led to its fullest fruition.

A certain ambiguity introduces itself at this point, which has to do with

a duality of meanings of the notion of autonomy itself. First, "autonomy" can

mean a sort of spontaneous affirmation of self . In this sense, it suggests such

ideas as that of a "strong personality" or "strong character", according towhich one is supposed to act out in an unreflected way one's feelings,

impulses or motives of whatever kind. The second meaning is rather that of

self-control , where the chief component is precisely the element of

reflectiveness and cognitive awareness with regard to one's motives or goals

and their relationship to other and perhaps more important objectives one may

adhere to -- that is, the idea of being, ultimately, the author of one's norms,

which is contained in the etymology itself of the word "autonomy".

From a point of view akin to ethics and political philosophy, it seems

quite likely that we would have agreement on the need to achieve some sort of

balance between these two senses of autonomy: they would be made to appear

especially p. 1098.

xix Piaget, "A Explicação em Sociologia", op. cit., pp. 60 ff.

17



as "dimensions" of a proper concept of autonomy, where both aspects would

combine in appropriate measures as requisites of real autonomy -- the one of

motivated (and in the limit impulsive and perhaps "blind") intentionality and

the one of self-cognition and control. My point here, however, is that these

complexities of the concept of autonomy are politically relevant, even crucial-- and that they result in a decisive challenge for the use to be made of the

concept of rationality and so for rational choice as applied to substantive

political problems like the ones we are concerned with. Actually, I think the

rational choice approach faces a dilemma: either it sticks to a rather

impoverished way of using the concept of rationality, in which case it will

have in this concept a useful analytic instrument for certain kinds of problems

(and I don't mean to suggest that these are only unimportant or uninteresting

problems); or else it seeks to do full justice to the above complexities in their

relationships to the notion of rationality (which, after all, is the ultimate

foundation of the approach) -- but this is probably equivalent to openning a

Pandora's box in which the specificity of the approach ends up by dilluting

itself.xx

Let me hurry to add that I don't mean by that to get back to the attempt

to distinguish between a "formal" and a "substantive" concept of rationality

and to affirm the need to resort to a supposedly "substantive" rationality

instead of the formal one of rational choice. Actually, I am persuaded that thisdistinction cannot be sustained in a consistent way, and that the only notion of

rationality available is a "formal" one, if we understand by that the

instrumental relationships between ends and means. Since my previous

references to the problem of rationality were directed solely at some

epistemological consequences of a basic contrast between actor and

environment, it may be well to take a detour to substantiate this position and

to consider some of the complexities in which the notion of rationality gets

involved in relation with the ideas just stressed.

xx Przeworski ("Rational Choice and Marxism", op. cit., p. 387), stressing the methodological intentions of rational choice, comments that "Elster's carefully measured assessment of humanrationality in Ulysses and the Sirens (...) may be subversive of the project of methodologicalindividualism" for its concern with descriptive realism and the obstacles that existing irrationalitiesmay represent for an approach based on the assumption of rationality. Note, however, that I am nottalking about irrationality, but rather about a fully consequent adherence to the idea of rationality inall its complexity.

18



IV - Rationality as related to identity and autonomy

The starting point is the acknowledgement that rationality is necessarily

an attribute of an action -- or, by extension, of the subject who acts, insofar as

it can be assumed that her actions will be rational: if there is no action, there isalso no problem of rationality. This attribute has to do above all with the

effectiveness of the action in the pursuit of its ends, which is directly linked to

controlling and processing relevant information. There is, then, both an active

and a cognitive component in rationality, and it is meaningless, from this point

of view, to speak of the rationality of "intentions", "goals" or "preferences" as

such -- which is the usual claim or concern of the proposal of a "substantive"

notion of rationality. Of course, it will always be possible to speak of degreesof rationality according to the volume of information processed, and at the

limit of poor or inadequate information-processing we may have cases of

incompatible intentions.xxi But as long as we stick to the level of intentions

understood as mere wishes or desires, there is nothing properly irrational in

entertaining incompatible intentions: it is only at the level of actual behavior

supposedly guided by really incompatible or contradictory intentions that we

would have irrationality -- and at this level, I sustain, a problem of information

would be fatally involved in such irrationality. On the other hand, the idea of

degrees of rationality in connection with the volume of information does not

detract from the "active" ingredient of rationality, or from the link betweenrationality and the effectiveness of an intentional action in search of its goals.

For it is through the increased probability of effectiveness that increased

information-processing comes to mean increased rationality. Even

omniscience would not be equivalent to absolute rationality if the omniscient

being did not have designs to be realized -- and a world created by an

omniscient and perhaps almighty but purposeless or futile god would be just

as absurd as any.

Now, knowing or the search for knowledge can itself be seen as a type

of action whose goal is to acquire or increase information. Its effectiveness

will be associated with the creation by the agent(s) of the conditions leading to

that goal, whence the requirement of openness, "decentration", willingness to

xxix

Jon Elster speaks of "irrational" intentions in this context in Explaining Technical Change, NewYork, Cambridge University Press, 1983, p. 20.

19



communicate and interchange and to let presumed information be

intersubjectively controlled as a condition of its "objectivity". We are here in

the realm of that type of action that Jurgen Habermas would call

"communicative action"xxii -- but it is crucial not to forget or minimize that it

has its own instrumentalness. Perhaps more proficuous is to realize that we arehere, in terms of the work of Jean Piaget, in the sphere in which the

instrumental or "operational" character which is inherent to knowledge

necessarily mingles with its social character -- not in the sense of the

"sociocentrism" of ideologies, but, on the contrary, in the sense of the

"decentered" character of objective knowledge which implies the recognition

of the autonomy and plurality of points of view.xxiii Moreover, from the

standpoint of the political ramifications of the theme of rationality, it is

important to observe here the tense way in which this aspect connects itself to

the strategic character of political interactions: though the idea of a plurality

of actors and points of view is a crucial element both in the case of

knowledge-oriented interaction and of strategic interaction, in one case we

have a purpose or "instrumentality" that realizes itself by means of

communication between autonomous subjects, whereas the other case is

distinguished by the prevalence of a purpose of self-affirmation and of

reciprocal instrumentalization on the part of agents.

In any case, by contrast with the quest for knowledge, other types of action, though requiring information-processing as a condition of

effectiveness, as does any action, require also some degree of closure,

decision, firmness or pre-commitment, which is tantamount to saying that the

ends or goals of the action have to be established in a sufficiently clear and

consistent way, or else there cannot be goal-seeking at all. That means that the

processing of information in such cases has to refer not only to the immediate

environment as such, but also to the acting subject herself, her goals or

preferences and their consistency through time, the relatinships between long-

run and short-run goals, the costs for the possibility of effectiveness in the

pursuit of a certain goal that may ensue from delaying the corresponding

xxiix

See Jurgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume One, Boston, Beacon Press,1984.xxiiix

See, for instance, Piaget, "La Pensée Sociologique", op. cit.

20





as actually autonomous and rational action. In other words, there must be the

possibility of choosing oneself, even though the existence of restrictions on

this possibility is part of the idea of character or identity.xxvi

To sum up, the issue of rationality is built upon the tension contained inthe notion of informed action. Acting implies closure, commitment, clear and

consistent (persistent) goals; getting and processing information implies

openness, availability, detachment. And some problems of relevance to our

general queries seem to turn around the dialectic between "self-centering" and

"decentering" which is implicit in that notion -- and in the corresponding idea

of autonomy.

V - Democratic consolidation as "character planning"

Let us begin with the observation that any agent whose point of view

one may wish to adopt may be looked at either (a) in terms of a more or less

short-sighted pursuit of interests such as defined by the situation treated as

given, and so in terms of taking the preferences themselves of the agent as

given; or (b) in terms that involve reflectiveness, self-questioning or

questioning of one's identity, "decentering" with regard to the agent's (whether

individual or collective) insertion in some encompassing social environment

xxvix

A couple of other positions sustained by Elster deserve to be considered briefly in this context. Irefer to his views (Jon Elster, Sour Grapes, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1985) on therelationships between preferences and beliefs (or the aspects I have been referring to in terms of volition/intentionality and cognition) in connection with rationality and autonomy. Elster speaks of "judgement" with regard to the rationality of beliefs, seen as a matter of appropriate information or evidence, and speaks of "autonomy" with regard to the rationality of preferences -- tentativelydescribed, though Elster is little affirmative on the theme of autonomy, as a matter of deliberatechoice, acquisition or modification of desires (pp. 15 ff., 21). Without intending to deny thecomplexity of the subject, on which Elster's discussion has rich insights to offer, I suggest that themost important aspects of the general problem of rationality have to do with the links between preferences and beliefs in behavior, or between intentionality and cognition -- and so between the

elements that Elster's analysis tends to separate. To rephrase some statements of the text, I wouldsay that rationality has to do both with the active ingredient of cognition and the cognitiveingredient of action -- and "active" and "action", given their intentional character, are inseparablefrom the element of volition and desire. It is quite clear, for instance, that the deliberate choice,acquisition or modification of desires or preferences involves a "reflective" and cognitiverequirement, and it is thus impossible to speak of autonomy in the terms of the definition proposed by Elster himself (in which it is supposedly linked to preferences as opposed to beliefs) withouttaking information and beliefs -- judgement -- into account. On the other hand (though it may seemat first sight more disputable), a Piagetian perspective would certainly warrant the converse: there isno judgement -- no real knowledge -- without the capacity to act autonomously.

22



(and so with regard to whatever the latter may ascribe to the agent), and so

on. In the latter case, therefore, we are considering the possibility of

preference formation or transformation, and ultimately of what has been dealt

with in terms of "character-building" or "character-planning".

As indicated above with regard to the dialectic between the identity-

defining (and so largely "ascribed") and the cognitive (and decentered)

requirements of autonomy, the task involved in dealing with character-

planning -- in correspondence with the idea that it takes a superior degree of

rationality than routine goal-seeking or interest-seeking behavior -- is a quite

complex one even if we stick to the case of an individual actor facing a

"parametrically" defined environment. What is to be said of a case in which

the definition itself of the character-planning actor is problematic -- and in

which this very "actor" is constituted through the communicative and strategic interaction of a multiplicity of other actors that are not only

individual but also collective, engaged themselves in a process of self-

definition through communication and strategy?

However appalling, this question seems to me to be inevitable in the

context of our problems. For the objective of establishing and eventually

consolidating democracy in a given country, insofar as it is actually an

objective of at least some relevant political actors, involves at least a"dimension" which is "reflective" in nature and does correspond to the

problem of character planning. There is no need to resort, in diametrical

opposition to the principles of "methodological individualism", to the view of

the country as such as a real soal-searching actor. But the efforts explicitly

directed at organizational and institution-building aims are, after all,

supposedly an important component of the process which takes place in the

countries we are concerned with, or else our own thematization of the

consolidation of democracy is entirely futile. And part of the job of such

institution-building efforts is precisely the one of assuring that the at least

potential focus of collective identity which corresponds to the country comes

to operate to some degree as an effective focus of collective identity for

decisive numbers of the people involved -- and that, consequently, supposedly

collective objectives compatible with the continuous operation of democracy

and corresponding to the encompassing level of the country as such may

23



become attainable. That much was actually achieved in some stable

democratic countries of today.

The task of solving the "constitutional problem" so defined is obviously

exposed to the previously described dialectic of the institutional and to thecorresponding paradoxes at the socio-psychological level -- in short, how to

create or produce (in an inevitably artificial and deliberate way) a tradition (in

which artificialism and deliberation will become unecessary, for whatever

comes to be prescribed by the tradition will be rendered spontaneous); in other

words, how to use reflectiveness to obtain spontaneity.xxvii In this aspect, the

paradox is aggravated by the fact that this production of a tradition, to the

extent that the constitutional undertaking involves a purpose of changing a

previous state of affairs, will have to affirm itself against traditions already at

work; it is thus not only a question of producing spontaneity, but of producing

a new spontaneity against an old one. But this aspect articulates itself in an

important way with another paradox having to do with the strategic dimension

of the problem. For if we assume (as I think we must) that the problematic

situation in which the constitutional design emerges and which is prone to

authoritarian "solutions" is itself an expression of power relations in society,

then the effective establishment of a democratic constitution involves some

sort of change also in the structure of power. Of course, it is possible and

important to link the two features of the situation thus described, which wouldlead us to the theme of the ideological aspect of power relations and to look at

prevailing traditions in this light.xxviii In any case, the paradoxical character of xxviix

See Karl Popper, "Towards a Rational Theory of Tradition", in Conjectures and Refutations, NewYork, Harper & and Row, 1965. See also Elster, Ulysses and the Sirens, op. cit., pp. 150 ff.xxviiix

It is interesting to consider some of these paradoxes also from the point of view of the doctrinaryrequirements of the democratic ideal, which, of course, are not irrelevant from the point of view of the problems of achieving and consolidating democracy. So, one important trait of democracy is toassure the autonomy of -- ultimately -- individual citizens. But, if we are to have democracy,

autonomy should definitely not be understood here as the mere "spontaneous affirmation of self", but rather as incorporating a crucial element of self-control. (In this sense, democracy obviouslyinvolves the organization of political interaction and the creation of certainty with regard to theoperation of restraints on its strategic ingredient -- a definition which, of course, is quite compatiblewith Przeworski's emphasis ["Ama a Incerteza e Serás Democrático", Novos Estudos Cebrap, 9, July1984, 36-46] on the uncertainty element of democracy, since it incorporates the continuous, albeitrestrained and "democratic", operation of strategy itself.) Now, autonomy as self-control includesthe requisite of being able to "decenter" and detach oneself from the spontaneous and naiveimmersion in society (from "ascription"), whereas the institutionalization of democracy involves theeffective operation of social norms that curtail autonomy as self-affirmation, which implies that

24



the whole problem might be described by resorting to Buchanan and Tullock's

distinction between the "constitutional" level of basic rules of the game and

the "operational" level of day-to-day socio-political interactionxxix : the drama

consists in that the constitutional problem itself cannot be solved but through

the vicissitudes of "operational" politics where a "constitution", in asociologically dense (though perhaps juridically unacceptable) sense of the

word, is always already in force.

Of course, the overall dilemma contained in the situation faced by the

supposedly "transitional" countries clearly involves many traits of the general

dilemma of collective action. However, there are also specificities in this

situation which make it differ significantly from the abstract definition of the

dilemma in such works as Olson's classic. Such specificities have to do

precisely with the foci of reflectiveness, so to speak, which are present in it --

or with the actors that can actually be seen as at least in part sensitive to the

character-planning and institution-building objectives. After all, in contrast to

the Olsonian state-of-nature paradigm, in the case of the countries in question

there already exist states which are at least formally committed to the

constitutional task, and which are effectively so committed as far as some of

the people involved in the complex state apparatuses are concerned. And

sometimes there are even such actors as constituent assemblies. Hence, the

idea that the constitutional problem must itself be solved at the operationallevel, important as I think it is, should be understood, in accordance with

something suggested above, as pointing to institution- or constitution-building

actions as being themselves "micro" (so, as proper objects to be dealt with by

rational choice even on a strict definition) and as having necessarily to deal

with other micro-behaviors and decisions which are always in process. It

should not, however, be taken to mean that such actions are just irrelevant --

or that the institutional equipment which makes up the dreams of those

committed to democracy in our countries should necessarily be thought of as

having to emerge as a mere "by-product". In other words, there is no reason to

suppose that the difficult character-planning and preferences-transforming job

that these countries have to face, with its stringent demands in connection

somehow they become "spontaneous" parts of "selves" to be affirmed...xxixx

James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy, Ann Arbor, Mich., The University of Michigan Press, 1967.

25



with the concern with effectiveness and hence with a higher-order rationality

capable of permitting awareness, on the part of at least some actors, of the

complex strategic dimension itself of the problem, would best be served by

resorting only to short-sighted strategic rationality, however crucially

important the proper consideration of the interests served by the latter may be.

Nonetheless, much of what would seem characteristic of rational choice

approaches to the problem looks rather like a sort of mechanic transposition of

the abstract dilemma of collective action and of the "by-product" solution

given to it by Olson. To be sure, the state and certain interest groups of major

importance, such as workers and capitalists, are supposed to exist and to be

capable of concerted action. But the problem tends to be defined exclusively

in terms of the standard by-product trick of how to achieve coordinated

(institutional or constitutional) results at the encompassing collective level

through the mere play of the particularistic and short-sighted interests of such

actors. In a way, the question might be said to be the one of how to build

institutions without really trying -- or, if I am allowed a somewhat abusive

recourse to some usual "hand" metaphors, how to use the invisible hand in

order to obtain the ostensive hand of effective democratic institutions to

replace permanently the iron hand of authoritarianism (with its propensity to

act sometimes rather like a malicious hiding hand)...

Let me add at once that the adequate alternative to what there is of

unsatisfactory in this approach to the problem does not seem to me to lie in

either of two other conceivable ways of dealing with it. First, as I think will be

quite clear below, the point of this objection to the mere "by-product"

conception of democracy-building is not to oppose to it some idealized and

wholly "dialogical" or communicative legislative effort guided by a superior

rationality, or even to sustain that something akin to this has an important,

though not exclusive, role to play in a successful process of consolidation of

democracy. Actually, instead of anything that idyllic, I am quite pessimistic

about the chances that the countries of Latin America which concern us here

may achieve, in the foreseeable future, a condition that might be properly

considered as consolidated democracy, whatever the way to get there. Second,

I don't think there is much to be gained by looking at the problem in terms of a

sort of "constitutional strategic interaction" (as opposed to "operational

26



strategic interaction"), where we would be dealing with the confrontation

between explicit constitutional or all-embracing projects for or against

democracy on the part of a plurality of actors of various natures. Even if we

admit that constitutional projects thus understood make up a real feature of

the situation (that is precisely what I claim with regard to the relevance of theelement of reflectiveness and character-planning), a few facts make it hard to

sustain the analytic effectiveness of modelling it as something like a

"supergame" of strategy. On the one hand, if the problem is thought of as

properly a confrontation between democratic and anti-democratic or

authoritarian forces, I fear that the attempt to deal "strategically" with it leads

to perhaps inevitably trivial propositions the usefulness of which seems highly

doubtful.xxx But there is also a clear lack of realism in the supergame model

thought of in these terms. For most people simply are not aware of being part

of any such game. And even those interests that people may be aware of (in

different degrees according to country and social sector) and which may be

supposed to have consequences for what is actually at stake at the

"constitutional" level in the sociologically "dense" sense pointed out above

(say, those interests involved in relations between workers and capitalists) are

far from being unequivocally linked with democracy versus authoritarianism

-- or from being perceived as such.

VI - Przeworski, self-enforcement and institutions

I shall indicate shortly what seems to me to follow from all these

nuances. But let me turn first to an attempt to illustrate some of the

difficulties of the "standard" rational choice approach to the problem. I willxxxx

This has been a point of dispute in some informal interchanges between Guillermo O'Donnell andmyself in the course of our recent collaboration. I think my skeptical position in this regard gainssupport from the fact that the triviality mentioned in the text appears in an otherwise very interestingand rich paper by O'Donnell when he tries to characterize in general terms the strategic problem

faced by the several actors in the post-authoritarian political process: democratic actors must"neutralize unconditionally authoritarian actors, either isolating them politically (...) or (chiefly inthe case of the armed forces) promoting attitudes and dispositions less incompatible withdemocracy", and so on. See Guillermo O'Donnell,"Os Atores do Pacto Democratizante: Reflexõessobre a Transição Brasileira", in José Augusto G. Albuquerque and Eunice R. Durham (eds.), ATransição Política: Necessidade e Limites da Negociação, São Paulo, Universidade de São Paulo,1987, pp. 418 ff. and especially p. 421; this is a preliminary version of Guillermo O'Donnell,"Transições, Continuidades e Alguns Paradoxos", to appear in Fábio W. Reis and GuillermoO'Donnell (eds.), A Democracia no Brasil: Dilemas e Perspectivas, São Paulo, Editora Vértice, in print.

27



take a couple of texts by Adam Przeworski, who distinguishes himself for his

involvement and competence in both our methodological and substantive

concerns.xxxi

Let us consider Przeworski's technical formulation of the problem of social pacts. A central notion is the one of self-enforcing solutions to strategic

situations, which correspond to states of affairs "from which no one wants to

depart when taking into consideration the eventual retaliation by others".

These solutions are self-enforcing because "as long as the conditions remain

the same no one would want to or dare to do anything else": so, they are

based, so to speak, on strictly "particularistic" definitions of interests.

Przeworski's discussion supposes three actors (workers, firms and the state),

and the states of affairs corresponding to self-enforcing solutions are seen as

being either open conflict (where workers revolutionize, firms disinvest and

the state represses) or compromise (where workers offer wage restraint, firms

invest and the state provides supportive economic policy). Self-enforcing

solutions "may or may not be efficient in the Pareto sense but there is nothing

in principle that would guarantee that they would be efficient". In contrast to

the self-enforcing solution, Przeworski introduces the notion of a bargain,

which is "by definition efficient but not self-enforcing: each of the actors

could be better off pushing its interests further". Thus, in the case of bargains

there is clearly a tension between what I have just called "particularistic"interests, on the one hand, and, on the other, the "universalistic" interest to be

secured through the bargain. Bargains, therefore, "require enforcement

mechanisms to hold" -- that is to say, they require an institutional apparatus,

ultimately the state.

From all that Przeworski extracts three things. First, an interpretation of

conditions necessary for the consolidation of democracy, which are either (a) a

self-enforcing compromise through the independent interaction of social

forces or (b) the establishment of a bargain (a "'pact' in the literal sense of the

word") with the knowledge that it would be enforced by the state. Second, a

diagnosis of the Latin American problematic, where: (1) economic conditions

xxxix

Adam Przeworski, "Micro-foundations of Pacts in Latin America", op. cit.; and Adam Przeworski,"Capitalismo, Democracia, Pactos", in Albuquerque and Durham (eds.), A Transição Política, op.cit. Of course, many other works by Przeworski are also relevant.

28



make a self-enforcing compromise unfeasible; and (2) a bargain is unfeasible

because political institutions are incapable of providing the necessary

enforcement. Third, a formulation of the available alternatives: (1) self-

enforcing open conflict, (2) a tug-of-war situation, or (3) a self-enforcing

institutional solution, or "institutional compromise". Of course, only the lastalternative would be a real solution to the problematic situation.xxxii

Now, note that the possibility of a self-enforcing compromise is

excluded with regard to current economic interests, whereas it is affirmed to

exist with regard to the setting up of institutions -- whose lack or weakness

makes a bargain unfeasible. Thus, according to Przeworski, a compromise

guided by self-interested considerations is impossible at the ("operational")

level of economic interactions, but feasible at the ("constitutional") level of

institution-making (where the compromise is supposed to provide a

framework for, most importantly, just such economic interactions).

Przeworski is explicit and quite emphatic in affirming that "the 'pacto

fundacional', the 'constitution' in the generic sense of the term, must be a self-

enforcing solution".xxxiii Since a self-enforcing operational compromise is not

viable and since we don't have the institutions to enforce a bargain, so let us

create, by means of a self-enforcing constitutional compromise, those

institutions needed to enforce bargains.

I think this is clearly paradoxical. It amounts, in my view, to supposing

that, in the problematic situation described, people are capable of acting

collectively (converging toward a compromise), on the basis of a rational

consideration of particularistic interests, with regard to precisely those aspects

of the situation where the chain of ends and means to be dealt with is morecomplex and so the volume of information to be processed is greater -- inother words, where a greater degree of rationality is needed. There is, I think,

only one alternative way to interpret the proposal: the idea that, precisely

because the issues are supposedly more complex and "clouded" at the

constitutional level, people in a difficult and problematic situation might be

led to agree because they don't see clearly the consequences of their decisions.

xxxiix

Przeworski, "Micro-foundations", pp. 6, 7 and 8.xxxiiix

Ibid., p. 8.

29



But this, of course, is in turn squarely inconsistent with the assumption of

rationality which is supposed to guide the rational choice approach.

Besides, there is an important element of circularity in Przeworski's

propositions. For the definition of a self-enforcing solution refers to certainconditions, whose existence results in that no one has an incentive to adopt a

different strategy than the one corresponding to that particular solution. Now,

we are told to look for a self-enforcing institutional solution for the problem

of democracy. But the conditions needed to make the democratic institutional

compromise a self-enforcing one include themselves certain appropriate

institutional arrangements.xxxiv If the very definition of the fundamental

problem involves such a circularity, it is no wonder that, in spite of the

obvious richness and importance of Przeworski's analysis in many works, with

regard to aspects that would seem more specific one is often left with the

impression, in reading him, that the decisive questions are being begged.xxxv

In general, it seems to me that the major contribution of analyses like

the ones undertaken by Przeworski in these and several other recent works lies

xxxivx

See Prezeworski, "Capitalismo, Democracia, Pactos", op. cit. p. 461. After introducing a set of categories quite parallel to the ones occurring in the paper on "Micro-foundations" and reproducedabove, Przeworski states his "central thesis": "The coexistence between capitalism and democracy inthe advanced capitalist countries is not based upon pacts resulting from joint choices of strategy andmade compelling because someone else enforces them, but is based rather on solutions derivingfrom autonomous choices of strategy and which are self-enforcing under the prevailing institutional arrangements. The economic, electoral and institutional conditions prevailing in these countriesgenerate a spontaneous compromise which favors the coexistence between capitalism anddemocracy."(My italics.)xxxvx

A few examples. With regard to the conditions of class compromise, we are told that "politicalconditions play an important role in creating confidence in the future on the part of workers andcapitalists, and under democracy the workers can use those conditions in their own favor" (ibid., p.471); but how to create political conditions that create confidence? With regard to the specific typeof class compromise corresponding to corporatist concertation, which supposedly can be

instrumental for democratic stability, we are reminded of the literature which shows that partiesfavorable to the workers must be in power for long and uninterrupted periods of time so that unionscome to be willing to enter the corporatist bargain (ibid., pp. 472-3); but how do you get to asituation where a workers' party can not only achieve power but also remain there and act as aneffective power-holder without arising fear and reactions from conservative forces? With regard tothe transactions between capitalists and wage-earners, we are told that neither category will bewilling to sacrifice present consumption if the strength of institutions is not enough to prevent theother side from using circumstancial advantages to get hold of a larger share of the benefits whoseexistence is made possible by that sacrifice (ibid., p. 475); but how do you build strong institutions?

30



in the precision and clarification they bring to the discussion of issues relating

to the working of the articulation between democracy and capitalism under mature or stable conditions, that is, in the case of advanced capitalist

countries. Another way of phrasing this might be to say that they help clarify

the problems concerning the working of "social pacts" (that is, those pactshaving to do with socio-economic policy and involving such central actors as

the state, organised workers and organised capitalists) under conditions in

which the "constitutional pact" has somehow been settled. But the problem

posed in connection with the effective introduction and eventual consolidation

of democracy is the constitutional problem itself, or the problem of effectively

instituting the constitutional pact. The unavoidable questions in this regard

are: How do you get there? What would someone have to do so as to make the

constitutional pact viable, or to create conditions that may allow the political

process eventually to be channelled through actually operative democratic

institutions? For such questions, I would say, the recommendation of looking

for self-enforcing institutional pacts is not enough.

Of course, a preliminary aspect of the problem thus posed is the

previously discussed one of who, after all, would this "someone" be. Quite

clearly, this turns out to involve the question of the "reflective" dimension of a

constitutional project, and correspondingly the question of the actors capable

of reflectiveness in the "transitional" situation. Admittedly, the concretedefinition of such actors, or their actual emergence as such in the socio-

political process, is something quite problematic -- and this is a decisive part

of the problematic character of the general situation. But note that the same

problem is also present in the type of analysis exemplified by Przeworski's

works, which do not stress the problem of the "reflective" dimension of the

actual social definition and behavior of the collective actors involved in

"social pacts" -- not to speak of who is going properly to institute or "sponsor"

any pact, which leads again to the institutional requirements of even "self-

enforcing" pacts.

But there is another particular -- and singularly important -- aspect to

the problem of collective actors when considered from the standpoint of the

constitutional problem. I have in mind the role played by the military

corporation as a very special actor in the "transitional" situation, by contrast

31



with their irrelevance in the case of the democratic countries of advanced

capitalism. Indeed, the centrality of the role of the military in "transitional"

countries might be seen as nearly equivalent to the very definition of the

constitutional problem. For it is the lack or weakness of democratic

institutions which, by making of the political arena the stage in which everysocial "force" pushes its own interests with the aid of whatever tools it may

have at hand, leads to the predominance of the military given the peculiarity

of the tools controlled by them -- the instruments of physical coercion. This, of

course, is the classical definition of "praetorianism" proposed by Huntington

and others.xxxvi And I think this notion is quite appropriately introduced here,

for it seems to me to grasp a crucial trait of the dilemma faced by

"transitional" countries which connects itself directly to Przeworski's

propositions. Indeed, it reminds us that there is no reason to assume that a

process of transition is actually taking place. This is so precisely because of

the dilemma of pulling oneself by one's hairs involved in having to build

institutions in a condition in which the spontaneous play of interests (or the

operation of self-enforcing mechanisms) tends to result rather in a sort of

lasting marshy situation, where tug-of-war is not one specific outcome: it is

rather an enduring trait of the situation which helps to define it and which

includes at its extremes the threat or actuality of open conflicts and the overt

authoritarian control of political life by the military. Furthermore, however

one may wish to analyse the political performance of the military from thestandpoint of the class structure of the countries in question, they tend to be

the single collective actor (perhaps together with the Church) best to justifify,

in general, the presumption of having the organizational capacity to act

"reflectively" (and effectively) in search of goals defined in connection with a

comprehensive diagnosis, however biased, of the situation and of their specific

role in it. If one considers the prospects of actual transition to a consolidated

democracy from the point of view of the military corporation seen as such a

decisive actor, what does the presumption of the need for a self-enforcing

institutional compromise leads to? How would it contemplate the interests of

this particular actor?

VII - Contractarian democracy and the dual autonomy of political

xxxvi Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies, New Haven, Yale University Press,1968, chapter 4.

32



institutions

There is a doctrinary point in Przeworski statements in the paper on

"Micro-foundations" which provides a suitable way to shift to the presentation

of my own perspective on such problems. The point is rather puzzling, for itreveals a radical and utopian element which does not blend well with the

patent realism of Przeworski's analysis of related problems in other texts. I am

referring to the definition of democracy provided by him: "the quintessence of

democracy is that there is no one to enforce it",xxxvii to which he links the idea

that an institutional or constitutional pact cannot be a bargain and must be a

self-enforcing solution. This definition of democracy is indeed wholly

consistent with the view of the democratic compromise as self-enforcing: in a

"real" constitutional (democratic) pact, anyone whose interest is not

contemplated should be able to veto it. But note how this view of a real

democracy is rather a view of the "ideal" democracy, how it fits the

contractarian model of an original (out of the state of nature) and unanimous

pact among agents supposed to be rational. Whatever the importance of

analytically resorting to some such radical conception of democracy for

theoretical purposes, emphasizing it does not seem helpful for the purpose of

analysing the possible transition to a realistically achievable democracy (a

"poliarchy") within severely limiting constraints.

Now, Przeworski himself has been championing, in the company of

writers like Claus Offe and Volker Ronge, a quite "realistic" conception of the

nature of the democratic compromise in the case of capitalist countries, where

democracy appears as a form of political organization which is inevitably

biased in favor of capital, given the structural dependence of state and society

on capital that is characteristic of capitalism as such.xxxviii One crucial

consequence or aspect of such a compromise is that social conflicts are

mitigated, so that, most importantly, workers accept private property and

control by the capitalists over investment decisions, whereas capitalits accept

democracy and the ensuing social policies favorable to the workers on the part

xxxviix

Przeworski, "Micro-foundations", p. 8.xxxviiix

Adam Przeworski, Capitalism and Social Democracy, New York, Cambridge University Press,1985; Claus Offe and Volker Ronge, "Theses on the Theory of the State", New German Critique, 6,1975, 137-48.

33



of the state. The democratic pact, therefore, involves in an important way the

creation of an element of certainty to compensate for the uncertainties

inherent in day-to-day socio-political interaction. But in the text under

examination Przeworski goes on rather to associate with the above radical

view of the "pacto fundacional" a few propositions stressing just the uncertainand conflictful features of democracy, to which he opposes the search for "el

consenso democrático", denounced as betraying "a non-democratic

intellectual legacy".xxxix

The outlook I propose as more adequate would certainly involve

supporting the realistic Przeworski against the utopian or radical one. From

this point of view, it is possible to agree with Przeworski's denunciation of a

"non-democratic intellectual legacy"; but, instead of being just a manifestation

of intellectual bias, this legacy is rather perceived as referring to an

"objective" aspect of the problem to be faced. A useful way to state this

problem in its doctrinary aspect is to resort to some of the many shades and

confusions associated with the idea of the autonomy of the state or, more

broadly, of political institutions.xl The above "utopian" side of Przeworski's

thought is clearly leaned toward the position that the state should not be

autonomous, for state autonomy can be seen as opposed to "popular

sovereignty".xli But it is undeniable that part of the defining characteristics of

democracy express rather the idea that the state must be autonomous, so that itcannot be made into the mere instrument of this or that socio-economic

interest -- or at least so that, even if it is by and large an instrument of certain

social categories, it is not too sensitive, in fulfilling this role, to the

vicissitudes of the day-to-day play of interests (this is what Huntington calls

"the autonomy of the political system" and sees as the crucial result of a

successful process of political institutionalization) and can thus assure the

orderly processing of some degree of uncertainty.xlii

xxxixx

Przeworski, "Micro-foundations", p. 8.xlx

For a discussion of such confusions, see Fábio W. Reis, "Strategy, Institutions and the Autonomy of the Political", Kellogg Institute, Working Paper # 3, December 1983.xlix

The problem is elaborated in these terms in another recent article by Adam Przeworski and MichaelWallerstein: "Popular Sovereignty, State Autonomy, and Private Property", Archives Européennesde Sociologie, XXIII, 2, 1986, 215-259.xlii

34



Obviously, there are different conceptions of the state at play here (the

state as either itself a focus or agent of tyranny, or an instrument of some

"societal" agents to exert power over others, or an instrument of all), which

are connected to different conceptions of the polity or of society as such (for instance, society as a homogeneous "public" versus society as a structure of

private power relations, chiefly class relations). And the central challenge

concerning democracy has to do with the interconnections of the questions

posed by such different conceptions. In any case, one question which is

certainly decisive for our problems refers to the relationships between the idea

of autonomy of the state or of political institutions, on the one hand, and the

distinction between the "operational" and the "constitutional" levels of

political life, on the other. Huntington's notion of the "autonomy of the

political arena" and Przeworski's democratic "uncertainty" both refer to a

requirement of autonomy with regard to the play of interests at the

operational level. But what is to be said of autonomy with regard to the

constitutional level?

Clearly, the answer is that there should be no such autonomy if the

democratic compromise is to become possible under capitalism -- and it is

obvious that this prescription of non-autonomy is quite different from the one

attributed above to the "utopian" Przeworski, for here I have in mind anegalitarian structure of societal power relations and not a homogenous public

thought of as sovereign. The problematic and unstable character of the

situation faced by our "transitional" countries can be described as having

ultimately to do precisely with the risks that it contains (or is perceived by

relevant political forces as containing) that there might be successful attempts

at organizing the state in an autonomous way with regard to the social

structure of power relations, that is to say, in a way that might turn out to be

hostile to the prevailing structure, or in which the state might be used against it. This, of course, is precisely what is involved in the recognition of the

structural dependence of state and society upon capital and its relationship to

the democratic compromise. In other words, it is certainly correct to say that a

See, for instance, Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies, op. cit., pp. 20-21. Theobvious point of contact between this idea and Przeworski's emphasis on uncertainty as an elementof democracy makes it quite clear that Przeworski himself proposes, either explicitly or implicitly,more than one way of dealing with the question of autonomy of the state.

35



major component of the constitutional problem is the problem of how to

neutralize the risk of revolution. Of course, one might also correctly say that

the constitutional problem is described just as well as being the problem of

how to make the revolution and organize the post-revolutionary society -- and

this shift of points of view is a welcome reminder that the problem of democracy can also be discussed, of course, under conditions other than

capitalism. But there seems to be no doubt that the current concern with the

problem of consolidating democracy in the countries of Latin America now

emerging from authoritarian regimes is definitely conditioned by the

acknowledgement that the range of options actually open for an eventual

"solution" to the basic problem of strategic interaction thus pointed out does

not include the suppression of capitalism, and proper discussion of that

problem thus requires looking at things with a special sensitivity toward the

severe constraints of the prevailing situation -- or, if I dare say so, from a

rather conservative point of view. In other words, we shall either have

capitalism with democracy or capitalism without democracy -- and the

"solution" to the problem of democracy seems to require above all that the

problems of capitalism be solved, and that the latter be made to flourish and

mature.xliii

VIII - What to do and incrementalism

My own view of our substantive problems of democratic consolidation,

as well as the methodological recommendations that seem to me to converge

with this view as regards the issue of rational choice, can now be stated. The

fundamental orientation is provided by the idea that we face a task of

institutional construction which can only have some hope of succeeding if it

shows the sensitivity just mentioned -- which means that the question of what

can actually be done under the adverse conditions is absolutely central and has

to be kept before our eyes. Looked at from the standpoint of the classical

discussion on the "social conditions of democracy", this orientation leads to a

couple of crucial ideas which might perhaps be stated as follows. First, there is

xliiix

Actually, stable democratic compromises are clearly rather exceptional, and there certainly is roomfor a theoretical presumption that, if you have capitalism, you will probably have politicalauthoritarianism, whatever is the case for non-capitalist systems. This presumption, which hasobvious and important antecedents in the social science literature, is of course wholly compatiblewith the theory of the structural dependence of state and society on capital under capitalism.

36



no reason to suppose that the perspective of "the social conditions of political

democracy" points to a better way to answer the question of what is to be

done than the alternative perspective of "the political conditions of social

democracy" -- or the political conditions of political democracy itself. For

what is needed is in any case political action, and the alternative of revolutionary political action is blocked. Second, this orientation implies the

recognition that, if there are conditions to be attended to in the process of

building authentic democracies in our countries, they are first and foremost

those conditions which actually characterize our countries -- socially and politically. This brings about, I think, the acknowledgement that the task of

democratic institutional construction would have to be guided by an

incrementalist perspective marked by the concern to act on those aspects of

the general context that seem liable to effective manipulation at the level of

our "institutional as object" without precipitating authoritarian reactions from

conservative forces and with some prospects of gradually helping to changethe present context in a direction favorable to democracy.

Of course, there is no reason for the logic of this realist and

incrementalist perspective to stop at the recognition of the need to live with

capitalism if we are to have democracy. Having in mind particularly the case

of Brazil, I shall take a few points which illustrate the ramification of this

logic into the area of related themes I have been discussing in some recentworks.

1. From a constitution to a better one

The overall feeling which distinguishes the outlook proposed here, with

its combination of the reference to the need for action aimed at innovative

institution-building and intense awareness of the resilience of the context to be

transformed, can perhaps best be seen in the evaluation to be made, in my

view, of what to expect of an "actor" like the Brazilian constituent assembly

itself. From a certain standpoint, it can quite obviously be taken as a

privileged focus of "reflectiveness" and of deliberate and intentional efforts at

institution-building in the current Brazilian situation. From another point of

view, however, the fact that the Brazilians are now involved with a

constituent assembly can be seen as itself a symptom of fundamental

37



embarassments rather than as a reason for great hopes that the corresponding

problems will actually be solved. In other words: Brazil is clearly not living

the "foundational moment" that the end of twenty one years of political

authoritarianism led some people to assume and that the summoning of a

constituent assembly is supposed to have crownned. From the point of view of the social structure of power relations, the conditions which led to the l964

crisis and its authoritarian outcome (conditions brought about by the

penetration of capitalism and the processes of industrialization and

urbanization, the increasing popular participation in the political process and

the ensuing tensions) are very much the same. If anything, the "constitutional

problem", seen as the latent confrontation resulting from such processes, was

aggravated due to the operation of the authoritarian regime itself and its

success in sponsoring the rapid transformation of Brazilian economic and

occupational structure -- as a consequence of which the country now has, for

instance, a significant unionist movement with claims to autonomy and more

difficult to manipulate and control than was the case previously to 1964. The

military corporation, in turn, came out of the authoritarian regime (the end of

which, I am persuaded, was largely a concession from the military, determined

above all by the threats to their internal cohesion produced by the protracted

control over the life of the country) intact in its organizational structure,

maintaining a diffuse penetration of the state machine and firm in its

adherence to the ideas associated with the 1964 intervention. It is thus nowonder that the functioning of the constituent assembly came soon to be seen

as itself a source of strain. In any case, there certainly are no good reasons in

favor of the expectation that the constitution about to be finished come to "lay

roots" and last: this is in all probability not a constitution for the next

centuries, but, with luck, for the next couple of decades or so.

Under such conditions, what would be the proper posture to adopt from

the point of view of democratic consolidation? I think it would clearly be to

demythicize the work of constitutional elaboration and try to give to it a

deliberate instrumental and experimental character based on a realistic

diagnosis of the situation. Instead of an ideal projection for the millenium, the

aim would be to make of the new constitution a legal instrument capable of

justifying the hope that the country will not have to start from the same point

in the constituent assembly to be summoned twenty years from now. And the

38



curious thing is that the relationships between such basic perspectives and the

need or even the possibility of being bold and creative as a legislator are far

from being what they might seem at first glance: if you are a deputy to a

constituent assembly and have to keep your eyes on the millenium, you are

very much in the situation of an end-of-the-world version of the Prisoners'Dilemma, and there is no alternative to sticking to the straight affirmation of

the interests that you represent or of the ideals that you stand for. By contrast,

the task of preparing a constitution for the next twenty years or so, which is in

any case probably soon to be replaced by a new one, somehow "structures"

the future and puts you in front of a more complex chain of ends and means --

where you are not only allowed, but required to be more flexible so as to

make of the result of your immediate efforts a possible instrument for long-

term goals.

The latter is certainly not the perspective of the deputies to the present

Brazilian constituent assembly, in whose attitude there is by far the

predominance of the "self-centered" and somewhat blind affirmation of

interests and ideals over the cognitive "decentration" required and made

possible by this stepwise orientation. However, this stepwise and more

decentered perspective is no doubt possible in principle -- and people may

learn. Actually, we Latin-Americans seem to have learned a good deal, under

the recent authoritarian regimes, about the importance of political democracy.Perhaps the deputies to the next Brazilian constituent assembly, together with

many of those whom they will be representing, will have a different

perspective...

2. The military: rules for the real game?

The problem of the political role of the military can be taken briefly as a

second illustration of the general logic I am proposing, with the advantage that

it permits also a direct and dramatic illustration of realistic and stepwise

constitution-making. In Brazil, along the whole republican period since the

last quarter of the nineteenth century, when we had several constitutions, the

role of the military has been constitutionally defined as that of neutral and

professional guardians of the laws of the country and its national sovereignty.

Of course, this is patently a legal fiction without any correspondence to the

39



fact of the crucial importance that the military have had throughout, and still

have, as a political actor. Nonetheless, the present constituent assembly poses

the problem largely in the same terms, and the debates which take place there

on the issue of the military can be appropriately summed up as turning around

the question of whether or not to forbid military coups. If it comes down tothat, I am personally in favor that coups be explicitly forbidden in the most

severe way (and I even admit that this may have some effect on the

willingness of the military to coup)...

But I also think that, since it is clearly not possible, under the present

circumstances, really to break the autonomous political power of the military,

the legal fiction of their political irrelevance should be abandoned and we

should try to do something legally that might be expected to be of greater

consequence. Now, beyond the factors of a "structural" nature that are

probably linked to military interventions in Brazilian political life, there are

also at play socio-psychological factors which are probably susceptible to

being changed by means of institutional measures. Having that in mind, the

problem of the military might be considered by reference to the following

objectives: (1) to eliminate the present isolation of the military corporation

with regard to society as a whole, promoting opportunities for the military to

get together institutionally with the representatives of various foci of interests

and opinions; (2) to help create a tradition of civic conviviality, maybegradually neutralizing the paranoia or "insurgency complex" that has long

characterized the political outlook of the military; and (3) hopefully to

neutralize, at the end of such a "re-socialization" effort, the very disposition to

act as an autonomous political power on the part of the military. Such a

perspective amounts ultimately to looking for some form of mitigated

institutional incorporation of the actual power of the military that might

perhaps result in somehow making explicit the rules of the real game of which

they are a part -- and doing that as much as possible in terms capable of

claiming their consequent acquiescence. Of course, since the point is not to

assure constitutional backing for permanent military tutelage, time limits and

mechanisms for revision of such legal dispositions should be considered. In

any case, I think this proposal adds up concretely to experimenting with some

kind of corporate representation of the military within the executive and

perhaps even the legislative branchs of government -- and at least a precarious

40



support for the bet contained in it can be found in the experience of observing,

during the 1964 regime, previous "hardliners" among military leaders act with

moderation and equilibrium once they were nominated judges in the military

courts.

3. Corporatism and the state

Another point, which can be referred in some crucial aspects to the

question of corporatism, is more far-reaching analytically than the previous

one. It actually deals with the broad problem of state-building or -rebuilding

in connection with democracy, and, if properly pursued (which it is impossible

to do here), would lead us into some much needed revisions of many

confusions which seem to me to creep over such themes as traditions of

"stateness" or "statelessness", which tend to be directly linked to either

authoritarian or democratic propensities. Questions such as the ones of state

autonomy and of political institutions seen as a result either of self-enforcing

pacts or of other sorts of arrangements are also of interest here.

In any case, corporatism in Brazil has always been linked with a

"statist" and hence authoritarian tradition and invariably denounced as

something to be suppressed for the sake of democracy. Beside being seen asnothing but an expression of the authoritarian character of Brazilian political

life since remote times, in its current features Brazilian corporatism is

described as the direct consequence of the manipulative designs of Vargas'

dictatorial Estado Novo. Certainly for that reason, even the current vogue of

stressing the need for a "social pact" is not phrased in terms of corporatism

(the phrase "corporatist concertation", for instance, does not appear in current

Brazilian political lexicon).

Now, some sort of social pact seems indeed necessary, in line with some

of the main concerns elaborated on by Przeworski in his "Micro-foundations

of Pacts in Latin America". Granted that, a few questions emerge rather

naturally: What are the relations between, on the one hand, the search for

social pacts in the interest of democratic consolidation in a country like Brazil

and, on the other, the fact that the country has a tradition of presence or

41



initiative on the part of the state and, more specifically, a corporatist tradition?

Are these relations necessarily negative, even if we admit the connections

between corporatism and political authoritarianism in the past? Or is there the

possibility that corporatism itself, as well as the large Brazilian state, may

somehow be made instrumental to the establishment of effective social pactsand eventually to democracy?

My point, in accordance with the incrementalist perspective proposed

above, is that we definitely have to explore the latter possibility. Indeed, the

powerful Brazilian state is here to stay -- and probably to expand, as it did

enormously even during the authoritarian 1964 regime, the rhetoric of

economic liberalism of the latter notwithstanding. Moreover, as is

characteristic of capitalism itself, and certainly more so of relatively immature

forms of capitalism as we have in Brazil, this huge state is naturally prone to

corporatist articulation with entrepreneurial interests in the informal

"bureaucratic rings" of Cardoso's diagnosis, which is an obvious expression of

its affinity with and ultimate dependence on capital and an additional factor of

its conservative bias to be compensated for, if at all possible. Furthermore,

under the general social conditions prevailing in Brazil, the prospects of

autonomous organization of the "popular sectors" taking place in such a way

as to make large segments of them capable of acting effectively in the

promotion of their interests (an action which, even if successful at themobilizational level, could not afford to ignore the state, given its very

weight) are dim indeed. If, on top of all that, we consider the irony contained

in the path followed by several of the most stable capitalist democracies,

where the supposedly autonomous and pluralist initial mobilization of the

workers ended up in the corporatist (or "neo-corporatist") structures of today

-- how then can someone insist that the path to be taken in Brazil in securing

weight to popular interests must go through something like the dismantling or

curtailment of the state, or distancing popular interests from it, and through

the difficult and unlikely efforts at autonomous popular organization?xliv

xliv I think Philippe Schmitter's distinction between "state corporatism" and "societal corporatism"("Still the Century of Corporatism?", in Fredrick B. Pike and Thomas Stritch, eds., The NewCorporatism, Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 1974) is largely irrelevant to thesubstance of my argument. Actually, despite its importance in originating the vast recent literatureon corporatism, I think Schmitter's article is inconsistent as far as that distinction is concerned, andthat the latter turned out to add to the confusions prevailing with regard to corporatism. Thus,

42



For my part, I suggest that the most proficuous way to deal with the

issues that normally turn around the notion of corporatism is to adhere in a

consequent manner to the definition of the latter as having to do, in general,

with the articulation between state and society -- particularly functionalinterest groups in society. In itself, such an articulation does not have to be

seen as implying either authoritarianism or democracy: it can just as well be

conceived as leading either to control of interest groups by the state or to

greater sensitivity of the state toward interest groups (and so to control of the

former by the latter). A step forward is taken when we realize that whenever

we have corporatism (or even, perhaps, in any society in which we do have

both a state and interest groups) we will probably have a certain degree of

both components of this two-way flow. The next step is the realization that

there is another two-way flow, this time between "corporatism" thus

understood and "democracy": if, on the one hand, the degree to which the

state prevails over "society" (interest groups) or vice-versa depends on the

extent to which democratic mechanisms are consecrated in the political

system as a whole, on the other hand the articulation and communication

between state and "society" is itself part of the definition of democracy. We

are again, as seems clear, involved with the seemingly contradictory demands

that the state both be autonomous and not be autonomous -- and nothing much

seems to be added or taken away by the consideration of corporatism as such.

However, if the context in which one has to act and try to build

democracy includes to begin with as a paramount feature a state which is

already huge, socio-economically active and greatly biased in its relationships

whereas the general definition of corporatism provided by Schmitter refers to a system of interestrepresentation in which the state articulates itself with units which are "organized into a limitednumber of singular, compulsory, noncompetitive, hierarchically ordered and functionally

differentiated categories" and "granted a deliberate representational monopoly" (pp. 93-2), thedistinction between state and societal corporatism does not refer to the structural elements of thisdefinition, but rather to (1) the origins of each type or the process through which it gets established(pp. 103 and 106, for instance) or (2) the more or less authoritarian characteristics of the politicalsystem as a whole in which each type is found "imbedded" or with which it is "associated" (p. 105)-- despite the fact that Schmitter himself denounces in the literature on corporatism the tendency to"submerge it into some wider political configuration such as 'the organic state' or 'the authoritarianregime'" (p. 91). Of course, this fusion between "corporatism" and "authoritarianism", whichSchmitter criticizes but inadvertently shares, prejudges the answer to some important questions, likethe ones I raise in the text.

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with interest groups (besides firmly entrenched and unsusceptible to being

revolutionarily overthrown), the task of building democracy then inevitably

goes through appropriately building corporatism, that is, seeking to articulate

state to "society" in a richer and more complex way. And I propose that in

Brazil we not only, in this sense, lack corporatism, but also are largelycompelled to resort to the "shortcut" of trying to build both corporatism and

democracy (something like the "corporate pluralism" that Dahls considers to

be the seemingly inevitable future short of political authoritarianism)xlv with

the materials available from the statist and authoritarian tradition and by

resorting to the state itself. Among other things, the challenge is to assure

adequate functional representation for workers' interests and try to formalize

and make more transparent the whole process of corporatist representation.

Since this text is already too long, I will not elaborate this any further.xlvi

Instead, let me just register a couple of brief points. First, the idea of a

corporatist structure where various important functional interests receive

adequate representation fits nicely, to speak à la Parsons, the need to deal with

another unpleasant fact of Brazilian political life which has also been a

constant theme of the political sociology of Brazil and which would certainly

deserve to be taken by itself in this small exercise in political realism: our so

called "amorphous" and catch-all parties, abhorred by those who are attached

to the model of "ideological" politics. What I want to propose in this regard issimply that we might perhaps see in a more positive light the possible

contribution of "non-ideological" catch-all parties to democracy (or

democratic consolidation) in a country like Brazil if they operate side by side

with a corporatist structure in which the specific interests of organized

workers are represented.xlvii Provided that they have an overall popular

orientation (and the general characteristics of the larger part of the Brazilian

xlvx

Robert A. Dahl, Dilemmas of Pluralist Democracy, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1982, p. 80.xlvix

A more extended discussion can be found in Fábio W. Reis, "Consolidação Democrática eConstrução do Estado", in Reis and O'Donnell (eds.), A Democracia no Brasil , op. cit.xlviix

Of course, this proposition has important points of contact with Przeworski and Sprague's findings,with regard to Western Europe, on the trade-off between the class-based appeal of workers' partiesand their electoral penetration and the relations of this trade-off with the strength of corporatistrepresentation through unions. See Adam Przeworski and John Sprague, "Party Strategy, ClassOrganization, and Individual Voting", chapter 3 of Przeworski, Capitalism and Social Democracy,op. cit.

44



electorate are such as to require this for a party to be able to claim electoral

hegemony or even viability -- just as they forbid rigid ideological postures if

these objectives are to be achieved), the flexibility of parties of such a nature

may even turn out to represent a welcome correction to the distorted effects at

the level of functional representation of interests to be expected from theheterogeneity of the Brazilian "popular sectors" as regards mobilizational and

organizational capacity.xlviii

The second point refers to the contribution that a proper

"corporatization" of state-society relations in Brazil might bring to the

adoption of effective welfare policies (in substitution for the tragic caricature

of the welfare state that the country now has). Of course, it is hard to imagine

that the civil and political dimensions of democratic citizenship might lay

roots in a country like Brazil if -- subverting the order described by T. H.

Marshall in his classic essay on citizenship -- the social elements of

citizenship are not introduced to a significant extent so as to neutralize the

staggering deprivation of much of the population. And it is equally difficult to

see how this might be achieved if not through the state...

IX - Conclusion: democratic consolidation and rational choice

So, at least as far as conditions approach those which seem to me tocharacterize the Brazilian case, my general outlook on the question of the

consolidation of democracy is rather pessimistic. The hopes contained in it

refer to a process of institution- or state-building and -rebuilding which is

inevitably precarious: it necessarily unfolds over a long and uncertain period

of time, for the passing of time is a necessary ingredient of the very process of

institutionalization, with its dialectic of artificiality and "context-

impregnation"; the actors of different scales involved in it are not only

multiple and strategically oriented and constituted, but also placed at different

stages as regards the definition and maturing of collective and individual

identities, as well as differently capable of dealing in an autonomous and

cognitively sophisticated way with the tensions between both long-run and

short-run and self-centered and decentered perspectives -- not to speak of the

xlviiix

These problems are discussed at greater length in Fábio W. Reis, "Partidos, Ideologia eConsolidação Democrática", in Reis and O'Donnell (eds.), A Democracia no Brasil , op. cit.

45



complex relationships between these elements which are supposed by the

doctrinary requirements themselves of democracy; it supposes a process of

convergent learning on the part of these multiple actors... Given such

complexities, the presumption must be that, even if successful in the long run,

the process of making and consolidating democracy will probably go throughsevere setbacks which are likely to include the reintroduction of authoritarian

political regimes.

As we approach the end of these notes provided with a diagnosis of this

sort, the obvious question is how does it relate to rational choice and its

prospects as an analytic instrument for dealing with democratic consolidation.

A preliminary observation of interest regards the affinity with the rational

choice perspective exhibited by the "strategic" concern with what to do.

Despite its necessary sensivity toward the dialectic of the institutional (or

rather, because of it), the outlook brought about by this concern is clearly

opposed , at a certain level, to the excessive emphasis on "cultural" factors

often found in discussions of democracy and the prospects of democratic

consolidation. From this point of view, cultural elements are of relevance as

long as they are part of the "givens" of the situation to be acted upon in the

most effective way possible. This has a "consequentialist" effect on how to

approach the study and eventual diagnosis of concrete historical situations

which seems healthier than a certain moralist -- and paralysing -- ingredientfrequently present in the contrast between abstract models of political life or

of any of its multiple aspects.

Another issue is that, of course, the eventual effectiveness of a

supposed process of democratic consolidation is something which has to do

with the behavior or action of the actors themselves involved in the process.

The above diagnosis and prognosis involve an analytic posture or bet

regarding the likely outcome of such action and imply propositions about both

the situation and its perception by the actors which should be liable to some

sort of verification other than just waiting for things to happen -- above all if,

given the nature of the problem, the option of waiting for things to happen is

not really, alas!, open to us. Of course, the question of evidence concerning

processes is a quite complicated one for the social sciences as such, regardless

of the specific approach favored. But is the rational choice approach entitled

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to any special claim in connection with the general problem, including its

ramification with regard to evidence?

I think the answer is in the negative. The very statement of the problem

in all its complexity seems to me certainly to require abandoning the"standard" outlook of rational choice, in which there is a hidden or latent

presumption to the effect that the analysts (the rational-choice oriented social

scientists) "outsmart" the "rational" actor with whom they deal. The actor is

caught in a situation involving a complex coordination problem (between

different actors and everyone's actions in different moments) of which the

analysts may perhaps have a sophisticated grasp; as to the actors themselves,

however, the operative assumption is rather that they are condemned to being

guided by a myopic consideration of interests -- and, even if they are granted

an equally sophisticated grasp of the situation, the coordination problem is

thought to make this of no avail to them. Whence the by-product or invisible-

hand perspective. As we have seen, however apt a description this may be of

an abstract original-contract situation (or of the situation of some real "latent"

groups), the concrete historical situation faced by the "transitional" countries

which concern us is different in important respects, for it includes as relevant

aspects certain coordinating actors (who even have already, in some cases, the

capacity to coerce, which, of course, is part of the problem) and foci of

convergence and reflectiveness. Certainly the analytical rendering of the problem posed by the situation thus defined does not require abandoning the

notion of rationality itself: on the contrary, the enhanced complexity of the

situation includes actors and actions that are by definition sensitive to or

oriented toward long-run and collectively encompassing objectives (and which

are thus expressly faced with the need for increased rationality) side by side

with short-sightedly "interested" ones.

But there is a loop at this point which brings forth an additional

complication. To wit, the effectiveness (or rationality) of the actions oriented

toward the long-run goal of consolidating democracy is itself dependent upon

our reflective actors' taking due account of many short-sighted (and even of

some long-run oriented) other actions -- this, of course, is precisely what my

incrementalist recommendation amounts to. Again, this new step in the

description of our convoluted problem does not lead to the requirement of

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abandoning the idea of rationality for its analytical rendering, but rather to a

still stronger commitment to rationality. But the question is: are we still within

the confines of the rational choice approach when (instead of having to deal

with irrationality, as is the claim of some usual criticisms to rational choice)

we have to deal both with thorough rationality of a reflective and character- planning nature and with a complex "sociological" context which sets the

traditional and normative stage, so to speak, not only for this reflective effort,

but also for the definition of the interests and objectives to be sought in the

multiplicity of myopic "interested" actions?

I don't think that rational choice alone can do the job implied in such a

definition of the problem. But that does not deny, of course, that there

probably is an important role to be played by it in clarifying problems at

several levels. The usefulness of such works as the ones dealing with the

operational level of social pacts and with their relevance to the constitutional

level seems clear enough. And I think there should be a favorable presumption

concerning the possibility of proficuous applications of the rational choice

approach in a similar way to the more complex forms of strategic interaction

-- and so perhaps also more complex forms of articulation between the

operational and constitutional levels -- we have in our "transitional" situation

as a consequence of aspects like the important role played by such actors as

the military and the strategic complications involved in the sometimesincipient process of formation of other collective actors. One important aspect

which seems in need of clarification is the one of the extent to which it may be

necessary to go beyond the play between institutional pacts, on the one hand,

and strictly "material" or "economic" interests, on the other. As previously

suggested, I don't think that the option of viewing our problem in terms of a

supergame played between alternative constitutional projects is a useful one,

for it seems to lack realism and inevitably to lead to triviality. So, part of the

problem seems to be how to define in a sufficiently complex way the

"operational" interests which articulate themselves with the prospects that

different constitutional arrangements may come to prevail and endure: for

instance, besides "constitutional" preoccupations themselves and the desire for

proper pay, are there any actual motivations on the part of the military that

should be included in the attempt formally to grasp our complex strategic

game? Would the suggestion presented above of an institutionally conducted

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"re-socialization" of the military point to aspects relevant to this question?

In any case, the formal clarification of the constitutional problem such

as it appears in the very perspective of a supposedly reflective or

"constitutional" actor is, quite obviously, another aspect concerning which oneshould expect the rational choice approach to try its resources. This is related

to the privilege granted above to the question of what to do, and it probably

leads to a focus akin to the one usually associated with policy analysis, where

the point of view of a "global" actor (the supposedly impartial and

sympathetic state) is adopted in dealing with problems defined in terms of

global maximization, even if they involve aspects of strategic interaction.

Inherent in such a perspective there would be some sort of organic

utilitarianism, by contrast to the contractarianism adopted by Przeworski with

his radical definition of democracy. I think this is not only inevitable if we

speak of building constitutional democracy in a historical context; it is

probably also necessary so as to incorporate to our analyses the

"consequentialism" of which I think my incrementalist recommendation is an

example. I can't see how an analysis aimed at the diagnosis of a given situation

and at orienting efforts toward its amelioration might not be consequentialist.

Which is far from meaning that my crude guesses are all we need.

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Rationality, Sociology and the Consolidation of Democracy

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