July 16, 2013
Never missing an opportunity to weigh in on a global trend, Thomas Friedman recently opined in his op-ed column in The New York Times that the widespread social unrest found in various countries across the globe can be attributed to three principal factors: majoritarianism, the effects of economic integration into the global economy, and technology.
While there is some degree of correlation between each of these factors and the current protests worldwide depending on the country in question, Friedman, in his customary zeal to attribute any and every international phenomenon to globalization, has committed a notable analytical error made by numerous pundits over the past few weeks. He mistakenly assumes that all of these cases are fundamentally similar due to the common appearance of mass protests, and proceeds to lump them all together when trying to locate the source of this collective public rage.
“In places like Turkey, Brazil, Russia and Egypt,” writes Friedman, “the formal opposition is feckless. So people take to the streets, forming their own opposition.” Unfortunately, what is occurring at the moment in these places is not so simple. Aside from the obvious error in trying to present current events in Turkey, Brazil, Russia, and Egypt in the same light, the attempt to find a pattern amongst this myriad of polities currently embroiled in social unrest is an exercise in futility. Quite simply, they are not all alike. What occurred last week in Cairo was quite different than the ongoing protests in Istanbul, Rio de Janeiro, and Santiago, based on not only their structural differences but also their objectives and goals. If anything, the Egyptian case bears greater resemblance to what recently transpired in Bulgaria and Slovenia, although aggregating these countries together would most likely prove problematic for a variety of reasons.
In short, when examining the widespread social and political unrest found in many different corners of the globe, analysts need to avoid the temptation to oversimplify this phenomenon and to disaggregate the different cases in order to determine what, if anything, they share in common – beyond the fact that citizens are using modern technology to organize massive displays of public discontent – and more importantly where and how they differ from one another. At the present, the three countries experiencing large-scale social protests that provide the most salient point for comparison are Turkey, Brazil, and Chile due their common status as newly industrialized countries (NICs), their recent political and economic trajectories, and the character of the protests themselves, all of which have emerged in a relatively short period of time.
Oversimplifying Causality
Recently commenting on the protests that have rocked newly industrialized countries (NICs) from the Middle East to South America, Moises Naím, a prominent Venezuelan economist and current Carnegie scholar, argued that the unforeseen manifestations of public rage could be explained by a seminal book written by the late American political scientist, Samuel Huntington, dating back to 1968. Citing the classic text on modernization theory, Political Order in Changing Societies, Naím claims that the current unforeseen and unexpected demonstrations are the result of a gap between the slower development of political institutions behind socio-economic change. “That lag,” he writes in Business Week, “is what brings people into the streets and amplifies more limited protests against high college tuitions in Chile, the redevelopment of Taksim Gezi Park in Istanbul, or the 9¢ increase in public transport fares in Brazil.”
Moises Naím is neither the first nor the only political commentator to suggest that the current unrests in Turkey, Brazil, and Chile are the product of each country’s recent economic successes. And while Huntington’s thesis can explain these events on a macro level, it is too general a framework to adequately explain the multiple causes behind these protests. By focusing solely on the positive political and economic achievements of these NICs over the past decade, individuals like Naím overlook the negative externalities of these processes and in doing so avoid examining other factors which most likely have fueled these separate, on-going protests.
Locating the Source of Discontent
Huntington’s modernization theory is not without its merits as an explanatory device for current events in Turkey, Brazil, and Chile. All three countries have experienced substantial annual GDP growth, an expanding middle class, and improved levels of education over the course of the past decade. Of equal importance, they have also simultaneously witnessed a high degree of democratic consolidation in their respective polities, a substantial achievement given their previous experiences with military dictatorships.
It also dovetails nicely with the literature on new social movements (NSMs), which posits that increased economic performance creates greater expectations and as a result, more public displays of social discontent. This phenomenon is found in industrialized countries where, according to Dalton, Kuechler, and Burklin, non-hierarchical, decentralized and fluid masses of people question society’s emphasis on material success in lieu of value and issue-based cleavages. The German academic Max Kaase similarly concluded that improved education in a given society leads to broader cognitive bases (i.e. cognitive mobilization), and the public may bypass political parties and established interest groups to get an issue on the political agenda with greater expedience.
What this suggests in layman’s terms for Turkey, Brazil, and Chile is that they have each effectively reached a level of development which has permitted citizens to adopt post-material values, or to place greater importance on non-excludable pure public goods such as improved, affordable transportation, education, and health services. Yet what these demonstrations have shown the world is that despite the vast improvements in economic performance and democratic governance over the past ten years, political parties and established interest groups in Turkey, Brazil, and Chile are increasingly focused on the allocation of state resources to specific political constituencies, rather than creating public goods which would benefit all citizens.
This is evident in the seemingly small grievances that started the protests in each of these countries, provoking an excessive reaction by the state which kicked off these cycles of contention. The initial repression of the Turkish, Brazilian, and Chilean authorities ended up creating a wider political opportunity structure which gave increased access to participation to other disenchanted citizens with diverging complaints. In Turkey, this initially took the form of a protest against the proposed development of Taksim Gezi Park, which would have benefitted certain military, corporate, and Islamist interests, whereas in Brazil it was a 0.20 Reais raise in bus fare which infuriated working and middle class citizens in light of the fact that the federal government has earmarked billions of dollars in funds to build infrastructure for the upcoming 2014 World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympics.
Chile differs slightly in this respect as protests there have largely revolved around the issue of affordable post-secondary tuition, yet this underscores the common perception that the Chilean government has simply not done enough to create a more equitable society during the recent economic boom. Notwithstanding the notable advances of these economies and improvement in the quality of life under their democratic governments, hundreds of thousands of citizens have engaged in what political sociologist Claus Offe has termed ‘non-institutional politics,’ because citizens share the belief that social problems are no longer able to be meaningfully resolved through traditional institutions, based on a perceived deterioration of conventional politics.
Most tellingly of all, at the beginning these protests were launched by new social movements which subsequently paved the door for trade unions, the traditional vanguards of and vehicles for protests in industrialized societies, to follow in their stead. This demonstrates a profound shift in the traditional method of public interest articulation in Turkey, Brazil, and Chile. At the moment of writing, the biggest Brazilian and Chilean trade unions have convened nationwide strikes in their respective polities, echoing many of the same demands made by the initial protests last month, while also paralyzing vital infrastructure in the process. The persistence of this widespread discontent exposes long-standing cleavages that have failed to subside in the face of higher living standards.
Even with functioning democratic institutions and staunch economic growth, Turkey, Brazil, and Chile register Gini coefficients that have remained stubbornly high despite modest improvements in recent years. Nowhere are these indices of inequality more noticeable than in the disparity of the income shares of the wealthiest ten percent of the population compared with the poorest ten percent. Using data obtained from a 2009 World Bank report, the massive income disparity in these countries is evident; in the case of Turkey, the wealthiest ten percent earn 29.4% of GDP while the poorest ten percent account for 2.1%; Chile fares worse with 42.77% to 1.53%, while Brazil is even more unequal with 43.3% to 0.8%.
Although the mass protests in each country contain a variety of messages and voices, they have all been largely successful in creating consensus mobilization, or a common agreement on what it is that they are ultimately seeking: a re-prioritization of the citizen over private interests. And while the massive level of inequality found in Turkey, Brazil, and Chile is not the sole deterministic factor for this demand, it is reflected in the overarching framing of the debate, which is a call for more transparency, less corruption, and a greater emphasis on people.
Contrary to what Moises Naím suggests, it is not modernization per se that has produced social unrest in these countries; rather, it is economic development that privileges a limited demographic without providing commensurate benefits to the rest of society.
About the Author
Charles Larratt-Smith is a PhD student in the Political Science department at the University of Toronto and he also serves as the Vice President of Latin American Affairs for The Peace by Piece Initiative. He holds a BA in Latin American studies from Brooklyn College-CUNY and an MA in International Relations from the City College of New York-CUNY and recently served as a Guest Professor at the Universidad de Los Andes in Mérida, Venezuela for the 2011-2012 academic year. He also spent time working for Fundación Por La Madre, a nascent NGO that provides educational initiatives for communities of internal refugees in the Colombian department of Magdalena and has travelled extensively throughout the region. His interests include alliance formation, foreign policy, and security issues. He is an avid football (soccer) fan.