Transition in transition : parties, state and politics in Uruguay 1985-1993

Transition in Transition: Parties, State and Politics in Uruguay 1985-1993 Jorge Luis LANZARO Universidad de la República, Montevideo Working Paper n.90 Barcelona 1994 I. THE URUGUAYAN "DOUBLE TRANSITION": CENTRALITY OF THE PARTIES AND "CONSENSUAL" DEMOCRACY (1) 1. During the past decades Uruguay has undergone a "double transition", like other countries of the region. The first refers to overcoming the authoritarian regime set up in 1973 and closes with the restoration of democracy in 1985. The "second transition" dates from before that, is far from being over and broadly covers a series of essential changes in the structure of the state, in the political system and in the economic regime (in production, markets and regulations), including significant changes in social structure, national identity and in the plurality of cultural practices nourishing it (2). 2. The parties figure prominently in this campaign: for their own merit and for the responsibility that the social body assigns them, even though they may go through a period of depressions and readjustments, even though a certain "disenchanment" may be felt in the air, with uncertainties and feeling the citizens' apathy. Within the parties, there evidently are actions and sensations of blockage, a variable quota of ideological anxiety, slowness and shortcomings in the drive for remodelling, unequal tendencies, conservative heaviness, with an unsatisfactory political productivity and leadership elaborations that leave much to be desired. The margins of dissent, the axis of tension and the matters in dispute that open with the proposals for modernization, cut the party groups, cut across the competition of the different sectors and inform political development, in a complex setting. Carrying these weaknesses, the parties are first-class actors in the change of the way of doing politics, in the reform of the state and in updating the styles of public management. They also have to set the pace of the reconversion of the economy, guiding the "opening" and substituting the patterns of market regulation, pushing and safeguarding the agents through the road of troublesome innovation, carrying out works of reconstruction, setting policies to that purpose, giving effective "signals", that contribute to a reconditioning of the national identities that has been long and difficult. The process implies a reformulation of their idiosincrasy, of their composition, of their functions, going through the regeneration of the ruling class, of the management positions within the administrative body and of other public servants. The finalization of the Keynesian designs and the misfortunes of a "social" state -which in our land has specially been a "party state"- goes together with the crises in politics, and is also unavoidably a crisis of the parties, a panorama of important tears, inertia and the generation of anomia. In order to secure relief in all these aspects, the parties have to play a leading role and, as it could not otherwise be, they have to undergo at the same time their own restructuring. It is the "transition within the transition", hard and troublesome, to which the title of this article makes reference(3). 3. The central nature of politics and the role of the parties in the course of the crisis are points to be highlighted in our analysis. The thesis goes against one of the currents that takes most part in the conformation of current common sense, opposing the ideological theory that has set itself against politics and against the parties at this moment of weakness, to which well-intentioned self-criticism and a guilt complex are added, or at times even pure and simple complicity of the members of the profession itself. In the present vicissitudes we can spot pockets of modernity that contrast backwardness. There is a group of agents of modernization that is becoming more and more extended, that moves in the different areas of interest and competes with reactionary attitudes. It is a network of "activists" with recognition, understanding and a quota of convergence, that does not reach the adequate level of political communion, and neither does it articulate in an all-comprising "project" of an intense and moving public nature, but that grows and drives current changes in the economy, in education, in culture and in the press, in the commercial chambers and in the unions, in the national administration and in the municipalities... Obviously that with different wills, diverse ways of operating and different achievements. The appearance of a "new entrepreneurship", which is talked of insistently here and there(4), does not merely imply the prominence of a set of businessmen. It is part of a much broader movement and refers comprehensively to the development of entrepreneurial creatures of better competence and more competitiveness. This movement irregularly crosses all social spaces, private and public -including of course the political classeswith more or less equal vices and virtues, with transitory cultural wills and ways, in each case, with a comparison between the conservative and the innovators. In the early nineties, in a very laborious way, the latter started to have more influence, even though, as Gramsci would say -"the old ways do not quite finish dying and the new ways do not quite start being born". 4. This adventure is enormously difficult, for several more or less good reasons. Because we stand before a task whose dimensions are enormous: a rotation of times, in the strong sense, which can be compared to the passage into the twentieth century and the turn of the thirties. Because this implies very troublesome and delicate labouring, of "deconstruction" and construction, -undoing and redoingjeopardizing the structure and the ideological nerve and the cultures that settled themselves in the country, by means of a century-long itinerary. Because this effort is carried out in the dark, without general guidelines and without the desired certainty or drive being contributed by the present models. Finally, because the transition happens in our case in a long, slow, annotated way, with dense metabolisms and with a certain tardiness in processing change and recognizing innovations. The legal quality that reigns over innovation is once again evident the ways of change -in Uruguay. According to a classical text on the subject, we live in a small and "buffering" society, which finds it difficult to transform itself, and which when it goes into these tasks, does so without speed, or daring, through a chain of compromises, through screens and waiting, necessarily moderating the more advanced initiatives, riding on a way of politics that, in order to work, is forced to be inclusive and timid. This sets a pace of its own, a calmness that may turn out to be exasperating, but that should not be done away with lightly. It also entails a peculiar decision-making structure, modelled by a range of forces that is highly plural and with deeply ingrained pluralistic customs -in which the "law of number" and the applications of the majority principle are deliberatedly downplayed, making it more difficult for political adventures of a Bonaparte fashion and plebiscitary checks, great "foundational" crusades, moves of a providential nature. The Uruguayan "partidocracia" is a framework of crossed conjunctions, with a trademark of a "consociational" (Lijphart) style, fed by the pacts and arbitrary ways of "coparticipation"(5). In any case and though leading sectors may be identified, primacy is not achieved by the parties -one by onebut relies on the party system as a whole(6). Electoral competition -a high priorityhas nevertheless to articulate itself with other productions of power. The reign of the parties, when these have the necessary energy, achieves its effectiveness within a dense area of links and participations, in which appears a dense dynamics of interest and can be seen the density of the "world of associations", corresponding to the corporative exercises and to the coming in of other collective entities. In general terms, a temper ruled by consensual logics comes to prevail, of transactions and conveniences, with a thick and heavy practice for negotiation and alliance, in favour of an ample combination that has to wait for the cultural alterations to be spread and be thoroughly assumed by social subjects and political actors. Ours has been and seems to be forced to be, a regime of high inclusiveness with the profile of a "unifying" democracy. On the basis of a series of conditions that mark its origin, such as size and location that model the armour of Uruguayan way of thinking. But above all because of a specific political set up, much quarrelled over and that goes deep into the history of the country and accompanies precisely a stubborn pluralist conception. The words of the constitution formally states these political rules by means of a procedural pattern that affirms plurality by means of a heavy series of annotations and balances in the allocation of public powers, in the majority and minority equations, in the always limited game of winners and losers. This shows in the electoral regime, in the system of representation, in the allocation of faculties to the President and to the Executive Power, in the relationship that the latter has to have with the other state entities, in the procedures and quorum tables that rule parliamentary capacity, in the administration of the state enterprises, which for a long time have been decentralized and quite autonomous centres, in which "coparticipation" is applied rigorously, in a way similar to the outline of the Austrian "proporz". In one way or another, the guidelines for coparticipation and the codes of party equilibrium are present in the whole of the state, accompanied by a principle of decision that is not condescending with the univocal majorities, and that requires instead, ample conjunctions (at least of "negative" consensus). Naturally, this principle -determining the itineraries of the governmentrules in stricter terms for any initiative of a reform of constituent pretensions. 5. It is clear that, when needed, these tools have not been able to avoid the spurts of authoritarianism, with disruptive reactions in the core of the political cast itself, or the coming in to the scene of outsiders. To the contrary, the same connections to which we refer have caused these rebounds, each time the parties grow faint in their political productivity, when the game of pluralities operates in waves of "disaggregation", when the spurts of opposition have reached an acute character, enhancing the contentious nature of the reforms, leading into a "blockage". In fact, if we look wen into history, we can also see that the great changes have repeatedly gone through a peculiar connection, of authoritarian moments and democratic moments. And this is virtually what has happened lately. In fact, in continuation of some of the work started in the previous period -with the 1967 Constitution and the Pacheco Governmentthe "civic-military" dictatorship that settled in after the 1973 coup imposed an excluding centralization and reformulated the profile of the state, blocking the entries into the public space. In their way, the lieutenants of what is known as "the process" pushed towards the opening of the economy, propping up the restructuring of capital and generating ruling conditions of "mobility" in the workforce. Tying state despotism to "factory despotism" this lattice contributed to set forth innovations in the production processes and in the reproductive cycles, affecting -class by classthe recomposition (disqualification-requalification) of the working sectors and the entrepreneurial sector. Although in what regards state management the performance is very short and with more bureaucratic disasters than efficient results, certain alterations appeared, very few -within the private enterprise sector and the local governments. A neat inventory could continue counting buds of change, of different size and in different spheres of society (in tunes that were more destructuring: destructive instead of constructive), that were adopted under the authoritarian cover. Nevertheless -and unlike what could have happened in Pinochet's Chile or in Uruguay during the thirtiesthe recent dictatorship, which for the first time in the century put the parties aside, did not go very much forward in the refoundation of labour. Over the years and in spite of -or because ofsome of its works, a good deal of the renovation work is still pending and it is important to get over certain strong negative results that can be seen. The passage to a new "modernity" and the bundles of reform that it entails have had to be faced in other conditions, with other rules and at other times, step by step, by means of the joint performance of the national actors, of the recovered frameworks of "consensus democracy", adjusting to modulations of the pluralistic metrics and with the characteristics that we have pointed out(7). The "agreed" transition, that enabled leaving the dictatorship, opened a new phase, by means of a course of restorations and creations, that contributed to some of the most prominent marks in the present political scenario. The "second transition" and the "liberalization" process -political, economic, culturalthat lies before us and in which we associate with the other Latin American countries, is being carried out now on a different and distinct principle, according to its own regulations. It does not have the characteristics of "despotic", "caudillo style", "providential", with the employment of "soft" authoritarianism (Francis Fukuyama) or of "delegating" democracy (Guillermo O'Donnell), which may be found in other places. It does not have either, for the time being, the populist aftertaste of the new type ("neo-populist"), that Alain Touraine points out in some contemporary experiences. And the country does not easily accept changes "per saltum"(8). Our evolution has gone through the ways of bureaucratic authoritarianism, but its lattices of today -and according to the background, those that register a greater possibilityfind themselves in the channels of a party democracy, largely pluralistic, in a system that shows a high degree of institutionalization (9). It is in these travels that a strategy for change should be laid out, animated by the making of politics, enjoying success with the public and a popular hearing. Thus, under new conditions and in the cycle of mutation itself, the old concern for efficiency in a pluralistic democracy, of consensual composition is once again brought up. A challenge that we share with other societies and that in our case has pressing fringes is once again posed. II. THE MISFORTUNES OF "PARTY GOVERNMENT" 1. The circumstances described put together all the parts that make up the link of the parties with the government, that is, of what is usually labelled "party government"(10). The setting up of this regime -that is backed up by a political culture and in a permanently reelaborated traditionassumes that the leading actors are recruited by the parties, on the basis of mechanisms of team formation, by means of generational reproduction processes, through an adequate "socialization". It also implies that the important decisions are taken by the party staff, on the basis of specific "responsibility" standards, that assert themselves in the core of the political class and before the citizens, within the organic setup valid at the time, circulating within institutional channels and in a network of "informal" mediations, tied to written and unwritten rules. Thus operate the interparty relationships and negotiations, under a leadership structure, within the framework of a system that ensures a certain degree of centralism, integration and loyalty. This assumption must work fully. In a setting like the one described, political consolidation is not a matter for a single party and cannot be reduced to the exclusive competence of the faction that is in office. We must rely on the strength of the party system, on the basis of a set of well-rooted rules and professional solidarities, with guarantee elaborations and certain basic meeting points, with a set of oppositions that takes place within certain margins: annotating the dissents and strengthening the central nature of the political core, in such a way that the gravitation of particularisms, disaggregation and centrifugal dynamics is reduced, cushioning the possible intervention of "anti-system" forces and acts of "blackmail". Wrapping up this non-professional way of operating, and as the binder of political construction, there must mediate a fundamental attribute, that the texts that tackle these topics of party government do not usually highlight, perhaps because they have referred to situations in which the raison d'être of the parties is not in contest. The living experience of these government workings demands that, above all, the parties have a defined identity, that they assume the mission they have to carry out in a specific historical equation, that there be a respectable proportion of clarity -a clarificationregarding its functions ("primary" o "secondary"). It is equally essential that these typifications are recognized by society and win good citizen affinity. These are basic production tasks and of political reproduction, which the parties themselves have to develop and whose development must precisely generate those identities and if it be the case remake them, setting up the catalogue of functions, teaching the properties of those bodies and spreading their waves of legitimation. 2. In our case, the party government has managed to reinstall itself and continues acting, thanks to a certain dose of political productivity, on the rebuilding of the procedural mechanisms and on the regulation of conflicts. We find therefore a reconstituted system, which complies with a good deal of the above-mentioned requisites. Nevertheless, on almost all points, not to say on all, there are focus of distortion, "disfunctions", factors of anomia and important shortcomings(11). In all and without prejudice of other explanations, it can he considered that the ills come from the combination of the following factors: a) They are typical of the cycle of modernization of political life into which we have come, in particular, of the misfortunes originated by the restructuring of the state and the public areas, the modification of the economy and the international readjustment. We live, as has been said, in a time of uncertainty and turbulence, during which the demands of government and reform have come interlaced, hard and complex. In this environment, the parties are mutating beings, they suffer largely of an identity crisis, and have great difficulties to enter into the engineerings of change, which forces them to adjust the features with which they have lived for a long time. b) At the same time, a specific alteration of the party system can be verified, by means of a critical evolution, which is crossed by controversies over modernization, distorting the rules of legitimacy and opposing different logics of political behaviour. On this aspect, the multiplication of opposition, pluralism, fragmentation and the fractioning of party factions weighs heavily. c) The growth of pluralism and fragmentation appear prominently, because of the difficulties of making up government majorities and also, because of the traits of centralization -as far as the state and the processes of political decisionthat have prevailed, as part and as the instrument of the reforms that are being carried out. There is a significant counterpoint here, which goes together with the recreation of the state and political model, with a different sign than the one that dominated on the second third of the century. 3. The sharpening of pluralism in the range of parties, within a -regime of presidential natureis one of the most noted points in this type of analysis(12). A new -four-unit- type breaks with the traditional biparty prevalence, to which was adapted the lattice of institution that rules us even today. In the alignment of the political forces and in terms of elections, this process started before the dictatorship in the pull of 1962, the turnings of 1966 and the prominent voting of 1971. As is suggested in the Table 1, the picture is reproduced and extended with democratic transition. The political development and electoral growth of the left influence this horizon, in the context of its own crisis, and with the emergencies it entails(13). After the dictatorship, the left factions resorted to a citizen politics, they made out as catch-all parties, an in spite of an excision, they have attained a position which raises expectations(14). Table1 In particular we are witnesses to an "integration" process, which makes us go back to previous tears and reestablishes national political ligaments, on bases that are different to those that shaped coexistence during the second 'Batllismo', up to the early sixties. This is no doubt one of the elements that has eased the democratic concert, and is a significant factor for the consolidation of the political system. We can further state that the advances recorded in this sense -that have brought the poles of the spectre closer, with the "regularization" of the left as a third party, a certain "homogeneity" or if you wish a limited opposition, the possibility of party rotations and of eventual alternance in the government, do not threaten with a "radical" turn, and end up being relatively "indifferent", in sum the "trivialization" of competition and of current conflictswill go in favour of a government regime and the pursuance of the "double transition", even allowing to embark in political reform enterprises with open eyes(15). This trend might be strengthened by the fact that the sectors of the Partido Nacional and the Frente Amplio have gone into the experiments of government, in a domain which was before occupied comfortably by the Partido Colorado. Such an extreme leads to the rephrasing of positions and responsibilities. 4. Despite this progress, with the increase of pluralism an important alteration was made on the party system, and can be seen in the government settings as well as in the other parts of the political machinery. On the other hand the rythm of internal fractioning, which has existed for a long time, acquires at present other expressions and a different significance. This does not break away from the greater unity of the parties, but no doubt makes it weaker(16). The weight of old ballast can be felt and important alterations appear, dating from the sixties and sharpened in the period after the dictatorship. Thus, the discussion on the relations between the party system and the electoral regime acquires new profiles (17) . Without going into this subject, we can nevertheless highlight that the game of factions to the inside of the parties is subjected to effects that make government has been a challenging ideological producerset forth a "high politics" alternative, compared to the gradualism of the preceding courses. This impulse shook the question of change with intensity, drawing a new cut between renovators and conservatives, by means of a turn in the traditional terms in that couple and with another cut of the "friend-enemy" political opposition. Thus several relevant tasks were set forth -specifically and urgently-, most of which directly referred to fiscal discipline and the reform of the state. Batlle's bet implied an appeal to citizen radicalism, including certain profiles of liberal "alliegance". Without necessarily passing established communities by, he wanted to instrument a "leap": beyond the filters of the party system, overcoming the brakes of its own group, absorbing the existing reluctancies, hastening the options and the actions of the participants. In this way, the making of a peremptory mandate was intended, with a consistent accumulation of forces to give energy and autonomy to the coming government, achieving a high dose of political authority, with provisions of energy and legitimation, further away from pressures and vetos. All this would serve to season spirits, hasten the pace and overcome resistance(27). Lacalle won back these aspirations, nevertheless adopting a much more cautious posture: he promoted a faster and more severe change than the one that could have worked before, but he appealed to the broadening of the negotiating resources that had inspired the Sanguinetti government(28). The call for a "coincidencia" specifically tried to put both trends together, with a government proposal that looked for stronger calls and more temperate consensus. In all cases, his management showed the temperament that had marked both electoral rounds in 1989 and came to pose questions of renovation in insistent terms, in favour of a marked "liberalization". The new task shows the designs to urge and deepen modernization, by means of conducts close to the traits of the Partido National itself, promoting at the same time a change in the make up of the government casts and in the management practices. There is therefore a mobilization of other hues, causing many difficulties. The comparison of positions takes place in more complex terms. Because of problems that might be put down to lack of leadership, lack of government habit of the Blanco casts, to the difficulties to compose and hold broad coalitions. But also, due to the variation in the political frequency to which we referred, which comes to have a strong influence in the setting forth of "tuning", of the reform of the state and economic reconversion (29). From this shift pressures multiply. The sluggishness becomes more obvious and resistance grows. The party government sets forth some more daring options. But it is confronted with certain obstacles and with blockage reactions, which its performance sharpens. Presidential policy, more active in reform, generates because of its own nature moments of uncertainty and increases disharmony. At this rate, there is certain harshness in the performance of the political class, that echoes in the decision-making processes(30). Despite the rattling along, and above the noisy tone that some failures acquire, in bulk the Lacalle administration manages to keep its route and is getting on. It does so, no doubt, with less inclinations of flexibility, but keeping certain margins of compromise with regards to their party and with the colorados, although the coalition cycles have been short and support is thinning out. Within these coordinates, the innovation rates increase and effective balances are achieved. With their ups and downs and although there appears not to be the great turn which some continue to dream of, the government is fulfilling several of its purposes: many more than their members display and many more than their opponents are willing to admit. The insistence on the modernization trends, the practice of pressing the pace, the uplifting and vulgarization of the spirit of reform are making their mark. We can also see in public opinion, not necessarily a credit of popularity for the leaders, nor a net agreement with their policies, but indeed -in sustained progressionan increasing recognition of the logic of change. With the difficulties of their own traffic and with points against them, the native expressions of the muddling through come into a new chapter with considerable variations. 5. Thus, the truly existent presidentialism has allowed Progress the heavy toils of the "double transition". Nevertheless, and even within their own standards, the present course is below its possibilities. True enough, the productions of this type require of a well -adjusted functioning of the political "still", which cannot always be achieved. This functioning refers to a road of preparations, together with a series of tests and multiple direction links, by means of a tight dynamics of political refinery: projects and elaborations, accumulation of forces, continual and continued negotiations, up and down, putting together in each station the discreet management and public communication. Those courses put to test the combination of leadership, vocation for reform and spirit of compromise, to which we have referred. At the same time, the weaknesses of the mesh become apparent. There are areas where public links and the bureacratic staff are thinning, with degradations in the staff and loss of substance in the link with the civil actors, in the commissions network, in the corporate "rings", in the communication streams. Nevertheless a certain progress is also registered in the procedure of political manufacturing: in some subjects and in some institutions more than in others, by means of the training of the executive staffs, at the level of the bodies responsible for internal decision and foreign policy, in several ministries, in the higher administrative boards, in strategic programmes, in the state banks and in a selected circle of public enterprises. We stand therefore in front of a landscape of several stains, lights and shades, with serious empty spaces, in which there remains a lot to be done. The modesty in which the presidential organization itself lives is particularly remarkable. This calls for tuning in the host's daily behaviour codes, a larger, more complex and more efficient organization of the secretariat, better information and coordination networks, better government frameworks in the strong sense(31). More broadly and although there already exist some samples of this kind, we can see the lack of centers of political intelligence, something more than the think-tanks that we know, since we must assume government decisions directly. These centers would have to multiply themselves, in a texture of generalized presences, in the different organisms and at a diverse scale, including decentralized vectors: linking public efforts to civilian efforts, in the context of the state and society, forming teams flexibly devoted to the thinking out, designing and negotiating, to prosper in the consensual geometries. This would enable strengthening the productivity in the area of state politics, with sketches that project themselves beyond a party or government period. 6. This disposition and devices must also reach the performance of parliament, usually pointed out as one of the main elements of the "blocking" of the political system. This refers to party bargaining, setting the game of incentives and discipline in motion, a point in which, in our case, we have a favourable balance(32). Beyond these inclinations, political manufacturing requires laying down bridges of another kind between the government and the legislative assemblies, by means of the channels that the parties are able to provide and by other -state and non-state- coadjuvant public mechanisms. Insisting on the flow of information, in the productive dealing of the subjects and the debates, in the construction of consensus and in a certain management of disagreements. We must take another step and put parliament in the innovation of government pragmatics, placing it fully in the context of the crisis of the time, as a fundamental piece in the reform of politics and in the consolidation of democracy. In such a way that it, too, takes part in a process of reform of the state, that should intimately affect its functions and its work patterns. This implies adapting and diversifying the legislative, together with the rephrasing of the parliamentary identity itself, in a new deal with citizens, in the representation link, in the interventions of public opinion, in the decision-making process. 7. Beyond the efficiency and weaknesses of the presidential performance or the behaviour of parliament, in general, a rather noticeable lack can be seen in the way the parties move within the present regime. True enough, the four political conglomerates that today make part of the spectrum are below their possibilities, at least if we take into account the marks they reached under the pressures of the "first transition". The replacement of the fibres of compromise and coparticipation comes together with new experiments, new manifestations of coalition, always starting from the presidential pivot. There are currents that favour these developments, even without the adoption of another government regime. And there is no doubt that present tendencies are oriented in that direction. Nevertheless and to the contrary, there are also a series of contentious and distorting facts, that obstruct the cooperative units. In face of the change in which they are embarked and with the list of pending matters, in view of the layout of pluralities and affluence of the social agents, because of the complications the political system, the institutional format and the election parameters entail, the parties are forced to be more careful than ever in the process of elaborating consensus, handling discrepancies and the range of factions with responsibility and care, tuning negotiation mechanisms, providing more effectiveness and more efficiency to the public decision-making. They do not always do so an part of the present misfortunes derive in the lack of consistency that can be seen on this respect. This seems to magnify the echo of the confrontations, and gives place to certain preoccupying disaggregations. Such shortcomings influence the "malaise" of the season and feed the feelings of "blocked" democracy, reflecting in the moods of public opinion, which the polls bring up every day (33). The erosion of the political class starts by having effect on the "rotation" of the government teams, but has come to insinuate the "relaxation" of public authority and in the long run is a risk to the legitimacy of the system. After that, we have been witnesses to an increase in union activities and certain "rebellions" from pensioners to police and judges, from farmers to ranchers. These mobilizations, which express a protest for the economic orientations and the continence of the "adjustment" insofar as they do not find strength and flexibility on the side of the government, by the way imply the weakening of the parties and the centers of gravity of politics. In the same sense, the "leap towards the citizens" might have its influence, which has acted as a replica before certain basic decisions, by means of appealing to direct democracy, resorting to the referendum mechanisms provided for in the Constitution. Up till now, the result has been positive for democratic integrity, drawing a road that deserves some special analysis(34). But it cannot be denied that, according to the cases and insofar as the resource is repeated -or threatens to be repeatednot without wearing away and ambiguities, other effects can be produced, uncertain and counterproductive: for the parties themselves, for the political system, for the integrity of the institutes of representative democracy. IV. PARTY RECYCLING: FROM KEYNESIAN MANAGEMENT TO A NEW POLITICAL GOVERNMENT Throughout the contingencies set forth, the replacements of the development model are made, in a movement that answers to the new complexities, in our provincial society, in the regional vicinity and in the "global village". The process includes the provision of new goods, bounces on the types of legitimation and is linked to a refoundation of citizenship. The makings of a new state and of a new public space, the progress in the management matrixes -which touch the administration, the enterprises and the municipalitiesare key points on this course, which keeps the parties in the main avenues of transition: with affairs that modify the nature and the functions of those bodies, their structure, the intermediation patterns, political communication, the set of information and relationships. It is in fact the specific identity of the parties and of the party men, its reason for being and their political status, what is at stake in this trance, as is normal that it should happen and as it in fact has, in the great curves of history. 1. Stretching the condition with which they were born -as artisans of a society which, since its origin and as such few has lived camping around its statethe traditional Uruguayan communities, as many others, acted for years as "Keynesian" parties(35). It was the time of the 'neobatllismo' during the second third of the century, in which the paths of the first 'batllismo' and our "social" state were broadened. In a strong articulation with the class members and with other actors of society, the state had an "active" function in the development of the economy and in the organization of solidarity. In order to do that it broadened its participations in direct production and multiplied interventionism, through the control of foreign trade and the improvement of the internal market -in a relatively "closed" spaceby means of the activation of demand and other supports to capital. This was combined with a systematic participation in the reproduction of the workforce and in the "regulation of poverty". Politics was mostly resolved in that arbitration, by means of the regulations of general order and a thick skein of specific and differentiated assignments: particularized and particular (36). Based on redistribution and reward, the parties became the directors of state production and acted as "providential" assistants of village capitalism that developed after the second world war. They were public manufacturers and distributors of goods and services, officials of the non-mercantile regulation of the economy, tutors of the businessmen, trustees of the reproduction of the labour force and arbitrators of the labour code ... All according to the balance of power of the political market, at the crossroads of the logic of government with economic rationality. The vernacular manifestations of a phenomenon that had at the time universal reach, was knitted then, forming a strong link between market and politics. 2. In the processes developed since 1980, the parties rescued the classical elements of their office and come into a way of operating that leaves behind Keynesian intermediation. On the roads of the "double transition" professions of another kind will be outlined, associated to the change in politics, in the state and in public management. For the time being, all groups go back to operating in an intensive way as "opinion" parties, in the making of public symbols and signals, in the outlining of projects and in political design. There is an evolution of offers in the goods circulating. Party competence as well as the acts of the citizens more and more refer to options of a global nature -with regards to democracy and to the political system, to the state, the economy, the internal mesh and external relationsputting to test the courses of direction of society. These circumstances point out the initial steps of transition, when the parties were in the political plain and become pioneers in the conquest of democracy(37). The plot by force takes us to foundational considerations and implies an "agreement of regime", to enact the regulatory substitution and to give shape to the profiles of a relief system. We are in the detours of the construction of a new order, even when the matter goes by the "restoration" scale. The electoral acts that happened in those years, with different questions being brought up, once again link the definition of the programme to the breaking apart of factions and the selection of ruling personnel(38). In the incidents that make the "first transition", the parties succeeded in recovering their competences and their hierarchy, carrying out a good job, thanks to their own performance and to the concourse of other subjects that were present. In a show of skilled workmanship, the political class remakes itself and solders the previous links of the party system, at the same time articulating conducive proposals on a national scale(39). With the return to civil rule, as of 1985, the parties have to answer the demands of a democratic "consolidation" and have to face at the same time a sequence of tied reforms. We then fully enter the "second transition", which will provide the basis of a new kind of political government. V. "LIBERALIZATION" PROFILES NEGATIVE DISCIPLINE AND REFORM PROCESSES As from then starts a process of "liberalization" that affects the different orders of the social universe(40). These operations have a negative and a positive element which strictly speaking go together, since it is not possible to instrument an effective replacement, that overcomes the previous ways of operating, without the dynamics of politics being organized around new formulas and new targets. In spite of that there are different speeds and loads: at first the efforts of "deconstruction" took up most of the space; after that, the scenario has been changing. 1. In what regards negative disciplining, we find some tactical manouvers that keep the balance of the situation and that lead to taking measures of equilibrium and austerity. After that are the strategic long-term postures, that take us to the invention of new development models. The "adjustment" is an intervention of immediate salvage, which at the same time poses foundational consequences. Given the prevailing tone, this starts with the reaccomodation of previous routines: directed towards lowering the expectations which the social subjects, the market agents and the party men continue to have, with regards to the amount of competences of the state and the powers of the government, to the jurisdiction and the effective capacities of the political will(41). Specifically, it is a question of diminishing the flow of goods and regulations coming from the state and public action. Also trying to change those services, in their nature, in their users, in their processing. There prevails for now an attitude of acceptation and responsibility, in view of the new conditions of government and the new market trends. In view that the state is losing its quality as purveyor of assistance that it once might have had, knowing that the margins of internal and external autonomy, inside and outside the national space -are much narrower. Knowing too, that the present developments of capital have taken a route that operates against the traditional public distribution. The opening of the economy and the alteration of previous ways of operating for the working of the domestic market, go in the same direction. The measures that previously worked a "virtuous circle" do not have the same effects of animation. To the contrary, they go into a "vicious circle", they oppose evasive investment, they generate deficit and inflation, they are linked to the "fiscal crisis". 2. To these determinations are added the firmest doctrine beliefs and political purposes, to draw another articulation of the state and the market, with a shrinking of the public space. The "deception" of the citizens which, according to Albert Hirschman, determines a decreasing rythm in that area, is a phenomenon that is largely induced. The "exit" reactions are purposefully provoked. The itinerary of pendular wearing away, the flexing of individual thought, no doubt weigh heavily. But we do not stand before a simple natural tendency. The diagram that results is the consequence of a political game, in a complex dynamics, with specific exhibitions and discouragement. They are the applications of power, thus directed, which organize the "cycle" of alternance, which at this stage points to the decadence of what is public and generates a frame of "exclusion", trying to deactivate the respective mobilizations"(42). These withdrawals preferably affect politics and collective movements. They touch economic activities, companies and the market in different ways: areas which private-oriented logic naturally straightens, but in which there may also be operations of public projection(43). With a different design, it is possible then to imagine an optional cycle and work in favour of a new intensity of public activities by means of specific calling, (re)inclusive pushes, with the participation of skilled subjects and thanks to a conducive construction, in tasks of collective entry and individual entry. It is this, exactly as A. Wolfe states, that has happened over and over again, in successive comings and goings, throughout the long history of force relationships that shapes the existences of capitalism (44). This rescuing of what is public must go through a new concept of civilization and a new regulatory statute, determining a space of multiple and complex common grounds, in which the state comes in, but also, the ways of working and the market circles: "worldliness", "plurality" and politics -inter homines essein a summing up of public concepts, on the basis of which "life together" is built(45). 3. These styles outline a rotation in the legitimations, cut out the distributive logic, the norms of "retribution", the respective peculiarities. The model calls for the action of the state in the general order, less given to the allotment of "specific" and specified benefits, favouring the efforts of society and the market themselves, which are the ones that are supposed to generate the necessary goods. Faced with a range of requisites of that size, and with that marginalization of state goods, the citizens will see themselves more as "political" and less as "social", with less determined public hopes. It is partly due to this reason that we have a more "distant" civic corps, whose daily life does not depend so much on what the state does, and that therefore pays less attention to politics and politicians. A citizenship of "consumers" that votes and gives their opinion -cut off from its previous attachmentsthat selects electoral offers, judges the government from afar, participates less and is less "faithful" or lies in another area of loyalty: amongst other things because the "retribution" chain is corroded, because the specific incentives are lowered and the politicians avoid the synallagmatic exchanges and tend to offer more generic incentives. We thus have a more open sum of subjects, less framed up, that is cornered into directing its preoccupations towards the spaces in the market, in independent survival courses, operating on a public level as users or clients, which has lost traits of political clientele. The link between market and politics also gives way, in the form that it had taken up during the Keynesian era. Nevertheless and paradoxically -as its other employments are reduced, it lowers its social compromise and the orders of solidaritypolitics becomes strongly tied to the efficiency of the public sector and to the governing of the economy. 4. In this context, the new system of links between state and market starts to be spun, with important transformations in each of those areas. The liberalization in vogue does not simply imply the withdrawal of the state and the shrinking of politics. We really stand before a "coming and going" with movements in different senses, ups and downs, putting together and dismantling, following a road that is resolved in a series of rehearsals, going through a muddled litigiousness, with specific waves and changing trends. Politically, by means of the constitutive actions of the state, the market starts to be the object of "disprotection" treatments: in a combination that at first draws tactics for protected opening -not of exposed opening- and that has only recently wanted to be a little more severe, going further in the "deregulation", eliminating implicit subsidies and various explicit stimuli, lowering import barriers, adjusting and giving uniformity to public tariffs, trying to attack "rent" practices, some monopolies and some corporative quarterings. This therapy lies within a drive of the government that stresses the orientations imposed since the mid-seventies and leads to a historical replacement. The centrality of the internal market, in a relatively "closed" economy that was the key of development of the internal market and that had been to a great extent organized by the state, is substituted by a perspective of growth through exports, in a regime that opens gradually, allowing at the same time entries "from the outside". In this curve too the state has an important task. The political pace is aimed towards the control of "macroeconomic variables" and includes steps that belong to inflation economies, fiscal determinations and budget orientations with monetary approaches, of financial ordering and of modulating the exchange rate parities, which seek to relieve some loads of the economy and at the same time set up a market codification. In this sense we can see a relevant effort, that seeks the recomposition of the "guarantees" of the economy and the "general conditions" of production. Police procedures and legal reparation are marked, driving a reform of the administration of justice, that specifically touches civil and commercial instances. The pains for efficiency and the change in the outlook of the judiciary tend to stress the market mechanisms and the coactive springs that ensure its effectiveness, parallel to a lowering of compensatory assignations coming from the state and the parties. There is here a change in the system for restoring interests that is projected on the agents of the economy and also on the ways of operating of the political class. "Deregulation" goes together with the new batch of regulations, with the setting up of the economic policy and regulatory determinations, laws and rules, that continue to shape productive relief and circulation, the different capitalist markets, the financial networks, the credit system and banking, trying to mint new principles of monetary authority(46). 5. These coding tasks come wrapped up in a change in politics, ideology and culture, purposefully sought by the government, at the rythm of the watchwords of these times, that refer to productive modernization, to flexibility, competition and competitiveness, insisting on the will to export, the proposals of regional integration or on the more open and less determined options for opening up, regarding the world horizon. Behind the purely economic reasonings, this implies a strategic relocation -"exteriorization"- with new operating technologies, with new international communications and with ideal elements, of symbolic value, both for the private agents and for the parties, the state employees and the public in general. The change is more distressing than in other parts, in a society that has for a long time looked within, with a sharp tendency towards "exceptionalism" and strong endogenous inclinations, with a broad set link between the practices of the state and the dynamics of the domestic market. obstacle to the developments of professional bureaucracy, cutting away from the progress that had been achieved on that regard during the first half of the century. To make matters worse, to the influx of the crisis of the second 'batllismo', the parties ended up by submitting the recruitment of personnel to a regime of unqualified clientelism. The possibility of taking up the original lines, brought up once again, in a new combination. This poses in other terms the eternal problem of balance -and the old strugglebetween politics and administration. The party representatives in the state services, some before others, start discovering their new roles: in the drawing of specialized public policies, in the general direction of the bodies, in the dealing with government and parliament members, with users and with citizens, in the set of relationships on a national and international level. In turn the "debureaucratization" leads to the construction of bases of a more competent bureaucracy. A progressively sharper change can be seen -in the skills, the norms and even in the setups of culturethat reaches the silhouettes of management (to the new "technostructure" of state companies) and to the staff of the parties, that continue to hold the posts of political leadership in these processes. 7. This reform-oriented leadership can also be seen in some of the municipalities, showing the road of a new type of management in the departments up country. Previously, they used to assume a series of functions, more or less classic: administrative police, organization of public services and social services within the department -above all in the urban areasinterventions for "redistribution" and generation of jobs, a certain drive of promotion, tasks of mediation and complementation, with regards to the central government and the supplies of national administration. Since breaking away from the model valid during the second third of the century occurred, local governments have had to face a severe readjustment of their traditional tasks. In many of these territories, this turn has imposed a shortage. In several of them nevertheless, the mayors have managed to come up with conducive initiatives and skills, to strengthen the "poles" of activity and promote a true development policy, stressing department productivity: in tasks of public management and as promotion officials, in the participation regime with civilian cores and as "partners" of private agents, alternating with the other actors of the national system and the regional scenarios. Naturally, all this depends largely on the potential of each department. Those lying on the ocean coast and those on the border with Argentina or Brazil have an advantage. On that basis act nevertheless the, purely political ingredients, on the basis of which department performances are strengthened, by means of structures relevant to the public power and of responsibility, autonomy and efficiency. The political will of the mayors is to this purpose crucial. Provincial societies allow leaderships to prosper -at a scalewith very different traits than those that might be found at a national level or in the aglomeration of Montevideo. And in fact in some of them we find certain types of "caudillo-style leadership" of modernization, in which weighs the regime of department "proximities", the matrix of traditions and the degree of century-long tradition of the area, regional culture, their system of identities and the characteristic of party loyalties. This performance has led to specific experiences of participation (by means of local boards, mixed commissions, committees of neighbours, processes of elaborating "plans" for economic improvement). It also involves a range of horizontal links, between mayors and members of the municipal council of the different departments. These authorities also cultivate their own line of foreign affairs, leaping over the instances of the national ministries, to make deals and advance on their own on integration speaking with the person across the border, with Argentina and southern Brazil. VII. A NEW POLITICAL PARADIGM? These notes serve to have a picture of the parties in the "double transition", drawing the main traits of this cycle and specifying points that should be the object of an in-depth research. 1. The turn of civilization that the process analized entails, is linked to the lawfulness of change that has traditionally presided Uruguayan history. We therefore turn to a slow, gradual modernization, marked by the rules of pluralism. There was moderation in Sanguinetti's government, which had to watch over the recently recovered democracy. There has been more drive in Lacalle's, which naturally provoked more opposition, but that was useful for a change of frequency, drawing up the mark of innovation, opening the way for other temperaments. These episodes bring to mind the universal debates -of a theorical and political natureabout the vices and virtues of "incrementalism" versus the accelerated alternatives, the feeling of paralysis on the one hand, the possibilities of foundering and the risks of urgency, on the other. The procedure is perhaps too cautious, with an apparently exaggerated sluggishness and obstacles that cannot be hidden. The goods of consensual democracy, may at the same time provoke a disadvantage in the competences that rise in the world at the end of the century. But there is a lot at stake. It is not easy to remodel at breakneck speed -to make and unmakethe structures that have been built over the decades. And also, Uruguay has to move as a "small country" -of limited strength and important weaknesseson a regional and global landscape that is very much complicated, with large uncertainties. 2. Although restructuring implies a "return to the market" and opens the credit of the economic agents, the parties steer the way and keep their central position in the political steering of society. They do so amidst an enormous crisis, whose dimensions multiply in proportion to expectations that are fed, because of its historical background and because of the way in which they negotiated coming out of the dictatorship. Once the obstacles to civil restoration were deftly overcome, the parties have to consolidate the efficiency of democracy, at the same time promoting the reform of the state and the reform of politics. They drag along this course their own condition of being mutant, with weaknesses and identity problems, similar to those that other parties suffered in other regions. 3. On the road appear the problems inherent to the "party government", which in the first term respond to the sharpening of the plurality of the political range, the breaking of the traditional biparty domain and the growth of the left, with certain margins of differences and a fractioning within each community, with traits that make majority compositions difficult and drive political bargaining to its limits. Instead of the parliamentary logics that are recommended and without facing for the moment an institutional renewal, the parties have preferred to cultivate a kind of neo-presidentialism -of reform design and transactional naturethat recreates the old system of compromises. The coordination exercises, in which the president must exert himself, the broadening of "coparticipation", the spinning of side agreements with factions of the different parties, the coalition experiments in a presidential regime, have served the purpose of "muddling through" the government and to drive certain reforms: even amidst strong discrepancies, even if the new patterns are not still settled, with criticisms and self-criticisms to the leaders, with discontent and insatisfaction at a public level, feeling in our country too the "unease of democracy". Although the polls, the press and other voices carry on about how "unpopular" politics and those who make of it their profession are, citizens do not break away from the parties and outside their channels there has been no place for "outsiders". 4. According to what is agreed, the constitutional reform that appears in the horizon might improve the scene, probably sharpening the mixed nature of the regime. Within the current setup, any way of perfecting political engineering and governing techniques would be useful, progressing in the operations of "intelligence" and public manufacturing: in parliament, as in the units of executive administration, stressing the lattice of the presidency, its secretariats, its capacity to influence the larger designs and in that higher political coordination, which is becoming essential. Naturally, in the end it all depends of the game of consensus and disagreements. It is imperative to find a more cooperative tone, of a higher degree of responsibility, especifically, the pluralist range forces the extension of coalition experiences. The parliamentarist arrangements would go in that sense. But apparently, it is also possible to insist on stocks of that order, in the setting of the present "neo-presidentialism". And we could even say that the tendencies at work and the institutional corrections provided, aim more at that. In the context, we must try out the possibility of giving a more positive course to the competence and the link between the large parties, as well as to the side links between the factions that divide them. The role of the blanco and colorado sectors for that is crucial, as it has always been. The course of the left also has its influence now, its progress on political integration and the logic of government: on the basis of its own efforts and the relations that the traditional parties spin with it, through the affirmation of the new "inclusiveness" that has been occurring in the post-authoritarian period. 5. In vertebral terms, the transition we call for includes the armature of the new shape of the state and the new pattern of politics, in a road that once again brings up a shift in the functions of the parties, in their idiosyncrasy and in the principle of legitimacy. As happens elsewhere, there is here a period of dismantling and negative disciplining, in which prevail the therapies of "adjustment". After that, in a broad series of proofs, in a still blurred and budding way, appear silouhettes of relief. The lines of innovation are broader than is commonly believed. But they still need to extend further, so that politics and politicians can overcome the existential crisis, consolidating a new way of being. 6. The "liberalization" applied brings changes in the state and modifies the catalogue of public goods being produced. It specifically upsets the Keynesian profession and the old crafts of the parties, that had become impracticable: because of the crisis of the previous political model itself, due to the basis of transformations of capital and the state, the limits of domestic action and the new international actions. As a result of a two-sided political action, it is a question of giving the state independence and ease, cutting the entry of the civil actors and their demands, when giving up certain tasks, reducing the political veil prevailing over economic activities and other matters of society. We therefore have an induced "depolitization" that searches greater autonomies, from one side and the other, for society and for the market, for the government and for the state, dismantling previous links and proposing other substitutive articulations. 7. The quests for reform and the ills of the government generate uncertainty and some dismay in the leading staff and in the public. Politics and political parties are scorned. The civic corps takes distance and goes to more "floating" electoral postures, with a weakening of traditional loyalties, whether for the blanco or the colorado, parties whether for the left. There is a reflux towards individual workings, and the decay of collective actions can be noticed. It is not easy to identify the cause of the "disenchantment" of the time and the phenomena that go with it. We know it is a complex matter, in which the successive transformations undergone by the societies of this end of the century can be seen. We can nevertheless think that such well-known "apathy" -in which the clumsiness of party government no doubt has an influencecomes in part from the character itself of the conversion that was started and is the expression of an anomia: of that purposefully sought descent, that represses the state and makes public mobilization less solid, quickening the breaking away from known patterns, without a recognition of the silhouettes that are coming up in politics. 8. The task of neither easy nor short-term, and in any case it requires the setting up of a new historical paradigm, acceptable and accepted. In real and realistic terms, this setup has to go along a road on which no drastic turns or returns can be seen. It is necessary to propose remedies, repair major faults, come out of dark areas. But we should profit from what has been done, accept its consequences, absorb disciplines and inspirations of culture, skills and organizations that have been developing. Taking advantage of the achievements that the liberalization process could impose. Furthermore to assume that Politics and society, the state and the market shall not again have the physionomy, the reach and the crossroads that it could have had before. Democracy at present requires new frontiers and new types, specifically a new political mood. And this has to have continuity with tradition, insisting on progress, as of the exposed faults and of effective acquisitions. 9. It is still good to consolidate and extend what has been done and what has been posed, in what regards the reform of the state and administrative reform, for the modernization of public enterprises -which we did not want to let gofor the tuning of the regulation bodies, the developments in national organization and in the municipalities. The wave is right and it is right to spread it. Strengthening the bureaucratic constitution, the managerial staff, the government teams, keeping the political direction of the public companies. Giving effectiveness to the rules that propose efficiency, flexibility, more responsible behaviour, severe budgeting, pertinent and plural appraisals, both in the procedures and in the results. Not with privatising fervour, but to perfect management in its public nature. With an entreprising sense, which may in the case apply. But above all, and in a different way, in an "entrepreneurial" spirit of general scope with clear efforts of competition: competitive as much as possible and by force competent. Complying with certain rules of the economy, without running after them, by means of behaviours that may legitimally be "market-oriented" without being "market-controlled". To have the large compromise of the employees and confirm the expeditions of management bureaucracy, with salary resources, career incentives, fixing targets and professional recognition, sense of mission and winning pride back. Broadening the purpose of the service and of citizen destinies, transparency and democracy in the administration of common things, communication currents and open information. For that, at the same time as the improvement and discretional working of the bureaucracy is sought, we have to tie the integrity and authority of the political leaders. 10. The reform of the economy, "openness", stability, the alternative designs of regulation, that have been driven with caution and with certain success, have to be at large accompanied. The action of the market and of private agents should be protected, promoted and channelled, by tasks of the state, public support and political designs, in such a way that it is possible to increase the density of present performances, progressions in the culture of services and more stress on the productive cultures, with new industrial moves. The making of rules and certainties, order and security, the making of salary bargaining mechanisms, the orientation towards certain conducts, require a more dense intervention, that implies the drawing of general policies and sector policies, - specialized strategies and specific tactics, that make internal behaviours, external exits and integration tests more solid. Drawing scenarios and alternatives, spotting risks and annotating their effects, exploring opportunities is a task in which the state and the private individual should go together. And it may be done successfully starting from a triangulation between public managers, businessmen and workers, with the participation of the business associations, trade unions and parties, as happens in other countries or in other regional units (such as the Emilia-Romagna for example), but with a slant that is adequate to our way of thinking. 11. With an even design, the parties have to take up old and new subjects, about which less or nothing has been done. It is imperative that they seriously take care of the matters that show a negative figure. Especially, within the area of the more neglected social policies, in the basic processes of the reproduction of society and of its individuals, in the educational, scientific and technological matters, in the emergencies of poverty, in the frameworks of equity. With the conviction that we stand before a set of fundamental elements of political and social integration, that at the same time hold economic development. This requires a public organization of solidarity and a public organization of knowledge, a role that is typical of the state and the parties, as a decisive ingredient of the national texture. Particularly internal solidarity at the time of external opening as a key of political strength an economic efficiency, in the internal market and of exports, through and organization that collects the best traits of Uruguayan biography but it cannot repeat the formulas that were adequate at other times. Putting together the keys of the social state again in a post-Keynesian era is one of the biggest challenges that the system has before it. 12. Each one of these headlines holds a debate that may be hard and although many will agree with the inventory, there is sure to be a strong controversy on the road to follow. Without going into details, but taking up one of the basic points of the discussion we have to underline that the new path appeals to a strengthening of the state and of the teams operating in it, of the party crews in the first term. The search for strength is above all a problem of quality: it requires precisely a refining of the quality of the actors, of the organization and of the procedures. On the other hand, a drive of this kind will not always lead to a way of operating that is directly taken up by state organizations, with the corresponding institutional enlargement. The primitive layouts are being overcome -which simply questioned the size- and we have learnt that the prominence of the state is irregular, with comings and goings, ups and downs, passages that are narrower and others that are necessarily broader. This happens to be like that, case by case, as of a preferably political definition, on which tradition and ideology, interests and the displays of force do have an influence. In which we should also bear in mind the demands posed by the economy and scarce resources, selectiveness and specialization, civil aptitudes and social participation. We do need the state to be consistent. And we do need certain requirements of general interest, universal and specific to be complied with. The idea of a "necessary" state (Kliksberg) does not stop us from abiding in a certain way to the disciplines of a "modest" state (Crozier), in a guideline that does not imply giving up but also adapting, that avoids slips of "omnipotence" and totalizing expansions, with a device that may require direct public administration but that can also call upon a coordinating function of the forces available in the national ensemble (of linking, promoting, informing, protecting). A state which is itself a producer of services and regulates services together with a state that operates more as a "promotor", animating and channeling the energies of society and the market, with proposals, requirements and requests to activate the behaviour of others. An "intelligent" state, that is the storage center and contributes to the accumulation of knowledge, favouring the preoccupations of civic organizations and of economic agencies. 13. In fact, the reform of the state is wrapped up in a rephrasing of the government, more government and good government, political government in the strong sense: definition of problems, anticipating and setting up capacities, plotting out opportunities and possibilities, identifying and confining the risks and implications, posing options, debates, resolutions, and steering the boat of the country, connections and contacts, information, publicity openings and transparency with regards to the state and to private rounds, at home and abroad, relationships with official agents and civilian agents, collective and individual. The notion of public policies -or of government by public policiesexpresses this alternative well. And if it is in vogue today it is precisely to strengthen this increase of government and politics, without falling back into gross statism, to underline the idea of government conduction -of governability in a broad and reformulated sensetogether with the expectation of a renewed participation of civil society and of the private agents of the economy, that does not leave everything in the hands of the market. This is truly a loan from culture, from democratic deeds and of the science of Anglosaxon politics -American above allwithin the parameters of which reference to government, to politics, to public policy, is opposed to the place that the state has in the original constructions of continental Europe. For many of the Latin American countries there is a discovery here, that puts them before an experience that appears to be unknown, as a piece of the new image of democracy and pluralism. For us it is not so, since the Uruguayan laboratory has known how to produce political equations, of pluralist democracy, that very well tally with civil society, outlining a public space that in what regards the state has lived with the non-state public corporations, crossing the forces of the social actors and the economic actors. Spinning has been the specialty of parties and party government. If it is now a question of remaking the mesh, with new configurations, entering unknown areas, there lie in the middle the wounds of the crisis and the extreme difficulties of a scenario that has very much changed and demands a lot, but we also have heritage, provided by courses of tradition and cultural credits, by a talent that the parties could once again display. Table1 Table2 (37) The process entails the "reconciliation" with ("formal") democracy, after a period in which more acute depretiation postures had prevailed, and which led to a disastrous "emptying". The reunion that can be seen after the 1980 plebiscite, calls for a board set of wills and includes the left, which goes, in this sense a specific peregrination, with some acts of contrition and several demonstration of democratic responsibility. (38) Within the Colorado and the Blanco Party, these moves acquire traits of ideological offensive, with provocative aspects. Just as the left is walking along a road of "integration" and is opening towards "citizen politics", which entails rather a "deideologization" and leaves it quite disarmed in its capacity of having a project. (39) The ill-fated Charlie GILLESPIE made a good analysis of the transition (Negotiating Democracy. Politicians and Generals in Uruguay, Cambridge University Press, 1991), in which he takes the trouble to highlight the incidents that gave shape to the directing role of the parties. (40) I speak of "liberalization" in indicative terms, referring to a linking of real processes and to avoid digressions about the ideological seal that presides over them: in the certainty that the matter would ill be limited to a simple remitting to the liberal or neo-liberal currents, even when these obviously have a determining incidence in the parables of the present day. (41) Significantly, ex-president Sanguinetti, when he was still in office, could state that the policy consisted basically on "knowing how to say no" (!). This happened during a television interview in which he appeared together with Felipe González on occasion of a visit of his to Uruguay. (42) We cannot analyze here the observations that HIRSCHMAN, Alberto O. (Private interest and public action [Interés privado y acción pública]. México, FCD., 1986), makes on this point, which refer to a more complex and broad picture, with a historical projection about the pendular, succesive and never ending movements of "deception" and alternative engagements. These movements ("shifting involvements") lead to the preference of public actions (participation, collective roads, voice: in a space in which individuals are "seen and heard") or otherwise push towards to "exit" of the public arena, towards private satisfactions. It is enough to underline that the outline of "rationality" that leads individuals in one direction or another, is a complex process, in which play the different relations of power, the turns or the state and capital, ideological architectures, the basis of culture. We stand before an construction made up of oscillations, that implies the development of politics of a different sign. (43) And they already exist, with interesting manifestations, renewed, suggestive, by means of which qualified products of culture are obtained. (44) To have a broader perspective on this matter, it is worthwhile to go over the descriptions made by A. Wolfe regarding the originary accumulation and the successive turns of the development of capitalism, with special reference to the liberal turns of the nineteenth century: with regards to the definition frontiers between what is public and what is private, to reformulate the rules of the market, to hand over certain parts of the state to the bourgeois and confirm its ascending parable (WOLFE, Alan: Los límites de la legitimidad, [The limits of legitimacy]. México, Siglo XXI, 1980). In view of the present clashes, it is good to keep in mind that there has historically -once and againbeen a political production of the autonomy of the economic field and of market freedom. It is good also to remember -as Polanyi teaches usthat after the liberal radicalisms of the nineteenth-century, there came the "reaction of society" and that caused "a return to the state", with the corresponding remaking of the public and the new collective experiences (See: POLANYI,Karl: La gran transformación [The great transformation]. México, Juan Pablos, 1975). (45) To go into these notions, that refer to classical discussions on the way of being of society -we can see dense ARENDT, Hanna: La condición humana [The human condition]. Barcelona, Seix Barral, 1974. (46) The new statute of stability and independence that has been given to the Central Bank of Uruguay [Banco Central] is in this sense very relevant, in a historic turn with regards to the banking system, the monetary discipline and the regulation of the market, comparable with the one we had at the end of the XIX century and in 1938. (47) The delegates of the workers central union have just come into the board of directors of the Social Security Bank [Banco de Previsión Social] -which administers most of the services in the areawhich enacts, after many delays, the mandate included in the 1967 Constitution. This may open ways of political promotion, but does not reactivate the more direct interventions -immediate and relatively autonomousthat previously allowed union units to have access to the managing of certain resources, contributing to the strengthening of their corporate insertion and their place in a structure of public intermediation. (48) LANZARO, Jorge Luis: "El sindicalismo en la fase post-keynesiana" [Syndicalism in the postkeynesian phase], in Politica 145/1992, México. (49) A significant factor in this restructuring -belonging to liberal vindicationis what requires a clear distinction between a specific area of activity of each public service and the application of steps of economic or social protection: trying to make these be complied in a direct and explicit manner, in terms of "visibility", without being inserted -as an "implicit" subsidy in a more or less particularistic wayin the management of exemptions and differential tariffs, as was common practice at the time of vernacular keynesian. (50) The government has just presented a draft law so as to, -without giving up the design of public policies in each area, the companies of state domain, whose sale was vetoed by the referendumnevertheless adapt their way of operating to the norms of private law, similar to nay other market unit. (51) The progress in the area and even the intentions of reform themselves, have stayed in the shade, and there has been no insistence on bringing them to light, as would be the case. In all teams, even in those that promote such reforms, preoccupation lies on the more general debate on the relationships between the state and the market, the courses of privatization and specifically, the sale of some public entities. This attitude is changing. But for long, the discussion on property reigned over the management subjects, its administrative dimensions and its political dimensions.