History's Against Him

There are already signs of an anti-Chávez backlash. While the Venezuelan president rails at U.S. interference in Latin politics, he has tried to promote populist allies such as Ollanta Humala of Peru and Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico. Venezuela's neighbors resent this, and have punished the Chavista candidates at the polls. Indeed, Chávez may well have cost López Obrador the Mexican presidency, since the number of votes the latter lost because of dislike of Venezuelan interference probably exceeded the small margin by which he lost the election.

Chávez's popularity among Venezuela's poor is based on his social policies. He has begun innovative initiatives, such as a network of health clinics in low-income neighborhoods, where Cuban doctors treat the poor. He has created subsidized food outlets that equalize the prices paid by rich and poor. And he has attempted to distribute land to peasants. Some of these policies, such as the clinics, meet pressing social needs and should have been undertaken long ago; others, such as the food subsidies, will be hard to sustain absent high oil prices.

A response to Chavismo must recognize that populism is driven by real social inequalities. Proponents of economic and political liberty in Latin America are often suspicious of grand social-policy experiments, perceiving them as a road to bloated welfare states and economic inefficiency. But free trade alone is unlikely to satisfy the demands of the poor, and democratic politicians must offer realistic social policies to compete.

Social policy is, unfortunately, difficult to get right: Unless it creates incentives for the poor to help themselves, it can become an entitlement that breeds dependence and out-of-control fiscal deficits. In Brazil, Lula's government took over a program of income transfers to the poor but in the process weakened enforcement procedures obliging parents to keep their children in school. And market policies are no panacea: Even Chile, which has extensive high-quality private education, saw huge student protests this spring because of the low quality of its publicly funded schools.

Democratic governments in Latin America must also work patiently at enhancing the quality of their public institutions -- improving simple things such as issuing business licenses, enforcing property claims and controlling crime. There is no cookie-cutter solution; it often requires local-level experiments, such as the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre's "participatory budgeting" initiative from the early 1990s, which opened the budget process to civil-society groups and forced politicians to show where the money was going. Bad public administration saps economic growth and delegitimizes democratic institutions, paving the way for violent swings and backlash.

Last December, a bridge on the road connecting the Venezuelan capital to its international airport collapsed, diverting traffic into the mountains and stretching a 45-minute journey into one lasting several hours. A two-lane emergency highway now bears this traffic; renovation of the bridge is still months away. The bridge epitomizes what is happening to Venezuela today: As Chávez jets to Minsk, Moscow and Tehran in search of influence and prestige, the country's infrastructure is collapsing.

The postmodern authoritarianism of Chávez's Venezuela is durable only while oil prices remain high. Yet it presents a distinct challenge from that of totalitarianism because it allows for democratic choice and caters to real social needs. At a recent conference of business leaders here, I witnessed many speakers openly criticize Chávez; their remarks were cited in the mainstream media. There is no police state in Venezuela -- at least not yet.

Chavismo remains a threat. But it need not embody Latin America's future, not if the region's democrats can reduce economic inequities through innovative social policy and nimble public institutions. Of course, such developments would not mark the end of history. Just the end of Chavismo.

fukuyama@jhu.edu

Francis Fukuyama is professor of international political economy at the School of Advanced International Studies

at Johns Hopkins University.