SOCIAL EXCLUSION AND POVERTY REDUCTION IN LATIN AMERICAN AND THE CARIBBEAN ESTANISLAO GACITUA CARLOS SOJO With SHELTON H. DAVIS Editors SOCIAL EXCLUSION AND POVERTY REDUCTION IN LATIN AMERICAN AND THE CARIBBEAN THE WORLD BANK Social Exclusion and Poverty Reduction in Latin America and the Caribbean Copyright (c) 2001 by The International Bank for Reconstruction and DevelopmentIThe World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, D. C. 20433, U.S.A. All rights reserved. Manufactured in Costa Rica First printing, August 2001 The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this work are entirely those of the authors and should not be attributed in any manner to the World Bank, to its affiliated organizations, or to members of its Board of Executive Directors or the countries they represent. The World Bank does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this publication and accepts no responsibility for any consequence of their use. The boundaries. colors, denominations, and other information shown on any map in this work do not imply on the part of the World Bank any judgement of the legal status of any territory or the endorsement or acceptance of such boundaries. The material in this work is copyrighted. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or inclusion in any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the World Bank. The World Bank encourages dissemination of its work and will normally grant permission promptly. For permission to photocopy or reprint, please send a request with complete information to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, USA, fax 978-750-4470. All other queries on rights and licenses, including subsidiary rights, should be addressed to the Office of the Publisher, World Bank, 1818 H Street N.w., Washington Dc, 20433, fax 202-522-2422, e-mail pubrights@worldbank.org. Cover design by Valeria Varas ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The papers presented in this publication are the result of an initiative organized by the Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development (LCSES)and the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management (LCSP@ Departments within the Latin America and Caribbean Region (LC@of the World Bank. In addition, the Social Development Division (SDq of the Bank provided valuable support to the project. These papers were initially presented in a technical seminar organized by the World Bank in Washing- ton, D.C. on May 26 and 27, 1999. Following the seminal, the Bank established an agreement with FLACSOCosta Rica to finalize the English and Spanish versions of this publication. This publication would not have been possible without the support and dedication of a number people who collaborated since the beginning of the project on the preparation of the working papers, the organization of the seminar, and the editing and publishing of this book. In particular, we would like to thank Norman L. Hicks, Ashraf Ghani and Timothy P. Kessler, who collaborated on the organization of the seminar, provided valuable comments and supported the publication of this book. Juan Caviedes and Mercedes Flores Rojas, members of the staff at FLACSQ were also key supporters through the editing proccess. In addition, we would like to recognize the effort and dedication of Lee Anne Ada~nsof the World Bank, for her collaboration in the organization of the seminar, the revision of the working papers and the r anagement of the project. PROLOGUE TO WORKSHOP PROCEEDINGS ON POVERTY AND SOCIAL EXCLUSION IN LATIN AMERICA GUILLERMOPERRY When I was asked to address you and give a few words about the subject of poverty and social exclusion in Latin America and the Caribbean, the first thought that occurred to me is that I have had ambivalent feelings about the topic. Observing poverty in Latin America it seelrls obvious that the poor, especially the extreme poor, are suffering from something other than just low incomes. An apparent strong correlation exists among income distribu- tion, poverty incidence and race, social organization and culture in our societies. Some form of causal relationship is observed between the charac- teristics that indicate who you are, such as your ethnicIracia1 group, and the position you hold in the income structure of the society. Econometric analysis may help us to see that this is not a spurious correlation, but it is not clear how to integrate this evident fact in the kind of analysis that we normally do. The various papers in this book attempt to achieve this integration. I am especially pleased that the Bank is trying to come to terms with these two concepts by bringing together both economists who work on poverty issues and professionals in other disciplines in the social sciences - anthropology, sociology - to try to integrate these views in an operational way. I am impressed by two things that result from these papers. The first one is that we have advanced in defining a concept of social exclusion - a very powerful concept -that canbe translated to the operational level. Social exclusion is a multi-dimensional concept that at least has fourcharacteristics. The first is the fact that certain groups are excluded through non-eco- nomic means from equal access to basic goods and services that determine their human capital. There are groups that have not the same kind of access to education, health and other services, even if one takes into account just purely economic differences of income. Clearly, there is a discrimination of access due to other factors which could be part of a definition of social exclusion. The second characteristic is unequal access to labor markets and social protection mechanisms through both formal and informal institutions. Even for people with equal levels of human capital and skills, there appears to be an important element of discrimination that we should consider as part of what one would define as social exclusion beyond purely economic consid- erations. The third characteristic is exclusion from participatory mechanisms, mechanisms that through the participation of diverse social groups affect the design, implementation, and evaluation of public sector programs or pro- jects. Finally, the fourth, and more general characteristic, is exclusion in the sense of unequal access in practice to the full exercise and protection of political rights and civil liberties, including the denial of basic human rights. Obviously, these four characteristics are interrelated. Somehow the exclusion from the last two can help explain why some groups of people are excluded from the first two. If an individual does not participate on equal terms in the political process or does not have the opportunity to participate within a social group on equal footing in the design of programs, then it is not surprising he or she will encounter discri~ninationin access to the programs or to the institutions that dominate the working of labor markets. The second issue that impresses me from these papers is that they reflect a significant advance in our understanding of who the excluded are in Latin America. Multiple groups or social sectors can be excluded, but two broad groups are observed in a very forceful way. One is the indigenous groups and the other, in some countries, are people of African descent-Afro-Lati- nos. This is not to say that there are not other lines of exclusion such as gender, age or religion in some countries. What it does seem to say is that ethnic and racial differences are among the most evident factors in social exclusion. Poverty studies in the region indicate that poverty incidence among indigenous groups is about 80per cent, that is some 32 million people, which is a tremendous percentage compared to the average for the region which is about 30 per cent. In the paper by Adolfo Figueroa, an economist who has been actively trying to bridge the gap between the research of economists and other social scientists, there are startling figures from different studies that indicate that the poverty incidence among indigenous peoples in Guatemala is 87 per cent versus 54 per cent for the non-indigenous population; in Mexico, 81 per cent versus 18 per cent; in Peru, 79 per cent versus 50 per cent; and in Bolivia, 64 per cent versus 48 per cent. Similarly, a recent Poverty Assessment completed by the World Bank in Panama shows that nearly 95 per cent of the indigenous population that country is poor and 86 per cent is extremely poor. Finally, evidence from recent work on Peru suggests that in spite of recent high growth rates, the situation of the indigenous population has not improved in any significant way. When one looks at the few existing figures regarding access to public services by ethnic origin, there are similar fundings. Schooling is less than one-third for indigenous groups in Bolivia compared to non-indigenous groups. Similarly, differences in political participation of indigenous peoples throughout the region are obvious. The participation in elected bodies, not to say cabinets or the like, is dismal, if not non-existent, in most of the countries in the region. These facts cannot be attributed to casual economic factors among an otherwise homogeneous population, a population that would be discrimi- nated only through economic means. So it seems important to construct a coherent framework that may help to explain the persistence of high inequality and poverty indexes in countries that have excluded populations, such as the indigenous populations. Low access to schooling and health services by excluded groups, in part, explains lower future learning, lower earnings, and limited political participation. Low access to schooling, in turn, may also be explained by low political participation, poverty of the parents and outright discrimination in the labor market. But what about other countries, countries where indigenous populations are not the only excluded groups? In this regard, I found especially interesting the paper done on Brazil by Nelson da Silva which presents very compelling evidence that something similar happens in Brazil with the black families. Here, poverty rates for blacks and mixed-race people are twice as high as those for white families. Illiteracy is about 5 percent in whites, but 14 percent in other races, while the difference in completed education is more than 11 years. Similarly, the papers on Chile provide an excellent discussion on how youth and gender interact with other socioeconomic and cultural factors to generate exclusion in a context of sustained economic growth. I think it is encouraging to see this attempt to integrate in a rigorous way the social exclusion perspective with the traditional analysis of poverty, a traditional analysis of poverty that economists have been doing in the World Bank and in other places. However, I believe we still have a long way to go. I think there are three areas at least where further work is essential. One is developing more theoretical constructs, such as the one that is captured in Adolfo Figueroa's paper. It would be useful to further develop these kinds of models to show how these factors interact and determine social and economic outcomes. Perhaps even more important is the attempt to measure social exclusion. Good measures of social exclusion are important. And, finally, further analytical and empirical work needs to be carried out on the ways in which these factors interrelate with economic factors in the determination of poverty and income distribution. For the World Bank, I believe this is a promising path thar we really have to continue developing. I believe our main documents, like the Country Assistance Strategies as well as our work program in the region, need to recognize the issue of social exclusion, and we need to mainstream this concept. After all, our overarching objective in the World Bank is poverty reduction. So if these excluded groups are not only among the poorest, but are probably going to continue to remain poor because they are being excluded through mechanisms different from purely econo~nicfactors, then we would need to have a special focus and special programs designed to attend these issues. Finally, I would like to congratulate niy colleagues in both the Environ- mentally and Socially Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Departments, as well as our guest writers, for this initiative and I want to encourage you to continue on this very fruitful path. INTRODUCTION POVERTY AND SOCIAL EXCLUSION IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN ESTANISLAOGACITUA WITH SHELTONH. DAVIS Initially, the concept of social exclusion was used in Europe - first in France, Italy, and the Nordic countries - to refer to the new social and economic problems associated with globalization, such as: precarious em- ployment and underemployment; the social, economic, political and cultural insertion of immigrants; and social disintegration generated by ethnic differences. Specifically, social exclusion-was defined as the mechanisms through which persons and groups were denied participation and social rights, or as a process that precludes certain social groups from accessing econo~nicand social benefits.' In this context. social exclusion is broader than the concept of poverty, since it represents a phenomenon that relates to social, cultural as well as from econornic institutions. Yet, at the saiiie time, social exclusion does not replace the concept of poverty. but rather it allows the analysis of ~eclianismsleading to poverty that are not derived from a lack of income.- Simultaneously, the International Labor Organization has been develop- ing an ample research program on social exclusion. The ILO has utilized social exclusion as a multi-dimensional phenomenon of second order wliicli I . See the documents of the European Com~nission.V r r .irtir Elirty~etlrs Soiitlnrir~.~:Itrrc~r~sificr ~ ILI Ottte contrr I'r,rclusiorz soc.iule, prott~o~ri,oirI'itltrfirtrtititr Bruxelles 1992: illso tlit. li~,ro Vrr~le(1993), the sectiorl about social politics. 2. Consult. in regard to this topic, the t ~ p o r tto the European C~)m~ssion. Elrro.sttrt'.\ ~\.ot'k progrunl or1 pollerr?; tint1 .soc.itrl e.rc.l~r,siot~-Srtrrr o f rl~rArt. document presented in Li.;hoa (1997) in the Seminar on Social Exclusion: Non-n1onetal.y issues. involves three dimensions: (i) econon~ic;(ii) political; and (iii) cultural which have a cumulative impact on social groups and individuals hampering their capacity to modify their position in society (in terms of income and social hierarchy). In Latin America, the concept of social exclusion has been utilized with some variations and in different contexts to explain the persisting marginali- zation and poverty experienced in the region. Nevertheless, numerous authors have signaled that there is neither a clear theoretical framework nor appropriate methodological instru~nentsfor analyzing social exclusion, particularly in the Latin American context. Rather, there exists a series of isolated explanations of each one of the dimensions or factors that contribute to generate marginalization, inequality and poverty.4 The concept of social exclusion refers to a series of processes that increase the vulnerability of social groups to risk factors which could lead them to a situation of poverty, extreme poverty and social vulnerability. Social exclusion impedes a subject or social group to effectively participate at the economic, social, cultural, political and institutional levels. The concept of social exclusion involves at least three dimensions: (i) economic, in terms of material deprivation and access to markets and services that guarantee the satisfaction of basic needs; (ii) political and institutional, as far as a lack of civil and political rights which guarantee citizen participation; and (iii) socio-cultural, referring to the denial of cultural rights and particular needs of social groups based on gender, age, ethnic identity, and religious beliefs. In this book social exclusion refers to a cumulative process whereby different risk factors interact in time and space decreasing the capability of vulnerable social groups to control those risks and to fulfill certain rights (civil, economic, social, cultural and political). At one point in time, this process could result in increased social vulnerability and poverty or extreme poverty. The temporal dinlension indicates that exclusion involves the accumulation of risk factors in particular historical circumstances. This necessarily leads us to the consideration of spatial and territorial dimensions, 3. For a detailed vision of the work of the I~oahoutthis. see the ILOII~Lreport "Social Exclusion S in Latin America " (1995) arid "Social Exclusion and Anti-poverty strategies'' (1996) I~lter~~ationalInstitute for Lahour Studies and United Nations Development Program. Geneva I~lternationalInstitute for Labour Studies. 4. As indicated in the previous footnote. the ILO (Up. ('it.) since the beginning of tlie 90s has heen applying and adapting the concept of social exclusion to the regional context tl~rough case studies. On the other hand, FLAcSO-Costa Rica collaborated with the University of Ut~.eclitin a study and conference which cul~ninatedwith tlie publication of the book Pov~rfy. Soc,iul and Political Exc,lusion, (1997) Rafael Menjivar, Dirk Kruijit and Liete Van Vutcll Tihssen (editors). since the exclusio~iof certain groups manifests itself in a specific time and space. In this context, the territorial dimension not only refers to the expression of exclusion in space, but also that spatial phenomena are risk factors contributing to exclusion. The spatial distribulion of the population at risk is the result of the interaction of multiple factors intlueiiced by spatial variables (such as production systems, settlement patters, markets and co~nmoditychains. etc.) that come together in a specific territory." At the same time, the concept of social exclusion also involves an objective as well as a subjective dimension. It considers the subjects' actual conditions as well as the perceptions they have about this situation. On one hand, exclusion allows the identification of objective risk factors. such as spatial location, difficulties for accessing the job market, or the lack of adequate cornrnand of the language. On the other hand. social exclusion brings into the analysis the social constructions created by the sul?jects regarding those risk factors, as well as the specific actions the sul?jccts undertake to control those risk factors.' The social exclusion perspective is a multidi~nensionalprocess-based model for understanding the factors contributing to the generation of poverty and social inequality. The social exclusion frainework allows understanding thc linkages and interactions between different risk factors (economic. social, cultural. political and institutional) in a given social formation and the impact these factors have on different social groups. From a methodo- logical standpoint, the social exclusion frainework focuses on the processes, not only on the outcomes or the specific situations of deprivation experienced by the subjects. The analysis emphasizes the understanding of tlie mecha- 5 . I n respect to tlie discussion about risk regimes ;i11t1tcr~.ito~.iality.see Kr11iishy;~ritlCi(~ltliri; (eds.) Soc.itr1T11c.orir.sofRi.vk~ Wesrpo~~:I'ri~eycr. 1992. ~Ziio[liercu:~mplcot'tlic terrrttrri;~l . d~rllerisiorlo f social euclusion is fourld in tlie ar~;~lysiso f c;~tast~.opliicpIiencirllc~i;ia~itl\p;~ti;~l vulrierahility of distinct social groups. In respect to tlii\. consult Dl;~ickic.C'a~inon.I);~vi\ anti Wirner ( I 996) study about V1rlr~err1hilitlr1t1.El rt~lorrioSoc,~/il.I'o1ilic.o \ Er.ot~cit~~ic.o(I(, lo.vl~e.st~.vtr~.v. Dogoti. Colombia: La Red. ;\lso see tlie work of Ruben K;itrnian 1999);1l1out ( "Residential Segrcgarlon ;in11 Social Inequalit~csIn Molitcv~cleo".Cu;~derrio No. 3. Ol).\r/- l'rilorio i/cl[(Irlc..si~uulriri(l). 10 c.uc.~~rsiiirl.,oc,iri[. Duellos Ailes SrEhlPRo: hIOS1. IIhI S('0. 6. See in this volu~nethe work of Clert 111wlr~clithe rnlpol.tance of tlic pllyh~cal;Iplx,ll-,lncc ; I \ a risk t ~ c t oi<.di~cussed,the i~lterpretatio~i tlie plierio~iieiioiii~iiadehy tlie st~hlccc\2nd ~ of tlreil. 1.eactio11to said pr.oce.\sot discr.iminarion. As importarit a.s the i~icorpor;rtio~iof ;I IICW var-iablr (tlie perceptiriri of the suhjxts) in the explanatory model. is the undrrst;uidin: tlic suh.jects have of tlie explanatory model. That is. bringing into tlie i~nalysisthe sulyccts' perceptions has: (i) an explorato1.y t'ulic~io~~in ;IS niucli i t liclps tlie nlanitestatic~nCIS me;~~iins\ tliat would he absent from the perspective of tlie exte~.nalobserver: (ii) an ;~nalyticalt'uncticlrl since it perinits the visualization o f ~.elar~on.;liipsand processes ,~ndfillally iuld: ( i i j ) i111 explanatory function each time ~llati t helps to u~~de~.sta~idIiow suhjects react when taccd with cei'tairi plrenonie~ia. nislns that generate deprivation. Therefore, social exclusion, inore than representing a state or condition, reflects a process that can lead to distinct outcolnes (includingpoverty, extreme poverty, inequality, marginalization). Nonetheless, there are some methodological weaknesses in the approach that need to be considered. In the first place, it is difficult to clearly define the type of relationship between the different factors or dimensions of exclusion. Tlius, it is necessary to further define the theoretical models, which would allow a better understanding of these relationships. Secondly, it is difficult to measure and assess the impact that each factor (dimension) could have on the final outcome, which is why it is crucial to advance an operational definition and a method for measuring the impact of the distinct factors involved. From a policy-oriented perspective, the social exclusion approach is extremely valuable as it focuses 011 the institutional processes leading to poverty and inequity and not just the outcome. The strength of the social -exclusion approach is tliat. by explaining the risk factors and institutional processes that generate and maintain a situation of vulnerability, it allows thinking in terms of a policy matrix to prioritize and articulate programs leading to social inclusion. At tlie same time. the social exclusion approach takes into account social agency, or the capacity of those experiencing exclusion to develop actions that would allow them to exert their rights. To understand the persistence and heterogeneity of poverty in Latin American and The Caribbean region. social scieiitists as well as policy makers have begun to use the concept of social exclusion to ex lain the P processes that generate poverty and inequalities in the region. In tliat context, social scientist froin the World Bank and a group of specialists from 'tlie region started working together. The Bank colnmissioned a series of position papers to an interdisciplinary team of renowned scholars from the ! region with the objective of advancing in the definition of a conceptual-meth- odological and operational framework for the analysis of social exclusion approach. The papers were presented in Washington D.C. on May 27. 1999, 7. For sl3ecitic cases of the applic;~rionof the perspective of social exclusion illthe diag~iosis slid desig~iof policy i~lstru~rie~ltssee: Bustelo. Eduardo. Mi~lujin,Alhesto (eds.). Tot1o.s P I ~ I ~ I I I . P T ~ ~ ) I ~ PI1lrrtr(SI o ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~Ini.lrlyeil~~.s. . Y I l t r ( l r . s UNICEF.Notebook Collectioli 30 Dehate Colonlhia: Si~ntillalla.1998. Carpio. Jorge e Irelie Novaccrvsky (Comp.) Dr ijirfcrl rr ijirtcrl. El cle.scifio (101 Exltrdo rrlrir 10,s Nuc~o.sProh1r111rl.sSoc.itr1r.s. Buellos Aires. A ~ . g ~ ~ l t i ~ l i ~ : SIEMPRO-FLACSO. 1999: Figueroa .4dolto. Teofilo Altanlll-alloand Deri~iisSuimcrullt. "Stlclkll exclusion and illequality in Peru." International Institute ot Labour Studies. -United Nations Develop~iientProgl.am. 1996: Fundacion Naciollal para la ~uperaciti~ldr la Pohreza 111Cl~ile. S;untiago, Cllile. 1998. Clest, C;~s~ne"El enfoque de exclusitin soci;ll: Elemenrcrs ;~naliticos y aptr1.tt.s pal-a la discusi6n sohre pcrt~r.ezay el desar.rollo social en Amkric;~Larina" Pc~i\amientoIhero;11lierici111o. ROI.~SI(I(10 E ( . ~ I ~ O P~liti(.tr.3 1 I I / ~ ( I :425-43. 1997. in a technical workshop on "Social Exclusion and Poverty Reduction workshop in the Latin America and the Caribbean Region. The workshop, jointly organized by the Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Develop- ment (LCSES)and Poverty Reduction and Economic Management (LCSPR) units of The World Bank was attended by an interdisciplinary group of experts on poverty reduction and social exclusion issues from the region, The World Bank and other ~nultilateralagencies. This publication brings together the papers presented in the workshop and the discussion process that took place afterwards. This publication is the result of a long process of collaboration and dialogue between the authors and the World Bank team. This book contributes to the definition of a conceptual and methodological framework for understanding social exclu- sion and the processes that cause poverty as well as to the discussion of policy instruments to tackle exclusion. The seven chapters that follow this introduction explore from different disciplines (economy, anthropology, sociology, political science, juridical science), the notion of social exclusion in Latin America and The Caribbean. All the studies stem from a common question regarding the validity of the social exclusion approach for understanding the poverty, inequality, and marginalization prevailing in the region. Starting from this basic question, each chapter contributes to the development of a common conceptual and methodological framework and discusses, either in terms of societal models or specific case studies the analytical and policy i~nplicationsof applying a social exclusion perspective. Although all authors conclude by emphasizing the relevance and neces- sity of adopting the social exclusion approach as an analytical-policy-making tool, they also highlight the need for further developing the conceptual and methodological (models,variables, instruments of measure, etc.) framework in order to be able to map with greater precision the relationships between the different dimensions of social exclusion, their interactions, and the specific weight that each one of them has in the generation of exclusionary processes. The authors emphasize that only in this way will it be possible to fully utilize the social exclusion framework as a valuable operational policy-oriented tool. In the following chapter, Adolfo Figueroa proposes a model based on the concept of social exclusion for analyzing and understanding the persist- ence of inequality in the region. Figueroa begins by asking why inequalities exist in the region and how to explain their persistence throughout time. To answer this, he develops an analytical model in which individuals have an unequal endowment of: (i) economic; (ii) political; and (iii) cultural re- sources. This unequal endowment would result in a hierarchy of markets, with the labor, credit and insurance markets playing an essential role in the generation and reproduction of inequality. This basic hypothesis is confronted with the empirical data of Latin America, using the situation of the indigenous groups as an indicator of unequal access to goods and subordinate participation in the markets. Figueroa concludes that the Latin American evidence is consistent with the hypothesis indicating that social exclusion is a particular trait of the predominant model of society and development. From the methodological point of view, he points out that social exclusion refers to the mechanisms that generate poverty, this being the endogenous variable and exclusion being the exogenous variable. This is the reason, he concludes, why poverty must be analyzed as a function of social exclusion in order to explain its origins and design policies to reduce it. Carlos Sojo leads us to analyze the characteristics of social exclusion in their political-institutional dimension. His starting point is a conceptual framework that links social exclusion to the denial of rights and the issue of citizenship to market participation and the institutional structures that would enable social integration. Sojo discusses the socio-political and cultural factors that in the Latin American context lead to social exclusion through the transformation of institutional regimes which limit or stimulate the possibility of exercising full citizenship and basic political and civil rights. At the conceptual level, Sojo argues that social exclusion allows under- standing social inequality and its socio-political implications because: (i) it facilitates the observation of symbolic and material needs; (ii) it reflects specific historical contexts and the dynamic of social antagonisms; and (iii) it generates a heterogeneous, not dualistic, vision of social inequality. Agreeing with Figueroa, Sojo also emphasizes that the social exclusion approach reveals a process and not just data that indicates a relative social disadvantage. Sojo concludes that the notion of exclusion - understood as the accumulation of institutional processes and practices which erode the satisfaction of certain rights - becomes essential for designing socially inclusive policy instruments. Even though inequalities may persist, for Sojo, the social exclusion framework facilitates the identification of the institu- tional arrangements that generate exclusion and it helps to develop policy instruments to tackle it. Jaime Ord6iiez1schapter continues developing at the conceptual level the relationship between rights (civil, political, economic, social and cul- tural), social exclusion, and the role of the State. Ord6iiez argues that the lack of rights indicates a situation of exclusion and represents a parameter for setting the thresholds of citizenship and for defining the role of the State in assuring those rights. Ord6iiez discusses indicators that would allow monitoring the fulfillment of economic, social and cultural rights and concludes that, currently, the existing indicators are no fully satisfactory. Thus, it is necessary to continue working to achieve greater conceptual and methodological precision. Ordoiiez's work represents a proposal for advancing the definition of State policies and institutional mechanisms required for assuring the fulfill- ment of the thresholds of economic, social and cultural rights. The basic conclusion reached by Ord6iiez's is the need to rethink of the role of the state as a political agent and guarantor of equality. He points out that, contrary to civil and political rights, in the case of economic, social and cultural rights, in 111ost cases a decisive state intervention is required for their protection and development. In fact, this is the case of universal social investment programs. Of course, Ordofiez warns, country specific circum- stances define the characteristics of these policies and how they are imple- mented. Nonetheless, Ordoiiez advises, for the success of policies that guarantee rights as a form of expressing citizenship, it is essential to invest strongly on the development of civil society, that is, in the generation of citizens capable of demanding their rights. The chapter prepared by Michel-Rolph Trouillot is about social exclu- sion in the Caribbean. It represents a transition from the conceptual models developed before to case studies using the framework of social exclusion. Trouillot utilizes the concept of social exclusion to explain the structural processes that keep certain social groups in the Caribbean societies in a disadvantaged position. At the conceptual level, Troulliot distinguishes three dimensions of exclusio~~:(i) socio-economic; (ii) socio-cultural; and (iii) institutional. However, these dimensions are utilized more as heuristic devices than as independent domains. That is, they are used as an approach for viewing intermediary and cumulative processes. Along the same line set forth by Sojo, in this chapter, the elements that enter into the equation of exclusion are not linked through linear causality but rather in a complex process of reciprocal causation. The economic phenomenon plays a role in the other two dimensions and vice versa. Each one of the dimensions, as the process of social exclusion, is analyzed through the prism of circular causality. This means, as Figueroa also pointed out, that the economic, socio-cultural and political factors couldn't be analyzed separately. Given the above, Trouillot proposes that the state policies for reducing and even reversing exclusion should focus on the articulations or interactions that occur between the distinct factors or dimensions contributing to situations of social exclusion. Analyzing the Caribbean experience, Trouillot exposes for each of the dimensions identified the mechanisms that have operated indifferent national contexts, giving special emphasis to the institutional and political aspects. At the same time, he analyzes various policies implemented to demonstrate how (despite certain successes, for example, in education) the lack of an (articulated) institutional policy has reproduced the mechanisms of exclusion over time. Finally, the work concludes that, while policy instruments should focus on specific components, all of the interventions should consider, in their design, the potential interactions between the different factors that generate social exclusion. The chapter by Nelson Do Valle Silva presents the case of racial exclusion in Brazil. Beginning with a detailed analysis of the phenomena of racial ascription and identification, Do Valle Silva analyzes the mechanisms of racial discrimination in Brazilian society from access to services, to participation in the labor market, to housing patterns, to interracial mar- riages. Contrary to what the predominant ideology of racial democracy in Brazil suggests, this chapter reveals the strong racial differences that exist and the mechanisms that generate them. On one hand, there are institutional mechanisms generating exclusion. On the other hand, at the level of interpersonal relationships, interaction between racial groups is intense and non-conflictive, involving a relatively high level of mixing. A central element that comes out of the work of Do Valle Silva is that social exclusion cannot be equaled or reduced to instances of discrimination -in which case a new concept would not be required. Rather, exclusion based on racial identity is fluid, relational and socially determined by an institutional system that is legitimized by social class asymmetry. On this backdrop, Do Valle Silva finally discusses current policies for combating racism in Brazil. He concludes that both affirmative action and universal policy instruments are necessary and complen~entarysince, in the case of Brazil, it is extremely complex, if not impossible, to define who is part of-and, above all, who is not part of-the targeted group. This is consistent with the idea that policies leading to the reaffirmation of economic, social and cultural rights are essential for attaining the situation of full citizenship described by Ordoiiez as the frontier of exclusion. The next two cases deal with Chile. Both draw on the social exclusion approach to explain how, in a context of sustained economic growth and significant poverty reduction, inequality between low and high-income sector has expanded.8 These case studies illustrate what Guillermo Perry 8. According to M~DEPLANand World Bank data, income distribution between 1990and 1998 has remained equally concentrated or has worsened (as is indicated by the Gina coefficient of 0.58), which places Chile among the countries with the greatest income inequality in the region. In that regard, see the results of the 1996 CASEN survey in the report about Income and Poverty (1998)-from the Social Division of MIDEPLAN,as well as the report of the World indicated in his Prologue to this book: that in spite of economic growth, there are barriers (beyond access to income) which prevent certain social sectors from accessing the existing mechanisms for achieving social in- tegration. Carolina Toh5 presents a detailed study about youth and social exclusion in Chile. First, Tohi provides an exhaustive analysis of the educational, employment, political and cultural situation of the youth in Chile. Tohi maintains that, beyond not having access to certain rights (political, civil. social and cultural), social exclusion for the youth means being unable to move towards adulthood on all of these dimensions. As a consequence, Chilean youth do not share a common identity (as an age group) due to the great differences that exist between them in the aforementioned areas. Additionally, they have serious difficulties constructing social networks to facilitate their transition to adult life. The author then provides a critical summary of the policies developed by the Chilean government in recent years to facilitate the social integration of youth, focusing specifically on barriers to education and labor market insertion. At this level, Toh5 argues that the existing programs have attempted to develop a gradual process of insertion with mixed results since. even if they improved the delivery and quality of some services to certain groups of young people, the shallow scope of the programs has resulted in a limited impact as far as equity and social and institutional sustaillability are concerned. Toha concludes presenting what she identifies as the principal causes of social exclusion of youth in Chile. Based on her findings she argues that public policies have not allowed the qualitative changes required to articulate a coInmon strategy aimed at facilitating the (socio-economic, political and cultural) integration of the youth. Only through a coordinated and integral policy, she proposes, the youth would break through the threshold of full citizenship, which would allow them to take decisions regarding their lives and the society in which they live. Next, the work of Carine Clert presents an interesting case study about social exclusion and gender in the community of Huechurabu, in a poor Municipality of northern Santiago. Clert's study analyzes how social exclu- sion mechanisms operate at the micro-social local level and the perceptions subjects have about their situation and the impact of some social policy instruments. At the conceptual level, Clert argues that the specific contribu- tion of social exclusion refers to the dynamic analysis of institutions and agents. In other words, the social exclusion approach allows linking social Bank (1997) "Chile: Poverry and Incorne L)isrl.iburion in a High G~.owthEcononiy 1987- 1995 (Vols. 1 &2). processes and actions that determine, enable, or restrict the differential access of social groups to diverse material and symbolic goods. The fieldwork demonstrates how social exclusion mechanisms operate at the local level. This is how labor markets, human capital, civil rights, the judicial system and institutional resources interact in the generation of exclusion. Particularly interesting is Clert's combination of quantitative data with the subjects' perceptions regarding social exclusion and its political implications. In her conclusions, Clert suggests that the social policies implemented reveal a series of conceptual as well as operational problems. At the conceptual-methodological level, Clert indicates that the utilization of targeting instruments, by definition, leaves out other social sectors that are also excluded. From an operational point of view, Clert concurs with Tohi in arguing that targeting instruments and delivery mechanisms could lead to exclusionary practices, diminishing the pertinence and effectiveness of existing social policies. Finally, in the conclusions the main lessons suggested by the authors regarding the analytical value of the social exclusion approach and its repercussions for the design and implementation of social policies are discussed. Regarding its validity and usefulness, the social exclusion ap- proach offers an integrated view of the situation of a particular social group, making possible to deal with multiple dimensions and variables that other analytical tools do not contemplate. First, social exclusion establishes a benchmark - that of rights and societal thresholds, to measure and analyze social policy. Second, the exclusionprism contributes to place social subjects at the center of any policy intervention by emphasizing the processes leading to poverty and that impede social subjects from participating on an equal stand in society. Finally, from the policy design perspective, the social exclusion approach is of great utility because it looks at the articulation and interaction of the different dimensions or elements that impede social integration. Thus, it allows designing and prioritizing actions aimed at diminishing vulnerability and increasing participation of underprivileged groups. SOCIAL EXCLUSION AS A DISTRIBUTION THEORY * Why do countries differ in their degree of inequality? The answer to this question mostly has come from economic literature on growth and distribu- tion. Some economists emphasize the link from output to distribution (Kuznets 1955), others from distribution to growth (Lewis 1954; Kaldor 1957).These links have a theoretical shortcoming, however; production and distribution are both endogenous variables in the standard general equilib- rium theories (neoclassical, classical and Keynesian). Even if these hypotheses could be generated from a theoretical system, the empirical evidence is statistically weak. A recent article by Furman and Stiglitz (1998) shows that there is very little evidence of the statistical relationship between inequality and growth (or income levels), and the existing data is from chronologies and cross-referenced information. Their conclusion is mainly based on a new international set of data compiled by the World Bank, which they call "the most comprehensive and carefully constructed" in existence (p. 226). According to the same set of data, countries with similar levels of income show significant differences in their degrees of inequality. This is clearly the case in Third World countries. For instance, Latin America appears to be the region with the highest degree of income inequality in the world. The region has maintained this position since the 1950s (Deininger and Squire 1996). * This is the revised version of a paper presented at the World Bank workshop on Social Exclusion and Poverty Reduction in the Latin American and Caribbean Region held in May 26-27, 1999. I would like to thank participants at the workshop for helpful comments. I am especially gratehl to Estanislao Gacitua-Mario and an anonymous referee for their very fruitful comments. Why do Third World countries or regions differ in inequality? The aim of this paper is to develop a theoretical framework that attempts to explain such differences. The basic idea is to examine the role of the initial conditions in the process of growth and distribution. Some countries "were born" inore unequal, more heterogeneous, than others. Standard theories have made this factor into an abstraction. These theories have assumed societies where all individuals are homogeneous in every respect, except in their endowments of economic assets. No other assets are allowed to exist in the economy. This assumption will be abandoned here. An abstract heterogeneous society. which I will call the Sigma economy, will be constructed here. The paper is organized as follows. The theoretical construction is presented in sections one through three. Section four contains the empirical corroboration of some of the predictions of the theorydata from Latin American countries are utilized for this purpose. The paper ends with a section of conclusions. Sigma is a capitalist democracy. Individuals are endowed with three types of assets: economic, political and cultural. Economic assets include several forms of capital: physical, financial, and human. Physical and financial forms of capital are highly concentrated in one social group, the capitalists. Political assets are defined as the capability of exercising rights. Citi- zenship is thus a political asset, which gives rise to rights and duties. Due to inequality in the distribution of political assets, a hierarchy of citizens is created in society. As a consequence, social groups lower in the hierarchy have relatively limited access to economic rights established by society. Economic rights take the form of public goods, such as education, health services and social protection systems. Sigma is a nlulticultural society. Groups differ in culture. These distinct cultures, however, do not have the sallle social valuation. They are ordered into a social hierarchy according to a valuation that has been historically constructed. Therefore, social groups are endowed with different cultural assets which are valued according to a hierarchy that attributes different value to their culture. The characteristics defining valuation inay include race, language, gender, religion, caste, regional origin and customs. Cul- tural assets provide individuals with either social prestige or social stigma. which leads to discrimination and segregation. This unequal valuation of cultural assets implies the existence of groups with different social status in society. In synthesis, while economic assets indicate what a person has, political and cultural assets indicate who a person is. Contrary to economic assets, political and cultural assets are intangible; they are not tradable, and therefore they have no market value. However, as in the case of economic assets, they can be accumulated. The struggle for civil rights is the mechanism by which political rights are accumulated. It is clear that cultural assets can also be accumulated by individuals and groups through education, migration, social organizationand intermarriage, arnong other methods. The characteristics of the Sigma economy can be summarized by the following set of assumptions: Institutional context. Rules: There is private property of the econoinic assets, and individuals can exchange goods subject to the norms of market and non-market exchange. There also exist formal and informal norms of discrimination and segregation in access to political and cultural assets. Organizations include households, capitalist businesses, and the govern- ment. Government controls the supply of money and public goods. Rationality of agents. Individuals conform to the notion of Hottlo econo~nicus.They seek to maximize their own material well being. They act pursuing self-interest. Market relations. The market system operates with Walrasian and non-Walrasian markets. There is overpopulation in the labor market, which means that the Walrasian wage rate is below the worker's subsistence income. Thus, the labor market is non-Walrasian. There is no market for physical capital services; that is, owners do not rent out their physical capital and prefer profits to rents. Initial conditions. Individuals are endowed with unequal quantities of economic, political and cultural assets. The richer groups have more of every asset or the more valuable assets. 1. A market is Walrasian when the equilibrium price clears the market, ell~ninati~~gany excess demand or excess supply (as in the potato market). Hence, market rationing of gtrods operates through prices. B y contrast, a market is non-Walrasian when the equilihriu~npl-icedoes not clear the market. This market operates with quantitative rationing. Thus. in this market people are unable to realize the exchange of goods in the quantities they are wlll~ngto euch:u~geat the prevailing market prices. This does not happen in a Walrasian market. A MODELOF THE SIGMAECONOMY In order to derive empirically testable hypotheses from this theory, a model of the Sigma economy must now be established. There are five assets in the economy: physical capital, human capital (high skill and low skill), political assets and cultural assets. There are three social groups: the capitalists and two types of workers. Ownership of physical capital is concentrated among the capitalists. The high skill workers will be called 'y-workers' and the low skill will be called 'z-workers.' Capitalists and y-workers have the same endowments of political and cultural assets, but these endowments are lower for z-workers. Capitalist businesses employ y-workers to produce good B, the only commodity produced in this economy. There is an overpopulation of y-workers. The total capital stock is insufficient to employ the total labor supply. The 'z-workers' are endowed with lower amounts of all assets. In particular, they are workers with low human capital for the technology being used in the capitalist sector. Thus, their human capital endowments are not suitable for wage employment. They are not employable. They are not part of the labor supply in the labor market; that is, they tend to be excluded from the labor market. Capitalist firms cannot make profits employing them, because they would need to invest much in their training. At the same time, y-workers are in plentiful supply. It is the lack of profitability that lies behind the total exclusion of z-workers from the labor market. Capitalist firms seek profit maximization. In order to achieve this objective, firms need to apply incentives to extract the optimum work-in- tensity from y-workers (Shapiro and Stiglitz 1984, Bowles 1985). To make missing work costly for workers, the market wage rate must be higher than the opportunity cost of workers. In the Sigma economy, this opportunity cost is given by the income that workers can make as self-employed producers in the subsistence sector. The marginal productivity of labor in the subsistence sector is assumed to be subject to diminishing returns. The larger the quantity of self-employed workers the lower the marginal income in the sector; alternatively, the smaller the quantity of labor in the subsistence sector the higher the marginal income. Thus, when firms wish to employ more y-workers, maintaining the same work intensity, they would need to pay higher wages, because the opportunity cost of workers increases. On the wage-employment plane, there will be three curves now, instead of the traditional demand and supply curves of economics textbooks. The labor demand curve shows a downward slope, the supply curve (given by the curve of the marginal productivity of labor in the subsistence sector) an upward slope, and the effort extraction curve (which lies above the curve of the marginal productivity of labor in the y-subsistence sector), also an upward slope. The equilibrium wage is determined by the intersection of the demand and effort extraction curves. At this market wage rate there will be excess labor supply. This excess can not be eliminated automatically by a fall in the real wage rate. The labor market is not like the potato market; it is a non-Walrasian market. As a "second best" solution, the workers who are excluded from wage employinent will choose between unemployment and self-employment. The worker will evaluate the expected wage when engaged in the activity of job seeking (and being unemployed) against the sure income that can be made if self-employed in the subsistence sector. If the worker's expected wage rate is higher, he will choose to seek ajob; if the expected wage rate is lower he will choose self-employment. Assume the expected wage is equal to the market wage rate multiplied by the probability of finding a job. Given this probability, the expected wage is a fraction of the market wage rate. Once the wage rate is known, the expected wage is also determined. Workers will seek jobs until the expected wage is equal to the opportunity cost in the subsistence sector, that is, until it is equal to the marginal productivity of labor in the subsistence sector. Thus, the allocation of workers to unemploy- ment and self-employment is also determined. The incomes of the self-em- ployed are lower than the market wage rate. Z-workers are self-employed in small units of production, in which they produce good B with a traditional technology. Thus, z-workers produce good B with lower productivity compared to self-employed y-workers. In the Sigina economy, there are two subsistence sectors, one for each type of worker, with different levels of productivity. The model of the Sigma economy presented here has three sectors: the capitalist sector and two subsectors-the y-subsistence sector and the z-subsistence sector-where workers can make income as self-employed producers. There are two markets: labor and commodity B . ~ Given the technological (input-utput) relationship between labor and production of commodity B, it is sufficient to establish the equilibrium conditions of the labor market to arrive at general equilibrium. These conditions were shown above. So, the labor market determines the wage rate, the level of employment, and the excess supply of y-labor. Given this solution in the labor market, the allocation of the surplus labor into unemployment and self-employment is also determined, as well as the mean income in the y-subsistence sector. In the z-sector, workers seek to maximize total output with the use of their total labor supply, which is given. Because there is no interaction between the z-sector and the rest of the economy, the general equilibrium solution is separable in the z-subsistence sector in respect to the rest of the Sigma economy. The general equilibrium is illustrated in Figure 1. Output per worker is measured on the vertical axis and the number of workers on the horizontal axis. The number of y-workers is equal to the segment OO', and O'Z is the number of z-workers. MR represents the marginal productivity of labor in the capitalist sector, mr is the marginal productivity curve in the y-subsis- tence sector (measured from the origin 0' and towards the origin (I), and m'r' is the marginal productivity curve in the z-subsistence sector. Curve E measures the effort extraction curve. The equilibrium wage rate (we) is determined by the intersection of curve E and with curve MR which is also the labor demand curve. The excess labor supply is equal to A('. This wage rate determines the expected wage rate we, which in turn deteriniiles the allocation of the excess labor supply of labor to unemployment (AB) and self-employment (BO'). Total income in the capitalist sector is equal to the area under the curve MC, total income in the y-subsistence sector is equal to the area under curve mF, and total income in the zsubsistence sector is equal to the area under curve m ' ~Their sum makes up equilibrium national . income. 2. In what t'ollows the emphasis will he given to the relat~onshipshetween the capitalist sector and the subsistence sectors through the lahor market. So, we can safely ignore other market'; that are needed to estahlish general equilihriu~nat large. Figure 1 National income (y) of equilibrium and its distribution can be repre- sented by the following equation: Y = P + W + V y + V z = P + w Dy + vy Ly + V, Lz Profits (P), wages (W), and total income in the two subsistence sectors (Vy and V,) will make up national income. Labor incomes can be broken down into mean incomes (w, vy, v,) and quantities of workers employed in each sector (Dy, Ly, Lz). The condition of equilibrium in the labor market is w >vy and social exclusion leads to w >vy>v,. The z-workers will constitute the poorest group in society. (See Appendix for a formal presen- tation of the general equilibrium solution). The structure of national income tells us that in the Sigma economy there are different sources of income, which lead to inequality. There is inequality between capitalists and workers, but also amongst workers. Not all y-work- ers get the same income; not all z-workers get the same income. The exogenous variables of the system include the stock of capital and technological knowledge, and the initial distribution of economic, political and cultural assets among individuals. State policies and external shocks to the economy are also exogenous. The endogenous variables include the level of national income and its distribution. If exogenous variables remain unchanged, the equilibrium values of the national income and its distribution will repeat themselves period after period. Changes in the exogenous variables will modify the equilibrium values of the endogenous variables in particular directions, and empirical predictions can be logically derived from this theoretical model. EXCLUSION FROM CREDITAND INSURANCEMARKETS The labor market generates inequality among y-workers. The y-workers who are excluded from the labor market have the same skills as of those included; thus. why should they remain relatively poor? To set up a new business or to increase productivity in the existing units of the subsistence sector, financing is needed. Because owners do not rent out their capital. workers can not set up businesses by renting capital. They must buy capital. Workers do not have sufficient savings to finance capital accumulation, so bank credit is needed. However, the logic of the banks excludes workers from this market. Balks seek a dual objective: maximize profits and minimize risk. Because the unit cost per dollar declines with the size of the loan, banks prefer to give large loans; moreover, because of incomplete information, banks minimize risk by requiring collateral, the value of which depends positively on the loan size. Hence, banks set minimums on loan size and wealth, which determine who their clients will be. The logic of banks will exclude potential borrowers that own capital in amounts below the threshold value or have no capital at all. The credit market is non-Walrasian; it is not like the potato market either. There is also the risk of destruction of the capital stock. This risk can be insured through the insurance market, an instrument for spreading out risk. However, the insurance market is not Walrasian either. The reasons are similar to those of the credit market. Transaction costs are too high for insuring small businesses. Insurance companies prefer to do business with large firms. Thus, producers in the subsistence sector are subject to the risk of uninsured individuals. They are vulnerable to negative shocks to capital endowments. In sum, as a result of the eco~lomicrationality of banks and insurance companies, and information costs, the y-workers who were excluded from the labor market are also excluded from the credit and insurance markets. They can not escape from relative poverty; self-employment and unemploy- ment are their only viable, second best options. Z-workers are excluded from credit and insurance markets as well. The factors that explain the exclusion of y-workers from these markets operate with even greater force in regard to z-workers. They can not escape from poverty either.3 EXCHANGE RULES IN MICRO-SOCIETIES Because z-workers are excluded from the insurance market, they seek individual ways to self-insure against risks and also collective ways to spread out risk. Because z-workers are excluded froin the credit market. they seek peer loans. Thus, social networks are created as a mechanism that provides social protection and opportunity. As a result of their exclusion from financial and insurance markets, z-workers live in encapsulated communities or micro-societies. Within a closed micro-society, econoinic exchange can not take the form of inarket exchange. In such a small society individual interdependence is very high and multiple exchange is predominant. Hence. exchange relations cannot be impersonal. The inicrosociety is composed of networks created to solve the problem of uninsured individual risks, a problein that caililot be solved through the market system. Tlle rationality of self-interest cannot be the only motivation of individuals. for the economic coilsequences may be negative for all. Individual behavior based on this rationale may generate economic losses for the rest of the ineinbers of the community. The individual could then suffer a social sanction for that behavior. Given that inultiple exchange prevails in the community, the individual could be excluded froin other sorts of exchange as well ancl suffer additional economic losses. What are the rules of non-n~arketexchange? They can be suinmarized as follows. Non-market exchange is still voluntary and based 011 the logic of self-interest, yet it is not impersonal. individuals are restricted by the norms of the social network in addition to the constraints imposed by their own resource endowments. These norms include reciprocity and redisti-ibu- tion. "I help you now that you are in need. with the understanding that you 3. 71'l~eSigma economy will have a segment o f the labor force chat is not wage carncl-. T111s segment includes part of the y-workers and all z-workers. They 21-eexcluded t~.olllLI1e lahol. market and from the credit market, the two ~necha~~ismsunder which workers call Ile exploited, as Roe~nel-(1982) has shown. Tlie wage earners-those y-workers who are ft~lly integrated into the capitalist system-are the ricllest alnolrg all workers. The exclucled arc pool-el-, and because the degree of exclus~ol~ higher for z-workers, these make up the IS ptici~-estgl-tiup. Joan R o h i n s o ~well-~IIOWII d~ctuln"The only thing that is worst than heill: ~ ' ~ explo~tedIS not heing explti~ted"applies very tiil.cefully to Sigma society will help me when 1am in need" (Hoypor ti makana por mi.) is a principle of exchange. The economic balance of the relationship is attained in the long run, not in every transaction. Therefore, the law of one price for each good does not hold. Money cannot buy everything within social networks. The social network constructed by the poor is a survival strategy, not a development strategy. It allows each worker to reduce risk. It is a mechanism that provides a safety net. No individual goes hungry or homeless because of a negative external shock to endowments. At the same time, however, no individual can escape easily froin the network -that is, from poverty -even if presented with external opportunity. The rules of reciprocity and redistri- bution set limits to one's options. This is the other side of the coin of social protection. Non-market exchange protects individuals against risk but condenlns them to share the poverty of the entire group. By contrast, market exchange does not protect individuals collectively against risk, but allows thein to escape poverty individually. If micro-societies are open to the larger economic system, such as a capitalist economy, the rules of exchange will be dualistic. Individuals will have access to market exchange. Therefore, social norms within the com- munity will not be as binding as in the closed case. The more developed the markets, the weaker the constraints determined by social norms. In the Sigma economy, z-workers will be assumed to live in a closed micro-society, where non-market exchange rules dominate all transactions. Market ex- change will be ignored at this point. (This will not be the case of y-workers; they live in inore open societies and participate in exchange under market rules.) SOCIAL REPRODUCTION While the y-workers who are self-employed in the subsistence sector could adopt new technologies that are being developed in the capitalist sector, and thereby increase labor productivity, they do not. Given the differences in technology, and given that technological innovations cannot occur continuously but adoption can, the y-subsistence sector should be able to grow even faster than the capitalist sector. Given its technological lag, there is much room for the growth of productivity in the y-subsistence sector. The self-employed could not be limited by a lack of human resources in adopting new technologies, because labor is homogeneous. Under these circurnsta~lces,the main factor preventing the y-subsistence sector from growing is access to credit. The process of adopting new technology requires financing. However, workers in this sector lack savings, and, as we have seen, are excluded from credit and insurance markets. The z-workers also remain poor, even though their existence in a capitalist society should provide opportunity for adopting technological innovations and increasing productivity. Actually, the z-sector should also be able to grow faster than the modern sector, where innovations occur only intermittently. In this case, the limitation conies from z workers' endow- ments of human capital, which are very low for the present stage of technological development. Even if there were a subset of new technologies that they could adopt, they would not be able to do so because they would need external financing and means to spread out the risk. But, like the y-workers, they are also excluded from credit and insurance markets. Why are z-workers unable to accumulate human capital? First, because they are poor. They lack the financing capacity needed to accumulate physical and human capital. Second, they are excluded (in quantity and quality) from access to economic rights in the form of public goods, such as education, health and social protection. This is a problem of political exclusion. Thirdly, they are segregated, which makes the acquisitionof skills required for the modern technology very costly. This is a cultural exclusion problem. Because z-workers have a cumulative disadvantage in society, their capacity to organize themselves and demand access to rights is limited. In this case, collective action is limited by the exclusion problem, not by the Olsonian problem - or the "free ride" problem. Olson intended to answer the question: why is there little class action in the real world? His theory is that collective action will not occur if the individuals that make up the group act guided by the logic of self-interest (Olson 1965). In micro-societies. liowever, free - riders will suffer social sanctions. Thc Olsonian problem will not appear. The limits to collective action conle from the problem of exclusion. z-workers are too poorly endowed with economic, political and cultural assets to participate fully in the democratic process. The endogenous transformation of a heterogeneous society into a honiogeneous one - the transformation of z-workers into y-workers - will proceed at a very slow pace. z-workers will thus make up the "hard core" of exclusion. As a consequence, they will become the poorest group in society, and will remain so. In the Sigma society, the poorest groups are not only people with the lowest incomes, there are also different groups-people poorly endowed with non-economic assets. Three markets play a crucial role in the reproduction of inequality in the Sigma economy: labor, credit, and insurance. These markets can be called basic markets. Given the initial condition of unequal distribution of eco- nomic, political and cultural assets in the Sigma society, inequality will be reproduced in the process of capital accumulation in the capitalist sector. A segment of y-workers will be excluded from the basic markets. Z-workers are left behind in the process of economic growth, for they are excluded not only from the basic markets, but also from political and cultural assets. This latter exclusion-which will be called 'social exclusion,' as opposed to econornic exclusion-puts even more constraints on z-workers for accumu- lating capital, particularly human capital. What is particular to Sigma society -as a capitalistdemocracy -is socialexclusion. Although the distribution of assets is individual, the nlechanisins of exclusiorl do not operate on an individual basis. Individuals represent social groups. Exclusion is systematic regarding social groups, even though it niay be a random process among the individuals that belong to a particular group. The concept of exclusion in this theory refers to social exclusio~~,as opposed to individual exclusion. Social exclusion is the result of a historical event, a fundamental shock to society. This set of assuinptions may be called social exclusion theory. Hence, Sigma theory (the logical construction of Sigma Society) includes the social exclusion theory. The Sigma society was born heterogeneous; it was born very unequal in terms of economic, political and cultural assets and will remain so or change slowly. This will be the characteristic of the long-run equilibrium. In the Sigma society the long-run degree of inequality will basically depend upon its initial distribution of assets. I11 this society, there is dependence on the historical path of society. To change this path significantly, another exogenous shock to change the initial conditions will have to occur. The other exogenous variables will have either minor effects or just short-run effects. SOME EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE: THE LATINAMERICAN COUNTRIES Theories are constructed in order to be empirically tested, so is Sigrna theory. What are the empirical predictions that can be derived from the Sigma theory? This paper gives greater emphasis to those empirical predic- tions of the theory that refer to the z-sector. These are the simplest to derive, and address the question of poverty more directly. The effect of changes in the exogenous variables of the system on the z-sector can be summarized as follows: (a) Capital accumulation together with technological change in the capitalist sector (an upward shift of the labor demand curve) will have the effect of raising both the wage rate and the level of employment, reducing the level of self-employment of y-workers, while the change in unemployment is undetermined. There will be no effect on the z-subsistence sector. The capital accumulation process may eventually eliminate the excess supply of y-type labor, but z-type labor will remain untouched. (b) Increase in the z-population will have the effect of reducing the marginal productivity of labor in the z-sector, and then will reduce average income. Overall income inequality will rise. (c) Increase in the productivity of the z-sector will have no effects on the capitalist sector. (d) Among societies with similar capital endowrrients and technology, income inequality will be higher in Sigma societies than in more hoinogeneous societies.4 In social science, the empirical testing of a theory is done using statistical analysis. Any single observatiori can neither refute nor confirm a theory. The validity of a theory is understood in statistical terms, within the law of large numbers. Unfortunately, empirical data on the distribution of national income in developing countries are riot abundant. Most data on inequality refer to labor income, not national income, because they come from household surveys; moreover, they show information for only a few years per country. Hence, the requirement for disproving the theory cannot be met. I11this study, I will pursue a more modest objective. I will make use of some pieces of evidence from Latin Americancountries to test the hypothesis that countries with a large proportion of indigenous populations functio~ias if they were Sigma economies, where indige~iouspopulations represent z-workers. It seems iridisputable that this population is endowed with the lowest amount of economic, political and cultural assets (as valued by the dolllinant culture). The relative proportion of the indigenous population will 1. Co~rsidertwo other abstract societies that are defined as follows: Otnep society whel-e ~~-worke~.sdo not exist but tllerc is overpopulation of y-wo~.kers,and Epsiloti socirry where z-workrrs do not exist and there is no overpopulation of y-workel-s. Suppose the tI11.t.csocieties are siniilar in tecllnology and capital stock: in olher words. suppose the three socirt~eshave the same labor demand curve. It is clear tllat rl~esrsocieties will chow a certail~ol.der of i~requality.Sigma society w ~ lbe the {nost u~~equal,0111epawill follow and Epsilol~will be l the less unequal society. In general. societies that are no re ovel-populated and Irlore hetero~cnrousWIIIshow higllel- degrees ot inequality. be used as the indicator to determine "indigenous countries." The following propositions appear to be warranted by existing data and. tlius, give empirical support to the hypothesis. COUNTRIES WHERETHESHAREOF INDIGENOUS POPULATIONSHIGHER ARE MORE UNEQUAL IS In Latin America, there exists a diversity of countries in terms of ethno-cultural traits. Two extreme groups can be distinguished. The more homogeneous group includes Argentina, Uruguay, Verlezuela and Costa Rica. Tlie rnore heterogeneous group includes Mexico. Guatemala, Colom- bia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. The conquest may be considered tlle fundamental shock. Today indigenous populations constitute a significant proportion of the total population of these countries. Members of these populations still maintain part of their ancient culture and live ~nostlyin rural peasant communities. The Caribbean and Brazil may also be irlcluded in this second group. The presence of blacks, who were brought in as slaves from Africa, in addition to the presence of indigenous communities, has created a society that is multi-ethnic and multi-cultural, which is also the case in the other countries of the group. Studies made in the 1970s on the distribution of national income - not on labor income alone -showed that income inequality in the second group was consisteritly higher than in the first in the 1950s and 1960s. As shown in Table 1. the mean Gini coefficients for Costa Rica and Argentina were 0.37, 0.43; whereas for Peru, Brazil, Colonibia and Mexico they were in the range of 0.54-0.62; and Chile's figure was 0.50. Chile appears to be an iritermediate case, both in terms of social heterogeneity and inequality. The most complete recent information oti national income distribution, based on five or lrlore observations in the period 1950-1993, is also shown in Table I . This set of data contains only five countries. This statistical inforrnatiori also confirms the high positive correlation that seems to exist betweeri social heterogeneity and inequality. The low value of the Pearson coefficient of variability for each country suggests that income distribution has riot varied much within each country. This long-run persistence both in the degree of inequality and in the order of inequality by countries is striking. In terms of the two groups of countries mentioned above, the second group was born more heterogeneous and more unequal than the first and has remained so. This empirical result is consistent with Sigma theory. Tlie degree of income inequality seems to Table I LATIN AMERICA: Ih'EQUALITY IN EIGHT COUNTRIES IN SELECTEDYEARS DURING 1950-1 993 Weisskoff-Figueroa Altimir 1950-1 970 1950-1993 -. Counrry Number of Gini Number of Gini Pearson observations coefficient observations coefficient c.L' ('%j (years) Mean Value (years) Mean value -- Brazil 2 0.58 7 0.62 4.0 Peru 1 0.62 - - - Mexico 3 0.54 8 0.55 4.0 Colombia 1 0.58 6 0.50 6.7 Chile 1 0.50 - - - Argentina 3 0.43 - - - Venezuela - - 5 0.42 9.8 Costa Rica 1 0.37 9 0.42 4.1 - ---- - Not available ..br Source: Weisskoff and Figueroa (1976), p. 91: Oscal. AIti~~~il.'s esti~na(esappyar In 'rho~.p (1998). Appendix Table vt11.1,p. 352. be a structural characteristic of a country. The German naturalist Alexander Humboldt wrote in his Voyages that ec onolnic and social inequality was the feature that most impressed him on his visit to the region now called Latin America. This was published around 1850. One hundred and fifty years later, inequality is still a key characteristic of this region. It can be shown that the higher degree of inequality in the second group of countries is due in large part to their shares of indigenous populatio~ls.If we recalculated national income omitting the participation of the indigenous populatio~i,the result would be a slightly lower level of national income but a significantly more equal society. The reason is simple: a large number of people and a small amount of income would be deducted from the original rlational income. Let us examine the case of Peru. In the mid-seventies, the top decile of the population received 50 percent of the national income, and the bottom third received only 5 percent (Webb, 1977). The indigenous population constituted the vast majority of this lower group. With tl~erecalculation. the ratio between the top decile and the bottom third decreases from 10 to 4 tirnes. The mean income increases by 40 percent. The indigenous populations are at the base of the income pyramid of each country in the region. In the 1980s, the incidence of poverty among the indigenous population in Bolivia was 64 percent (versus 48 percent for the non-indigenous), in Guatemala 87 percent (versus54 percent), in Mexico 81 percerlt (versus 18 percent). and in Peru 79 percent (1,ersl~s 50 percent) (Psacharopoulosand Patrinos 1994).The hard core of poverty is to be found among the indigenous populations. It seems quite clear that the indigenous populations make up the poorest groups in Latin America. And because they are endowed with the lowest amounts of economic, political and cultural assets, the indigenous popula- tions appear to possess the attributes of the category of z-workers. THE PERSISTENCE OF THEPEASANT ECONOMY IN INDIGENOUS COUNTRIES As predicted by Sigma theory, economic growth in the capitalist sector has not eliminated the peasant economy in Latin America. Mostly indigenous populations constitute this economy. These populations have been subject to exclusion mechanisms during the process of economic growth that has taken place in the capitalist sector. Such exclusion could explain why tlie expansion of capitalism in Latin America has not managed to transform tlie peasantry into wage labor, as it did in ~ u r o ~ e . ~ The fact that there are peasants in non-indigenous countries also may be the result of a different process: such countries started overpopulated but not socially heterogeneous. In any event, this case does not disprove Sigma theory. This theory would be rejected if countries that started capitalist 5 . In the late seventies, the drstinguislied historia~~Eric Hobsbawm gave a lecture in Iny university and began by askiug the audience the following question: why do we still observe the peasanlry in the Andes of Peru'? Nobody answered. IIe then explained to us the case of Scotland. In the xvul century the mountairls of Scotland were alxo populated by peasants. Less than one century of capitalist develop~iie~rtwas enough to transfor111tliat peasantry into wage labor. Today those mountallw are empty. he concluded. After Inany years, I think I have the answer to his questiorl. Peru (as well as tlie other Latin American countries w ~ t h imp or tar^^ ancient civilizations) was horn as Sigma society, where the peasantry has been subject to meclianrsrns of social exclusion. Tlirs was not tlie case in Europe. The ancient Eul.opean countries resernble tlie Omega society. that IS,overpopulated but without z-work- ers. These countries developed much more easily to become Epsilon societies. Sigma societies musl first heco~neOmega societies before they can reach the level of Epsilon societies. develop~nentas indigenous are non-indigenous now; or if they continue to be indigenous, the cornposition of social groups in die agricultural sector as peasants, wage earners and capitalists are not associated to ethnicity. The presence of ethnic groups in the social structure is distributed randoinly. In this case, contrary to what Sigma theory predicts, initial conditions would not count. A significant out-migration of the rural population has taken place in recent decades in Latin America. This is usually explained by the large difference in the mean incornes between urban and rural areas. While this process of rural out-migration is hardly surprising, what is less expected is that people still live in rural areas. Why are they still there if income differences with urban areas still persist? One possible explanation coines from the exclusion theory: most of the indigenous population is not part of the supply in the urban labor markets. Under other forms of production in the past. the indigenous populations providect the basic labor force, and it was profitable for landlords to employ them. But that system of production (the hacienda system) did not function with labor markets. Furthermore, over time technology changed arid capi- talist production expanded, requiring particular kinds of skills, including proficiency in Spanish and new work ethics. Workers suitable for capitalist production, the y-workers. increased over time. But, as shown above, the indigenous populations have been left behind. THEMARKETSYSTEMIS LESS DEVELOPED IN AREAS WHERE INDIGENOUS POPULATIONS ARE PROMINENT Most empirical studies have found that the peasant com~nunitiesin Latin America carry out monetary exchange with the outside world. Economi- cally. they are not isolated communities. However, such empirical evidence cannot be taken as an indication that they are fully integrated into the capitalist sector. Figueroa's detailed family budget study (1984) of indige- ~iouspeasant communities in the Peruvian Andes showed four findings: (a) Econoniic exchange of goods and labor was carried out through market and non-market exchange. (b) Econo~nicexchange with other indigenous communities and with the self-employed producers in provincial towns was very signifi- cant. (c) As labor supply, peasants exchange part of their labor force witli other peasants on a reciprocity basis, part is sold to local farms and households, and another part is sold as casual labor in formal labor markets. (d) In quantitative terms, the study calculated tliat, on average, peasant families exchange half of their total output, and that labor income accounts for 25 percent of total inco~iie. The well-known argument developed by Schu~npeter(1934) that "the peasant sells his calf just as cunningly and egotistically as the stock exchange member his portfolio of shares" (p. 80) does not seem to fit witli what one observes in rural indigenous communities of Latin America. Such hehavior refers to peasants selling their products in an urban market to buyers that they scarcely know. But this is not their usual form of exchange. Within their cornniunity and within their social network, peasants hardly behave like stock exchange brokers. Here non-market exchange dominates. The high degree of integration between the rural and the urban self-em- ployed (between the two subsectors within the subsistence sector) seems to be a perfect match of demand and supply. Given their endowments of econornic assets, including human capital, thcse groups can produce only goods of low quality; and given their low incomes, these are tlie goods and services for which there is a high demand. This is consistent with the observation that the subsistence sectors produce ~nostly"inferior goods." as judged on a national scale of revealed preferences. If these subsectors produce inferior goods and are poor. they are cornplernentary economies. To show this, a theoretical model with more than one conmodity would be needed. In a world with only one good, tlie z-sector and y-sector could not exchange that single good. In this simple world, therefore, these sectors could be considered as though they were separate ecor~omies,or two sectors with no interrelations. The latter is precisely the assumption made in this model of the Sigma economy. This exchange is ignored, as it is considered non-essential in the process of productivity growth of these subsistence sectors. Because the peasantry participates in the market exchange of goods and casual labor. its real income would also depend upon relative prices in the market. But the theory ignores the effect of these relative prices: they are not considered essential in the process of productivity growth of the peasant economy. Although there is market exchange in the peasant economy. the theory makes an abstraction of this, as ifthere were no exchange. The theory assumes tliat changes in relative prices can have a level effect on income (a jump), but not a growth effect (a co~itinuousincrease in labor productivity and i ~ i c o m e ) . ~ What is quite clear in Latin America is the fact that the market system is less developed in the rural areas where indigenous populatioiis are predominant. For the peasaiitry, transaction costs with the market seem to be higher than within their social networks. Public goods (transportation and con~~nunicationssysterns) are needed for market development. but govern- inents invest very little in [he provision of these public goods in areas wliere indigenous populations are predominant. This is consistent with the liypothe- sis of political exclusion. And without developed r~larketsit will be very costly for the peasantry to have economic growth. TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS ARE LIMITED IN AREAS WHERE THE INDIGENOUS POPULATIONS ARE PROMINENT Empirical studies on the Latin American peasantry have found that there are demand and supply limitations with regard to the adoption of teclino- logical innovations. Only a sinall fraction of the peasantry has adopted new technologies. A study carried out within the ECIEL program7 surveyed thirteen micro-regions with peasant communities in four countries (Brazil, Mexico, Paraguay and Peru) in order to explain this low rate of adoption. The conclusion was that such adoptions require higher levels of working capital and human capital that peasants lack. New technologies are inore intensive in working capital and liulnan capital. Increasing productivity using modeni technology requires a capacity for numerical calculation, literacy, and a command of Spanish. But it takes 6 to 7 years (more than complete primary schooling) to acquire such skills. Technological innovation, then, requires a level of educatioli that most of the peasantry does not possess. Peasants with post primary education, offered ~nostlyin urban areas, were able to adopt new technology (Figueroa, 1986). The segregation of rural peasant communilies makes learning at school very costly in terms of resources and time. Not only is rural education low 6. L.ucas makes similar assulnptlons (1988) in his developmenr [hco~-y.For'instance. hc ;trgue.; that [t.;ide lihe~alization- a change in relative prices originated by tarifl' I-cductions- would Ilave a level effect hut not a gl-owtli effect on national income. 7. ECIEL. is an acronym for Estudios Con,juntos para la I~itcgracltinpcon61nicaLatirloa~ner-icana. 11 was the niost important re0, F I I< 0 ( 1 ) Y-sector Q = G(Ly, Ky), G1>0. Gll <0 (2) The Labor market equilibrium is determined by the following equations: Labordemand D y = f l ( w , K ) , f l < 0 , f 2 > 0 (3) Labor supply Sy=H(w,Ky),H1>O.H?>O (4) Effort extraction Ey = in H(w, tiy),m > 1 ( 5 ) The symbol w represents the real wage rate. K is the capital stock in the capitalist sector, K,, is the capital stock in the y-subsistence sector. Both capital stocks are exogenously given. Because capitalist firnis seek to maximize profits, the marginal productivity of labor ~iiustbe equal to the wage rate in a competitive market. Hence, the curve of the marginal productivity of labor in the capitalist sector is also the labor denland curve. The supply curve is the curve of the margi~ialproductivity of labor in the y-subsistence sector. the opportunity cost of labor. The effort extraction function is obtained by an upward shift of this marginal productivity curve, that is, of the supply curve. The equilibrium condition in the labor market is: Call the equilibrium wage rate wO,and the equilibrium quantity of labor demanded DyO The total amount of y-labor is Ly*>Dyo. Thus, the excess supply of labor is determined. Let H(apositive number but smaller than one) represent the probability to find a job in the labor market. Then, the expected wage rate we is equal to The allocation of the y-workers excluded from the labor market into unemployment (Uy) and self-en~ployment(Ly) is determined froin the following equation: Hence, The production function in the z-subsistence sector is represented by Total labor supply of z-workers (LZ*)is self-employed in the production process. This equation alone determines total output, as well as the average productivity of labor in this sector. Because of differences in technology and human capital, the average productivity in this sector is smaller than the corresponding value in the y-subsistence sector. Hence, national income (Y) is equal to The distribution of national income can be represented as follows: Yo = Po + w0 DyO+vYLyO + vZ Lz* (12) Here P is total profits; vy and vz represent the mean income in the y-subsistence sector and z-subsistence sector. It follows that w >vyvz.There is inequality between capitalists and workers, and also among workers. BOWLES, SAMUEL. (1985). "The Production Process in a Competitive Econorny: Walrasian, Neo-Hobbesian, and Marxian Models." Ameri- can Economic Review, Vol. 75, No. 1, March, pp. 16-36. DEININGER, KLAUS and LYN SQUIRE. (1996). "A New Data Set Measuring Inequality". The Worlcl Bank Economic Review, Vol. 10, No. 3, September. FIGUEROA, ADOLFO. (1984). Cupitalist Development and the Peusant Eco~zo~izyin Peru. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press. (1986). Productividad g educarioiz en la agricultura campesina de America Larina. Rio de Janeiro: Publicaciones ECIEL. FURMAN, JASON AND JOSEPH STIGLITZ. (1998). "Economic Consequences uf Income Inequality," in lnconle Inequality Issues and Policy Options, A Symposium Sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. Jackson Hole, Wyoming, August 27-29. GLAZER, NATHAN. ( 1997). We Are All Multiculturalists Now. Harvard University Press. KALDOR. NICHOLAS. (1957). "Alternative Theories of Distribution." Re- view of Econornic Studies, 23. pp. 83-100. KUZNETS, SIMON. (1955). "Economic Growth and Income Inequality, " Arrlericarz Econornic Review, 45. pp. 1-28. LEWIS, ARTHUR. (1 954). "Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labor," Manchester Papers, 22, pp. 329-402. LUCAS, ROBERT. (1988). "On the Mechanics of Econonlic Development." Journal of Monetary Economics, 22, pp. 3-42. OKUN, ARTHUR. (1975). Equality and Efficienq. The Big Trade Off. Washington, D. C: The Brookings Institution. OLSON, MANCIJR. (1965). The Logic of Collective Action. Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. PSACHAROPOULOS, GEORGE AND HARRY PATRINOS. (1994). "Indigenous People and Poverty in Latin America." Finance and Development, 31. March. ROEMER, JOHN. (1982). A General Theory of Exploitation and Class. Harvard University Press. SCHUMPETER, JOSEPH. (1934). The Theon) of Economic Developtn~llt. Harvard University Press. Originally published in German. 1911 . SHAPIRO, CARL AND JOSEPH STIGLITZ. (1984). "Equilibriu~nUnemploy- ment as a Worker Discipline Device. " American Econonzic Review, Vol. 74, No.3, June, pp. 433-444. THORP, ROSEMARY. ( 1998). Progress, Poverty ccntl Exclusion. Washing- ton, D. C. : Inter-American Development Bank. WEBB, RICHARD. (1977). Got~ernmentPolicy and the Distriburiot~c?flncot?re In Peru. Harvard University Press. WEISSKOFF, RICHARD AND ADOLFO FIGUEROA. (1976). "A comparative Review of Income Distribution in Latin Ainerica. " Latin Attwricorl Research Review, Vol. X I , No. 2, pp. 71-112. THE SOCIO-POLITICAL AND CULTURAL DYNAMICS OF SOCIAL EXCLUSION INTRODUCTION This chapter examines the issue of social exclusion as a social. political and cultural phenomenon related to citizenship rights. Reflecting on social exclusion involves both quantitative and qualitative issues because it refers to processes that produce inequalities (regarding material needs) that are clearly subject to numerical examination, as well as to institutional processes that result on power differences among social groups. The social exclusion approach emphasizes the need to consider multiple dimensions, not just what is cornmo~llyconsidered "material satisfaction" (basic needs indicators and income), but institutional, cultural and political factors both at the public and private levels. that constraint the opportunities excluded social groups have for advancement. In this regard, following Sen (1995), it calls for a broader definition of the "evaluation space", to Inove towards a multi-dimensional approach. The first section of this chapter discusses conceptual issues in order to relate social exclusion and poverty to a set of political, social and cultul-a1 factors. The objective is to illustrate the importarice of using a multi-dimen- sional perspective for the analysis of social inequality. It also provides the background for linking the issue of citizenship to socio-political and cultural exclusion. The second section analyzes the political and socio-cultural dimensions of exclusion and proposes an analytical model to link the different variables in the system. The third section concludes with recoin- mendations regarding the need for a multi-dimensional and participatory focus for the development of public social policy. Social exclusion and poverty Social exclusion means that while certain social groups have or ell-joy full entitlements (as defined for that particular society), others do not. lncluded and excluded from what? Social groups coexist under diverse codes that shape their communities. Even for excluded groups there are norms and institutions that contribute to keep their members within certain norms of inclusion and to maintain the boundaries with other social groups. The diverse levels of integration to that social group initially indicate that social exclusion is a relative category: it is never absolute, a-historical, or detached from specific social conditions. I If all societies have certain levels of integration, then social exclusion refers to the quality and intensity of that level of integration. Social exclusion indicates the existence of a poor link (or a partial link) between a social group and the larger society, its values, institutions and resources that would provide for an adequate quality of life for all its members. This includes economic, political, gender, ethnic, and environmental aspects, to mention the most common dimensions of contemporary social thought. Social exclusion refers to the existence of institutional barriers that impede the possibility of full participation in society (citizenship with its related entitlements) for some social groups. Therefore, the social exclusion ap- proach is concerned with the institutional factors (opportu~lities)that allow a group to become a full member of the system, and not just the exclusion experienced by particular individuals. In Latin America, the social exclusion approach started to be used as an analytical tool in the early 1990's. The focus of the regional debate was on the issues of social cohesion and the development of the institutional mechanisms for the democratization of the region (Figueroa, Altamirano, Sulinont 1996; ILO-ILS 1995). Basic to the establishmellt of democratic institutional arrangements was the notion of social cohesion and equal opportunities for all individuals and groups at the social, cultural, economic and political levels. In other words to the establishment of a community in I . The European Community Committee has an appropriate definition. It defined social exclusion as a process and concrete result. It pointed out that the "mechanis~nsby which persons or groups are rejected are the participation of exchanges and social rights practices that constitute the social integration elen~ents.and therefore, constitute identity also. (FLACSO I,/ (,>cc A I I I I ~ I I I I1908. ~ , which all social groups would have equal opportunities for participatiorl at the material and symbolic levels. Social exclusion -and its conceptual opposite, social integration - was first used in some European countries, specially those with important political traditions in social welfare, in which relative improvements in poverty levels and other dimensions of exclusion and social inequality are a priority. The main trust of the idea was that social integration and exclusion made reference to a series of processes whereby social groups and individu- als could be marginalized from the rights and entitlements that those societies had established (FLACSQ 1995). Income deprivation is one colnponent of social exclusion, but as far as it related to income and consumption at the individual level, it does not account for other dimensions that explain the underprivileged position in society of particular groups. Furthermore, an individual with an income below the poverty line could be in a situation of inclusion because of existing social networks, such as the family, that may provide for meeting the material needs. In contrast, a person with a higher income coming from informal activities could be excluded from the labor market because of individual characteristics, and thus, does not enjoy any of the collateral benefits associated with formal wage work.? The idea of social exclusion involves moving along a historically defined continuum of exclusion and inclusion. In between these two polar situations there is an interregnum of vulnerability in which social groups face the risk of becorning more or less excluded/i~icluded.Thus, the concept of social exclusion is related to the interaction of historically and socially conditioned factors. Therefore, the classification of a situation as social inclusion or exclusion is based on the specific conditions of a concrete society. with its corresponding institutions. This led us to the issue of citizenship. Social exclusion then would be the indicator of the degree to which a society has effectively established citizens' rights for everyone to enjoy. Rights create community, and the community produces integration and social cohesion. Tliere is a close relationship between the social condition of exclusion (or integration) and the concept of the definition of citizenship. Social exclusion is a useful resource for analyzing problerns of social integration in complex societies. It involves a multidin~ensionalapproach, enco~npassingboth material and syrnbolic factors; it is sensitive to historical peculiarities; and it allows for a non-dual understanding of the social dynamic. 2. I ' h ~aspect has hrcn developed hy Minujin and Busrelo (1997) and Minujin (1998). s Cartalla, Magallanes, and Dominguez (1997) point out that the term exclusion is "evocative hut imprecise." Following ~ i l v e rthey , ~ indicate rhat the concept evokes different approaches to the notion of citizenship. Three paradigms are identified: (i) the French tradition based on the idea of a "community of values" in which the concept of exclusion is related to issue of weakened social ties; (ii) the Anglo-Saxon tradition of citizenship, which coricentrates on individual rights and duties to which individuals can voluritarily separate themselves or are excluded due to market distortions. discrimination, or lack of rights; (iii) finally, the "monopolizing" approach in which social groups are seen as closed environments competing among each other and defending themselves by "building obstacles and restricting access to work and occupation. cultural resources. goods and services." (Cartalla, Magallanes and Dominguez, 1997:j). In this chapter the riotion of citizenship integrates the three paradigms presented above. The model of citizenship used here recognizes the each of the three paradigms contribute to the notion of citizenship, as this is defined by the existence of values that are translated into rights illspecific historical conditions in which different social groups have conflictive interests. The question of citizenship as a paradigm for social exclusion The idea of the citizenship has evolved over time. However, it was not until the middle of the twentieth century that the definition proposed by T.H. Marshall provided a satisfactory framework for understanding the process of development of citizen's righls. T.H. Marshall revised the ideas of the economist Alfred Marshall regarding the equalizing potential of citizensliip rights and the "architecture of legitimate social inequality" (1 992:7). Based on the above, T.H. Marshall showed how the relationship between "status and contracts," or social inequality and citizenship affects and is affected by the development of rights. He concluded arguing that a strengthened citizenship status prevelils further development of economic ineclualities. Marshall proposed a distinction amongst three levels of citizen rights: (i) civil; (ii) political and; (iii) social. While rejecting ally historical detel-~ninism,he established a logical sequence in the development of citizen rights during the 18th. 19th and 20th centuries. Civil rights (freedo~nof speech, asse~nbly,worship. right of ownership. entering into contracts and the administratiori of justice), were basic freedoms for the development and 3. Refer to Haan and Maxwell (1908). consolidation of capitalism. Political riglits, related to political repre- sentation, came after as a basis for the establishment of democratic govern- ment systems. Finally, social rights - including the right to a minimum economic well being Carrie later on as civil and political rights were consolidated. In that context, the development of citizenship is understood to be an integral part of the advancement of western democracies. The developme~ic of civil rights contributed to the development of political rights. which progressed from being restricted to a minority of white males, to include women, and then other social groups. Once societies had advanced in expanding the scope of their civil arid political rights, social rights became an issue. Two caveats to Marshall's approach need to be highlighted. First, the process is neither liner nor cumulative. Second, the process is not isolated from the social context in which it takes place. The process of establishing citizenship rights is based on what it could be called rights achievement deficit. These deficits reflect situations in which certain social groups either because of their gender, ethnicity (or any other socio-cultural characteristic). or due to structural conditions is precluded from exercising their rights. Therefore. there are cases in which there have been significant achievements regarding the establishment of legal rights, but in which deficits exist. Such is the case for example of societies that have asserted the right to employment but rhat have high unemployn~eritrates, or the case of societies in which social rights were more or less protected but civil and political rights were curtailed. Defining what a society understands by rights has always been contlic- tive as it is rhe outcome of a social struggle. Rights are defined on the basis of social antagonism. That explains why the establishment of civil rights evolved out of tlie clash between the feudal systeln anif the capitalist socio-economic order, which resulted in a new model of secularized politics and freedoms at that time. This broadened tlie arena in which democracv could develop and more groups progressively exercised their rights. Sinii- larly, the social and political struggles of the early 20th century opened up the space for socialist/social-democratregimes that expanded the notion of social rights. At the same time it is important to keep in mind that crosscutting issues such as gender-based antagonisms contributed to the expansion of civil and political rights. While the notion of citizenship proposed by Marshall contributes to a better understanding of the development of citizenship, it needs to be expanded in light of the changes that have taken place in western democracies in recent years. Bottomore (1992) suggests distinguishing between for~nal citizenship - defined as membership in a nation state and substantial citizenship, which refers to the disposition of rights and the capacity of citizens to exercise them in the public and private spheres. Formal citizen- ship is neither a prerequisite nor a condition for having substantial citizen- ship. Women and ethnic minorities are well aware of this, as they can have formal citizenship and at the same time be excluded from enjoying rights all members of society have. At the same time substantial citizenship call be enjoyed without having formal citizenship, as some migrants and refugees groups testify. This is an important distinction because moves the debate of citizenship from a pure formal-legalistic approach to a more substantive level, defined by the social conditions that impede or propel the exercise of citizenship. According to Bottomore (1992),the formal dimension of citizenship is under increasing scrutiny due to three interrelated processes. First, the growing population mobility and immigration represent increasing demands on the states that they cannot simply ignore, even if those who demand the rights are not formal citizens. Associated to the above, the globalization of labor markets has forced upon the nation-states new transnational rules to facilitate the movement of workers. Finally, the increased population mobility, thus the dislocation of place of residence and work place has put in question the definition of the nation-state as the basis for granting rights. The distinction between formal and substantive citizenship allows con- sidering the rights' issue in an integral way that assumes equal conditions (civil, political and social) for all individuals, even if they do not have the forinal condition of nationality or citizenship. This topic is particularly relevant for societies experiencing significant and constant immigration tlows, which in the past were related to social and political instability and repressio~iand, currently to the globalization of the economy and sociocul- tural patterns. The empirical and methodological implications of the migrants issue are quite relevant. A recent comparative study between Costa Rica and Holland revealed a strong link between being immigrant and poverty in San Josk, Costa Rica, but not in Rotterdam, because migrants have more rights and access to state programs in Holland than in Costa Rica (Cardona, et. al. 1999). On other context, Rolph (1999) has observed that in the Caribbean region. where 12% of the population is immigrant, migrants are not anlong the poorest but, instead, face socio-cultural barriers. Immigrants are not homogeneous in their capacities or in their ability to enter the labor market. Nevertheless, immigrants tend to enter at the bottom of the ladder, while the local labor force occupies social positions and jobs of higher prestige and income (Held et. al. 1999). Apart from the significance that havi~lgan immigrant status can have in relation to income, there are cultural issues that cannot be analyzed in terms of income. While the population can share certain conditions of substantial citizenship at the same time, some groups may experience discrimination due to the lack of formal citizenship. Or, contrarily: have formal citizenship but face discrimination base 011 social or ethnic conditions that represent a severe limitation to the full exercise of social rights. In his analysis of exclusion and race in Brazil, Nelson do Valle Silva finds statistical evidence of the existence of racial discrimination which is manifested throughout subtle mechanisms. He asserts that, in Brazil, racial discrimination (which is formally and institutionally denied) is disguised as class discrimination. In the Chilean case, Carolina Tohi shows that social exclusion among poor young people is reflected in high drop out rates, high unemployment rates and identity crisis. Toha also indicates how the systein clearly discriminates against young women entering the labor market because of the possibility of early pregnancies. A final conceptual consideration to be made is that the substantial-formal citizenship distinction should be complemented by the lotion of cultural citizenship. Turner (1994) considers citizenship in cultural terills as the capacity a society has of socially integrating citizens through communication and knowledge. Individual and group access to information is a functio~iof the level of human capital and, second, of the social position of the individual and the group. This explains that small powerful groups have access and control over vast amounts of information and knowledge through relatively cheap electronic means, while at the same time the majority of the population do not have access or participation whatsoever in the generation of knowl- edge and they ignore the most general events within the larger national and transnational communities. Most studies on social inequality in Latin America concentrate on access to economic opportunities.4This paper examines inequality from a social exclusion perspective, focusing on civil rights. The objective is to analyze the social and political implications the exercise of these rights has on (public and private) institutions and their capacity to decrease social exclusion.' Social rights refer here to the achievement of social well being. 4. Kefer to the last IDB report (1998) on the issue of social inrquallty according to disrrihution of income terms. 5 . This is an important axpect hecause it ISone of the strong points in the analysis of the 5oclal Civil rights are essential for the development of economic activities, such as: establishing contracts. trading and commerce, working and access- ing the judicial system. Civil rights create the conditions for future social integration, while the lack of these rights indicates social exclusion. In Western societies, the State through the co~lstitutionand subordinate legal regulations seeks to define basic rights that would ensure the proper functioning of institutio~ls,including markets. However, these institutional arrangements do not necessarily guarantee an equal access of all citizens to these rights. For example property rights are highly concentrated, or access to adequate housing is not even a guaranteed right for a large part of the population. The right to work is not secure for a vast segment of the poor, who can only resort to self-employment or under-employment. Similarly, different surveys in Latin America suggest that citizens perceive there is a direct relationship between poverty and receiving fair treatment in the judicial system. Political rights guarantee the exercise of active representation in politics and tlle possibility of electing governnlent representatives and being elected. In Latin America, after the traumatic experience of authoritarian military regimes, democratic governments have developed once again. The dernoc- ratization process opened up political participation for social groups that had been marginalized and created the opportunity to use political participation and good goverliance as mechanisms for social integration. Most recently, "third way" Latin American denlocracies have attempted to strengthen the exercise of political rights. however they have faced new challenges. Political E:-:clusion Political exclusion refers to the restrictions imposed to the basic right to elect and be elected.' Tlre absence of that possibility is what characterizes excluslorl Clert (1997) pointed out t h ~the exclusion concept generates intel-est for the capacity t c ~ tunderstandi~lg tlie social "disadvantage" as an ot rnultiple processes i~icludrdtlie socio-cultu~aland political aspects. Bur 11 sllould be noted that the multidimensional co~~dition could also be found illother concepts such as lack~ngInalerial goods a ~ vu1ne1-ahility or ~ d groups. lire concept of exclusio~iis useful complement as it e~nphahesthe studies of "tlie proces5es. the ellvironlne~lt.tllr practices of exclusion." 6. lu ;I no re gencral aspect, political exclusion refel-; to "tile exclusiol~of citizenhhlp" (Figueroa. Altalnirano and Sulmont 1996). wli~clialludes to the ahsence of guarantee in the individual rights hy a Iegiti~natrautllority. l'llis meaning Irequires of a specification, in our opinion referred to [lie citizen right of decisirrrl making, and tlie political c~tizenqliiprights in the ~narslialiansense social exclusion in the political dimension. As electoral campaigns become more dependent on the media and tnarketing strategies. the high costs of these campaigns leave out individuals and social groups that do not have the capacity to raise the required resources to run a successful campaign. Lack of economic resources to sustain a campaign is the first line of exclusion a social group faces in the e'xercise of political rights. This socio-econoniic inequality leads to socio-political exclusion7 and the barring from the political arena of certain political actors (ideas) that may not have the resources or the connections to raise the required financial contributions to support a political campaign. At the same time, the growing social inequalities and stagnant socio-eco- nomic conditions for poor and vulnerable groups undermine citizens' confidence in the capacity of democratic governnlents to tackle social exclusion, which may eventually lead to the acceptance of authoritarian alternatives (as the cases of Venezuela and Peru illustrate). Even under democratic conditions recognizing the existence of exclusion conditions is problematic since it represents a severe questioning of the foundations of the political regime. A recent Inter American Development Rarlk (ID@ report on inequality indicates that, "income inequality may weaken the acceptance of institutions and democratic principles." In turn, this situation could lead to other phenomena such as lack of consensus building and increasing pressure from interests groups, corruption. and inefficiency. (1998: 26). There is a primary level of exclusion that derives from the inability to exercise political rights and direct denlocratic practices at the local. provin- cial or national levels. Not everybody can have access to elected positioils, but more importantly, as indicated before. not everyone can be elected because they do not have the means to compete. This type of political exclusion is legitimated by the discourse of representative democracy, where the individuals delegate (not relinquish) their power of decision in public affairs to elected representatives. 'I'he jusnaturalist state of the social contract recognizes the possibility of the individual to be represented by others in the exercise of political power. As 7 . Notice here that we made refe~.enceto a cauaal relationship. The idea of soc~;ilexclus~on certainly assumes a circular causality (Rolph 1999). w h e ~the relatlonslrip hetwtsen and inside r the variables that originate the analysis is multiple and multidirectioilal. Clcrt (1997) states that this 1s not related to an exhaustive classification of the exclusion ways or Iri;inners. hut to an analys~sof tlielr interrelation and how this interrelation leads to a disadvantage. 8. Based on the int'olmation of the 12ati~iharometer.tlle report indicdtes that "Wliert. 11ir concentration of incoltre is to a greater extent tail., as in Uruguay or Costa Ric;~,a Iligli perccnt of the population considers [ha[c/c.rnocrcic:~.is,fi)r us hn/c.r Ihclti (/17yo/hrr type of~ol;rt-r~~~rrtrr. In other countries there is a hroade~.tendency to accept authoritative governments. and Inally think that a democ.ralic governmenr is rllr sclr~rrtr.\ ( Irrotl-clc.rrloc.ruric.one" ([DR.1998:26). such is a social integration principle. No one is excluded from political power, and nobody exercises total political power, but the "people" -often referred to as the "nation". In this way, the voluntary exclusion from the direct exercise of power resides in the foundatio~lsof the social integration strategy of the modern republic, which is contemporaneous in its evolution with [he market society. In liberal democracies, as in the case of most Latin America countries, this form of representation acquires its ulti~~latedegree of institutionalization through the developxnentof competitive party systems, which exert in a regular and orderly fashion the ritual of daily competitio~l through the delegation of sovereign popular power. While voluntary exclusion appears to be a preconditiori for citizenship. several distortions of this formulalion result in different levels of social exclusion. Some of these directly allude to decision-making procedures and mechanisms and others to socio-cultural dynamics. In Latin America there is a growing trend of electoral absenteeism, which means that potential voters exclude themselves voluntarily, leaving the power of decision making to those who exert their right to vote. It could be stated that this type of exclusion is self-inflicted, and thus, the State cannot be held responsible. However, even in this case when citizens choose not to vote they are sending a message regarding their perception of the quality of governnlent they have and the futility of participating in a system that does not respond to their needs. Political abstinence can be an indicator of citizen disapproval of the options offered, or even the effectiveness of the electoral process as a mechanism for accomplishing a real improvement in their living conditions.9 The issue of political options depends on the existence of real alterna- tives, which is the possibility of power alternation between different political groups. However, the recent period of de~nocratizationin Latin Arnerica coincided with the adoption of sweeping econo~nicreforms that transcended the different admillistrations which could not or did not want to detach themselves from the ideological conter~tsof the dominant economic pro- gram. Even the "lhird way" democracies from the region, which accuse the "neoliberal" orientation of the economic policies, have not moved away from the main tenets of this program. After all this years, most people acknow- ledge the lack of political options, and some groups react either favoring 9. Nohle~l(1994) considers that citizen participation in tlie election processes in Latin America is very low. Besides, it is really uneven. In (lie eighties, Uruguay, Argentina and Costa Rica had tlie highest levels according to the pe~.centageof voters with respect to the general population: 70%.53% and 47%. respectively. The lowest levels wcrc ~egisiel-edin Colomh~a (25%).Guatemala (25%)and Ecuador (22%).Another indicator of political exclusion related to [lie access to the election process is thc populatlot~of legal age not registered to vote (Quinti, 1999).This problem can be easily noticed in societies which are experiencing recent democratizatio~~processes, such as Central America (Sojo 1999Y. opposition movements with little option to gain power or withdrawing from the electoral process. The Opacity of the Decision-Making Process Partly as a result of the absence of real political options, and in part as an expression of the persisterlce of political manipulations and "clientelism". or simply by an excess of bureaucratic zeal, the political decision-making process appears opaque. This problem is esserltial because social integration is not only based on the full exercise of political rights. but on tlie establishnient of transparent decision-making processes and good goverii- ance. Political Elitism: Frorn Oligrtrchy to Techrzoc-rucy In most couniries in the region, public management and policy making are controlled by minority interest groups. regardless of the nature of the political regime. In the past, the oligarchy and/or military groups had control over the political arena. Today. an essential part of the decision-~ilaking process for public matters lies on tlie technical competence of experts responsible for formulating ~liacroecono~nicand social policies. In his analysis of the Argentine experience, Cainou !1998)proposes that this "new union between tecl~nicaland political knowledge" is manifested in the Latin-American scenario in three dimensions: a) mediation ill tlie process of channeling interests and defining political "circuits of expertise" with relative autonomy in respect to the State and civil society; b) the fact that the entities which comprise the circuit perform their tasks in a "semi- public or semi-private" arena; and c) the fact that "direct actionillecononlic policies" has been given to technical experts which do not necessarily respond to the voters. This approach to policy making implies not only restricting the options, but also choosing a specific course of action between the available options. The whole process of policy formulation and ilnple- mentation, takes place within a specific doctri~ieand technocratic discourse that citizens can hardly understand, particularly in terms of implications 2nd consequences of the policy options taken. Politics thus becomes "an expert thing" and a political option is disguised as a technical decision. This process confronts the common citizens with decisions taken out of their scrutiny and without their participation and. it is in the center of a growing confrontation between the legislative and executive powers. 10 Increasingly legislative powers have less control over policy decision-mak- ing and become fora where policy decisions taken by technical bodies are discussed and legitimized. Extreme examples of this process were the cases of Fujimori in Peru and Guatemala wit11 Serrano Elias. In other cases, the strengthening of a technocracy "without a party" has contributed to the consolidation of clearly partisan policies. Silva (1999) clai~nsthat the consolidation of a technocratic elite in Latin America is the expression of a negative vision of the past, the role of populist governn~ents,I ' and the progressive fading of left wing alternatives. To Silva this process has resulted in the definition of a new political culture in the region, and finally the consolidation of the technocratic model, which embraces neoliberal economic reforms since the 1980s." All these elenients restrict citizen participation in the political areria and turn policy decision- making processes unclear. Confronting this new political culture, which threatens the stability of democratic processes. requires active citizen participation i11the identifica- tion of problems and policy options. The challenge of good governance is to advance in the modernization and professionalization of political practices through decentralization (local action) and real citizen participation. Ripping Public Gooils: Politiccll Patrimony and Corruption When just a few handle public matters without clear procedures or no accountability, tliere is an elevated risk of corruption. Citizens' perceptions of generalized corl-uption in the political arena discredit polltical action and contribute to the divorce between citizen participation and political action. Corruption refers to the misuse of resources or appropriation of public goods for interests or objectives others that those legally sanctioned.I3 A subtle 10. Thc disl~utehas reacl~vatedthe discussion on the advantages of a parliament systeln over the presidential regimes illmany countries of t l ~ e1-eglo11.Serl-afe1.o 1998. As an example to the Ecuadorian case, ~.eferto Paclia~~o1998: for Mexico, Bkjar 1998, ancl Lanza1.o (1998) for 1Jruguay. 1 I . For an analysis of the 1.z1ationshipsbetween populism. neopopulism. bribery and eco~ioinic ~refo~.mationin Latin AIII~I-ica,refer tc~the volu~needited by Rul.bano de Lala (1998). 12. Silva ~ - e ~ n ~usdand partially analyzes the typology of political leade~'sliipin Latin .41nel.ica n s which was PI-oposed by Ka11nd11Silvert (1977): political bosses. oligarchs, ~ n ~ d d class l e PI-ofessio~lal.military fantit//?or.,ccrnservative pol7uIist. left and right wing totalitarian. and formally legal (although ethically debatable), dimension of this phe- nomenon is referred to as patrinlonial practices. While these behaviors can take place in the private and public arenas, here they are analyzed in virtue of the implications they represent for socio-political exclusion. The most common form of political patrimonial practices expresses itself in public action via kinship. Nepotism, lineage. and its derivations are the most common features of the patrimonial practices. There are several studies that show family dynasties have reign in the Latin American political scenario, especially at the parliamentary level but also in the executive power. These family networks are linked to economic interest groups creating close cliques between public and private capitals (Zeitlin 1984. 1989; Zeitlin and Ratcliff 1988). A recent study in Venezuela indicates that 57% of the arliament (Ramos 1997)have or have had a relative dedicated ,g to politics. Other forms of patrimonial practices and corruptio11in public admini- stration reflect the introduction of individual profit seeking behavior in political action. This phenomenon is the basis for the expansion of corruption in the public admi~listrationand threatens the stability of the institutional system, eroding the trust in public administration. Corruption delegitilnizes political action and promotes social-political exclusion. A survey to Latin American elected representatives (Mateos and Rivas 1998) shows that increasing personal profits is a central motivation for pursuing a political career. A significant number (46%)of the congressmen and women il~ter- viewed indicated that a political career is a way to maximize personal profits. Is Rose Ackerman (1998:36-42)has summarized the economic rationality of corruption in market economies. Bribes fulfill a series of functions that include providing cash "incentives" to public officials to expedite certain transactions, ensure the achievement of expected outcomes and reducing transaction costs among others. However, beyond its economic rationale, corruption is essentially a political phenomerlon. As Johnson (1998:721 suggests, entrenched institutionalized corruption appears when: a) tlie institutional arrangements to prevent and fight corruption are cumbersome and weak; b) when there is an organized network that assures the individual 13. Johnstoil (1993) points out [lie danger of tlie rigi~ldefili~tioiiof corl-uprlon (111legal rer11ib. for example) due to the existence of cultural ~~cil-r~iswhicl~vary frrilii cou11t1.yto coull[r);. 14. There is a great deal of information ahout t'alnil~arnetworks :uid polltlcal alicl e c c ~ ~ o ~ n i c a l pc~werin Latin America. Among otherh, Casaus 1992: Stc~nr1971alicl 1990: Vilas 1998 ;lnd SOJO1995. 15. The investigation conducted by Manuel Alcintara 1.1-omthe Unive~.sit)iot Sala~nanca interviewed Inore tllan thousand parliament repl.esentatl\'es 111 18cou~~triesin the t.egic111. benefits of corruption are shared and; c) when there is no effective social-political opposition to the power elite. The author differentiates "political corruption" related to the existence of blackmail, electoral fraud, political patronage arid browbeating and "bureaucratic corruption", which refers to the twisting of administrative procedures and function through bribes or other pressure mechanisms. In summary citizenship rights are essential to explain and to control corruption. Credible economic guarantees such as property rights. clear regulatory frameworks for establishing contracts are essential. Basic civil liberties (freedom of speech and association and free press), political rights and a strong civil society as well as a functioning arid accountablejudiciary constitute the foundations for the development of any anti-corruption program. The Lirnits of Active Citizenship: Deficit Control While exclusionary practices at the political level are widely generalized in the region, it would be a mistake to underestimate the progress and benefits created by the democratization process that has taken place over the past two decades. There is no doubt that citizenship rights have been strengthened in spite of significant institutional crisis such as in the cases of Collor de Melo in Brazil and Carlos Andres Perez in Venezuela, or the return to an institutional order in Peru and Guaternala.16 However, as societies affirm citizen rights, the threshold of citizenship rises, mainly because rights are socialconstructions that respond to historical processes, social antagonisms, and the capacities of social actors to demand from the state progressive levels of citizenship. The accomplishment of some rights creates new necessities and presents new horizons. Therefore, the idea of active citizenship does not invoke an ideal stage in which rights are fully realized. Rather, active citizenship refer to the citizens' capacity to access the resources needed to confront and resolve the social, economic, cultural and political inequities of that particular society. Social integration does not imply the full (and final) attainment of all citizenship rights, or the end of social conflict. In a positive way, increasing social integration requires the progressive elimination of deficits through the development of institutional arrangements that would ensure citizens the 16. For infori~~ationabout the ups and clowns of the process of the consolidation of demand ill Latin America, refel- to Peeler (1998). capacity to voice their demands, exert their rights and access the resources needed to tackle inequities in that particular society. The table below summarizes based on the multidimensional proposal by Minujin and Bustelo (1997)the dynamics of social-politicalexclusion/inclu- sion. The first column depicts the inclusion/exclusion continuum. The second column indicates the main variablesiindicators for that particular stage. Finally, the third column represents the policy orientations and institutional arrangements that allow the movement along the continuum. Socio-Political Dynamic Model IncIusioniexclusion Variablellndicator Institutional arrangements Continuum ------ ; Deficit Rcduction t--- - -- Vulnerability Absenteeism (anomy) Participatory Democracy Elitismltechnocracy i Expansion of citizenship Party rule -- - ~ I Exclusion Corruption 1 Civil, economic, social, cul- Patrirnonialisrn tural and political rights Inequity Transparency I Right violations Accountability -- -- Inclusiveness is a characteristic of stable societies with a high level of institutionalization and consolidated political systems. The condition of vulnerability can be interpreted either as the expression of social disintegra- tion or as progression towards inore inclusive institutional arrangements. At the other end, exclusion is associated with the lack of basic citizenship rights and political regimes entrenched in patriinonial networks and corrupt circles that lack legitimacy. Active citizenship is an indicator of social-political integration. This presupposes an institutional framework that guarantees the attainment of established citizenship rights and the development of new rights. Vulner- ability is expressed by the lack of civil engagement and participation. The other side of this situation is indicated by the emergence of political elitisin and technocracy. These elements reflect social anomy and constraints to the attainment of formal citizenship. Finally, social-political exclusion is mani- fested by the lack of substantial citizenship, and this is indicated by lack or violation of rights, inequitable social and econonlic structures, patrimonial practices and corruption. The third column reflects on the general policy orientatio~lsthat would allow the movement along the different scenarios. For example, to impede the deterioration of the level of social integration, the maintenance of active citizenship requires the development of policies and programs aimed at diminishing observed deficits and strengthening civil engagement in policy making. The paradigmatic case is affirmative action and other policy instruments, which guarantee rights (substantial citizenship) to minorities. In the case of vulnerability, the privileged policy forrriula has to do with the strengthening of democratic institutions and civil society participation. Finally. to avoid or decrease social atid political exclusion, a clear regulatory framework defining citizenship rights and the mechanisms for lnonitoring them is required. Cultcirrrl Exclusion Cultural exclusion is related to the differential access of social and groups to resources/assets based on the unequal valuation of non-structural characteristics and symbolic goods.l7 Tn this context, culture involves socially constructed institutioils and goods as well as socially developed nianifestations of the senses (Held er al. 1999). The predominance of certain cultural patterns assumes the displacement of other symbolic and material goods, which in turn Inay generate social stratification patterns, hierarchies and inequalities among different social groups. Cultural integration is problematic due to the existence of rnultiethnic societies, strong social class divisions, and structural inequality. In such circumstances, the cultural uniformity, which tends to emerge in the process of nation building, results in the Imposition and some cultural pattern that blurs or attempts to suppress the cultural particularities of the non-hegemonic groups. This problem becomes even more acute by the process of globali- zation that nlakes difficult the ascription of specific characteristics to a particular community. 17. In a similar way. Figueroa, Altarni~.anoand Sullllont (199614) give two meanings to culrural exclusion: "... the marginalization otcrrtain social sectors that do not participate it1 the basrc codes to cornrnunicate and interact with the mainsrrearn cornrnu~~ity(lal~guage,alphahetiza- t i i ) ~and school education, adherence to erl~ic and religious values: and second, [he ~ drscri~ninatio~lagainst cel.rai11people considel.ed to he in an ~nfel-iorcategory and. as a result, suhjcct t o d~tt'eretltiatedand humiliating rr-ear~nentin social relations." The acceptance of different cultural patterns is at the core of cultural citizenship. The issue at stake is precisely the acknowledgment of diver- sity.'' While globalization has facilitated the consolidation of cultural patterns shared across different societies by dominant groups, at the sallle time it has facilitated the develop~nentand resurgence of local group identities. Steenbergen (1994) indicates that there is tension between the globalization of cultural patterns and the recognition of citizenship rights, including cultural rights. Just as globalization creates the conditions for the development of a "universal culture", at the same time provides legitimacy to the development and strengthening of social subjects at the local level (Robinson 1997). Cultural exclusion could be based on the specific characteristics of the subjects (social group) andlor on the differential access or control of symbolic goods by social groups. Regarding grouplsubject characteristics, the most obvious are based on gender differences, ethnic origin. age differences, and attributelpreference-based minority groups (such as relig- ious groups, homosexuals, victims of AIDS). All these characteristics are not defined by the group economic conditions, however they Inay have an inlpact on the group's social and economic status. 1n the case of gender. women are penalized based on the unequal distribution of productive and reproductive tasks within the fanlily and society. However, gender discrimination is experienced differently across socio-economic groups and cultures. For example, Barriga (1 998) points out that low-income women have even less options regarding the type and level of insertion in the labor market than high income wornen. In this context, understanding and stating those differences is essential for the definition of targeted policy instruments (Guzman 1998). At the same time. analyzing women's discrimination in Venezuela, Friedman ( 1998)has pointed out the existence of specific problems related to democratization processes. While women played a key role in the restoration of democratic institutions. their participation afterwards has been limited and, thus has been excluded fro111 the institutional policy decision-making process. However, this situation has created the conditions for the development of a multi-class women's movement that is addressing gender-based discrimination. In multiethnic societies, exclusion based on ethnicity could take place either when a minority powerful group is capable of iinposing a (dominant) cultural pattern to a vast majority, or when an homogeneous large group 18. One of' the central components ot' the strategy of iucorpo~.ationof the social analysis and [Ire participation In the Bank's operation 1;lhol.s (soc~alasseszlllent) is prec~selytht acknow- Iedgnie~rtand the inclusioli of the diversity of social conditions (Social Developnie~~t Department 1998). (independent from the degree of half-bred population), ignores the specific conditions of ethnic minorities, excluding them from all political, econolnic or social policy decision making. In Latin America both cases are fhund. Bolivia or Guatemala, are clear examples of the first type, while Chile or Argentina illustrate the latter. l9 Increasingly. indigenous groups are reas- serting their identity, claiming full recognition of their social and cultural specificity and political and econoinic rights (Cardenas 1998). Age-based exclusion cannot be ignored. Until recently, citizenship was associated with adulthood. Childhood and adolescence have normally been conceived as developmental stages that would prepare individual for the future exercise of citizen rights. Children and adolescents live in a type of pre-citizen condition that, by definition is insufficient. Ilowever, children are exposed to multiple forms of discrimination and social risks that represent violations of basic human rights (such as infant labor) as indicated by UNICEFannual reports.20Similarly, the youth experiences multiple fhrrns of social and political exc~usion.~'At the same time, the elderly (particularly the poor) while having formal citizenship status cannot exert substantial citizenship as they no longer participate in the labor marketz2 and are marginal to policy decision making. This exclusion has become more evident with the state withdrawal from key regulatory activities and social services, such as the pension systems. The last form of cultural exclusion based on the subjects' characteristics relates to cases where social groups are victims of social segregation based group preferences or attributes such as religious beliefs, physical limitations or socially penalized diseases (as AIDS) or by particular preferences (as in the case of the homosexual population), or by immigration. The case of immigrants is particularly relevant because of the increasing mobility of the labor force. Along with the rowing number of legal immigrants that inove to regional attraction poles?' there are scores of illegal immigrants that have 19. There are hetwecn 33 and 40 nill lion indigenous people in Latin Amcrica. wllo are dlstr~huted in 400 towns with language and cultural identity. 70% of-these tribes are co~nposedof less than 5000 people. Most of them (90%) ale located in Central America and the Andes: 6% i n the Amazon region and 4% in the Car~hheanand the Soutllern cone. In Guatemala and Bolivia. they co~np~.ise 607%of [he population. and in Peru and Ecuador, 40%. (Clirdenas 1998). 20. For an analysis al~outthe ~.elatronbetween i~~t:nncy,poverty and delinquency in Mexico. rete~' to Azaola (1994). Also refel. to Minujin, 1998. 2 1. Ahout thc possibilities for cultural integration of the youth in Chile, Ttr(l;i has ohserved in this volume tliat "there is a lack of referents and spaces that represent and comprise an ample youth ident~tyand. also, a strong transversal influence of mass ~nediaand consun~prion." 22. Refer. to M~nujin.1992 for Argentina: Renzi and Krujit (1997) tot. Nicaragua: Del Cid and Krujit (1997) for Hondur-as. and Sojo (1997) for Costa Rica. no access to formal citizenship benefits. There are i~lstitutionalbarriers that impede illegal immigrants to claim basic rights. However. at the same time. there are cultural barriers that prevent both legal and illegal immigrants froin exerting their rights. Unequal access to or control of symbolic goods represents another type cultural exclusion. S y ~ ~ ~ b ogoods encompass the dominant discourse, l i c information and knowledge, as well as the infrastructure required for their production, dissemination, and adoption. At the national level. differential access to the educational system is a key mechanism of social and cult~~rr\l exclusion as high-inco~negroups have access to better quality private education and consolidate a knowledge base. Similarly. control over the Inass media allows the dissemination of certain type of information, shapes public discourse and generates cultural stereotypes that impede eclual participation of all social groups. For example. gender biases in the educatio~lalsystem in the past contributed to keep wolnen performi~~gonly certain functions as well as legitimized that labor division by generating a public discourse (and knowledge) that supported such difkrenccs. At the same time, the globalization process. associated with the expan- sion of global communications (based on information techlloloyy and teleco~mmunications). has allowed the incorporation of Latin Amcl-ica~i societies to the n nod el-n world". No doubt the inforn~ationera has createcl a virtual reality that integrates nlinority groups in every country. Television, for instance, has propitiated the circulation of local news from every counlry in the region. In the same way, access to Internet offers unlimited possihili- ties to access goods, services and i~lformatiou.However. while this process has increased access to information, most of the population has no control over the type of information they receive, rhe public discourse that is disseminated or the knowledge that is generated. The universe of the global information and knowledge is a prerogative of those tliar possess the know how, control the hardware, and manage the co~nmu~iicationcodes. 23. Refer to cast ill;^ (1992)tor 1nfol.rnalion about the situatioll of Celilral Alne~-ica~l11llmi~rant5 In Mexico. FOI-i ~ ~ f o ~ . m ; iahout~ ~the situatioll trf Nicaragua11 i~nn~iyl.arltsto Costa l i ~ c ; ~'elcr t i o ~ . to Morales a l ~ dCastro (1999). Moralzs and C~.ansl~awI Y Y X ) ( presellt il~tc.l.extin: \t~1~1y about the PI-oblemat~csituation o t aclolesce~~ti ~ n l l i ~ g ~uromrn fronl Nicirl-agu;~to C t ~ a a n t Ric~i(w111cl1rr~cludrsthree aspects of incqual~tyi. CULTURAL INTEGRATION MATRIX -- Access to Symbolic Goods Education Subjccts!Group characteristics Gender -4 . I Degrees of social integration Eth~licity Inclusion-Vulnerahility-Exclusion Age Specific attributes (p.e.sexual handicapped) EXCLUSION AND PUBLIC POLICIES Tackling exclusion requires public policy and civil society engagement. The recognition and protection of citizenship rights appear as the starting point for the achievement of progressive social integration levels. That function is primarily a state responsibility. However, the development of social inclusive policies requires civil society participation to identify deficits and to monitor tlie attainment of rights. Before discussing tlie state capacity and the role of civil society in developing socially inclusive policies, it is necessary to briefly address the question of the defense of citizenship rights, which is a rather old concern in the region due to the long history of political instability and arbitrariness. Initially, the only mechanisms were at the Interamerican (niultilateral) level (Ayala Lasso 1998 and Ayala Corao 1998).24More recently. national government that have adopted specific citizens' defense mechanisms such as the Ombudsman. Garcia Laguardia (1 998:92) considers that in Latin America the figure of the Ombudsrnan has sorne singular characteristics compared with the European model. In addition to the traditional duty uf 24. Jose Ayala Lasso (1998:16). Chancellor for Ecuador. has noted that the evolution of declarations oriented towards the protect1011 of rights illLatin Aniel.ica started from the granting of guarantee.; to fore~gnersand then i~ continued with "mattersofnatinnality.asylu~n, peace, and women rigl~ts." lawful control of the State's administrative action. the Ombudsman in Latin America also has an explicit and priority role in the defense of human rights and competence to carry cases to the judiciary. These characteristics are essential for the establishnlent of a transparent self-regulated mechanism. The relationship between public policy, state capacity and civil society participation refers to good governance. Good governance is the result of a permanent negotiation between the state and civil society in order to ensure proper representation of all social actors in policy making and transparency in the administration of the programs the state implement to attend the demands of the people. This implies a continuous process of administering demands and conflict of interests between various social groups, ensuring that citizenship rights are observed. Contrarily. bad governance occurs when there is a systematic failure to engage civil society and to take into consideration citizenship rights. To surn-up, governance involves a perma- nent process of redefinition of the threshold of citizenship rights and the role of government and civil society in attaining and guaranteeing those rights in changing social, economic and political contexts. Regarding the state role, as Grindell (1996)correctly observed, the focus must be on its changing capacities. A "competent" State can establish and perform economic, technical, administrative. and political functions. Insti- tutional capacity involves the ability to regulate political and economic societal exchanges based on a series of rules. which are known and understood. Technical capacity refers to the ability to define and execute appropriate sector policies. Administrative capacity is the efficient admini- stration of social and economic services and infrastructure required to provide state services. Political capacity refers to the management of social participation and representation, social demands, conflict resolution and public accountability. In synthesis, good g~vernance.~' The economic reforms that have taken place over the last decade have introduced distortions in the state capacity to perform all previously dis- cussed function. However, more important than the state's wirlidrawal fro111 certain functions performed in the past has been the lost of legitinlacy and capacity to guarantee citizenship rights. This situation has favored the emergence of growing conflicts regarding the definition of institutional and political rules and the necessary integration of the various realms of state action. As indicated before, the technical competency of the state has been yielded to technocrats with little accountability to elected representatives and civil society in general. At the same lime, the "privatization" of state functions is presented as the strengthening of civil society while in fact 25. For intol.matio11about the he elation ship between cleveloprne~~tand Good G o v e l - ~ ~ ~ l ~letcr~ r . e l to Wo1.1~1Bank, 1992. represents the deregulation of the state responsibility of guaranteeing citizenship rights. With respect to civil society, its main function corlsists in expanding the threshold of citizenship and representing before the state the growing denlarids of social groups that do not have access to the established political channels (Touraine 1996). For Marshall, the political element of citizenship refers to the right to participate either as an elected representative or as a member of the electorate in the exercise of state power. However, in the current situation, the citizens' capacity to exercise this power is limited because of the decreasing power that the legislative powers have in settling technical sector and macroeconomic policies vis-a-vis the dominant role that technocrats and economic interests (national and transnational) have in policy making. Related to the above, the fiscal crisis faced by most Latin American countries has forced austerity policies that, in turn, have led to the transfer of former state responsibilities to the private sector. This has contributed to decrease delivery costs and to increase the net transfer to the targeted population. However, at the same time, it has forced to focus social services primarily 011the extreme poor, overlooking other vul~ierablegroups that have been placed at greater risk of social exclusion. Nevertheless, the increasing participation of the private sector (and civil society organizations) in the implementation of social policies provides opportunities for the development of new policy instruments to curve social exclusion. For example, Paz and Muguertegui (1998) point out that devel- opment and implementation of gender-inclusive social policies in Bolivia came about as the result of the collaboration between womeri NGO and state agencies, which culminated in the definition of an institutional framework for addressing gender issues in state policy and the establishment of a Subsecretariat of Gender Affairs. For this collaboration between state and civil society to be effective, the definition and implenientation of socially incllrsive public policies requires a clear understanding of the processes that generate social exclusion and inclusion. To this end, in the first place is essential to have good indicators of the phenomena and a measurement system that would allow monitoring the impact of diverse policy instruments, the evolution of the indicators and the perception regarding the effectiveness of the measures by the people. For example, that women only represent about 12% percent of all elected representatives in Latin America indicates a clear deficit in the inclusion of women. particularly regarding their political rights. Similarly, the high ratio of presidential decrees in relation to bills approved by congress indicates there are iniportant transparency and political participation issues that need to be addressed for the establishment of accountable policy making proce- dures. Finally, the development of socially inclusive public policy requires clear participatory mechanisms. Social exclusio~lis not a uniform phenome- non. 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"Especificidad versus Representatividad: Enfoques Metodologicos en el Estudio de la Migracibn Mexicana hacia Estados Unidos. " In Estudios Demograficos y Urbano.~.40199: 75-116. BASIC RIGHTS AS A REFERENCE FOR EXPLAINING THE PARADIGM OF CITIZENSHIP AND DEFINING THE BOUNDARIESOF SOCIAL EXCLUSION HYPOTHESISAND THEORETICAL AND PRACTICALPROBLEMSOF THE PROPOSAL This work attempts to explain the development of civil and political rights as well as economic, social, and cultural rights over the past ten years by analyzing the normative formation of these legal rights and the existing procedures by which citizens can demand their right to adjudication. The purpose is to show the relationship between determined levels of confirma- tion of these rights and the concept of citizenship. The hypothesis proposes the existence of a set of civil, political. economic, social and cultural rights (setting and defining ~ninirnumsta~idards I . This paper is a summary of two technical and conceptual studies. It builds upon solne of the results of a project called "The Equality ot'Modern Times," in which the author participated. under the di~ectionof Dr. Antonio A. Cancado TI-~ndade,as part of a group of speciiilists designated hy the Inter-Arnel.ican Institute of Human Rights and the Econo~n~cCommission for Latin America, to conduct a study on tile devclop~nentof econolnic, social and cuI(ura1 rights in Latin America. It also restates infor~nationfrom I-esrarchcompleted by the Ce~iter tor Strategic Studies ill1997 and 1998 on the topic of legal rights and adjudication by A. Torl.ealh;~Navas and tht author of this paper within the context of the PI-eject o n State Relc~r~n and Dzccntralization. In the last version, we thank Va~lessaRctana. a researcher at the Cc11ter for Strategic Studies, for her significant contributions. This paper also restates parts of the theories developed in both o f the above-mentioned papers. Therefore. it is necessary to ;i\e credit where it is due. This study also pr-oposes certain tlieoret~caland practical elements used to explain the relationsh~pbetween fact indexes, similarity indexes and legal processes, as compulsory bases for the advancement of econolnic. social and cultural rights and the development of the definition ol'citizenship In the region. of confirmation) as a parameter for defining the question of citizenship. This set of nlinimum indexes helps establish a standard for measuring the effectiveness of basic citizen's rights, which serves as the basis for defining the terms: social inclusion and social exclusion. The verification arid exercise of this set of basic rights or human rights, which will be examined in the following pages, presents some difficulties and doubts about concepts and facts within the process of classifying possible transgressions as well as the legal scope they cover. These difficulties stem fro111the existing differences between civil and political rights, on one hand, and economic, social and cultural ones, on the other. According to the theory of I~umanrights, which has been examined thoroughly, the aforementioned rights i~llplythat the state has the obligation of izot acting, whereas the economic, social and cultural rights imply the opposite: the state, and society as a whole, has the obligation of acting. Therefore, both groups of rights ilaturally possess their own distinct sets of similarities. Civil and political rights protect a state. a situation, and a whole concept, the verification and exercise of which does not allow for li~nitsor doubts. For example,freedom of assernbly rnusr be cor~lplete,or there is no freedom at all. The same is true for thefreedom of'expressioizand political liberty. There is a similarity in the sense that the judicial norm (the article in the constitution which protects the freedom of speech, for example) does not allow any doubt regarding the content or the scope it covers or the actions that would be considered violations of the right. This is not true of economic, cultural and social rights, because their essential characteristics are often mistaken, elusive. and indeterminate. In the case of the right to education, if we agree that participating in the educational process as a student is the manner in which that right isexercised, the boundary by which the right is protected is not well defined. This could imply elemelltary school, secondary school, or a university education - depending on the context or the economic possibilities of each country. Historically, this has been the means of measuring social evolution in many developed or developing societies during the last century. If, at the end of the nineteenth century, the "educational frontier" in rnany countries was elelneiltary school, at the beginning of the twenty-first century the boundary is secoridary school, or, in some countries, a university education. These are "changing frontiers" that are relative to the historical process of each country and their individual capacities, their socio-economic evolution, and their participation, or lack thereof, in the development process of the new ecorlomic world order. For example, the "educational frontier" in Sweden, at present, is very different from that of Haiti or Paraguay. These frontiers are closely related to the social advantages that these rights or benefits generate within each specific society. This implies an almost obligatory relativism of these boundaries that verifies the extent to which people can exercise their rights and operate under prescribed norms in demanding that their rights be respected and exercised. The objective of this previous digression is to methodologically point out the strengths and weaknesses of the theory of human rights (e.g. civil and political, econon~ic,social and cultural) as an instrument for setting frontiers or boundaries for the phenomenon of social exclusion. These limitations are related tothe different aspects or profiles that define the values of citizenship. Citizenship can be defined as the ability to enjoy a set of rights and' values that include the individual's integration and participation in society, or it can also be defined as a sense of belonging to a community. Thus, the human rights theory seems to have developed a differentiated level in relation to the main profiles that define citizenship. There is the area of freedom (civil and political rights), the area of equality or material well-be- ing, and the option of exchange (economic, social and cultural rights). The international colnmunity has developed a very well defined norm for boundaries of the protection of civil and political rights, even taking into account legal rights. However, there are no clear guidelines defining economic, social and cultural rights. The existing uncertainty about the definition of the boundaries of these rights constitutes a limitation that hinders the right to demand.justice as well as the social right to an education. housing, health, and food. HUMANRIGHTS (OR FUNDAMENTALCITIZEN'S RIGHTS)AS A STANDARD FOR THEDEFINITION OF CITIZENSHIP Human rights are a constantly changing notion. The dehate regarding the definition and concept of human rights has gone through an evolution characterized by endless defining and redefining of concepts. However, three aspects of human rights have remained constant in the analysis and are generally considered to be essential to the concept: human integrity, freedom and equality. The systems containing specific rights and responsibilities for the different states have developed a set of legal productions on the constitutional, administrative, civil and family, rilercantile and corporate. a process which has strengthened the ways to protect the citizen. In general terms, the progress made in this area has been verified on the level of civil and political rights. The great ideological tradition of the French Constitution and its Civil Code was borne from the ideology of political reform during the (Illustration/Post-Revolution)period. It should be seen as an ideological premise of a historical period that evolved from the republican reforin of the eighteenth century and marked the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. For this reason, the traditional vision of human rights has been limited in dimension to civil and political rights. Included in this perspective are the following: the right to life, liberty and security; the right to be free of discrimination based on ethnicity, color, gender, language, religion, social class or political opinion; the right to vote; the right to free speech, and freedom of the press; the right to not suffer arbitrary invasion of privacy, family or home; and legal rights such as the right to due process and the presumption of innocence until guilt can be proven. Aspects related to the economic and social dignity of the hurnan being have been viewed as an appendage and, consequently, show very little development. While no distinction should be made between civil and political rights, on one hand, and economic, social, and cultural rights, on the other hand, the forrner are considered part of the classic concept of huinan rights, while the latter are mainly associated with doctrinal and norillative developme~itswhich only recently gained importance at the beginning of this century. CIVIL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS (THE DIMENSION OF FREEDOM A STANDARD FOR THE AS DEFINITION CITIZENSHIP) OF The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the General Asserrlbly of the United Nations in 1948. is the most important document related to the subject of Human Rights. Although it lacks legal character, since it's not a treaty, it has great moral and political value.2 2. Miximo Paclieco says that despite limitations and impertections in the Universal Human Rights Deolat.ation, it has had a gl-rat influence. Its pri~iciplesare ci~nsideredideals tliat all nations should try to attain. In many countries these rights are not exercised, but that does not nrean tliat the Ueclar.ation is not valid. See "Los Derechos Fundamentales de la Persolla Humans" in Estudios Rrisicos de Derechos Hu~nunos11, San Josi., Inter American Human Rights Institute, 1995. p. 90. Htctor Gross Espiell states that it must h e considered similar to an expression ol' international custom or as an i~ite~.pretationof the Chart supported by the iiliernational corn~nunityor as an expression of general PI-inciplesthat, because of their fundamental nature, has these cliaractcristics. While the Declaration was being drafted, the decision was made to create various texts of a conventional nature that would imply a legal obligation to respect human rights and to create international mechanisms for the promo- tion and protectio~lof these rights. Because of the time lapse between the Declaration of 1948 and the two Pacts -one about Civil and Political Rights. and the other one about Economic, Social and Cultural Rights -both written in 1966, the concept of the subject matter to be addressed in these agreements also evolved. The result, a product of this process of evolution. was two texts containing rights that were originally excluded from the Declaration, such as the free will of nations, which is included in both Conventions. In the last stage of preparing the two Pacts, it was decided to include an Optional Protocol to the Civil and Political Rights Agreement, the main innovation of which was tlie inclusio~lof an individual communication mechanis~nfor reporting human rights violations." Although both agreements are important to the field of human rights and have been approved by states of diverse regions and political, ideological and social systems, the number of participating states is very low. The systern of implementin and controlling the Pact on Civil and Political Rights F has not been efficient. Even though there are differences between the civil and political rights and the economic social and cultural ones,5 it should not be forgotten that these are just formal categories. since human rights are integral, interdependent and indivisible. This has been stipulated in nulner- 3. "Tile syatelll for applying tile Civil and Polltical Kights agreen~e~~tdepeclda oil tlie ohlig;~tor.y prrse~itationof reports to tlre H u ~ n aRights Conl~nissio~l.wllicll wa, estahli~l~edin tllc P;IL~ ~ l (Articles, 18-45). Througll a11~ndepende~ltdrclal-'~tio~io f rat~ficalioilor.;~dhc'sioilto tllc P~ICL. states will acknowledge tile Corrlrniss~oil'sconlpetrlice to act wl~cilevei~tllerc is a i'iolatio~l of the Human Rights Agrre~l~rnt.Eacll atate uill report ;III viol;ttiorra of tile .4gr-cc11ic11t (i\rticles 41-42). I n re1;rtion to t l ~ eparticipatiiig states, tile Co~ilnlissio~lwill also exercrse the function o f an Optional Protocol tllroilgh which it will receive vio1;ltion report.; a ~ i dclecidc what type o f cornrnun~catioiiwill be used ti) report vio1;ltioiis o f the Agrernle~~t.(.41.1iclc 1-6. o f tile Protocol). The coexistence of va~iousiiltrrnatiorlal. universal ai~clI.K~IOII;II procedures regarding tliesr corn~nuuicationslias led to conlplicated i~lterprctatio~~pl-i)lilem~ w l ~ i chave been remedied only in recelit years hy the international practlce in ;rpplyi~igtllrse l ~ rights." Gross Espiell (IItctor). Op. <.it. pp. 35-36. 4. Contentious state intrrests foresee11in the Pact 011tlir Civil ;and Polltical R~ghts(Article 1 1 ) -only sixteen states have recognized the authority of the Co~rrmiscionto act in tl~e~caes e -has not worked, and it has not heen applied in other urliversal and 1.epiona1~II~II-UI~I~~ILS as is tlrr casc o f the International C o n v e ~ ~ t ~ o no nEliir~illati~~pAll Forms of Racial Disc~.i~ui~iatii)i~ (Article I I ) and tht: American Conveutiol~on Human Rights (A~ticle45). There ~creso~rlc exceptions resulting from the ir~~l>le~rirntatio~~system established by tlte ISuropcan ot the Co~nlnission(AI-ticle 23). Gross Espiell (Hector). Op. cit. p. 37. 5. To each classification, a set of tli~rdgeneration r.iglits. 01.solidai-ity riglits. lias bee11;udded to cover items such as tlie right to peace, the r~ghtto develop~rientand the 1.iglit to a safe and I~ealtliyenvironment. ous international and regional texts on the ~ u b j e c tBecause of the nature . ~ of the subject matter, it is not acceptable to categorize human rights hierarchically. Civil and political rights, considered first generation rights, are much Inore consolidated in relation to the protection and definition of their content.7 It is affirmed that these rights generally imply a necessary abstention on the part of the state, and therefore they require passive action. It cannot be stated independently that the State ~iiustrefrain from actioii. It should also be understood that it is the State's "task to guarantee an e~lvironmentof public order in which these rights can be fully and freely exercised without discrimination, and it should also establish and maintain conditions in which order - needed to exercise freedom - really and effectively exists." Therefore, the principal responsibility of the state is to prevent the violation or injury, either by omission or by action, of civil and political rights and by either a governmental agency or representative or any other person responsible for governmental functions or administrative duties. There is an internatiorral regime that protects civil and political rights providing that all other internal defense resources have been exhausted, and after it has been proven that the State has in effect violated the rights of the citizen. Each one of the Human Rights Agreements stipulates different meclia- nisins for implementing the protection of rights. In the case of the Civil and Political Rights Agreement, the Optional Protocol has been added to include procedures enabling individual citizens to present lawsuits in the event that their rights have been violated. The International Agreement on Civil and Political Rights has been drafted with greater legal precision and includes some rights that are not covered by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. For example, it includes the protection of ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities, along with other members of their community, and the right of mirlorities to enjoy their own culture, practice their religion, and use their own language. Other relevant rights making this text innovative, since they are not mentioned within the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, include: protection from incarceration due to inability to fulfill a 6. IIkctcl~Gross Esp~elldetails that the Ilolistic notion of Iiurnan ~.iglits"is implicit in the Chart of the Unrted Nations. is ~.estatcdand classified in the Universal Declaration ot'Human Rights ot' 1948. and is detinitely corifir~nedby the Unikersal Human Rights Agreerne~ltswhich wn-e approved hy the General Asselnbly in 1966 and have beer1 in effect since 1975. as well as in the Tehran Proclamation of 1968, and the General Asse~nhlyResolution. adopted on Uecernbel. 16. 1977. on the crite1.1aused to i~npl.ovethe process of e~ljoyingllu~nanrigllts." 0,).(.it.p. 325. 7. For. Instance, in the Anle1.1can~rcgionalarena. the American Co~iventionprofusely declares civ~land political rights, hut not economic, social and cultural rights. contractual obligation; the right of prisoners to receive humane treatment and respect based on their inherent condition as human beings; the right of children to have a nationality and to be protected as minors. Notwithstand- ing, the Universal Declaration does include some important rights that are not included in the Agreement. These include the right to own property, the right to seek and be granted asylum. and the right to have a nationality in general terms. The right to own property was not included in the Agreement because of ideological and political differences between the countries represented in the United Nations. They were not able to agree 011 the definition or the scope this right would entail. In the Americas, civil and political rights protected regionally are, essentially, those covered by the following texts: The Reformed Charter of Organization of American States (OM), the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man and the American Convention on Human Rights. The three documents are related, however, it should be noted that the Declaration contains civil and political rights as well as economic, social and cultural rights, arid it is the document with the greatest enu~nerationof rights. The American Convention fundamentally stipulates civil and political rights. The Reformed Charter, although it establishes few concrete rights. refers to "general economic, social, and cultural norms" which, it can be said, implies the existence of rights in these areas. The source for validating this is the American Declaration of Human Rights (Buergenthal, Norris and Shelton, 1998). This classic concept has been questioned. It is said to be very limited in scope, since human rights requires more multidimensional and holistic approach. In effect, economic, social and cultural rights (ESC@ are devel- oped within the framework of civil and political rights which include the right of every human being to have an adequate standard of living, to be educated, to have work, and to receive equal compensation for equal work performed, and the right minorities to enjoy their on111culture, religion and language. Minorities and those social groups that are at a disadvantage, such as women, children, and indigenous peoples, are gradually acquiring renewed importance. This evolution has been heightened by the celebration of three forums: the World Summit on Social Development, held in Copenhagen in March, 1995; the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat 11). held in Ista~ibulin 1996; and the World Summit 011 Nutrition, held in Rome in November, 1996.These events clearly emphasize the importance of economic, social and cultural rights. THEECONOMIC, SOCIALAND CULTURAL RIGHTS AS HUMANRIGHTS (THE DIMENSION OF EQUALITY IN THE CITIZENSHIPPARADIGM) The correlation between civil and political rights and economic, social and cultural rights (ESCQ, as has been previously noted, does not allow for an easy comparative methodology from the perspective of the creation of norms and their protection. In addition to the substantial difference in emphasis placed on the classic civil rights in comparison to EsCR there is also a fundamental difference regarding the perceived role of the State. Civil rights, in order to be exercised, regularly demand non-interference on the part of the State, while ESCR frequently demand action on the part of the State for their development and protection. Therefore, we cannot categori- cally affirm that, in order to enjoy civil and political rights, only the passive role of abstention is desired from the State. Nor can it be said that ESCR explicitly require solely active measures on the part of the State. Although there is some truth in the previous statement, a few things must be specified. For example, in some aspects of the right to receive an education, which constitutes a so-called social right, inhibition on the part of the state is highly convenient, particularly when there is a desire to preserve its ideological liberty. This also occurs in the case of cultural rights which were generally imposed by a cultural penetration process carried out by centralized governments with no respect for the particular ethnic, cultural, religious and ideological characteristics of many nations. There are instances during which the participation of the state is convenient and necessary for the development of civil and political rights. A Iexample call ~ be found in the election process, which needs to be organized and financed by the State so the process will effectively take place. This activity should never involve trying to influence citizens ideologically, but instead the State should offer the infrastructure and resources to permit electoral competition and equality, so that citizens can participate freely in elections without ideological interference. In synthesis, the specific nature of each right, in essence, commands a different type of role from the State. On the other hand, there is the constant problem of legal enforcement of ESCR. Undeniably, it is necessary to overcome a series of ideological problems regarding the function of the State and society, particularly in relation to the objectives of redistribution of wealth and the search for social equality and human dignity. Dedication to this level essentially means that a serious commitment should be made to attaining social integration, solidarity and equality, including the always-conflicting debate concerning distribution of income. Economic, social, and cultural rights are intended to foster the well being of the rnost vulnerable groups, such as the economically disadvantaged, so the decision to promote these rights lies within the responsibility of the economic and social policies of the govern- ments. One problem is that the implementation of these rights relies heavily on the economic prospects and material resources of each state. This is believed to be the reason that, in many situations, the concept of progres- sively applying these rights implies not demanding them, but instead they autoinatically should be included gradually within the policies of the states.' According to the demands put forth in international instruments written on to this topic during the last decades, the state should guarantee a minimum threshold for ESCR, independent of the level of economic development. On the other hand, basic human rights have been constituted at a regional and national level, as an instrument for legitimizing the judicial organization of Western democracies. Almost every single constitution has at least a chapter or a set of norms making reference to ESCRas a substantial component of the rights of citizens.' I11 some cases, there are problems of uncertainty not only in classifica- tion, but also in the instruments of protection. Trade union rights and propriety rights are constantly cited for the difficulty of classifying both. In the European system, the right to have an education is in the First Protocol of the European Co~nn~itteeabout Human Rights and not in the European Social Charter. Notwithstanding, this problem clearly calls for urgent creative measures that will formulate more precise methods to allow the consolidation of ESCR In light of the integrity of the human rights issue, a 8. "The ESCR have heen cornpared to civil and political rights hecause of certain characteristics that seen1 to differentiate them. Civil and political rights are considered immediately legally demandable. The state cannot condition tl~eirtilnc of effectiveness o n the lack of resources. Consequently, the right to life. to respect the personal integrity of the human being. to f~eedom.among others, should he respected and guaranteed completely." Rodriguez Pinzhn (Dieyo), Martin (Claudia), Ojea Quintana (Tomis), Lu Dirr1etlsi6rr Olternacionuf tlr 10s Dercc.11o.s H~ot~clnos.Guias puru h Aplicuc,itjn de Norrnu~Internucionc~lesen el Drrecho Ir~trrr~o. and American Ilniversity. Washington, D C, 1999, p. 340. Notwithstanding, as IDB i t was noted previously. this statement is not true at all times since there are EsCR that arc im~nediatelyenti)rceahle. 9. "Tl~ebasic Iiu~nanrights, that Max Weber corite~nptuouslyranked as 'rational fanat~sm'are a key colnponent in thejudicial orders of the western democrac~eseven if their episte~nological value is not very clearly stated. They are actually becoming gradually strengthened. They are becoming the central pillars on which social and political halance is based. They maintain an awareness of the difference between civil society and the technocratic superstructure of power and keep the difference between what is public life and what is private life distinctly clear. concepts borne from the best lihe~.altradition." Rohles Mol.clion (GI-egol-io),Los DrrrtJlos F~irrdanzet1tu1e.ve t ~la Comltni~lolndEuropra, Madrid, Editorial Ceura. 1988, p. I 1. decline in imple~llentationof ESCRdirectly deteriorates tlie development of the civil and political rights. This situation definitely threatens the basic principles of the Economic, Social, and Cultural International Agreement.lo Then, there is the problem of whether or not it's possible to adjudicate these rights. The responsibilities assumed by States and by the international community in the international docunlents regarding these rights must be implemented ingood faith by each country. Even if this principle is applied to all present-day human rights systems, there are certain drawbacks for the effective application of the ESCq especially the fact that the existence of these rights is ignored and excluded by many. Another drawback is that clarifying the scope, content and duties of these rights is a slow and difficult process. The basic principles that made the United Nations General Assem- bly approve two different agreements are the saine ones used to justify the separation of these rights - civil and political rights and ESCR - as two different "categories" of rights. During the approval of these agreements, it was considered that the civil and political rights were immediate and absolute rights, whereas the ESCRdependedon prograinming and should be strength- ened gradually. Consequently. their identity as rights was justifiably clues- tio~led. Also during that time, a similar presumptio~lwas pondered in relation to the issue of the adjudication of these rights." It was determined that civil and political rights could be adjudicated, since they were easily applied in courts or by other judicial entities, whileEsCR had a inore political nature. 10. In I996 the 30tll a~luivrrsaryof the adoptroll of the Agreelnent ;und the 70tll an~liverh~ry of when it wcnt illto was celebrated. One Ilu~~dr.edand thirty-five States part~cipated ill llle ~xocessof writing and adopting the Agree~uent.Refer to tlle Plot1 for I~~il)ror.i~/grl~r, Irt~~)lrttrrtir~itio~z[lie Ituertrotiot~crlAgrc,cltt/etrf0 (?f 1 1E(.o~lot~~ic.. Social nr~tlC~illrirtrlI~',qlrl.\. United Nations High Conl~nissionon Hunlan Rights ;und llle Com~nitteeon E c o ~ ~ ~ ) ~Social. n i c a~ldCultural Rigllts, at I~ttp:ilwww.u~~hchr.ch. 1 1 . This is a general cl:luse added to article 26 of the V~ennaColive~ltio~l tlie Kigl~ts01' tl~e 011 C ~ t ~ z e n1969. . 12. "The ei'frctivencss of the international protection of the ESCR are related lo two hasic di~neusions:The international surveillar~ceand super vision of the inlplenlentatioil of tllc EscR in general, and the applicatiol~of'nol-nls that recognize theye ~rigllrsin specific cases. The first ones are generally related to the legisl;~tiveand budgetary policies ot the states. i111dthe second is related to the enforceability issue of eel-rain specif~cESCR i l l courts ofjuhtice or any other type of entity related to fightirig for rights." Rodl-iguez Pinz6n (Diego). Mutin (Claudia), Ojea Quintana. (Toinis). O/I. cir. p. 357. The el~li~rceahilityIssue - under.;tood as the possibility to report in f~.ontof a judge or justlce system trihunal to adhere t o at lei~st solne of the obligation staled as the object ofthe law - prohlemat~cin the case o f rlle ESCR IS due ttr the concept of progrersivt. develop~nc~ltdiscussed. Today it is mow gener:~lly recognized that some of thcsc rights a[-e i~l~rllediately applicable. for ex;~mple,unloll ~iglltc are oftliis naturr, as is equal remuner.atlon for equal work. and the right to free and lriandatory prinlary education. In particular, aer Canqado T~indade(1998: 578). Additionally, it was agreed that civil and political rights were considered "free" and did not require any cost. It was further assumed that their essential content was related to the duty of the State to not interfere with the integrity and freedom of the citizen. On the contrary, concerning the ESCR its implementation was ranked as onerous. it is understood that the State should provide the social safety of the citizen, The arguments concentrated on the problem related to the different obligations the state has that result from the two sets of rights. As was expected, those states that did not want to take into account the responsibility of the obligations derived by the ESCR would at least commit to ratifying an instrument that only contained the civil and political rights. Notwithstanding, the predictions were wrong because almost all the coun- tries that have signed the Civil and Political Agreement have also adopted the Econon~ic,Social and Cultural Agreement. Even though ESCR are recognized in many international agreements on human rights, it is necessary at the level of the United Nations to emphasize other documents relevant to this subject, such as the International Conven- tion on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the Conven- tion on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the Convention on the Rights of Children. At the regioiial level, tlie American Declaration of Rights and Duties of Man was enacted at tlie Ninth American International Conference in Bogota, in 1948. The Additional Protocol to the American Convention on Matters of Economic, Social and Cultural ~ i ~ h t was s ' ~approved in San Salvador at the XVIlI General Assembly of the Organization of American States on November 17. 1988 ("Protocol San Salvador"). These instruments clearly indicated that the region was becoming aware of the importance of ESCK l4 13. The principles and norrns of the regional systerrl of the PI-otectionof human ~riglltsis tound in the Amel-ican Declaration of Rights and Duties of Me11in the o ~ Charter - tlie haais of s the system both Protocols (the additional protocol concerning matters of Economic. Social. and Cultural Rights in 1988and [heP~.otocolrelaled to the Abolition of the Capital Pu~~islirnent iri 1990), and the protection sectors of the Co~~ventions(tlic Inter American Co~iventionto PI-eventand Penalize Torture In 1985, and the Inter American Convent~onahout People Missing by t'orct in 1994, and the Inter An~ericanConvention to Prevent. Peni~lize;~nd Eradicate Violence against Women of 1994). 14. The American Declaration of Human Rights established in its tol.eword tliar "tile plincipal objective is the protection of the basic human ~.iglitsand rhr crearron of circun~xtancesrh;it allow for the spir~tualand material progress:" The Ileclaratio~~has also progl-esively incorporated human rights in general. In nluch the same way. the articles 11. 12. 13. of the P~.otocolof San Salvador guarantees tile right to Iiealth. a safe envirorln~znt,nutrition and education. Refer to Rodriguez Pinzbn (Diego). Martin (Claudia~,Ojea Quintana (To~nis). 011.(.it. p. 342. Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights - which have been directly promoted in recent years by the international documents on human rights - coincide, in general, with public policies on social investment matters within the so-called Welfare State. In some of these cases, the problem lies in vague terminology, with terms like "the right to a dignified quality of life," or terms of a normative order, being used to define the scope of legal rights, as mentioned previously. The right to a dignified qualit)! of life. Basically, there are three international human rights documents that guarantee the right to health and an adequate level of life.'' While the meaning of an "adequate level of life" has not been precisely defined, Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights includes a valuable approxinlate meaning. This instrument indicates that having a dignified level of life means to havefood, clothing, housing, ~nedicalattention, and the necessary social senlices. The Conven- tion on the Rights of Children includes an integrated explanation about what a quality life entails. Without a doubt, human beings require fulfillment of more than just the basic needs to attain a satisfactory way of life. This involves a cultural value that cannot be precisely specified, since it depends upon the society of which an individual is a part. In material terms, an appropriate standard of living has been classified or explained as one that is above the poverty line. The essential components of this right include access to sufficient nutrition -probably the component considered most important -alongwith basicmedical attentionandanadequatecontrol andprevention of diseases. Adequate housing has been defined as that which offers adequate privacy, space, safety, lighting, ventilation, infrastructure, and location in relation to the work place and basic needs. In recent forums, it has been noted that there is a huge gap between the rights regarding housing and the actual conditions present in real life situations. Even in developed regions such as Europe, at least 5 million people are presently without housing, and housing policies do not meet the needs of the people that require assistance. Yet, there are many documents regarding human rights that include the right to adequate housing. l6 15. It is (i) the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, arricle 25(1) that proposes that every human being has tl~cright to an adequate standard of living, and should have access to health and the well being ol'the person and the family. (ii) the International Econo~nic,Social and Cultural Rights Agl-eement. In which article I I estahlishes that he Participating States recognize the right to have an adequate standard of living for the every human being and for the family. And (iii) the Convention for the Rights of Children. in which in article 27, consecl.ates the right that every child has to an adequate standard of living for his 01.her physical, spiritual. moral and social development. 16. Among them is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights -article 25(1), the International There are two groups of rights to which health is usually attributed. First, the protection of health could legitimately imply the limitation of other human rights, and the right to receive health services creates more rights for the citizen and correlative obligations for the government. Thus, many limitations on other rights have been generated due to the tradition of public health, but investigation of whether or not the right to health is adequately utilized is a relatively new field. Because the international community has acknowledged that provision of health programs is a right for every citizen, does not mean that every citizen will have the opportunity to be healthy. Neither the governments nor the nations can ensure a specific situation of health, since that depends on the influence of the enviromlent and the genetics of the individuals. Thus, there are various reasons why the right to health is not fully acknowledged by the international community. First, economically speak- ing. because it implies a considerable investment by the governments to guarantee public health services for all the citizens. The second reason is that the opportunity to acquire health services is closely linked to other factors (outside the area of health care), which either weaken or strengthen this right. According to the World Health Organization, those factors include other aspects of development of the society, since in some cases it could be more convenient for individuals to have access to jobs, income, housing, nutrition, drinking water to establish the well - being of the people. (Tomasevsky 1992). The relationship between the right of ownership and economic and social rights is certainly polemic. There must be a redistribution of wealth and access to resources if there is to be an effective developlnent of social rights. Among these rights is the right of ownership, which compliments and protects social rights. I11the classic concept, the right to ownership is limited to protecting the institution of private ownership from arbitrary intervention. That the right to property, in a general sense, constitutes a link to an adequate quality of life for the individual does not conflict with social and economic rights. Article 17 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that every human being has the right to have private property individually or in association with others. Notwithstanding, when the International Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Agreement and the Civil and Political Rights Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrim~nation- article S(e)(iii), the Convention on the Rights of'the Child - article 27. the Convention on the Elimination of Disc~i~ninationAgainst Women-article 14(2). tlie Convention o n tlie P~.otectionof Migrant Workers and their Families - a~.ticle43. However., housing ~.iglitsas applied to society as a whole were eliminated fro~nthe principal regional instruments on human rlglits such as the San Salvador Protocol. Agreement were written, a considerable effort was made to include tlie right to ownership, but it was not successhl. However, since the countries shared more legal and social conditions, regional documents did include the right to property. For example, the first article of the European Human Rights Committee guarantees that any physical or juridical person can peacefully enjoy their property and applies the necessary conditions to limit tlie interference in citizens' enjoyment of ownership. There is also the right to have a job, which is considered a basic human right, but is also a socio-economic right -the common denominator for both is work. In its liniited traditional definition, work has been considered merely as a form of econon~icsurvival. In the twentieth century: however, this concept has evolved to adapt to a more holistic vision. In effect. work is actually one dimension of an interdependent system of labor conditions, social justice, and universal peace. Additionally, the most modern percep- tions include work as a human value, a social need. and a lneans for personal growth and the development of personality .l7 The international labor legislation was borne long before the establish~nentof a human rights framework, even though it was limited to certain labor categories and with fragmentary objectives in relation to the extent of protection provided. The International Labor Organization (1~0)has broadly developed this type of legislation. After the Second World War, efforts to legislate problenis related to work at an international level were seen i11the Civil Rights Law. both at a regional and universal level. Today. the right to work and labor laws are present in many documents published by the United Nations, Europe (under the European Commission), in America (Organization of American States, OAS) and Africa (Organization of African Unity, 0 ~ 1 . ) . Tentatively, is has been affirmed that tlie spectrum of hullIan rights related to work can be divided into the following sub-categories: riglits related to work (freedom to work without being enslaved, no forced or mandatory labor, freedom to work); rights derived from the job (work schedules, annual paid vacations, etc.); equal treatment and non- discrimi- nation rights; and instrumental rights (freedoin of association, freedom of organization. etc.). Because it is a current topic, it should be emphasired that one of the greatest difficulties faced by labor riglits is that it (when tlie positive advantages have not been exploited) allegedly has caused tlie deterioration of healthy competition. This issue was vigorously discussed during thc negotiations in connection with "dumping" and its social ramifi- cations during the Uruguay Round and in the conversations concerning the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT). 17. Dl-zewicki (Kl-ysztot). "The Right to Wol-k and R~glltsin Wol-k." in E[.orrorrric..Sof.icll(I t / ( / C~llrurulRigl~rs.A Textbook. 011.c'il. p. 169. ECONOMIC RIGHTSAS STANDARD FOR THEDEFINITION OF THETHRESHOLD OF CITIZENSHIP A MINIMUM AS INDICATORFORSOCIALINCLUSIONSTANDARD Human Rights constitute a reference for setting the boundaries or thresholds of citizenship. The paradigm of citizenship, or the process of exercising of basic essential rights, would set the scope or space in which people verify the values of integration, participation, or being a member of society which determine their social inclusion versus social exclusion (refer to Sojo, in this volume). Also assumed in this is the concept of boundaries of citizenship, defined as the threshold of actual erljoyment or non-enjoyment of civil and political rights, and also the economic, social and cultural rights that permit human civil rights and values. The process of constructing these rights has been the result of an extensive consolidation of historical legal-ethical demands with universal characteristics. Recently, they have been developed'8 as a set of values to be put into effect in a systematic and interactive way, which means that their goals can only be reached when simultaneously put into effect with the values and objectives of other rights in systeni. In the following table, colunlns A, B and C are the economic, social and cultural rights-values that constitute the pillars of the threshold of citizenship (it is the area of confluence and systemic interaction of the three variables). 18. See CEPAL-IIHR, La igualdad de [os tnodernos (Retlectioiis about the putting illto et'fecl ol' economic, social and cultural rights in Latin A~nrlica)Sail Jose-Santiago, 1998. For all integral paper, refer to Canqaclo Trinclacle. Antonio. "La rrlacicin cntrr el clesarrollo sustentable 10s der'echos economicos, sociales y cultui.alcs: tendrncias rrcientes." E.s!uflior Busicos de Derechos H~imanos,IIHR, San Josi, Costa Rica.1995. Table 1 Set of Human Rights and Values Which Constitute the Threshold of Citizenship - - Threshold of Citizenship -- -- ECONOMIC VALUE-RIGHTS SOCIAL VALUE -RIGHTS I CULTURAL VALUE - RIGHTS - *Right to Economic *Right to have an 1 *Right to have a generic participation education access to culture, *Right to commerce *Right to health provided as a service *Right to have basic *Right to housing from the state needs satisfied *Right to nutrition *Right to develop cultural *Right to organize *Right to work manifestations that businesses respect ethnic identities *Right to be part of a trade (religion, language, etc.) union or any other similar *Right to freely express any organization aesthetic, ideological, ethical or philosophical manifestation. -- The correlation of the elements that comprise each group of value-rights also has multiple, interactive characteristics (Can~ado1992; Ordonez y Vasqukz 1991).The elements of each of these sets of rights find relationships with each other in all possible combinations and functions, as constants that put into effect the value-right concept intersecting each other in the three different areas (economic, social and cultural), generating dynamics in which they all put into effect these rights simultaneously (Sosnowski 1999).19 This characteristic is important because, from the point of view of the construction of the threshold of citizenship, there are no rights or values with a hierarchical priority in this area. This has a practical and direct implication for social development policies, since they include the putting into effect the essential consumption and participation of exchanges (Sen 1981). From what was said previously, it can be inferred that there are two operating factors. On one hand, there is the existence of the goods that allow 19. In this sense, refer to resolution No. 41-128 of the General Assembly of the UN, specially Article 6, Paragraph 2. "All the human rights and basic freedoms are indivisible and interdependent, equal attention and urgent consideration should be given to the application, consideration and protection of the civil, political, economic, social and cultural riphts." participation within the social exchange networks, which could be expressed at different levels or abilities. On the other hand, there are the goods that make consumption possible, which could also be considered securities. On one hand, securities or essential consu~nptionare classified individu- ally or under a family category for practical and statistical effects: securities or essential consumption refers to those factors that satisfy the main biological needs. In general terms, these satisfying factors (and the indexes of fulfilling basic needs) have to do with the essential requirements for human econoinic support and for which satisfaction is (or should be) i~nperious, independently from social or historical context present at the time. Within this scope, inini~nu~nbiological basic needs include issues like health, nutrition, clothing and housing. In this field, boundaries of minimum well-being situations are proposed by which the definition of a coillparison standard will be made (based on established criteria) as a specific social reference. or a society with its own pattern of nornlalcy. Notwithstanding, there are any legal rights in relation to essential consrcinption,neither at the natiotzul rlor at the interrzationn/ level. The non-existence of legal rights establishing obligations concerning this issue uncover the wide field of work still pending in international law and human rights, and constitutional rights and internal laws of countries. THECREATIONOF OPPORTUNITIES FOR PARTICIPATION WITHIN SOCIALEXCHANGE The so-called threshold of citizenship has to do with the establishment of minimum competition situations that allow for the creation of opportuni- ties supported in the long tern1 simultaneously with the securities or the esserltial consumption. Of course, the political situation should be balanced by the transitional circun~stancesin each country or state, which could eventually force great opportunity investments in securities or essential consumption. To conclude, the following table summarizes a model of synthetic indicators, according to the proposal made by CEPAL-IIHR Table 2 Synthetic Indicators of Esselltial Consumption, Creation of Capacities and Opportunities - -- Fulfillment of Essential Creation of Opportunities Consuntption for Participation (Sarisfaction of Minirnuni (Sarisfaction of thr biological needs) threshold o j citizenship) pp -- Nutrition 8 Minimum Incnnie Housing Education Health Stable job Security (against life-thre Access to information atening situations) 8 Political Participation -- --- Aid Investment Potentiality Investment ----- THEPROBLEM THELEGALNORMSAND OF DJUDICATION AN EXAMPLEFROMTHEAREAOF INSTITUTIONAI, REFORM It has been proposed by the scientific judicial community that the development of economic, social, and cultural rights will not be possible until -and the same is true for developing a model for synthetic indicators -the levels of legal rights and adjudication are clearly defined by norms. The process of defining a set of norms could be described as follows: once the threshold has been established in reference to the protected value (to be determined by a given indicator), immediately proceed to set a "judicial protection" for the threshold that has been defined by the indicator. This protection will only be possible once certain aspects are defined. These aspects are: what will be the threshold of legal protection (normative area). and it should be consistent with the legal rights process or the creation of judicial norms. Once this has been established, the process of judicial definition should be completed by the creation of an effective ~neclianism that will allow for the claiming of a right (in a court of justice), activating the adjudication mechanisms to put these rights into effect. This is the process that defines legal rights or adjudication. These processes have cause, concept and time sequence characteristics. Defining the concept of legal rights (definition of the legal scope) is not possible without first defining the indicators and conducting a concrete analysis of the facts in question related to the indicator. In much the same way, the definition of these mechanisms and the instruments of adjudication are not possible without first defining how to set the norms or the legal boundaries of the value (refer to the scheme). Areas where a dysfunction or distortion is observed occur when the correlation among values and objec- tives is not clearly defined beforehand (technical, political, or economic), and the indicators could function as parameters for ~rieasuringthe results or define the legal denlanding procedures. Even when legal rights have been acceptably defined (when there is a law that defines the judicial scope covered by the right) there is no adequate solution in which legal procedures guarantee adjudication to put right into effect. The dysfunction could be explained from the analysis graph used as reference to define correlation arnong objectives, categories, concepts and indicators (refer to following scheme): Graph 1 Determining the Functional Indicators as Standards for defining Legal Rights and Adjudication Concepts Dysfunction Zone Definition Determining of the Value the indicator that protects (Constitutional Reform) the fulfillment th; value THRESHOLD OF CITIZENSHIP \ (Technical Document, World Bank IDB, UNDP,national information sources or statistics) 3 Definition of NORMS or scope of judicial protection of the value and the threshold of the value protected by the indicator (development of substantive law, public administration law, financial administration / law tributary reform law, etc.) a Dysfunct~onZone 4 Proposal for legal rights or adjudication procedures (Creation of specific mechanisms to activate individual legal procedures, or collective ones.) CONCLUSIONS CRITICAL EVALUATION : A The fact that there are still no specific, internationally-accepted indica- tors to measure economic, social, and cultural rights makes it difficult to diagnose how the exercise of these rights should be processed. Therefore, they are generally related to the issues of social equity in relation to economic, social, and socially integrated aspects, which are part of cultural rights. Consequently, the traditional socio-economic indicators can present only a partial view, and they concentrate on those aspects strongly related to the right of citizens to economically support the~llselvesand their families, e.g. work, safety, health, nutrition, education, and maintain an adequate standard of living with adequate housing conditions. In most cases there are indicators, with some exceptions. developed using certain instruments presented by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and its Annual Report for Human Development as an Index for Human Develop- ment (IHD). However, the process for defining these issues requires more conceptual, methodological and operational specification. Even in the cases where advances were made with the legal rights procedure concept internationally defined, problerns related to social exclu- sion and social inclusion can still be found. These problems are related to verifying the nationally defined indexes that act as correlative aspects and other internal elements defined by each independent nation. Social exclusion or social inclusion terms (enjoyment of complete citizenship rights) not only depend on the verification processes that analyze these standardized indexes. They also depend on the way different factors related to this, such as enjoyment of rights and capacity, affect each other. The way each nation has defined the concept of poverty should be analyzed. This definition should be related, not only to the fact of whether each citizen can obtain an adequate standard of living by being able to have their basic needs satisfied, but also to other environmental, cultural and political issues. The paranleters are related to each nation and will be able to be determined using synthetic indicators, such as those proposed by CEPALand IHRI (1997). In both cases (the standards related to the international indexes and the synthetic national ones), the theory and practice could play an important role in the process of formulating enforceable norms supporting legal rights and adj~dication.~' 20. The index is intended as a reference to be compared with international standards. 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La pobreza, Wash- ington D.C., USA. SOCIAL EXCLUSION IN THE CARIBBEAN The concept of social exclusion carries the advantages and challenges of all processual approaches.' Its multidimensionality is its richness; but that very richness leaves plenty of room for divergences among analysts on causes and directions of the processes under study. 'The particulars of specific social formations -not to mention analysts' assumptions -tilt the attribution of causality from markets to institutions to culture-history. To map out causes and directions multidimensionally even within the borders of a single national state is thus difficult. To map them out in a region as complex as the Caribbean is even more challenging. In the case of the Caribbean, two specific difficulties increase the challenge: the state of the existing research and the heterogeneity of the area. Few writers have explicitly used a social exclusion framework - or associated concepts - to analyze either the Caribbean as a whole, or individual territories within it. To be sure, most Caribbeanists would agree that the region has been profoundly shaped by various forms of exclusion, which themselves have long been privileged objects of study. However, such studies have used a wide range of (sometimes incompatible) approaches. As the Caribbean remains a poor cousin within Latin American studies, the burgeoning literature on social exclusion in the Americas rarely takes into I . I extend my thanks to the workshop organizers and my profound gratitude to Clare Sam~nells of the University of Chicago for her research assistance. The comments of workshops participants and, especially, those of Estanislao Gacitua-Mario o n an earlier version of this paper kindly helped me io clarify many points. account the area's characteristics (e.g. ILO 1995). Thus, we still lack an empirical bridge that would explicitly connect previous qualitative research on the Caribbean to changing forillulations in the social exclusion literature at large. More important, the quantitative data rarely breaks down to the point where they could become meaningful to studies of social exclusion. On the contrary, their presentation most often suggests the homogeneity of Caribbean societies. For instance, beyond demography, it is rare to find figures that express the rurallurban divide, a key feature of inost qualitative analyses. Accordingly, this paper cannot evaluate the literature in a manner that would have been possible if any variant of the social exclusion framework had gained currency in Caribbean Studies, or if the appropriate quantitative data were available. Rather, tlie opportunity and the challenge here are to bring analytical coherence to an amalgam of data and studies and, beyond them, to the region itself. Thus, data and observations from diverse sources are organized here in an attempt to develop a coherent regional approach. Yet where do we find such coherence? Is not the Caribbean too complex to be enclosed as a single object of analysis? To be sure, we are dealing with a relatively small number of people - about 36.5 million for the basin as a whole. and 20 million for islands (Baker 1997; World Fact Book 1999). Yet smallness here coexist with diversity. The region includes allnost twenty distinguishable social formations, most of which occupy a single island. Further, six major colonial and neocolonial powers -Spain, Britain, France, the Netherlands. Denmark and the United States - have profoundly marked the region, creating social dynamics that have often clashed. Caribbean diversity expresses itself linguistically, mainly through tlie four major linguistic blocs inherited from the colonial past - Spanish, English, French and Dutch -and numerous Creole languages. It expresses itself through a inedley of phenotypes, human faces that recall sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, India. or China and all niixtures thereof. Caribbean diversity expresses itself also through a variety of institutions and through a range of national statistics that bear witness to distinct institutional processes. GNP per capita varies from under ~ ~ ~ $ 3in0Haiti, to over 0 us$],500 in Jamaica to US$3,500 in Trinidad, which usually ranks ahead of Mexico or Brazil in international economic tables (World Bank 1997:214- 5). Questionable as they inay be sometimes, quantitative social estimates of health statistics, rural-urban poverty rates and literacy ratios. as broad indicators of complex mechanisins, verify this institutional diversity. Not surprisingly, social, linguistic, ethnic or religious distinctions affect particu- lar Caribbean territories differently. Similarly, econo~nicexclusion does not take the same shape throughout the region. Likewise, political participation -in the broadest sense-is asfirmly institutionalized insome territories as it remains shaky in others. Does it make sense, then, to treat the Caribbean as a single region for the purpose of studying social exclusion? A MODEL FOR A REGION This challenge can be faced if we ground the analysis in two initial - and fairly simple - observations. The first, which is theoretical, concerns the conceptualization of social exclusion as a cumulative process. The second, which is historical, has to do with the particulars of the Caribbean region. Social Exclusion as a Cumulative and Multidimensional Process I start with the widespread notion that social exclusion is "the process through which individuals or groups are wholly or partially excluded from full participation in the society in which they live" (European Foundation 1995:4). Yet, this phrasing should not hide the fact that social exclusion is ultimately both a cumulative and circular process. That is, unless we reduce social exclusion to instances of discrimination -in which case we do not need a new concept- it can only be seen as the culmination of intermingling of a number of other processes, not all of which inherently cause exclusion. In that sense, what could be call the generalized process of social exclusioll is best seen as a flow with multiple sources and tributaries, crosscurrents and countercurrents. A major theoretical issue, then, is how to rank the component processes that cross, contribute to, or stem from this flow. If social exclusion is both processual and ~nultidimensional(de Ham 1998), how do we break it down. Indeed, should we break it down? Here, we face a number of choices. Most simplistically, we could give all contributory flows equal weight, at least at the onset, in which case we lose a lot in complexity and may ultimately dismiss the notion of a cumulative process. At the extreme of this approach, social exclusion would be a mere sum of indicators. Alternatively. we could set a hierarchy that ranks relative contributions according to one or another universal theory, in which case we may ultimately dismiss the notion of a multidimensional process. At that extreme, social exclusion would be like a watered-down version of class analysis.2 The choices between these extremes are many. The solution proposed here is to emphasize both the multidimensional and cumulative character of social exclusion as a process. If social exclusion is a general cumulative process, part of the task may be to identify intermediate dimensions of accumulation within that generalized process. I mean by this dimensions along which we can already see a number of smaller processes coalesce to create widespread trends, which, in turn, will feed into the generalized process of exclusion. 1see these dimensions as heuristic devices, not as naturally bounded units, that emphasize smaller yet already cumulative processes within the generalized process of exclusion. Obvi- ously, the fleshing out of these dimensions is in part a theoretical exercise, but the concrete results of that exercise will vary according to the funda- mental particulars of the populations under study. What are these fundamen- tal particulars in the Caribbean seized as a single region? To answer that question, we must turn to the complexity of the Caribbean region. A Region Shaped by Exclusion The Caribbean region as we know it was actually created by exclusion (Brathwaithe 1971; Knight 1990; M. G. Smith 1965, 1984; R.T. Smith 1970, 1987, 1988). Indeed whether our approach to exclusion emphasizes the lack of solidarity, excessive specialization, monopolies of access, or combines these various paradigms (ILo 1996; de Haan and Maxwell 1998), we must incorporate an understanding of the fact that the modern profile of the Caribbean region is profoundly shaped by the exclusion of the majority of its inhabitants. Here we must take into consideration not only to the decimation of native populations but the rise and maintenance of the plantation system both during and after slavery. For centuries, the plantation system was the dominant form of integration of the Caribbean into the world capitalist economy. That mode of global incorporation required, on the local scene, the exclusion of the majority. Global inclusion and internal exclusion combined to make illost 2. In the first case, our primary emphasis would be national indicators but we would lose sight of the mechanisms behind these indicators. The research agenda would be strongly marked by methodological individualism and policy responses could only target parts without assessing their relation to the whole. In the second case, our primary emphasis would be theoretically secured connections, but we would lose sight of the specific conditions under which exclusion takes form. The research agenda would stress comparative analyses and the extent to which societies fit a pre-set model. Policy responses would be universal without attention to the historical particulars of a society or region. Caribbean societies surprisingly similar in many ways over time-even if not always in the same way at the same time.3 The concept of social exclusion thus, it brings us closer to the Caribbean reality than alternative approaches that place an analytical emphasis on individual or group "poverty."One of the objectives of this paper is to indicate how much more understanding we are likely to gain by emphasizing the relations between exclusion and poverty. Caribbean societies were not born poor - indeed, the opposite can be argued. Rather, they were born deeply divided. If Caribbean societies were at the outset based on exclusion and if the plantation was the original vehicle of that exclusion, it follows that a regional account of social exclusion and poverty must incorporate or address that historical baseline. This does not mean that Caribbean societies are doomed to face a present - or, worse, to inherit a future -preordained by their past trajectory. Nor does it mean that the facts and figures that demonstrate social exclusion today are impervious to more recent dynamics. Rather, possible futures can be envisioned if -and only if -we overcome in the present some of the limitations imposed by past trajectories. To understand current facts and figures as outcomes of processes, we need to look at social exclusion against the background of economic, social and cultural history -all of which include the history of the institutions that generate exclusion. Dimensions of Social Exclusion While the plantation system itself now plays a minor role in the region, the processes unleashed by the transition out of the plantation system and the institutional directions shaped by that transition directly affects social structures at the present. Therefore, we need to investigate these processes and institutional directions along three overlapping dimensions: i) socioeco- nomic; ii) sociocultural and; iii) institutional. These dimensions recall classical divisions of societies into economic, political and sociocultural spheres. They also echo those outlined elsewhere by other analysts who insist on the multidimensional and processual char- acter of social exclusion (e.g. ILO 1995). Yet the emphasis here is not on economics, culture and institutions or politics as independent domains "out there. " Rather, these dimensions are used here as heuristic devices, ways to look at intermediary yet cumulative processes. Economic phenomena play 3. The insistence of the plantation systern as factor of both global integration and local exclusion is what allows us to include mainland terl.itories such as Suriname or Guyana within this analytical framework. a role in the other two dimensions and vice versa. Indeed, each of these dimensions, as well as the generalized process of social exclusion is characterized in diverse degrees by circular causation. This means that causality crosses the heuristic boundaries used here, often in multiple directions. Indeed, the treatment of the institutional dimension in particular will demonstrate that one cannot clearly separate economic, sociocultural, and political factors of social exclusion. Circular Causation In Caribbean Studies, the concept of circular causation has been applied by economist Mats Lundahl who uses the reciprocal influence of land erosion and population pressure to explain increased peasant poverty in Haiti (Lundahl 1979). More generally, in the many domains where it has been deployed (from economics to mathematics and cybernetics), circular causa- tion generally refers to situations characterized by the reciprocal influence of factors, where cause-effect relationships take on multiple directions, where feedback fromone area influencesanother. In abstract, within circular causation theory, not only is there no single or preordered sequence of events, nor any single and necessary direction of causality. It is the flexibility and richness of the notion that make it a useful one to apply both to the generalized process of social exclusion and to the dimensions within it. Circular causation is key to the social exclusion approach developed here. It applies to the relations between the three dimensions. It applies also to relations within each of these three dimensions. The crux of the approach is that at each of these dimensions, we can see a number of smaller processes coalesce to create widespread trends, which, in turn, feed into the generation of specific exclusion process in Caribbean societies. Policies aimed at ending exclusion nust therefore be: a) holistic in perspective; b) relational in scope; and c) specific in implementation, in order to modify the specific factors that are interacting in each case. There are numerous advantages to this approach. First, in accordance with the theoretical literature on social exclusion, it is inherently multidi- mensional. Second, as it insists on processes rather than states of affairs, it facilitates the setting of policies that may revert the processes that provoke social exclusion. This approach also emphasizes how particular processes and institutional arrangements produce excluded groups, instead of consid- ering social exclusion as an attribute of individuals (ILO 1996). As a consequence, policy instruments can be targeted to address those nodes. Finally, and more relevant, this approach allows us to speak of the Caribbean as a whole without dismissing the particularities of single territories. It does not ignore intra-Caribbean differences. Yet it does set those differences within the context of a fundamental re~emblance.~ THE SOCIOECONOMICDIMENSION The socioeconomic dimension, as conceptualized here, addresses the transformations of the agrarian economy and the mechanisms unleashed by these transformations. In some countries, peasant-based agriculture now provides a substantial share of GDPor occupies a substantial proportion of the population. In others, urban-based economic activities such as tourism, light manufacture, and offshore finance have become predominant. In others the plantation economy still thrives in specialized enclaves. Yet in most countries where industry, mining, or services now contribute to increasing shares of GDP, the majority of the labor force tends to remain engaged in agriculture in the countryside. Further, at the level of the region as a whole, the vast majority of Caribbean citizens are rural. In only 6 countries of the region was the urban population higher than 50% in 1995. The socioeconomic dimension outlined here reflects both this demo- graphic reality and the economic trends sketched above as manifestations of ongoing processes and indicators of similarities and divergences within and between Caribbean societies. Key to the plotting of this dimension as a heuristic device is the proposition that the dominant processes of socioeco- ilomic exclusion in the region coalesce into the marginalization of the rural populations. This is not to say that all individuals of rural origins are excluded or excluded to the same degree and in the same way. However. the transition out of the plantation economy have reinforced the links between social exclusion processes and the rurallurban divide. Those links vary across and within societies. Indeed, the overall marginalization of rural populations does not mean that these populations are not integrated in the dominant system of their respective societies. Rather, the marginalization of most rural actors as a inode of insertion on 4. To be sure, the model tends to analytically favor post-plantation societies Inore than s l y . Anguilla, the Bahamas or the Cayman Islands. This is not a weakness. FII-st.territories that did not fully experience the plantation systern can be said to have been integrated in tlie Caribbean as a sociocultural area only to the extent that they sel-ved that system. Second. as it will become clear later, social exclusion in the Caribbean ~.eachesits peak in post-plantation societies of various kinds. Third, the vast majority of Gal-ihhean peoples live in post-plantat1011 societies. the one hand requires their participation in the system and, on the other, guarantees their inability to participate fully in that system. The plantation economy, then and now, posits a rurallurban dichotomy in which both parts are intertwined yet unequal. The rise and fall of peasantry, then and now, only reconfigures that dichotomy. As the populations of the hinterlands (rural workers and independent peasant farmers) became increasingly mar- ginalized, the processes leading to their marginalization as a mode of unequal insertion have solidified. Socioeconomic exclusion even in the urban sphere bears the weight of current and past marginalization of the populations living or born in the countryside. City dwellers of immediate rural origins are caught within mechanisms of exclusion that duplicate in the urban setting the exclusion they or their parents encountered in the rural areas. If the plantation is everywhere, both by definition and in its historical reality a mechanism of exclusion (Thompson 1928, 1975), then the flow we are trying to outline here can be seen as originating there and in the urbanlrural divide that it posits. We can even postulate a gradation along which we read Caribbean societies in relation to that point of departure in two ways: a) how far they have moved from it; b) by what mechanisms and in which directions. This means -and the point is quite important -that not all rural populations in the Caribbean experience or relate to their corre- sponding urban center(s) in the same way. The organization of agriculture (e.g. peasantry vs. plantations) and the resulting social, institutional and economic structures matter here. Still, we can see the general resemblance between societies where the transition out of the plantation system led to the rise of an independent peasantry, such as Haiti and the Windward Islands. At the other end of the continuum stand countries where the plantation system never became dominant (such as the Bahamas or the British Virgin Islands) or was replaced with varying degrees of success by an urban-oriented economy (such as Antigua and Barbados), or by an extractive industry (such as Trinidad). Most other territories can be plotted between these two poles, including those where the plantation system retains some significance (such as Cuba, the Dominican Republic, or Guyana) or those where mining now contribute to an important share of GDP (such as Jamaica or, again, Guyana). These broad country profiles do not invalidate important differences between various segments and classes within the rural population of every single Caribbean territory. Even in Haiti, "a proverbial peasant nation" (Lundahl 1995), there are important differences between kinds of peasants (Murray 1977; Oriol 1992). The Dominican Republic, next door, offers a more formal kind of differentiation between latifundia and minifundia, with a very strong pro-plantation and anti-peasant bias on the part of the state (Vedovato 1986). Internal differentiation within the rural population takes other forms in other countries, not all of which can be discussed here. N-otwithstanding these major differences within or between countries a majority of Caribbean people are engaged in agriculture and live in the countryside, on the other side of an urban-rural divide whose disparities are often hidden by national statistics. Indeed, we can hypothesize that the reality behind these statistics is more alarming than the average figures suggest. For life expectancy to be as low as it is, say in Guyana or Haiti, on the national scale, it has to be in fact much lower in the countryside, given known disparities between town and country.' Rural Areas Caribbean rural life is marked by differential access and differential depletion of resources. Socioeconon~icexclusion takes the form of differen- tial access to fixed assets (including capital and property), to markets (including labor and credit),and to services (includinghealth and education). It also takes the form of differential depletion of resources (including land and human capital). DiJferentialAccess to Assets Whether they are independent peasants, miners or plantation workers. Caribbean rural dwellers have limited access to property compared to their urban counterparts. In areas dominated by peasant farms, partition continues to reduce the size of holdings of most peasants. In areas dominated by mines or plantations, ownership of the major means of production is limited to the state or to transnational corporations. Further, in a number of countries, small rural properties are insecure, either because they started out as family land and cannot be formally divided (Besson 1987; Carnegie 1987; Maurer 1997) or simply because procedures set by the state discourage land title registration. 5. Not to tnention the impact of disparity itself on national averages. Evidence suggesttng that average life expectancy in developed countries highest not in the richest societies but in those with smaller income differentials (Wilkinson 1996). DlfSerential Access to ~ a r k e t s ~ Most Caribbean rural populations also experience differential access to markets, notably labor and credit. On the labor front, there are virtually no competing employers in most Caribbean villages. In plantation areas, the seasonal demand for labor tends to be controlled by the dominant plantation of the locality and plantation management tends to favor workers who come from distant regions anyway (Lemoine 1981; Martinez 1995; Moya Pons 1986). In peasant-dominated areas, the possibility of steady work outside the family farm is nonexistent. In peasant areas, at least, access to a credit market could alleviate the situation of the self-employed. Unfortunately. credit is extremely scarce throughout the rural Caribbean. Vargas-Lundius (1991) notes that unequal access to credit in the Dominican Republic plagues large and small farmers alike. While plantation management and more successful farmers do provide credit, most often in small amounts and almost always at usury rates, the nearest branch of the national bank (most likely a low-service facility that may not provide credit) may be anywhere between 20 to 50 miles, and covering those distances can take the most of a day given the poor conditions of roads and inadequate public transportation. Further, differential access to assets (e.g., registered property that could serve as collateral) and to finance (that could help legalize property rights) play into one another. In the absence of a formal credit market, many rural dwellers in the Caribbean, as elsewhere in the South, set up rotating savings and credit associations - ROSCAs (e. g. Kirton 1996). These associations take diverse forms, but they generally entail small regular payments from all participating members, with a different member taking the entire amount each time. The members of each association generally know each other, and the personal- ized nature of RosC~sallows them to adjust to members' individual circumstances. Very few joining members are asked to provide any formal documentation, yet default is uncommon due to social pressure. However, given the small amount of cash available to most members. the ceilings for regular contributions are rather low and the total amount available at each turn can rarely sustain major ventures.7 6 .The distinction betweeri differential access to fixed assets and differ-eritral access to riiarkets echoes Sen's (1981; 1989) insiste~iceon the iict that we should, on the one hand. drstinguish between what people possess arid what these possessiorls allow rheln to do and. on the other. study the combined outcorne of these possessions and capacities. 7 . A survey of adults fr-omprivate liouseliolds in Jamaica (including Kingston, St. Andrew. St. Cather-ine and St. Thomas) showed that 65% were involved In ROSCASduring 1993. and this A group particularly affected by the differential access to credit, in spite of its extraordinary economic vitality, is that of Caribbean market women, also called "higglers," "hucksters," or "Madan Sara." It is well known that small internal marketing -especially foodstuff and small consumer goods - has been dominated by women of rural origins since before the demise of slavery (Mintz 1972). Then and now, through very hard labor, they have managed to accumulate some capital at small steps and through risky ventures. Those who have managed to accumulate capital in quantities large enough are, however, equally excluded from a credit market to which their sheer economic competence should give them favorable access. The lack of access to credit makes it impossible for most of them to expand and to diversify. Increased Risks The extreme reliance on single cash or export crops combined with the insecurity inherent in agricultural practices create greater exposure to risk to much of the region economies. Risks include environmental changes, internal economic reforms, economic changes induced from the outside (such as the recent turbulence in the global banana market), internal political instability, etc. An example of the interplay of these different risks is that of the economic reforms implemented in the Dominican Republic in the mid 1990s. Those (ongoing) reforms, included the devaluation of the peso, a huge increase in sales taxes and a reduction in income taxes. While these reforms contributed to substantial growth in GDP rates, they also affected different sectors of the population unequally. The first two measures put an increased burden on the labor force engaged in agriculture who lives primarily in rural areas and does not have foreign sources of income. The second measure barely touched rural residents. Yet inasmuch as it alleviates a duty bore mainly by urban residents who enjoy higher incomes, it also increases the gap between those and most rural Dominicans. Thus, 11otwit13- standing the long-term promises of these reforms or their immediate positive impact on national figures, they can also be seen as confirming and reinforcing processes of exclusion. system "was identified as one of the most important sources of finance fol. low-income persons, who could not access funds from the formal financial sector" (Kirton 1996:202-203). Indeed, the poor, young adults, women, and unskilled laborers are disproportioni:tely rep[-esented. Differential Depletion of Natural Resources Not only do the majority of Caribbean rural residents face more difficult access to assets and markets but the assets at their reach undergo depreciation and depletion at a faster rate. Indeed, the differential depletion of resources is another major node in the generalized process of social exclusion. Most important is the general depletion of agricultural land, its reduced fertility -whether or notdecliningfertilityparallelsmarket depreciationof individ- ual plots. That pan-Caribbean phenomenon is exacerbated in the mountains by faster rates of erosion, especially in territories with either a Cordillera Central (a dorsal-central mountain chain) or a strong peasant presence. Indeed, the two phenomena tend to go together and their combination can be life threatening, as in the case of Haiti, where erosion further increases already abject poverty (Lundahl 1979). The declining supply of water, both for agriculture and for domestic use, is a close second to the depletion of the land, to which it is tied. Here again, differential depletion marks particularly highland peasants but the shrinking or disappearance of the rain forest also affects lowland rural populations. In enclaves dominated by plantation or mining activities, available water tends to be tapped first for those activities before being made accessible to local residents. At other times, the differential access to assets and the differential depletion of resources combine to reinforce inequality such as when water from the countryside is tapped primarily for urbanites directly for domestic use or, indirectly for electricity. Migration as Loss of Human Capital Differential depletion also threatens human capital, particularly in the for111 of rural outmigration (Besson and Momsen 1987; Pessar 1982). Caribbean migration is massive. An estimated twelve percent of the total Caribbean population migrated in the 1980s. Such an exodus does reduce both human deprivation and the rate of depletion of natural resources.8 Further, remittances from these migrants are substantial. They accounted for six percent of GNP throughout the region in the 1980s. 8. The most striking example is the case of Dominica wliese century-old patters of ~nigration from the countryside to the capital town of Roseau and, especially, to foreign lands have coiitributed to produce an environmental and economic outcome much different from Haiti in spite of tlre fundamental similarities betweelr the two peasantry (Table X3.1 on migration; Bob Myers on Dorninica migratio~r:T~.ouillot1988: 1990). Still, the full story of migration has to do with how particular processes feed into one another. Whether they originate from rural or urban areas, international migrants tend to come not among the poorest but among the most enterprising segments of the local population, sometimes with assets above local averages, almost always in prime productive age (Baker 1997; Hope 1986; Martinez 1995; Pessar 1982). Their reirlittances usually go to those households that were already better-off, increasing local gaps.9 Further, with their departure, the community loses in human and social capital. Such losses, in turn, contribute to reduce further rural residents' already limited access to national or local state services, notably health and education. They may also reinforce differentiation within the countryside. Pessar's (1982) fieldwork on the impact of emigration from a rural community in the Dominican Republic to the United States poignantly reveals the impacts at the local level. The rural migrants whom she studied tended to be froin better-off faluilies who could afford to help with the process of migration by providing loans, employment contacts in foreign countries, or assistance in obtaining visas. Migrants, in turn, provided remittances that allowed families to decrease agricultural production. 10 Larger estates hired fewer agricultural workers from among the poor, leading to higher unemployment. Emigrants often bought land at inflated prices and allowed it to lie fallow, further decreasing agricultural production and employment as well as increasing land prices and inducing smaller landholders to sell. The national bias against small peasants (Vedovato 1986) was unwittingly reinforced. Some authors have pointed to similar processes to suggest the over-all negative of remittances. They argue that while remittances may help specific households, they may also hurt the economy as a whole (Baker 1997; Brana-Shute and Brana-Shute 1982; Pessar 1982; Rubenstein 1982). Others have considered the experiences and impact of returning migrants on local economies, seeing immigration not as a singular event but as a cycle, often with several stages of leaving and return (Martinez 1995; Maurer 1997; Muschkin and Myers 1993; Thomas-Hope 1999). Nevertheless, migration - especially within the region -has a long historical precedent and is seen 9. Fol example, in Guyana and St. Luc~a,only 10%of emigrants are poor. due to the high costs of emigration. Although one-third of households in Guyana receive remittances. only 137u of these are among the poorest quintile. For these poor lhouseholds. however, remittances provide an average of one-fourth of the household income. In the Dominican Republic, only 2% of the poorest quilltile of households receive ~.emittances.while among the highest quintile this number is 6% (Baker 1997:46). 10. Although over half of the Dominican Republic was rural at the tlme of Pessar's study. less than a quarter of international migrants came from rural areas. by many as a common survival strategy for the region (Duany 1994; Richardson 1983; Valtonen 1996). Be that as it may, given the profile of most Caribbean migrants in their country of origin and their track-record in North America, their departure constitutes a serious loss in human capital. A common Haitian saying is that there are more Haitian doctors in the city of Montreal than in the whole of Haiti. Regardless of its mathematical correctness, the saying expresses the national sense of loss. Given the unequal distribution of human resources between cities and countryside throughout the region, such losses bear inore heavily on rural residents. They certainly contribute to reduce further rural residents' already limited access to national or local state services. notably health and education. Differential Access to Services Indeed, unequal access to state services may be the most blatant n~echanisn~of economic exclusion of Caribbean rural populations. In general throughout the area, government spending is first oriented toward urban centers. Expenditures directed toward rural populations enter national budgets often as leftovers - except in a few limited domains (such as education, at times) and in a few countries (such as some former British colonies). Health services, in particular, are lacking or limited. Nurses rather than doctors, clinics rather than hospitals, limited hours rather than constant access are the norm. Unequal access to services, which already acts on its own as a major mechanism of econon~icexclusion of rural populations, thus gives new momentum to the depletion of resources and the intertwined cycles accelerate. The Urban Areas As a result of the urban-rural migration, what happens on the urban scene often consolidate the urbantrural divide. Caribbean capitals, have grown tremendously in the second half of this century. In spite of some declines, the annual urban growth rate has generally maintained a steady pace between 1970and 1995. With the exception of the Bahamas, the highest growth rates in the region for these twenty five years can be attributed to a large extent to rural-urban migration, and especially migration from peasant areas - as in St. Vincent, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, and Dominica (Portes et al. 1997) As a result, high ratios of urban residence rarely reflect the strength of an urban-based (or urban-oriented) economy - as in the Bahamas or Trinidad." Most often, they are due to ongoing migration of rural individuals seeking better opportunities. Urban Macrocephalia The Caribbean urban scene can be characterized as a case of urban macrocephalia, in which capital cities, looming as gigantic heads of small national bodies, engulf most of the urban population. The development of new activities in secondary provincial towns alleviates at times the demo- graphic burden on the capital. Tourism in Northerncoastal towns and bauxite extraction in the interior have helped to reduce Kingston's primacy in Jamaica. Similar trends have affected the Dominican Republic, though to a smaller extent (Portes et al. 1993, 1997). Still, most often, in the absence of a spectacular touristic development, most provincial towns lose residents or become stepping stones to longer migratory flows to the capital or to foreign lands. Poorer residents of the capital towns, most often recent migrants, face processes of social exclusion that echo those of their rural parents or relatives, including differential access to assets, to markets and services. Often, the urban poor display coping strategies similar to those used in the rural areas. But mechanisms of exclusion pick up a different mornenturn in the city, generated by the necessities of urban life. For instance, the lack of governmental services in some of the poorest neighborhoods -such as lack of tap water, which affects more than 70% of the Port-au-Prince population (Manigat 1991) -cannot be alleviated by the natural environment. Two crucial changes further impact on the lives of migrants from rural areas. First, they lose the safety net of both the extended family and the family-based network of friends that are the ultimate protection against starvation in the countryside. Second, they find themselves in a context characterized by the overwhelming necessity of cash transactions. 1 I . Similarly, high rural residency figures may hide the relative strength of the urban economy as in Barbados. Denial of Labor Rights The urban poor who managed to find employment face differential access to labor rights, especially in light of the general weakness or absence of unions, especially in export-oriented free-trade zones (Frundt 1998). Differential access to the labor market thus takes the lead among processes of exclusion. Unemployment becomes the most immediate problem and the dominant mechanism of socioeconomic exclusion. Safa (1995:99) reports that female factory workers in the free trade zone of La Romana in the Dominican Republic risk being blacklisted from all factories in the zone for attempts to unionize. Gender thus intertwines with the denial of labor rights in a country where organized labor represents little more than ten percent of the work force and where there are reported cases of forced or coerced factory labor (U.S. Department of State 1997b). Organized labor is even weaker in Haiti. Only in some of the former British colonies, and only in certain sectors of activities, does a strong tradition of organized labor tend to protect workers (Thomas 1984, 1988). In search of cash, many of the urban poor turn to the informal economy and personal services. More research -both qualitative and quantitative - is needed to evaluate specific processes of social exclusion in the informal econoiny per se. We know that abuses and the denial of rights can increase. A lamentable case is that of the Haitian "restavek," rural children who are sent to work as unpaid live-in domestic servants in urban middle-class and elite households in Port-au-Prince. THE SOCIOCULTURAL DIMENSION The sociocultural dimension of exclusion strengthens the findings and analyses of the socioeconomic dimension. Here again, the resemblance between countries with a large peasantry is striking. In other countries (e.g., Guyana and Trinidad) the immigration of indentured laborers to work on the plantations created an ethnic divide that still endures (Premdas 1996; Munasinghe forthcoming). Exclusion along ethnic lines also happens in countries that include a substantial number of non-citizen immigrants tied to specific low-paying jobs, such as in the Bahamas or ,the Dominican Republic (Leinoine 1981; Martinez 1995). Differential access to the domi- nant language, religious differences, skin color, and other sociocultural attributes and markers also matter. Key to the heuristic coherence of that dimension is the proposition that sociocultural exclusion processes coalesce in the segmentation of the population in groups that are inherently disadvan- taged because their culturally marked origins give them low access to social and cultural capital. Such sociocultural markers may include color, ethnicity, or national origins; language; or gender, as we will see in turn. Sociocultural Prejudice The rurallurban divide is relevant also in the sociocultural dimension. To start with, dominant ideology both reflects and reinforces the divide. One extreme example is the case of Haiti, where the Haitian expression "mounn andero" (indicating "people outside" or "outsiders"), is used to describe peasants or urbanites of peasant origins, verifying the lack of sociocultural cohesion on the national scale. Similar expressions, even when less brutal (such as "campesinos"), carry implicit prejudice. Color, Ethnicity, and National Origins The undisputed position of whiteness at the top of the social pyramid throughout of plantation slavery has had deep consequences on the relation- ship between physical aspect (phenotype) and position in Caribbean social structure. Across various theoretical lines (Lowenthal 1973; Smith 1965; Stolcke 1974), there is little dispute on the existence of a historically honed color gradation in which blackness reduces social status. Today, and in spite of the rise of a nationalist rhetoric in 19th-century Haiti and later, throughout the region, dark skin has lower sociocultural value in all Caribbean countries (Nettleford; Rubenstein 1987:58). Color prejudice functions throughout the area, in different degrees, as a mechanism of exclusion. Neither the presence of a black segment of the elite nor the strength of a "black" political bloc contradicts the fact that light-skin has an exchange value, often captured in inatrimonial alliances that enhance the social and economic possibilities of the new breed (e.g. Trouillot 1988, 1995). Exclusion along ethnic lines (that often coincides with color) also happens in countries that include a substantial number of non-citizen immigrants tied to low-paying jobs. Descendents of Haitians who were born in and are citizens of the Dominican Republic are routinely treated as foreigners and subject to low-pay jobs on sugar plantations, deportations, and even the destruction of their identity cards by Dominican soldiers (Martinez 1995: 9-10; see also Moya Pons et al. 1986) Recent iirunigrants from Haiti and Dominica also face exclusion on grounds of national and ethnic origins in the Bahamas and the British Virgin Islands, where their children are denied citizenship (Maurer 1997). In other countries (e.g. Guyana and Trinidad) the much older iininigra- tion of indentured laborers from Asia (India, in particular) led to ail ethnic divide that first reproduced some of the traits of the urbantrural dichotoilly, as citizens of African descent moved to urban settings and gained control over the state, Indians remained mostly in the rural areas. However, over time, due to changing national institutions and further economic possibilities many ethnic Indians gained serious socioeconomic mobility and political positions -notably in Trinidad. Further, as states became less intervention- ist, the possibility for the black political elite to feed itself from the state apparatus and/or to control political discourse declined (Maingot 1996; Munasinghe forthcoming). Thus, we may be facing a situation in Guyana and especially in Trinidad where both major ethnic groups face social exclusion on the basis of ethnic identity but in different realms of both private and public life. Linguistic Divides and Continua Language is often a central cultural marker that leads to the exclusioil of "outsiders." In a number of Caribbean countries, a distinct native language (Creole) developed and became not only the language of the majority, but in many cases the only language for many. Creole languages have been socially undervalued for centuries. Yet even when they have now achieved official recognition, their value as sociocultural capital ren~ains absolutely inferior to the dominant European language of the territory. Not having decreased sociocultural value not only reinforces prejudice per se, it also affects economic chances, such as job opportunities. Formal education does make a difference, but as we will see later, national educational systems have their own inherent limits. Gender Roles and Exclusion The issue of gender highlights how multiple causes can feed into the exclusion of a socially defined group. Gender is a central category of exclusion in the Caribbean but it is different from the gender differentiation in North Atlantic nations. The gender division of labor in rural areas and the economic independence of market women in many Caribbean countries, notably those with strong peasantry, belie the notion that women in the South are necessarily "behind Western women" in a unilinear continuum of gender equality. However, the comparatively high independence of market and peasant women to carry their own business does not mean the absence of a patriarchal ideology. To the extent that this ideology permeates social relations, exclusion on the basis of gender obtains in a number of Caribbean situations, both rural and urban (Coppin 1995, 1997; Ellis, Conway and Bailey 1996; Mair 1988; Ortiz 1996). Differential access to property along gender lines, which was not the norm in most peasant situations, is now acerbated by the demise of the peasant economy (e.g. Oriol 1992). When poor rural women move to urban settings, they confront two kinds of exclusionary forces working against them. During this transition, they tend to lose whatever economic independence and social networks includ- - ing gender specific kin solidarity -they may have had in rural areas. Yet Caribbean urban settings are not more liberal on gender issues than rural areas. Indeed, the opposite could be argued on some points, as patriarchal ideology still dominates and migration to cities therefore reinforces gender differentials, creates new patterns of exclusion and dornination that often put newly arrived migrant women in worse situations than both their North Atlantic counterpart or the rural sisters they left behind. In general, women workers in urban settings are under-remunerated, and have little legal protection from either unsafe working conditions, low wages, or sexual harassment or abuse in the workplace. That is the case for factory workers as well as paid or semi-indentured domestic workers. Finally, domestic violence against women is pervasive throughout the region. There is little legal recourse or protection for victims and societal attitudes toward this issue are at to some extent permissive. According to a U.S. official report, in the Dominican Republic, "doinestic violence and sexual harassment are widespread. There are no laws protecting citizens from abuse by their spouses, and victims rarely report such abuse" (r1.s. Department of State 1997b).l2 12. Another specific case where exclusion is based on lifestyle is the case of holnosexuals, especially males. Caribbean societies are homophobic societies. The varying degrees ot penalization of male homosexuality go from public ridicule or denial of employ~nentto public beatings, to state penalization in Cuba. The institutional dimension emphasizes processes that contribute not only to political exclusion as such, but to exclusion from national affairs as shaped by the presence, absence, or workings of formal institutions. I take institutional life in the broadest sense of participation to include not only such favorite indicators as formal political participation in local and national elections but also the institutional strength of civil society, its capacity to organize, and its ability to establish channels between the state and the citizenry. In many Caribbean territories, notably a number of British colonies, the solidification of political or civil institutions -such as Parliament, inde- pendent presses, labor unions, the civil service or the educational system - happened before independence or even often before the demise of the plantation system. Countries that have been able to build upon that institu- tional strength now secure greater participation in national affairs than those that never had that base or managed to weaken it (Premdas 1996).A central issue here is the degree to which the consolidation of civil and political institutions in Caribbean societies predates the transformations of the agrarian-based economy. Equally important is the degree to which the reach, strength, and independence of institutions have facilitated or impaired the participation of significant segments of the population in national affairs. At this level we need to recall the fragmented genesis of the Caribbean. Most Caribbean institutions were never meant to serve the whole population of the respective territories. Institutional memory, history and practice have honed them along lines of exclusivity. Still today, national institutions tend to exclude rather to include a majority of the population into their specific sphere of activities. l3They tend to be incapable of alleviating processes of exclusion. By and large, they have impaired rather than facilitated the participation of significant segments of the population in national affairs, and give them little power in decisions that affect their own future. Viewed in light of their effectiveness at integrating their respective nations, Carib- bean institutions are fundamentally weak. 13. There are two blatant exceptions to this institutional weakness, the military and the Catholic church, especially outside o f the English-speaking Caribbean. It is worth noting that these institutions were created from the outside - such as the Haitian or Dominican army, both creations o f the U.S. Marine Corps -and with the help o f national governments. So to a lesser extent is a third institution, the national school system in most English-speaking countries. That outside-induced institutions helped by the state can claim a national reach says something about the role o f the state i n nation-building. That other Caribbean institutions cannot, is a sign of their weakness. Political Sphere The relevance of the institutional weakness at the political level can be best seen when we look at democratic practice and its concrete results. Most Caribbean countries have formal democratic systems. However, the extent to which certain groups or individuals actually participating in shaping national affairs varies greatly. Populist and clientelist politics dominate and traditional power networks operate in most of the countries (Gray 1994), increasing the disconnect between formal and actual rights, which charac- terizes most of continental Latin America (ILO 1995:15).l4 In summary, the superficiality of democratic rule entails both the incapacity of individuals to exercise the rights supposedly guaranteed by law and the incapacity of institutions to structure relations independent of the individual who are temporarily in government positions. Discussing Jamaican politics, Lundahl (1995:344) notes that both major parties in Jamaica use varied methods, including patronage to gather votes. He adds: "All these methods, however, seem to have one thing in common: they are designed to obfuscate, to increase the costs to opponents and voters of revealing the government's true intent." This is not to suggest that the guarantee of electoral practice, widespread in most of the English-speaking Caribbean is meaningless. Nor is it meaningless to have judges there who most often do not take direct orders from the Executive. The point here - and the lesson from Lundahl's observation - is that the general weakness of national institutions, although varying in degrees, effectively circumscribes the final efficiency of any single set of institutions, including the political ones. The point is best made by starting with the extreme case of Haiti. The unruly nature of the political sphere there exacerbates process of social exclusion because it restricts and sometimes annihilates forms of interaction -both civil and political -that could challenge mechanisms of exclusion. For instance, the extreme politization of labor unions reminds us of many English-speaking territories within the region. The qualitative difference is that the total dominance of the political sphere in the Haitian case leaves little room for already politically biased unions to intervene with any kind of effectiveness on behalf of workers' rights. They have little room to 14. O'Neill (1990) shows the gap between formal and actual rights in the extreme case of Haiti under military rule. when widespread military corruption led to long detentions injail without charges, seeing a lawyer, and physical abuse, often avoided with bribes. His arguments extend to previous states of affairs where rights existed only on paper. Further, similar discrepancies are experienced by other excluded populations - such as migrant laborers, factory female workers elsewhere - in the region. maneuver outside of state politics and thus they tackle few labor-specific issues outside of an immediately political context. Institutional weaknesses feed into one another. As extreme as that case is, the argument here is that the structural features it suggests are not rare throughout the region though they emerge under various forms. The limits to the effectiveness of the parliamentary system in Trinidad provide a different example. Ethnic divisions there lead to the difficulty of formalizing anything close to a broad social agreement, which is essential for the functioning of state institution. Programs can be passed or stopped on the basis of ethnic partisanship with little relation to their national effectiveness, as Premdas (1996) suggests was the case of Trinidad's failed National Youth Program. Other Institutions While many institutions generally provide a poor level of services and resources, how those resources are distributed also reveals processes of exclusion. In rural areas there is a lack of working institutions. For example, health care in the region is a largely urban institution, and the top elite often use health facilities outside of their nation altogether. IS The lack of faith in public institutions that provide health care leads to a situation of increasing disparity. Those who have the power to determine budgets and resource allocation to national institutions are not relying themselves on these institutions as they go abroad to get quality services. The region's health care systems are located disproportionately in cities. A recent report by CONFEMELstated that in the Latin America and Caribbean region as a whole, there has been a concentration of doctors in urban areas. It attributes that concentration to the fact that resources needed for running a practice are available only in cities. So while the region as a whole (with Haiti as a notable exception) has an increasing number of doctors, rural areas are losing their doctors to cities (Inter Press Service 1999; also see Guerra de Macedo 1992). Thus, policies aimed at rural health must consider the allocation of both material and material resources. Opening clinics in rural areas will not be enough without the guarantee of a permanent staff. Where governmental institutions are failing to provide needed services for their citizens, other organizations sometimes step in. For example. in Haiti, where "public sector institutions have all but broken down," 1.5 1.5. Thus aftel. a failed attempt on her life, the sister of the Haitian president was sent to Cuha for relatively minor medical care rather than receiving it at liolne. million people - more than one-fifth of the country -receive health care services from local and international NGG (Baker 1997:41). Although chronic diseases are an important health problem in the region, contagious diseases disproportionately affect the poor, especially where public-health care systems that they rely on have limited resources and react slowly (Hammer 1996; Weil and Scarpaci 1992:5-6). The 1980s economic crisis may have created larger disparities in health care, as public spending decreased and across the board public subsidies for health care tend to help the rich more, as those who could previously afford private care were forced to turn to public services (Guerra de Macedo 1992:35). Finally and obviously, the lack of medical insurance -especially for poorer segments - leads to larger discrepancies in care (Hammer 1996:6-10). Thus. some observers have suggested that the public sector should focus on problems least addressed through the private sector and that disproportionately affect the poor, such as contagious diseases and clean water. Education in general provides a good example of an institutional system that claims to be national but does not serve equally the majority and contributes to exclude substantial segments of the population from sotr~e forms of participation. First, levels of support are clearly advantageous to groups that are already better-off. For example, universities in the region are for the most part public, and supported by public funds. However. the proportion of the poorest segments of the population who attend universities is disproportionately low. Enrollment in tertiary education among poorest quintile in Jamaica is 1.6%,while in Guyana it is only I % Nevertheless. in the Caribbean region per capita expenditures on tertiary education are 15-25 times higher than those on secondary education, and 50 times higher than those on primary education (Baker 1997:137). The results on primary and secondary education are more mixed. Many countries of the English-speaking Caribbean where primary education developed as a national institution before the downfall of the plantation system stand as world exemplars. Among those, Barbados further stands out.l6 In others, both primary and secondary education serve as institutional node to reinforce social exclusion. Miller (1 992) suggests that even reforms aimed originally at reducing exclusion can perversely reproduce it. For example, Haiti's 1978 primary school educational reforms are telling of the processes of exclusion that both feed into and result from the educational 16. Barbados spending on education as a percentage of government experld~tures(19%)and I)!. G N P(7.2%) is high for the region. Over half of the children go to pre-.;c1111ol.Teacher5 a!-c better tralnedas a result ofa better educational .cystem. For example. primary school teacher\ all have at least a high school certificate. 73% have a teacl~ers'cert~t'icate,;uld IOY, have bachelor's degrees. This is a positively l'einforcing cycle (Miller 1992:119-143). system. These reforms placed the formerly separate administrations for urban and rural education under one Ministry. Creole was introduced as the language of instruction, replacing French, but this was met with some opposition by many parents as they accustomed to language as a form of social capital that education should impart; Creole, as an excluded language, would only serve to further reinforce the exclusion of their children. As private schools did not implement these reforms, many parents switched their children from public to private schools. Thus. in the decade when the largest investment had been made in Haiti's primary education system, less than half the primary school students were in the public system. This strain on the private educational systeni led to a lowering of teacher standards in order to lower costs, with the result that the teachers in the private system are less qualified than those in the public system. Private schools for children of the upper class are, of course, an exception, as they have the funds to maintain quality teachers. These institutions contribute to maintaining social class distinctions (Miller 1992:135-167). In an unchanged situation of exclusion, even attempt at reform can lead to greater differences. The purpose of this section is to suggest ways to address policy issues and to indicate the kind of research needed to guide policy, rather than to prescribe specific "inclusionary" policies. It became clear while writing this document that the majority of data most currently collected - particularly on the quantitative side - does not provide the information necessary to derive specific policy instruments to alleviate social exclusion. Existing statistics underplay the heterogeneity of the Caribbean in terms of the rural-urban divide, the various ethnic groups, across gender, etc. Given that categories of people are not obvious, and must be broken down into different kinds of units in order to see the multiple streams of social exclusion at work, it will seem obvious that problems must be similarly broken down. Units such as "health care" or "women's rights" cannot be considered independently of the forces that create and maintain these forms of exclusion. The social exclusion approach suggests that reform in one substantive area may be counterbalanced by the potential impacts it may have or the constraints that may exist in another domain and between them. No amount of investment in medical education, for example, can alone provide adequate doctors for rural areas where urban migration is a prevalent force. Nor will civic training of individual officials prevent corruption where the structure of institutions encourage corrupt practices. What matters is the interaction of these factors. The key implication for the way we think about social policy in the Caribbean, is that we need to identify the nodes at which processes of exclusion intertwine into the institutional settings that (re)produce social exclusion. While policy instruments should be targeted to specific conipo- nents, all interventions should consider in their design the potential interac- tions between the different factors that are generating social exclusion. To give one example, Haiti is full of urgent problems, one of them springs from the relationship between poverty and the environment (Lundahl 1979). No material intervention is more important than stopping environmental degra- dation. This does not mean that other problems are less urgent. It does mean that tackling this problem is more likely to have serious and long-term consequences on others. Yet at the same time, given Haiti's institutional weakness and the marginalization of its peasantry, environmental prograins need to be coupled with, or indeed integrate, interventions that will allow the peasantry to enhance its power of decision at the local level. Indeed, only the achievement of the institutional changes required to increase participation at the local level can guarantee the success of environmental programs. The case is unique but the lesson can be generalized. Throughout the region reform has to insist as much on institutional strength, reach, and representation as on content. Official institutions in the Caribbean are tlot national institutions. So-called formal institutions are institutions whose national reach has been claimed by the state, but whose national effectiveness is dubious. They need to be made national in terins of reach and representation, both geographical and social. lliis is not just a matter of service delivery. The key issue is participation vs. exclusion. A ina.jority of Caribbean citizens are excluded froin the processes that coalesce around these institutions. They are excluded as entrants. They are excluded as outcome. In that sense, Caribbean institutions need to become truly national. That narionalization, in turn, can happen only at the local level. Finally. in spite of the magisterial failure and weakness of the most visible and for~ilalinstitutions, there are local institutions which, despite the forces of exclusion working against them, have nevertheless shown remark- able resilience and strength. To call them informal is in part to miss the point of their effectiveness. One thinks of the internal marketing of corninor1 consumer goods and foodstuff and the mostly independent market women wlio sustain that system. One thinks of the various peasant associations so often neglected by both state and NGOworkers who walk in the countryside eager to impose their owl1 model of what civil society should be. However, more research is needed to identify these institutions, to understand how they work, why they work and when and where they falter. Policy must absolutely target them and support them in order: a) to strengthen their reach and nodes - as informally as necessary if research suggests that option; or b) to allow them a smooth transformation to a more formal level if both needed and possible. This also means, of course, that we should have the extreme humility required to talk less about or for the region's excluded and listen more carefully to what they have to say about their exclusion. ACOSTA-BELEN, EDNA AND CHRISTINE E. BOSE. ( 1993). "Women in the development process in Latin America and the Caribbean." In Re- searching women in Latitz America and the Caribbean. Acosta-Relkn and Bose, eds. 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