The hypothesis would be more or less the following: assuming the consensus of the party system within democracy, the system has generated a dynamic of elite groups. The aim of the parties is not the consummation of any programme, the promulgation of any law. The goal of the party is the party. The object of the movement is the installation of the elite of the organization in the highest levels of the State.
U.S. President Donald Trump takes a photo with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro before attending a working dinner at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, United States, March 7, 2020. REUTERS/Tom Brenner
There is a lot of classic literature on the subject: Party models. Organizations and Power in Political Parties (1982), by Angelo Panebianco; Political parties. A Sociological Study of the Oligarchic Tendencies of Modern Democracy (1911) by Robert Michels; The list could be extensive. This is detailed by "Michels' Law": the tendency to oligarchies is the "Iron Law" of organizations.
It is interesting to study the way in which organizational systems have been relaxing as neoliberalism, the fall of the Wall, the weakening of fascism and Stalinism, the drop in temperatures of the Cold War or the emergence of the digital age have gradually taken over.
Gone are the times of democratic centralism and the theory of the centrics and the concentric, the division between organics and adherents, the demands of the militancy floor or the theories about organizational systems.
New types of political organization are emerging in the digital age. Where the demands on ideology or commitment, loyalty or floors of militancy are relaxed, new forms of belonging to politics and fidelity among its members are set in motion.
Among those classic texts of the bibliography on organizations, there are some that have begun to circulate in certain contemporary environments. They are para-university notes that are trafficked as attachments between WhatsApp groups, a sign of the extent to which certain academic debates circulate through new media.
Among these notes, essays made in the first half of the 90s and signed by Richard Katz and Peter Mair stand out.
Katz (1947), is a political scientist and professor of political science; He received his Ph.D. from Yale University and has taught at the State University of New York, the City of New York and the Central European University in Budapest and now teaches at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
For his part, Peter Mair (1951-2011) was an Irish historian and political scientist, professor of comparative politics at the European University Institute in Florence and at the universities of Limerick, Strathclyde, Manchester.
The books El Partido Cartel (1995) or Cadre, Catch-All or Cartel? A Rejoinder (Picture Matches, Catch-All Parties or Poster Matches. An Answer) (1996) are some of those shared by Richard Katz and Peter Mair. Katz and Mair's reflections continue to this day. In 2009, for example, we find reworkings of his ideas in "The Cartel Party Thesis: A Restatement". An Reaffirmation), in the University of Florida's Perspectives on Politics magazine.
The then president Cristina Fernandez put into operation 100% the Nestor Kirchner Nuclear plant with her sister-in-law. Photo Rolando Andrade Stracuzzi
The Reaffirmation of 2009 has its logic. Katz and Mair's theses were discussed. Among the criticisms he received were those that referred to his excessive theorism about the social, a field in which, to be accurate, fieldwork and case studies are required.
There is, however, a reflection that we could risk: "If the ideas of Katz and Mair are not very convincing to you, try coming for a few days to Argentina. A few hours in some northern provinces will surely convince him."
Katz and Mair's thesis, if we are allowed further development, would be this: the consummation of political leaders as "project-individuals" in the "perpetuity of power" has become the goal. But worse: the cartelization of politics about which Katz and Mair "theorize" refers to a tacit pact between the elites of different parties regarding the hegemony of access to public funds.
The aristocracy of a triumphant party guarantees some kind of access to state resources to the aristocracy of the defeated. When the alternation in power requires it, and the party of the vanquished is again called to lead the access to the public treasury, nobility obliges, will return the favor.
The back and forth creates a kind of cartelized Butskellism – a British neologism composed from the names of Rob Butler (Conservative) and Hugh Gaitskell (Labour leader) to indicate that the two parties had no real differences in the Britain of the 50s and 60s.
This is how we can better understand the history that goes from the neoliberal depoliticization of the 90s to the new voices about "the caste", passing through the thunderous cry of "QueSeVayanTodos" of the near times of 2001. A reflection until some time ago could have been: "It's not politics, beardless people, it's the discussion about party systems." But probably, for that reflection, it is already late.
Democracy made, trap made
What does all this have to do with our lives? There is a hint of transgression or political incorrectness in these lines. Poorly read, they can give rise to a certain ill-thinking and depoliticizing tone.
Read in another way, they can be interpreted as the opposite: as a profound call for the democratization of institutions, for the sincerity of our relations. A new autobiographical novel could be written. It is the story of all those disaffected by-the-structure, that is, of all those disaggregated by the system of distributions in the public treasury.
Demonstrators participate in the march "Let them all go", called by the collective "No a Keiko" on March 22, 2018, in its route through various avenues of the historic center of Lima (Peru). EFE / Ernesto Arias
It is a bibliography that only circulates in certain academic and political environments. But perhaps, in a country with poverty rates like ours, the time has come for it to be discussed outside the cloisters as well. The levels of cartelization of parties, trade unions, certain institutions, have perhaps already gone too far. Politics should take note.
One of the modus operandi of the cartel parties is the perpetuity of the members of a family in the estates of the State. And the exclusion of any new member not to their distribution systems, but to the hierarchy in their organizational systems. Family membership as hereditary political reassurance produces a new type of plutocracies – regimes of power based on money – from "nouveau riche".
The usufruct of several generations with job stability in the State, generates its benefits. Surname bearing in politics should be, at the very least, a negative attribute. The entry of family members into the public service, without CV, without previous experience, without competition for opposition and background, should be prohibited.
Trojan horses of democracy
Without genuine modernisation of institutions, without genuine political reform, democracy is a trap. While huge masses of people are dragged into the open curdled from the damp and abandoned streets, a forty-something political system raises its skyscrapers designed with a glass cynicism. It is a political system in which, regardless of election results, party elites always win.
With pomp and gala attire, in 2023 we celebrate 40 years of democratic recovery. The enormous effort and lives involved in the conquest of civil liberties deserve it.
The de-democratization of our institutions today is that other thing we should reflect on. The cartelization of politics is that patina that clouds the whole system: it is that mucilaginous glue coating that bogs everything down and what really should be removed.
There is a book that, from a not so distant past, returns to us as in a mirror the reverse effect of this tempestuous present, numb with wars, post-pandemic and humanitarian crises. In 2003 – after the crisis of 2001 – a Daniel Samoilovich frightened by the structural aestheticization of poverty, wrote a formidable book: The cart of Aeneas. "Look, (...), look down there, / in the fresh, acidic air ... / that is Troy, friend, the one who once / wore her proud battlements / curds of jarana soldiers; If the air / wasn't so thick it would look..."
One question might be: who introduced the Horse into this Troy? Who were the new invading Hellenes who, one night, entered the city to take everything from us, take everything, barbarize everything, make it unpunished and illegitimately theirs?
Juan José Mendoza holds a PhD in Literature from the UBA. Among his books are: Borges/Piglia. An Introduction to American Literature (2023), The Interpretation of Nightmares (2023), Homo Bunker (2021), The Archives. Papers for the Nation (2019).
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