Political Participation, Public Investment, and Support for the System

Political participation, public investment, and support for the system: A comparative study of rural communities in Mexico. Carlos Salinas de Gortari. 1982. 51 pp.

Back cover

Carlos Salinas de Gortari was trained at Harvard University and M.l.T. This book is an edited version of his doctoral dissertation Political Participation, Public Investment, and System Support: A Study of Three Communities in Central Mexico, originally submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Political Economy and Government at Harvard University in may, 1978. 

Since 1971 he has held a succession of key positions in the Mexican public sector, including those of Director of Economic and Social Policy in the Ministry of Planning and Budget, and Director of the Institute of Political, Economic, and Social Studies of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional. His book, Producción y participación política en el campo, was published in 1980 by the Universidad Nacional Autbnoma de Mexico.

 

Quotes

Public spending did not buy the political support that the State had hoped for.

The State confronts a dilemma:

• if it wants to increase productivity and efficiency in the rural sector through collective participation, it may have to do so at the expense of political support; 
• if it wishes to maximize support, it will seemingly have to forego its strategy of organizing campesinos to increase productivity in rural areas.

A State which does not permit the participation of its citizens runs the risk of losing not only instrumental efficiency, but also its very legitimacy.

Summary + Notes

1. Introduction.

Importance of the rural sector. In most underdeveloped countries, a majority of the population lives in the countryside. Since development strategies usually require the removal of surpluses from the rural sector to foment the process of industrialization, the countryside gives birth to strong political tensions and becomes the cradle of deep-rooted and persistent social inequalities (Like the EZLN 12 years later).

Given scarce resources, governments have typically placed higher priority on import substitution to promote urban industrial growth than on projects to encourage rural sector development. However, increased government investment in the countryside (irrigation, roads, and infrastructure) did not improve the rural distribution of income. Even worse, public-sector investment in rural areas began to decline in relative terms. This led many campesinos to leave their lands, accelerating the growth of cities and emigration to the United States. 

In an attempt to:

1. Reduce social tensions.
2. Lower the rates of migration to urban areas.
3. Increase the income of campesinos.

Mexican government introduced development programs for the countryside in the early 1970s. These projects emphasized the active participation of campesinos and sought to:

1. Increase agricultural productivity.
2. Provide inexpensive foodstuffs for urban areas. 
3. Awaken a sense of dependence upon and loyalty towards the State.

Prevalent knowledge: Proletarian zones have been unable to take an active part in political decisions due to: 

1. Culture of Poverty. Apathy.
2. Image of the limited good. Keep the status quo.
3. The encogido syndrome. Too diffident and humble.

Three trends of thought:

1. Latin Americans are becoming increasingly politically mobilized.
2. Political participation is minimal and restricted to socioeconomic elites.
3. Mass political participation is usually irrational and violent.

The concept of political participation. Different modes of participation. Any activity which attempts to effect a favorable distribution of goods, who gets what within the community, generated by the public sector and/or to obtain desired government services. These activities include contacting public officials to obtain desired goods or services and engaging in "problem-solving" activities within the community.

This work will try to answer the question: Does public expenditure in rural Mexican communities result in increased support for the political system? 

1.  It will examine the nature of political participation.
2. How it varies between and within communities.
3. What factors explain this variation. 
4. It will evaluate Mexico’s rural development strategy.

Two national programs were selected:

• Labor-intensive Roads Construction Program.
• The Puebla Project.

Three communities were selected:

1. Supported. Received abundant benefits from government spending without having endeavored to obtain them.
2. Independent. Had gained government benefits through effective pressure.
3. Inactive. Lack of interest in obtaining government benefits and government’s lack of interest in providing them. 
4. Active. Segment of residents in the inactive community which autonomously mobilized with the guidance of external politicizing agents, to pressure for benefits.

Use of Wayne Cornelius questionnaire (1971). 227 interviews conducted. 

2. Rural Dwellers and Political Participation.

Approach: Cognitive and behavioral involvement.

• Compare rural political behavior with that of urban populations.
• Compare between and within rural communities.

Tables rural and urban:

Involvement	Rural	Migrants	Urban
Interest in federal government	50	55	30
Interest in campaigns	83	92	65
Voted in elections	87	95	74
Partisan membership	23	32	12
Contact with public officials	20	25	8
Community problem-solving activities	83	27	N/A

• The level of government spending in a community seems not to affect the level of political awareness.
• Communities with independent attitudes concerning the State (Active and Independent) put more emphasis on contact with public officials and on collective participation in the solution of community problems.
• The migration experience may have affected their political awareness. 
• Problem-solving activity is defined as collective participation in resolving community issues through self-help. 
• Political participation of rural inhabitants in all accounts exceeds that of urban dwellers.

Tables between and within rural communities:

Involvement	Inactive	Support	Active	Indep
Interest in federal government	40	20	30	17
Interest in state government	50	25	45	30
Interest in local government	60	32	33	34
Interest in campaigns	30	35	15	10
Voted in elections	90	98	70	80
Partisan membership	40	25	15	30
Contact with public officials	25	20	30	15
Community problem-solving activities	70	80	85	70

Modes of Political Participation. Political activity as a multidimensional phenomenon in which the participation of individuals differs not only in degree, but also in the type of activity that a given individual may prefer (Verba & Nie).

Participants	Rural	Migrants
Non-participation (Below average in all)	25	10
Voting specialists	20	30
Contact officials	25	11
Community proglem-solvers	15	30
Complete activism (Above average in all)	15	5

The community most favored by government expenditure (Supported) and that which has received neither great benefits nor stimuli either from within the community or from external agents (Inactive) continue to use voting as a principal mode of participation.

The context of political activity —the community— is an independent variable of considerable importance in explaining political behavior.

Participants	Active	Inactive	Indep	Supp
Non-participation	10	25	20	15
Voting specialists	15	35	5	30
Contact officials	10	25	60	20
Community prob lem-solvers	55	6	6	20

3. Political Participation and Support for the System.

Intro.

1. A system which permits the opportunity to participate in political decisions inspires greater satisfaction and loyalty among its citizens. In other words, the opportunity to participate in politics contributes to political stability. (As argued by the EZLN in 1994, indigenous people were always forgotten but in elections)
2. The symbolic importance of the Mexican Revolution encourages among Mexican citizens a feeling of loyalty toward the system. This support, however, coexists with a predominantly critical assessment of the government’s daily performance.
3. After a certain period of time, an inefficient system can be in danger, even if its citizens consider it legitimate.

Analysis. 

1. The Mexican government’s conception of rural development programs implicitly assumed that the greater the participation stimulated by these programs, the more likely that attitudes of support for the system would increase.
2. This work attempts to determine:

1. The relationship between political participation and support for the system among rural dwellers:
• Pragmatic attitudes (satisfaction with efficiency): specific support.
• Affective orientations (perceptions of legitimacy): diffuse support.
2. And the correlation between the aggregate index of specific support and the three modes of political participation:
• Contact with public officials
• Solution of community problems
• Voting in elections

Results. 

1. Supported, the community which has received the most benefits from the government without requesting them, has the lowest correlation between participation and support. 
2. Inactive, the community least benefited by government services shows the highest correlation between political involvement and specific support for the system.
3. Active and Independent show less specific support for the system.
4. Greater participation results in more critical views of government performance.
5. Diffuse support for the Mexican political system increases with greater political participation.
6. Political participation in Active correlates negatively with diffuse support. 
7. Inactive once again demonstrates the highest positive correlation between participation and support.
8. Supported stands out for the very weak correlation between political participation and diffuse support for the system expressed by its inhabitants.
9. Inactive, the community which demonstrated the greatest preference for voting, also registered the highest correlation between participation and overall support for the system. 
10. The community most benefited by the State, Supported, has also opted for voting as its preferred mode of political participation, but this activity does not correlate with support for the system as strongly as it does in Inactive.

4. Summary and Conclusions.

About the campesinos:

1. Contrary to conventional wisdom, many campesinos participate actively and peacefully in politics.
2. Mexican campesinos participate more actively in politics than do urban natives, and to a degree comparable to that of migrants to urban areas.

Types of communities and its type of participation:

1. The community with the highest overall index of political participation, Active, prefer to engage in political activity through community problem-solving.
2. Inactive, which has the lowest overall index of participation, is composed of people who prefer voting as their mode of political involvement. 
3. Independent, which registers the second-highest index of political participation, prefers contacting public officials to obtain services. 
4. Supported, the community most benefited by the State, the overall participation index was similar to that of Independent, but its members prefer to participate through voting.

Support for the system:

1. The results demonstrate that the participation stimulated by development projects does not necessarily augment political support.
2. When the members of a community participate actively in the solution of their problems (Actives), their support for the system declines.
3. Only in Inactive and Independent does greater participation (through voting and contacting officials respectively) correlates with increases in perceptions of regime legitimacy. 
4. In Supported this relationship does not seem to exist.
5. Inactive and Supported —have the same preferred mode of political participation (voting) but very different levels of overall support for the system. This fact indicates that knowing the preferred mode of political participation in a given community will not necessarily enable the analyst to determine its level of support for the system. 
6. It is quite important to differentiate not only urban from rural, but also between types of communities.
7. Problem-solving behavior, although essential for achieving a "multiplier effect" in development programs, does not seem to accompany attitudes of support for the political system. On the contrary, communities which demonstrate high participation also develop highly critical attitudes, especially with regard to voting.

To take into account:

1. The system seems (ironically) most efficient at garnering the support of those communities that it benefits least. 
2. The mode of participation which the State has encouraged as a strategy for achieving political modernization in rural areas —community problem-solving— is negatively correlated with support for the system in the community which specializes in this type of political activity (Active).
3. The system faces a dilemma: the mode of political participation it favors most correlates with diminished support. 
4. The policy of stimulating collective activity to solve economic and social problems in the countryside seems to alienate communities from the system; and it considerably reduces the system’s chances of gaining political support through simple public expenditure.

Policy recommendations:

1. Three principal goals for its rural development programs: 
1. Increased production, 
2. Higher levels of employment, 
3. Improved distribution of income.
2. Shortcomings of the past to be fought: 
1. Unkept promises, 
2. Inexcusable delays between the offer of a project and its execution, 
3. Administrative corruption.
3. The state will not reach its economic, social and political objectives, if it cannot rely on a corps of leaders of local development programs who will be attentive to the problems encountered in the delivery of development projects to targeted communities.
4. The State must delegate to responsible local officials the resources, thus increasing the efficiency, necessary to guarantee the timely and complete execution of projects involving public spending.
5. These officials must live permanently in the communities which they serve, and coordinate a decision-making process in which the members of affected communities participate.
6. The State needs such leaders in order to translate public expenditure on development projects into support for the political system.
7. The participation of rural inhabitants in both the execution and the administration of each program will serve to reduce corruption.

Note: Estas recomendaciones de política pública están prefigurando el Programa Nacional de Solidaridad creado por CSG, sólo cinco días después de tomar posesión, el 6 de diciembre de 1988.