The Normative Blocking to the Economical Change in the Post Authoritarian Chile and South Africa

In countries such as Chile in LatinAmerica and South Africa on the African continent, drastic processes of democratisation occurred during the 1990s, accompanied by radical processes of economic liberalisation. These processes assumed a neoliberal character that generated a development pattern characterised by substantial market reforms and a reduction of state functions.

After their authoritarian periods, apartheid (SouthAfrica) and the military dictatorship (Chile), the economic trajectories can be considered successful when judged by its results, namely, a decrease in poverty and an increase of the gross domestic product (GDP). However, these countries have maintained high levels of inequality.

The adjustments and reforms of the authoritarian periods, have generated particular phenomenon with normative character. The aim of this paper is to develop an understanding of the manner in which economic policies in postauthoritarian societies are influenced by policies formulated during authoritarian periods, as well as the normative mechanisms that lead to the continuity of an economic policy framework that allows the perpetuation of social inequality. There is an emphasis on processes and normative mechanism for this continuity, and the communicative norms, that have constituted a particular kind of capitalist development in postauthoritarian countries.

The economic situation of Chile and South Africa is characterised by the presence of strong political coalitions left of centre, the African National Congress, in South Africa and the Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia (NuevaMayoría) in Chile, whose elites mostly belong to the groups of actors who were  oppressed during the authoritarian period. Both coalitions govern in the new context of democracy with a high availability of resources enhancing economic potential, and also in a context of high dependency on foreign economies and the global capitalist growth of the 1990s.

Two normative mechanisms of institutional continuity, which may serve as hypotheses to explain, the neoliberal trajectories, are highlighted.The first mechanism is "The Seduction of Potential Political Opposition": In both cases, a limitation of the scope for democratic competition emerged on during the postauthoritarian democracy as a combined consequence of the structure of electoral support after the end of oppression and the particular institutionalisation of the rules of democratic representation. The effect was a very weak presence of radical critics of neoliberal economic policymaking, even though such critics had strong voices during times of resistance. The result was roughly the same in both cases. The second mechanism is "The Dark Side of Moral Capital": A major underlying mechanism for this non-progressive immobility is the presence of unequally held moral capital in the post-oppression polity and the dark side of the mobilisation of such moral capital. Recent debates in political theory have often referred to the mobilising and uplifting potential of keeping the memory of past injustice alive in the present. When, however, the rememorisation becomes a form of discursive moral capital not binding to any political action, and when, in turn, criticism of the government becomes illegitimate because of the condition of the current governing elites as formerly oppressed and even persecuted groups in society.