Abstract
The inter-generational transfer of power from the Castro to the post-Castro era represents what we may call a critical juncture in Cuba’s contemporary political history. How much space will be allowed for deeper changes, particularly regarding the paradigmatic challenges ahead? Among these are inevitable requirements for decentralisation, horizontal forms of interest representation, transparency and accountability, economic and political pluralism and participation, legalisation and regulation of non-state business, reconstruction of the welfare state through a mixed economy. We discuss whether Cuba is suffering from non-curable democratic birth defects. Drawing on experiences from other post-communist transformations, one of the big challenges is how to handle the incoherence of partial reform, tending to release a domino effect spinning out of control. The question of how power, hegemony and legitimacy will evolve during the critical juncture is crucial in order to imagine future scenarios for Cuba, and whether negotiation options will emerge. On the basis of trends during the last ten years and the remaining challenges, we are outlining the following four transformation scenarios for Cuba past the critical juncture, between neo-patrimonialism, capitalist neo-authoritarianism and a mixed economy with more participatory polity, up against collapse and state failure.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Several of these ‘paradigmatic choices’ are closely related to the rule-of-law elements discussed in Chap. 7, Sect. 4.
- 2.
Díaz-Canel: “La tarea fundamental de la Revolución hoy es la economía”, Speech to VIII Congreso de la Asociación Nacional de Economistas y Contadores de Cuba. Granma, 15.6.19.
- 3.
Head of the Economic Reform Commission, Murillo, made a very frank admission right after the 2016 PCC Congress: “it is impossible to lead a country without transparency” (remarks at Taller Internacional sobre auditoría, control y supervisión, organised in Havana in May 2016, quoted by Elías Amor Bravo: “ ¿De qué transparencia están hablando?”, Cubaeconomía, 03.06.16).
- 4.
Juventud Rebelde, 11.09.11.
- 5.
Ref. Bechle (2010), discussing the use of the concept neo-patrimonial in a Latin American context.
- 6.
The 1940 Constitution contains such fundamental democratic elements as full division of state powers, semi-parliamentarianism, direct popular vote for all government positions, recognition of civic-political freedoms, free primary education, etc.
- 7.
A figure cited by leading Cuban economist Juan Triana, posted 11.07.16: http://oncubamagazine.com/columns/the-situation-and-development-in-cuba/.
- 8.
The quote is taken from the introductory chapter of the book, reproduced by Espacio Laical, Havana, July 2013.
- 9.
“Nanxun” (Southern Tour) of 1992. Quoted in The Economist (31 May 2001). Deng is commonly quoted as saying “To get rich is glorious”, but there is no proof that he actually said this.
- 10.
Diario de Cuba, 01.07.16, “La subdirectora de ‘Granma’ alerta de que en Cuba se dan las condiciones para un estallido social en las calles” (S/E). The young journalist in a provincial party newspaper (Vanguardia, Santa Clara) who published this speech on his personal blog was harshly criticised and fired from his job.
- 11.
This represents a clear change from the way Fidel Castro was conducting his leadership role, expecting any minister or high-level state official to stand ready at any moment to take his personal orders, follow up and implement his more or less whimsical initiatives. Under Raúl Castro’s much more institutionalised system of government, ministries and state bodies are after all left with certain independence within their respective technical areas of competence.
- 12.
Like Díaz-Canel, Gorbachev was the first leader of his country born after the Revolution, about the same age (mid-50s) when he took over from over-aged veterans, delivering the same continuity discourse from the outset in spite of enormous socio-economic challenges.
- 13.
So far (2019), however, new economic restrictions imposed by the Trump administration have mostly led to a sharp reduction in private US tourism in Cuba, with very negative effect for the private tourism sector on the island.
- 14.
A pair of concepts sometimes used in Spanish is ‘Aperturistas’ versus ‘Immobilistas’. O’Donnell (in O’Donnell et al. 1986) applies a more nuanced concept system, distinguishing between four actors: Hardliners and Reformers inside the authoritarian bloc and Moderates and Radicals in the opposition (ref. Linz and Stepan’s concept ‘four-player game’). Hardliners, they say, tend to be found in the repressive apparatus of the authoritarian bloc (police, legal bureaucracy, censors, even among regime-loyal journalists), whereas Reformers are often recruited among politicians of the regime and from some groups outside the state apparatus: sectors of the bourgeoisie under capitalism and some economic managers under socialism. In the latter case, it has been claimed, some factory managers saw the possibility of converting their political power into economic power (and probably personal enrichment), and therefore supported democratisation.
- 15.
Carlos Manuel Rodríguez Arechavaleta, Cuban political scientist of the Universidad Iberoamericana, Madrid, in a debate “Escenarios posibles del futuro cubano”, organised by Flacso at Casa de América, Madrid, June 2016 (“Cambios, Castro, Reformas: ¿“No Castro no problem”, otra vez? Transición en Cuba no comenzará hasta muerte de Fidel Castro, según expertos en Madrid”). EFE, Madrid, 30.06.16 (reprinted in Cubaencuentro.com ).
- 16.
Several other authors have also attempted to draw up a variety of scenarios for post-Castro Cuba: Ritter (2016), Feinberg (2016), Monreal (2016) have been mostly concerned with different economic scenarios, while Saxonberg (2013) has discussed transitions from Communism, and Carothers (2007) and Fukuyama (2015) have shared their views on the more classical transition to liberal democracy. A summary of these discussions are to be found in chapter 12 of the author’s Dr. philos dissertation (Bye 2018).
- 17.
José Azel: “El ‘Partido Institucional’ cubano”, published in AsceNewsclippings No. 683, 19.11.15.
- 18.
Reinaldo Escobar: “Trump, los militares y la división de poderes en Cuba”, 14ymedio, 20.06.17.
- 19.
It is interesting to note that this impressive documentary work, published in Havana, makes no mention of the property belonging to Castro’s father, Don Ángel: the Manacas finca in Birán, today a museum in Holguín province, with its 10,000 hectares domain (although most of it was rented permanently from the United Fruit Company), with some 300 families living and working on the property (Szulc 1986: 99). The Castro family no doubt belonged to the landed oligarchy in pre-revolutionary Cuba.
- 20.
At a conference in New York organised by Cuba Posible on 26.05.16.
- 21.
Extractive economic institutions, the claim, are such that promote or permit “expropriating the resources of the many” and concentrating them in the hands “of the few”; inclusive institutions on the other hand permit the participation of the people in economic activity to make productive use of their talents and skills.
Bibliography
Acemoglu, Daron, and James A. Robinson. 2012. Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. New York: Crown Publishing Group.
Alonso, José A., and Pavel A. Vidal. 2013. ¿Quo Vadis, Cuba? La Incierta Senda de la Reforma. Madrid: Editorial Catarata.
Anderson, Perry. 1976. The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci. New Left Review I/100 (Nov.–Dec.): 20.
Bechle, Karsten. 2010. Neopatrimonialism in Latin America: Prospects and Promises of a Neglected Concept. GIGA Working Papers No. 153 (November 2010). Hamburg: German Institute of Global and Area Studies.
Brown, Archie. 2009. The Rise and Fall of Communism. New York: HarperCollins.
Brundenius, Claes. 1981. Economic Growth, Basic Needs and Income Distribution in Revolutionary Cuba. Lund: Research Policy Institute.
Bye, Vegard. 2018. The End of an Era or a New Start: Economic Reforms with Potential for Political Transformation in Cuba on Raúl Castro’s Watch (2008–2018). Oslo: University of Oslo (Dr. Philos dissertation). http://hdl.handle.net/10852/66018.
Carothers, Thomas. 2007. How Democracies Emerge: The “Sequencing” Fallacy. Journal of Democracy 18 (1, Jan.): 12–27.
Castro Ruz, Raúl. 2016. Informe Central al 7mo Congreso del Partido Comunista de Cuba. Downloaded 17.04.16. http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2016/04/17/informe-central-al-vii-congreso-del-partido-comunista-cuba/#.WhPu77bBKog.
Chaguaceda, Armando, and Marie L. Geoffray. 2015. Cuba: Dimensiones y transformaciones político-institucionales de un modelo en transición. In Cuba: Ajuste o transición? Impacto de la reforma en el contexto del restablecimiento de las relaciones con Estados Unidos, ed. Velia C. Bobes. Flacso México: Ciudad de México.
Feinberg, Richard A. 2016. Open for Business. Building the New Cuban Economy. Washington: Brookings Institution.
Frank, Marc. 2013. Cuban Revelations: Behind the Scenes in Havana. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
Fukuyama, Francis. 2014. Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy. London: Profile Books.
Fukuyama, Francis. 2015. Why is Democracy Performing so Poorly? Journal of Democracy 26 (1): 11–20.
Gramsci, Antonio. 1971. Selection from the Prison Notebooks. London: Lawrence and Wishart.
Huntington, Samuel P. 1968. Political Order in Changing Societies. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Jimenez, Guillermo. 2008. Los proprietarios de Cuba 1958. La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.
Kornai, János. 1992. The Socialist System: The Political Economy of Communism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Lenin, Vladimir. 1906. Report on the Unity Congress of the R. S. D. L. P. A Letter to the St. Petersburg Workers. Accessed 15.01.18. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1906/rucong/viii.htm.
Linz, Juan J., and Alfred Stepan. 1996. Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Lipset, Seymor M., and Stein Rokkan. 1967. Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments. In The West European Party System, ed. Peter Mair, 91–111. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.
MacGregor Burns, James. 2003. Transforming Leadership. New York: Grove Press.
Mahoney, James. 2001. The Legacies of Liberalism: Path Dependence and Political Regimes in Central America, Paperback. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Moene, Kalle. 2016. Social Equity as a Development Model. In Reinventing Social Democratic Development: Insights from Indian and Scandinavian Comparisons, Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Studies in Asian Topics, no. 58, ed. Olle Törnquist and John Harriss. Copenhagen: NIAS Press.
Monreal, Pedro. 2016. Unpublished seminar presentation: Nuevos Escenarios sobre Cuba: Sociedad y Derecho. Universidad de Alicante, 16–17.11.16.
O’Donnell, Guillermo, Philippe Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead, eds. 1986. Transitions from Authoritarian Rule. Prospects for Democracy, 4 Vols. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Przeworski, Adam. 1991. Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ritter, Archibald. 2016. Alternative Institutional Futures for Cuba’s Mixed Economy. Posted on His Blog thecubaneconomy.com , 01.02.16. http://thecubaneconomy.com/articles/2016/02/alternative-institutional-futures-for-cubas-mixed-economy-2/.
Saxonberg, Steven. 2013. Transitions and Non-transitions from Communism: Regime Survival in China, Cuba, North Korea, and Vietnam. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Stokke, Kristan, and Olle Törnquist. 2013. Transformative Democratic Politics. In Democratization in the Global South. The Importance of Transformative Politics, ed. Kristan Stokke and Olle Törnquist. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Szulc, Tad. 1986. A Critical Portrait: Fidel. New York: Avon Books.
Törnquist, Olle, and John Harriss, eds. 2016. Reinventing Social Democratic Development: Insights from Indian and Scandinavian Comparisons. Nordic Institute of Asian Studies; Studies in Asian Topics, No. 58.
Whitehead, Laurence. 2009. Losing the Force? The ‘Dark Side’ of Democratization After Iraq. Democratization 16 (2, Apr.): 215–242.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bye, V. (2020). Into the Critical Juncture: Principal Dilemmas and Possible Scenarios. In: Cuba, From Fidel to Raúl and Beyond. Studies of the Americas. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21806-5_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21806-5_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-21805-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-21806-5
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)