1. INTRODUCtioN
A democracy moves from a formal model to a substantive one when there are social agreements (Quiroga, 2000) sufficient to establish that democracy should not only guarantee individual freedoms, but should also seek what, in the absence of a better way, can be termed as the common good. For the purposes of this document, it is understood as the constant search for structural conditions of real equality among all members of that society.
This search occurs thanks to a set of conditions that include, but are not limited to, institutions, democratic tradition, and the role of the State in shaping these structural bases. Other necessary conditions have to do with the strengthening of civil society that moves the “center of gravity in the relationship between the resources that money, administrative power and solidarity represent” (Habermas, 2005, 8) in such a way that new public spaces for the democratic formation of opinion and political will be developed, as suggested by the same author, in the social group and not in the private sector or the State. This reaffirms society against money or administrative power.
This study proposes that for democracy to be considered substantive, its quality should improve in a sustained and permanent way. For Jacobs (1994), democracy should not be limited to electoral processes, but should be evident between each process. The concept of substantive is associated, among other variables, with those that relate to how political and public institutions give results in the search for these conditions of real equality in access to the guarantee of fundamental rights (Spiker, 2007) and in the real access to the same opportunities.
This breaks a historical vision of the role and functioning of the traditional Administration, so given to generate difficulties in order to sell facilities (Correa R, personal communication, 2015). A different vision is proposed that focuses on citizens, on how they should operate to meet their needs, how to generate competitive conditions in the business sector or facilitate access to all the procedures that are required for this purpose.
The document raises several reflections on this way of understanding the State and the Administration. At first, a review is made of the notion of the modern State, surpassing the traditional vision that assigns it the ability to monopolize legitimate violence. Subsequently, reflections on democracy and its quality are proposed, and how a democracy can be understood substantively if the State and the Administration function.
The article has been built on the analysis of public information and published by the Government and other related studies on the implementation of the public policy to simplify procedures in the period 2014-2016 in Ecuador. As can be seen, it is stated that from the implementation of said policy, access to the Administration was facilitated for citizens, which in turn could improve the citizens’ perception of the functioning of the State and democracy.
In particular, the evidence suggests that the effort to take advantage of electronic resources could contribute to the strengthening of substantive democracy. The information provided by this work shows that the electronic processing and the possibility of participating in the feedback processes and improvement of the quality of the administrative paperwork and procedures carried out by the citizens could feed social conditions that made it possible to configure a more substantive democracy.
2. THE NOTION OF THE MODERN STATE
States are the most complex expression of social agreement in a self-regulating society. The ultimate goal of the democratic process is to decide who should govern the State to direct society towards what the social group considers desirable. It can be suggested that it is not possible to speak of democratic quality if there is no institutionalized State that supports it. The quality of democracy is not possible only as an agreement of individual wills, but it also requires an institutional apparatus to support it. This institutional apparatus is sustained in the State, understood as the sum of the relationships of all the social actors that coexist in it. The State is also and at the same time, the consequence and origin of the political actions carried out by the members of that society (Heller, 1998 [1934]).
This State consolidates its material manifestation in an interdependent set of institutions that bring together the power and resources of a social and political coercion (Oszlak, 2007) necessary for the legitimacy of its actions. The sphere in which human groups dispute control of the state is the sphere of politics. Wherever dialectical, ideological, and programmatic disputes occur that are possible because society has accepted that such disputes are necessary to feed the democratic process (Levi, 2015 [2002]).
It is in the State where ideas such as public goods, a just society or common values are developed and take shape (Bauman, 2002), ideas that are echoed in the concept of substantive democracy. These notions require a support structure that allows coexistence in these complex societies to make possible the search for those purposes that Bauman contributes. Substantive democracy, understood as the inclusive solution of the most relevant public problems for this social group, which facilitate conditions of real equality of opportunities and are not limited only to economic growth (Giroux, 2005).
In this sense, the role of the State “is not only to ensure the conditions for the accumulation of capital, but also and above all, to improve the lives of its citizens in terms of rights, services and public policies” (Peña & Lillo, 2018, p. 24). Therefore, according to the author, the State should no longer be perceived as a mere reproducer of the mercantile, since its vocation is broader and includes, among other things, the power to regulate and shape life in society to avoid the perpetuation of inequalities and imbalances that persist in societies. This is one of the ways that consolidate democracy. Strong states, generate capable public organizations that provide quality services to citizens.
In a spiral effect, citizens trust the state more by receiving better services and may be willing to participate in more democratic processes. Interestingly, they can decide to participate in the processes that allow them to elect their representatives, and in those in which they can co-construct solutions to the public problems of society, or demand accountability for the actions of said representatives. In this sense, it can be summarized that the State is “the best way to achieve social order, to promote economic growth or to facilitate democratic expression” (Levi, 2015 [2002], p. 28).
In the period studied in this article, the Ecuadorian State was reformed with the intention of expanding its presence and incidence in previous cases in which either there was no state presence or its incidence was relative or secondary. For example, the Government created the Ministry of Mines as a response to the need to give more relevance to the sector, considering that the mining potential of the national territory could be subject to exploitation for the generation of new productive sectors with the consequent increased income for society. Another example was the emphasis assigned to the professionalization of public management through the strengthening of the National Secretariat of Public Administration (SNAP) as the body responsible for implementing quality management processes, the implementation of electronic government, innovation or transparency in the central Administration.
3. QUALITY OF DEMOCRACY
An organized society generates a State that acts to solve complex public problems that cannot be solved individually. This state is governed by coalitions that participate in democratic processes to win the right to govern. Ultimately, formal democracy has to do with who and how comes to power, and how they exercise it (Duhem, 2006). That is, how he uses power to govern the State and solve the problems that society has commissioned him to solve. From this moment on, democracy ceases, or should cease, to be formal exclusively as the one who arbitrates the process of competition and access to power. Henceforth, democracy should also be substantive, as the one who creates conditions for the construction of societies of equals with equal rights and real equality of access to opportunities.
Democracy can have different relative qualities. The concept of quality of democracy can be associated with 1) the processes of democratic participation, 2) the way in which political institutions facilitate the consolidation of democratic processes, allow the participation of all actors or create conditions of accountability of the elected authorities (Levine & Molina, 2007). Other currents also recognize that the quality of democracy improves 3) when the State functions (UNDP-OAS, 2010).
Democratic participation is understood as the set of public actions that demonstrate the role that citizens play in public policy decision-making processes. These processes of corporate deliberation according to Habermas (1995), validate the decisions of the majority of the participants in the framework of a rational discussion. For this, the participatory process should be based on the plurality of lifestyles of modern societies (Velásquez, 2003) if it is in the interest of society to raise the quality of democracy.
The quality of democracy includes the extent to which public officials are obliged to be accountable to the citizens for their actions and decisions as governors (Levine & Molina, 2007) and, in the same sense, the degree to which the functioning of the Public institutions is also open to public scrutiny (Duhem, 2006). Note that it is not just about the actions of the ruling coalition. It is also that the state apparatus should be subject to scrutiny by society as a whole. Therefore, democracy improves if citizens feel that their rulers report their actions and the reasons that justify them, and if the system of public organizations can be scrutinized so that people feel informed and understand the decisions of public policy taken by both the government and the administration.
The State is one of the main executors of democratic, citizen and participatory openness (Piñeiro, 2018). It must have the capacity, among other things, to channel legitimate protests from sectors of society that perceive themselves as affected by political decisions or by the operation of public organizations. Also, it should guarantee the stable presence of a social order that makes possible the real exercise of the freedom of citizenship. For this, government organizations should operate according to their capacities and responsibilities in the provision of public services, access to common goods or guarantee of rights that allow the effective exercise of said freedom.
