In the midst of recurring economic crises, social discomfort and institutions in check, the state figure returns to the center of the stage. But this time, not as an unquestionable guarantor of order and well -being, but as an object of dispute. Should you continue to intervene in economic and social life? Can you do it effectively to limited resources and increasing expectations? Do you really want to assume the role that was historically attributed to him?
These three questions – to be able and want – condense the central dilemma of the state transformation. Globally, the idea of a “smaller” and “agile” state, accompanied by a growing participation of the private sector. Even progressive court governments have yielded essential functions in the name of efficiency, fiscal deficit or market pressure. However, a good part of the structures that are intended to reduce today were built to cover the gaps of the market itself.
In Latin America, the history of the business state, subsidist and employer has also been that of its capture by sectors that, paradoxically, today promote its reduction. Criticism of interventionism becomes rhetorical when those who raise it have been its main beneficiaries.
The real challenge does not reside in taking sides between an omnipresent or an absent state. It is about reconstructing its legitimacy. Modernization cannot be an accounting operation or an ideological slogan: it must involve real capacity for management, transparency and results orientation. And, above all, a political will that does not give up equity as a horizon.
The future of the State is not in its size, but in its vocation. It is not about how much it intervenes, but how, for which you already favor who. In an era marked by structural inequalities and social distrust, redefining its role is not a technical option: it is a democratic urgency.
Carlos Felice
E-mail: [email protected]
Instagram: @carlosdfelice
By CEDOC
