The Nation, November 26, 2007
By Pablo Salvat
Bologna * abuse of power and the national ethos
abuse of power in the field of social rights we talk about inheritance and failures of the economic model and habits no social help to overcome historical imbalances.
Barometer Report Abuse of Power, which generates released, realize the negative evaluation that persists as to the perceived abuses of power in social rights. Certain data sets, for example, that in both 2005 and 2006 remains at 50% the experience of violation of these guarantees in the population surveyed (in health, education, housing, welfare, work). Second, on the representation of the use of power, according to respondents, about 40% conceived in a negative way, connected with relations of inequality (16%), experience as abuse and corruption (16%) and negative values \u200b\u200bas envy and arrogance (4%). The use of power is seen in positive terms only 18% of the entries. Third, the respondents understand the abuse and take advantage of a position (about 40%), 18%, with trampling on people's rights, 11%, as the expression of the use of force to achieve certain objectives.
A fourth interesting figure says when asked about the responsibilities in the abuses of power, over 60% conduct relates to politics or corporate culture of the agency providing the service (in health, education, housing, welfare or work). Is linked to structural factors more than a bad experience with a particular official. However, in fifth place, a positive radiograph is the increased willingness of citizens to complain when they perceive as violations of their rights. This suggests that we, from the authoritarian legacy and currently has limited democracy in the modernization and inter-institutional practices that are cut by inequality, injustice, discrimination and abuse. That is, for situations that can be characterized as a refusal to recognize the other as "other legitimate" attended by not only individual rights but treated in accordance with a common human dignity.
The perception of an unequal society and some just demand another look at the ingredients can be incorporated in our public political culture of the prevailing social ethics, relationships between citizens and institutions, and their impact on the production of these situations experienced . The country's social history is marked by the existence of a series of events that are repeated, in which show signs of exclusion, discrimination or violence on the other especially if that other is female, indigenous, poor, illiterate, immigrant or adherent to change projects.
abuse of power in the area of \u200b\u200benjoyment of social rights we talk about inheritance and failures of the economic model and ways of living marked by social habits that do not contribute to overcome asymmetries and historical: authoritarianism, impunity, discrimination, lack of social esteem that people decisional stage private and public. The barometer results confirm something we've been able to trace from other angles: the absence among us of a moral egalitarian in the area of \u200b\u200bsocial and institutional ties and the likely consequences it. You may think that not be a simple task to modify the behavior of institutions and structures if at the same time, attitudes, corporate and union point in the opposite direction, ie if it is still proceeding as if there were people first, second and third class and still considered it a good thing and should it be.
Apparently, these situations do not only come from more powerful groups or those with more prestige. If the failure is "geo-social", if linked to the forms of articulation between citizens and between people-and institutions-then we find behaviors and habits of discrimination and abuse in different echelons of society and institutional trades. Whenever any fellow citizen feels that a fee has power, will often have the temptation to, as perhaps they did with him a degree of abuse in the micro or macro power as a form of "enforceable" to the rest. It is important to evaluate these situations so as not to avoid a trial on the given social relations, on the institutions we have and the parent to obey.
situations of abuse of power, but are examined in terms of the practice of agencies linked to the fulfillment of social rights cases but often there is a tendency to view them as isolated from the use of political power, forward inevitably to the kind of society we have, the social status of their relationship and their organizing principles. When talking about the kind of society we have, the society we want and its organizing principles, we are always talking about politics, especially democratic politics: how to resolve deliberately as a way to self-organize the common life.
could be inferred that the abuse of power was part of the population in relation to the rights and treatment due, talks about the shortage is our democratic process, in particular their ability to develop ways, means and institutions capable of meeting the basic rights socioeconomic and cultural field, which seems to show that we have a policy that, for now, lags behind the possibilities of the economic model. Conflicting and / or a deepening democratic impractical if not aim at the same time to the creation of an ethics (ethos) of equality mainstreamed. * Pablo Salvat
Bologna, Ph.D., U. Catholique de Louvain and director of the Master in Social Ethics and Human Development of the U. Alberto Hurtado.
