Dr. Alfred G. Cuzán

The Portuguese régime change from dictatorship to democracy, set in motion by the April 1974 military coup and finalized with the 1982 and 1989 constitutional amendments, offers clues for answering contested questions about transitions to democracy. Among those questions are the following: Are there socio-economic prerequisites for democracy? What conditions facilitate subordination of the military to the new democracy’s civilian authorities? Who are the parties to the agreement a democratic constitution represents? What is the relationship between market economy and democracy? What works best in new democracies: parliamentarism or presidentialism?

This chapter argues that political anarchies are of two types—hierarchical or plural. The more pluralist political anarchy is, the more it resembles market anarchy. The performance of hierarchical and plural anarchies is evaluated in terms of their ability to minimize the level of force in society. The chapter shows that plural anarchies are much less violent than hierarchical anarchies. The chapter also argues that the real question libertarians must solve is not whether minimalism or anarchy, but which type of anarchy, market or political, hierarchical or plural, is most conducive to the maximization of freedom. Anarchy is a social order without Government, subject only to the economic laws of the market. The anarchic relations of government officials can be illustrated in the following example: Suppose that a congressman manages to divert streams of moneys from the government's flows to his private estate.

This paper adopts a comparative, analytical approach leading to the suggestion that while Chile and other developing societies might beneficially borrow from the US experience with techniques of privatization and decentralized delivery of social services, the United States, and other developed societies, likewise will benefit from privatizing existing social security systems along Chilean lines. Grounded in the assumption that privatization must be explicitly defined and fully understood as offering governance as well as administrative choices drawn from a complex set of socio-economic techniques, the paper concludes that the most important benign effects of privatization will be obtained from a policy which allows for public provision of socially desired goods and services which are privately produced.