TECHNOCRACY AS A FORM OF CONSENSUS. EVIDENCE FROM SANTIAGO S PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM

Transcription

1 TECHNOCRACY AS A FORM OF CONSENSUS. EVIDENCE FROM SANTIAGO S PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM Author: Andrea Gartenlaub. PhD Student of Social Sciences of Universidad de Chile. Conicyt 1 Scholarship. ABSTRACT: The article seeks to demonstrate how in discussions over Santiagos s public transportation system, technical knowledge was transformed into a consensus-building tool. It is argued that a consensus was built on the basis of shared social imaginaries, reflected in the discourse of officials and in the written press. Keywords: Public Policy; Transantiago; Consensus; Technocracy. INTRODUCTION 2 This paper focuses on the analysis of the formulation stage of the public policy of the Public Transportation system of the city of Santiago, Transantiago 3. Under this scenario we examine the concept of social consensus and how it was reflected in the agenda of the media. From various evidences it is presented the hypothesis that technical knowledge was raised as a building-consensus tool in the debate of this public policy. It states that this agreement was built in basis of shared social imaginaries, which reflected in the discourse of officials and in the written press, so this technocratic knowledge stood as the hegemonic public speech. It is concluded that the dynamics of consensus which was established as a tool to overcome the conjunctures of the first Coalition (Concertación) 4 governments-, was extended also to other scopes, permeating the Chilean society beyond political disputes. The hypothesis of this work was built from the analyzed evidence in basis of interviews with actors, bibliography and newspapers, and how they were forming a public discourse given to the modernization and technocratic imprint of the centreleft governments. In other words, a social imaginary was built as base and justification of the public policies government discourse. The successful establishment of this consensus between government, social actors and media, allowed it not to be altered by the demand of the transportation guilds, main opponents to this modernization, but, on the contrary, it became a dissent with little public support. The support of the citizen to Transantiago was threatened when the 1 National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICYT) 2 This paper has been possible by the input of Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica de Chile, CONYCIT (National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research) to the Fondecyt project : The process of public policies in Chile. Case analysis of the Reform and Modernization of the Public Management, Auge-Ges Plan, and Transantiago Public Transportation System ( ). Any mistake or omission is the author s sole responsibility. 3 Transantiago was a public policy formulated during the administration of President Ricardo Lagos ( ) and implemented in the first semester of 2007, during the administration of Michelle Bachelet ( ). 4 Concertación or Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia is the name of the centre-left coalition. From now on it would appear as Coalition of Parties for Democracy or just Coalition. 1

2 system collapsed in its difficult start. However, the notion of modernization stayed unalterable. During the research process, the analysis of the print media became a tool to visualize the key ideas of the social actors facing this public policy, and, at the same time, to demonstrate the low critical capacity in front of public policy issues. The theoretical framework used in this research included concepts from different areas, such as public opinion studies, sociology and political science. And if there are another papers that have approached the issue of Transantiago (Maillet, 2008; Jouffe and Lazo, 2010) from this constructivist perspective can provide new backgrounds, from a qualitative approach to a case study. Methodologically, it was chosen a case study, because this one is used when the research question seeks to understand the how and why of a phenomenon; and when the research seeks to investigate into a fact that has no clear boundaries, i.e., when the limits between the phenomenon and the context are diffuse (Yin, 1994: 1). The date analysis was done according the Grounded Theory method. This method created by Glauser and Strauss (1967) is used by qualitative studies, based in analytic induction, and allows generating coding criteria of the interviews contents and, from there, generating explanations regarding the case in study. The method starts with the data analysis to construct an explicative theory of the phenomenon. For that, it merges the analysis of classic content, grouping the data into analytical categories, oriented to discover properties that allow comprehending the studied phenomenon (Glaser and Strauss, 1967, cited in Valles 2007). The analyzed data in this work come from three sources: Thirty in depth interviews realized during 2010 with relevant actors within the formulation process of the Transantiago public policy. The respondents were chosen according their participation in some of the stages of the analyzed period. The respondents identification was made according the criteria of theoretical or purposive sampling. The interviews were realized through a semi-structured questionnaire. News analysis regarding the Transantiago on the Chilean main newspapers during the period there were selected the media of greater national circulation: El Mercurio, La Segunda, La Tercera, La Nación, La Hora, Punto Final. This analysis allowed identifying the public features of the actors within the political discussion. The used methodology was based in the review of publications directly related to the subject, in areas of news coverage of the following sections: National, Politics, Economics, and Editorial. The clippings were selected from the Institute of Political Science s Centre of Political Documentation of the (CEDOP), of the Faculty of History, 2

3 Geography and Political Science of Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, during the months from July to September of The review of materials and documents elaborated by public bodies technicians, as well by researchers and academics interested in the subject. This review included discourses and public presentations of government authorities related to this public policy. The document review sought to identify key concepts in the construction process of the public policy. 1. SOCIAL IMAGINARIES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF A PUBLIC POLICY To understand the social construction process, we will start for the concept of imaginary developed by the French Cornelius Castoriadis. This author proposes that social creations, institutions, laws or, in this case, a public policy, cannot be explain outside its context, due to only in it, its regulations, and mostly, its own symbols and significations, make sense. The social world is, in every instance, constituted and articulated as a function of such a system of significations, and these significations exist, once they have been constituted, in the mode of what we called the actual imaginary (or the imagined). It is only relative to these significations that we can understand the choice of symbolism made by every society, and in particular the choice of its institutional symbolism, as well as the ends to which it subordinates functionality (Castoriadis, 1998: 146). Why using as starting point the concept of social imaginary to analyzed the sense of Transantiago in the public discourse? The choice is due, mainly, to a specific fact: the chain of decisions behind the implementation of this policy. The vast majority of respondents expresses that the will behind the presidential momentum to restructure Santiago s public transport, obey rather than to a technical diagnosis and social pressure- to a previous decision based in a belief system, in a social imaginary, about what should be a public policy: modernization. Many interviewees agree in pointing President Ricardo Lagos as the one who urged a reform that should to be consistent with the vision of a modern Chile, i.e., in a trajectory that wanted to put the nation in the horizon of a development country, of the first world. Thus, in the words of a former advisor for the Ministry of Transport, I think that it has to do with the field of society s development itself, and, in second place, to the imprint, or the seal that had the then minister Lagos by urging a modernization plan and also by improving the infrastructure in different areas. In public works and transport, that s why later came two emblematic projects when he became President: Transantiago and the recovery of the southern railway system. Beyond the fact that the decision to transform transport was part of Ricardo Lagos s government program, it must to be remembered that the modernization drive of the State, and especially of its infrastructure, was one of the distinctive features of the governments of the centre-left coalition, Coalition of Parties for 3

4 Democracy since its arrival to power in 1990, and where Ricardo Lagos himself had a relevant role as minister of Public Works in the administration of Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle ( ). In practical terms, the imposition of the administrations of Frei Ruiz-Tagle, and in its continuity with Lagos s government, to create new infrastructure in highways, ports, customs, and to modernize the State services, was due to: a) The need to give effect to a claim, after the postponement during the nineteen eighties, for the construction of connection infrastructure and works, and also, b) To create an association between public and private actors, i.e., a model of public policy, that was called concessions system 5. Nevertheless, in ideological terms, or of social imaginaries, the modernizations can also be explained as an efficient way to combine democratic regime with technocracy. For Silva (1009), the Chilean case is special, because in it democracy coexists with technocracy in a successful way, and this is due mainly to the need to maintain the economic model and for the political learning process experienced by the elite (cited in Dávila 2010: 208). In other words, for Coalition, its programmatic task was to find the equilibrium point, which could overcome the dripping logic imposed by the military regime, and in its replacement recognize the role and responsibility of the State in economy, its regulatory and guiding role in the big lines of a development strategy (Valle, 2009: 242). The above coincides with the vision of Carlos Cruz, former minister of Public Works during the Ricardo Lagos administration, when he remembers that the beginning of the modernization effort of the Coalition s governments, were framed within the strategic proposal of the coalition. The policy was led by the then minister of Public Works, Ricardo Lagos, and consisted basically in emphasize the need that the country should have a proper infrastructure to fully accomplish its strategic guidelines in economic matters: on the one hand, to be in conditions to face the globalization challenges as it was assumed that in that frame the process of national development would be carried; and in the other hand, to provide the country s inhabitants a minimum common base in infrastructure (Cruz, 2009: 196). In this sense, it seems obvious Ricardo Lagos decision to modernize the public transport, because his predecessors (especially Frei Ruiz-Tagle) opted by other reforms in this field. And though his government program displayed the slogan Growth with equality heavily influenced by the social agenda- also showed a clear stress in the infrastructure areas, maintaining the modernization drive as part 5 Dates back to 1991 and the person in charge of reviewing the Organic Law of the Ministry of Public Works, was the Minister Carlos Hurtado, who sent to the Congress the Concessions Law. With that, it was created de Concessions Department, which was dependant to the General Direction of Public Works. 4

5 of his government rhetoric, and feeding the social imaginary concerning the need to create an efficient policy to develop a modern country, with the times. From the diagnosis of delay, it is inferred the need of modernization, a term that appears linked to the Latin American developmental approach, and which, on the other hand, has also a long history in the Chilean political culture. The search for a modernization paradigm by the Chilean governments is in not way exclusive for the governments of the Coalition, it can be traced since the Frente Popular (Popular Front) period, since 1938 to 1952, when it starts a solid stage of social reforms and industrial growth with policies designed to generate an infrastructure base for production and a social welfare system for the working and middle class (Garretón, 2007). Doing a historical account within the Latin American context, it should be noted as part of those modernization efforts, the reforms of 1950s and 1960s of the Development Administration, initiated to overcome the features of an administration that was patrimonial, traditionalist with paternalistic characteristics, which led into and administration that was both rational and bureaucratic and where the relations of the functional order were established, that has the State as the main protagonist by being a guide and promoter of the policies and by assuming directly the production of goods and services. Later, since mid 1980s, the modernization attempts were reflected in the precepts of the State Reform. This took place in a political context of change with the incipient democratizations; with uncertainties and pressure in the economic with the external debt crisis; meanwhile, at the same time, in the international level it begun to visualize the process of financial and communicational globalization. There were added to this, the structural adjustments imposed by the multilateral agencies, which formed a context that promoted in the public administration the adoption of strategies based in the New Public Management, which sought to improve the efficiency of the administrative apparatus (Cunill, 1997: 225). In the nineteen nineties, with democracy already recovered, it is inserted the idea of public apparatus modernization, with the reform of public management realized under the administration of Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle. After that, in a new government, it is maintained the same logic and rhetoric, which establishes the change of the transport system of the city of Santiago, in which previous administrations had been working. This process starts with a diagnosis: There is a verification that the sector is in the hands of actors identified with a situation of underdevelopment, [from that] it is deduced the need of change, and more specifically, of rupture. Thus, President Lagos, in a visit to the extension works of the Metro, qualifies the modernization process of public transport as the biggest revolution in the history of Chile in the field of infrastructure. [This] makes possible the inscription in a historical trajectory which culminates in the Bicentennial projects, and 5

6 in the other hand, the word revolution is a highlight of the reform s ambition to raze with the past (Maillet, 2008). Referring to the specific form of transport, the government program of Ricardo Lagos expresses the desire of reform in the sector: We will modernize the urban transport of Santiago. We will improve the security, travel times and quality of transport. We will promote the construction of exclusive lanes for public transport vehicles. We will insist in the professionalization of the drivers and the improvement of work conditions. In Santiago it will be invested in six main corridors with a total extension of 60 kilometers and the Metro network will be extended, covering 25 kilometers in total. The routes will be restructured and they will have tariff systems integrated between buses and the Metro. With an intelligent ticket it will be possible to travel in the several services. We will promote the renovation of the bus park, introducing clean technologies. It will be implemented decided actions to reduce traffic accidents. Public spaces will be adequate to make walks safer and more attractive, and to facilitate cycling. We will design mechanisms that ensure the plan s financing and monitoring, in the understanding that Santiago will have to take charge of its costs (Lagos, 1999). 2. CONSENSUS AND TECHNIC. KEYS TO GOVERNANCE If on the one hand the government discourse is framed within the programmatic ideology of the centre-left coalition, how can we explain the high degree of consensus achieved by these reforms? Was it only due to a social consensus agreed between the authorities and the elites? Or this consensus permeated the public opinion and, hence, the media? First, we understand by consensus the definition delivered by Giacomo Sani as the determined condition of the belief system of a society, which exists when between the members of a given social unity there is agreement concerning principles, values, norms and also concerning desirability of certain targets of the community and the suitable means to achieve them (cited Riorda, 2006: 19). Following this concept, and in operational terms, what would be the aim of a government to maintain consensus? If not, maintain, get and manage certain levels of support to the administration s decisions. According to Elizalde (2006: 153), consensus is harder to get in an environment of more social complexity; social complexity transforms into communicative complexity, while present society can be defined as media society (society of the information) and a society with higher levels of social protest and participation in the public scenario ( ) social complexity grows insofar protest and participation feed back and strengthen mutually. 6

7 In this sense what is really new is noting how a mechanism to establish political agreements, is transferred to the social establishing itself as a shared virtue, in this case, by the local press. It has to be noted that the consensus dynamic was established as a tool to overcome the conjunctures of the first governments after the transition, nevertheless, in a way the consensus democracy was extended toward other fields, not just political controversies. We agree with Baeza-Rodríguez (2008) to explain that the consensus dynamic was widely used as a barometer to measure the level of governance of the democratic administrations. According to the author, The notion of governance seems, in effect, to perform a role of organizing discourse. By articulating an acceptable story of modern democracy where the ruling capacity it can only come from a technocratic and stable power, the record of governance appears to resolve the contradictions of the Chilean democratic transition. Thus it is minimized the deformation of universal suffrage by comparing it with the stabilizing and moderating qualities of the binominal electoral system; the disarticulation of citizenship is positively reinterpreted as the disideologization of society and as its support to the great consensual principles of the new technocracy, understood here, at the same time, as the government of the technical rationality and as the erasing of border between political and technical professions (Baeza-Rodríguez, 2008). The idea mentioned in the paragraph above seems to provide some keys to explain how a whole social imaginary sustained by the pillars of consensus and governance, could permeate other actors: politicians, and the press too. One of the possible answers to that transfer is that technical knowledge can also be used as a building tool of reality. The idea in not new, and has been applied in other fields as science history and scientific paradigms, it is so how the use of the socio-technical controversy concept 6 is a phenomenon studied by the science sociology, which it is understand as the implementation of technological innovations in society. For these studies, the technologies does not obey to endogenous factors of science itself, rather they are the result of negotiations, impositions, consensus and translations which allow them, installing the debate concerning the need of its implementation. Within this approach, Pinch and Bijker (1989) use the constructivist sociology perspective to explain that scientific artifacts are built socially. This construction has stages, which are the debate of the alternatives, the stabilization of an alternative and the closure of the debate with the redefinition of 6 The concept of socio-technical controversy appears in the field of sociology as one of the constituent principles of David Bloor s Strong Programme (1974) to analize the construction of scientific knowledge through theories, models that has to be studied using the same knowledge that the new paradigm considered overcome and wrong. A decade later, arrives the social construction of technology approach (Pinch and Bijker, 1989), which uses the constructivist sociology for the social study of technology. 7

8 the problem which originated it. It is because of that, that we can think that technical knowledge for a policy implementation, also is found under a subjective social imaginary which make the ideas and its technological artifacts, not only have to do with technical and objective aspects, but also with the beliefs and values from whom creates them. By applying this perspective to the study case, more than technical artifacts, transport systems can be understand as a domain in which social and not social (infrastructure) actors form an association network in permanent emergency; and, that under determined conditions, and given its importance in the social environment, acquire agency capacity, of mobilize resources and constitute itself in objects of controversy (Latour, 2005: 91). In this point it is necessary to understand how the modernization idea can be transformed in a dominant discourse which, through social and technological processes, can be revealed as a necessary innovation for an authority and, hence, for society. From this concepts it is put into evidence the importance that acquire the institutional settlements, and hence the negotiation and consensus processes which set the creation of a technology, or in this specific case, the adoption of a new transport system. In addition, according the socio-technical controversies perspective, science and experts are socio-technically built, therefore, the innovation will be politically imposed to the citizens. In this point we can say that the constructivist perspective is quite close to the proposal called coalitions that promote public policies, developed by Sabatier (1988) and Jenkins-Smith (1993), in which it is expressed that there are multiple actors that share a set or sets of beliefs which are translated in public policy plans. This approach also emphasizes the subjective role of the normative beliefs, because these can also constitute in key factors for the creation of a public policy plan. In a similar perspective, but from the French school of public policy, Jobert (2004) reflects in an analogous way. His concept is the referentials : a set of beliefs, values and techniques which form the structure of public policy. For Jobert, this referentials have three dimensions; a cognitive one which gives interpretation elements to the problems and its solution; a normative one which defines the values that should occupy in the treatment of a problem; and an instrumental one which defines the action principles that have to guide the action in function of its values (Jobert, 2004: 93). From the exposed approaches, the constructivist perspective seems useful to understand how the social consensus is structured within society, and how the institutional settlements are necessary to maintain certain standards of governance. In this sense, the role of public policy does not escape these negotiations; rather, is part if this dynamic, imposing and being part, from its formulation, in the belief system of a government. 8

9 3. WHY DO WE ALL AGREE? THE FORMATION OF THE CLIMATE OF OPINION When we think how consensus is formed and built, attention must be paid not only around the disputes about technical information, we should also understand how the information is managed in society. In this point we will use the concept Spiral of Silence, coined by Noelle-Neumann to explain how public opinion transforms into a kind of social control in which individuals adapt an opinion and/or a behavior from the predominant attitudes about what is considered acceptable. These attitudes can be assimilated to a set of public issues which institute itselves as the actually important, leaving others ignored, forgotten, although they exist. The main thesis of Noelle-Neumann is based on the idea that knowledge, by being public, is legitimates, not matter if it is true or false. The question point is what has achieved to establish as consensus, or the called climate of opinion. Climate of opinion is the majority trend about determined options, which are shared by a vast part of population. According to Noelle-Neumann, it interacts as a contagion phenomenon, because the majority option is rapidly extended for all society, and becomes a hegemonic feeling concerning a matter. This idea explains of dynamics of mass media by imposing its own issues (agenda function), and why between a broad universe of topics, only a few are selected, i.e., how some people and/or arguments are given a greater prestige or reputation than others. By using the terms spiral of silence (the discarded topics of the agenda) and climate of opinion (which majority assumes as the hegemonic thought), we can say that the construction of technical consensus is based in the socially shared idea that what an expert says is efficient, real an, over all, true. 3.1 How consensus is built? If information in society is distributed through certain dynamics, it is the task of governments to know and handle certain resources and repertoires to manage its information, being this a phenomenon that becomes more important to government communication everyday, becoming a complex point, highly sensitive for administrations. For Elizalde (2006:164): Communication problems which governments face nowadays can make fail and destabilize the most effective public policies. Not only because they are destabilize by unpredictable crisis or political, financial, corruption or even sexual scandals, but because of the erosive effect (medium-term) of the lack of consensus motivated by certain reputation crisis deriving in credibility and legitimacy losses, which in a longer term produces erosion over the basis trust and over institutionalization. In the case of Transantiago, at a first moment the government played with many chips in favor. After the decision of carrying out the policy, the government started 9

10 working with the Espiral of Consensus-Dissent (Elizalde, 2006), to install a discourse which attracted most citizens, and also destabilize the main opponents, the associations of public transport, by defining them as contrary to modernizations. From the view of public policies it exists a less contentious vision in the definition of guilds; e. g., guilds and unions unite for non political reasons such higher salaries and more security, i.e., unite for reasons that has little to do with their functions or the public policy process (Lindblom, 2001). Then, more than the desire of influence in the policies, the union of individuals is produced by the private benefits that generates to its members (Olson, 1978). In the case of workers, Kingdon (1995) proposes that their participation in public policies is less frequent than in other groups and, as a result, as a group of pressure they would not be as important in the emergency of the agenda. Their presence, or pressure level, would vary according to the field in which they develop (transport or health) (Gaete, 2010: 22). Exemplifying which was the government/guilds relation, we can see different edges. e.g. in a interview published by the newspaper La Nación on July 26 th of 2002, the then coordinator of the transport program Germán Correa, he analyzed the rejection of buses owners to the route s tender which would be take place in They say that it does not mean to be opposed to the coming modernization, but if this is not to be opposed I do not know what it is. We are going to try to help them in this change, but if in the next tender they have the same attitude than now, they are not going to have a future in the transport system. It is not us whom we are going to let them out of it. Meanwhile, the guilds exteriorized their disagreement to that process, due to they considered it excluded them even in advance, due to the high incorporation quotes which were required to participate in the tenders. In an article dated March 20 th of 2004 in the newspaper La Tercera, said: Leaders of buses owners present a protection appeal against Transantiago, for considering that transgresses several rights of the sector s entrepreneurs by imposing arbitrary rules in the tender plans ( ) According to lawyer José Hinzpeter, of the sector, are being set important resources to participate, 500 thousand UF. This is a greater guarantee than the one required setting a finance company or a stock market. In this scenario, another strategy of the government to install the topic in the public opinion was the execution of a series of diagnosis 7 referred to difficulties of several 7 For a synthesis see the paper from Guillermo Díaz, Andrés Gómez Lobo and Andrés Velasco (2004), entitled in a very categorical way: Buses in Santiago: form public enemy to public service. In this paper it is 10

11 natures: environmental, citizen security, economic deficiency and guilds malpractice which the system caused, in this sense: Transantiago was not only introduced as the solution of the buses problems, but also as one of the means to convert Santiago in a world class city, modern and competitive at international level. In this way the discourse that carries this change stigmatized the chaotic character of the yellow buses, unworthy of a nation which aspired to be part of the developing countries (Jouffe and Lazo, 2010). For example, for a former regional authority, the change was due mainly to the need to ensure the security and health of Santiago residents, and passing to carry out a decontamination plan: The yellow buses were highly pollutants and it was necessary to make a significant renovation fleet to accomplish the Decontamination Program of Santiago 8. Besides that system was highly insecure in terms of traffic accidents, drivers and passengers safety, and even in crime issues. And in the sense that the number of buses circulating, with all the inefficiency that means in terms of congestion, travel times and costs (former regional authority). However, regarding to citizens interests, public transport does not seem a firstorder demand, even it existed the consensus that service could be improved: In surveys that were handling in that time, there were very low score for public transport. I could not say either that there was a demand, that is, that there were rallies in the street to change the system. But that it is not the only reason to face a public policy (Technical Advisor). It was also a diagnosis of economic order. It was true the economic inefficiency: driver earned a lot of money for the education they had, that is clearly a sector which paid a bonus to compete in the streets was inefficient, because it was not something that summarized a vast part of the diagnosis over the capital transport system: The public transport of Santiago has some virtues, such as its wide coverage and frequency. However, it is also afflicted by serious problems of congestion, insecurity, inefficiency and bad quality of the service. The buses are also responsible of a vast part of the air and acoustic pollution that Santiago suffers. These problems justify a profound reform. There is certain consensus at a technical level over the general lines that this reform should follow. The Transantiago plan, which will start in 2005, pretends to optimized the routes, integrate transport modes and fares, create companies and modernize the buses, all that through a new system of tender which modifies drastically the regime governing since the beginning of the nineties. 8 The Decontamination program of Santiago (2005) was a modification of the Prevention and Decontamination Plan of the Metropolitan Region. It sought avoiding the environmental crisis episodes (preemergencies) through a series of actions such as the improvement of fuels and the demand of emission standards for productive activities developing in Santiago s basin. 11

12 generates, in my opinion, an economical improvement, considering the existing alternatives (Technical Advisor). In a majority way, all these considerations were developed from the technicalacademic scope, and with a clear bias against the sectors managers, being this the critical point most commonly used with the system. The answer, however, was unanimous: the transport market should be regulated and restructured: There was a basic economic problem of externality. And the market, actually, when it does not work, the only one that can have a regulatory role is the State. But it is not easy to regulate when there are thousands of entrepreneurs. I mean, there was an entrepreneur by every bus. In the developed countries there was a system much more structured (former sector s authority). This critical idea regarding the yellow buses is confirmed by the versions of two transport experts. There was a sense of licentiousness regarding the old system and from the more technical point of view it was a system that does not have how to improve and that could only worsen [ ] It was the main reason to propose a greater change to the public transport system of Santiago. Another interviewee adds: The main reason to modify the transport system was that the old system was one based rather in the providing of almost a scale service. In brief, which is explicit in the previous paragraphs is how it was created a perception, a climate of opinion, through a discourse concerning how this policy should be faced: one which has to be thought rationally, structures through a State public policy, and mainly with new actor in the role of providers, the privates. The sum of these criteria led the authority to search for a wide repertoire of reasons to implement the action, and mainly to minimize the effects of its opponents: the guilds. Then, which was the public discourse implemented by the government? A guild leader explains it: They sold to people the idea that the previous transport system was bad. And then, they wanted to make a transport revolution from the economic, which failed. They did not see another point of view. And they realized that a public entity never operated in any activity. And they have to go plainly in real terms, I mean, in operational terms. The own banks entered a technological business that they were not used to and failed. So cobbler to your last they did a transformation which was not according with it should have to be done in this country, which was a gradual development of the transport system. On 2000, the guilds have already showing some reluctance and during 2002 they were openly critical of the system. An example of the rise of the conflict between government and public transport entrepreneurs was the feature of newspaper La Tercera, March 9 th of 2002: 12

13 The first frictions between Germán Correa and the buses owners rise. Leader of the buses owners replied in hard words the statements of the former minister regarding the bad quality of the service. Manuel Navarrete remembered that the operation conditions of the buses were the result of the basis of the process led by the former State secretary when he was minister of Transport in the Administration of Patricio Aylwin. This is how the tone of confrontation is maintained in statements such as: I do not fear the buses owners, realized by the same Correa to El Mercurio newspaper, August 4 th of It is in this point when media seems to adopt consensus against the guilds and pro modernization through its editorial features. E.g. La Tercera newspaper, August 13 th of 2002, published: Santiago cannot be hostage of buses owners. Nothing justifies the calling of the public transport entrepreneurs to paralyzed the machines and block the main avenues of Santiago, as a ways to reject the recent tender realized by the government. Even less when the aim that authorities have in mind is the modernization of one of the guilds worst evaluated by the citizens ( ) the latter have opposed to all that point towards a modernization and management order of public transport. Apparently media discourse was the reflection of what the own experts (technicians and mainly transport engineers which participated in the developing of the plan) had regarding the guilds. The system was in crisis again, but more from a political perspective, when took place the famous buses strike 9. And that was probably what unchained the political decision to introduce a greater change into the system. If one asked many people, all had critiques, but were not the same. Nor, certainly, I think that the cost political decision, and which implied a more important change, was attacking the existing business organization. That is an organization which could be of entrepreneurs, guilds or cartels 10. In fact from the economic point of view, their behavior 9 The strike took place on August 12th and 13th of 2002, and it was summoned in protest against the routes tender rules established by the government. In answer, the Home Office and Santiago s council presented lawsuits against the guilds leaders, who were arrested the same August 13 th. The five leaders: Demetrio Marinakis, Manuel Navarrete, Armando Huerta, Orlando Panza and Marcel Antoine were held during 14 days. Later they were sentenced to three years in prison. However, the sentence was remitted a year later in In the light of their action resources, the transport guilds not only acted as workers associations, but also showed other forms of public action, in the way of pressure groups. Citing Kingdon (1995), we can point that a pressure group has the capacity to influence through different mechanisms: persuasion, intimidation and corruption. Persuasion is directed to actors inside the government, through negotiations and/or 13

14 was more like a cartel; from another point of view they acted ore like a guild. But on the other hand, in the daily activity they were as a family. There were a lot of links that overpass the purely corporative. There were entire families involved in the business, for generations. There was a whole culture which was more than an association to defend some interests. Therefore, it was not a minor change. Any change of that structure, clearly, was large-scale (Transport expert). From the point of view of communication theory, it can be said that the government does not handle Transantiago (considering always its first stage, i.e. the formulation, which took place long before its implementation) with a model of diffusion and marketing. The model of diffusion is defined in how controlling the information process that are relevant for public interest topics. This is a communication model which adapts to the conception of technocratic State and the classic enlightened conception which supposes that the governed should be informed in an impersonal, cold and objective way regarding what is happening (Elizalde, 2006: 208). It can be thought that those were the mechanism which allowed the media to be highly receptive to the technocratic content proposed by the government, mainly in the creation of a discourse against the guilds-transport entrepreneurs, and which also makes possible to explain how was adopted by the press with no further questions. But, which was the reason of such submission to the technical discourse? Apparently, the knowledge of technical experts was highly seductive for the media, which helped to impose this discourse over other considerations of social, union or citizen order, showing itself as the hegemonic way to understand reality. In fact the idea of expert wisdom, above other forms of knowledge, was a constant which maintained during all the studied time. 4. MEASURING CONFLICT: THE SPIRAL OF DISSENT-CONSENSUS In this point it is analyzed the role of the written press during the period when took place the formulation of Santiago s public transport policy. For this we will use a concept called Dissent-Consensus Spiral, used by Elizalde (2006). This idea is based in the need to create a climate of opinion or a consensus prone to the authority. To Elizalde governments, in its function of executive power, are in permanent public overexposure, which is required by social and political sensitivities, and the increment of social participation of different social groups. Because of that, communication and government politics are united mainly by the fact that the government needs to increase or maintain its power through consensus and the agreement of wills (Elizalde, 2006: 159). propaganda, with the aim of presenting ideas, needs or requirements as actions oriented to common good. Intimidation is expressed through actions or threats of force such as strikes or demonstrations. In extreme cases, corruption is established as the payment of money to force a favorable political decision. 14

15 To illustrate a consensus-dissent cycle, a useful tool is to define what was the level of conflictivity of the main national circulation newspapers, which were the actor with more media presence, and the periods of greater conflictivity. Describing these dynamics allows to show with clarity which was the ascendant curve of consensus (period or formulation of the public policy, between years ) and the moment of crisis, or descent, with the implementation of Transantiago (first semester of 2007). From a corpus formed by related news articles, published by the main national circulation newspapers, we worked to know which were the more conflictive periods, and the actor with greater presence in the agenda. To fulfill this research there were reviewed press articles from the following newspapers: El Mercurio, La Tercera, La Segunda, La Nación, and other media between 2000 and The disaggregation of the press notes by newspaper is the following: Graphic 1: Articles about Transantiago published in national circulation newspapers ( ) Source: Own elaboration from data obtained from publications of the writing press in the period 2000 to As methodology it was carried out a basic content analysis, through a list of codes, a code book through words with contentious emphasis as Crisis, Deficiencies, Strike, Mistakes, Difficulties, Attacks, Critiques, among others of similar meaning. To headlines and leads of each article, was assigned a number from 1 to 4 to define de conflict level, being 1 for low conflict level, 2 for moderate, 3 for high and 4 for very high. From the obtained coding it is showed that the conflictivity of the press notes was concentrated during the first semester or 2007, date 15

16 coincident with start of Transantiago Plan, on February 10 th of the same year (see table 1). TABLE 1: Conflictivity level percentage of press notes published about Transantiago by semesters( ) TABLE 1 Year by semester Level of conflictivity Very high High Moderate Low First semester ,50% 0,30% 0,00% 0,70% Second semester ,20% 0,30% 0,00% 1,40% First semester ,50% 1,20% 0,40% 2,80% Second semester ,00% 0,00% 0,00% 0,00% First semester ,60% 0,90% 4,00% 5,60% Second semester ,80% 2,60% 2,20% 1,40% First semester ,00% 2,00% 1,30% 2,80% Second semester ,40% 0,60% 0,00% 0,70% First semester ,00% 4,00% 2,70% 4,20% Second semester ,90% 2,30% 2,20% 6,30% First semester ,80% 2,90% 3,60% 7,70% Second semester ,10% 0,60% 1,80% 3,50% First semester ,00% 9,00% 5,40% 15,50% Second semester ,50% 0,30% 0,00% 0,70% First semester ,00% 55,50% 48,70% 38,00% Second semester ,00% 0,00% 0,00% 0,00% First semester ,60% 17,30% 27,70% 8,50% Second semester ,00% 0,30% 0,00% 0,00% % Total 100,00% 100,00% 100,00% 100,00% Source: Own elaboration from data obtained from publications of the writing press in the period 2000 to Examples from this period are plenty, as the editorial feature of El Mercurio, dated March 20 th of 2007, which heading The drama of Transantiago summarize the environment after the service implementation. After more than a month of operation, problems of Transantiago have become permanent for a big part of Santiago s inhabitants. Even motorists, initially favored, now face a worsen congestion. Also, the agglomerations at Metro confirm the seriousness of the situation. This has been admitted by its chairman, who, with great courage, has called 16

17 pregnant women, elderly, children and disabled to avoid it, and has declared that the level of the public transport service is not acceptable. And the Ministry of Transport in another sample of the pressure over itannounced significant route changes without communicating it before to the company hired to inform Transantiago users. Meanwhile, newspaper La Tercera, on the same date, March 22 nd of 2007, described the polarization settled between government and opposition after the troubled implementation of the system: Tension grows for Transantiago: Committee meets at La Moneda and Alliance undertakes new attack. At the seat of government, the undersecretary of Transport Danilo Núñez, said that his team still has the President s trust and assured: we have more strength than ever to go ahead, we do not fear anyone or anything. Meanwhile, Jovino Novoa and Hernán Larraín insist in the position of finding political responsibilities to the Transantiago crisis. This morning, moreover, the UDI deputy Patricio Melero criticized the explanations given by Espejo in the special session in Valparaiso: The only thing lacking last night was saying that Pinochet is guilty for Transantiago. Otherwise, at Table 2 we can see that the actors who showed a greater conflict level were the Ministry of Transport and the guilds, and in lesser extent the Financial Administrator of Transantiago (AFT) and the own users of the system. This could be a reflection of the most controversial edges of the public discussion. While, on one hand, it was evident the struggle between the ministry and the guilds, the rest of percentages showed how the AFT although it was the body in charge of the system s collection- concentrated the users critiques for being the most visible speaker during the first stages of implementation. Finally, there are a significant percentage of more conflictive articles associated to users, in a clear reflection of how the policy negatively impacted population, distress which was also revealed in public opinion surveys According to a press note from February 3rd of 2008 published in El Mercurio newspaper: Transantiago worsened the users mental health. Stress, bad times and work problems influenced this perception. 83% users of Transantiago have seen their mental health worsened within days of the first year of the capital transport system. This, according to a survey delivered yesterday and that was realized by National Renovation and Direct Media. According to the survey, 28,14% users give mark 1 to the present system, 15,58% give 2, 19,84% give 3, and 1,91% give 7. The most negative qualifications had a mild upturn compared with the 31,06% that failed Transantiago with a mark 1 last December. 17

18 TABLE 2: Conflictivity level of press notes published in national circulation newspapers associated to an actor (institutional and/or private) TABLE 2 Level of conflictivity: Actor involved Very high High Moderate Low Ministry of Transport 34,54 50,58 45,54 52,11 Ministry of Public Works 0,36 0,29 0,89 - Ministry of Treasure 0,90 2,60 0,45 0,70 Ministry General Secretary of Presidency 0,90 0,87 0,45 0,70 Guilds 9,58 8,38 7,59 6,34 Concertación Coalition Parties 2,35 3,18 2,23 0,70 Right wing parties 6,15 2,02 1,34 - Left wing parties Deputies 2,17 2,02 3,13 0,70 Technicians 3,80 3,18 5,36 2,11 Carabineers (police forces) 0, Financial Administrador of Transantiago AFT 9,22 5,78 7,14 1,41 Metro- Metropolitan Urban Train 3,44 0,29 0,45 3,52 Users 7,96 5,49 8,93 13,38 Presidency 4,52 5,49 6,25 6,34 Sacyr Group (Private Investor) 0,18 0, Drivers Union 4,52 2,60 0,89 2,11 Ministry General Secretary of Government 0,36-3,57 - Source: Own elaboration from data obtained from publications of the writing press in the period 2000 to 2008 In this stage, political parties appear as actors reactive to the process, due to their role become visible mainly in the system s implementation period, when they summed up along with other actors- to the critiques to the untidy system. The critiques appear in both coalitions, both in the centre-right one, Alliance for Chile (Alianza por Chile), and in the own Coalition of Parties for Democracy 12. In this sense, as a previous conclusion, we can observe that the performing of actors, as political parties, Congress and media, is reactive to the results of a public policy, being low or little participative in the previous stages Not only in the centre-right coalition existed critiques to the system. From the Coalition itself, with the Socialist Party senator Camilo Escalona, there was dissent: I think that former minister Etcheberry miscalculated the needed fleet. Not only there are implementation problems, there are also design issues, that it there is a group of people that with the best intentions made the wrong calculations. Our technocracy showed not knowing everything and that make mistakes. Here there are shared responsibilities (La Nación newspaper, March 22 nd of 2007). 13 An example of this ex post dissent behavior in the press note published in La Tercera newspaper, February 7 th of 2008: Alliance leaders interrupt their holidays to whip Transantiago first anniversary. At early hours of Sunday 10 th of February will be a year since operations on Transantiago began. The occasion will propitiate a new attack from the Alliance leaders, many of whom will interrupt their vacations to display a series of commemorations during the weekend. One of the most die-hard critics of the capital transport plan is 18