Patrimonial Liberalism: a Weberian Approach to Early Latin American State-Making

FORUM FOR INTER-AMERICAN RESEARCH (FIAR) VOL. 13.3 (DEC. 2020) 75-87 ISSN: 1867-1519 © forum for inter-american research Patrimonial Liberalism: A Weberian Approach to Early Latin American State-Making FRANCISCO COLOM GONZÁLEZ (SPANISH NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL (CSIC)) Abstract The attempts to create liberal institutions in the absence of a recognizable liberal political culture have traditionally disconcerted historians of the Iberian world. Liberal ideas not only legitimized the termination of the colonial bond with the metropolis, but also bolstered attempts to create modern state institutions on both sides of the Iberian Atlantic. At the same time, patrimonial practices were widespread and recurrent phenomena throughout the early period of state formation. The ritual invocation and the political functionality of liberal ideas in this context demand a more nuanced explanation than simply discarding them as mere propaganda or empty political rhetoric. However unstable or contradictory 19th-century Latin American politics were, they were systematically worded in the language of liberalism and enjoyed a latent legitimacy that reflected the normative universe of the old colonial society. This article tries to explain the background of the ‘patrimonial’ type of liberalism that spread throughout Latin America after the Atlantic Revolutions and the potential that Max Weber´s theoretical framework offers for its interpretation. Keywords: Max Weber, Patrimonialism, Liberalism, Latin America, State-making Patrimonialism in Max Weber risked essentializing some of their features. In fact, there is no single, universally accepted For a long time, ‘patrimonialism’ was a definition of ‘patrimonialism’. The notion of term that critical social sciences loved to hate a Patrimonialstaat (patrimonial state) was because, since the 1960s, it had been used by originally devised by the conservative jurist Karl modernization theorists as a culturally biased Ludwig von Haller in the wake of the European and static concept to explain the alleged Restoration in opposition to the contractual ‘deviation’ of Latin American societies from the theories of the state disseminated by the French unidirectional path of change from tradition Revolution (von Haller). [2] According to him, to modernity (Schwartzman). [1] For Max patriarchal states were the most common ones Weber, patrimonialism was a type of ‘traditional in history and were derived from the aggregation domination’, that is, “when authority is claimed of seigniorial house and land rights (Haus- und by it and believed in by virtue of the sanctity of Grundherrschaft). Max Weber refined the term age-old rules and norms” (226-7). Organized rule a century later, conveying a new meaning is based in this case on “personal loyalty which to it within the wider context of his theory of results from common upbringing” (Weber 226-7). domination. For him, patrimonial conditions Whereas the roots of traditional domination grow have had extraordinary importance as a out of the master’s authority over his household historical platform for larger political structures. and the belief in the inviolability of traditional Patrimonialism, along with patriarchalism, norms, under bureaucratic domination the norms was thus portrayed as a subtype of traditional are established rationally, appeal to a sense domination that developed as a differentiation of abstract legality, and presuppose technical from the oikos, the household domain. It implied training. The application of such concepts to the legitimate exercise of jurisdictional power contemporary societies meant bringing them and of certain political rights as if they were back into the traditional-modern dichotomy and private. A ‘patrimonial state’ emerged when the 76 F. COLOM: PATRIMONIAL LIBERALISM ruler managed his political authority in the same functionalist sociology and linked on the one discretional way as he did his patriarchal power, hand to traditional society and, on the other i.e. as a personal instrument. hand, used as an explanation of why some In Weberian terms, therefore, patrimonialism countries were ‘lagging behind’ in the process of essentially refers to the mode in which power economic and social modernization. is exercised and distributed throughout society, Patrimonialism acquired new connotations in but it also involves a certain type of legitimacy. the 1960s, when the then emerging paradigm of The origin and limits of the patrimonial ruler’s civic culture promoted a behavioral approach to authority are viewed as legitimate insofar as the study of politics. This perspective interpreted they are ‘traditional’, that is, as long as they rely political change through social attitudes and on the belief in the “inviolability of that which has led to the comparison of political cultures in the existed from time out of mind” (Weber 1006). Americas, a task that was carried out Patrimonial regimes are characterized by a with uneven skill and eventually transformed continuous tension between the central authority into an essentialist and culturalist interpretation and the centrifugal tendencies of the subordinate of social agency. Drawing on Parsons’ belief powers, as this mode of subjection is based on that Calvinist religiosity –with its egalitarian, customary bonds of reciprocity between the ruler individualistic ethos, and its skepticism of state and his dependents. The difference between power– had become institutionalized in the patriarchal and patrimonial authority was for United States as a pattern of social values, Weber only one of degree for, unlike the former, some authors maintained that in Latin America patrimonialism includes an administrative cadre. the combined effects of the Catholic Counter- Patrimonial rule could be exercised through Reformation, patrimonial rule, and colonial the granting of feudal tenure to dependants, dependence had inversely crystallized into a who could then transmit it to their heirs, or by monistic political culture that had outlived its bequeathing benefits to office-holders. The first original background and continued projecting its case was typical of the European Middle Ages, influence on contemporary societies in the forms whereas the prebendal mode is identified with of charismatic rule, authoritarian corporatism, ancient and Oriental societies. and bureaucratic paternalism. Admittedly, Hegel’s conception of the rational state (i.e. the state whose administrative The Patrimonial State in Spanish America body is based on the rationality of the law) as the dialectical culmination of Sittlichkeit (the Though there are few explicit mentions of ethical order of the community) looms large in Latin America in Weber’s work, his notion Weber’s legal-rational type of domination and of patrimonialism is particularly helpful in its ascription to the modern bureaucratic state. describing some characteristics of the colonial However, Weber’s categories were embedded in regime. [3] The Spanish system of domination in a larger conceptual network and used in complex America was originally devised to exploit mineral historical descriptions that did not strictly imply resources through forced labour and exact tribute an evolutionary outline. He recognized historical from native peoples. The Estado indiano, the passages connecting one type of authority to the colonial state that emerged from this scheme, other. For instance, revolutionary movements shows some resemblance to the ideal features guided by charismatic leaders could crystallize of the patrimonial state depicted in Weber’s into a traditional order or bureaucratize into work. Originally created by the private initiative a rational formal organization. It was Talcott of military entrepreneurs, the Conquistadores, Parsons, the first translator of Weber’s work who tried to impose patrimonial rule on domains into English and his most influential interpreter gained for the Crown at their own expense, in the American academy, who transformed it soon developed –not without struggle– into these ‘ideal types’ into a developmental process. a more cohesive and centralized structure of After the Second World War, the notion of domination. Colonial society became ethnically patrimonialism was reshaped by structural- organized into a caste system that differed from FORUM FOR INTER-AMERICAN RESEARCH VOL. 13.3 (DEC. 2020) 75-87 77 the matrix society in the Iberian Peninsula. oriented, bureaucratic norms are established Spaniards and Indians were initially pressed according to instrumental purposes and have by the Crown to live in their own repúblicas or a formal-rational basis. Pressed by particular communities, but Creole domination depended circumstances, like competition with rival on the availability of indentured native labour. powers and fiscal necessity, Weber admitted the Unlike the fiefdom and the corvée institutions in possibility that patrimonial domination developed Europe, the encomienda and the repartimiento – some rational administrative traits, as happened which had some indigenous precedents, like the with modern capitalism in feudal Europe. mita system in the Inca Empire and the coatequitl Capitalism, however, had also been ‘advanced’ among the Aztecs– were not modes of servitude in Europe by the political and economic interests entailed to land tenure. They were temporary of the urban guilds and merchants, a role that grants of native workforce that were bestowed the colonial cities and the Creole elites failed by the Crown either to private individuals

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