Upend the status quo in Cuba
For the first time in six decades, Cuba is poised to have a non-Castro as leader. On March 11, it will hold elections for the National Assembly, which in turn will select the country’s next president April 19. President Raúl Castro, brother of Fidel, will not run for re-election. In 2012, he introduced term limits and seems willing to honor them. The National Assembly is widely expected to choose a successor from outside the Castro family.
What are we to make of this succession? One optimistic reading is that this could be the first step toward democracy. A more realistic reading is that Cuba is heading for more of the same: undemocratic one-party rule.
If the Cuban Communist Party were smart, it would try to get out while the getting is good. By transitioning to democracy on its own terms, the party could reap benefits.
Newly configured institutions and laws (for example, electoral laws) could be tailormade to its advantage. The party could use this new freedom from the Castros to produce new freedoms for Cubans, thus generating goodwill that could translate into votes.
After all, in many new democracies, the old authoritarian ruling parties (or parties formed by former authoritarians) remain prominent actors. In a majority of cases, these “authoritarian successor parties” are freely and fairly elected back into office.
Voters return the “bad guys” to power because in the often messy post-transition environment, some feel nostalgia for the authoritarian past. And some authoritarian regimes can point to significant achievements. In the case of Cuba, the party could highlight its record in the areas of domestic security and free public services like health care.
But the longer the Communists wait to embrace more-liberal policies, the more likely that the party will become further entrenched in the old ways of the Castro family.
Authoritarian regimes born of revolutions such as Cuba’s often survive for decades, but they struggle once the revolutionary generation dies off — especially if they cannot find an alternative source of legitimacy, such as China’s extraordinary economic growth in recent decades.
Unfortunately for the Cuban people, there are few indications that liberalizing is being considered. Instead, most signs point to a continuation of the status quo — a succession to a non-Castro, yes, but not a transition to a freer regime. The Cuban regime remains fairly protected from domestic pressures to become more democratic, even if it is ultimately in the Cuban Communist Party’s long-term interests to do so.
While Castro will step down as president, he will remain head of the Communist Party and the unofficial head of the military, the country’s two most important institutions.
Castro’s son and daughter will remain in powerful positions, as well. His son, Alejandro, is influential in the Ministry of the Interior, and his daughter, Mariela, is a member of the National Assembly and the head of Cuba’s most important gender think tank, Cenesex. Neither is known for a love of liberal politics.
Beyond the family itself is the fact that Raúl Castro’s most important policy legacy — military control of the economy — is hard to dislodge. The Cuban military, through its conglomerate Gaesa, owns a vast majority of the firms that engage in trade, from hotels to foreign exchange houses to ports, which gives it control of up to 60 percent of incoming hard currency. Cuba’s military is committed to not just one-party rule, but also, it seems, to onecompany economics.
And because Cuba’s economy is so closed, the private sector is small and weak. We know that transitions to democracy require actors with wealth to lobby the state for change — and perhaps bankroll the opposition. Under Fidel Castro, Cuba enforced one of the world’s most draconian bans on private property. His brother did expand the number of allowable selfemployed activities, but only professions requiring low skills were liberalized; huge restrictions on hiring and financing remain in place, and taxation is onerous.
Finally, the triad of policies that have kept the regime afloat since the end of the Cold War — migration, repression and remittances — remain in place.
Migration has long operated as a safety valve by moving the most disaffected dissenters off the island, and it has become easier now that the government no longer requires exit visas. Repression continues to be applied to the remaining dissenters.
And remittances, averaging perhaps as much as $3 billion annually, are a vital lifeline for the Cuban economy. One would think that remittances could help democracy in Cuba by financing civil society. But because poverty is rampant and financing scarce, most remittances get used for household consumption or self-employment activities, with very little left over for the sorts of civic groups that are indispensable for democracy to emerge.
Perhaps the only possible pressure for greater democracy after the succession could come from a conflict between the party and the military. These are separate entities, each with its own culture, resources and base of support. It is conceivable that an eventual conflict between the party and the military could produce a political earthquake, which could in theory produce a political transition.
Castro understands this better than anyone in Cuba. That is why he may decide to stay in charge of both groups, and as long as that is the case, the potential for a free Cuba will remain limited.