Jorge I. Domínguez, "The Triumphs and Failures of Bureaucratic Socialism in Cuba in 2018-2021," Presentation at the 31st Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy

The 31st Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy (ASCE), with the support of the Coalition for Peace & Ethics for its virtual format, was held 12-14 August. The theme this year was COVID and the VIII Party Congress: Reforming the Cuban Economy (more on the Conference HERE).  The opening sessionon the contemporary economic and political context brought together three eminent scholars of Cuban political economy, economics, and politics. Carmelo Mesa-Lago, Professor Emeritus, University of Pittsburgh, presented a paper on “Key Economic and Social Factors That Provoked the Worst Cuban Economic Crisis since the 1990s and Subsequent Street Protests.”  Omar Everleny Pérez Villanueva, Havana presented on the state of cuban economic reform in a presentation entitled “La economía cubana: La Tarea Ordenamiento y su repercusión social.”  I will return to  Omar Everleny's presentaiotn in a latter post.

Here I wanted to highlight the fascinating presentation of one of the most eminent students of Cuban politics, Jorge I. Domínguez.  That presentation, The Triumphs and Failures of Bureaucratic Socialism in Cuba in 2018-2021, focused on the critical importance of the Cuban 8th Communist Party Congress on reshaping the institutions of the Party, and to some extent, perhaps not just its working style but also structuring.  He provides a critical analysis of the product of that inward turning of the PCC that I considered  in the context of its Leninist and ideological implications (here). His analysis of the changes in the composition of Party leadership, as well a the moves toward institutionalizing the trajectories of those changes are critical for understanding the way in which the Party nomenklatura is changing, and its consequential effects on the Part's ability to meet and respond to challenges. At the same time, Dominguez astutely examines the way that those changes were insufficient to either anticipate or meet the challenges of the eruptions of popular anger from 11 July 2021. The presentation is worth careful consideration, and its insights will have substantial application for any study of Caribbean Leninism, for the sociology of vanguardism, and for the relationship of leadership theory to political economy.

Now retired, Jorge Dominguez was a Harvard professor for 46 years and Harvard’s vice provost for international affairs for nine years, among other senior posts. He has been publishing books and articles about Cuba for about a half century. In 1989, Abraham F. Lowenthal described him in Foreign Affairs as the dean of U.S. Cubanologists. Dominguez' books touching on Cuba (without mentioning his excellent work on Mexico and other Latin American states) include: The Construction of Democracy: Lessons from Practice and Research; Between Compliance and Conflict: East Asia, Latin America and the New Pax Americana; The Cuban Economy at the Start of the Twenty-First Century;  and Democratic Politics in Latin America and the Caribbean.  Dominguez's germinal work,  Cuba: Order and Revolution (1978) whose look at the way in which changing elites made clams to legitimate rule in Cuba and its consequences, remains a foundational work for those studying Cuba, and its insights now appears to have increasing resonance in the conflicts among political elites in the contemporary US. 

The Power Points of the presentation, including some very interesting data, follow.  This and other materials frm the 31st Annual Conference may be found at the Coalition for Peace and Ethics website as well.