Autonomy as appearance: The impact of government decentralization on community organizing in Puerto Rico

This dissertation analyzes the impact of neo-liberalism on states, local governments, and communities. Specifically, it examines the impact of government decentralization on community life in Puerto Rico. Evidence is presented to demonstrate that through decentralization, communities are relinquishing their autonomy in order for states and municipalities to accumulate greater power under the "appearance" of granting autonomy to communities. This research refutes the standard notion that decentralization depletes state power Instead, it is argued that decentralization enables the state to reabsorb the very power it is supposedly "disseminating" to lower levels of government and grassroots groups under the guise of promoting a bottom-up approach to democracy building. As such, this dissertation is grounded in a Gramscian framework whereby civil society is viewed as a sphere of ideological hegemony that serves to support the state apparatus. Additionally, this research demonstrates how state control is established through attaining more precise and statistically accurate knowledge of individuals and groups. The documentation and description of groups, the characterization of collective facts, and the calculation of groups between individuals and their distribution in a given population subject to control reveals how state apparatuses accumulate power and sustain themselves. Yet states must also gain the willful consent of citizens into the process of state building by perpetuating a legitimizing ideology as opposed to using force. This dissertation argues that the ideology used in this case is democracy building through decentralization, under the "appearance" of autonomy. These state-society dynamics are analyzed through examination of government sponsored community empowerment programs in Caguas, Puerto Rico. The government program uses a discourse of promoting popular democracy but is instead in the process of building consensual domination. Although the program was designed to empower communities "from within" based on the ideology of "autogestion" or self-management, the result was increased government direction of activities and diminished autonomy. At the heart of the neo-liberal project in Puerto Rico is the promotion of self-organization initiatives that are state assisted and/or directed in scope. This leads to the conclusion that decentralization can result in less power for the grassroots, groups it ideologically purports to strengthen.