THE NEW CABINET AS A SYMPTOM: MANAGING THE COEXISTENCE OF TWO STATES

 

The New Cabinet as a Symptom: Managing the Coexistence of Two States

The recent formation of a new cabinet clearly reflects the prevailing logic within the political system: the management of a structural duality that the State itself has been unable to resolve.

The latest cabinet reshuffle in Peru does not represent an attempt to reorganize power or restore state authority. On the contrary, it clearly expresses the dominant logic of the political system: the administration of a structural duality that the State itself has failed to overcome.

In a country where a formal State—legal, normative, institutional—coexists with a real State—informal, illegal, and territorially fragmented—the cabinet does not emerge as an instrument of transformation, but rather as a mechanism for maintaining a fragile balance between these two dimensions.

The appointment of a ministerial team lacking strong political backing of its own, marked by high turnover in the Office of the Prime Minister and composed largely of technical profiles, reveals a defensive strategy. Its aim is not to lead the political process, but to prevent it from spiraling out of control. It does not seek to rebuild authority, but to manage its erosion.

Since the crisis that followed the government of Pedro Castillo, the political system has ceased to function as a space for strategic direction. It has instead become a field of fragmented negotiation, where the Executive avoids open confrontation with Congress, and Congress avoids fully assuming the costs of governing. The result is an unstable equilibrium, sustained more by mutual weakness than by substantive agreements.

The cabinet does not represent a governing project, but rather a mechanism of containment. Its primary function is to buy time.

However, the underlying problem lies not only in political fragility, but in the steady expansion of the “other State”: the one structured around illegal economies, informal networks, and forms of territorial control that operate outside the law. While the formal State maintains an appearance of order—especially in macroeconomic indicators and within Lima’s institutional spaces—the real State continues to expand across large areas of the country, establishing its own rules, protection mechanisms, and economic circuits.

As currently configured, the cabinet does not appear to have either the capacity or the mandate to confront this dynamic. In critical areas such as internal security, territorial control, or effective economic regulation, state action remains reactive, fragmented, and in many cases insufficient.

Thus, rather than reversing this duality, the new cabinet consolidates it. Not because it explicitly intends to do so, but because it lacks both the political instruments and the strategic will required to alter it.

Ultimately, the current cabinet is not the cause of the crisis of the Peruvian State, but its most visible expression. It reflects a political system that has ceased to organize power and instead limits itself to managing it under conditions of growing informality.

Silvio Dragunsky G
Lima, March 17, 2026
Silviodragunsky.blogspot.com