![\"Hare1\"](\"\/pardeeschool\/files\/2018\/04\/Hare1.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nAmb.\u00a0Paul Webster Hare,<\/a>\u00a0Senior Lecturer at the\u00a0<\/span>Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, was interviewed for a recent article examining\u00a0<\/span>the constitutional reform commission in Cuba.<\/p>\n Hare was interviewed for a June 21, 2018 article in\u00a0Latin America Advisor<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/em>entitled “Will a Constitutional Rewrite Bring Big Changes to Cuba?<\/a>”<\/p>\n From the text of the article:<\/p>\n \u201cThrough the creation of a constitutional commission, the government can appear responsive to calls for reform but also can play for time. Cuba faces a major philosophical dilemma with economic reforms. Controls have to be loosened, but that loosening will stimulate inequality, long seen as the Achilles\u2019 heel of the Cuban Revolution. None of this was resolved by the excruciatingly slow Lineamientos reform proposals of 2011. Only 21 percent of these had been implemented\u00a0by 2016. With Ra\u00fal Castro as its head, the commission will reject shock therapy. In a speech to the National Assembly last July, he rejected any relaxation of restrictions on accumulation of wealth in the self-employed sector. For example, private restaurants had to stay small. He also lamented the fact that some Cubans now had enough money to enable them to travel widely. The Lineamientos stuck fast to the socialist model, distrusted market reforms, insisted on government price setting and state control of major economic sectors. The constitutional revisions will likely reflect the same principles. Cuba\u2019s bureaucracy is designed to preserve the Revolution. So any new language in the\u00a0constitution will be largely anodyne. How will private business activities be defined and what shackles will be taken off foreign investment? Social issues like same-sex marriage matter little to the Revolution\u2019s survival, so they can appear progressive. And term limits already have Ra\u00fal Castro\u2019s blessing. But it is hard to imagine any Cuban having a spring in their step at the thought of constitutional revisions.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n