Samstad 2002

Samstad 2002

Samstad, James G. 2002. "Corporatism and Democratic Transition: State and Labor during the Salinas and Zedillo Administrations". Latin American Politics and Society. 44 (4): 1-28.
Overview:

• Corporatism involved three levels
  
  • State/”Macro”-corporatism: national level, tripartite discussions of economic and political policy (3)
    
  • Micro/Local or firm level corporatism: representatives on JCA’s
    
  • Party corporatism
    
• Shift to export-led growth created tensions in the coalition forged under ISI (5)
  
• Procedural democracy poses a greater challenge to corporatism that ELG (6)
  
  • Decline of strong president gives each level of corp. more autonomy
    
  • Resistance to herding rank and file by authoritarian labor leaders
    
• By end of Salinas, labor corp. still basically intact (11)
  
• Creation of UNT in 1997, labor split challenged all three levels of corporatism
  
  • who gets to peak bargain? (MACRO)
    
    • CTM tries ‘corporatism without government’
      
  • UNT and some in CT call for more democratic PRI(PARTY)
    
    • ALSO: primaries for candidates decreases labor delegates
      
• Few structural changes to corporatism, HOWEEVER, big changes in how corporatism works in practice
  

Quotes:
“The party (PRI) has formally incorporated labor as a ‘sector’ with nominal voting rights…Over the years, representatives of PRI-affiliated labor organizations consequently secured a non-insignificant share of nominations for elected posts…In return, those organizations were often expected to deliver the votes and organizational support of their rank and file…” (4)
“The shift to export-led growth created tensions in the coalition forged under ISI” (5)
“What change that has occurred has been in how corporatism functioned in practice, and this transformation has come primarily as a side-effect of a decline in centralized presidentialism and an increase in political pluralism during [Zedillo’s] sexennio.” (19)