Murillo and Ronconi 2004

Murillo, Maria Victoria, and Lucas Ronconi. 2004. "Teachers' Strikes in Argentina: Partisan Alignments and Public-sector Labor Relations". Studies in Comparative International Development (SCID). 39 (1): 77-98.

• Intro
• Teachers have been the most militant sector since 1989 (77)
• increase in militancy is related to, but can't be fully explained by (78)
• worsening of conditions
• challenges to income security (through decentralization)
• "Patterns of teachers' militancy are better explained by political alignments between public employees' and teachers' unions than by labor institutions (78)
• How does/would this explanation change in the context of no viable parties outside the PJ?
• then partisan alignments are less salient, but alignments with factions of the one party may be important
• at some point this may become clientelism, depending on your definition of clientelism, as unions may ally themselves with personalties or groups within the PJ (as they have in the past)
• Teachers' strikes reflect a larger but uneven trend of provincialization of protests, which happened no doubt because of the decentralization of the education system
• Explaining Public Teachers' Strikes
• economic conditions don't quite play in here, since these are public sector workers (79)
• labor strength can var across provinces, so it could bean important variable
• but political alignments will likely be very salient, given that governors have a high degree of discretion in implementing labor laws (80)
• Argentine Public Education and the Provincial Analysis
•  by 1993 primary and secondary public education administered at the provincial level (81)
• provincial governors now have the power to decide legality of strikes, etc, but also have a lot of discretionon how they use labor laws
• provincial governors also control education expenditures
• CTERA has traditionally been the national union (82)
• teachers caught between government and parents at times 
• A Cross-Provincial Test on Teachers' Militancy
• dependent variable: strike days lost
• independent measures: (82-83)
• political affiliation of union leaders compared to governor, percentage of legislators of governor's party, change in teachers' real earnings, unemployment, attendance bonus, unionization, union fragmentation
• downside: data are for a short period of time, so some independent variables don't really change much (85)
• Political alignment (of union leaders/governors) has the strongest effect, though other variables have an effect as well (86)
• if job stable and unemployment high (ie low exit alternatives), union members will protest for better things
• authors suspect that executive discretion diminishes the effect of institutional and organizational variables, which is why they weren't necessarily strong effects here (88)
• Conclusion
• politicization of labor relations thanks to provincialization of education AND executive discretion re: labor laws
•  suggestion: labor laws should be strengthened to decrease executive discretion, which should in turn decrease strike days (89)

Roberts 2002

Roberts, Kenneth M. 2002. "Social Inequalities Without Class Cleavages in Latin America's Neoliberal Era". Studies in Comparative International Development (SCID). 36 (4): 3-33.

• Introduction
• Social inequality along class "fault lines" is unusually pronounced and appears to be growing (3)
• despite inequality growth and economic insecurity, parties are not cleaving the political arena along class lines, but are building cross-class platforms (4)
• this is especially true in Latin America, which is contiuning historical subordination of the popular classes
• though in the past class cleavages were important, after neoliberal turn party systems now are more elite dominated than before, and the elites dominate the popular classes through diffuse, multi-class forms of representation (5)
• Distinction between "segmented" and "stratified" cleavages
• segmented cleavages are constructed across class lines (ELITE parties)
• stratified cleavages are grounded in class consituencies or organizations (LABOR MOBILIZING parties)
• neoliberal critical juncture was hard on stratified parties, made them seek/create more segmented party structures (5-6)
• Argumetn is that neoliberal juncture realigned party systems across Latin America toward segmented structures (6)
• Economic Crisis, Strucutral Adjustment, and Deepening Social Inequalities
• Given teh growth of inequliaty, one could expect rejuvenation of class-based politics (7)
• but it's not happening
• early protests against neoliberalism were not sustaine
• the economic transition drove new wedges between different sectors of the lower classes, diffusing class cleavages
• Party Systems and Cleavage Structures in Latin America: Historical Patterns
• uses term from European scholars, class cleavages, where a cleavage must: differentiate a group, organize them for political representation, and generate a sense of collective identity (8) (citing Lipset and Rokkan 1967 and Bartolini and Mair 1990)
• this rarely happens so neatly in Latin America
• most economic identities are rather shallow
• labor-backed parties have always had to attract other support as well
• better definiton of segmented versus stratified cleavages (9)
• segmented cleavages may be grounded in social/cultural distinction, or the may be entirely political
• at 1900 modernization began creating a more diversified social structure (10)
• the mobilization of workers created intense class conflict
• nevertheless, class cleavages were never quite as durable in Latin America as the were in Europe
• nor, indeed, were parties organized only within one class...most were at least partially multi-class
• this meant that labor either supported historical parties, or became a major supporter of populist/cross-class parties (11)
• though populism did not generate strict class cleavages, it did create stratified fault lines that differentiated elite adn mass parties (12)
• but the impportance of labor unions as backers for populist and left parties at least meant that some stratficiation occurred in class cleavages for left and labor mobilizing parties
• for elite/traditional parties, the relationship with labor was usually patronage-based, and did not encapsulate voters within a party, could be more personalistic (113)
• labor movemetns were, thus, weaker in elite-party systems
• Countries with l abor-mobilizing parties tended to adopt more and deeper ISI measures, thus the neoliberal turn buffeted both socioeconomic and political connections between parties and popular sectors (14)
• Party Systems in the Transition from ISI to Neoliberalism
• Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico were regional leaders in ISI, joined by Bolivia, Peru, Venzuela
• in all these coutnries, the state became the focal point of social deamnds (15)
• thus the fundamental change in development model (from ISI to neoliberalism), and its commensurate withdrawing of the state from development, posed the greater political and economic shock to parties with labor mobilizing party systems (16)
• (up to that point) the most stable electoral party systems are those that have eschewed the organization of class cleavages and are grounded in intra-elite schisms (Roberts pulls this back and makes a different claim in a 2012 article!) (18)
• Market reforms pose a threat to the resources available for clientelism, but they pose little threat to the segmented organizational logic (19)
• in contrast, beoliberalism produced sharp discontinuities in labor-mobilizing systems with stratified organizations
• the stratified logic have been undermined by the more individualistic nature of neoliberalism
• The Erosion of Class Cleavages in the Neoliberal Era
• Argentina, Chile, and Peru demonstrated (in the past) that all three dimensions of class cleavage can develop in Latin America (20-21)
• But the new economic model has thrown much of that into doubt (21-26)
• the new economic model creates dispersion and segmentation among workers, with only a few having stable jobs, which fragments the labor movement (22)
• unionization has also dropped, meaning unions have a smaller political voice
• many labor-based parties have relaxed their ties to labor (Levitsky 1998, 2001, 2003, Murillo 1997, 2001)(23-24)
• class has also been less important in determining voting patterns (24-25)
• The Transformation of Political Representation in Comparative Perspective
• Brazil seems the last labor-mobilizing party left, but class still hasn't been important recently as it has in the past for voting (26)
• there has been an erosion of stratified axes of electoral competition, and a reinforcement of segmented patterns
• labor unions remain political actors, but their ties to parties and state institutions have loosened, their access to policy-making has narrowed, and their voice has diminished (26-27)
• suggests their is a "re-oligarchization" of politics

Roberts 2007

"The Crisis of Labor Politics in Latin America: Parties and Labor Movements during the Transition to Neoliberalism". 2007. International Labor and Working-Class History. 72 (1): 116-133.

•  Introduction
• the neoliberal turn dislocated the mode of political representation of the popular (working) class(es), as this incorporation was rooted in the state-led development model (116)
•  domestic consumption was previoulsy the driver of the economy
• this meant that wages generally rose over time, and unions flourished (117)
• "An elective affinity existed, then, between strong developmentalist states, mass party organizations, and dense trade-union movements"
• the neoliberal disruption undercut organized labor both in the political realm and in teh workplace
• Party System Differentiation Under ISI: Elitist and Labor-Mobilizing Patterns
• elitist
• 19th century oligarchic parties (or new, elite-driven parties) (Colombia, Uruguay, Paraguay)
• attracted support from the popular classes but did not drive union creation/membership (118)
• Labor-mobilizing
• new parties (usually)
• party could be populist (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela) of leftist (Chile, Nicaragua after 1979)
• in these countries, level of trade union membership and degree of organizational concentration were much higher, which usually is read as meaning unions were much stronger in these places
• labor-mobilizing countires tended to have a deeper commitment to ISI (119), elitist countries didn't stray nearly as far from liberal economic development (120)
• the depth of ISI system also helps predict which countries made neoliberal turn last
• stabilization was frequently delayed until a deep crisis
• needed austerity measures were usually worse, "shock treatment"
• contractions, crises, and disequilibria were not as strong in elite countries(121)
• paradoxically, the places with teh strongest labor movements endured the deepest and most painful wage cuts, adjustment (122)
• But what were the political consequences?!
• Economic Crisis, Market Reform, and the Transformation of Political Representation
• after neoliberal adjustment, there was an erosion of the social alignments and organizational forms that distinguished elite and labor-mobilizing party systems (123)
• the groups (unions) that used to supply grassroots activists, identities, and loyal voters are now much weakers
• at the same time, mass media has become more prevalent
• NEW parties: top-down, largely detached from an increasingly individualized, independent, and more volatile electorate
• with the dominance of neoliberal thinking, party programs have converged a great deal (124)
• bait-and-switch occurrences by many left and populist parties in 1980s and 1990s meant:
• they were saddled with the political costs of the transition, and
• the transition weakened their traditional supporters (125)
• this has forced many of these parties to seek new connections with the electorate, and they tend to do so using patron-clientelism, leadership appeal, or political marketing (instead of offering to change the economic system)
• The Puzzle of Electoral Volatility in Latin America
• lots of intraregional differences in electoral volatility (126)
• volatility increased in the context of growing economic stability and democratic consolidation in the 1990s
• thus volatility is not explained by "tough economic times"
• party systems anchored in mass parties saw lots of dislocation in the 1980s and 1990s during transition, whereas elite party systems were relatively stable (127)
• BUT recent divisions in elite party states f Uruguay and Colombia suggest the elite/mass differentiation isn't perfect either
• Overall, it seems that voters just don't identify with any party nearly as strongly as they used to (128)
• this volatility is especially striking given that many of these parties had all the institutionalization that should have made them very stable (129)
• strong grassroots organizations
• linkages to social blocs
• as labor unions grew weaker and more detached from political parties, electoral competition became less polarize but also less programmatic, less grounded in popular interests, and more fluid and personalistic
• Conclusion
• "Latin America's widely noted 'crisis of representation' is, at least in part, a crisis of a particular type of socialpolitical representation" (130)
• the Left might be able to fix this, but it's a long way away from being able to do that/actually doing that (130-131)

12/30/13

Questions:
Why don't poor people and workers team up?

Why would they?
The urban poor and workers are both in tenuous positions.  In many cases the urban poor were workers, and have lost their jobs or otherwise slipped into poverty.  Under a Marxian analysis they share similar interests and similar oppressors.

Why don't they?
This is an important question.

• There is a collective action problem, and neoliberal society might be more atomized (Kurtz 2004).
• Labor unions have gotten weaker (cite everyone), and have lost their political partners in many instances (Levitsky 2003, Murillo 2004, Burgess 2004).
• Roberts (1999?) has an analysis of class-cleavages without class, where class identities aren't prevalent but class issues still are.
• They have differing demands on the government
• unions want jobs
• unions want higher wages, for which informality may be a subsidy
• poor want social spending, which could come at the expense of higher wages for unions
• poor want jobs
• unions want leverage over employers
• poor don't necessarily care about this, as they would prefer first to have an employer, no?
• poor have to spend a lot of time waiting on the government (Auyero 2012)
• incorporation for the poor is waiting in waiting rooms, being subjugated
• incorporation for the workers is improved wages but smaller unions, more precarious work

Auyero 2012

Auyero, Javier. 2012. Patients of the state: the politics of waiting in Argentina. Durham: Duke University Press.\

• Introduction and Chapter 1
• waiting for government aid as "temporal processes in and through which political subordination is reproduced" (2)
• people are "kicked around", given the reunaround, forced to wait by local officials/bureaucrats (4)
• BOOK focuses on "the workings of political domination" among the urban poor, specifically through waiting (5)
•   state practices provide the poor with an education/crash course on the workings of state power
• they also shape clients perception of the state and their own status
• and clients learn the rules of the game
• making the dispossessed wait is negative, akin to repression, but has "positive" effects of creating citizens who are patient, subordinate, dominated; waiting creates this and recreates this (8-9)
• SEEMS LIKE CLIENTELISM ON A GRAND SCALE, NO?
• if the state really wanted active, full-fledged citizens, it wouldn't make them wait so much, waste their time, take time away from productive actions and/or political activity...so what this state actually wants is subordinates (22)
• the processes of waiting are part of the recreation of subordination, which looks like an exercise of power/agency but is actually subjugation through constraining use of time for the poor, demanding they not be contentious, and thereby preventing conflict from arising (34-35)

• Chapter 2: Urban Relegation
• since the neoliberal turn, (80s, but more in 1990s), shantytowns have been growing a great deal (36-38), inequality has been gorwing, and along with that spatial segregation of rich (behind gates) and poor has been on the rise (38-39)
• class mobility is decreasing, as is the belief that moving up is possible (39)
• Poor are dominated by: (41)
• "fists and kicks", state repression (which can be overt and covert), administered by government and army/police
• "tentacles", non-violent subjugation to "waiting", administered by local officials
• State repression
• overt: (48-56)
• protest and repression (decreasing repression after 2003)
• police violence still prevlaent
• incarceration increasing
• National Guard has occupied entire neighborhoods to "keep the peace"
• evictions of homeless/squatters from public spaces
• covert 56-58
• evictions by those contracted to do it by the state, usually fairly violent
• "tentacles"
• Kafkaesque play where government creaqtes threat/issue, then offers the solution for this isssue
• usually issue demands waiting, time spent in offices, paperwork
• there is no monoloithic state, but rather a large number of agents and agencies through which the poor have to maneuver, spending time (60-62)
• This domination, subjugation doesn't end all protests...protests will increase as social insecurities increase, both due to economics and interactions with the state (63)
• Chapter 3:
• local leaders tell the poor when and where to register, even when the state opens offices in their neighborhoods..."local leaders attempt to control the timing of the state's precarious and always limited welfare programs" (67)
• chapter argument: everything in their waiting teaches them a lesson: keep waiting, there's nothing you can do about the endless lines (73)
• three processes: veiling, confusing, rushing/delaying (73-74)
• all serve to snare poor people into uncertain and arbitrary waiting time
• there is a total absence of routine outside a RENAPER office (where one gets an ID card) (80)
• Chapter 4: The Welfare office
• everyone comes with someone (family usually)
• disorgainzed chaso in teh waiting room, lines are created and dissolved, people are given appointments on days when the office is closed (on accident)
• elections can speed up the cprocess, but afterward there is more "kicking the ball" down the street when it comes to actual payments (105-106)
• much of the fault of issues is placed on the computer..."i don't know why, but the computer says that", "it needs to be reprogrammed, so it will come later", the computers says this and that is the way it is....Auyero brings it to Marx's idea of the machine reprogramming the worker (115-118), but couldn't it also just as much be that there is little real reason for any of these things happening, and the computer can be a black, uncontrollable bo
• people come multiple times throughout the year for their benefits, as there seem to be many problem (118-123)
• but few complain once there, because "patients" understand that they are expected to wait, contestation may just bring about further delay, other "repressions" of sorts
• welfare benefits are gendered female:  women wait, get some random benefits 124-126)
• government pushes men toward employment opportunities (126)
• relying on welfare benefits leaves you on teh street, so in a way the state reinforces patriarchy by ensuring that stability can only be found if a women is with a man with a job (126-127)
• Chapter 5:  Chapter on environment
• for those waiting for a dangerous plant ot be moved, or for themselves to be moved away from the plant (by the government), politics is a profoundly dis-empowering experience, and everything takes a long time to work (if it does at all ) (143)
• court ruled in great favor of the residents, but the state has yet to comply in any way (148-152)
• Conclusion
• the state (of waiting and being dominated through waiting) is not a cultural phenomenon, but a political construct, somethign created by the state tiself (154-155)
• unpredictability and waiting have the effect of binding the poor to the state, reducing the poor's agency and disempowering them (156-7)

12/3/2013

There needs to be some connection between the big issues of the day and the individual worker/citizen.

Workers are squeezed between the demands of the international market (competitive wages, etc) and their own demands of subsistence.

The union leader is in some ways a nexus between the individual worker and the government or national confederation.  Yet the union leader who cannot involve his/her members in the movement

How to get workers to

Taco stands.  How do workers at the ground level, the self-employed, the independent contractors, what is there work?  how do they view themselves?  What's the point of that work (ie survival versus career)?  They are the bottom of the system, not even fully integrated into the capitalistic market, in the shadow economy (more or less). 

12/2/2013

Political incorporation is the connection of the people in a country to their political institutions.  Much has been written on  the importance of political institutions on the functioning of a democracy (Roberts DATE, Flores-Macias 2012).  One of the important pieces of democratic viability is the legitimacy of these institutions.  That legitimacy comes from whether people see there needs expressed and/or assuaged through the political system, OR, importantly, at least see the future possibility of have these needs assuaged (Przeworski).  But how long will people wait for their need to be met?  At what point does democratic procedure become subsumed by demanded outcomes?

This problem is especially puzzling for those squeezed by the global economy.  The working class, especially those who struggle on the edge of subsistence despite having some sort of job, face a future that involves either upskilling, finding some way into the more-skilled economy or, more likely, being caught in a cycle of near poverty (Standing, probably).

The government exists to ensure the health and wellbeing of its people, but how far the idea of "health and wellbeing" extends is under debate.  Moreover, the extent to which the people of a given country, especially those without material wealth, are represented by a government is an important part of a government's legitimacy.  

So when do we talk to the people?

How do labor unions fit in?

Why is political incorporation important?  Or rather, why does it matter to the worker?
- politics is the arena where workers have (or at least rhetorically have) as much legitimacy as business.