Garay 2007

Garay, Candelaria. 2007. "Social Policy and Collective Action: Unemployed Workers, Community Associations, and Protest in Argentina". Politics & Society. 35 (2): 301-328.

• Introduction
•  unemployed and informal workers have traditionally been marginalized by labor unions, as they are a threat to formal workers (301)
• but in the 2000s the unemployed in Argentina engaged in an impressive amount of collective action (302)
• and political leaders began to want to integrate these groups into partisan politics
• Argument:  that Plan Trabajar, a national workfare program created in 1996, encouraged collective action among unemployed and informal poor workers (303), because it
• had a short supply of benefits relative to demand
• lack of clear rules to define beneficiaries
• funds were administered to community organizations
• The state responded to protests with more workfare provisions, which in turn brought on more protest!
• Challenges to Popular-Sector Collective Action (Lit Review)
• more informal employment, heterogeneity in people made organization difficult (304)
• belief that most social programs reduced collective action
• despite problem-solving groups being formed, most scholars thought these groups just got pulled into clientelistic networks (305)
• Explaining Collective Action: A Policy Centered Approach
• many of the collective identities of these unemployed only arose after or during protest of policy and state responses
• policies can generate new groups, coalitions, and/or constituencies in, around, and in response to these policies
• this is especially true if policies give money to organizations to disburse, as opposed to state disbursing them directly (306)
• Argument: the program design of Plan Trabajar favored the creation of collective action
• Program Design and Collective Action
• low supply of benefits + no transparency = grievances (306)
• funds disbursed to groups = creation of new collective organizations, and thus identities (307)
• some groups even disbursed benefits based on who showed up to protest
• horizontal linkages between these new groups also sprung up because divided they would lose benefits to more powerful, pre-existing client-machines
• State Responses to Collective action
• repression/confrontation backfired (thanks to democratic context) (308)
• negotiation
• this at first led to more protest, but eventually led to less
• unemployed groups become actors in negotiation with the state, not protesters demanding access
• Protests started before 2001, and by mid-1998 two of these unemployed groups had formed alliances with unions CTA and CCC (311)
• 2000 saw some austerity, limiting number of people who received Plan Trabajar benefits
• new associations emerged from this
• many new and old associations began coordinated nationwide protest (313)
• Duhalde increased beneficiaries despite crisis (313)
• created formal and informal negotiation spaces between state and unemployed
• broader access to benefits meant unemployed groups multiplied, but also fragmented the movement
• Effects of Collective Action
• redefined social policy
• coverage has expanded (314)
• get money instead of a basket of goods
• now you get it until you get a job
• national state came to control this budget and decision on disbursement of these funds 
• but the program seems unable to lift people out of poverty
• changed modes of interest mediation between popular sectors and the state
•  duh, new movement! (315)
• some groups community based, large
• other groups led by social militants
• still others organized from the top down (clientelistic?)
• challenged partisan machines
• popular organizations now have greater access to state resources, as opposed to trying to get them through machines (317)
• reversed normal distance between labor union and unemployed (see CTA alliance)
• created linkages between parties and unemployed groups
• PJ has gotten access to these unemployed, undermining Left parties (318)
• Kirchner tried to get these groups to be his popular sector support (successfully)
• Comparative Context
• Goes against lit, shows that in certain ways policies to alleviate poverty can cause protest, collective action, and increase in social spending (318-320)
• this is happening a bit in Brazil, too (319-320)
• these unemployed groups count as reconfiguration of the PJ (321)