Roberts 2012

• Introduction
• one the one hand, democratic regimes from the 1980s have proven remarkably durable adn resilient to crises (2)
• On the other hand, party systems have been far less stable
• Paradoxically, democratic consolidation has coincided with a crisis of representation and general disillusionment with the political establishment
• but this crisis affects different countries differently
• Critical junctures:
• neoliberal turn (3)
• reactive sequences against neoliberalism!
• Modes of political representation based in ISI were undermined by its collapse, specficially among the popular classes
• and party systems varied widely in their ability to channel these issues
• Broadly, these critical junctures dealigned parties, made their programmatic promises seem less sincere (especially thanks to bait and switch)
• Argument:
• when a populist/mass-based party undertook economic reform
• it often made the transition more politically viable
• but also dealigned the party from its constituents (4)
• when a right party undertook economic reform
• left party was able to channel dissent through the insittuions
• party alignment was "reinforced"
• in both cases, parties that undertook reforms were vulnerable to leftist challenges
• The Puzzle of Party System Stability in Latin America
• Presidentialized party systems may result in parties with unaccountable elites, ambiguous programmatic stands, but it doesn't help explain the wide variation in strength and durability of party systems (5)
• electoral competition has not stabilized party systems or crystallized partisan identities
• During neoliberal transition programmatic differentiation was tough, since there were such acute constraints on policy options available (7)
• by contrast, the left turn helped realign some of these party systems
• "neoliberal critical junctures and teh reactive sequences they spawned dislodged and reconfigured historic party systems, altering their programmatic alignments in was that heavily conditioned the stability ot partisan competition in the aftermath period" (8)
• Market Liberalization and Part system alignments during neoliberal critical junctures
• Critical junctures are designed to explain why similar types of political or economic challenges produce different, path dependent patterns of institutional change across a range of cases
• suggest neoliberal critical juncture from 1973-1998 (Chavez ended it) (9)
• it altered:
• the character and purpose of state power
• the patterns of association in civil society
• the ways in which societal interests and claims were articulated and represented in the political arena (Collier and Handlin 2009, Yashar 2005)
• Party systems before market adjustment: (10)
• labor mobilizing
• elitist (with clientelistic relations to popular sectors)
• these preconditions weighed heavily on results of critic juncture, but did not define them entirely
• three basic requirements of programmatic structuring of party systems
• parties must adopt relatively coherent stands on salient issues that divide teh body politic (11)
• policies adopted in office must bear resemblance to election platform
• bait and switch severs relationship between electoral verdicts and the content of public policy (12)
• there must be meaningful differences/policy alternatives between the competing parties
• often not true during ISI crisis
• The regionwide transition undermined all three of these basic conditions (13)
• lots of policy switching, left/populist parties went along with reforms, or did bait and switch (13)
• created internal party dissension among leftish parties
• often meant that popular sector connections to parties were severd, replaced with clientelistic relations (14)
• BUT if a conservative party initiated transition, and left remained in opposition, no dealignment
• Three possible outcomes: table on page 16
• parties aligned (contested liberalism), outcome was a durable party system (15)
• Brazil, Chile, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Uruguay
• Mexico, thanks to creation of PRD which replaced PRI as left
• ambiguously Nicaragua (17)
• dealigned (bait and witch), or neutral (no real left to contest) results on part system (neoliberal convergence), outcome was not a durable part system
• dealigned: Argentina, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela
• Neutral: Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay
• contested liberalism allowed for dissent to be challenged through stable forms of electoral competition (17)
• neoliberal convergence resulted in systems susceptible to destabilizing reactive sequences
• 17-25 goes through cases and uses electoral data, etc to prove this story
• 
  

Cochabamba 2004

Olivera, Oscar, and Tom Lewis. 2004. Cochabamba!: water war in Bolivia. Cambridge, Mass: South End Press.


Oscar Oliveira  "Privatization" 7-24

• (11-12) "we were--and still are--tremendously worried by the fact that the Bolivian government evidently prefers to follow the dictates of the World Bank instead of taking into account what the population views as in its best interests"
• disconnenct between government and people, either in reality or in perception..."why don't they (the government" listen to us, help us??
• (14) describes selling mineral rights as "stripped of our material inheritance"
• (15) external debt was contacted "undemocratically--in our name, but without our consent"...and now Bolivia is hostage to its external debt, resulting in terrible conditions for the people
• (16) external debt is "a complete loss of sovereignty

Oscar Oliveira "Organizing" 24-32

• (27 28) offered office of the union for the Coordinaria en Defensa del Agua y de la Vida
•  a group formed by the union and a previous civil society org. interested in water issues (27)
• the Coordinaria spoke in the name of the people who felt ignored (28)
• hoped that the water issue would unite disparate factions, urban and country, etc etc, and it worked (30)
• in one protest Oliveira and Morales snared traffic, busted windows, were repressed by police when government promised (and failed to show up to) negotiations (31)

Raul Gutiérrez-Aguilar 2004 "The Coordinaria: One Year after the Water War" (53-64)

• the coordinaria movement differed from trade-union movements in the past in that it focused on basic, universal needs, not just individual proposals (55)
• the coordinaria used assembly-style poolitics, not internal institutions (56)
•  the coordinaria assembly became a place for other civil groups to discuss with each other more specfici problems, neighborhood to neighborhood, as well as a mass-mobilizing movement
• the coordinaria has had toruble in times of calm due to "the atomized society" and stretching of the social farbic by neoliberalism (58) -- people are lazy
• coordinaria hopes to poltiicize the people, and the working class, who have been under-political since the demise of the trade unions (64)

 
Álvaro García Linera 2004 "The 'Multitude'" 65-86

• 
  
• idea that unoins are being replaced by political parties as the means of negotiation between the state and society...is this surprising? (69)
•  this has looked more like clientelism, in this authors view
• "union" form of collective organizing is being replaced (in Bolivia) with the "Multitude" form (70-71)
• since the unified workplace has been diffused (often ino the niehgborhoods and homes), geographic groups and collective action organizations are more important now (71-73)
• Coordinaria members are uniting under an identity created through the struggle, but it is vauge, something like "ordinary working people" (78)  <<The breadth of this identity is an important weakness of it>>
• 
  
•  

Kingstone, Young, Aubrey 2013

Kingstone, Peter, Joseph K. Young, and Rebecca Aubrey. 2013. "Resistance to Privatization: Why Protest Movements Succeed and Fail in Latin America". Latin American Politics and Society. 55 (3): 93-116

• Introduction
• Broad Defense in Peru, coalition of many civil society organizations, was able to block privatization in 2002 (93-94)
• Article focuses on privatization because it fidrectly affest jobs and consumers, and national industries can be symbolic (94)
• Argument: protest tend to succeed under two conditions
• when protesters engage in "brokerage" across multiple sectors of society (94-95)
• (95) protests are most successful when civil rights are protected but political representation is weak
• this model accounts well for failure, but not so well for success...will discuss example of Bolivia and Uruguay to play this out
• Privatization in Latin America
• Privatization can have diffuse and uneven effects, improving the experience of some while decreasing jobs and increasing prices as well (96)
• the perception of corruption can increase hostility to privatization
• this is likely due to or increased by lack of transparency and public scrutiny in these privatizations (97)
• authors identify 104 protest cases in 18 countries between 1990 and 2000
• 25 successfully reversed the sale
• protests were frequent in Argentina, Bolivia, and Brazil, though few succeeded in any of these places, and were less frequent but more successful in Costa Rica and Uruguay
• Successful Resistance
• political opportunity
• hypothesis 1: and open civil rights climate is associated with greater likelihood of success for protest (99)
• hypothesis 2: the level of political rights is negatively associated with success of protest movements
• assume that high political representation will result in grievances going through "proper channels"
• brokerage
• occurs when previously unconnected groups cooperate in seeking a common goal
• hypothesis 3: brokerage increases probability of protest success (100)
• alternative explanations
• protest became more frequent and successful later in period as neoliberal project lost steam
• no trend in this direction in data
• certain sectors are more likely to generate protest
• protest were more successful and had more linkages if a public utlity
• but suggest that overall success is high enough that this doesn't really pan out in data either.
• could make argument they're making a molehill out of a mountain here!
• Research Design:  uses a bunch of third party measures (101-103). tests political, economic, and brokerage variables
•  Results
• all hypotheses proven (103), economic variables hard to gauge, and their seem to be some country effects as well (104) (through discussion on 106)
• Democracy, Neoliberalism, and Protest
• the modal case of a successful protest is one where civil rights are protected but political representation is weak enough to demand groups use outside channels (106)
• Bolivian Water War
• 107-109
• privatization of water company done without consultation of the polity (108)
• Earlier protests against privatization had failed, in Cochabamba there was brokerage
• protesters barricaded, took over parts of city when government failed to negotiate
• police leveraged this situation for a pay raise...is this significant to success?
• importantly, the political exclusion of indigenous people led to this successful mobilization (109)
• Protecting ANTEL in Uruguay
• ultimately the protest was channeled through a national plebiscite (109)
• generally the country is seen as politically open, but Elite parties were losing groudn to Frente Amplio at this point
• notes brokerage between PIT-CNT union confedration and the Frente Amplio's civil society org (110)
• does this really count as two civil society orgs?!
• protesters took advantage of national plebiscite rule in Constitution (110-111)
• Conclusions
• privatization, especailly when its done undemocratically, may tap into deeper, already held feelings of political exclusion (111)
• this political exclusion may predate privatization effort, and even neoliberalism for that matter (though likely not the latter)
• high success in Costa Rica and Uruguay occured because of brokerage between CSOs, unions, and political parties (111-112)...protests are eventually channeled into political institutions
• these stand in contrast to Ecuador, Bolivia, and Mexico where protest has taken place almost entirely outside of formal political institutions  (112)

Silva 2012

Silva, Eduardo. 2012. "Exchange Rising? Karl Polanyi and Contentious Politics in Contemporary Latin America". Latin American Politics and Society. 54 (3): 1-32.

• Introduction
• organized workers and their capacity for mobilization were a key nonparty political societal source of advocacy and defense of protections [from capitalism in the 20th century]" (1)
• But deindustrialization, privatizaion, deregulation, and business-friendly labor codes debilitated the workplace as the locus from which to organize effective societal countermovement [against neoliberalism]"
• so what now? who will stand up against capitalism?
• Argentina, Bolivia, and Ecuador suggest that Polanyi's theory may still be useful (2)
• that is, that the circuits of exchange in capitalism, the commodification of labor, land, and money, can be sources of mobilization and resistance
• this article seeks to anchor Polanyi in real events
• thsi article also needs an explanation for how social movements reocgnized the common threat of recommodification and then formed horizontal linkages to fight it (3)
• goes for contentious politics literature, using threat, framing, and brokerage
• this article combines this idea with Poanyi's circuits of exchaage
• NOTE: defnesive reactiosn to recommodification were also mized with identity, organization, and disruptive action, NOR DID LABOR DISAPPEAR FROM THE SCENE
• labor was important before neoliberalism, and likely led the charge against reforms initially, but in many places there is a new "head" organization in current contentious politics, and it tends to not be labor (4)
• Two Sources of Societal Countermovement to Free-Market Captialism: Production and Exchange
• Marx focused on point of production (4-5)
• concentration of workers created shared identities (5)
• large-scale industrial owrkplace provided place for uniosn to organize
• power depended on ability of unions to disrupt production
• Polanyi had a different persepective
• what's important are the attempts to subordinate market economics to SOCIAL RELATIONS
• people demadn some stability and reciprocity, but te market is to volatile to give it to them (6)
• ressistance to free-market (in Polanyi's view) can come from more places than just the industrial proleriat
• Polanyi predicts blacklash against the free-market, McAdam explains the nuts and bolts of how the movements are created (7)
• Market Reforms, National Populism, and Organized Labor
• "National populism was Latin America's version of the social democratic compromise that evolved in Europe during the long 20th century (8)
• a coalition of urban labor, middle classes, and domestic market oriented bourgeoisie, mediated by the state, supported ISI
• labor in Latin America was not as powerful as labor in Europe, which is why they had to rely on a coalition with the middle class and labor-friendly parties (9)
• labor led the popular sectors, most of the others got a decent deal, but not as good as labor (8-9)
• first and second stage structural (neoliberal) reforms intensified the commodification of labor , land, and money
• first stage was liberalizing the economy, shrinking the economic reach of hte state (10)
• second stage extended market logic to education, healthcare, other government services
• labor protested, but was too weakened by reforms to stop them
• Exchange, threat, and Contentious Politics
• new social movements arose from territories, social categories, identity politics because the point of production was no longer a relevant reference (11)
• but they operated alongside class-based groups, ie unions
• Many of the grievances sought by these groups were based around the commodificiation of land, labor, or money (12)
• peasants wanted land reforms, issues that were often intertwined with indigenous identity movements
• downside is that these movements tended to be a bit more heterogeneous that old union movements, since new movements were mobilized around multiple issues, not just at the point of production (like labor of old)
• but the weakness of labor also meant these movemetns had a chance to be of more central importance to the resistance against capitalism
• Argentina
• Unemployed movements showed up first in small towns in the interior (13)
• because they were unemployed, locus of fight was communities, not the workplace
• successful unemployed and underemployed movements in the WOrkers' Party in the late1990s (14)
• piqueteros, asembleas populares also happening
• these community-based movements linked up with the CTA
• the main CGT never hooked up with these movements, was mainly fighting rear-guard actions to control its own downsizing (15)
• Bolivia
• COB national union was powerful in Bolivia, but was massively weakened by privatization of tin mines and radical downsizing of the satate (16)
• coca federations, other peasant groups rose up in their place
• coca sindicatos were targeted for eradication by the US and Bolivian authorities in counternarcotics raids
• the CSUTCB union joined up with the cocaleros, framed the movement as anti-imperialism, neogtiated coca laws with the federal government (17)
• intertwining of material and indigenous culture strengthened the movement
• when the government took on indigenous rights and customs, the movement further consolidated itself and fought off this challenge
• also, water wars (18) and gas wars, demanding water access and use of money from gas mining to benefit the nation
• Ecuador
• urban labor movements mobilized against the reforms, but were weak and easily coopted (19)
• organized indigenous peoples became the main opposition to neoliberalism
• CONAIE, combined movement of highland and lowland indigenous movements, blocked land liberalization
• Exchange and the Repertoire of Contention
• direct action in the form of roadblocks, takeovers, and other disruptions to daily business overtook strikes on production as the most important form of direct action (19-21)
• Exchange and Framing
• exchange-based framing allowed individuals to unite despite the fact that they were in different locations in the structure of production (22)
• neoliberalism became an important frame
• it came to stand for loss of sovereignty to foreign governments, international institutions, and transnational capital
• corruption by government officials and helping foreign creditors and/or foreign banks was framed as theft
• moral indignation rallied people (22-23)
• life became an encompassing frame as well
• neoliberalism became an assault on life
• such big terms, frames allowed groups to make many horizontal linkages, more than just class-based ideas (23)
• (23-24) in Argentina many people experienced unemployment, precarity, or new forms of employment which they attributed to neoliberalism
• many differently situated people recognized themselves as part of the world of work, and saw neoliberal reforms as a worsening of their work lives (24)
• some dissident unions began proclaiming "the neighborhood is the new factory"
• this shifted the center of resistance away fro teh factory and into popular sector neighborhoods
• the demand for state intervention brought in other groups as well, environmentalists, gender, human rights, as they saw the state as the only actor who could protect them from the market
• Conclusions
• in practical matters, this means that movements need to be more broadly cooperative and coordinate with each other (26)
• but it also brings a challenge to the left in Latin America, who will be expected to agglomerate and channel these movements into real political power

Cook 2007

Cook, Maria Lorena. 2006. The politics of labor reform in Latin America: between flexibility and rights. University Park, Pa: The Pennsylvania State University Press.

Chapter 5: Bolivia and Mexico (only Mexico here)

• Technical, ambiguous nature of the law allows the JCAs a lot of discretionary power
• also makes protection contracts easier to attain
• exclusion and separation clauses
• make protection unions stronger
• protect leadership in unions from rank-and-file revolt
• 1980s: “The economic crisis weakened all labor unions, but independent unions were hit hardest by industrial restructuring and never regained a presence in manufacturing” (163)
• Government devoted to neoliberal model
• in 1990s-2000s, “corporatist compromise” granted increased flexibility to employer in exchange for conserving the status quo on unions’ organizational prerogatives and collective rights
• First round of labor reform proposals in late 1990s, both for PRD and PAN, tried to take apart corporatist system, demand greater union democracy
• labor divided:
• official wanted to keep positions
• UNT unions divided, because some (SNTE, STRM?) didn’t want to totally demolish system
• also fear that once the bill hit Congress, everything would change!
• Fox appoints a businessman, Carlos Abascal, to head Labor Ministry
• His reform (which fails) would create greater flexibility and not touch internal democracy of unions
• Sequence of transition, economic then democratic, may have limited possiblities for democratic labor reform
• business now heading the labor ministry!!
• official unions can give wage restraint, which managers want, so managers allow official unions to survive
• “As long as the PRI remains a significant presence in Mexican politics, labor’s relationship with the party is likely to continue and the party is likely to degfnd the demands of the traditional labor sector” (192)
• see labor reform failure in 2012!
• MEXICO NOT ABLE TO REALIZE PROMISE OF PROGRESSIVE LABOR LAWS OF DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION