Kosack 2012

Kosack, Stephen. 2012. The Education of Nations : How the Political Organization of the Poor, Not Democracy, Led Governments to Invest In Mass Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

• Chapter 1:
• education is important for development, development without education leads to low-road economies (3)
• Argument: Government will choose to expand quality education based on two factors: (3-4)
• a tight but flexible skilled labor market, with little ability to attract skilled foreign workers
• government engagement in political entrepreneurship of the poor...that is, government subsidized collective action on the part of poor people
• looks at Ghana, Taiwan, Brazil to show theory
• (7-8) governments don't seem to invest in education based only on the needs of businesses...shows some poorer countries spend way more on tertiary education than they should
• most scholars think democratic regimes are more interested in educating citizens. This book suggests that overall and throughout recent history regime hasn't been as important a variable as others think (9-10)
• he suggests that it is less the regime type and more the existence of collective action demanding education that will result in education spending (11)
• the key is political entrepreneurship, where collective actions problems and costs are overcome (12-14)
• government needs the support of a "vital constituency", and political entrepreneurship will determine if the poor are part of this constituency or not (14-15)
• employer demands for labor (skilled, unskilled, trained by govt or not) also affect govt motivations for providing education (15-16)
• (17) 3x3 matrix of when government will provide mass education. short story: any time poor are part of the vital constituency (either as part of it or as all of it) AND when employers need workers in a flexible skilled labor market
• Chapter 2: the government's educational goals
• education is NOT a public good (24)
• education as "bad collateral" (Milton Friedman), and thus banks don't want to invest in individual's education (26)
• demands of families
• the richer the family, the more they can afford education, the more they want government to subsidize TERTIARY/higher levels of education, and low enrollments overall (30-31)
• poor families are the opposite, they can't afford much of anything, so they want govt to spend lots of money on primary (and maybe every other level, too), high enrollments at every level (30-31)
• demands of employers:
• three types of demands for worker training:
• none: from biz that either doesn't need skilled workers or can import them (34)
• broad: biz needs skilled workers, can't import them, and wants a lot of them to lower wages of skilled workers (35)
• selective: biz needs skilled, can't import, and can't expect wages to be lowerd (thanks to unions or govt employment or sthg) (35)
• type of education system created depending on vital consituency:
• bottom up = more spending on primary, when VC is only poor
• all levels = equal spending, when VC is cross-class
• top-down = more spending on tertiary, when VC is elites (45-48)
•  
• see also 69-71
• chapter 3
• lots of tools in the governments use, like fees, buildings, outsourcing, to point educational resources toward the vital consituency (49-60)
• but constraints like budget size, inherited school systems, and need to keep social peace affect how govts allocate schooling resources (61-67)
• chapters on Taiwan, Ghana, and then...
• Brazil!
• Vargas era
• cross class alliance, Vargas as the political entrepreneur for the poor, but not the VERY poor (228-230)
• Vargas and his direct successors created an All-Levels system, but enrollment was limited so basically only those in the vital constituency (workers, middle class) had access to education (about 42% enrollment rate, rural sectors had low enrollment) (235)
• middle class had the access, also had high quality teachers, making the eudcation system pretty nice, but tradeoff was that it didn't serve many people (236-7)
• some intra national differences during the dictatorship, state-level becomes important when federal level politics are sort of cut off (253-254)
• top-down education system built between 1964 and 1990 to serve the agricultural elites who were the vital consituency (254-267)
• education projects were also a great way to dole out jobs in a clientelistic style, meanign rural landowners used education spending more for the sake of remaining in power than for actual education...foreign education grants were essentially wasted funding these patronage networks (259-262)
• soem equalizing after return to democracy, post 1990, but system still retains many of the private school advantages, better track for elites, it just opened up primary schools to more people (278-287)
• analysis stops at 2000, so doesn't include PT's rise to power, not sure how that affects the edcuation system
• Conclusion:
• regime type does not predict improvements in mass education, at times democracies don't fund education and yet autocrats do (300)
• could be that pro-poor collective action is what spurs any sort of pro-poor policymaking, rather than relying on ideological feelings of the leaders or some sort of platform: if the poor take to the streets adn demand things, they are more likely to get them! (302-4)

Risley 2011

Risley A. 2011. "The power of persuasion: Issue framing and advocacy in Argentina". Journal of Latin American Studies. 43 (4): 663-691.

·         Analyzing strategies of NGOs that found it necessary and desirable to work with the political class post-2001

o   Two issues: children’s rights and greater transparency in government institutions (664)

o   Non-profit, public interest NGOs and community organizations

·         Argument: by devising effective framing strategies, civil society actors increase their chances of participating in the agenda-setting, formulation, and adoption phases of policy-making

o   Using motivational framing

o   But frames must also incorporate positive of constructive measures

o   In a place where CSOs aren’t normally consulted by the government, activists do not merely respond to existing political opportunities but endeavor to CREATE opportunities for participation (665)

·         It is clear that activists mobilize ideas as well as resources (667)

o   The strategic use of ideas can make up for lack of resources

·         The power of ideas

o   Diagnostic framing: problematizes issue (668)

o   Prognostic framing: suggests solutions

o   Motivational framing: provides rationale for collective action

§  For the last, the motivation must work for both the public AND elites

§  But all three are necessary

o   Policy-friendly frames have THREE MORE characteristics:

§  Contain a positive/constructive message (669)

§  Downplay blame

§  Propose feasible solutions

·         This is only influence over het policy-making process, not over outcomes (671)

·         Two cases:

o   FOI legislation, which CSOs were influential in creating through 2003, but had stalled by 2006 despite continued clamoring by CSOs (672)

o   Child welfare legislation, in which CSOs had only gotten middling levels of policy influence through 2004, but the law went through in 2005 (policy influence ramped up in 2004-2005)

o   Argument: differing levels of involvement was partly the result of different framing

·         FOI

o   Lots of CSOs that had been working on this since the 1990s

o   Did conferences to garner public support and attempted to gain elite support (675)

o   Instead of echoing “que se vayan todos”, they tried to give political elites a chance to do FOI to improve their own image (676)

§  Reforms specifically did not revolve around culpability

o   The legislation as a whole conveyed a sense of hope and institutional building/improving even as much of the rest of the country was angry and disgusted at politics

o   ME: So it seems like these guys did a pretty good job of framing the issue in a way to get everyone on board

·         Advocating for Children

o   CSOs had strong credentials as watchdogs for justice (680)

o   Very successful educating the public on children’s issues (681)

§  Great at motivational framing, but these advocates did not have great diagnostic or prognostic framing (682)

§  Constantly talked about how bad everything was (683)

§  Linked neoliberalism to child poverty

§  Entire system painted as “bad”, bleak (684)

·         Frame of criminalization of poverty emphasized system’s failure

o   Frame suggested only a fundamental change in social and economic model would fix the problem (685)

o   Frame antagonized executive branch and the family courts

§  The extent to which the frame threatens elites has an effect on whether it is implement…child legislation should seem obvious, but frames did not allow elites options for workable solutions (686)

o   BUT all of this changed in 2004-5, when activists latched on to a “modernization” frame, whereby child-poverty legislation was seen as part of modernizing project

·         What changed? Why do we get child legislation and not FOI?

o   Everyone else in the region (not Chile or Mex) had adopted childrens’ rights legislation, Argentina wanted to catch up (687)

§  Took out reproductive rights, which make the legislation more palatable

o   Kirchner did FOI decree for executive branch agencies in 2003, which took off some of the pressure (687)

§  FOI is example that doing everything right does not = policy success (688)

§  But a few years later the momentum picked up again, FOI passed lower house in 2010, stalled in upper house in 2011 (unsure of result due to publishing)

·         Conclusion:

o   Key aspect of CSO advocacy is circulation of people between CSOs and state (689)

Rodríguez 2001

GONZALO M. RODRÍGUEZ. 2001. "Crisis, Social Explosion, and Three Moments of Breaking with Representative Democracy in Argentina". International Journal of Political Economy. 31 (1): 79-88.

• "If in the light of the events it is clear that the will of millions of citizens, expressed through voting, is not respected by their supposed representatives, it is then revealed that representative democracy is not a mechanism of representation, but rather a means of expropriating the popular will." (80)
• the economic consequences of the de la Rua government were the wake-up call of the urban middle sectors (81)
• three breaks with representative democracy
• null votes in October 2001 (82)
• protests in December 2001, supermarket lootings, middle class caceralazos (82-83)
• middle classes and poor rebelled at same time, but they used very different strategies (83)
• asambleas barriales (84)
• big, radical break with representative democracy (85)
• "As Argentine society heads toward an intensification of its social contradictions, the confrontation between the ruling class and the popular sectors (which now include sectors of the comfortable middle class) grows deeper and more visible." (86)
• "Today the people do not have representatives or referents within the "political class"...the people mobilized themselves outside the traditional state structures of the parties, and outside even the unions and other preexisting movements." (86)

Stokes 2006

Do Informal Rules Make Democracy Work? Accounting for Accountability in Argentina" Susan C. Stokes 125-139

in editors Helmke, Gretchen, and Steven Levitsky 2006. Informal institutions and democracy: lessons from Latin America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

• likens some informal rules of democracy to language rules, where we learn to follow them before we learn what they actually are  (125)
• two central premises of the chapter:
• the way people vote in elections is rule-governed, and individuals rules for making voting decisions should be taken seriously (126)
• voters decision rules are grammatical: they are known and diffused through social mechanisms and rarely discussed openly, but are still not violated
• informal institutions and rules do not just describe what people do, but also what the expect other people to do (128)
• In Argentina, author suggests, democratic institutions are weak (128-129)
• Argentine democracy actually functions better in places where informal rules enforce accountability (129)
• people in places where democracy works pretty well display a heightened appreciation for mechanism of accountability AND expect others to follow decision-rules that make accountability possible (mar del Plata)
• in clientelisitic areas, people expect others to vote in ways that support clientelism (BA, Córdoba, Misiones)
• uses survey evidence
• "Expectations of accountability, when they do occur in Argentina, focus both on formal institutions and on informal rules and behaviors." (131, emphasis added)
• in places where democracy works, voters vote on whether a politician was accountable and expect others to do the same (132)
• none of this comes from any inherent belief (in Mar del Plata) that people are more trustworthy (135) or because they think perpetrators will be caught (136) but because they think people will lose support, voters, whatever if they aren't accountable (136-137)
• Authors hunch: beliefs in accountability are both a cause and a consequence of well-functioning democracy (138-139)
• 
  

Helmke and Levitsky 2006

 Introduction, Helmke and Levitsky, 1-30

editors Helmke, Gretchen, and Steven Levitsky 2006. Informal institutions and democracy: lessons from Latin America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

• lots of literature, the "unrule of law" scholars, question the extent to which focus on "parchment" rules of law actually misses important on-the ground realities (1)
• "informal rules shape how democratic institutions work" (2)
• some informal rules compete with and subverts democracy (dedazo in Mexico), others can complement and help sustain them (Chilean Concertacion) (3)
• informal institutions definition: socially shared rules, usually unwritten, that are created, communicated, and enforced outside officially sanctioned channels (5)
• they must be enfored in some fashion (5)
• four distinctions: informal institutions should be distinguished from (6)
• weak institutions
• other informal behavioral irregularities: a patterned behavior must be accompanied by a rule and social sanction (if not done) for it to be an informal institution
• informal organizations (7): separate rules from players
• culture. these are not culture, though it can at times be hard to tell them apart
• why informal rules matter: (8) (can be good and/or bad)
• Political representation can be affected in both directions
• programmatic links can be broken
• sometimes looks like the tradeoff in clientelism
• democratic accountability (9):
• vertical accountability (citizens can punish officials), and
• horizontal (officials are responsible to other agencies, officials)
• informal rules can provide more accountability, but it might not provide the right type of public accountability (10-11)
• democratic governance
• informal rules of accommodation, power-sharing, and coalition building can prevent intractability problems (11)
• at times these may improve governance and stability, but not democracy
• citizenship and the rule of law
• brown areas = places where citizens do not actually possess the rights they should, especially indigenous (12)
• informal institutions can both violate and advance citizenship rights in areas not fully controlled by the state
• typology (13)
• two dimensions:
• degree of convergence between informal and formal institutions
• effectiveness of relevant formal institutions
• page 14:

	Effective formal institutions	Ineffective formal institutions
Convergent	Complementary	Substitutive
Divergent	Accommodating	Competing

• some final points on this typology
• Substitutive may be able to achieve things that formal rule fail to (17)
• same informal rules may be in different box depending on the formal institutions discussed
• the relationship between formal/informal institutions is dynamic, both can cause decay and/or institutionalization of the other, can cause stability or instability in formal rules

Arnold and Samuels 2011

Jason Ross Arnold and and David J. Samuels 2011, "Evidence from Public Opinion" (31-51)

in  Levitsky, Steven, and Kenneth M. Roberts. 2011. The resurgence of the Latin American left. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

• Based on Latinobarimetro survey
• Big conclusions:
• No mass-level shift to the left of voters in LA (32)
• citizens see current wealth distribution as a problem, but also don't seem to be more unhappy with it than they ever have been before
• unhappy with performance of democracy, but not democracy itself (32-33)
• left vote is strongly correlated with anti-American sentiment (33)
• No region-wide leftward trend (35)
• voters did increasingly identify as left in Chile, El Salvador, Hoduras, Nicaragua, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela
• Even after left came to power, roughly 75% of respondents in the region believe distribution of wealth was unfair (36-37)
• Democracy:
• everyone unhappy with performance of democracy
• though even that score has decreased slightly, it's still high (38)
• mostly people are unhappy with the institutions as they exist (40)
• generally LAs Ok with democracy as a form of government, but this is often based on incumbent performance (43)
• most Latin Americans seem tot define democracy along liberal-type lines, not populist lines (Mexico is a notable exception) (45)
• Conclusion: Left turn is a bit of a misnomer, as because surveys do not show mass ideological shifts to the left among LA voters

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>>
• 
  
•  

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)

9/23/2013

After the advent of neoliberalism in Latin America in the 1980s and 1990s (and in Chile in 1973), scholars generally accept that the function, or at least the goal of the state changed fundamentally and radically.  Before neoliberalism political incorporation of the popular classes (i.e. peasants and workers, broadly stated) was done through protective-yet-constraining connections between a party or government and popular organizations.  The most often used example of this type of incorporation was labor unions and governments, where union leaders earned the privilege of joining the government in exchange for votes for a party and moderating the demands of workers.  But the advent of the neoliberal model changed this relationship between the masses and the state.  Now the state took a hands-off approach to political incorporation; electoral contests replaced organizations as the connection between parties and the masses.  A possible driver of this change was the idea that politicians could connect directly to the masses (both literally, thanks to mass media, but also figuratively, in the sense that politicians felt they had shed the image of themselves as the "elite ruling class", and that having set aside such pretenses they could now connect directly to their constituents without the aid of a interpreter/wrangler, in the form of a union leader or some other such individual).  But the result was a shift in the state's goal of incorporation.  Previously political incorporation seemed to be defined outcomes; that is to say, the government proved that it has incorporated the masses by wanting/seeking/achieving improvements in the lives of workers, peasants, and generally anyone not considered elite.  In this model, the political process is not entirely fair, and the government attempts to achieve more equal (though hardly totally equal) economic outcomes.  Now political incorporation was a matter of process (Roberts, I think?), where holding representative and clean(ish) elections was the entire purpose, and the economic health of ones constituents is left to the market.

We are now in a new era of political incorporation, as the 1990s and 2000s exposed the issues with relying solely on voting as political incorporation.  Democratization has been uneven, and even where it seems to be complete economic troubles have tainted the progress of electoral opening.  Some party systems have collapsed, while others have come to rely (again) and clientelistic methods of incorporation.  Democracy has not adequately softened economic struggles, nor has it created societies in which the poor and rich have equal access to the state or rights under the law.

So what now? The idea of a new incorporation moment (which we are currently, in, or perhaps at the tail end of, in some cases) suggests that the political parties and leaders are seeking ways to connect or reconnect to the popular classes.  (aha!) In many ways the PRI has already done this, as it won an election after being totally crushed for two elections in a row.  In this new incorporation moment, how are people reconnecting with politicians, and vice versa?  Where do civil society organizations fit into this?  Unions are still around, but are they big enough, important enough to warrant a role in political reincorporation?  Unemployed groups in Argentina have become important partners with the government, or at least were under Néstor Kirchner.  They haven't replaced unions, but they have come from almost nowhere to become as important, if not more important that unions in the constellation of civil society organizations that supported Kirchner.  What, then, occurred in Mexico?  Some unions supported Pena Nieto, but they do not have organizations large enough to drive the whoel electoral process (except maybe for the SNTE, which is an important part of Pena Nieto's election story).  How did Pena Nieto attract voters?  Did he incorporate them, or simply market to them?

Bellinger and Arce 2011

Bellinger,, Paul T., and Moisés Arce. 2011. "Protest and Democracy in Latin America's Market Era". Political Research Quarterly. 64 (3): 688-704.

• Introduction
• LA has seen a generalized rise in protests (688)
• collective actors in LA are highly responsive to changes in economic policy, and democracy ahs given them room to move
• central question:  do economic reofrms in teh context of democracy demobilize political actors, or RE-mobilize them?
• literature notes discord between neoliberlal society and democratic protest
• paper is to test and see which effect is greater, demobilization associated with neoliberalism or re-mobilization associated with democracy (689)
• Literature review
• demobilization literature
• increase in poverty, decrease in equality, higher levels of unemployment, and lower standards of living all create "anomie" (Zermeño 1990)
• but this literature has trouble explaining the revival of protests in Latin America
• in this literature, market policies erode democracy (690)
• and state diminishes, leaving it an unhelpful target of economic grievances
• Repoliticization literature (690-691)
•  traditional class-based actors are protesting (labor)
• NEW actors are protesting (unemployed, indigenous, regional groups)
• elaborating the repoliticization argument (691)
• neoliberal turn:
• heightened economic insecurities
• offered a master frame for protest
• democracy enhanced opportunity for collective activity
• authors believe regime type is a core component of the political opportunity for collective mobilization
• Data and Method
• data from 1970-2003 (692)
• dependent variable: collective protest
• independent variables: economic liberalization, democracy, semi-democracy, autocracy, and interactions between these two categories
• Controls include the level of regional protest to account for cyclical, demonstration effect (693)
• Results
• economic liberalization x democracy and economic liberalization x semi-democracy interaction terms are positive, support repoliticization argument (695)
• econ lib x autocracy supports demobilization argument IN AUTHORITARIAN SETTINGS
• also protest is shown to be regionally cyclical (697)
• index of civil liberties shows that the political opportunities provided by democracy, outside of simple elections, are actually driving remobilization
• Conclusion
• authors cast doubt on demobilization perspective (699)
• Latin American citizens do not seem to be passive, atomized

Levitsky and Murillo 2005b

"Building Castles in the Sand? The Politics of Institutional Weakness in Argentina" Levitsky and Murillo, 21-44

in Levitsky, Steven, and Maria Victoria Murillo. 2005. Argentine democracy: the politics of institutional weakness. University Park, Pa: Pennsylvania State University Press.

•  Central argument OF THE BOOK: the major cause of Argentina's under-performance was persistent and widespread institutional instability (21)
• The Origins of Institutional Instability
• between 1955 and 1972 Argentina politics were deadlocked (24)
• one the one hand, allowing Peronist party to compete in elections woul certainly result in Personit victory, which was unacceptable to many elites
• yet, on the other hand, keeping the Peronists out of elections was a major destabilizing influence
• eventually military leadership had to allow Peron back into power (25), then another military regime
• The brutality and dramatic failure of the military regime discredited the military in the eyes of the public (26)
• gave rise to broad public support for liberal democracy (Catterberg 1990
• and gave rise to a powerful human rights movement
• change in office between Alfonsín and Menem was first time democratic change of hands, but even then Alfonsín resigned early because of economic crisis, and there was a lot of institutional fluidity
• Argentina under Menem
• Menem abandoned traditional Peronism, set off on neoliberalism (27)
• among the fully democratic countries, Argentina carried out the most rapid and far-reaching reforms
• among the countries with the deepest crisis and radical reform, Argentina was the most democratic
• BUT many of the policy arrangements made by Menem proved to be economically unsustainable
• AND Menem did little to strengthen political institutions, and in same cases he weakened them
• The Politics of Radical Economic Reform: Why Menem was successful
• Menem's ability to end hyperinflation increased public support for him/his policies (28)
• The strength of the PJ helped Menem keep a solid electoral base
• the PJ's hegemony in the popular sectors limited possibility of anti-reofrm appeals (29)
• PJ's close ties to organized labor gave union leaders a stake in limiting opposition from working class
• Menem gave side payments and policy concessions to losers (30)
• unions protected pro-labor law
• industrialists were giving help in competing for privatization contracts
• governors wooed by putting off provincial budgetary adjustments
• Encroachment on legistlative and judicial perogatives
• lots of executive decrees
• court-packing and impeachments
• PROBLEMATIC LEGACIES (31)
• convertability left governmetn without tools to rspond to economic shocks or erosion of competitiveness
• public debt grew a lot
• reforms generated large-scale social exclusion (and middle class shrunk
• Democratic Institutions under Menem
• Menem frequently circumvented legistlaive process using decrees (32-33)
• M allowed little judicial independence (33)
• executive accountability decreased, allowing corruption to increase
• widespread perception of corruption and abuse eroded the credibility of Argentina's representative institutions (35)
• Party system and Political representation in the 1990s
• Alianza able to win on anti-corruption ticket (37)
• mostly because middle and upper-middle classed had little faith in credibility of government
• The Post-Menem Era
• Alianza failed to clean up politics (37)
• actually got caught up in its own curruption scandal, which it didn't handle very well (37-38)
• Alianza did poorly in economic arena
• inherited a recession *38)
• convertibility left them without policy tools, and convertibility was too popular to be touched
• in 1999 legislative vote 22% cast spoiled/blank votes
• three Presidents in 2 weeks
• third was Duhalde, who ended convertibility (39)
• economic plunged into chaos
• poliitcal system and parties pushed into crisis as well
• FREPASO and UCR disintegrated (40)
• 2003 elections:
• military made no move to intervene
• despite anger, no anti-establishment outsider received more than 2% of the vote (41)
• PJ finished 1-2-3 in presidential vote, all other partis wiped out
• PJ proved remarkably resilient
• Kirchner 1
• concentrated power in the executive (43)
• but his initiatives were more transparent and oriented toward institutional integrity
• rst of the story yet to be seen (chapter form 2005)....

Muirillo, Oliveros, and Vaishnav 2010

Murillo, Maria Victoria, Virginia Oliveros, and Milan Vaishnav. 2010. "Electoral Revolution or Democratic Alternation?" Latin American Research Review. 45 (3): 87-114. 

• Introduction
• Argument: Left wave is actually just the normalization of democratic politics (87)
• electoral accountability is still the primary mechanism of controlling the executive in the region's democracies (88)
• democratic elections have allowed voters to punish bad performers
• thus the rise of the Left is a result of retrospective voting
• they use Levitsky and Roberts' definition of the left, which is based on overarching redistributive goals irrespective of the strategies pursued to achieve those goals (89)
• Arnold and Samuels (2011...in Levitsky and Roberts) note that the Left turn has not been accompanied by citizens' self-placement on ideological scales (though some authors disagree...)
• other surveys agree, as does authors data, which shows leftward shift in votes, but not a giant shift (89-90)
• thus the authors test to see if voting is related to right-leaning candidates poor performance in the economic arena during the 1990s (90)
• Explaining the rise of the Left
• their take is that the sudden "backlash" and rise of the Left is actually due to the institutionalization of democracy and electoral accountability, not a radical swing to the Left (93)
• My take: so it's not a Marxist revolution, but why does that mean it's not a backlash? or even a radical backlash?!
• Democracy
• Hypothesis 1: failure of prior economic policies and poor economic growth will increase the share of Left voting ONLY WHEN there is a right wing candidate to blame (94)
• dependent on the extent of democratic experience in each country (95)
• Socioeconomic factors
• Inequality hypotheses (2 and 3)
• greater inequality = more left votes (95), OR
• U shaped curve (Debs and Helmke 2008):  same as above, but at some high point of inequality rich people start bribing poor to maintain current inequality (95-96)
• Left as a refuge from the economic insecurity of being in the global market, hypothesis 4 (96)
• Crisis of Political representation
• left-wing outsiders will benefit when crisis of representation comes under right wing leader (97)
• Empirical Model (97-100) 
•  Results
• high inflation under right-wing leader greatly increases likelihood of left-win (100)
• but reaction AGAINST left-wing governments in same situation is slightly stronger (101)
• but right wing governments are not necessarily rewarded for achieving growth (100-101)
• no support for income inequality arguments (101)
• no support for left-votes because of representation crisis under right government (103)
• weak/inconsistent support for globalization argument
• Conclusion
• inflation may be more visible than growth to everyday people, meaning voters may decide their vote on the former but not on the latter (106)
• strong effect of inflation and non-result by other hypotheses shows electoral accountability on economic issues is mostly at work in rise of Left

Grayson 2004

Grayson 2004

(in Wiarda 2004)

Grayson, George W. “Mexico's Semicorporatist Regime,” in Wiarda, Howard J. 2004. Authoritarianism and corporatism in Latin America--revisited. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
Overview:

• Salinas’s neoliberal reforms
  
  • Ruptured the ruling party (246)
    
  • Diminished rewards to the faithful (due to lower government revenues through tariffs, quotas, etc.)
    
  • Diminished central control
    
  • Caused businesses to start competing on labor costs, which is bad for system/unions
    
• Wiarda also Suggests these reforms led to calls for greater democracy, and gave rise to opposition party successes (especially at the state and local level)
  
• Population growth and social diversification also meant there were more groups outside the corporatist political framework (247)
  
• As corporatist institutions had been slightly undermined, Fox did not have great control over corrupt labor leaders (248)
  
• Talks a lot about Fox’s political styling
  
  • disdain for politicians
    
  • attempt to use media instead of government organizations
    
  • included PRI in some things, didn’t hammer away at them, not many panistas in his cabinet
    
  • allowed Sup Marcos and EZLN to address nation
    
• PRI maintains traditional sectors, though does some changes (BUT, of course, primaries for elections undermine any delegate/candidate concessions)
  
• AMLO taking some corporatist reins, very humanistic but also relatively authoritarian (read: populist)
  
• Lots of foreign NGOs hanging out, too…massive increase over the 2000s, maybe they’ll be important in the future?
  
• No new rules of the game exist for governing (255)
  
  • No new organizations have replaced traditional corporatist structures
    
  • Corp. structures remain, although in much weaker form.
    

Quotes:
“No new rules of the game exist for governing.” (255)

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)

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

Cook 2002

Cook, María Lorena. 2002. "Labor Reform and Dual Transitions in Brazil and the Southern Cone". Latin American Politics and Society. 44 (1): 1-34.

• During democratic transitions governments are under pressure to restore civil and political rights, unions can make gains
• During economic transitions, unions face a variety of constraints, focus on survival
• Order of transition effects process and outcome of labor law reform
• In Brazil and Argentina, democracy then neoliberalism
• democracy led to greater, pro-labor reforms for unions
• later consolidation of neoliberal tried to roll back some of these labor protects
• In Chile, neoliberalism then democracy
• neoliberalism (and dictatorship) severely weakened labor movement
• later democratic transition brought some civil protections, but entrenched economic interests resisted strong labor protections
• Democratic Transitions
• both Argentina and Brazil inherit democratization and economic crisis
• Argentina
• First democratic government did not want to empower Peronist unions
• but business interests divide, labor not that divided, able to win demands
• Brazil
• CUT was oppositional to government, worked through the PT
• business divided here as well
• though able to beat some proposals, watered down others
• in the end, new Constitution was a bit of a labor relations hybrid
• WHEN DEMOCRACY FIRST, LABOR CAN BE MORE MILITANT
• Economic Transitions
• Argentina
• Menem had support of labor in the election
• first term:
• labor divided, some support Menem (in exchange for some concessions in law), others more combative
• CGT could not strongly resist flexibilization, but able to strongly resist losing obras sociales
• CGT focused on saving organizational resources, waited to fight another day!
• second term
• Menem threatens organization resources!
• unions mobilize
• favorable climate, because lots of popular discontent
• LABOR ABLE TO RESIST REFORMS THAT THREATENED IT’S RESOURCES, BUT NOT LIMIT NEOLIBERAL TURN
• Brazil
• Collor then Cardoso both beat Lula, no labor backing for them!
• political climate not favorable for unions
• labor divided, Forca Sindical willing to accept flexibility
• similarly to Argentina, labor has a lot of losses but is able to maintain significant resource reservoirs
• CHILE
• Story above
• Pinochet decimated unions
• employers unified
• even though labor had legitimacy going into democratic transition, too weak to do much
• political allies of labor accepts neoliberal model