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)

delfini, erbes, and roitter 2011

• study about participation of workers in a union, and what determines this participation
• one of the biggest debates is the mobhilization coapcity of unions (375)
• some suggests relation between leadership and rank and file isn't the whole story
• some say partiicpation in union elections is iportant
• some say identification with the union is important
• what determines union affiliation? (the literature, split into 4 types)
• structuralists: employment rate, legal framework, economic cycle
• individual factors: motivation and/or personal characteristics
• socio-laboral: business size/type, labor relations
• interventionist: the link between high leaders and local leaders, the amount that a union actually comes and is invovled in a workplace, helps explain unionization rate
• there is a general hypothesis is that, in the context of reduced participation within unions, there are lots of different factors that help determine the distinct forms of union particiaption (378)
• quick descripiton of labro relations system in Argentina, page 379
• four indicators that a union member is involved in the union:
• if they know their union, and identify themselves as a member
• participate in union activites
• help negotiate a contract
• know what's in a contract (383)
• three types of involvment:
• desvinculado, 43%-- don't do any of the 4
• partial participation, 38% -- very much luck the desvinculados, but get involved in negotiations and know the contract
• integrated participation, 19% -- do all of the 4
• checking other theories
• business size does not affect probablity of union participation style
• desvinculados:
• higher educated, older workers less likely to be desvinculados
• women more likely to be desvinculados
• if the workplace has a long day, or the presence of a delegado, less likely workers will be desvinculados
• integrados
• very much dependent on the presence of a delegado
• the existence of a delegado is important to see idfference between integrados and disvinculados
• but so do some demographic variables (age, gender, education level)

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)

Peruzzotti 2005

"Demanding Accountable Government: Citizens, Politicians, and the Perils of Representative Democracy in Argentina" Enrique Peruzzotti, p.229-249

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

• Introduction
• in the past 20 years a more sophisticated and demanding citizenry has emerged, demanding representation and accountability from Argentine politicians (229-230)
• and important actor was the rise of the human rights movement in response to the dictatorship (230)
• Menem's disregard of demands for greater accountability also spured the citizenry
• Redefinition of Representation
• Argentine citizenry switched from  "authorization" view of representation, which is connected to populism, to demanding accountability of representatives as in liberal democracy (Pitkin 1972) (231)
• populist leaders were given authorization to act in the interests of the people
• now citizens demand politicians be directly accountable
• this pivoted thanks in part to the emergence of the human rights movement in the 1980s and their demands against the military (231-232)
• there is no longer a direct relationship between constituents and representatives...this relationship is mediated by institutions (233)
• this is a change driven by leveling off of high expectations for politicians and a new trust in institutions
• The partial dissolution of captive electorates has led to more fluid and unpredictable electoral behavior (235)
• footnote: the PJ has been able to keep hold of its lower class constituents through clientelism
• The Politics of Social Accountability
• three main actors
• NGOs and advocacy organizations (236-237)
• Social movements (237)
• watchdog journalism (237-238)
• threefold contribution
• signalling to population, "what's happening, why its bad" (238-239)
• social initiatives can activate a network of horizontal agencies of accountability, gets a movement going (239-240)
• establishment of permanent watchdog groups/agencies (240)
• 2001 buildup and Accountability politics
• Alianza promised to renew ties, not be corrupt (241)
• then the Senate scandal (241-242)
•  the scandal cast doubts n the electoral arena as a place where accountability could be found (243)
• the bribes went to the very heart of the state's electoral institutions
• Alianza was slow to respond, and had a tepid response
• this led to electoral protest/null ballots in 2001 (244-245)...
• ...and mobilizations against leaders, que se vayan todos, (245-246)
• and local, representative, unofficial neighborhood "governments" called asambleas sprung up (246-248)
• these eventually ran out of steam in 2002 and most were gone by 2003 (248)
• Conclusion
• shared concern of the quality of democratic institutions connects the politics of social accountability, the cacerolazos (pot banging protests), and the asambleas (249)
• importantly, though, these mobilizations were triggered by the spread of frustration that the government wasn't listening/wasn't accountable

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)....

Holzner 2007

Holzner, Claudio A. 2007. "The Poverty of Democracy: Neoliberal Reforms and Political Participation of the Poor in Mexico". Latin American Politics & Society. 49 (2): 87-122.

• Introduction
• Focus on core of democratic politics: citizen participation in the political process (87) 
• this paper on the non-electoral forms of political action, such as petitioning activity and protests (88) 
• Free market reforms require governments actively to suppress political participation and citizen voice by weakening trade unions, leftist parties, and other social organizations that advocate redistributive social and economic policies (citing Przeworksi 1991) 
• Though elected officials court the popular vote with promises of redistribution, once in office they face pressures to continue market reforms (citing Stokes 2001) (89) 
• "After an initial surge in political activity and growing feelings of political engagement by the poor during the 1990s [in Mexico], voter turnout, petitioning activity, and feelings of political interest and efficacy have declined overall since 1997” (91) 
• some of this apathy comes from Left’s inability to complete credibly in elections 
• BUT the changing structure and actions of the Mexican state in the 2000s are creating obstacles and disincentives for political mobilization, especially for the poor 
• Net effect of institutional reforms has been to stifle poor peoples political activity, especially in comparison to more affluent
• Political Participation in Mexico
• By 2000, high-income individuals participated in politics more frequently than low-income individuals, reversal from the past (92)
• Frequency of political activity peaked after 1982, declined after 1997
• after narrowing during 1990s participation gap widened between poor and affluent after 1997 
• affluent are now twice as likely to petition than the poor 
• Puzzle: why is political activity decreasing (for the poor) just as democratization should be opening up more avenues? (93) 
• Explanation: changes in the relationship between the state and the poor (95)
• suggestions seems to be that institutional reforms have created obstacles and disincentives to participation that affect the poor more adversely
• three possible mechanisms of discouragement
•  poverty, severity of poverty, and income inequality has worsened, meaning poor people find it difficult to muster the material and organizational resources necessary for petitioning the state
• free-market forces have weakened lower-class mobilization organizations, like labor unions
• technocratic policymaking sends the signal that the state doesn't have the interests of the poor in mind (96) 
•  Poverty and  Declining Resources for Participation
• Graph showing national survey results: (97)
• EVERY income group thinks they are worse off in 2003 compared to 2000
• in income groups 10x minimum wage and below, proportion is between 35 and 45%
• Petitioning government officials for direct assistance has historically been the most common form of participation of Mexico's poor, reflecting clientelism (98)
• this requires an investment of time, money, and lost wages
• but now the cost of petitioning too high for many poor (99)
• by 2003 income = best determinant of petitioning and protest activity. (Positive relationship)
• Declining Resources for Mobilization: Organizations
• organizations in civil society became more diverse in the 1990s as new groups came to fill in vacuum for retreating corporatist groups (101)
• BUT this also meant that political parties became the only/best game in town for articulating interests at the regional/national level
• organizations that now represent the popular sector, replacing old corporatist ones, haven't been able to gather the material resources or aggregate demands enough to become important in regional/national politics (101-102)
• Changing State-Society Relations
• neoliberalism radically changed the relationship between the state and the poor (102)
• by changing the basic functions of the state, neoliberal policies also changed the logic of political participation (103)
• the shrinking state made the state/politics less relevant to the poor
• other reforms have made it clear that the state cannot or will not provide for popular groups
• for example, new targeted poverty relief measures use formulas, which eliminates the discretion of implementing these policies by politicians
• my take: that sounds too naive...politicians can still game the system, no?
• poor people increasingly feel like petitioning is useless because traditional channels are closed (104-105)
• feeling that that government has abandoned their traditional role as caretaker of the poor (106)
• the poor are tired of neoliberal methods for fighting poverty and inequality (106-107)
• by the time the neoliberal changes to civil service institutions had been cemented by the late 1990s, the poor had little confidence in these institutions' ability to actually help them (107)
• poor see little relevance in political action, and thus see little importance in paying attention to politics
• neoliberal policies have alienated the poor to a much greater extent than affluent citizens (108)
• when the poor do act, they are more likely to target the local and state governments than the federal government (109)
• More affluent target federal government, less often state or local governments
• BUT ALL THE MACROECONOMIC DECISIONS ARE MADE AT THE FEDERAL LEVEL
• the poor simply cannot bear the costs of actually protesting/petitioning the level of government that has control of the economy (110)
• Statistical Analysis
• income is the most important predictor of protesting and petitioning activity (112)...make more money, more likely to petition/protest!...this basically meditated everything!
• membership in traditional corporatist organizations has no effect on petitioning (surprising....)
• respondents who believed the parties would listen to them were more likely to petition, but even then the effect was stronger for higher incomes (114)
• BUT poor people who receive government aid were more likely to petition
• this could be because of clientelism (114) or because the receipt of assistance creates incentives to petition again (115)
• Conclusions
• the decline of corporatism in Mexico has not meant an end to clientelism (116)
• nor have autonomous organizations been capable to mobilizing the poor effectively
• elections are losing their luster for the poor
• politics for the poor increasingly revolves around how to meet basic needs, less about the political ideology or directing reform of the state (117)