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Economic Elites, Democratization, and Redistribution: Evidence from Latin America in the 19th and 20th Century
Get PDFSocial scientists often argue that economic elites play an important role in thwarting the adoption of democracy. Yet, some economic elites have at times supported democratization, leading to deep elite divisions in struggles over regime type. Why do some economic elites support democratization while others oppose? This dissertation examines the counter-intuitive role of economic elites in supporting democratization and the ways in which these elites can shape redistributive outcomes post-transition.The theory I develop argues that the strategies of labor control elites pursue under authoritarianism fundamentally shape their preferences over democratization. Historically, exercising control over workers was of critical importance to elites, whose primary economic activities--manufacturing and agriculture--relied heavily on labor. My theoretical framework distinguishes between two key strategies of labor control. The first is repressive control, which relies on the threat or use of force against workers. The second strategy, which I label co-optive control, involves the provision of resources that partially benefit workers but are structured to facilitate employer monitoring and influence over workers' activities, e.g. elite-led labor organizations and employer-provided housing. While individual elites often vary in whether they pursue either co-optive or repressive labor control, both strategies constrain workers' ability to act in ways that run counter to elite material interests.I argue elites' investments in co-optive or repressive labor control under authoritarianism give rise to variation in their support for democratization. Repressive control is deeply tied to authoritarian regimes--it is difficult to exercise this strategy in democratic contexts in which institutional and electoral constraints greatly limit elites' ability to employ force against workers. Elites who depend on repression are thus more likely to oppose democracy because it entails the loss of their primary form of labor control. Co-optive control, on the other hand, does not rely on force to manipulate and constrain workers' behavior. It is thus easier to transfer co-optation to the democratic period, allowing elites who pursue this strategy to preserve their control over labor and thereby lower the risk associated with democratization. Crucially, these same elites can incur key benefits from the adoption of democracy. In democratic settings, elites who previously invested in co-optive control have a competitive advantage over those who relied on repression under authoritarianism, as this latter group of elites will face challenges in maintaining labor control in the democratic period. Co-optive control thus lowers the costs and raises the returns of democratization, making elites who rely on this strategy more likely to support democratization than those who depend on repression. In addition to investigating the adoption of democracy, I also examine how forms of labor control, established under authoritarianism, affect post-transition outcomes. Specifically, I investigate how these different strategies of control shape workers' ability to secure material concessions following a democratic transition. I argue that post-democratization, workers operating under co-optive labor arrangements struggle to extract higher wages, improve their working conditions, and make related demands that threaten elite material interests. In contrast, workers in areas with a history of repressive control are more likely to secure these key labor concessions under democracy. To test my argument, I employ a multi-method empirical approach that combines natural experimental data, archival material, and administrative records from Argentina at the turn of the twentieth century. The case of Argentina represents a hard test for the theory developed in this dissertation due to the relatively low labor intensity of most economic activity as compared to many other Latin American cases. To the extent strategies of labor control shape elite preferences over democratization in Argentina, we might expect the theory to also hold in contexts where economic elites are even more dependent on labor. A key feature of the Argentine case is that there exists a natural experiment in which forms of labor control can be considered randomly assigned. Leveraging this exogenous variation, I examine how different forms of labor control shape elite support for democratization, which I measure using an original dataset of local, pro-democracy committees. I complement the primary analysis with an examination of micro-level census data, historical electoral returns in which pro-redistributive candidates ran for elected office under democracy, and case study comparisons.This dissertation develops and tests a theory to explain elite support for democratization. As such, it makes several theoretical and empirical contributions. First, it speaks to a large body of research suggesting that labor-dependent elites oppose democratic transitions due to fears of losing control over workers following democratization. My findings suggest this opposition critically depends on the strategies of control that elites employ. Second, the findings shed light on the degree to which such regime transitions represent a break with the authoritarian past. As I demonstrate, elite investments in co-optive labor control not only make them more likely to support the adoption of democracy but also endure following democratization and shape elite-labor conflict under democracy. Finally, the dissertation also generates new insights regarding the potential returns economic elites can obtain from transitions to democracy, suggesting elites who rely on co-optive control can secure a key economic advantage under democracy that may encourage them to support democratization
Economic Elites, Democratization, and Redistribution: Evidence from Latin America in the 19th and 20th Century
No full textPartidos sin fronteras : análisis de la difusión de propuestas políticas entre partidos políticos : los casos de Perú y Ecuador.
Get PDFLa presente tesis amplía el ámbito de los estudios actuales sobre la comunicación internacional de los partidos políticos a través de un análisis preliminar de la difusión de propuestas políticas que se lleva a cabo entre diez partidos de Ecuador y Perú y distintos actores internacionales. Específicamente, el estudio analiza la incidencia de la difusión de propuestas políticas en la coherencia y consistencia programática de los partidos ecuatorianos y peruanos. Sobre la base de los estudios sobre movimientos sociales, se desarrolla dos caminos principales de difusión: directo por relaciones interpersonales (con personajes políticos del extranjero u organizaciones internacionales) y mediado por un tercer actor (organizaciones inter-partidarias, fundaciones partidarias). También se analiza los cuerpos partidarios que impulsan la difusión, distinguiendo así a actores formales (las instituciones partidarias oficiales) de aquellos informales (los dirigentes partidarios)
Economic Elites, Democratization, and Redistribution: Evidence from Latin America in the 19th and 20th Century
No full textPartidos sin fronteras : análisis de la difusión de propuestas políticas entre partidos políticos : los casos de Perú y Ecuador.
No full textLa presente tesis amplía el ámbito de los estudios actuales sobre la comunicación internacional de los partidos políticos a través de un análisis preliminar de la difusión de propuestas políticas que se lleva a cabo entre diez partidos de Ecuador y Perú y distintos actores internacionales. Específicamente, el estudio analiza la incidencia de la difusión de propuestas políticas en la coherencia y consistencia programática de los partidos ecuatorianos y peruanos. Sobre la base de los estudios sobre movimientos sociales, se desarrolla dos caminos principales de difusión: directo por relaciones interpersonales (con personajes políticos del extranjero u organizaciones internacionales) y mediado por un tercer actor (organizaciones inter-partidarias, fundaciones partidarias). También se analiza los cuerpos partidarios que impulsan la difusión, distinguiendo así a actores formales (las instituciones partidarias oficiales) de aquellos informales (los dirigentes partidarios)
Partidos sin fronteras : análisis de la difusión de propuestas políticas entre partidos políticos : los casos de Perú y Ecuador.
No full textLa presente tesis amplía el ámbito de los estudios actuales sobre la comunicación internacional de los partidos políticos a través de un análisis preliminar de la difusión de propuestas políticas que se lleva a cabo entre diez partidos de Ecuador y Perú y distintos actores internacionales. Específicamente, el estudio analiza la incidencia de la difusión de propuestas políticas en la coherencia y consistencia programática de los partidos ecuatorianos y peruanos. Sobre la base de los estudios sobre movimientos sociales, se desarrolla dos caminos principales de difusión: directo por relaciones interpersonales (con personajes políticos del extranjero u organizaciones internacionales) y mediado por un tercer actor (organizaciones inter-partidarias, fundaciones partidarias). También se analiza los cuerpos partidarios que impulsan la difusión, distinguiendo así a actores formales (las instituciones partidarias oficiales) de aquellos informales (los dirigentes partidarios)
When perception bypasses truth: attention, bias, and the structure of social stereotypes
No full textIs perception accurate? How wide spread is inaccuracy in perception and under what conditions do our perceptual capacities undermine our ability to accurately perceive? This dissertation examines two examples of perceptual inaccuracy: attention altering perceptual phenomenology (making attended to stimuli appear bigger, brighter, and higher in spatial frequency) and social stereotypes impairing low-level perceptual judgments. There is a prevailing assumption in philosophy and cognitive science that perception is--and functions to be--truth oriented. However, I herein argue that our perceptual faculties often fail to deliver truth. Moreover, understanding how our cognitive architecture gives rise to systematic perceptual inaccuracy can provide us with insight into just how much our experience of the world is shaped by our social categories and computational limitations.
In chapters 1 and 2, I consider the way social stereotypes shape perceptual judgments. We know social stereotypes influence many of our judgments. Women, for example, are deemed less likely to succeed than men in especially intellectually demanding tasks (Bian et al. 2018). This suggests that higher-order judgments about qualities like 'brilliance' or 'genius' can be shaped by our gender stereotypes. But might stereotypes be so cognitively entrenched that they could affect more basic perceptual judgments as well? For example, would harboring the stereotype 'doctors are men' make it more difficult to visually process a female doctor? These chapters empirically and philosophically consider this question and its larger social ramifications. I argue that my empirical work with Jorge Morales and Chaz Firestone suggests that stereotyping has a considerably wider scope of causal influence than has been appreciated in the philosophical and psychological literature, which can shed light of larger patterns of discrimination.
In chapter 3, I take on another, more basic, facet of perceptual inaccuracy--the phenomenological effects of voluntary and involuntary attention. I argue that much of the empirical evidence supports the interpretation that attention inaccurately distorts many aspects of our perceptual experience. On the face of it, these findings appear to be difficult to reconcile with the view that perception functions to furnish us with accurate representations of the world. However, rather than claim that our perceptual systems are constantly in the process of malfunctioning, I argue that perception instead functions to guide action and that this can satisfactorily explain many examples of perceptual inaccuracy.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical reference
Three Women/Three Margins: Political Engagement and the Art of Claude Cahun, Jeanne Mammen, and Paraskeva Clark
Get PDFEThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo
Configurations of mothering in post-war British women's playwriting
Get PDFWhile examining a selection of plays centred on the phenomenon of mothering, my
thesis also investigates the interaction between theatre and feminism in post-war
Britain, aiming to highlight mutual correspondences between women's theatre
making and feminist agendas. I focus mainly on the period of second-wave
feminism, but I also discuss the decade preceding the appearance of the Women's
Liberation Movement, as well as its aftermath up to the mid-nineties. Scrutinising
proto-feminist, feminist and post-feminist stances, I argue that several fifties women
dramatists anticipated key concerns of the late sixties and seventies; and equally, that
many playwrights active after the heyday of second-wave feminism revisited the
climate of the seventies in an attempt to evaluate the transformations that have since
occurred in women's lives. In this manner, I not only contextualise some of the
major achievements and shortcomings of successive feminist interventions, but also
elaborate on key changes that have taken place in the negotiation of dramatic form
and content.
Rather than privileging one dominant theoretical position and adopting its
perspective for the purposes of my analysis, I connect the work of playwrights
informed by different artistic positions and political convictions, in order to pinpoint
the principle of co-existence and multiplicity. This aesthetic and ideological diversity
in women's writing for the stage, characteristic of the past five decades, has been
confirmed not only by the primary and secondary sources that I drew upon but also
by the playwrights themselves, whom I interviewed. For most present-day female
dramatists, as this thesis argues, contemporary British women's theatre is a space of
experimentation and of confluence - in which the broad range of individual voices
can situate themselves next to one another, without the urge to replicate an ultimate
direction imposed by hegemonic political constraints or artistic platforms
Images of Self: A Study of Feminine and Feminist Subjectivity in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Margaret Atwood and Adrienne Rich, 1950-1980
No full textPhDThe thesis explores the poetry (and some prose) of Plath, Sexton,
Atwood and Rich in terms of the changing constructions of self-image
predicated upon the female role between approx. 1950-1980.1 am
particularly concerned with the question of how the discourses of
femininity and feminism contribute to the scope of the images of the
self which are presented.
The period was chosen because it involved significant upheaval and
change in terms of women's role and gender identity. The four poets'
work spans this period of change and appears to some extent generally
characteristic of its social, political and cultural contexts in America,
Britain and Canada. (Other poets' work, for example Rukeyser, Lorde,
Levertov, is included too. ) The poets were not chosen to illustrate a
pre-feminist vs. feminist opposition since a major concern is to explore
what I see to be the symbiotic relation between femininity and feminism
(as also between orthodoxy and heresy). However the thesis is organised
chronologically because periodisation is important for a consideration
of the poetry's social setting.
In wanting to connect the poetry with cultural and political
circumstances as much as possible I have taken Edward Said's assertion
of a text's position of 'being in the world', its potential as a cultural
product to help reshape reality, and its value as a 'powerful weapon of
both materialism and consciousness'. This is the starting point for the
study which is circular and cumulative in shape, fundamentally thematic,
though each chapter is a chronological exploration of the work of one
specific poet, beginning with Plath and completing with Rich. A
conclusion attempts to pull the strands of each together and consider
the implications raised.
The thesis has four general concerns which run through its particular
focus on each poet. The first involves the relations between cultural
practice and ideology; the second involves the ideology of gender
(through exploration of femininity and feminism); the third involves
authorial ideology (through the construction of self-image in relation to
femininity and feminism) while the fourth involves these concerns in
terms of the overall arena of women's struggle for meaning and selfdetermination
in cultural practice.
More specific elements of the study include collating and comparing
self-images and attempting to make connections or chart changes where
images such as witch, queen, handmaid, shamaness, goddess, earth mother,
whore, madwoman, etc., re-occur. Usage of myth (particularly Persephone).
the Gothic, 'and articulation of lesbian desire are also explored. The
emergence of a female 'hero' self-image, in opposition to 'victim', seems
to be a corollary of the impact
,
of feminism in Rich's poetry
particularly, but this tendency can be traced back through Plath. I
explore the celebration of nature and the power of essentialism in the
construction of heroic female images, particularly in the figure of the
mother flowing with milk at the centre of 'ecriture feminine'.
The concluding chapter suggests that femininity did not constitute
such a repressive constraint on self-image and writing practice for
women as perhaps might be supposed; and that feminism, while opening up
many empowering changes for women, has raised further disturbing and
unresolved questions about identity, and even helped, in some of its
aspects, to create a new 'orthodoxy' in which various aspects of
experience cannot easily be articulated. My example is Rich's later work
where it seems to admit itself limited by its own initially liberating
strategies and looks further on towards new 'heresies.
