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[Recensione a] The Civil Sphere in Latin America, edited by Jeffrey C. Alexander and Carlo Tognato, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2019
No full textThe Civil Sphere in Latin America presents a number of original case studies applying Jeffrey Alexander’s civil sphere theory (CST) to eight Latin American countries. This publication has to be seen in the context of a larger scholarly enterprise, namely, the theoretical and empirical advancement of CST beyond its traditional focus on North America and
Europe
Legacies of Authoritarianism and Elite Responses to Social Unrest : The Estallidos Sociales in Peru and Chile
Get PDFMassive social unrest broke out in Peru and Chile in recent years. In both countries, the constitutional issue was central in the articulation of protests. However, elite reactions to these movements were different. In Chile, political institutions sought to accommodate the popular demands, launching a process of constitutional reform that attempted to appease discontent redirecting it to institutional politics. Whereas in Peru, the political elite was unable to agree on a process of constitutional revision. The “estallido social” of 2020, which led to the ousting of President Merino, re-emerged two years later with more intensity in the aftermath of the failed coup d’état attempted by President Castillo. To understand these different responses to mass social unrest, this article proposes a theoretical framework grounded in historical institutionalism. The main argument is that authoritarian regimes are critical junctures that produce enduring legacies in the power configurations of the polity. Legacies will vary depending on two aspects: whether authoritarianism consolidates a power basis, and how these regimes end. Different socio-political legacies favored distinct elite reactions and approaches to the threats posed by popular movements. To illustrate this argument, the article draws on previous studies and provides preliminary evidence. Overall, the article contributes to political sociology by integrating critical junctures and outcomes of social movements literature
Introduction: Student movements and political change in contemporary Latin America
Get PDFThe year 2011 with its series of massive episodes of popular mobilisation in Europe, North America and the Arab region, signals a symbolic comeback of students as a political actor and higher education as a locus of contention and dispute. Yet in many Latin American countries, students had mobilised well before the aforementioned events, including those studied in this special issue. Latin American campuses had been protesting against austerity before this very concept was part of the vocabulary of politicians and the media in industrialised economies. The so-called Washington consensus, that emerged in 1989 as a set of policy recommendations aimed at tackling the main problems of Latin American economies (hyperinflation and stagnation or recession), represented a framework endorsed by most countries in the region. (In a way, the Washington consensus represents a functional equivalent for Latin America of the Maastricht treaty (1992) for the EU.) But its success proved temporary and attempts by governments to impose reforms (e.g. the privatisation of public companies, the de-nationalisation of natural resources, the deregulation of labour laws and of many previously protected sectors such as pensions or education) rapidly encountered resistance. Students engaged in successive waves of protest during the 1990s and 2000s, joining urban and rural workers, indigenous groups, and left parties and unions. These struggles deposed presidents and forced new elections, halted projected reforms and/or brought about new political processes that eventually, in some countries, would be known as the ‘pink tide’ or new Latin American left. Therefore, student mobilisations over the last three decades can be interpreted within the context of larger and long-lasting conflicts over democracy and redistribution aggravated by the intransigence of neoliberal policy in the region
Introduction to special sub-section : student activism in global perspective : issues, dynamics and interactions
Get PDFThe relationship between students and activism has long interested sociologists, especially since the wave of social unrest of 1968 (Barker, 2008). However, the works that have looked at the topic can hardly be identified as a coherent, clearly identifiable strand of the literature. Furthermore, scholarly attention has fluctuated over time, with researchers reacting to the course of events and especially to the waves of student protests. Attention waned after the 1970s as governments proposed higher education reforms that succeeded in pacifying campuses, especially in Europe and the US (Daalder and Shils, 1982); and has risen again over the last decade or so as students seem to have made a comeback (Altbach and Klemencic, 2014). I suggest that the relevance of student protests for sociological thinking can be summarized around three main issues: (a) the potential political role of students in national politics; (b) the role of the university, and more broadly of educational institutions, in the economy and society; and (c) the political socialization of young people and its consequences. Furthermore, these issues overlap to a certain degree with the three main approaches adopted by scholars of student protests: social movements, sociology of education, and sociology of generations/youth. These issues and approaches are not mutually exclusive, but should rather be seen as sets that overlap with each other, creating subsets
The Students' Rebellion in Chile: Occupy Protest or Classic Social Movement?
No full textThis article gives an overview of the trajectory, components and repertory of the Chilean students' movement, which staged a series of protests during 2011. Although it started by contesting inequalities in the education system, the movement soon evolved into a challenge to the authoritarian character of political institutions, sharing similar goals with protests elsewhere around the world—including radical economical and political democratization. Should we therefore see the Chile students' protests as an Occupy-type protest? By analyzing the main interpretations over the movement, this article argues that the Occupy label is insufficient to understand the specificity of the conflict. In Chile, protests did not occur through small groups coordinated by loose networks; instead, they were spurred by traditional student organizations. This created a scenario of social unrest that resembles classical forms of contention, and in that respect differs from Occupy Wall Street, the indignados or the Arab Spring. This case shows that despite the crisis of neoliberal governance forming a common historical backdrop, the modularity (how?) and the composition (who?) of the movement are better explained by the historical configuration of national political systems
Radical Social Movements in Western Europe: A Configurational Analysis
Get PDFThere has been little comparative research on the differences across radical social movements in the context of consolidated democracies. This paper analyses the squatting movement, as an exemplary case of contemporary radical movement. This study aims to identify the causal contexts that explain the differences of strengths within these movements across 52 large cities in Western Europe. It examines three main hypotheses drawn from the literature on social movements concerning the characteristics of political systems, the availability of resources and the presence of economic grievances. We use fuzzy sets qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to identify configurations of causal conditions. The findings show that diverse contexts (multi-causation) lead to strong movements. A first causal context combines grievances, resources and closed or unresponsive institutions, and is typically found in Southern European cities. A second context highlights the presence of robust far-right parties in combination with less severe grievances and relative scarcity of resources, and is typically found in Northern European cities. These findings demonstrate that resources and grievances are quasi-necessary conditions for strong radical movements, although polarization can lead to a similar outcome where these characteristics are not present
Mass Higher Education and the 2011 Student Movement in Chile : Material and Ideological Implications
Get PDFThis article analyses the material and ideological implications of a highly commodified mass higher education system on the 2011 students' mobilisations in Chile. Drawing upon quantitative and qualitative data, we show that the grievances denounced by the movement emerged from the differences in the process of socialisation/reproduction of intellectual labour among universities, which in turn correspond to forms of class exploitation. Moreover, we demonstrate that students' engagement in/with the movement varies across universities in accordance with the differentiation of these institutions along class and political cleavages. The article offers insights to understand why a sectoral conflict became the most significant challenge to the neoliberal consensus that has prevailed since the late-1980s
Protest and Social Policies for Outsiders: The Expansion of Social Pensions in Latin America
Get PDFThe expansion of social pensions in Latin America was part of a larger process aimed at extending protections to informal workers and other individuals not covered by social insurance. These reforms were enacted by governments of different colours, and varied considerably with regard to the scope of the new programmes. While previous comparative studies have privileged economic factors and electoral dynamics to explain these differences, this article extends these frameworks to incorporate the interplay between contentious and institutional politics. It uses a two-step qualitative comparative analysis to investigate the long-term effect of protests on reforms extending the coverage of social pensions under different constellations of political, economic and institutional conditions in 18 Latin American countries (2000-2011). The results show that protest was present in almost all configurations of expansion, but that its effect was contingent on the ideology of governments, the levels of political competition and the strength of unions
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