Union Affiliation and Civic Engagement: Teachers in Bogotá, Colombia

ABSTRACTDo labor unions still motivate their members to participate in politics, or have social and economic changes undermined their political importance? This question is important to revisit, as globalization and economic reform have weakened many popular sector organizations in Latin America, reducing some to mere patronage machines. This article examines the case of the teachers’ union in Bogotá, Colombia to assess whether and how labor unions are able to promote the political activation of their members. Employing a multimethod research design that begins with a quantitative analysis of a survey of Colombian teachers, this study finds that union affiliation is associated with higher levels of motivation to vote. It then uses evidence from interviews to show how union advocacy and internal elections for leadership positions shape political behavior, contributing to civic engagement. This research engages with broader debates about democratic quality and political representation in contemporary Latin America.

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Mecanismos de representación política en las democracias latinoamericanas: las cuotas electorales de género

La Manzana de la Discordia ◽

10.25100/lamanzanadeladiscordia.v3i1.1485 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 3 (1) ◽

pp. 39

Author(s):

Roberto Álvarez San Martín

Keyword(s):

Latin America ◽

Costa Rica ◽

Political Participation ◽

Latin American ◽

Political Representation ◽

The Political ◽

Gender Quotas ◽

Participation Of Women ◽

Las Mujeres ◽

America Latina

Resumen: A partir de cifras y hechos planteados por PNUD, CEPAL, FLACSO Chile e INSTRAW sobre la participación política de las mujeres, se realiza una revisión de los debates, aplicaciones y efectos de las cuotas electorales de género en América latina. Se toman en cuenta las diferentes barreras que deben sortear las mujeres en la arena política, y se analizan la definición, alcances y argumentos en pro y en contra de las cuotas electorales de género. Se analiza este mecanismo a partir de los casos de Argentina y Costa Rica, los más exitosos en términos de resultados; mientras México evidencia el impacto incremental de las cuotas en la representación femenina, Perú pone en evidencia la influencia de la fuerte tradición presidencialista. Brasil es un caso paradigmático, que representaría el fracaso de las cuotas de género. Se concluye que, salvo Argentina, las otras democracias sólo han podido acelerar el proceso de inclusión real de mujeres en los procesos eleccionarios, pero sin que los resultados sean realmente compatibles con lo esperado. Las mujeres latinoamericanas, con cuotas o sin ellas, siguen estando sub-representadas en los espacios de participación política.Palabras clave: Participación política femenina, cuotas electorales de género, mecanismos de representación política.Abstract: On the basis of data and facts put forth by UN, CEPAL, FLACSO Chile e INSTRAW about the political participation of women, this article analyzes the debates about the application and effects of electoral gender quotas in Latin America. The barriers to women’s political participation are taken into account, analyzing the definition, reach and arguments for and against gender quotas. The cases of Argentina and Costa Rica, the most successful in results, are analyzed. While Mexico shows the increased impact of quotas, Peru makes evident the influence of the strong presidential tradition. Brazil is a paradigmatic case, representing the failure of gender quotes. In conclusion, save for Argentina, other democracies have only accelerated the process of women’s inclusion in election processes, but without results compatible with expectations. Latin American women, with out without quotas, are underrepresented in the spaces of political participation.Key words: feminine political participation, electoral gender quotas, mechanisms of political representation.

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Indigenous Political Representation in Latin America

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics ◽

10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.243 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Roberta Rice

Keyword(s):

Social Movements ◽

Latin America ◽

Civil Society ◽

Indigenous Peoples ◽

Latin American ◽

Political System ◽

Political Representation ◽

The State ◽

The Political ◽

Indigenous Movements

Indigenous peoples have become important social and political actors in contemporary Latin America. The politicization of ethnic identities in the region has divided analysts into those who view it as a threat to democratic stability versus those who welcome it as an opportunity to improve the quality of democracy. Throughout much of Latin America’s history, Indigenous peoples’ demands have been oppressed, ignored, and silenced. Latin American states did not just exclude Indigenous peoples’ interests; they were built in opposition to or even against them. The shift to democracy in the 1980s presented Indigenous groups with a dilemma: to participate in elections and submit themselves to the rules of a largely alien political system that had long served as an instrument of their domination or seek a measure of representation through social movements while putting pressure on the political system from the outside. In a handful of countries, most notably Bolivia and Ecuador, Indigenous movements have successfully overcome this tension by forming their own political parties and contesting elections on their own terms. The emergence of Indigenous peoples’ movements and parties has opened up new spaces for collective action and transformed the relationship between Indigenous peoples and the state. Indigenous movements have reinvigorated Latin America’s democracies. The political exclusion of Indigenous peoples, especially in countries with substantial Indigenous populations, has undoubtedly contributed to the weakness of party systems and the lack of accountability, representation, and responsiveness of democracies in the region. In Bolivia, the election of the country’s first Indigenous president, Evo Morales (2006–present) of the Movement toward Socialism (MAS) party, has resulted in new forms of political participation that are, at least in part, inspired by Indigenous traditions. A principal consequence of the broadening of the democratic process is that Indigenous activists are no longer forced to choose between party politics and social movements. Instead, participatory mechanisms allow civil society actors and their organizations to increasingly become a part of the state. New forms of civil society participation such as Indigenous self-rule broaden and deepen democracy by making it more inclusive and government more responsive and representative. Indigenous political representation is democratizing democracy in the region by pushing the limits of representative democracy in some of the most challenging socio-economic and institutional environments.

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Democracy and representation

The Constructivist Turn in Political Representation ◽

10.3366/edinburgh/9781474442602.003.0007 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 104-118

Author(s):

Claude Lefort

Keyword(s):

Social Movements ◽

Latin America ◽

Labor Unions ◽

English Translation ◽

The Political ◽

Political Actors ◽

Institutional Conditions ◽

Claude Lefort ◽

Mass Publics ◽

Sciences Sociales

This chapter presents the first English translation of an essay that was originally presented in 1989 by Claude Lefort at the Colloquium on Latin America, sponsored by the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), organized by Daniel Pécault. In this essay, Lefort affirms his important thesis regarding the disembodiment of power in representative democracy and begins to elaborate institutional conditions for its modern practice. He emphasizes that representation must be supported by independent political organizing by social movements and dissenting groups within institutions such as labor unions, schools, and hospitals. He also emphasizes the importance of participation, understood distinctively neither as voting nor as taking to the streets but as a feature of political judgment that he terms a “capacity to understand the political game,” a feature that he considers to be lacking where there exist great divides between elite political actors as mass publics.

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Populism and Political Representation

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199845156.013.30 ◽

2016 ◽

Author(s):

Kenneth M. Roberts

Keyword(s):

Developing Countries ◽

Latin America ◽

Civil Society ◽

Political Representation ◽

Comparative Perspective ◽

The Political ◽

Institutional Conditions ◽

Political Exclusion ◽

Natural Means

This article examines populism as a mode of political representation from a cross-regional, comparative perspective and considers some explanations as to why it appears to be thriving and, arguably, spreading in many developing countries. It begins by considering the political and economic conceptualizations of populism, particularly in Latin America and with respect to its logic in the cultural, or ideational, dimension of politics. It then discusses the structural and institutional conditions for populism, such as democracy, authoritarianism, and civil society. The article argues that populism is a natural means of appealing to and incorporating mass political constituencies characterized by weak or widely discredited representative institutions, where many citizens are marginalized or alienated from such institutions due to socioeconomic or political exclusion.

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Resistance to Privatization: Why Protest Movements Succeed and Fail in Latin America

Latin American Politics and Society ◽

10.1111/j.1548-2456.2013.00204.x ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 55 (03) ◽

pp. 93-116 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Peter Kingstone ◽

Joseph K. Young ◽

Rebecca Aubrey

Keyword(s):

Logistic Regression ◽

Latin America ◽

Civil Rights ◽

Labor Unions ◽

Political Institutions ◽

Political Representation ◽

Formal Institutions ◽

Protest Movements ◽

Case Examples ◽

Legal Right

AbstractWhy do some protest movements in Latin America succeed in rolling back privatizations while others fail? This article argues that protests against privatizations have tended to succeed under two conditions. First, privatization’s opponents form linkages (or “brokerage”) across multiple sectors of society. Broad coalitions are more likely to achieve their goals, while groups acting alone, such as labor unions, are more easily defeated or ignored by governments. Second, civil rights are protected but political representation is weak. In that case, opponents have the legal right to protest, but are unlikely to have opportunities for communicating their concerns through formal institutions, which prompts them to channel their demands outside of existing political institutions. Using case examples and logistic regression, this study confirms these arguments and discusses the implications for democracy in the region.

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The Political Development of Mexico

American Political Science Review ◽

10.1017/s0003055400123330 ◽

1961 ◽

Vol 55 (2) ◽

pp. 308-312 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Martin C. Needler

Keyword(s):

Latin America ◽

Political Development ◽

Social Economic ◽

Policy Formation ◽

The Political ◽

Leadership Positions ◽

Political Leaders ◽

Political Experience ◽

The Social ◽

The World

Mexico's political experience over the last fifty years—since the Revolution of 1910—is highly significant, not only for the rest of Latin America, but for much of the rest of the world. For Mexico has accomplished the exceedingly difficult feat of breaking out of the vicious circle of dictatorship, misery, and revolution, and finding a way to a regime that is at once increasingly democratic, stable, and progressive. Despite a relative lack of many of the social, economic, and cultural characteristics which are often treated as prerequisites of stable democracy, Mexico seems to have solved the problem of assuring peaceful succession to leadership positions, while at the same time permitting wide participation in policy formation and allowing full civil freedom.This type of end-result is almost always the conscious goal of political leaders throughout Latin America, Africa, and Asia. While the Mexican road is hardly likely to be followed exactly elsewhere, other countries, to reach the same goal, will have to find equivalents for the solutions that Mexico has devised, for the obstacles in their paths are much the same. A study of the difficulties which Mexico has faced and how they were overcome may therefore have a generic interest, as being suggestive of some broader hypotheses about political development.

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Crises as catalysts of foreign reporting on Latin America: An evaluation of the German press over 15 years

Media War & Conflict ◽

10.1177/1750635220945737 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 175063522094573

Author(s):

Regina Cazzamatta

Keyword(s):

Latin America ◽

Latin American ◽

Central American ◽

Washington Consensus ◽

The Political ◽

Economic Changes ◽

American States ◽

German Press ◽

Foreign Reporting ◽

Latin American Countries

This article investigates whether, in light of the political and economic changes that occurred in the region in the last decades, crises are still a catalyst for foreign reporting on Latin America. The study comprises 3,831 articles related to the 20 Latin American countries published from 2000 to 2014 in the German press: the dailies Süddeutsche Zeitung and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the political magazine Der Spiegel and the alternative newspaper tageszeitung. The author found that more than half of the coverage on the continent depicted some sort of crisis, especially non-violent ones and controversies (36.4%). However, the portrayal of crises is sectorial. The ‘invisible’ Central American states (Honduras, Haiti, Guatemala and El Salvador) and the countries against the Washington Consensus (Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela) exhibit a higher coefficient of crisis intensity. Colombia, despite considerable press attention, has the most crisis-centred reporting due to the conflict with FARC.

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Economic Reform and Democratization: Evidence from Latin America and Post-Socialist Countries

British Journal of Political Science ◽

10.1017/s0007123404210080 ◽

2004 ◽

Vol 34 (2) ◽

pp. 357-368 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

HYEOK YONG KWON

Keyword(s):

Latin America ◽

Empirical Analysis ◽

Economic Reform ◽

The Political ◽

New Democracies ◽

Research Paradigm ◽

Political Consequences ◽

Ample Opportunity ◽

Heated Debate ◽

Regional Perspective

What are the political consequences of economic reform in new democracies? Is the effect of economic reform on democratization the same across regions? Some scholars of transitology argue that economic reform has negative consequences on democratization largely because the resistance of established groups can undermine democratization processes. Others, mainly scholars of the post-socialist region, argue that in the post-socialist region economic reform has positive consequences on political democratization due in large part to the region's distinctive historical and structural legacies. The heated debate between Philippe Schmitter with Terry Karl and Valerie Bunce provides ample opportunity to (re)think about democratization in a more contextual and cross-regional perspective. However, there has been little systematic empirical analysis across regions. This analysis attempts to fill the gap by examining whether the dominant research paradigm of democratization is empirically valid across regions in transition.

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