Democracy without Parties? Some Lessons from Peru

2010 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 357-382 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN CRABTREE
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Party System ◽  
Important Case ◽  
Party Development ◽  
State And Society ◽  
Key Issues

AbstractThirty years on from Peru's return to democracy in 1980, the country's record with democratisation has been chequered. Not only was the process of ‘consolidation’ reversed in the 1990s under the Fujimori government, but the degree to which durable linkages have been established between state and society is very limited. More than in most countries of Latin America, the party system has failed to fulfil the representative role allotted to it in the literature, a role that cannot easily be assumed by other sorts of institution. It is therefore an important case study for those concerned with the more structural obstacles to the development of representative politics. The article seeks to look at some key issues affecting party development: the chimera of consolidation, the persistence of clientelism and patrimonialism, the interaction with social movements and the significance of political culture.

19. Latin America

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Oelsner ◽  
Mervyn Bain
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Economic Factors ◽  
Institutional Challenges

This chapter examines the main features of the undemocratic regimes that were in power in Latin America from the late 1960s, along with the democratization processes that followed since the 1980s. The nature of the non-democratic governments varied throughout the region, and consequently the types of transition and the quality of the resulting democracy varied as well. The chapter focuses on four cases that reflect these differences: Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and Venezuela. For each country, the chapter reviews a number of dimensions that have been relevant in the democratization processes: the historical and international contexts, the role of economic factors, political culture and society, political parties and social movements, and the institutional challenges that still lie ahead.

scholarly journals People and urban nature: the environmentalization of social movements in Bogotá

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 525 ◽  
Author(s):  
Germán A. Quimbayo Ruiz
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Urban Politics ◽  
Political Mobilization ◽  
Situated Knowledge ◽  
Environmental Discourse ◽  
Urban Nature ◽  
Urban Commons

Using research conducted in Bogotá, Colombia, I discuss in this article how urban nature has been used as a vehicle by social movements to contest urban commons. The article explores the "environmentalization" of strategies and repertoires of social movements in urban struggles dating back to the 1980s, which developed in parallel with public urban planning debates. In recent years these were nurtured in turn by environmental discourse in a quest to change the city's growth paradigm. I suggest that the legitimacy of knowledge and law about urban nature advocacy is co-created by communities confronting institutions that are supposed to represent state power. This case study analyses conceptualizations of urban nature in and from Latin America, and shows that urban politics and environmental issues are part of a process in which political mobilization is a key element to overcome socio-ecological inequalities.Key words: urban social movements; political ecology of urbanization; situated knowledge; socio-ecological inequalities; Latin America  

Contentious Institutions and Party Orders in American Politics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Hejny ◽  
Adam Hilton
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Party Development ◽  
State And Society ◽  
American Party ◽  
Over Time

What are political parties, and how and why do they change? These questions are foundational to party research, yet scholars of American parties disagree about the answers. In this paper we present a new theoretical framework capable of bridging these scholarly divides and coming to terms with American party politics today. We argue that political parties should be seen as fundamentally contentious institutions. Due to their mediating position between state and society, parties are subject to rival claims of authority from a range of political actors, including elected officeholders, party officials, interest groups, and social movements. To manage intraparty contention, win elections, and govern, entrepreneurs construct and maintain party orders -- institutional and ideational arrangements that foster an operational degree of cohesion and constraint through time. Together, the dynamics of intraparty contention and the rise and fall of distinct party orders over time illuminate the patterns of American party development.

20. Latin America

2018 ◽  
pp. 305-321
Author(s):  
Andrea Oelsner ◽  
Mervyn Bain
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Economic Factors ◽  
Institutional Challenges

This chapter examines the main features of the undemocratic regimes that were in power in Latin America from the late 1960s, along with the democratization processes that followed since the 1980s. The nature of the non-democratic governments varied throughout the region, and consequently the types of transition and the quality of the resulting democracy varied as well. The chapter focuses on four cases that reflect these differences: Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and Venezuela. For each country, the chapter reviews a number of dimensions that have been relevant in the democratization processes: the historical and international contexts, the role of economic factors, political culture and society, political parties and social movements, and the institutional challenges that still lie ahead.

Politicizing Consumption in Latin America

2018 ◽  
pp. 538-558
Author(s):  
Fátima Portilho ◽  
Michele Micheletti
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Northern Hemisphere ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Sustainable Consumption ◽  
Political Consumerism ◽  
Working Through

Latin America is not only a region where labelled goods are produced for the Northern hemisphere. It is also a region where consumption has been politicized. Political consumerism takes a different trajectory in Latin America when compared with the northern hemisphere. Reasons include its different countries’ political culture and how corporations, governments, and social movements are driving forces for sustainable consumption. The region has a strong tradition of social movements, and these movements have incorporated political consumerism into their action repertoire. Political consumer tools are now becoming part of Latin American social movements’ strategies, though more emphasis is still put on working through the parliamentary arena rather than using the market as an arena for politics. The chapter covers some limitations and opportunities for the expansion of political consumerism throughout the continent. It also addresses weaknesses in the northern hemisphere’s theoretical framing of the phenomenon.

scholarly journals Democratic imperialism and Risorgimento colonialism: European legionnaires on the Argentine Pampa in the 1850s

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Alessandro Bonvini ◽  
Stephen Jacobson
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Buenos Aires ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
Cross Pollination ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Racial Hierarchies

Abstract In the wake of the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe, democratic nationalism promoted the liberation of oppressed peoples from the shackles of absolutist empires and prophesied the emergence of a cosmopolitan brotherhood of nation states. From a global perspective, however, this political culture could be imperial. The governors of State of Buenos Aires modelled plans for the White colonization of the pampas on French Algeria. They sent a Military-Agricultural Legion to the enclave of Bahía Blanca, near the Patagonian frontier, to participate in the war against the Indians. Launched as the successor to Garibaldi’s Italian Legion of Montevideo, its leaders promised to bring civilization to savage lands in the spirit of Columbus and in the name of the Risorgimento. This case study offers a window into the cross-pollination of ideas concerning conquest and colonization between Latin America and Europe. Expansion and secession, empire and nation, mestizaje and racial hierarchies, cosmopolitanism and adventurism, all coexisted within an entangled republican universe.

Left Governments and Social Movements in Latin America

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel Larrabure
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
Party System ◽  
New Left ◽  
Hierarchical Structures ◽  
Capitalist State ◽  
Traditional Structures ◽  
New Social Movement ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between social movements and left governments in Latin America since the postwar period has evolved from top-down relationships of populism and vanguardism to more contemporary attempts to blend new social movement practices of horizontalism and direct democracy with the hierarchical structures of the capitalist state and the party system. This evolution represents a long and unfinished transformation in the character of popular struggles, which today stands at the crossroads between referring back to more traditional structures of resistance, and pushing forward to the creation of a new left that can feature radical democratic participation from below as its centerpiece.

Failed Democratic Reform in Contemporary Mexico: from Social Movements to the State and Back Again

1994 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 375-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diane E. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
The State ◽  
Research Focus ◽  
Democratic Reform ◽  
Theoretical Premise ◽  
Democratic Transformation

Over the last decade or so, North American and European scholars have popularised a research focus on new social movements, or so-called autonomous and democratic struggles generated from within civil society against the state. The underlying theoretical premise of this approach is that challenges to the state from social movements are a principal driving force of political change in modern society. Despite its grounding in the advanced capitalist context, many Latin American scholars have found elective affinity with the argument, as evidenced in the recent tidal wave of studies on social movements by Latin Americanists. Basing their work primarily on analyses of Brazil, Argentina and Chile, scholars have argued that social movements help challenge the legitimacy and political power of strong and centralised governments in Latin America, at the same time creating from the grassroots a political culture suggestive of democratic transformation. In sort, there is growing consensus that social movements play a central role in bringing democracy to Latin America.

Housing explorations. Unidad Vecinal Portales in Santiago

2021 ◽  
pp. 22-27
Author(s):  
Umberto Bonomo
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Social Housing ◽  
Important Case ◽  
Santiago De Chile ◽  
Deep Exploration

This article explores the contribution of Unidad Vecinal Portales – built in Santiago de Chile by the studio Bresciani, Valdés, Castillo y Huidobro – to the debates on social housing in Chile between the 1940s and 1960s. A series of radical decisions, put into action in the complex, demonstrate a deep exploration at the urban, typological, and aesthetic levels. This exploration has given life to an important case study in Chile and Latin- America, where urban and architectural challenges of the second half of the 20th century blend harmoniously

The Genesis and Internal Dynamics of El Salvador's People's Revolutionary Army, 1970–1976

2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (01) ◽  
pp. 102-129
Author(s):  
ALBERTO MARTÍN ÁLVAREZ ◽  
EUDALD CORTINA ORERO
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
El Salvador ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Internal Dynamics ◽  
Internal Coherence ◽  
The 1960S

AbstractUsing interviews with former militants and previously unpublished documents, this article traces the genesis and internal dynamics of the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (People's Revolutionary Army, ERP) in El Salvador during the early years of its existence (1970–6). This period was marked by the inability of the ERP to maintain internal coherence or any consensus on revolutionary strategy, which led to a series of splits and internal fights over control of the organisation. The evidence marshalled in this case study sheds new light on the origins of the armed Salvadorean Left and thus contributes to a wider understanding of the processes of formation and internal dynamics of armed left-wing groups that emerged from the 1960s onwards in Latin America.

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