Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn. Benjamin Franklin

Thursday, November 9, 2017

Beyond the Left Turn: The Second Wave of Incorporation of the Popular Sectors in Latin America

Economic Sociology and Political Economy - November 7, 2017   

by Federico M. Rossi

Neoliberalism has been defined as crucial to the reformulation of state-society relations in the postcorporatist period because it has undermined the national-populist or – as Cavarozzi and Garretón (1989) called it – “state-centered matrix”, through the weakening, and sometimes destruction, of existing corporatist arrangements (Oxhorn, 1998).
Neoliberalism has also caused the sociopolitical exclusion or – as I call it – “disincorporation” of the popular sectors. However, exclusion was intensely resisted by social movements mobilizing the popular sectors, such as the landless peasants in Brazil, the indigenous in Bolivia and Ecuador, and the unemployed in Argentina, contributing to a resurgence of the left (Rossi, 2015).
A growing body of literature is examining the turn toward leftist governments (Cameron and Hershberg, 2010; Levitsky and Roberts, 2011). Some scholars associate what might be considered as the end of neoliberalism with the accession of left-wing or populist parties to power in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Uruguay, and Venezuela (Grugel and Riggirozzi, 2012). While the access to power of some left-wing or populist parties seems to be relevant for the application of inclusionary policies (Huber and Stephens, 2012), I argue that we need to add extra layers of empirical detail and theoretical density to the “left turn” thesis to explain the complexity of the macro-process of transformation in Latin America’s political arena.

READ MORE....

No comments:

Post a Comment