Reviews
Hammond, Jack
The New Politics of Inequality in Latin America: Rethinking Participation and Representation Edited by Douglas A. Chalmers, Carlos M. Vilas, Katherine Hite, Scott B. Martin, Kerianne Piester...
...Unions in Argentina (M...
...It is not clear that as old forms of collective action wane, these new forms can fill the gap...
...The New Politics of Inequality in Latin America: Rethinking Participation and Representation Edited by Douglas A. Chalmers, Carlos M. Vilas, Katherine Hite, Scott B. Martin, Kerianne Piester and Monique Zegarra...
...In case studies of Guatemala (Deborah Yashar), Brazil (Paulo Sdrgio Pinheiro) and Peru (Jo-Marie Burt), authors examine the violence of everyday life and the fragmentation wrought by decades of repression, violence and economic liberalization...
...As these old structures become weaker, new ones have emerged around specific issues, notably the environment (Kathryn Hochstetler on Brazil), indigenous rights (Melina Selverston on Ecuador), and poverty alleviation (Monique Segarra on Ecuador, Kerianne Piester and Jonathan Fox on Mexico...
...Elsewhere, the new structures create a lot of activity, but their tangible gains are few...
...Representatives of both the second and third view are present in The New Politics of Inequality, although sometimes at cross purposes...
...Others believe that political and economic restructuring create an opening for a new kind of political practice by the popular sectors within civil society...
...With the exhaustion of the revolutionary option, the prospects for real advances toward greater representation and social justice in Latin America today do not inspire optimism...
...The New Politics of Inequality is an edited collection of 20 highly topical case studies of social and political movements in nine countries of continental Latin America (not the Caribbean, and with a nod to Spain in one chapter...
...The authors examine new social movements, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), associative networks and civil society...
...Victoria Murillo) and Brazil (Scott B. Martin) cut loose from state regulatory support, accommodate to capital and sometimes get concessions in return...
...Despite macroeconomic growth, most of Latin America's middle and working classes have taken a beating, as the income gap has widened and poverty has reached crisis levels...
...Uruguay, where popular sectors have suffered least (according to Fernando Filgueira and Jorge Papad6pulos), is ironically also the country where the old structures of representation remain most vigorous...
...While the region's policy makers see free economic initiative as the necessary underpinning of political freedom, many left critics argue that huge increases in poverty and inequality impede the full exercise of citizenship...
...Leftist political parties have formulated economic programs which do not demand state intervention and redistribution (as Kenneth Roberts and Eric Hershberg show for the Peruvian and Chilean left), and focus on expanding popular participation at the local level (Peter Winn and Lilia Ferro-Cl6rico on Uruguay and William Nylen on Brazil...
...Staffed by professionals, and often created at the behest of international lenders and donors, they may wind up benefitting the constituent organizations more than the poor who bear the brunt of economic liberalization...
...Oxford University Press, 1997, 662 pp., $85 (cloth), $24.95 (paper...
...They are generally of high quality, both conceptually and empirically...
...While these phenomena differ from each other as models of political practice, they have important common features which are said to give them advantages over the old forms-they are local and decentralized, they encourage direct participation, and, by recognizing diverse bases of association in preference to a dichotomizing class model of society, they promote gradual rather than revolutionary approaches to social and political problems...
...Several essays discuss the perceived failures of the older forms, but the newer forms do not come under the same scrutiny...
...This is where a short section of the volume on "the stubbornness of violence" stands out...
...These studies nevertheless provide a useful and up-to-date view of present activities and possible future directions...
...The book also includes an introduction by Carlos Vilas and a conclusion by Douglas Chalmers, Scott Martin and Kerianne Piester that draw out some of the implications of the cases examined in the volume...
...Recognizing the broad similarities in the different countries' social and economic policies, and without pretending to be comprehensive, the case studies present both breadth and concrete detail across a range of political initiatives, especially from the "popular sectors...
...Several of the essays examine the way neoliberalism has undermined traditional structures of representation such as populist parties and trade unions, and the way social and political actors have adapted by shifting their practices and demands...
...Most are written in accessible language, and their very diversity-in topics, countries and points of view-make this volume a worthwhile addition to survey courses on contemporary Latin American politics...
...The underlying theme of this volume is the question of the compatibility between electoral democracy and enhanced party competition at the political level and the move toward free-market reforms and cuts in social programs in the economic arena...
...The authors do not always recognize that organizations such as NGOs often function more as mediators between the popular sectors and the state than as actual expressions of the popular sectors themselves...
...Both the traditional and the newer organizations are mainly working for incremental change...
Vol. 31 • March 1998 • No. 5
