Blockchain Papers

Émmanuelle Barozet

The problem of the causes and forms of political mobilization in urban peripheries originated from the great rural-urban movements throughout the twentieth century, which resulted in the emergence of poblaciones, favelas, barrios, and villas. These recurrent mobilizations show the cyclical significance of the movements of pobladores, depending on political opportunities and moments of repression. But important moments of political recess, or abeyance (i.e. phases in which collective action becomes isolated and without activists) have also marked this history. Based on an ethnography carried out over six years (2012-2017) in two neighborhoods in the east of Santiago, Chile's capital, Simón Escoffier gives an account of how mobilizations endure - or not - in marginalized areas. Interviews, carried out in 2020 and 2021, completed this comparative fieldwork. The book draws on historical accounts of these two neighborhoods, that were chosen because they have a past of mobilizations in the context of mass land occupations in the 1960s and 1970s and then during the process of transition to democracy in Chile in the 1980s. Although these forms of collective action are more identified as leftist, they can also be self-defined by the pobladores as autonomous from the parties, relying on family networks, neighborhoods and often informal organizations, with few capitals, resources and opportunities. Using the concepts of exclusion and stigmatization, the author examines why one neighborhood remains mobilized (Lo Hermida), while the other does not (Nuevo Amanecer), like most of the neighborhoods in Chile before the outbreak of 2019. The central question is: how do the urban poor sustain collective action in shifting contexts of authoritarian rule and democratization? Far from romanticizing the collective action of the urban poor, the analysis starts with the observation that, in these peripheries, the exclusion of their inhabitants means that they cannot participate in contentious action and claim their rights. For this reason, they are under-represented in political systems despite constituting a significant and deprived part of the population. It is mportant to remember this point on a continent where it is very difficult for social advances to be made and then consolidated. In theoretical terms, the book develops the concept of mobilizational citizenship, based on a broad framework that draws on history, beyond sociology and anthropology. It claims affiliation with the studies of Skocpol and Somers on comparative history and Gamson on the social psychology of collective action. It also uses process theory to analyze mechanisms of community building. It is part of a rich tradition of sociological and historical studies on the mobilization capacity of the urban poor. Simón Escoffier adds to these traditions the studies of memory and identity, where his initial training in psychology is transparent. The argument of the book is: politicization and mobilization survived in some areas of the urban margins, where dwellers use memory and community- making to recover their identity through legacies of past activism. Calling themselves pobladores is a mark of recognition, much more than citizens for example, which for them refers to a liberal and instrumental vision of politics. The notion of mobilizational citizenship adds a dimension of active participation based on the recovery of neighbourhood memories to fight against social and urban exclusion. The author develops four dimensions of this concept (agentic memory, mobilizing belonging, mobilizing boundaries and decentralized protagonism) throughout six chapters and through the discourse of dwellers and his observation of local life. While the focus of the book is on community building within the population, it also looks at the moments when people engage in large-scale protest with the relationships and coalitions that this entails, in a context of police repression, even in a democratic period. This book has multiple qualities: Besides its broad and comparative focus, it offers a detailed analysis of the historical conditions in which collective action takes place, and in which, in most cases, it does not, in Chile and elsewhere. It shows that demobilization is most common, not only because of a lack of self- organization, but also because of systems of local institutional political organization that put social actors in competition for scarce resources through clientelistic networks. As Simón Escoffier shows, it is not that there are no political capital or resources, however limited they may be. Rather, he argues that the accumulation of political capital by some in these areas prevent other local leaders from maintaining the historical continuity of their claims in their community. This text is useful not only for scholars of urban poor neighborhoods and contentious action but also for undergraduate and graduate students and anyone asking broad questions about the differential capacity for collective action. Additionally, it offers a very pedagogical explanation of how methodological comparisons are constructed in space and time.

Jonathan Fox

Latin America's Emerging Local Politics Jonathan Fox (bio) Does local democratization really matter for national politics? For those who value accountable government and civic participation, democracy at the local level is obviously important in and of itself. This essay makes a different point, however—that the degree of democratization of local government affects the prospects for national democratic governance. Most Latin American nations made the delicate transition from authoritarian to elected civilian regimes in the 1980s, but in the 1990s many still have not firmly consolidated their democratic gains. The wave of regime transitions in the 1980s created opportunities for experimentation with more honest and effective styles of governance, but so far most of the new regimes have failed to produce successful results at the national level. Traditional centralized, top-down approaches dominated national governance thoughout the region during the 1980s. Key characteristics included centralized and militarized police powers, appointed rather than elected mayors and governors, and extreme fiscal and bureaucratic centralization. These problems of top-down governance were compounded by systemic defects such as the lack of independent judicial authority and highly opaque, discretionary policy processes. Remarkably, most of these practices could be found across the entire political spectrum, from the moderate civilian governments of Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela, and Colombia to revolutionary Nicaragua and Cuba on the left and military-dominated El Salvador, Guatemala, and pre-1989 Chile on the right. The view that policy solutions should necessarily be national is now [End Page 105] widely questioned throughout Latin America. The role of national governments is changing in two ways: international economic integration is limiting the scope for market regulation, while on the domestic front national authorities have begun to devolve major responsibilities to local governments. For example, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Colombia all began decentralization programs in the 1980s. Many of these decentralization plans were enshrined in new or recently reformed constitutions, though the actual resources and autonomy ceded to local authorities varied greatly.1 Decentralization does not necessarily involve the democratization of local government, however. In Chile, for example, General Augusto Pinochet's military dictatorship gave huge policy responsibilities to appointed mayors. Local democratization has two dimensions. First, it involves opening up territorially based subnational governments to electoral competition (mayors and governors had traditionally been chosen by the president in many Latin American countries). Second, it entails the elimination of exclusionary political practices, including fraud, unfair limits on voter registration, the lack of ballot secrecy, voter intimidation, and vote buying. These are issues of electoral freedoms, as distinct from issues of electoral fairness (e.g., media access, campaign financing, etc.). This essay focuses on exclusionary political practices in "local" politics because that is where most citizens either gain access to or find themselves excluded from the state more generally. But authoritarian local politicians—especially those challenged from below—usually need national allies to survive. Local democratization affects the prospects for national democratic governance in four interrelated respects. First, elected civilian regimes cannot be considered democratic until authoritarian enclaves are eliminated and the entire citizenry is effectively enfranchised. Second, pluralist politics must be learned, and subnational governments make a good school. Third, rising democratic leaders can most credibly challenge the corrupt old ways if they are forearmed with successful records in local government. Fourth, the widespread transition from traditionally paternalistic social policies to more efficient and targeted programs depends on balanced partnerships among national governments, local governments, and new social and civic actors. Eliminating Authoritarian Enclaves National political conditions certainly shape the possibilities for local democratization, but the reverse is true as well. If enough authoritarian enclaves persist, democracy's consolidation at the national level may be jeopardized. Longstanding exclusionary practices will not disappear because of the signing of decrees or the transfer of the presidential sash in national capitals. [End Page 106] The persistence of authoritarian enclaves under civilian rule prevents the effective extension of basic political rights to the entire population. The proliferation of seemingly small free spaces within civil society greatly helped to weaken centralized authoritarian rule in many a Latin American dictatorship. Now one encounters a mirror image of that situation—elected civilian regimes rule nationally, but the societies...