The Quest for Re-Incorporation in Post-Corporatist Politics: The Path of the Unemployed Workers’ Movement in Argentina, 1996-2009
Federico ROSSI
Ph.D. thesis defence on 21 July 2011
Abstract
The purpose of this dissertation is to narrate and conceptualize the piqueteros movement’s path to re‐incorporation in Argentina. The piqueteros movement provides an outstanding scenario for the dynamic analysis of thirteen years of the intertwining logics of both contentious and routine politics. This thesis argues that the complete explanation for the interaction of social movements with state institutions must involve the less spectacular accumulation of ad hoc practices and the use of a predominant repertoire of strategies.
The empirical argument of this dissertation is that the period between 1996 and 2009 represented a reshaping of the political arena through the second incorporation of workers under a non‐corporatist logic. The territorialized path and specific logic of re‐incorporation struggles in Argentina presents us with the crucial question of the redefinition of state‐society relations in the post‐neoliberal era and its related re‐incorporation struggles.
The theoretical purposes of this dissertation are manifold. The first is to suggest a refinement of the concept of political opportunities by specifying its logical location in the wider debate about the configuration of the political context for social movement interaction. The second is to propose a series of concepts for the analysis of strategic action in non‐rational choice and/or structurally determinist terms. The threefold set of interrelated concepts I propose are: the stock of perceived alternatives; legacies; and repertoires of strategies. The third is to define the type of movement associated with the struggle for the redefinition of the actors to be included in the post‐neoliberal political arena. Re‐incorporation movements have specific attributes that define them as a particular expression of a historical process of struggle for incorporation that emerged with the neoliberal critical juncture. Finally, this dissertation has the goal of bridging the social movement and historical institutionalism literatures with the hope of contributing towards a yet underdeveloped cross‐fertilization agenda.
Jury: Philippe Schmitter (EUI), Donatella della Porta (EUI) (Supervisor), Jeff Goodwin (New York University) (External Supervisor) (via phonelink), Sidney Tarrow (Cornell University) (via phonelink)
Bio:
Federico M. Rossi holds a degree from the Universidad de Buenos Aires (B.A.). During his Ph.D. research at the EUI, he has been Junior Visiting Researcher at the Universidade Nacional de Brasília (Brazil) and Global Visiting Scholar at New York University (USA).
Federico has published several articles in América Latina Hoy, Desarrollo Económico, European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, International Sociology and Mobilization (forthcoming 2012) among others. He has also published his first book, La Participación de la Juventudes Hoy. La condición juvenil y la redefinición del involucramiento político y social (Buenos Aires: Prometeo, 2009). In addition to academic research, he has worked for the Conference of NGOs in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations, Oxfam Australia and the Fondation Charles Léopold Mayer pour le progrès de l’Homme.
Currently, Federico works as research assistant at the European University Institute in the project “Mobilizing 4 Democracy: Democratization processes and the mobilization of civil society”, where he carries out comparative research about the role of social movements and contentious politics in democratization processes in Latin America and Eastern Europe.