This important book makes an original contribution to answering the fundamental question of how we can understand the relationship between processes of mobilization and sociopolitical change. While the author studies this relationship in the context of Argentina, its lessons also apply to other Latin American countries.
A preliminary sketch of this is drawn in chapter 8, where the cases of Bolivia and Brazil are seen as following a pattern similar to that of Argentina, though with their distinctive particularities. But the starting point of the book can be traced on page 4 of the introduction, where Federico Rossi sets out the book’s two main working questions: how did the struggle from below contribute to the halt of neoliberalism in part of Latin America? And how has the sociopolitical arena been expanded to include the interests of the poor and excluded strata of society? Thus, according to the author, neoliberalism was suspended in Argentina, partly explained by the political incorporation of the interests of the poor and excluded. While this rests as an assumption more than the research problem, Rossi’s aim is primarily to posit a new reading of what has been a widely studied phenomenon, which is why he steers the emphasis of the research questions toward the how, the mechanisms and dynamics that made it possible.
Rossi’s central hypothesis is that a second wave of incorporation of popular sectors has occurred, and this has subsequently reshaped the sociopolitical arena. Unlike recent literature on the left turn in Latin America that tends to emphasize the role of government coalitions, Rossi maintains that left-wing or populist parties in government were byproducts of two decades of struggles against disincorporation. While the first wave of incorporation refers to the legitimation and regulation of the labor movement that took place in the mid-twentieth century—with corporatism as the primary form of popular interest mediation—the second wave refers to the recognition, legitimation, and inclusion of poor people’s organized interests, which took place in the early years of the twenty-first century.
The main difference between the first and the second waves is the principal-agent. During the first wave, trade unions gave voice to workers, who were organized by sectors of the economy (metallurgic, transport, etc.). During the second wave, the principal-agent is the social movement, for which the territory (neighborhood, city) and the demand (for work, land) are the key organizing factors. This important difference, according to the author, affects the type of solidarity that weaves the formation of identities, goals, and strategies, followed by the actor’s pushing for incorporation. In turn, the type of actor (trade union or social movement) influences the sociopolitical dynamic because it presupposes a different type of relationship with the state.
Chapter 1 introduces the main ideas and overall summary of the book. While the piquetero movement in Argentina has been studied to exhaustion, Rossi’s contribution lies in revisiting the complexity of the movement with the full incorporation of a historical perspective. He does this by offering his own conceptual framework, which combines historical institutionalism and social movement theory. He convincingly claims that while the notion of path-dependency remains too structural, social movement theory often neglects the significance of past struggles and their legacies for processes of sociopolitical transformation.
In order to suggest a long-term perspective between the struggle of the piquetero movement and the role of the left in national politics, Rossi characterizes the piqueteros as a type of “reincorporation movement.” Such movements are distinguished by six features: period of emergence (neoliberal disincorporation); social demand (claims for inclusion); radical methods of social protest; leadership from former trade unions, Christian base communities, and former guerrilla organizations; organization loose, territory-based; and positive perception of democracy.
This detailed examination of the characteristics, complexity, and trajectories of the piquetero movement leads Rossi to suggest that the movement’s struggle cannot be explained through co-optation or clientelism-based accounts of piqueterogovernment interactions. In other words, Rossi rejects reading the piquetero as an autonomous, emancipatory subject that was co-opted by the state or as the unconscious mass, which was the object of clientelist manipulation by populist leaders. To account for the complexity of the government-piquetero interaction, inspired by the proposed cross-fertilization between historical institutionalism and social movement theory, in chapter 2, Rossi suggests two new concepts: repertoire of strategies and stock of legacies. While both concepts fulfill their function in the context of the book and do incorporate the effect of past struggles, they tend to remain closer to the idea of agency than to the structure. This is understandable, however, because the aim is to acknowledge the piquetero movement as agent of incorporation.
Chapters 3 to 7 are dedicated to proving the thesis of the book, following a methodical, historical, immensely rich and detailed narrative of events and processes from the origins of the unemployed workers’ protests in 1996–99 (chapter 3) to the aftermath of the second incorporation in 2009–15 (chapter 7). Logically, Rossi suggests that to understand the emergence of the piqueteros, we have to learn first about the crisis of the first incorporation actors; that is, the trade unions. While he agrees with others in saying that the trade unions continue to play a critical role in Argentina, he also acknowledges, in chapter 3, that they are no longer the main locus of collective action.
Trade unions lost ground with the collapse of the import substitution industrialization model and the introduction of free market reforms. One evident effect of this transformation on the structure of the state has been the displacement of the Ministry of Labor in favor of the Ministry of Social Development as the main state office responsible for dealing with the social conflict. Rossi demonstrates that the effects of regime change on the structure of the state generated a multiplicity of vertical and horizontal opportunities for the movement of the unemployed to become more visible (see table 4.1, p. 124).
In the short period between 1999 and 2001, Rossi argues, the piquetero movement achieved national recognition as a political actor. Recognition, Rossi reminds us in chapter 4, represents a necessary but not sufficient condition for incorporation. A detailed mapping of the variety, growth, divisions, and coordination attempts of the piquetero movement is provided in this chapter. Rossi facilitates the reader’s job by providing tables when possible, summarizing key elements of each chapter.
For the author, the government of Eduardo Duhalde shut down the vertical political opportunities and expanded the horizontal ones, which is why he characterizes the 2002–3 period as a failed attempt at territorial incorporation (chapter 5). In other words, there was an active piquetero movement that clashed with the interim president’s strategy of developing a traditional coalition with governors that excluded social movements. Too much reliance on the notion of political opportunities often tends to separate the strong interdependence that exists between the process of mobilization from below and changes within the political elite, but in chapter 6, Rossi achieves the objective of the book by introducing the idea of party territorial incorporation. This is, in essence, the arrival point of the book’s analysis, because it explains the conditions of possibility that paved the way for the Latin American left turn.
In Argentina, specific conditions existed that help to explain the left turn. In Rossi’s terms, Néstor Kirchner was a weak president without a majority in Parliament; he took office with the country in bankruptcy, and the piquetero movement was already a politically legitimate actor. Unlike Duhalde, Kirchner decided to rebuild a territorial base incorporating almost half of the piquetero movement into the government coalition. Neither the Justicialista Party nor the CGT played a central role in this second wave of incorporation (197).
The aftermath, claims Rossi in chapter 7, was a neodevelopment model with heterodox economic policies but without the reinstatement of corporatism. The sociopolitical arena, as a result, has been expanded, because new actors are now counted as such in the distribution of power. With right-wing Mauricio Macri approaching the end of his first term as president, the first- and second-wave incorporation actors are on the defensive again. Will the first or second incorporation actors lead the way to putting a limit on the full restoration of neoliberalism in Argentina? Or perhaps is a new synthesis between the two the most likely scenario? This book is necessary reading for political sociologists interested in Latin America and beyond.
