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The extraction of natural resources in Peru has led to an impressive economic expansion, but the country has also had more than its share of protests against resource extraction. The conventional wisdom on mobilizations against extraction emphasizes their geographical dispersion throughout the country, the presence of weak protest movement organizations, and, ultimately, their minimal influence on national outcomes. Drawing on data from fieldwork and interviews, I identify the types of mobilizations that are more likely to lead to organized and sustained challenges against resource extraction. Following contributions on the political consequences of movements, I explain the conditions associated with positive movement outcomes as well as the types of collective goods produced by these mobilizations. Insofar as the extraction of natural resources is pivotal to a country's political economy, the political consequences of protests over extraction in Peru have important ramifications for similar resource-based growth policies elsewhere in the developing world.

The governments of Toledo, Garciía, and currently Humala have embraced and deepened the economic liberalization policies that were set in place by Fujimori.

Prior research has shown that economic liberalization leads to greater levels of protest in the presence of open and democratic politics. Yet the meso-level political institutions that associate democratic political regimes with protest remain unknown. In this light, the article analyses the effects of political parties on the level of protest using cross-sectional time-series data from 17 Latin American countries beginning with the third wave of democratization in 1978. The results show that the quality of representation embodied in political parties structures the level of societal conflict. In particular, countries with low levels of party system institutionalization and high levels of legislative fragmentation experience greater levels of protest activity. Overall, the article highlights the importance of political institutions in countering the most recent wave of protest against economic liberalization across Latin America.

AbstractThis article analyzes how market reform policies already in place affect social interests, and the feedback effects of those interests on reform processes. The variety of societal responses includes the creation of new societal organizations, reflecting the variable content and asymmetrical distribution of costs and benefits of the policies implemented. Because of this variety even in Peru, where the disorganizing effects of neoliberal reform appear to be strongest, it would seem that the societal impact of economic reform elsewhere in Latin America would also warrant more careful examination.

Departing from the tradition of previous scholarship, this article redirects attention to the political consequences of pension privatization by focusing on how pension reform affects social interests, and the effects of those interests on reform processes. In Peru, the pension reform created concentrated beneficiaries who pushed for the deepening of the reform process at the expense of costs that were widely distributed among workers in the formal sector. (DSE/DÜI)