Suchergebnisse

Unemployed and informal workers seem an unlikely source of large-scale collective action in Latin America. Since 1997, however, Argentina has witnessed an upsurge of protest and the emergence of unusually influential federations of unemployed and informal workers. To explain this puzzle, this article offers a policy-centered argument. It suggests that a workfare program favored common interests and identities on the part of unemployed workers and grassroots associations, allowing them to overcome barriers to collective action. State responses to demands for workfare benefits generated a pattern of protest and negotiation that strengthened those groups and dramatically expanded social policy.

Environmental protection presents a challenge for commodity-producing democracies. To account for the enforcement of environmental laws in decentralized systems, this article proposes a multilevel approach that highlights the importance of national laws and subnational implementation rules to the politics of enforcement. This approach contrasts with prominent scholarship that focuses on sanctions and the electoral incentives and bureaucratic resources of enforcers. The advantages of the multilevel approach are demonstrated by the enforcement of the native forest protection regime (NFPR) in the Argentine Chaco Forest, which is shaped not only by whether sanctions on illegal deforestation are applied by subnational authorities but also by the design of both the national law and subnational regulations. The article employs quantitative data and case studies based on extensive fieldwork to show how affected subnational organized interests influenced the design of the NFPR and the provincial regulations that weaken or strengthen enforcement.

While the presence of a strong civil society is recognized as desirable for democracies, an important question is what motivates citizens to join organizations. This article presents novel experimental evidence on the conditions under which citizens join interest organizations. We presented 1,400 citizens in two Mexican states with fliers promoting a new local interest organization. These fliers contain one of four randomly selected recruitment appeals. We find evidence that both brokerage of state patronage and demand-making for local public goods are effective recruitment appeals. The effect for patronage brokerage is especially pronounced among respondents with prior organizational contact, supporting our hypothesis of a "particularistic socialization" effect wherein organizational experience is associated with greater response to selective material benefits. Our findings suggest that under some conditions, rather than generating norms of other-regarding, interest organizations can reinforce members' individualistic tendencies.