Reorganizing Popular Sector Incorporation

• Date: 01 March 2017
• DOI: 10.1177/0032329216683166
• Published date: 01 March 2017
• Subject Matter: Articles

Politics & Society

2017, Vol. 45(1) 91 –122

© 2017 SAGE Publications

Reprints and permissions:

sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

DOI: 10.1177/0032329216683166

journals.sagepub.com/home/pas

Article

Reorganizing Popular Sector

Incorporation: Propositions

from Bolivia, Ecuador, and

Venezuela

Eduardo Silva

Tulane University

Abstract

Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela are cases in which, despite of the collapse of party

systems, the fragmentation of popular sectors, and the dismantling of corporatism

that resulted from neoliberal reforms, a new mode of incorporation nonetheless

emerged. This article argues that left government responses to the demands

of heterogeneous, mobilized, popular sectors shaped a new incorporation in

the political arena. In it governments deal differentially with the proliferation of

politically significant popular sectors and subaltern social groups. This segmented

popular interest intermediation is explained by the interaction of three broad

conditions: the configuration of popular sector forces and their linkages to left

parties when they took office after the crisis of neoliberalism, the ideational

frames of said parties’ leadership, and the dynamics of opposition and support

for the regime’s project. The new incorporation establishes a new normal in the

relationship of popular sectors to politics in democratic regimes.

Keywords

post neoliberalism, social movements, left parties, interest representation and

intermediation, Latin America, popular sector incorporation

Corresponding Author:

Eduardo Silva, Political Science Department, 316 Norman Mayer Building, Tulane University, 6823 St.

Charles Avenue, New Orleans, LA 70118, USA.

Email: gesilva@tulane.edu

683166PASXXX10.1177/0032329216683166Politics & SocietySilva

research-article2017

92 Politics & Society 45(1)

Neoliberal economic, social, and political reforms reorganized the relationship of pop-

ular sectors to politics in Latin America.1 They weakened labor unions, the historical

actors of the first incorporation during the first half of the twentieth century, by decol-

lectivizing, disarticulating, and excluding them from policymaking.2 Thus heteroge-

neous popular sector social groups were fragmented, sapping their already tenuous

political clout.3 Further, the social compact on which import substitution industrializa-

tion and Latin American welfare states rested was broken. By the late 1990s, increas-

ing socioeconomic exclusion, economic volatility, and political marginalization due to

free-market policies generated reactive sequences that challenged neoliberalism.4 This

anti-neoliberal backlash ushered in Latin America’s left turn in the 2000s.

Left governments responded to the expressed demands of popular sectors. They

recognized them, expanded social policy, raised wages, subsidized basic goods, and

promoted participatory democracy. Although the commodity boom facilitated expan-

sive fiscal policy, the electoral trend to the left and the commitments of left parties to

their base began before then. Thus the left turns were not a product of the commodity

boom, and their policies are not necessarily destined to end with them.5

This article argues that government responses to the expressed demands of hetero-

geneous, mobilized popular sectors shaped a new incorporation in the political arena.

This new incorporation is fundamentally different from the first incorporation ana-

lyzed by Collier and Collier in terms of its social subjects and its forms and levels of

institutionalization.6 The fact that the left tide currently faces challenges due to the end

of the commodity boom and voter disenchantment does not diminish the importance

of the subject. There is a pressing need for benchmarks against which to measure its

more enduring elements.

The central puzzle of incorporation lies in the fragmentation and heterogeneity of

the popular sectors.7 Political leaders wishing to incorporate them have limited

resources to address their variegated demands for inclusion. The first incorporation

dealt with the problem by focusing on one segment, labor unions and their formal

relationship to the state and political parties. In the new incorporation governments

have found a way to deal differentially with the heterogeneous and fragmented world

of the popular sectors.

New modes of incorporation have crystallized in a new interest intermediation

regime for popular sectors to replace the old union-party hub and state corporatism of

the mid-twentieth century.8 I call it segmented popular interest intermediation. It is a

response to the proliferation of politically significant popular sector and poor subaltern

social groups.9 Following Luna10 in a context of high inequality segmented popular

interest intermediation regimes differentially articulate heterogeneous popular sector

social groups and their interests to the political arena, understood as the state, legisla-

tive institutions, political parties, and policy.

The new incorporation establishes a new normal in the relationship of popular sec-

tors to politics in democratic regimes. Their emergence as core constituencies for par-

ties that provide expanded social policy and a larger role for the state in the economy

should make it more difficult for eventual conservative governments to roll back gains

to neoliberal era levels. Indeed, conservatives’ recognition of this fact suggests the

Silva 93

emergence of a pragmatic consensus over social equity and a more heterodox view of

the state’s role in the economy.

The article analyses the reorganization of the popular sectors’ incorporation in three

cases: Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela. These cases are useful for comparative analy-

sis because although they share many characteristics each has a different outcome.

They also experienced more institutional discontinuity than other cases due to deep

political crises in the reactive phase of neoliberalism. More relaxed institutional con-

straints permitted wider range of experimentation. We get a sharp focus on key dynam-

ics of the new incorporation.

With respect to their similarities, first, all three experienced recurring cycles of anti-

neoliberal contention.11 Second, by the end of the reactive phase to neoliberalism all suf-

fered intense institutional discontinuity.12 Their party systems collapsed. Third, after their

election left governments established constituent assemblies.13 Fourth, they departed

from liberal democratic principles and adopted heterodox economic policies.14

Despite these similarities Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela had very different out-

comes with respect to the new incorporation of popular sectors in the political arena.

Bolivia’s was a classic mode of incorporation from below via a mass mobilization

party. Ecuador forged state-led incorporation via anticorporatist public policy–elec-

toral mechanisms. Venezuela orchestrated state-led incorporation on socialist concepts

of popular power. All three constructed distinctive segmented of popular interest inter-

mediation regimes.

Variation in outcomes in the three cases of radical populism challenges dichoto-

mous interpretations of the left turn that differentiate between a “good,” responsible,

mildly social democratic left and a “bad,” irresponsible, or radical populist left.15 They

are too simplistic. Their arguments posited homogeneity within each type. My analy-

sis evidences significant variation within types. They underscore the complexity of

Latin America’s left turns.16

The Puzzle of Popular Incorporation after Neoliberalism

The central problem for popular sector incorporation lies in their heterogeneity under

conditions of inequality. Collective action problems must be overcome. In the first incor-

poration of the twentieth century this was accomplished by focusing on urban workers

seeking labor rights, largely limiting incorporation to them.17 After neoliberalism no

such single privileged social subject existed. Many gained significance in anti-neoliberal

struggles including but not limited to indigenous peoples movements, unemployed

workers, denizens of poor neighborhoods, precariously employed workers, landless

peasants and rural day laborers. Debilitated unions were but one more actor.18

The central question is: How can governments incorporate popular sector groups

with such differing levels of organization, interests, and mobilization capacity when

the expense in time and resources for uncertain payoffs are strong disincentives? As

Roberts19 argued, the fragmentation induced by neoliberal economic, social, and polit-

ical reforms reinforced the segmentation of heterogeneous and politically weak popu-

lar sectors. How, then, does a new incorporation emerge?