Synopsis
Against a broad backdrop of globalization and worldwide movement toward democracy, the essays in this important new collection examine the unfolding relationships among such phenomena as social change, equity, and democratic representation of the poor in nine different Latin American countries and Spain. Recent shifts in the composition of inequality and increases in overall disparities of wealth have coincided with governments turning away from historic redistributive politics, and also with the general weakening of political and social organizations traditionally identified with the "popular sectors." The contributors here suggest that the region must find not just short-term programs to alleviate poverty but long-term means to ensure the effective integration of the poor into political life. The book bridges the intellectual gap between studies of grassroots politics and explorations of elite politics and formal institution-building.
About the Author
Douglas A. Chalmers is Professor of Political Science at Columbia University and Acting Dean of its School of International and Public Affairs. Chalmers has written several articles on political institutions and the state in Latin America, and he is co-editor (with Maria do Campello de Souza and Atilio Borón) of The Right and Democracy in Latin America (1992). He received his Ph.D. from Yale University. Chalmerss recent research has focused on transnational linkages and on Mexico, where he taught at El Colegio de Mexico and where he led a team of researchers investigating the role of non-governmental organizations in that country. Carlos M. Vilas is Research Professor at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico. He is the author of numerous articles and books, including State, Class and Ethnicity in Nicaragua (1989) and Between Earthquakes and Volcanoes: Market, States and the Central American Revolutions (1995). His current research focuses on the on-going restructuring of state/market/civil society relations in Latin America and its impact on processes of democratization. Katherine Roberts Hite is Acting Director of the Institute of Latin American and Iberian Studies at Columbia University, where she received her doctorate in political science in 1996. Her recent article, The Formation and Transformation of Political Identity: Leaders of the Chilean Left, 1968-1990 appeared in the Journal of Latin American Studies (May 1996), and she is currently at work on citizenship formation issues in both democratizing and consolidated democracies. Hite teaches Columbia's undergraduate seminar in Latin American studies as well as college lecture courses on democracy and authoritarianism. Scott B. Martin is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at Columbia University. He is currently completing his dissertation on unions' role in industrial governance in Brazil, with comparative reference to Mexico, a topic on which he has written articles for NACLA Report on the Americas (1990) and, in Portuguese, Lua Nova (1996). Mr Martin has taught courses in Latin American politics at New York University and Columbia University and in industrial relations at the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey in Mexico City. Kerianne Piester is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University. She is currently completing a dissertation on social welfare reform in Mexico and its impact on the changing structure of relations between the state, non-governmental and popular organizations. She has ongoing research interests in social welfare restructuring and the politics of the poor in transitional societies. She has lectured on Latin American politics and Inter-American relations at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University. Monique Segarra is a political science Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University. Her dissertation examines the construction of what she terms 'welfare networks', involving new practices among non-governmental organizations, international organizations and the state in social service and welfare provision. Segarra is analysing the impact of this institutional reshaping on how popular sector interests are represented within the process of state reform in Ecuador, and she has conducted comparative field research on these questions in Guatemala and Bolivia.
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