Civil Society Organizations, Advocacy, and Policy Making in Latin American Democracies

Pathways to Participation

A. Risley

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137502063
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

What explains civil society participation in policy making in Latin American democracies? Risley comparatively analyzes actors who have advocated for children's rights, the environment, and freedom of information in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. Successful issue framing and effective alliance building are identified as 'pathways' to participation.

CHAPTER 1

Pathways to Participation in Latin American Democracies

Introduction

When Argentina was mired in its profound economic, social, and political crisis of the early 2000s, more than half of the population was living in poverty. In June 2002, the poverty rate was 51 percent; by 2003, it climbed to 58 percent (International Monetary Fund 2006; World Bank 2003). The situation was even more devastating for children, who experienced poverty at a rate of 71 percent in 2003 (UNICEF 2007). Young people were abandoning school, working in the informal sector, and suffering—even dying—from malnutrition. Infuriated by the policies that had caused such “hunger and misery,” citizens primarily directed their outrage toward political elites.¹ Perceptions of rampant corruption at the highest levels of government also fueled discontent with “politics as usual,” which was increasingly expressed through contentious forms of mobilization. Unemployed workers joined the piquetero movements that had emerged in the 1990s. The piqueteros blocked major arteries throughout the country to call attention to their plight; in 2002 alone, they erected roadblocks on more than 2,000 occasions.² Meanwhile, laborers seized businesses that had been abandoned by their owners and established hundreds of worker-controlled factories. Growing numbers of citizens participated in neighborhood assemblies and other grassroots organizations as well as in countless protests. This “popular insurrection” prompted analysts to conclude that Argentines were reinventing politics and filling the void left by failed representative institutions (Dinerstein 2003; see also Trigona 2002; Bielsa et al. 2002). The slogan of “que se vayan todos”—demanding that all politicians and government officials should immediately relinquish power—reverberated across the nation.

Members of prominent nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) were not immune from these mass sentiments. They too felt disgust and indignation vis-à-vis Argentina’s political leaders. Nevertheless, some were convinced that engaging with political elites and institutions was a necessary means to resolve the crisis and enact meaningful reforms. For example, a member of Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, a highly respected human rights organization, signaled her group’s willingness to cooperate with “serious” politicians.³ The director of Citizen Power, a high-profile NGO, likewise expressed interest in finding “honest and capable” public officials with whom to collaborate and “building bridges between political leaders and civil society.”⁴ Another NGO leader observed that civil society organizations (CSOs) would benefit from sharing ideas and proposals with the government instead of only “exchanging them with other groups.”⁵

Indeed, a diversity of civil societal actors engaged in policy advocacy during this period. Child welfare advocates clamored for sweeping reforms that would enhance the rights of the country’s youngest inhabitants; proponents of greater transparency demanded major institutional reforms; and activists advocated for a variety of further changes. Needless to say, some fared better than others. What accounts for their varying levels of involvement in policy making? The answer to this question tells us a great deal about the types of democracies that exist in contemporary Latin America. Yet, surprisingly few specialists in the region’s politics have addressed the subject; fewer still have performed comparative analysis. This book, in contrast, offers a comparative perspective on advocacy through a close investigation of the strategies that civil societal actors have used to influence policy debates and decision making in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay.

In some cases of policy making, members of CSOs have shaped the policy agenda, contributed information and analysis, collaborated with government officials in the formulation of policy, and pressured legislators to adopt reforms, whereas in other instances, they have been less active and influential. I explain this variation by identifying two important “pathways” to participation: successful issue framing and effective alliance building. Extending insights from social movement theory, I argue that when activists devise persuasive collective action frames, they increase their chances of participating in policy agenda-setting, formulation, and adoption. Additionally, I demonstrate that alliance building helps activists convert organizational assets into political influence. Individual groups that succeed in joining forces can pool resources, coordinate their actions, achieve strength in numbers, and present a united front to governing elites and the broader public. This original, agency-centered theory of civil society participation in policy making helps solve the puzzle of CSO involvement in countries where formal channels for consulting such groups are often lacking. Activists do not merely respond to existing “political opportunities”; they also endeavor to create opportunities for participation.⁶

In the present chapter, I develop these arguments further, contrasting them with rival explanations. I then discuss the project’s qualitative methodology, which entailed comparative analysis of multiple cases of policy making pertaining to the environment, children’s rights, and freedom of information (FOI; or the “right to know”). My first task in this chapter, however, is to briefly review ongoing scholarly debates concerning civil society’s political potential.

Civil Society and Its Discontents

For years the subject of civil society advocacy was strangely absent from the literature on Third Wave democracies.⁷ Prominent scholars of democratization gravitated toward the study of elites, institutions, or civil society. Moving in separate orbits, analysts overlooked the interconnections among these sets of factors and occasionally sparred over which was most crucial for consolidation.⁸ Many institutionalist works scarcely mentioned civil society; they lacked any “serious consideration of the aspirations of citizens and the way in which they engage democratic institutions” (Hagopian 1998, 101). And although numerous scholars were examining the relationship between associational life (and/or social capital) and democracy, few were integrating institutionalist variables into their analyses.⁹ Critics therefore concluded that institutions had “been cast away from the debate” on consolidation (Berman 1997; Encarnación 2001a, 77).

Seemingly dichotomous approaches that pitted civil society against institutions (or parties) aggravated these divisions: some regarded the post-transition “recession” of civil society in certain countries as a welcome indicator of political institutionalization—the more decisive force behind consolidation—rather than a cause for concern. Civil society should, in fact, be “subordinated” to political society (Encarnación 2001a, 2001b).¹⁰ Such arguments overshadowed a more commonsense position suggesting that predictable linkages among political society, civil society, and the state are necessary for democratic stability (Kubik 2000). They also differed dramatically from the literature on long-standing democracies, which frequently discussed policy influence in the “actively inclusive” corporatist environments of European nations and the “passively inclusive” pluralist United States (Dryzek et al. 2003). Regular contact between organized groups of citizens and government officials was essentially taken for granted.

Few studies of Latin American politics published in the 1990s and early 2000s directly analyzed advocacy; nevertheless, the scholarship seemed to envision a rather limited policy-making role for civil society. A myriad of factors conspired against meaningful policy engagement and citizen participation more broadly. During the heyday of “democracy with adjectives,” the literature was replete with qualifiers suggesting diminished forms of democracy (Collier and Levitsky 1997). In Chile, democracy was described as “cupular” (Bickford 1999) and “restricted” (Barrera 1999; Drake and Jaksic 1999); in Argentina, it was “anemic” (Munck 1997) and “autocratic” (Taylor 1998). Institutionalist works underscored exclusionary, technocratic policy-making processes and the concentration of power in the executive branch. Scholars of Argentine politics, for example, emphasized the country’s “delegative” form of governance (O’Donnell 1994) and President Menem’s penchant for issuing executive decrees (Carey and Shugart 1998).¹¹ Chile’s “protected” democracy was characterized by authoritarian enclaves, including a still-powerful military, nonelected senators, and legislative overrepresentation of the right (Bickford 1998; Segovia 1999). These concessions facilitated the transition from military rule in 1990 yet subsequently became “impediments” to further democratization until the constitutional reform of 2005 eliminated several enclaves (Posner 1999).¹²

Analysts also argued that political parties and alliances, including the center-left Concertación bloc that governed Chile until the election of President Piñera in 2010, had become insulated from their constituents and, more specifically, the popular sectors (Barrera 1999; Greaves 2001; Posner 2008, 1999; Roberts 1998; Segovia 1999). The region’s “socially disembedded” regimes depended on “the absence—and even the active destruction—of political links both within civil society and between it and the state” (Chalmers et al. 1997, 552). Traditional intermediary institutions and modes of representation had declined; few stable channels for the articulation of interests remained (Friedman and Hochstetler 2002; Hagopian 1998). Corporatism in particular was viewed as an arrangement from a bygone era that was incompatible with the neoliberal state’s diminished role in economic production, regulation, and redistribution (Barrera 1999; Bickford 1999; Collier and Handlin 2009; Johnson 2001; Panfichi et al. n.d.; Robinson 1998).¹³ More recent studies have begun to describe new representational arrangements that have replaced the old. Collier and Handlin (2009), for instance, reject monolithic portrayals of Latin American civil societies as either strong and autonomous or fragmented and disconnected from the state. An interest regime characterized by networks of community-based organizations and other associations has supplanted traditional, party-linked unions as the main vehicles through which the urban popular sectors seek political representation.

These more nuanced portrayals notwithstanding, Latin American specialists proposed the structuralist argument that neoliberal economic reforms (and their social effects) had weakened organized labor and other grassroots actors and undermined their interests (Barton 2002; Kurtz 2004; Petras and Leiva 1994; Posner 2008, 2003; Roberts 1998).¹⁴ Mainstream parties—the custodians of neoliberalism—continually privileged the interests of big business and industry (Carruthers and Rodríguez 2009; Drake and Jaksic 1999; Roxborough 1997; Silva and Rodrigo 2010; Vilas 1997). Meanwhile, NGOs exercised a greater role in implementing social policies, prompting observers to conclude that the state was “harnessing” civil societal actors and using their expertise to strengthen neoliberal hegemony (Gideon 1998; see also Dagnino 2003). Such organizations risked becoming little more than “transmission belts” for government policies and losing their “autonomy, initiative, and capacity for critical assessment” (Cardelle 1998; Edwards and Hulme 1996; Foweraker 2001; Loveman 1995, 138; Pearce 1997).¹⁵

Additionally, analysts portrayed Chilean CSOs as “depoliticized” and far removed from policy decision making (Fitzsimmons 2000).¹⁶ According to Armony (2004), Argentine groups that tried to effect change in the areas of corruption, police brutality, citizen safety, and minority rights during the 1990s had a limited impact.¹⁷ Because some civil societal actors were incapable of rising above discrimination and intolerance, they reproduced the dysfunctions of broader society. Associational life was merely a reflection of the larger context in which it was embedded, prompting Armony to question the value of investigating civil society groups or movements (see also Berman 1997).

In summary, an astonishingly diverse group of scholars relying on different approaches within political science were suggesting that civil societal actors in Argentina, Chile, and other Latin American countries usually lacked the resources, characteristics, strength, and/or institutional access required for policy engagement. Although civil society’s involvement has indeed been limited in some cases of policy making, groups have sometimes been able to influence the agenda-setting, formulation, and adoption phases. Levels of participation in policy making vary significantly both within and across democratizing nations. The book’s principal objective, which distinguishes it from the works discussed thus far, is to explain these different levels of involvement.

By adopting this focus, I add my voice to an emerging scholarly dialogue. A greater number of Latin American specialists have been investigating civil societal actors’ advocacy efforts since the 2000s (Acuña and Vacchieri 2007; Díez 2006; Garcé and Uña 2006; Gaventa and McGee 2010; González Bombal and Villar 2003; Grugel and Peruzzotti 2010; Hochstetler and Keck 2007). It must also be noted that scholars of feminist and women’s movements in Latin America have been at the forefront of researching advocacy. For years, they have elucidated the difficult choices facing activists: Shall groups maintain their independence from conventional politics and risk being marginalized? Or, alternatively, should they cooperate with political parties and government officials while possibly relinquishing some of their autonomy (Alvarez 1999, 1998; Jaquette 2009, 1994; Molyneux 2001; Taylor 1998; Waylen 2000)? In addition to analyzing this dilemma, gender and politics specialists have contributed insightful studies of feminist policy making (Blofield and Haas 2005; Franceschet 2004; Haas 2010; Ríos Tobar 2009).

Fortunately, then, a growing body of work provides rich empirical evidence of civil society advocacy and group participation in multiple policy domains. Most Latin American specialists investigating such themes do not purport to offer a general theory of civil society influence. Instead, many apply the theoretical approaches developed by analysts of interest groups, nonprofits, think tanks, and social movement organizations (SMOs) in long-standing democracies. Accordingly, they examine organizational resources that facilitate policy influence according to several different literatures addressed later in this chapter (Díez 2006; Garcé and Uña 2006; Leiras 2007). Case studies have also examined exogenous variables that affect the likelihood of CSO involvement, including the presence or absence of allies within government agencies, the number (or types) of access points, the degree of partisan competition, and levels of state capacity (Leiras 2007).¹⁸ Furthermore, scholars using constructivist approaches examine how global human rights regimes generate opportunities for domestic activism; international norms and conventions bolster their rights-based claims and demands for reform (Grugel and Peruzzotti 2010). Although I do not dispute the importance of global or regional norms, well-positioned political allies, organizational resources, and similar variables, I propose a more dynamic, agency-driven explanation of CSO participation. The arguments outlined in the following section help account for civil society involvement in countries where elites seldom roll out the welcome mat and resources are scarce.

The Power of Persuasion

By using effective strategies for framing and politicizing issues, groups can create opportunities for policy involvement.¹⁹ Successful framing thus represents a significant pathway to participation. Civil societal actors often rely on the persuasiveness of their ideas and information to influence fellow citizens and governing elites endowed with more “authoritati...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Pathways to Participation in Latin American Democracies
• 2. Civil Society and Policy Making
• 3. The Power of Persuasion
• 4. The Power of Partnerships
• 5. Comparative Perspectives on Civil Society Advocacy
• 6. A Wide-Angle View of Advocacy
• 7. Civil Society Participation and the Quest for High-Quality Democracy
• Notes
• References
• Index