View source for Disappearance of the Neighborhood Assembly Movement in Buenos Aires

'''* Thesis: The Disappearance of the Neighborhood Assembly Movement in Buenos Aires, Argentina 2001-2004: A Phase of Demobilization? Mariah Thompson.'''

URL = http://polisci.uoregon.edu/acrobat/HTThompson.pdf

An Honors Thesis Presented by Mariah Thompson to Department of Political Science University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a degree with honors of Bachelor of Arts February, 2010

=Excerpts=


==Introduction==

Mariah Thompson:

"Since the 1960’s social movements have become an important part of the international
political landscape.1 In some advanced industrialized societies, social movements have
become so commonplace that it has been suggested that they are now part of the
conventional repertoire of political participation2 .Many social movements have
attempted to influence traditional political institutions, and in some cases they have
successfully led to drastic restructuring of the political sphere or even to revolutions. In
other cases, movements that seemed promising at first quickly lost strength and
disappeared. Why? Much has been written on why social movements appear, but less
information is available on why movements fade away. In order to better understand how
some movements can be sustained, we must also study why others have declined.

An interesting opportunity to probe the question of “why do some seemingly
powerful social movements suddenly decline?” can be found in the Neighborhood
Assembly movement that erupted in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in the early twenty-first
century and then vanished almost as rapidly as it arose. This nation-wide movement of
autonomous, democratically-controlled neighborhood councils and community centers
appeared along with several other social movements during a cycle of protest that began
in Argentina in the late 1990s. The movement appeared in 2001 at the peak of the cycle,
during a political and economic crisis of monumental proportions.


The assemblies were immensely popular and the movement swelled in size and
reputation throughout early 2002. At their peak popularity, a poll by a local paper showed
that one of every three citizens in Buenos Aires had participated in either a meeting or
one of the movement’s activities.3 The assemblies gained international recognition for
their consensus-based decision-making structure, high levels of citizen involvement, and
community-building activities. However, within only two years they had all but
disappeared. Today only a handful continue to operate in the capital.

The assemblies had many roles in Argentine society. They sprang up following an
economic crisis that shattered the daily lives of families and individuals, crashed many
parts of the middle class into poverty, and made most citizens of Buenos Aires
experience a sensation of vulnerability that they had not felt since democracy had been
consolidated in the country at the end of the twentieth century, following years of
dictatorial rule. Citizen trust in the governmental power-holders gradually evaporated
before turning, almost overnight, into a complete rejection of any claims that the budding
democratic institutions were operating with the good of the people in mind. In the streets,
and without work or any sense of stability, citizens were feeling betrayed and
disempowered. The assemblies worked to take the power out of the hands of the corrupt
government official and put it back in the hands of the citizens. They offered a way for
disenfranchised individuals to connect across class or party lines and help each other in a
time of need. They gave the citizens of each neighborhood a place to speak, be heard, and
have a concrete impact on the ways that the future of their neighborhood would unfold,
without the interference or assistance of governmental organizations.

The disappearance of the assemblies is fascinating because it occurred so rapidly
despite the high levels of popularity and citizen participation. It is also interesting
because it had been promoted by both the Argentine community and international
spectators as an important new form of truly democratic politics that could serve as a
replacement to the traditional methods of political participation in Argentina, which had
previously been limited to unions and political parties. For the movement to end abruptly
demonstrates that the high expectations for this vision of politics were misplaced, that the
movement itself was not strong enough to resist the forces that eventually led to its
dissipation, or some combination of these factors.

Disappearance of social movements has been discussed by many theorists. This
work will examine the disappearance of the assembly movement through the theories of
Sydney Tarrow, while also serving to evaluate the usefulness of his theories for
explaining this case. As previously mentioned, the assembly movement appeared at the
peak of a cycle of contention in Argentina. According to Tarrow, a leading proponent of
protest cycle theory, these cycles occur in two parts: a Mobilization Phase and a Phase of
Demobilization. 

In his famous work Power in Movement (2003), Tarrow asserts that the
end of a movement is marked by three sets of causal factors. These include 

1) exhaustion of movement members, leading to member withdrawal and subsequent internal
polarization 

2) disputes within the movement over the use of violence, paired with the
institutionalization of more moderate sectors, and, 

3) repression of the movement by the State along with State facilitation of some movement demands.

Together, these factors
contribute to the fragmentation, weakening, and eventual decline of a social movement. If
Tarrow’s theory is correct, it can help explain the reasons that the assembly movement
disappeared.

This work will serve three overarching tasks: First, it will explore the
circumstances that led to the disappearance of the assembly movement to help explain
how the movement could lose significance so rapidly. It will also test the strength of
Tarrow’s theory. To do this accurately, Tarrow’s overarching theory of a Phase of
Demobilization is broken down into three smaller theories and each piece is tested on its
own by comparing the predictions of the theory with the actual circumstances that
impacted the assemblies. For reasons of simplicity, in this work the three theories are
given the same titles given to them by Tarrow in Power and Movement. They are
“Exhaustion and Polarization”, “Violence and Institutionalization”, and “Facilitation and
Repression”. Each theory is described in detail and outlined at the start of each section of
analysis.

Lastly, steps will be taken to address any discrepancies in Tarrow’s model as
applied to the assembly movement, and refinement will be made to the theory to better
represent the reasons for the movement’s decline. The goal of these refinements is to
create a more specific theory that students of political science can use when analyzing
movements with characteristics similar to the assemblies to predict and understand what
factors contribute to their decline.

This investigation uncovered sufficient evidence to support the argument that the
decline of the assembly movement was representative of a cycle of contention coming to
an end. Exhaustion of some assembly members led to withdrawal, and moderate
members pulled out of the movement sooner, returned to traditional politics, and were coopted
by state agencies. This caused radicalization in some assemblies and made them
less likely to interact with other moderate social movement organizations, which
alienated them and further undermined the movement.

Additionally, internal polarization of the assemblies based on a variety of factors
meant that they could not continue over time as a single functioning movement. Even
though the assemblies originally seemed united under their rejection of traditional
methods of politics, the concept of the anti-political was not actually a unifying aspect of
the movement and quickly dissipated once traditional political institutions had met some
of the movement’s immediate demands.

The factionalization over ideological stances was furthered by successful partial
institutionalization of the movement, as many members reneged on their anti-institutional
stance and were co-opted by the political parties, such as the Workers Party and the
Communist Party, who saw the assembly movement as an untapped resource of potential
activists, and also by the participation of assembly members in the 2003 presidential
election. While additional attempts by the state to institutionalize the movement through
a decentralization program aimed at drawing assembly members into local government
planning offices, called Centros de Gestión y Participación, were unsuccessful, these
attempts added to pre-existing disputes within some assemblies, further weakening the
cohesiveness of the movement.

State facilitation of movement demands, such as calls to unfreeze savings
accounts of the middle class, was also one of the leading causes for movement decline.

After taking office, President Kirchner also followed through on campaign promises to
clean up the judiciary and armed forces, work with human rights organizations, and lower
the unemployment rate, all of which were important to the middle-class members of the
assemblies. This helped him to re-legitimize the traditional political institutions and made
the assembly movement largely irrelevant in the political sphere.

Two of Tarrow’s theories, ‘Exhaustion and Polarization’, and ‘Facilitation and
Repression’, were accurate for predicting how the actions of the state and the internal
dynamics of the movement would lead to its decline. However, his theory of ‘Violence
and Institutionalization’ has several weaknesses in this case. First, it is overly
deterministic in that it assumes that all movements contain at least one sector predisposed
to violence. Secondly, it assumes that institutionalization of a movement and the use of
radical action is always separate, which does not allow for situations where
confrontational methods are used by institutionalized sectors. While most of the causal
factors outlined by Tarrow were found during the decline of the movement, internal
disputes over the use of violence were barely present at all and were not sufficient to have
serious consequences. Confrontational actions took place in the form of building
occupations and, contrary to Tarrow’s predictions; these tactics were employed by
institutionalized sectors of the movement as well as autonomous ones.

Modification of this theory makes it more specific so that it better explains the
situation in Argentina during the decline for the assembly movement. A new theory is
proposed which states that the use of violence is unlikely in movements with a
homogenous constituency of middle-class members. The theory also states that the use of
confrontational tactics is not limited to autonomous sectors of a movement. This new
theory more accurately explains the way that the assembly movement declined and can
be applied to other middle-class social movements with homogenous constituencies."


==Lessons Learned and Future Research==

This investigation has demonstrated several things. Primarily, it has demonstrated
that it is rare for a single causal factor to bring about the decline of a prominent
movement. The assembly movement did not fade away only because of the changing
beliefs and values of individual members, or because of internal divisions over ideals and
objectives. Nor did the interaction with other movements or the state single-handedly
contribute to its dissolution. Rather it was a combination of all these factors, and most
likely others that are not measurable by the tools of social science, that caused the
movement to dissolve.

This multi-dimensional explanation for the end of a protest cycle is further
evidence that the approach taken by Kardstedt-Henke, which was touched on at the
beginning of this work, is incorrect in its assertion the relationship between the state and
the movement determines its decline. Granted, the facilitation of key movement demands
by the Kirchner regime did heavily impact the end of the movement, and it could be
argued that it was the most decisive factor leading to the dissolution of the assemblies.
Nevertheless, if the movement had not been so destabilized by the time the Presidential
Elections of 2003 took place, the return to traditional politics may not have been as
tempting for those who pulled their faith from the grass-roots alternative and put it back
into the conventional outlets of civic participation. The fact that both internal and external
forces were to blame for the cycle’s decline in Argentina is evidence that a strictly statebased
approach is not sufficient.

The way that the middle-class status of the movement contributed to its decline
has also reaffirmed what has been spoken of for almost the entire history of the study of
social movements. The importance of socioeconomic class in explaining the actions and
demands of movements has been long recognized, most famously by Marxist theories of
state/public relations. Despite the growing focus on New Social Movements- a sector of
social movement theory that analyzes the rising trend in advanced industrialized societies
of identity-based movements that supersede class divisions, the old lesson (that class
matters), has proven yet again to be a valuable tool in explaining social dynamics.

Secondly, and equally important, the study has also shown the importance of good
theories. It has shown that a good general theory can be applied to a wide variety of
different settings. In this case, Tarrow’s general theory on the Phase of Demobilization
served quite well to explain the movement decline and provided an excellent set of
criteria to reference when trying to understand the forces that impact the lasting-power of
a social movement. Futhermore, it has shown that a good theory lends well to
modification. Tarrow’s theory was rather easy to modify into a new theory that explains
the declination of the assemblies and other homogenous middle-class movements.

Lastly, this study has also illustrated how unique each social movement is. While
political scientists spend much of their time devising theories to explain very broad trends
in social movement activity, each movement will have its own particularities that may
require adaptations to these theories or the creation of new ones. With that in mind, it is
important to note that the theory presented in this work is preliminary and by no means
absolute. More research will be necessary on the patterns of middle-class social
movements to test the theory across a broad spectrum of cases and determine if any areas
need further polishing or modification. As noted early, the surge in new social
movements comprised of middle class participants that occurred in the late twentieth
century and early twenty-first may provide the necessary cases to do this research on in
the future and will prove for an interesting topic to explore."


=More Information=

# [[Argentine Assembly Movement]]

Key book:

* Tarrow, Sidney. Power in Movement. 2nd. New York: Cambridge, 2003.


Biblio:

#Dinerstein, Ana. "¡Que se Vayan Todos! Popular Insurrection and the Asambleas Barriales in Argentina." Bulletin of Latin American Research 22.2 (2003): 187-200.
#Dinerstein, Ana. "Here Is The Rose, Dance Here! A Riposte to the Debate on the Argentina Crisis." Historical Materialism 16 (2008): 101-14.
#Petras, James. "Argentina: From Popular Rebellion to "Normal Capitalism."" Social Movements and State Power:Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador. London: Pluto Press, 2005. 28-59.
#Svampa, Maristella, and Damian Corral. "Political Mobilization in Neighborhood Assemblies: The Cases of Villa Crespo and Palermo." Broken Promises? The Argentine Crisis and Argentine Democracy. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2006. 117-39.
#Villalón, Roberta. "Neoliberalism, Corruption and Legacies of Contention: Argentina's Social movements, 1993-2000." Latin American Perspectives 34 (2007): 139-56.

[[Category:15M Movements]]
[[Category:Movements]]
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