Popular Mobilization and State Violence in Latin America

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

How do marginalized communities mobilize to enact systemic change? Why do states sometimes respond to these demands with repression and other times with policy concessions? This panel seeks to understand these core issues of contentious politics in Latin America. Together, the papers in the panel examine mobilization around critical regional conflicts: migrant flows, urban-rural divides, resource extraction, and police violence against a range of marginalized groups. Not only has the COVID-19 pandemic caused regional upheaval and exacerbated existing inequalities, it has brought into sharp focus the importance of studying domestic governments’ capacity to respond to global issues affecting marginalized communities. In the course of studying mobilization and repression, this panel highlights policy issues such as climate change, migration, resource endowments, as well as domestic interactions with multi/transnational institutions such as corporations. Through examining the diverging responses of Latin American governments and citizens to these global issues, the panel will provide a deeper understanding of how better to achieve political stability and social justice in post-pandemic Latin America.

Sub Unit

• Division 12: Comparative Politics of Developing Countries

Individual Presentations

• Framing Contentious Events at the U.S. Southern Border and Support for Migration - Pearce Edwards, Carnegie Mellon University; Daniel Arnon, University of Arizona

• Electoral Competition, Resource Booms, and Public Goods Provision in Peru - Amy Chiang, University of California, San Francisco; Jose Incio, Pontifical Catholic University of Peru

• Election Cycles and Targeted Repression in Brazil - Leonardo Fernandes, University of Pittsburgh; Kelly Elizabeth Morrison, University of Tennessee, Knoxville; João V. Guedes-Neto, University of Pittsburgh

• State-Business Contracts and Environmental Conflict in Colombia - Jamie Lee Shenk, Harvard Kennedy School

Chair

• Maryhen Jiménez University of Oxford

Discussants

• James Franklin Ohio Wesleyan University

• Heather A. Sullivan Hamilton College