The Landless Workers Movement, the Workers Party and Reform in Brazil in Comparative Perspective: 1995-2013

• In Event: 277 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 18. Political Contexts of Movements

Abstract

Abstract: Why do previously influential social movement organizations fail to achieve policy gains when sympathetic regimes take executive power? To answer this question, I advance a political-economic mediation model of the political influence of movements, adding economic conditions to the political conditions analyzed by the existing political mediation model. The new model suggests that movements must match their strategies to economic as well as political conditions. To appraise this model, I analyze the variation in policy gains and losses made by the Brazilian Landless Workers movement (MST) before and after the rise to power of the Workers Party (PT). I also compare these policy episodes to both the policy gains achieved by a similar Bolivian Landless Workers SMO (BMST) under a similar regime, and to the gains made by the Afro-Brazilian race movement under the PT. I show that the MST failed to match appropriate strategies to political and economic circumstances during the terms of PT presidents, whereas both the Bolivian Landless Workers movement and Afro-Brazilian movement were able to maintain stable alliances with parties in power. In the case of the MST, the movement became a liability to the PT, and the PT could no longer represent the MST in face of changing political circumstances. In illuminating the complex interactions between movements and ostensibly friendly parties in power, the model harbors significant implications for research on the question of political representation.

Author

• Nicole Clorinda Shortt, University of California-Irvine