Political Incorporation in Latin America: A Conceptual Analysis in Historical Perspective

• In Event: Political Incorporation: Old and New

Abstract

A central conflict in Latin American politics (and beyond) relates to the dynamics of inclusion/exclusion of lower classes and other subordinated sectors of society into the political arena. When accounting for these processes in comparative politics, one central concept has been that of Political Incorporation, as exemplified by Collier and Collier’s now classic Shaping the Political Arena in reference to labor incorporation.
Despite its frequent use and analytical importance, political incorporation as a concept is often not clearly defined or too narrowly understood in reference to one particular historical context. The result is either an underspecified concept or ad hoc uses that prevent broader comparisons across time and space. Starting from this assessment, this paper revisits the existing definitions of political incorporation and related concepts such as corporatism and populism, as well as others in the same semantic field. We then propose a definition of political incorporation and advance a typology based on the motives that political elites had when conducting a process of incorporation: controlling a menacing sector of society or using its emergence as a political opportunity to expand their base of support. A final section of the paper presents as illustrations of the conceptual discussion the cases of the first wave of women’s mobilization in the Southern Cone and the incorporation of mobilized sector from the countryside in the contemporary Andean region.

Authors

• Rodrigo Barrenechea Carpio, Northwestern University

• Isabel Castillo, Northwestern University