Changing Socio-Political Dynamics within the Crisis of the Left Turn in Argentina and Brazil

• In Event: Social protest in Latin America within the crisis of the left turn

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to study the socio-political dynamics that, while once at the origins and consolidation of the left turn in Latin America, have been transformed over the past five to ten years into something of a different nature, in turn destabilising the left turn consensus. Whilst the general decline of progressive coalitions is apparent across the region, the nature of the change is still unfolding and being disputed, and presents a degree of complexity in the juxtaposition of elements of continuity and change. There has been change in electorate preferences, government rhetoric and the political party composition of governing coalitions. There is continuity in terms of mass mobilisation, street protest and societal polarisation, which in the case of Brazil was rekindled in the process of the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff. In addition, there is innovation in terms of the type of social actors mobilised around new distributive demands (workers, women, popular economy, middle classes, students and black movements) and repertoires of collective action (autonomists), as well as in the imaginaries enacted in the public field, such as the tension between “populism versus republic” or “participation versus neo-developmentalism”. Thus, the objective is to understand how a new socio-political dynamic has been constructed and transformed, and what the implications are in relation to the crisis of the left turn.

Author

• Juan Pablo Ferrero, University of Bath