The Politics of Transnational Actors in Latin America


Book Description

The Politics of Transnational Actors in Latin America: Power from Afar explores the important issues of transnational actors and their influence on institutions and people in Latin America, raising profound questions of accountability, social justice, and sovereignty. The text focuses on four particularly significant groups that transcend national boundaries: the Catholic Church, transnational corporations, transnational drug networks, and transnational human rights networks. By comparing each of their impacts on the region, Frederick M. Shepherd explores larger questions about transnational power and how it has deeply penetrated the nations of Latin America. The book’s analysis delves into attempts made over the last 100 years by citizens, social movements, and governments to reassert a degree of control over these transnational actors, setting up a framework to understand how local, national, and global forces interact in a setting of transnational dominance. The volume suggests that local and national groups can use principles and power to bring about equitable and just outcomes in relation to transnational actors, and that, in some cases, transnational actors can be a part of constructive change in Latin America. This concise volume will be of interest to students of History, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and Political Science, as well as those interested in 20th-century Latin American politics and political history.




Transnational Activism and National Movements in Latin America


Book Description

During the 1990s, as widespread perception spread of declining state sovereignty, activists and social movement organizations began to form transnational networks and coalitions to pressure both intergovernmental organizations and national governments on a variety of issues. Research has focused on the formation of these transnational networks, campaigns, and coalitions; their objectives, strategies and tactics; and their impact. Yet the issue of how participation in transnational networks influences national level mobilization has been little analyzed. What effects has the experience of social movement organizations at the transnational scale had for the development at the national scale? This volume addresses this significant gap in the literature on transnational collective action by building on approaches that stress the multi-level characteristics of transnational relations. Edited by noted Latin American politics scholar Eduardo Silva, the contributions focus on four distinct themes to which the empirical chapters contribute: Building a Transnational Relations Approach to Multi-Level Interaction; Transnational Relations and Left Governments; North-South and South-South Linkages; and The "Normalization" of Labor. Bridging the Divide will add considerably to empirical knowledge of the ways in which transnational and national factors dynamically interact in Latin America. Additionally, the mid-range theorizing of the empirical chapters, along with the mix of positive and negative cases, raises new hypotheses and questions for further study.




Social and Political Transitions During the Left Turn in Latin America


Book Description

Social and Political Transitions During the Left Turn in Latin America provides fourteen contributions to understand, from a multidisciplinary perspective, processes of socio-political reconfigurations in the region from the early 2000s to the mid-2010s. The Left Turn was the regional shift to left-of-center governments and social movements that sought to replace the neoliberal policies of the 1990s. This volume aims to answer the overarching research question: how do state and societal (national and transnational) actors trigger and shape processes of political and socio-economic transitions in Latin America from the rise to the decline of the Left Turn. The book presents case studies in which transitions are moments of change and uncertainty, which one cannot predict their definitive outcomes. The various case studies presented in the book place actors and processes in specific historical and socio-political contexts, which are influenced directly or indirectly by the historical trajectory of Latin America’s Left Turn. This book is essential reading for students and scholars of Social and Political History, Latin American History, and those interested in the social and political developments in Latin America more broadly.




Latin America And The Caribbean In The International System


Book Description

The fourth edition of this widely praised text has been thoroughly revised to reflect the evolving characteristics of the current international system that have had a dramatic effect on every aspect of international relations of Latin America and the Caribbean. The original purpose of this book is unchanged: It continues to provide a topically current and analytically integrated survey of the region's role in the world. Still organized around the idea of Latin America and the Caribbean as a separate subsystem within the global international system, the discussion gives special emphasis to complex interstate and transnational structures and processes. Within this framework, Atkins analyzes the foreign policies of the Latin American states themselves and those of the United States and other countries toward Latin America and the Caribbean. He also looks closely at the nature and role of transnational actors in the region, such as the multinational corporations, the Holy See, Protestant Churches, transnational political parties, international labor, nongovernmental organizations, and others. He gives special attention to Latin American participation in international institutions at all levels.




Intermediation and Representation in Latin America


Book Description

This book shows how the introduction of intermediation is relevant in studying political and public policy processes, as they are increasingly accompanied by grey spaces in public and non-public arenas that cannot be categorized as purely representative or purely participative. Instead, ‘hybrid’ mechanisms are developing in the policy-making process, which bring in new actors who either are unelected while being required to represent or advocate for the common good of others or are directly elected but challenged by identity/rights-based issues of the people they are required to act in the best interest of. By proposing a conceptual frame on intermediation and addressing five different Latin American countries and a wide range of case studies —from human rights, labour relations, neighbourhood management, municipal bureaucracies, social accountability, to complex national systems of citizen participation—this volume shows the versatility and validity of a tridimensional frame, the “cube of political intermediation” (CPI) as a tool for analysing public policy and understanding contemporary democratic innovation in Latin America.







Latin American Social Movements


Book Description

The two current trends of democratization and deepening economic liberalization have made Latin American countries a ground for massive defensive mobilization campaigns and have created new sites of popular struggle. In this edited volume on Latin American social movements, original chapters are combined with peer-reviewed articles from the well-regarded journal Mobilization. Each section represents a major theme in Latin American social movement research. Original chapters discuss the Madres de Plaza de Mayo movement in Argentina and the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico. Also included in the book's coverage of the region's major movements are los piqueteros and antisweatshop labor organizing. This is the first study to focus closely on the related issues of neoliberal globalization, democratization, and the workings of transnational advocacy networks in Latin America.




Routledge Handbook of Latin America in the World


Book Description

The Handbook of Latin America in the World explains how the Latin American countries have both reacted and contributed to changing international dynamics over the last 30 years. It provides a comprehensive picture of Latin America’s global engagement by looking at specific processes and issues that link governments and other actors, social and economic, within the region and beyond. Leading scholars offer an up-to-date state of the field, theoretically and empirically, thus avoiding a narrow descriptive approach. The Handbook includes a section on theoretical approaches that analyze Latin America’s place in the international political and economic system and its foreign policy making. Other sections focus on the main countries, actors, and issues in Latin America’s international relations. In so doing, the book sheds light on the complexity of the international relations of selected countries, and on their efforts to act multilaterally. The Routledge Handbook of Latin America in the World is a must-have reference for academics, researchers, and students in the fields of Latin American politics, international relations, and area specialists of all regions of the world.




Transnational Agency and Migration


Book Description

Migrants, both spatially and mentally, no longer settle in only one national territory but interact or move across borders regularly, profoundly challenging the nation-state and the image of society as a container. This volume explores the ways in which migrants, activists and professionals connect social worlds across national boundaries through a variety of social practices. The contributions from various disciplines - anthropology, economics, political and social sciences, educational studies and social work - illuminate the meaning of agency in situations where the capabilities of transnational actors are constrained by nation-states, their borders and social institutions. Based on a relational understanding of transnational agency which builds upon new insights and developments within transnational studies and network theory, this compilation of chapters presents transnational processes and developments in and across various regions of the globe - in East Asia, the Americas, the EU, Southeast Asia, Africa and Australia, in the borderlands of Mexico and the US, in the transatlantic space of the 19th-century fin de siècle world - in order to demonstrate the importance of gaining, assisting and expanding agency in transnational contexts.




Democracies and Dictatorships in Latin America


Book Description

This book presents a new theory for why political regimes emerge, and why they subsequently survive or break down. It then analyzes the emergence, survival and fall of democracies and dictatorships in Latin America since 1900. Scott Mainwaring and Aníbal Pérez-Liñán argue for a theoretical approach situated between long-term structural and cultural explanations and short-term explanations that look at the decisions of specific leaders. They focus on the political preferences of powerful actors - the degree to which they embrace democracy as an intrinsically desirable end and their policy radicalism - to explain regime outcomes. They also demonstrate that transnational forces and influences are crucial to understand regional waves of democratization. Based on extensive research into the political histories of all twenty Latin American countries, this book offers the first extended analysis of regime emergence, survival and failure for all of Latin America over a long period of time.