The quest for re-incorporation in post-corporatist politics : the path of the unemployed workers' movement in Argentina, 1996-2008

Abstract

The purpose of this dissertation is to narrate and conceptualize the piqueteros movement’s path to re-incorporation in Argentina. The piqueteros movement provides an outstanding scenario for the dynamic analysis of thirteen years of the intertwining logics of both contentious and routine politics. This thesis argues that the complete explanation for the interaction of social movements with state institutions must involve the less spectacular accumulation of ad hoc practices and the use of a predominant repertoire of strategies. The empirical argument of this dissertation is that the period between 1996 and 2009 represented a reshaping of the political arena through the second incorporation of workers under a non-corporatist logic. The territorialized path and specific logic of re-incorporation struggles in Argentina presents us with the crucial question of the redefinition of state-society relations in the post-neoliberal era and its related re-incorporation struggles. The theoretical purposes of this dissertation are manifold. The first is to suggest a refinement of the concept of political opportunities by specifying its logical location in the wider debate about the configuration of the political context for social movement interaction. The second is to propose a series of concepts for the analysis of strategic action in nonrational choice and/or structurally determinist terms. The threefold set of interrelated concepts I propose are: the stock of perceived alternatives; legacies; and repertoires of strategies. The third is to define the type of movement associated with the struggle for the redefinition of the actors to be included in the post-neoliberal political arena. Reincorporation movements have specific attributes that define them as a particular expression of a historical process of struggle for incorporation that emerged with the neoliberal critical juncture. Finally, this dissertation has the goal of bridging the social movement and historical institutionalism literatures with the hope of contributing towards a yet underdeveloped crossfertilization agenda.