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Social inequalities without class cleavages in Latin America’s neoliberal era

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Abstract

Social inequalities have deepened in Latin America over the past several decades, yet an erosion of class cleavages has occurred in the political arena. During the era of import-substitution industrialization (ISI), “stratified” cleavage structures based on class distinctions emerged in a subset of Latin American countries where party systems were reconfigured by the rise of a mass-based, labor-mobilizing party. These nations typically experienced more severe economic crises during the transition from ISI to neoliberalism than nations that retained elitist party systems with “segmented,” cross-class cleavage structures. They also experienced greater political upheaval, as neoliberal critical junctures produced an erosion of stratified cleavages along their structural, organizational, and cultural dimensions in the labor-mobilizing cases, while leaving the segmented cleavages of elitist systems relatively unscathed. The Latin American experience differs from that of Europe, where strong labor movements and labor-backed parties were associated with superior economic performance during periods of economic adjustment. It also challenges Duverger's notion of an organizational “contagion from the Left,” as the dramatic weakening of labor movements and the shift away from mass-based party organizations have caused party systems to converge on elitist organizational models during the neoliberal era.

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  1. Kenneth M. Roberts
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Kenneth M. Roberts is associate professor and chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of New Mexico. He is the author ofDeepening Democracy? The Modern Left and Social Movements in Chile and Peru (Stanford University Press). He is currently writing a book on the transformation of party systems in Latin America’s neoliberal era.

Research for this article was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (SBR-9818501). I would like to thank Ruth Berins Collier, Steven Levitsky, Kurt Weyland, Erik Wibbels, Karen Remmer, and the anonymous reviewers for insightful comments on earlier drafts or presentations of this manuscript. I also thank Christina Schatzman for capable research assistance.

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Roberts, K.M. Social inequalities without class cleavages in Latin America’s neoliberal era. St Comp Int Dev 36, 3–33 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02686331

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