2. Data Collection
We
are interested in individual-level political participation
and associational life across these cities.
However, we
also wish to understand the way that these phenomena vary
within these very heterogeneous cities. Before the commencement
of fieldwork in each country, eight focus districts were
selected on the basis of two stratifying variables: extent
of poverty, and his-toric ties to the political left. We
elected to stratify this way for two reasons. First, the
extent of poverty in a neighborhood or district might affect
levels and types of associational activity among residents.
Poorer neighborhoods, for instance, are expected to organize
more around survival issues than neighborhoods where poverty
is less extensive. Second, a neighborhood or district’s
ties to the left might affect patterns of political participation.
Neighborhoods which have been historically tied to left
parties might be more oriented to collective action and
claim making than neighborhoods with weaker ties.
The project entails three types of data collection: a
survey of 1,500 citizens of each of the cities mentioned
above, a survey of 240 association-leaders in each of those
cities, and the collection of a range of tertiary data.
Prior to the initiation of Summer 2003 fieldwork in Argentina
and Chile, the CIRELA team had written the two survey instruments,
a pre-test of each instrument had been carried out in each
of the CIRELA countries previously (travel for which was
also generously funded by the U.C. Berkeley Center for
Latin American Studies), and fieldwork had been exe-cuted
in Peru and Venezuela.
With
respect to the individual survey, the sample of citizens
within each city included a random-ized sample
of the entire city and an oversample of individuals
in the eight popular-sector
focus districts described above. Data collected
through the individual survey will allow us to analyze
the types
of participation through which citizens promote
their interests and attempt to solve vari-ous collective
or shared problems.
Patterns of participation are conceptualized in
terms of three dimensions: the arena of participation
(the extent
to which people participate in the party/electoral
arena and/or the interest/association arena), the
mode of problem-solving
(claims on government vs. the pursuit of self-provisioning
strategies), and the level of aggregation (do individuals
engage in collective or individual action)? Responses
to other questions in the questionnaire will allow
us to
explore a range of explanatory hypotheses at different
analytical levels. In terms of individual traits,
of particular theoretical importance for the present
inquiry are class,
employment situation, and social networks. In addition,
we examine factors at the district level (for instance,
age, central-peripheral location, and level of
infrastructural development of a dis-trict) and city/country
level (for
instance, the degree of decentralization, of privatization
of urban services and areas of social policy, and
political and economic crises).
While
the individual level survey explores participation
in both the electoral/party and interest/group
arenas,
a second survey of associations in the eight popular-sector
focus districts men-tioned above explores the activities
of associations and their relations to both state
and society. In each focus district, three associations
were chosen
to serve as entry points for a snowball sample
(generally one territorially-based organizations,
and two functional
organizations). A battery of questions in the questionnaire
asked the respondent to list all of the organizations,
parties, un-ions, foundations, etc., with which
his organizations works. From this list, subsequent
respon-dents were selected.
Both “horizontal” links (those between
organizations that share things or work together
on even footing) and “vertical” links
(those between organizations that, while they sustain
reciprocity in some sense, have a relationship
in which one group clearly
gives to the other, one group is clearly a subsidiary
of the other, and/or one group coordinates the
activities
of another) were followed. The goal was to interview
nine organizations linked to each original point
of entry; in
each district, the final sample included three
chains of ten associations each, for a total of
30 interviews in
each of eight districts, or 240 interviews per
capital city.
The
association-leader questionnaire and the methodology
used to select respondents were designed to acquire
data that will aid us in analyzing our two main concerns:
the
degree to which associations are networked and
the shape of the network (that is, the degree to
which the organizational
activity of the last two decades has produced associations
that can scale out and scale up), and the kind
of state-society intermediation provided by these
associations, with a particular
focus on how associations relate to both their
base and the state. This survey will not only allow
us to map variation
in the goals, strategies, and structures of associations
and associational networks, but will also allow
us to suggest some preliminary explanations of these
variations.
Several hypotheses related to the state, government
programs, and aspects of the party system parallel
the district
and city/country hypotheses at the individual level.
Finally,
pre-existing data was collected at local and national
government offices, and from other municipal sources.
This data will help us provide a macro-level depiction
of each of the eight districts and, where available
at
a more centralized level, for the whole city. Information
was collected about the level of socioeconomic
development, occupational structures, urban services,
voting patterns,
protest behavior, and political history of the
eight focus districts in each country. Researchers
also collected detailed
information on the nature and scope of governmental
distributive or social programs targeting the poor,
since these are
often key foci and incentives for activation and
organizing. Sources for this data included government
offices and ministries,
newspapers, existing studies, public opinion polls,
and market research data.
3. Preliminary Findings
Argentina
All
the interviews for the survey of association leaders
were finished by late August, and the survey of
individuals concluded in mid-September in Buenos
Aires, Argentina.
However, survey data have yet to be processed:
the database for the survey of individuals will be
complete by the end
of September, and the database for the survey of
association leaders will be ready by approximately
mid-October. Below,
we present brief observations on the fieldwork
and expected findings.
To
initiate the association leaders’ survey, we
selected as starting points in each focus dis-trict
three different types of associations,
based on previous knowledge of the local associational
world. In each, a neighborhood
association, a community center or popular association, and an unemployed
workers’ association
were chosen. We expected these associations to lead us through networks
showing variation in political affiliation (if
any), and constituencies – broadly
speaking, lower middle classes in the case of the neighborhood associations,
and poor sectors in the other two. Moreover, we thought that these
types of associations might reflect different “moments”,
objects and ideologies that animated the development
of the local associational world.
We
subsequently resorted to personal contacts in the
associational
world and data-bases of associations
(both those of government agencies, and that
of CEDES, the richest non-governmental source of
information on associations
in
the country), to select the actual associa-tion with which each
of the three chains in each district would begin.
We also discussed the final selections
with researchers at CEDES and at the Universidad de General Sarmiento,
who helped us in making contacts with associations
from the districts of José C.
Paz and San Miguel, in the Greater Buenos Aires.
In
very broad terms, we have found that neighborhood
associations
are tied to the early urbanization of the City
of Buenos Aires
and later of Greater
Buenos Aires, losing part of their relevance in the city and
remaining rooted in the community in the more peripheral
areas. Popu-lar
associations and community
centers are usually associated with the fulfillment of more basic
needs, such as food provision, day care and basic medical assistance
in the context of
the grow-ing poverty and downward mobility that Argentina experienced
in the recent decades. Furthermore, they are linked to diverse
types of NGO community-development
strategies or political militancy, the starting point of which
can be traced back to the late 1960s. Finally, the unemployed
workers’ organizations
are a recent phenomena emerging within existing associations
or as novel groups following the dramatic increase of unemployment
in the mid 1990s. These organizations,
tied in a loose movement, currently constitute one of the most
relevant forms of political and social organization among popular
sectors.
Our
attempt to avoid mapping networks that all shared
a particular “structural
trait” (for instance, that were all linked to the clientelistic
machinery of a specific political party) was successful. Snowballs
were denser in the
Greater Buenos Aires than in the City of Buenos Aires, and
snowballs that began in Greater Buenos Aires led us to different
groups
and types of linkages within
the associational world than those that started in the City
of Buenos Aires. Further, different networks mapped different
vertical
linkages ranging from
human rights organizations, international cooperation, political
parties, women’s rights networks, corporate foundations,
and federations and networks of associations that operate in
contact with local and national level au-thorities.
Variation in terms of linkages emerged in all snowballs, especially
when following more than one “layer” of contacts.
What is more, snowballs in some districts ran through highly
dense and interconnected networks, while in others,
such as in the City of Buenos Aires, networks appeared more
fragmented, suggesting heterogeneous associational life featuring
more issue-specific organizations,
such as immigration-based associations and NGOs.
Chile
As of this writing, approximately one-third of the total
interviews for the individual-level survey, and one-third
of the total interviews for the association-leader survey
have been conducted in Santiago, Chile. Data are not yet
available, and will not be for a few months. However, based
on the experience of fieldwork and supervision, we can
make some preliminary observations about the phenomena
that interest us.
The state-centered nature of Chilean civil society
quickly became apparent as we worked to organize and
initiate the
survey of association-leaders. In
concrete terms, this preparation in-volved identifying three relevant
base-level associations in each of the eight focus
districts, and securing an interview
with a leader of each association. We did our best to tap a wide variety
of sources in searching for the associations with which
to conduct these 24 initial
interviews; nonetheless, the vast majority came through offices of
municipal governments. The amount of information available
to these agencies, while
it did vary by district, was remarkable, especially when compared with
the amount of information available to municipal government
offices in other countries,
as revealed by the CIRELA researchers who carried out the project in
Perú and
Venezuela. In short, we were quite surprised by the extent to which
civil society organizations interact with the state
on a regular basis in Santiago.
The
nature of this interaction also seems to be strongly
hierarchical. Not only are
many associations organized geographically at three
levels – neighborhood,
district, and metropolitan – but their relationship with government
at these different levels is one of financial dependence. Many of
the representatives
of grassroots associations with whom we came into contact spoke of
the difficulty of accessing funds through competitive grant programs
run by the government.
Although there seemed to be a good variety of these programs, association
leaders whom we inter-viewed sometimes characterized the government’s
efforts to foster competition among grassroots associations in less
than benign terms.
We
also found interesting variation in the amount of
information available to municipal offices, and their
willingness
to provide
it to us. Some municipal
governments employ grass-roots liaisons who interact directly with
associations in a given geographic sub-sector of the district;
these functionaries alternately
proved helpful in gaining access, or acted as gatekeepers restricting
the flow of information. In some districts, working with municipal
councilors was
a useful point of entry, while in others, speaking directly with
municipal officials proved the more successful strategy. In some
cases, we were given
printed directories of associations operating within the comuna.
In others, municipal officials wanted to help us choose organizations
based on their own
criteria. Where possible, we emphasized randomness in choosing
starting points for the association survey, but in
some cases, more purposive
choices needed
to be made based on the amount of information that we were able
to obtain from municipal officials and other sources.
Across
the board, we noted a significant level of politicization
in the relationship between civil society associations and municipal
government. In one district,
we conducted a pre-test interview in the district office of
a congressperson who was of a different party than
the mayor. This
office appeared
to be a hive of activity for local associations tending toward
the congressperson’s
side of the political spectrum, as three different pre-test interview
subjects – one
working with a neighborhood association, one with a housing
committee, and one with a women’s group – all passed
through the office in the course of one afternoon. In another
district, the
best point of entry proved
to be a private think tank associated with the party of the mayor.
In yet another, the congressperson for that district was married
to a leader of a prominent
NGO. The interaction between politics and associations at the
municipal level, we found, is multi-layered and complex.
The
picture of Chilean civil society that has begun to emerge from
our research is one that is strongly state-oriented, hierarchical
in its internal organization,
and profoundly politicized. This latter term may be seen as
pejorative, but in our view, it reflects the growing
importance of these
organizations.
That
they should be seen as worthy of consideration and influence
by local politicians suggest that these groups are actually
doing something
and making some connections
between citizens and the state, at least at the local level.
We
hope that our survey data will help us to discern the extent
to which
these organizations – as
well as those operating at levels other than the grassroots – are
able to exercise autonomy in their decision making.
4. In Sum
The
tentative findings outlined above are, again, only
preliminary impressions. Analysis of the data collected
in all four CIRELA countries, which will begin
shortly, should provide us with a more vivid and
nuanced picture
of popular sector associational life, and the claim-making
and problem-solving strategies employed by the
popular sectors, in Argentina, Chile, Peru and Venezuela.
More
broadly, our findings will shed light on crucial
evolving dynamics of state-civil society relations
in Latin America.
The
substance of the CIRELA project relates mainly tangentially
to the dissertation projects that will be carried
out by the four students who executed the project
in Argentina
and Chile this summer. Chris’s dissertation
will explore professionalization of the military
in Chile, Mexico
and Colombia, Candelaria’s future research
will examine welfare state politics in several
countries in South America
and Southern Europe, Diana’s dissertation
will investigate the evolving power of high
courts and inter-branch relations
in Argentina and Chile, and Sebastian’s
dissertation will analyze state-formation in
several Latin American
countries. Nonetheless, the field experience
we garnered through participation in the CIRELA
project
has been an
important part of our professional development,
and the lessons learned over the past few months
will doubtless
facilitate execution of our own field work significantly.
