Book talk! “Origins of the Mass Party: Dispossession and Party-Form in Mexico and Bolivia in Comparative Perspective” Edwin F. Ackerman (Syracuse University)
“Origins of the Mass Party: Dispossession and Party-Form in Mexico and Bolivia in Comparative Perspective”
Edwin F. Ackerman (Syracuse University)
Thursday, October 27
12:30-1:45pm
KTCH 1B40
Description: In Mexico (1921) and Bolivia (1952), nationalist insurrections with armies largely composed of peasants triumphed over oligarchical regimes. In the aftermath of these uprisings, parties led by members of an urban middle-class intelligentsia adopting a populist agrarian discourse attempted to incorporate this predominantly peasant base. The outcomes of these efforts were, however, radically different. In Origins of the Mass Party, Edwin F. Ackerman tells the stories of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) as a mass party in post-revolutionary Mexico (1929-1946), and the attempt but ultimate failure of Bolivia's Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR) (1953-1964) to do the same. As he shows, Mexico's PRI successfully mobilized peasants into party politics, translating the insurrectionary effervescence of the peasantry into organizational incorporation. Bolivia's MNR, in contrast, attempted but failed to undertake a homologous process. To shed light on why this happened, Ackerman examines the historical conditions necessary for the emergence of the mass political parties, offering insights into the persistence of parties over time by linking the economic dispossession that makes it possible to articulate individuals into a political bloc, and the political dispossession that produces professional politicians to undertake articulation and create constituencies.
Author bio: Edwin F. Ackerman is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. His academic work has been published in Social Science History, Ethnic and Racial Studies, the Journal of Language and Politics, Contexts, and NACLA Report on the Americas, among other venues, and has been featured in National Public Radio (NPR), among other media outlets. He is a Ford Fellow and American Sociological Association Minority Fellowship Program recipient, and was a Global History Fellow at Harvard's Weatherhead Center (18'-19'). He received a PhD in sociology from UC Berkeley.
Co-sponsored by the Culture, Power, Inequality Workshop and the Latin American and Latinx Studies Center