Tag Archives: International

Democracia y movimientos sociales

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Rossi, Federico M. (2023), Movimientos sociales y democracia (Temas de la Democracia, 45; Mexico: Conferencias Magistrales – Instituto Nacional Electoral). ISBN 9786078870660. URL: https://www.ine.mx/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/democracia-y-movimientos-sociales.pdf

«El libro», afirma Matías Rossi, «sintetiza 20 años de investigación en un breve texto que responde a una serie de interrogantes troncales para comprender el rol de la acción colectiva en la constitución de los regímenes sociopolíticos». Estos interrogantes, en torno a los que Rossi articula su investigación, van desde las preguntas «¿Qué son los movimientos sociales?« y «¿Qué es la democracia?« hasta otras como «¿Cuál es la relación entre movimientos sociales y democracia?«, «¿Cómo contribuyen los movimientos sociales a la democratización como cambio de régimen político?«, «¿Cómo contribuyen los movimientos sociales a expandir la democracia más allá de sus límites representativos?« y «¿Cómo contribuyen los movimientos sociales a evitar que la democracia transite hacia una plutocracia?« Para el investigador de la UNED, «es un honor y una oportunidad» poder presentar este libro en una feria como la FIL. «Más allá de sentirme honrado por este reconocimiento a mis esfuerzos por comprender el curso de la historia, lo siento como una oportunidad de hacer reflexionar a la ciudadanía. El formato que propone el INE favorece un lenguaje coloquial que acerca los debates académicos a la población. Esto representa una oportunidad, que es la de hacer uso de la responsabilidad social del académico de involucrarse en la constitución de pueblos que vivan en libertad con dignidad social».

Organizing against mining companies during the COVID-19 pandemic: frames, tactics and the digital divide in southern Mexico

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Morosin, A., & Hein, J. E. (2025). Organizing against mining companies during the COVID-19 pandemic: frames, tactics and the digital divide in southern Mexico. Globalizations, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2025.2525034

How did movements defending the commons cope with a rise in direct State support for extractive capital during the COVID-19 pandemic? This article utilizes a mixed methods approach to explore how anti-mining organizations in southern Mexico shifted their frames and tactics at the onset of the pandemic. Content analysis of e-newsletters from two civil society organizations were combined with interviews with anti-mine activists. Electronic newsletters and other forms of communication engaged in frame extension by linking the pandemic to environmental injustice and to the State’s neglect of public health. In an effort to transcend a digital divide in rural areas impacted by neoliberal extractivism, some solidarity organizations increased their reliance on the internet, yet such digital tactics were not evenly embraced. Our findings clarify some limitations of the internet for mobilizing rural populations in mining zones, while reiterating the importance of traditional, face-to-face organizing tactics that directly challenge extractive industries.

About the Patient Named Taiwan: The Rise of Doctors in Party Politics

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Kim, J., & Liu, S. (2025). About the Patient Named Taiwan: The Rise of Doctors in Party Politics. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/00472336.2025.2488904

Doctors are not typically known for engaging in party politics. However, in Taiwan, many doctors have assumed prominent roles within the Democratic Progressive Party, including Dr Lai Ching-te who became president in May 2024. This article examines the factors contributing to the rise of doctors in Taiwan’s party politics since democratisation, particularly in the Democratic Progressive Party. Although the existing literature focuses on regime transitions and capital convertibility in elite circulation, this study proposes an alternative explanation: the symbiotic relationship between the Medical Professionals Alliance in Taiwan and the Democratic Progressive Party. Utilising extensive archival data from Taiwan, the article argues that this alliance, which combined an influential medical association with a weak political party, facilitated the emergence of doctor-politicians during Taiwan’s democratisation. The findings suggest that professional associations can serve as political vehicles, transforming individual efforts into collective action by participating in policymaking and mobilising resources for social movements and electoral politics. Furthermore, the case of doctor-politicians in Taiwan offers valuable insights into professional mobilisation, demonstrating how scientific expertise can be harnessed to wield moral authority and establish political coalitions within and beyond professional boundaries.

Through the Prism of Community Development: Decolonization and the Cold War Politics of Agrarian Modernization in East Pakistan

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Hussain, M. (2025). Through the Prism of Community Development: Decolonization and the Cold War Politics of Agrarian Modernization in East Pakistan. Social Science History, 49(4), 883–907. doi:10.1017/ssh.2025.21

With the Cold War’s epicenter shifting from Europe to the Third World, the Eisenhower administration’s foreign policy concerns of containing the Soviet bloc were tied to questions of socioeconomic development. Besides “trade and aid,” the appeal of this shift rested on the apparent complementarity between ideas of rural modernization and the practices of agrarian democracy. “Community development” referred to a series of projects initiated by the Ford Foundation and postcolonial governments toward this cultural-political end. This article examines the contested meanings, practices, and outcomes of such a project in East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh). Drawing on the project’s archives and published sources, it addresses how and why a disjuncture between the political-societal aspirations of decolonization and the hardening Manicheanism of Cold War competition came to characterize the contested trajectory of this project. As its proponents and detractors negotiated competing expectations, inter-regional tensions, and geostrategic interests, this disjuncture gave way to a developmental ideology envisioned around the technocratic nodes of population control and food production. Consequently, the supposed complementarity between “agrarian democracy” and modernization was relegated to the margins of developmental thinking, even as growing rural unrest and Cold War realpolitik propelled its need for legitimizing new claims on political power. The prism of community development enables a novel analysis of the conjunctural dynamics of mid-twentieth-century decolonization and the contingencies of Cold War politics of agrarian modernization.

Profile: multi-sectoral alliances in national mobilizations against extraction in Panama

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Díaz Pinzón, F., & Almeida, P. (2025). Profile: multi-sectoral alliances in national mobilizations against extraction in Panama. Social Movement Studies, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2025.2562887

Collective action against extraction tends to occur at the local level at the sites where nearby ecological damage takes place. In Panama in 2023, protests reached a national level against copper mining by a transnational corporation and successfully terminated operations. The protests endured for a month and acted as the largest outpouring of protests in Panamanian history. This study details how a massive campaign against extraction with a successful outcome builds from multi-sectoral alliances attained in previous struggles. The lessons learned from the mobilizations provide strategies for other regions in the search for equitable environmental policies that avoid threatening ecological sustainability.

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