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Journal Article

Coalition Building From Below

Published on 1 January 2003

In low and middle-income democracies social groups loosely classified as poor are typically in the majority but their political participation seldom influences national policy. There are many explanations for this. Some are familiar: the malfunctioning of democratic institutions in these countries, the class-bases of liberal (bourgeois) democracy itself, and Olsonian obstacles to collective action such as the free-rider problem. The fragmentation and “localism” of most organizations representing the poor, considered by some polycentrists (see Chapter 1) the carriers of radical (direct) democracy, is a less familiar but growing concern. The concern stems from an apparent paradox. Widespread adoption of formal democratic institutions and marked increase in civil society activism in the last two decades has coincided with a decline in the state’s responsiveness to social claims and the adoption of marketizing economic policies that have produced increasing inequality and few visible signs of poverty reduction. Scholars such as Castells (1996-98) and Roberts (1998) find that the community groups, NGOs, and other civic groups that have proliferated during this period “are often isolated and disconnected from each other, in part because of their insistence on political autonomy; and they generally focus on immediate, particularistic needs or partial demands that do not have generalized appeal” (Roberts 1998: 70-71). These localized forms of organization are, as a result, unable to challenge dominant structures of power and influence state behavior.

Editors

Peter P. Houtzager

Research Fellow

Publication details

published by
University of Michigan Press
authors
Houtzager, P. P.
editors
Houtzager, P. P. and Moore, M

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