ABOUT THIS BOOK
Politicians and political parties are for the most part limited by habit—they recycle tried-and-true strategies, draw on models from the past, and mimic others in the present. But in rare moments politicians break with routine and try something new.
Drawing on pragmatist theories of social action, Revolutionizing Repertoires sets out to examine what happens when the repertoire of practices available to political actors is dramatically reconfigured. Taking as his case study the development of a distinctively Latin American style of populist mobilization, Robert S. Jansen analyzes the Peruvian presidential election of 1931. He finds that, ultimately, populist mobilization emerged in the country at this time because newly empowered outsiders recognized the limitations of routine political practice and understood how to modify, transpose, invent, and recombine practices in a whole new way. Suggesting striking parallels to the recent populist turn in global politics, Revolutionizing Repertoires offers new insights not only to historians of Peru but also to scholars of historical sociology and comparative politics, and to anyone interested in the social and political origins of populism.
REVIEWS
“How does a new political practice such as populist mobilization take hold and become established is the subject of this important study of Peru’s transformative populist election of 1931. Drawing on pragmatist theories and based on a sophisticated, fine-grained reading of the sources, Jansen’s innovative work on Peru has implications for the rise of populist politics that has so proliferated throughout the hemisphere down to the present. I highly recommend it.”
— Peter F. Klarén, George Washington University
“Masterfully researched and brimming with insight, Revolutionizing Repertoires goes well beyond the Peruvian case to develop a brand new approach for explaining political change. Jansen demonstrates that habit and creativity are as important in politics as they are in everyday life, and that—under the right conditions—novel political practices can arise from their interplay. This is a major contribution that will help remake political sociology.”
— Neil Gross, Colby College
“Revolutionizing Repertoires presents an elegant, theoretically-motivated interrogation of a key moment in political history: the appearance of populist mobilization in Latin America. Whereas this form of political organization and rhetoric—combining horizontal solidarity among the people with oppositional orientation toward the elite—has been associated with post-war Brazil and Argentina, Jansen argues that its first appearance can be found in the 1931 election in Peru. This is a lovely book.”
— Elisabeth S. Clemens, University of Chicago
“With populist politics recently becoming in vogue, Jansen’s Revolutionizing Repertoires is a welcome addition to the literature. . .Jansen does provide a unique perspective on the subject of political repertoires, while contributing to a much-needed conversation on populism in the modern era by exploring the history of an interesting and understudied political event. Scholars of social movements and politics should familiarize themselves with this book. . .especially if they are interested in studying the intersection between tactical innovation and populist politics.”
— Mobilization
“A detailed historical sociological account of the factors which led and enabled the two leading candidates of the 1931 election to effectively resort to populist mobilization. The book delivers a well-integrated combination of theoretical arguments and comparative empirical research.”
— Canadian Journal of Sociology
“The most important contribution of Revolutionizing Repertoires is that it offers political historians of modern Latin America (and elsewhere) a novel conceptual approach and a powerful rationale to study early twentieth- century Latin American electoral politics—a grossly neglected area of study. In particular, the book offers a useful corrective to the current vogue of distilling populism either to the charismatic authority and practice of a single caudillo or to a reductivist structuralism that emphasizes class-based analysis of electoral politics. Jansen’s book also reminds us that comparative sociology is alive and well—and has much to offer American sociology.”
— American Journal of Sociology
"Profoundly historical... it also employs narratives to explore the personalities and the chain of events to analyze what was, Jansen contends, a pathbreaking election in Latin America."
— Latin American Research Review
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction - Robert S. Jansen
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226487588.003.0001
[contentious politics;Peru;political innovation;political practice;populist mobilization;pragmatism;repertoires;social movements]
This introductory chapter opens with a brief description of the novel populist mobilization practices that Peruvian political actors elaborated over the course of their 1931 presidential campaigns—the book’s central outcome of interest. It then endeavors to accomplish four things. First, it establishes the significance of, and outlines what is puzzling about, this outcome from a historical perspective. Second, it translates the historical puzzle into more theoretical terms, framing the outcome as a case of change in repertoires of political practice. Third, it assesses existing ways of explaining repertoire change that can be found in the literatures on social movements and contentious politics, highlighting strengths and deficiencies. Finally, it develops a framework for explaining political innovation that is based in part on pragmatist theories of action and specifies how the book’s substantive argument will be developed in the remaining chapters. (pages 1 - 26)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
1/ Who Did What? Establishing Outcomes - Robert S. Jansen
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226487588.003.0002
[nineteenth century;Peru;political practice;populist mobilization;repertoires;twentieth century]
This chapter circumscribes the book’s outcome theoretically by sketching a definition of “populist mobilization” and clarifying how this differs from other modes of political practice. It then goes on to substantiate the outcome empirically by demonstrating that 1931 did indeed mark a moment of profound transformation in the Peruvian political repertoire. It does this through a survey of how political practice changed in Peru between when the country achieved independence from Spain, in the early nineteenth century, and the second half of the twentieth century. (pages 27 - 57)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
2/ The Social Context of Action: Economy, Infrastructure, and Social Organization - Robert S. Jansen
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226487588.003.0003
[context of action;contingency;Peru;political action;political outsiders;populist mobilization;social conditions;structuralist theories]
This chapter provides an overview of the significant social-structural transformations that Peru experienced in the first decades of the twentieth century. It then goes on to consider how the significance of these transformations should be understood. This exercise serves two important purposes for the book’s overall argument. First, it demonstrates that the dominant structuralist theories of populism cannot adequately explain the rise of populist mobilization in Peru. Second, it suggests that social-structural conditions matter, but not in the way that traditional structuralists think they do. While changing social conditions did not make populist mobilization inevitable, they did make it newly possible by generating new grievances, making new groups of potential supporters both politically available and logistically reachable, and laying the social groundwork for political organization and mobilization. Just as important, they formed part of the social context of action to which politicians of the day were subjectively oriented as they elaborated their lines of political action. The chapter argues that populist mobilization emerged in Peru in 1931 not because conditions were ripe, but because changes in what were still unripe conditions spurred creative action by contingently empowered political outsiders who were attuned to the possibilities that they afforded. (pages 58 - 78)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
3/ The Political Context of Action: Collective Actor Formation in a Dynamic Political Field - Robert S. Jansen
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226487588.003.0004
[collective actors;context of action;contingency;Luis M. Sánchez Cerro;Peru;political action;political field;political innovation;political outsiders;Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre]
This chapter, which focuses on the political context of action, explains how two collectivities of previously marginalized political actors, with personal and organizational characteristics that would dispose them to creative political action, crystallized and then came to find themselves in unlikely positions of viability on the national stage in Peru by May 1931. It argues that this was not an automatic byproduct of the changing social-structural conditions, but rather the result of contingent events and interactions unfolding within a dynamically changing field of political contention. Empirically, the chapter traces shifts in political relationships (both cooperative and antagonistic), as well as the formation and dissolution of collective actors, across four significant periods of reconfiguration of the political field that took place between 1918 and 1931. The ultimate state of the political field, and the resulting composition and characteristics of the collective actors, set the stage for the forces of Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre and Luis M. Sánchez Cerro—as contingently empowered political outsiders—to take their first steps toward political innovation in May of 1931. (pages 79 - 120)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
4/ The Sources of Political Innovation: Habit, Experience, and Deliberation - Robert S. Jansen
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226487588.003.0005
[APRA;Luis M. Sánchez Cerro;Peru;political innovation;political practice;populist mobilization;problem situation;Unión Revolucionaria;Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre]
This chapter excavates the sources of political innovation in the first few months of electoral campaigning in Peru’s 1931 election. At this critical moment, collective actors from across the political spectrum faced new challenges and opportunities, but they responded to these differently. Some continued to act in routine ways, while others began to cobble together novel packages of political practices. Through comparison of the initial actions of all major contenders, this chapter explains this variation. The explanation centers around an understanding of how these actors’ perceptions of the situation and of their practical strategic options were shaped by their previous experiences, worldviews, and habits of thought. Only the leadership of Luis M. Sánchez Cerro’s and Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre’s embryonic parties (Unión Revolucionaria and APRA) experienced the moment as constituting a critical problem situation that required a break with previous routines and a creative turn toward new forms of action. As these leaders began to experiment with new practices, it was their previous experiences—filtered through deliberative environments that facilitated radical departures from the norm—that led their practices to take on the characteristics of what would become a distinctly Latin American style of populist mobilization. (pages 121 - 152)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
5/ Practicing Populist Mobilization: Experimentation, Imitation, and Excitation - Robert S. Jansen
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226487588.003.0006
[APRA;electoral campaigning;grassroots organizing;Peru;political innovation;political parties;populist mobilization;rallies;rhetoric;Unión Revolucionaria]
Political innovation is a process that unfolds over time. New practices have to be tested on the ground, in specific situations in which others are also acting. Accordingly, this chapter follows the development of populist mobilization practices over the course of the last few months of electoral campaigning in Peru’s 1931 election, paying particular attention to how the political actors adapted their innovative practices to the context at hand, as well as to how these practices were refined over time as the actors assessed their own actions and responded to the actions of their competitors. It argues that the dynamic of competition between the two political parties, and their assessments of their own strategic successes—that is, their experiential learning from themselves and from one another—led to a ratcheting up of the practices that they had been enacting since May. Focusing in particular on the Unión Revolucionaria and APRA parties’ grassroots organizing efforts, their practices at mass rallies, and their political rhetoric, it shows how populist mobilization crystallized and gained in coherence between July and October of 1931. (pages 153 - 190)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
6/ The Routinization of Political Innovation: Resonance, Recognition, and Repetition - Robert S. Jansen
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226487588.003.0007
[Latin America;Peru;political practice;populist mobilization;repertoires;routinization]
This chapter explains how the new populist practices developed in 1931 became routinized in Peru. Just because a political actor does something does not mean that this action will succeed or that it will become a go-to political practice for others. For this new practice to enter into the repertoire in a stable way, it has to be repeated by others; and for this to happen, it has to resonate with popular audiences and be recognized as useful by other political actors. Populist mobilization, although new for the context, shared enough similarities with previous ideas and practices to avoid appearing entirely foreign to popular audiences; it produced recognizable successes for its practitioners; and it was subsequently picked up by other Peruvian actors. Furthermore, the fact that politicians in other Latin American countries were aware of these events played an important—though by no means simplistically determinative—role in the development of populist strategies elsewhere in the region. This chapter demonstrates that this was the case and shows how it happened. (pages 191 - 203)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Conclusion - Robert S. Jansen
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226487588.003.0008
[contentious politics;historical sociology;populism;pragmatism;theory]
This concluding chapter summarizes the book’s historical argument, presents a more schematic version of its pragmatist approach to repertoire change, and considers the implications of this approach for students of historical sociology and contentious politics. It closes with a few brief remarks of how the theoretical considerations that have shaped this book might inform continuing research into the problem of populism. (pages 204 - 216)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
