Social mobilization and political changes: revisiting the concept of political action grammars

Abstract

As of 2003, when Nestor Kirchner took over as President of the Republic of Argentina, the dynamics of social mobilization experienced certain changes. What shape did the effects of social mobilization take? Were new action lines assimilated integrated or created? Did a reprint of populism occur as in the mid-twentieth century? Early studies were conducted based on the poststructuralist perspective, especially as of the work of Ernesto Laclau. Despite their contributions, this proposal supports itself on the opposition existing between moments of mobilization and of institutionalization. On the contrary, the aim of this article is to analyze such processes with a socio-political perspective, mainly based on the notion of the grammars of political action, taking into account the features adopted by such processes and the ways in which the effects of mobilization were institutionalized. Far from pretending being exhaustive, this paper studies the case of Argentina during “Kirchnerism” as the basis for this exercise of Political Sociology.