Social movements and free-market capitalism in Latin America : telecommunications privatization and the rise of consumer protest / Sybil Rhodes.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rhodes, Sybil, 1969-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Consumer protection--Latin America--History--20th century.

Consumer protection.

Protest movements--Latin America--History--20th century.

Protest movements.

Telecommunication--Privatization--Latin America--History--20th century.

Telecommunication.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (241 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Albany : State University of New York Press, c2006.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This innovative book examines how the privatization and reregulation of the telecommunications sectors in Chile, Argentina, and Brazil in the 1980s and 1990s provoked the rise of new consumer protest movements in Latin America. Sybil Rhodes looks at how hasty privatization of state-owned telephone companies led to short-term economic windfalls for multinational corporations but long-term instability due to consumer movements or the threat of them. Eventually these governments implemented consumer-friendly regulation as a belated form of damage control. In contrast, governments that privatized through more gradual, democratic processes were able to make credible commitments to their citizens as well as to their multinational investors by including regulatory regimes with consumer protection mechanisms built in. Rhodes illustrates how consumers—previously unacknowledged actors in studies of social movements, market reforms, and democratizations in and beyond Latin America—are indispensable to understanding the political and social implications of these broad global trends.

Contents:

Consumer movements

Explaining the emergence of consumer movements

Authoritarian privatization and delayed consumer mobilization in Chile

The "original sins" of privatization in Argentina

Contentious consumer mobilization in Argentina

The gradual and contested privatization of Brazil's "Telessauro"

"Post-Jurassic" regulation and contained consumer response

Democratizing free-market capitalism.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. 193-214) and index.

ISBN:

9780791482582

0791482588

9781423747901

1423747909

OCLC:

461442491