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 there are rare moments when political practitioners break with routine and try something new. Jansen's case study sets out to examine what happens when the repertoire available to political actors is revolutionized. Fully 15 years before the coming to power in Argentina of Juan Peron, the case of Peru in 1931 demonstrates the effectiveness of a Latin American style of populist mobilization. Over the course of seven months of intense campaigning, the two prominent candidates, Victor Raul Haya de la Torre and Luis M. Sanchez Cerro, shook off established routine to develop novel political practices. Both candidates sought to mobilize previously marginalized groups of urban and rural workers and both developed similar strategies and tactics. In order to incorporate previously excluded supporters, they relied on grassroots organizing, staged unprecedentedly large and contentious mass rallies, and each charismatic candidate developed his own brand of populist rhetoric that stressed the common plight and moral virtues of ordinary Peruvians. These practices were radically new, but they eventually became routinized and transformed the political repertoire available to Latin American politicians. To understand this transformation, Jansen draws on American pragmatism, focusing his analysis on situated political innovation. This requires an approach that moves beyond conventional assumptions that follow from a politician's social position, material interests, identity, or ideological orientation. Pragmatism instead focuses on habit, perception, experiential learning, situated action, and?crucially?creativity. What other approaches are forced to hand off to the residual category, ?contingency," pragmatism can explain with micro-level patterns in the immediate context of action. Revolutionizing Repertoires provides a new approach for explaining repertoire change and demonstrates the utility of pragmatist perspectives for historical research on politics.
Industry Reviews
"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"
"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"
"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"
"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"
