Entangled institutional activism. Political experimentation in public management during Néstor Kirchner’s government in Argentina

Abstract

The literature has studied the strategies that social movements adopt to influence public policy. The notion of institutional activism captures one of them. However, there are different ways in which state positions can be occupied and a diverse range of effects that this activism can have. This article examines an unexplored type of institutional activism, what we call entangled institutional activism. That is, an activism that produces an institutional interlocking between movements’ practices within civil society and state institutional arenas and resources. We argue that this type of activism can result in the expansion of infrastructural capacities and legitimacy, both for the policy areas where the movements are incorporated as well as for social movements themselves. In this sense, this paper shows how social movements can be state builders and conversely, how the state can become a movement booster. We illustrate the argument by tracing two cases in Argentina, at the beginning of the 2000s: the creation of the Office of Popular Organization and Training, linked to the unemployed social movement, in the National Ministry of Social Development; and the creation of the National Program Against Impunity, linked to the human rights movement, in the National Ministry of Justice.