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La politica en las calles: entre el voto y la movilizacion: Buenos Aires, 1862 - 1880. By HILDA SABATO. Coleccion Historia y Cultura. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1998. Illustrations. Maps. Tables. Notes. 290 pp. Paper.
La politica en las calles is an analysis of the Argentine political system during the "Age of Mitre" (1862-80; after Bartolome Mitre, president of Argentina from 1862-68). This book explores how in Buenos Aires after the fall of Rosas in 1852 a wide range of asociaciones civiles began to emerge. Along with an active system of political journalism, these associations constituted an informal network of power, vaguely designated as "public opinion," that Sabato, following Habermas, defines as an incipient "civil society." This interpretation provides the basis for Sabato's main hypothesis. Against traditional views that consider parties and elections to be the fundamental institutions that link rulers and the ruled, Sabato counters that the system of civil associations in Buenos Aires was, in the years under study, even more determinant of political practices. This system articulated a notion of political representation that was (if not in actuality, at least ideally) more inclusive, democratic, and, ultimately, "modern" than political representation organized around parties and other formal mechanisms.
Part one of La politica en las calles...