Dossier introduction "Social conflicts, collective action and democracy in Latin America"

Abstract

This dossier compiles a set of articles on the problem of collective action and socio-political conflict in democratic societies in Latin America. Today, conflict has undoubtedly become one of the constitutive aspects of social systems, and one that contributes to strengthening democratic processes. From the social sciences, the importance attributed to it –and its reverse, the social order- has served as a stimulus in recent decades to various reflections and conceptual developments with the aim of overcoming the limitations of political theories stemming from both liberalism (Sartori , 2001) and “deliberative” approaches (Habermas, 1998) that tend to consider conflict as a harmful element for the strengthening of democratic societies.