How to understand political and social transformation in Latin American politics after the arrival of left-wing governments? And what has been the role of movements of the poor in effecting those transformations? These are the two main questions that guide the work of Federico Rossi in this book, and they are addressed through analysis of the role of the piquetero (picketer) movement in the key transformations of the social and political arena in Argentina over the last 25 years. The analysis spans three large sections: a theoretical proposal regarding the repertoires of social movements, empirical analysis of the piqueteros, and a preliminary comparison of the Argentine case with Bolivian and Brazilian processes.

The theoretical framework proposed is developed in accordance with the goal of contributing to the literature on social movements as well as historical institutionalism. In so doing, Rossi proposes two central and novel concepts that help us to understand social movements as agents of change that act within institutional structures, of which their own trajectories of mobilisation are also part. The first concept is the repertoire of strategies, which includes not only the strategies of mobilisation outside the movement, but also those that help to construct the movement and keep people within it mobilised. The second is the stock of legacies, which includes all the practices the movement received from other social actors and previous political processes. These two concepts are very helpful in illustrating long-term processes of social mobilisation and change. That is to say, Rossi is able to put into words some intuitions that many scholars of social movements have developed in the effort to look beyond the ‘peak’ of social mobilisation or the cycles of mobilisation – to use Sidney Tarrow's concept (in El poder en movimiento, Alianza Editorial, 1997) – and analyse the mechanism of diffusion of not only collective action but also values, ideas and world visions.

The point of departure for the analysis of the process in Argentina, focusing on the role of the piqueteros, is a new classification according to their repertoires of strategies as opposed to their ideological orientation, the latter being the starting point of most works on the subject. However, the classification has almost as many types as movements, so it becomes almost redundant. Nevertheless, the story of the piquetero movement is very illustrative in two main ways. First, it enhances our understanding of the emergence and recognition of the ‘piquetero question’, as Rossi describes it, with a novel narrative that breaks with the traditional mechanistic approach of ‘emulation’ of the 1996 protests of Cutral-Có and Plaza Huincul and, by contrast, presents proper and solid information. Thus, Rossi is able to state and make strong arguments to explain how, even if the origins of the movements are in the events of Cutral-Có and Plaza Huincul, the movement is actually organised in Buenos Aires. Second, Rossi uses the concepts developed in previous chapters to review the emergence of the piquetero movement: political opportunity structure with vertical and horizontal dimensions, repertoire of strategies, stock of legacies and brokerage of important allies.

The following chapters explain the expansion and legitimation of the movement, considering features of the structure of political opportunities such as division among elites, changes in government alignments and the relevance of important allies such as human rights organisations and progressive sectors of the Catholic Church. In this expansion, Rossi emphasises the role of the movement in the mobilisations prior to the insurrection of December 2001, but not in the demonstrations that were on 19 and 20 December. These processes of organisation and mobilisation gave the piqueteros an important position in the Argentine political context that allowed them to be included, at least as a factor of consideration, in the decisions that were made by the governments after the crisis of 2001. All the Peronist governments in the aftermath of 2001 adopted responses towards the piquetero question, oscillating between repression and co-optation.

During Eduardo Duhalde's government, the repressive strategy had three main consequences: (i) new opportunities for developing alliances and constructing solidarity with other sectors; (ii) division of the piqueteros into two factions – electorist and abstentionist; (iii) fragmentation of the big coalition of organisations grouped under the label of the Coordinadora de Trabajadores Desocupados (Unemployed Workers’ Committee, CTD) Aníbal Verón. The strategy of co-optation, according to Rossi, operated through ‘the way of the state’ and ‘the way of the party’. Co-optation, of course, resulted in an increase in the inclusion of popular sectors compared to during the neoliberal period. This inclusion was political and social but it did not mean that all the piqueteros’ goals were achieved; for instance, political culture was not transformed, due to the persistence of Peronism. However, they broke the monopoly of the Justicialist Party and the General Labour Confederation as the main interlocutors of the demands of the popular sector.

In Rossi's argument, it is clear how organisations close to Peronist governments had the opportunity to participate through bureaucracy and social policies. Nevertheless, what is overlooked is that organisations in opposition to these governments also influenced the design of policies and the decision-making process by means of requiring that the state respond to their demands, even if in a repressive way, and by putting several issues beyond employment on the public agenda. This observation is derived from one of the major findings of Rossi's work: in the process of inclusion, most left-wing groups became more flexible and syncretic with their stock of legacies and visions of transformation, which helped enable them to achieve more in the short term, creating new opportunities for deepening their long-term aims.

The third section includes a comparison with the Bolivian and Brazilian cases, focusing on indigenous movements in the first case and the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra (Landless Workers’ Movement, MST) in the second. This is the weakest part of the book since it is too short and superficial. Focusing the criticism on the Bolivian case, framing it as an indigenous matrix, for example, is not accurate at all since social mobilisation in Bolivia went beyond ethnic questions. Finally, the idea of dignity, presented by the author at the beginning of the book, is missed during the analyses of the cases.

Despite limitations – which are present in any serious academic work – this book is remarkable and really helpful for those of us who are working on social movements and political transformation in Latin America.