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http://jcr.sagepub.com/ Journal of Conflict Resolution

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DOI: 10.1177/0022002711400864

2011 55: 340 originally published online 24 April 2011Journal of Conflict Resolution

Fabiana Machado, Carlos Scartascini and Mariano TommasiPolitical Institutions and Street Protests in Latin America

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Political Institutionsand Street Protests inLatin America

Fabiana Machado1, Carlos Scartascini1, and

Mariano Tommasi2

Abstract

In this article, the authors argue that where institutions are strong, actors are more

likely to participate in the political process through institutionalized arenas, while

where they are weak, protests and other unconventional means of participation

become more appealing. The authors explore this relationship empirically by

combining country-level measures of institutional strength with individual-level

information on protest participation in seventeen Latin American countries. Theauthors find evidence that weaker political institutions are associated with a higher

propensity to use alternative means for expressing preferences, that is, to protest.

Keywords

political institutions, public policies, institutional strength, protests, alternative

political technologies, political party representation, Latin America

Institutional systems differ significantly in their capacity to absorb and processconflict. In some countries, for example Argentina, almost every contentious issue

finds thousands of people on the Plaza de Mayo, tractors blocking roads, and pickets

cutting a bridge in Neuquen. Yet in other countries, say Costa Rica, almost all

conflicts are disciplined by political parties and processed through the Congress, the

Presidency, or the Courts. Przeworski (2009, 2).

1Inter-American Development Bank, Washington, DC, USA2Departamento de Economıa, Universidad de San Andres, Victoria, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Corresponding Author:

Fabiana Machado, 1300 New York Avenue Northwest, Washington, DC, USA

Email: [email protected]

Journal of Conflict Resolution

55(3) 340-365

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DOI: 10.1177/0022002711400864

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Most countries in Latin America democratized in the 1980s. After a few decades

of uninterrupted democratic rule, many of them share an intermediate level of dem-

ocratic maturity and of institutional development. Yet, the study of policymaking incontemporary Latin America reveals important variation across countries and over

time in the strength and relevance of specific institutions such as the congress, the

judiciary, and the bureaucracy. Chile, for instance, is a country in which policies are

debated extensively both among the members of the executive branch and in Con-

gress, with rich input from the bureaucracy, advisory bodies, and think tanks, usually

affiliated with political parties. Once agreements are reached, both within and across

parties, policies are implemented by a technically competent bureaucracy, and

enforced by an independent judiciary.

Things could not be more different in its neighbor across the Andes. Argentinashares many cultural and structural similarities with Chile, however, its political

institutions are weaker. Placed in comparative perspective, Saiegh (2010), for exam-

ple, finds that the Argentinean congress ranks among the lowest in Latin America in

terms of the level of experience and qualification of legislators and the strength and

degree of specialization of committees. Moreover, Magaldi de Sousa (2010) argues

that Argentina ranks thirteenth out of eighteen Latin American countries on the

degree of judicial independence, measured as the extent to which judicial rulings are

respected and enforced, and the degree of autonomy enjoyed by the judiciary branch

both in terms of resources and insulation from political influence. Finally, Zuvanic,Iacoviello, and Gusta (2010) find that the Chilean bureaucracy is much stronger than

the Argentinean in its capacity to manage personnel performance and implement a

merit-based approach to career building.

Democracy offers a variety of channels and instruments for citizens to participate

in the political process. Through voting, one of the most basic democratic tools,

citizens select their representatives to public office and convey their preferences

over policy. In addition to such conventional channels, citizens have at their disposal

other means to affect political decisions. Protests and demonstrations, ranging

from simple marches to road blockades and even violence, are some prominentexamples.

The question we address in this article is that of the relationship between individ-

ual choices of channels to affect political decisions and the quality of political insti-

tutions. We argue that, in democracies, the workings of formal political institutions

and the use of violent means of expressing political demands are related phenomena.

As the opening caption by Adam Przeworski suggests, countries vary substantially

in the degree to which policy is made mainly through deliberation and bargaining in

institutionalized arenas, or by using alternative means such as violence. In some

countries policymaking through formalized arenas such as congress is central.In such cases, the political process is approximated reasonably well by standard

models of elections and bargaining that take place within formal political institu-

tions.1 In other cases, however, the making of policy is far less orderly, involving

a considerable amount of actions taken outside formal institutions.

Machado et al. 341








In Latin America, protests and other contentious strategies were common and

played an important role during democratization, declining somewhat afterwards

(Eckstein 2001; Hipsher 1996). The last decade, however, has witnessed a resur-gence of protest activity but to varying degrees of intensity and political relevance

across countries. In places like Argentina (Urbiztondo et al. 2009), Bolivia (Jemio,

Candia, and Evio 2009), Ecuador (Mejıa Acosta et al. 2008), and Peru, street protests

have become a very salient and meaningful way to achieve certain political objec-

tives and to express policy demands. In other cases, like Chile and Brazil, protests

are more sporadic and far less relevant to policymaking in general.

In Argentina, decisions are made as often in Congress as in the streets. Routinely,

the main arteries of Buenos Aires and some of the main highways connecting stra-

tegic locations in the countryside are shut down by protestors. The issues theyraise range from the distribution of social benefits, to fiscal and trade policy,

down to the country stance on foreign affairs.2 Protests and road blockades have also

become a popular means of affecting public policy in Bolivia and other countries in

the region.

Our claim is that the strength and relevance of formal political institutions are key

determinants of the individual and collective choice of channels of political partic-

ipation. When institutions are strong, actors are more likely to participate through

institutionalized arenas. When they are weak, however, protests and other unconven-

tional means or participation become more appealing.Considering our sample of seventeen Latin American countries, we find a strong

relationship between a measure of the strength of political institutions—considering

Congress, Courts, and the bureaucracy (explained in detail below)—and the percent-

age of respondents to the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP; 2008)

reporting protest participation in the past twelve months. We observe a clear nega-

tive relationship between the two, shown in Figure 1 online. Unconventional forms

of political participation tend to be chosen more often where institutions are of lower

quality.

The trade-offs between choosing institutionalized versus noninstitutionalized venues to affect political outcomes is also apparent when we consider the option

of contacting representatives in Congress. Still based on the LAPOP data for

2008, we notice that in those countries where people tend to contact a member

of Congress, they also tend to participate less in protests. In other words, in

countries where people choose alternative channels for influencing policies, they

tend to downplay the use of more institutionalized means (shown in Figure 23

online).

The remaining of the article is organized as follows. In the next section, we sum-

marize our theoretical framework to explore the relationship between protest and institutional strength. We go beyond mainstream models of policymaking within

formal institutions—dominant in the international literature—to consider the possi-

ble use of alternative political technologies such as protests. We outline a number of

propositions relating individual decisions to the degree of institutionalization of the

342 Journal of Conflict Resolution 55(3)








policymaking process. In the following section, we explore some of these proposi-

tions empirically by combining country-level measures of institutional strength with

individual-level information on protest participation in seventeen Latin American

countries. We find evidence that lower institutional strength is associated with a

higher propensity to protest, even after controlling for a number of individual-level determinants. Moreover, we find that, in countries with weaker institu-

tions—where even government parties tend to foment protest—individuals who feel

parties represent their constituencies better are more likely to protest. We then conclude

with a brief summary and discussion.

Institutional strength index

A v e r a g e

p r o t e s t p a

r t i c i p a t i o n

0.00

0.05

0.10

0.15

0.20

0.25

MEX

GUA

ELS

HON

NIC

CRI

PAN

COL

ECU

BOL

PER

PAR

URU

BRA

VEN

ARG

DOMX

NH

CRICOL

CU

AR

UR

N

0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5

Figure 1. Strength of political institutions and protest participation

Note: Institutional strength index varies from 0 (weakest) to 4 (strongest). Line indicates the fit of a bivari-ate ordinary least squares regression. Average protest participation corresponds to the percentage of respondents to the LAPOP surveys in 2008 reporting participation in protest during the past twelvemonths.

Machado et al. 343








Analytical Framework: Institutions and Alternative

Political Technologies

Political actors, be they groups—for example, political parties—or individuals, face

various alternatives when deciding how to engage in the collective processes leadingto public decisions. One set of alternatives that we call ‘‘the institutionalized road’’

includes, among other things, voting in elections, writing to representatives, design-

ing platforms, forming political parties, bargaining in Congress, and funding think

tanks. A different set of alternatives, which we have dubbed alternative political

Percentage who contacted member of congress

A v e r a g e

p r o t e s t p a r t i c

i p a t i o n

0.00

0.05

0.10

0.15

0.20

0.25

MEX

GUA

ELS

HON

NIC

CRI

PAN

COL

ECU

BOL

PER

PAR

URU

BRA

VEN

ARG

DOMX

UA

IC

CU

BR

VEN

DOM

0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06 0.07 0.08

Figure 2. Contacting representatives and protest participation

Note: Line indicates the fit of a bivariate ordinary least squares regression. Average protest participationcorresponds to the percentage of respondents to the LAPOP surveys in 2008 reporting participation inprotest during the past twelve months. Percentage who contacted member of Congress is the percentageof respondents to the LAPOP surveys in 2008 reporting having contacted a member of congress in orderto solve a problem.









technologies, or APT for short (Scartascini and Tommasi 2009), includes actions

such as blocking roads, burning tires, picketing, and threatening violent action.

These two sets of actions are commonly studied in isolation. On one side, most political analyses of decision-making focus on negotiations that happen within insti-

tutionalized settings and under the assumption that actors abide by the formal rules.

In those studies, political institutions are important because they define the rules of

the game. They have clear bearings on the number of actors and their incentives

while delineating the formal arenas in which action takes place. On the other side,

most empirical studies of protest focus on individual-level determinants, such as

motivational attitudes, dissatisfaction with policies, and grievances that encourage

this kind of participation.

We combine both perspectives. Controlling for the individual-level determinants,we explore the link between institutions and people’s decisions to take part in pro-

tests. The set of constraints and opportunities to participate in politics that different

institutional systems afford citizens and groups have been widely investigated. Some

political systems, especially the decentralized ones, offer a number of institutional

venues for citizens to influence decisions. Individuals can contact their local repre-

sentatives or those at the national legislature or even resort to the courts to safeguard

their interests. In fact, institutions that promote inclusion are usually associated with

a greater variety of political participation by individuals other than the crucial act of

voting (Dalton 2008; Norris 2002; Verba, Nie, and Kim 1978).In this study, we draw attention to an aspect of institutions that goes beyond the

set of formal rules. Our focus is on how well these institutions fulfill their prescribed

roles in the policymaking process. While the constitutional design of countries in our

sample tend to be similar, they differ considerably on the degree of expertise and

level of education of members of congress, on the degree of the de facto autonomy

of the judiciary from the executive branch both in matters of budget allocations and

appointment of judges, and also on the capacity of the bureaucracy to implement a

merit-based system to manage personnel.

To see why these are important issues, consider the case of legislatures. Both theArgentine and the U.S. Congress are guided by very similar constitutional structures

(Jones et al. 2002). While the U.S. Congress plays a central role in policymaking4

and in the oversight of the public bureaucracy, the Argentine legislature is often sub-

dued by the whims of the president. We would probably not predict such disparity

based on rules alone but would expect it considering the capabilities of both institu-

tions. The U.S. Congress is characterized by representatives serving multiple terms

in office, who have an incentive to acquire expertise in certain policy areas through

long-term assignments to specific policy committees. In the Argentine legislature,

reelection rates are lower, as are the educational attainment of representatives and their levels of policy expertise.5 Our claim is that the more institutions lack the

means to perform their duties well, the higher the incentives for citizens and groups

to try to affect the policymaking process through more direct (and less institutionalized)

channels, such as protests and demonstrations.

Machado et al. 345








When institutions are strong and capable, citizens expect decisions to be well

thought of, to have longer term horizons, and to follow more transparent negotiation

processes. They expect their input, conveyed through traditional institutional chan-nels, to matter. Citizens in developed democracies know that by appealing to a court,

for example, the constitutionality of a law will be considered (in cases where judicial

review is present) and that their rights, if affected by a certain policy, will be safe-

guarded. Moreover, they know that if they bring their plights to their representatives

there are good chances that these delegates, if willing, are able to do something about

their concerns.

When we move to an environment where institutions are weak, however, the

prospects are bleaker. Complaints brought to the judiciary might drag for years and

biases might arise. Representatives in the legislature will often lack the expertise and the ability to make good decisions and to effectively advocate for their constituen-

cies. Under such circumstances, people’s expectations of influencing policy through

institutional venues decline. Moreover, systems characterized by such weaknesses

tend to be more vulnerable to independent influences on the decision process.6 This,

in turn, increases the expected payoff of protests and other group actions that can

impose costs on decision makers if they fail to comply with the demands being

made.

This argument has been formalized in Scartascini and Tommasi (2009) based on a

setup, where individuals (or groups) are given the option to affect political decisionsthrough two distinct arenas: an institutionalized one, similar to those modeled in the

mainstream literature on policymaking within formal institutions (Persson and

Tabellini 2000), and an alternative arena characterized by unconventional forms

of participation. More specifically, citizens are given the option to pursue their pre-

ferred policy outcomes through Congress or directly through the threat of imposing

costs on society, such as road blockades.7

Individuals and groups decide the arena in which they will participate by compar-

ing the likelihood of obtaining their desired policy in each of these arenas. If they

decide to go through the street (the noninstitutionalized arena), their expected payoff is a function of the number of other people taking that same route—which deter-

mines the size of the threat imposed on decision makers—and the costs of participa-

tion. On one hand, the more people participate in protest, the bigger the threat and

the higher the expected benefit of joining it. On the other hand, the higher the costs

of organizing a protest, the lower the expected payoffs.8 If they choose

the institutional route through Congress, their probability of affecting the outcome

of the decision process is modeled following the legislative bargaining model of

Baron and Ferejohn (1989). That is, each individual has a positive probability of

becoming the agenda setter and thus to propose their preferred policy.Two scenarios are explored with respect to the institutionalized arena. In the first,

it is assumed that citizens have equal probabilities of being the agenda setter. Under

this assumption, the noninstitutionalized equilibrium occurs only if enough players

choose that route but no single player has a higher (or lower) incentive to do so.









In the second, it is assumed that some citizens are better able to secure their preferred

outcomes through Congress than others. Under such circumstances, some players

have a stronger incentive to engage in protest than others. Actors who see little or no chance of having their interests taken into account in the formal decision-making

process are more likely to take their plights to the streets.

The model thus recognizes and explores an important feature of the policymaking

process: that political decisions can take place outside formal institutions. Moreover,

the model draws our attention to the workings of political institutions as a relevant

factor in citizen’s choice of channels of political participation and to the collective

nature of political mobilization.

Democracies are representative governments, and the link between citizens’

interests and the outcomes of the policymaking process is mediated primarilythrough parties. The way in which they fulfill this role can have an important impact

on individuals’ decision to protest, as studies have pointed out.9 Parties are not

constrained to representing the preferences of their constituencies through institutio-

nalized means—for example, via their representatives in congress. As noted in

Eckstein (2001) this trend is not new. In earlier decades in Latin America, when

institutionalization was weak and most countries shifted regularly between demo-

cratic and autocratic rule parties played a fundamental role fomenting protests.

This nurturing relationship between parties and social protest movements declined,

however, once parties got ‘‘the upper hand’’ on political decisions (2001, 398).

10

Thus, parties, as organized groups of individuals, also have two types of mechan-

isms to attempt to achieve their constituents’ goals. They can place their bets in the

institutionalized channels of election, legislative debate, and technical discussions

or they can use their organizational capabilities to mobilize collective action in the

streets. When political decisions are made mainly through a well-functioning institu-

tionalized process, protests are likely to have a lower impact on decisions and the for-

mer strategy might prevail. When, on the other hand, institutions are weaker, protest

can be an effective way to affect decisions and the latter strategy more profitable.

Parties’ strategies should thus have important implications for the individual propensity to participate in protests. If representation is achieved primarily through for-

mal channels, citizens with stronger linkages to parties would be less likely to protest. If,

on the other hand, parties represent their constituencies’ interests primarily through

direct means, such as protest, then those closer to parties would be more likely to protest.

To summarize, we advance a number of empirical connections between the char-

acteristics of institutions and the decision of political actors to take part in protests.

First, we expect a negative correlation between institutional strength and the propen-

sity of individuals and groups to use alternative political technologies such as

protests. Protest should be more prevalent under weaker institutions, where individ-uals do not expect to obtain their desired political goals through the regular institu-

tional means. At the individual level, we would expect those for whom the collective

action costs of participation are lower and the expected benefits of more direct

means of political action are higher to be more likely to engage in protest.

Machado et al. 347








Protests in Latin America: Empirical Analysis

In this section, we estimate empirical models of protest participation that draw on the

theoretical framework just described. Our main data source is the LAPOP (2008)surveys conducted in seventeen Latin American countries.11 These surveys,

designed to be representative of the voting-age population in each of the countries,

cover a broad spectrum of topics ranging from assessments of the economic situation

to respondents’ engagement in different forms of political participation.

Our dependent variable is respondents’ answer to a question about how often they

have joined a demonstration or public protest during the past twelve months.

Possible answers included ‘‘never,’’ ‘‘almost never,’’ and ‘‘sometimes.’’ For the

purposes of our analysis, we collapse the categories ‘‘sometimes’’ and ‘‘almost never’’

and work with a dummy variable indicating whether an individual participated or not.12

As it is clear from Figure 1 in the Introduction, countries differ considerably on

the number of citizens drawn to the streets. While more than 25 percent of the

people surveyed reported protest participation in Argentina and Bolivia, less than

10 percent did so in countries like Brazil and Mexico. Even though the broader

literature on protest participation has found that some individuals are more likely

to protest than others—based on personal traits and predispositions—individual

characteristics alone cannot account for much of the observed variation. Thus, our

claim that, in addition to such basic personal characteristics, there exists a relevant

relationship between protest participation and the strength of political institutions.

Variables

We begin by introducing the individual-level measures. Drawing from the international

literature on protest participation, we include in the analysis a number of personal

features found to affect the probability of joining protests and demonstrations.

These include individuals’ perceptions of the workings of political institutions,

satisfaction with the current government, motivational attitudes, and basic socioeco-nomic attributes. These are all taken from the LAPOP survey.

On respondents’ perception of the workings of political institutions we consider

two variables. First, we include respondents’ reported levels of respect for political

institutions in their country (respect institutions). Countries vary in their institutional

strength, and so do individuals within countries on their perceptions about such

strength and relevance. Thus, we expect this measure to be negatively correlated

with protest participation. Second, we employ an item on the extent respondents feel

their interests are being represented by political parties ( parties represent ).

And, moreover, to gauge the levels of satisfaction with the current government,we use the reported intention to vote for the opposition candidate if elections were

to be held soon (vote opponent ).

A common group of variables found in the literature are those capturing general

political motivational attitudes. That is, individual factors and traits which affect









their propensity to participate in politics in general and protest in particular.

These include the intensity of political interest ( political interest ), the degree of

(self-reported) understanding of politics (understand politics), and the level of trustin other people (interpersonal trust ). Interpersonal trust is also directly related to the

collective nature of protests. Protests and demonstrations tend to be more successful

the greater the number of participants. Thus, the incentive to join such a group action

is positively correlated with the extent to which an individual believes that other

members will not defect on her.13

Equally relevant to the collective action issue faced by protesters are individuals’

propensity to engage in group activities in general. It is often argued that members of

unions, churchgoers, and those who engage in community activities are more likely

to participate in protests because these existing networks reduce the costs of organi-zation.14 Thus, we also control for such levels of civic engagement. We build an

index for each individual based on their attendance of religious ceremonies, local

community meetings, professional associations, labor union, and political party

rallies ( group meeting ).

Another factor receiving increased attention in the literature is the relationship

between individuals’ experience with corruption (corruption experience) and protest

engagement. Previous studies have found that perceptions of public corruption

increase the individual likelihood of participating in protests. Authors such as

Gingerich (2009) and Kiewiet de Jonge (2009) argue that corruption victimizationmay be a grievance that lowers the collective action cost of protest due to the manner

in which it affects the attribution process.

Finally, we include a set of sociodemographic controls. The belief that the rich

and more educated are more likely to engage in political participation in general, and

in demonstrations in particular, is widespread, at least in the developed-country

literature (Anderson and Mendes 2005; Booth and Seligson 2008). First, organizing

and participating in protests are costly enterprises that not everyone is able to afford.

Thus, material resources should matter. Second, it is commonly believed that such

forms of political participation presuppose some degree of awareness and under-standing of the political process that the well educated are more likely to possess.

In this view, the better educated are seen as better informed, more critical, and more

engaged individuals. Thus, we control for level of education (measured as last-grade

completed), income (measured in log form), and for age (a continuous variable) and

gender (a dummy variable where 1 denotes male).15

As country-level covariates, we use indicators of the workings of the legislature,

the judicial branch, and the bureaucracy, compiled by research organizations.

These are three important institutions that we believe can affect individuals’

decisions of arenas of political participation. We draw our measure of CongressCapabilities from the Global Competitiveness Report, which focus on the effective-

ness of a country’s lawmaking body. We take the average of this measure over the

years 2003–2005. The degree of Judicial Independence, that is, the extent to which

the judicial branch is not subject to interference by the government and parties to the

Machado et al. 349








disputes, is drawn from the Fraser Institute of Economic Freedom Report (averaged

over the years 2000–2007). Finally, Bureaucratic Quality ratings are taken from the

International Country Risk Guide and averaged over the years 2000–2005.

16

Each of these measures captures both the specificities associated with the partic-

ular institution they portray and some general characteristics of the institutional

environment. In order to compute a summary indicator of institutional strength,

we use factor analysis. Results indicate that these three measures display a strong

common element that we take as a proxy for institutional strength.

Estimation

As is clear from the previous discussion, we believe protest is associated with a

number of factors. First, protests are determined by individual-level factors, which

might affect protest participation differently in different countries.17 Second, the

likelihood of protest participation may be related to country characteristics that

might be associated with protests both directly and through their relationships with

individual-level covariates. Given the complexity of these relationships and to better

understand the multilevel structure of the data we perform several exercises.

We begin exploring these relationships by running simple regressions containing

both the country-level covariates—our index and each of its components—and the

individual-level characteristics. A rich debate currently exists on the best strategy

to analyze multiple country survey data given that panel data methods were found

to be inappropriate.18 Following the discussion in Gelman and Hill (2006) and

results in Leoni (2009), we estimate these first regressions in two ways. First, we run

a pooled specification, using the jackknife procedure clustering by country to calcu-

late the standard errors. We run a logit specification given the dichotomous nature of

the dependent variable, as follows:

Pr y j i½ ¼ 1À Á

¼ logitÀ1 a þ X j i½ b1 þ U j b2

À Á; for i ¼ 1; . . . ; n j and j ¼ 1; . . . ; 17; ð1Þ

where i indexes individuals, j [i] means individual i belongs to country j , y j [i] ¼ 1

means individual i reported participation in protest in the past twelve months, X is

a matrix containing all individual-level covariates, and U is a matrix containing the

country-level covariates. n j is the number of individuals in country j .

This specification relies, however, on assumptions that might be too strong.

First, we are assuming that all country-level variation is explained by our aggregate

measures. Second, unless the individual-level variables are interacted with the

aggregate measures they are assumed fixed across countries. To relax somewhat

these assumptions, we also run a semipooling specification where we allow for randomcountry intercepts, as follows:

Pr y j i½ ¼ 1À Á

¼ log itÀ1 a j þ X j i½ b1 þ U j b2

À Á; for i ¼ 1; . . . ; n j and j ¼ 1; . . . ; 17 ð2Þ

a j $ N ma;s2a

À Á; for j ¼ 1; . . . ; 17:









In the next step, we estimate regressions by country to explore possible variations

in the estimated effects of individual-level characteristics on the likelihood to protest.

Following the estimation of these seventeen regressions, we look at simple correla-tions between the estimated coefficients—on individual characteristics—and the

institutional features of the countries. This provides us with preliminary evidence

on the degree to which country characteristics explained the fact that respondents

with the same individual traits have different propensities to protest.

Based on these results, we specify the full model, which includes both the

country-level covariates and its interaction with the individual-level variables of

interest. This model is also run based on both specifications discussed above.19

Results

Both the random intercepts and the clustered jackknife specifications yield very

similar results. Given these similarities, in Table 1 we present just the results of the

random intercepts logit estimations, following equation (2). We note the differences

in results where applicable. Except for ratings of the quality of the bureaucracy, all

proxies of the functioning of institutions have a negative and significant estimated

effect on the likelihood of protest participation. That is, in countries where these

institutions work better the propensity of individuals to take it to the streets, controlling

for individual-level factors is significantly lower. We also find that individual reported levels of respect for institutions is negatively related to the propensity to protest.

Regarding individual motivational attitudes, with the exception of self-declared

understanding of politics, the estimated effects are positive and significant, corrobor-

ating the claims usually found in the literature. Personal experience with corruption,

as highlighted in many recent accounts of protest participation that focuses on grie-

vances as an important motivator, is also estimated as positive and significant.

Lastly in this set, individuals’ engagement in group activities—such as those pro-

moted by churches, unions, and community groups—seem to exert a strong positive

effect. This is compatible with accounts of group activism as a means of decreasingorganizational costs, thus vouching for the importance of collective action issues on

the individual decision to protest.

Individual’s intention to vote for the opponent if elections were to take place soon

appears to have a strong and significant effect on protest participation. This corro-

borates the view that dissatisfaction with the performance of the current government

can encourage citizens to engage in demonstrations. With respect to socioeconomic

controls, based on the random-intercepts specification, the better educated, more

resourceful, and younger individuals are more likely to protest. Based on the jackknife

estimation, however, both age and income fail to attain statistical significance.Gender, in both models, is not significant.

While interpersonal trust appears to be positively and significantly associated

with protest participation under the random-intercepts specification, it is not under

the alternative jackknife estimation. Furthermore, whether or not parties are

Machado et al. 351








T a b l e 1 .

L o

g i t E s t i m a t i o n R e s u l t s f o r P r o

t e s t P a r t i c i p a t i o n B a s e d o n R a n d o m - I n t e r c e p t s S p e c i f i c a t i o n s

( 1 )

( 2 )

( 3 )

( 4 )

( 5 )

L e g i s l a t u r e e f f i c i e n c y

– 0 . 6

5 * * ( . 2 8 )

B u r e a u c r a c y i n d e x

0 . 1

7 ( . 2 3 )

J u d i c i a l i n d e p e n d e n c e

– 0 . 1

6 * * ( . 0 7 )

I n s t i t u t i o n a l s t r e n g t h i n d e x

– 0 . 3

8 * * ( . 1 7 )

– 0 . 0 9

( . 1 9 )

R e s p e c t i n s t i t

u t i o n s

– 0 . 0

6 * ( . 0 1 )

– 0 . 0

6 * ( . 0 1 )

– 0 . 0

5 * ( . 0 1 )

– 0 . 0

5 * ( . 0 1 )

– 0 . 0 6 *

( . 0 1 )

P a r t i e s r e p r e s e n t

0 . 0

1 ( . 0 2 )

0 . 0

1 ( . 0 2 )

0 . 0

1 ( . 0 2 )

0 . 0

1 ( . 0 2 )

0 . 1 0 *

( . 0 3 )

I n s t i t u t i o n s Â

p a r t i e s r e p r e s e n t

– 0 . 0 8 *

( . 0 2 )

E x p e r i e n c e w

i t h c o r r u p t i o n

0 . 2

1 * ( . 0 4 )

0 . 2

1 * ( . 0 4 )

0 . 2

1 * ( . 0 4 )

0 . 2

1 * ( . 0 4 )

0 . 2 1 *

( . 0 4 )

I n t e r p e r s o n a l

t r u s t

0 . 0

8 * ( . 0 3 )

0 . 0

8 * ( . 0 3 )

0 . 0

8 * ( . 0 3 )

0 . 0

8 * ( . 0 3 )

0 . 0 8 *

( . 0 3 )

V o t e f o r o p p o n e n t

0 . 3

2 * ( . 0 6 )

0 . 3

2 * ( . 0 6 )

0 . 3

2 * ( . 0 6 )

0 . 3

2 * ( . 0 6 )

0 . 3 2 *

( . 0 6 )

I n t e r e s t i n p o

l i t i c s

0 . 3

3 * ( . 0 3 )

0 . 3

3 * ( . 0 3 )

0 . 3

3 * ( . 0 3 )

0 . 3

3 * ( . 0 3 )

0 . 3 3 *

( . 0 3 )

U n d e r s t a n d p

o l i t i c s

0 . 0

2 ( . 0 2 )

0 . 0

2 ( . 0 2 )

0 . 0

3 ( . 0 2 )

0 . 0

3 ( . 0 2 )

0 . 0 3 *

* * ( . 0 2 )

P a r t i c i p a t i o n i n g r o u p m e e t i n g s

0 . 6

6 * ( . 0 3 )

0 . 6

6 * ( . 0 3 )

0 . 6

5 * ( . 0 3 )

0 . 6

5 * ( . 0 3 )

0 . 6 6 *

( . 0 3 )

A g e

– 0 . 0

0 * * ( . 0 0 )

– 0 . 0

0 * * ( . 0 0 )

– 0 . 0

0 * * ( . 0 0 )

– 0 . 0

0 * * ( . 0 0 )

– 0 . 0 0 *

* ( . 0 0 )

M a l e

0 . 0

5 ( . 0 5 )

0 . 0

6 ( . 0 5 )

0 . 0

7 ( . 0 5 )

0 . 0

8 ( . 0 5 )

0 . 0 5

( . 0 5 )

E d u c a t i o n

0 . 0

5 * ( . 0 1 )

0 . 0

5 * ( . 0 1 )

0 . 0

5 * ( . 0 1 )

0 . 0

5 * ( . 0 1 )

0 . 0 5 *

( . 0 1 )

L o g ( i n c o m e )

0 . 0

7 * ( . 0 2 )

0 . 0

7 * ( . 0 2 )

0 . 0

7 * ( . 0 2 )

0 . 0

7 * ( . 0 2 )

0 . 0 7 *

( . 0 2 )

C o n s t a n t

– 2 . 7

5 * ( . 6 3 )

– 4 . 4

4 * ( . 4 9 )

– 3 . 6

6 * ( . 3 0 )

– 3 . 6

7 * ( . 2 9 )

– 3 . 9 8 *

( . 3 1 )

O b s e r v a t i o n s

1 6 , 0

2 2

1 6 , 0

2 2

1 6 , 0

2 2

1 6 , 0

2 2

1 6

, 0 2 2

N u m b e r o f c o u n t r i e s

1 7

1 7

1 7

1 7

1 7

N o t e : S t a n d a r d

e r r o r s i n p a r e n t h e s e s .

* p < . 0

1 .

* * p <

. 0 5 .

* * * p < . 1 .

352 at PONTIFICIA UNIV CATOLICA on May 13, 2013 jcr.sagepub.comDownloaded from







perceived to fulfill their representative duties turn out to be insignificant in both

cases. That being said, constraining the estimated effects to be the same across coun-

tries can conceal important cross-country differences. We investigate these next.

Results displayed in Figure 3 suggest there can be significant variation in the

estimated effect of individual-level variables. The usual controls capturing individ-

uals’ motivational attitudes tend indeed to have a positive and significant effecton the likelihood of protest participation. The results on socioeconomic variables,

however, are less straightforward. While education tends to have a positive effect,

income, gender, and age display very different estimated effects depending on the

country. In Panama, for example, it seems like the poorer were more likely to report

protest participation, while the opposite is true in Venezuela, Uruguay, and Bolivia.

With respect to the belief that parties represent their constituencies’ interests, we

observe contrasting effects across countries. In Ecuador and Venezuela the effect is posi-

tive and significant, but in Uruguay and Brazil it is negative and significant. Based on the

accounts of party involvement in protests discussed in the previous section these results arenot surprising. Nor is the factthat this variation can be in part accounted for by the quality of

institutions. As shown in Figure 4 online, in countries where institutions are stronger, those

who believe that parties represent their constituencies were less likely to protest. Conver-

sely, under weaker institutions, those holding similar beliefs were more likely to protest.

Countries

V a r i a b l e s

Log income

Education

Male

Age

Understand politics

Interest politics

Group meeting

Vote opponent

Interpersonal trust

Experience corruption

Parties represent

Respect institutions

ARG BOL BRA COL CRI DOMECU ELS GUAHON MEX NIC PAN PAR PER URU VEN

Coefficients

Positive, significant

Positive

Negative

Negative, significant

Figure 3. Country-by-country regression results.Note: Each column corresponds to one of the seventeen countries, which are labeled on the x -axis. Each

row reports the sign and significance of the estimated coefficients on each of the independent variables.The threshold used to establish the significance of the estimated coefficients was a z score of 1.69 ormore, corresponding to a 90 percent confidence interval around the estimate not including zero.

Machado et al. 353








This finding is consistent with our proposition that in a well-functioning institu-

tional setting, parties are able to fulfill their primary role as representatives through

conventional political institutions, thus reducing their (and their constituencies’)

expected benefits from participating in protest is low. When institutions are weaker,

however, the best way for parties to represent their constituencies’ interests might

indeed be to voice them through unconventional means. While the percentage of

respondents reporting that parties represent them well is substantially lower in

weaker institutional environments, these fewer individuals tend to be those more

likely to take part in demonstrations.An alternative interpretation of these results, not inconsistent with our general

argument, is that clientelistic parties, more common under weak institutions, might

explain both participation in protest and feelings of representation. This is because of

the gifts doled out by clientelistic parties to protesters in exchange for their

0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5

–0.3

–0.2

–0.1

0.0

0.1

0.2

0.3


C o e f f i c i e n t s o f p a r t i e s r e p r e s e n t c o n s t i t u e n c i e s

Figure 4. The relationship between estimated coefficients by country and institutionalstrengthNote: Points in the figure represent the estimated coefficients and bars represent + the estimated stan-dard error. The gray line is the fitted line of a simple bivariate ordinary least squares regression of theestimated coefficients on the institutional strength index.









participation. We found, however, no preliminary evidence of this relationship.

Using a measure of the extent to which parties are programmatic rather than cliente-

listic, from Jones (2010), we found no significant relationship between participationin protest and feeling represented by parties. In fact, if we replicate our estimations

with this measure in place of our institutional index, both the individual coefficient

on level of clientelism and its interaction with parties represent are not significant.

Moreover, looking within countries, we found that in Chile—the only country

with a question on experience with clientelism—receiving material gifts from par-

ties is negatively and significantly associated with agreeing that parties represent

their constituencies. That is, the higher the exposure to clientelism, the lower the

feeling of party representing their constituencies well.

While suggestive, the result presented in Figure 4 (online) should be taken with agrain of salt, however, since we are not correcting for the fact that the dependent

variable in this exercise—that is, the coefficients by country—is estimated. We now

move on to consider a specification where we include this interaction between

institutional strength and parties represent .20 Results are presented in column 5 of

Table 1. Again, we get very similar results from both the jackknife and the

random-intercepts specifications (save for the same factors mentioned earlier: age,

income, and interpersonal trust). We thus decide to report just the latter.21

In general, the results obtained in the previous exercises continue to hold under

the full specification, including the relationship depicted on Figure 4 (online). Asshown in Table 1 column 5, the estimated coefficient on whether a respondent

believes parties represent their constituencies’ interests is positive but that effect is

dampened as institutional strength increases (negative sign of the interaction term).

While the results reported in Table 1 column 5 provide us with information on the

sign and significance of the coefficients of interest, their scope and actual effects are

difficult to grasp just by looking at these numbers. The nonlinearity of the specifica-

tion and the use of interaction terms complicate their interpretation. For clarity of

exposition, we discuss the results through the use of predicted probabilities calcu-

lated for meaningful profiles of individuals. We perform these calculations based on the random-intercepts specification.

Given the homogeneity of results with respect to personal motivational attitudes,

we set the individual profiles in the exercise that follows to one corresponding to a

‘‘highly motivated individual,’’ while letting the variables of interest vary. A highly

motivated individual is one that is interested in politics (value set at 3 on a 1–4

scale), would vote for the opponent if elections were to be held soon (dummy set

to 1), trusts people (set to 3 on a 1–4 scale), and displays a high degree of understand-

ing of the main issues in politics (set to 5 on a 1–7 scale). Since experience with cor-

ruption and levels of respect for institutions also turned out to be uniformly relevantin all countries, we set these variables to their sample mean values. The same is

done with the socioeconomic characteristics—education (set to nine years), income

(US 164 PPP) and age (set to thirty years old). It is worth noting that we replicated

the exercise shown below with average motivational attitudes with very similar results.

Machado et al. 355








The objective is to explore how these motivated individuals are led to take actual part in protest depending on their perceptions of parties’ as representatives and the

strength of institutions in their countries. Figure 5 displays evidence of both a direct

and an indirect (through parties’ strategies) effect of institutional strength on the

individual propensity to protest. The results thus suggest that the same logic leading

individuals to circumvent weak institutions and take it to the streets seems to hold for

parties as well.

In Figure 5, we compute the predicted probabilities of two profiles of individuals.

The first corresponds to an individual who agrees that parties represent constituen-

cies well—we set this item to the value of 6. The second represents an individualwho believes the opposite—we set the answer to 1. All other variables are assigned

the values specified earlier. Additionally, we compare these two profiles of individ-

uals at varying levels of our institutional strength index. The panel on the left dis-

plays, for each value of the institutional strength index, the pair of predicted

probabilities corresponding to the individual who agrees and to the individual who

disagrees with the party statement. On the panel on the right, we plot the differences

between these pairs of predicted probabilities with their standard errors, in order to

know in which cases they are significantly different.

Regarding the direct effect of the institutional strength index, it is particularly

strong in the case of individuals who rate parties as doing a good job representing

their interests. This individual has an estimated probability of engaging in protest

of around 37 percent if he or she lives in a country with weak institutions. The same

individual in a country with stronger institutions has an estimated probability of


P

r e d i c t e d

p r o b a b i l i t i e s : p r o t e s t p a r t i c i p a t i o n

0.10

0.15

0.20

0.25

0.30

0.35

0 1 2 3 4


0 1 2 3 4

F i r s t d i f f e r e n c e s : a g r e e

–

d i s a g

r e e

–0.2

–0.1

0.0

0.1

0.2

Figure 5. The effect of believing parties represent constituencies well under institutions of varying strengthNote: Vertical bars represent 90 percent confidence intervals. Triangles represent the profile of anindividual who agrees with the statement that parties represent constituents well (Answer Category 6).Circles represent the profile of an individual who disagrees (Answer Category 1) with the statement.









protesting that falls well below 10 percent. We also observe a drop in the case of

individuals more dissatisfied with the actions of parties but a less abrupt one. Those

believing parties do not represent constituencies well have an estimated likelihood of engaging in protest of around 30 percent under weak institutions and of 12 percent

under better institutions.

Inspection of the data shows that the number of respondents agreeing with the

statement about parties is much lower under weaker institutions than under stronger

ones. Thus, it seems that as institutions improve, so does the ability of parties to

convey a sense of truly representing the interests of their constituencies. Conceivably,

in weak institutional settings it is easier for parties to affect political decisions through

more direct actions. As discussed before, this strategy has been adopted even by the

president’s party (or faction) in Argentina.

Conclusion

Different features of political institutions have been used to explain political and

policy outcomes. Most of this literature relies on the proper functioning of institu-

tions, assuming that all outcomes are produced in a fully institutionalized manner.

While countries at distinct stages of development might share political processes

characterized by very similar rules and procedures, their actual functioning can

differ considerably.In this article, we explore the consequences of this fundamental contrast, in

particular how it affects individuals’ choices of channels of political participation.

We argued that when institutions of policymaking function well, actors are more

likely to participate through institutionalized arenas, whereas when they are weak

more direct channels of participation might be chosen.

We explored this relationship empirically with a particular focus on one promi-

nent type of direct participation: street protests. We thus combined country-level

measures of institutional strength with individual-level information on protest

participation in seventeen Latin American countries. Our results suggest that insti-tutional strength is indeed associated with lower protest participation by groups of

individuals. We also uncovered an interesting interaction between individual features

and institutional strength. In particular, we find that those who believe that political

parties represent their constituencies well are less likely to participate in protest in

countries where institutions are relatively strong but more likely to do so in countries

with weak institutions. We interpret this result as an indication that, just like individ-

uals, parties also choose between the more institutionalized versus the less institutio-

nalized channels in representing the interests of their constituencies.

In countries where political actors are more likely to ‘‘play by the book,’’ bargainingand decision making tend to be fairly institutionalized. This, in turn, generates incen-

tives for individuals to invest in the strengthening of these institutions and on their capa-

cities to affect decisions from within them. If, on the other hand, most actors believe the

best way to affect decisions is through alternative means such as protests, the incentives

Machado et al. 357








to develop strong and well-functioning institutions will be much lower. Given this

feedback effect, investing in the proper functioning of institutions can create a vir-

tuous cycle.

Appendix: Description of Variables Employed

Institutional strength index: this measure is scaled to the interval 0— low quality and

3.5— high quality. It was computed based on factor analysis of four indicators:

Effectiveness of lawmaking bodies (1 ¼ very ineffective to 7 ¼ very effective)

from the GCR (average over 2003–2005);

Fraser index of independence of the judiciary (average over 1995–2003); International Country Risk Guide ‘‘Bureaucracy Quality’’ rating (average over

1984–2001). High points are given to countries where the bureaucracy has the

strength and expertise to govern without drastic changes in policy or interrup-

tions in government services. In these low-risk countries, the bureaucracy tends

to be somewhat autonomous from political pressure and to have an established

mechanism for recruitment and training.

Parties represent voters: ‘‘To what extent political parties represent their voters

well? 1—not at all, 7—to a great extent.’’Respect institutions: ‘‘To what extent do you respect the political institutions of

(country)?’’ 1—not at all, 7—a lot.

Political interest: ‘‘How interested are you in politics? 1—a lot, 2—somewhat, 3—

a little, 4—not at all.’’ We reverse the scale of this variable for estimation.

Understand politics: ‘‘I feel I have a good understanding of the most important

political issues in this country. 1—strongly disagree, 7—strongly agree.’’

Interpersonal trust: ‘‘How much do you trust people you meet for the first time? 1—

trust completely, 2—trust somewhat, 3—trust a little, 4—don’t trust at all.’’ We

reverse the scale of this variable for estimation.Would vote for opponent: ‘‘If presidential elections were to be held this weekend

who would you vote for? 1—would not vote, 2—would vote for the incumbent, 3—

would vote for the challenger, 4—would vote blank.’’ This variable was employed as

dummies for each category setting the second as a baseline (not included in the

specification).

Corruption experience: In this index, we add the number of reported times a

respondent was asked to pay a bribe by either a public servant, a police officer, or

to keep services like electricity going.

Group meeting: Factor analysis of the following items: ‘‘I am going to read a list of groups and organizations. Please tell me if you attend their meetings at least once a

week, once or twice a month, once or twice a year, or never: (a) meetings of any reli-

gious organization; (b) meetings of a committee or association for community

improvement; (c) meetings of an association of professionals, traders, or farmers;









(d) meetings of a labor union; and (e) meetings of a political party or political

movement?’’

Acknowledgments

We thank the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) and its major supporters

(the United Stated Agency for International Development, the United Nations Development

Program, the Inter-American Development Bank, and Vanderbilt University) for making the

data available. We are grateful to Eduardo Aleman, Rafael Di-Tella, Thad Dunning, panel

participants at the LACEA and the MPSA annual meetings, seminar participants at the

University of Rochester and the Yale Conference on Fighting and Voting, and two anonymous

referees for valuable comments and suggestions. We are also indebted to Natasha Falcao and

Melisa Ioranni for their research assistance. The views and interpretations in this documentare those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Inter-American Development Bank

or to any individual acting on its behalf. All the material necessary to replicate the data anal-

ysis are available for download at the journal’s website.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,

and/or publication of this article.

Funding

Mariano Tommasi acknowledges the financial support and hospitality of the Research Depart-

ment at the Inter-American Development Bank

Notes

1. There are various reasons to expect more institutionalized collective decision-making

arenas to lead to better policies and better outcomes. According to Pierson (2004, 107),

‘‘political institutions can serve to coordinate the behavior and expectations of decentra-

lized actors (Carey 2000) and to facilitate bargaining by creating monitoring bodies, issuelinkages, and mechanisms for making credible commitments (Kehoane 1984; Weingast

2002).’’ Scartascini, Stein, and Tommasi (2009) shows that more institutionalized

policymaking environments lead to policies that are more stable, (yet) more adaptable to

changing circumstances, more coordinated and coherent, and better implemented.

2. Between June 2009 and April 2010 there were 2,303 road blockades in Argentina. These

blockades have taken place across the country, involving different groups, and a variety

of topics. Monthly reports and more disaggregated information are available at http://

diagnosticopolitico.com.ar.

3. All figures in the article were produced using ggplot by Wickham (2009) in R statistical package.

4. It tends tobe the focus of and the mainentry point for the political influence of interest groups.

See, for instance, Weingast and Marshall (1988); Shepsle and Weingast (1995); Diermeier,

Keane, and Merlo (2005); and Grossman and Helpman (2001) and references there.

Machado et al. 359








5. See Jones et al. (2002) and Spiller and Tommasi (2008) for details on the Argentine

Congress. Saiegh (2010) and Stein and Tommasi (2007) provide wider cross-country

comparisons. Such analyses constitute the background for the empirical measures of insti-tutional strength we use in this article. Similar analyses and data-building efforts to those

focused on Congress have been performed for the Judiciary (Inter-American Development

Bank [IADB] 2005; Magaldi de Sousa 2010), political party systems (IADB 2005; Jones

2010), and bureaucracies (IADB 2005; Zuvanic, Iacoviello, and Gusta 2010).

6. In some cases, protest indeed impacts policy decisions in important ways. Just to cite

a few examples, in Bolivia, teachers and police officers got substantial raises and benefits

after they took their claims to the streets. A very influential protest that opposed the

attempt of the government of Bolivia to change the tax system ended with the reform and

ultimately with the government of President Sanchez de Lozada. Three other presidentsin the region were forced to step down as a result of popular protests just a few years apart

(Mihaly 2006). Protests by the rural sector in Argentina forced Congress to decide against

a proposal by the executive to raise taxes on agricultural exports and ignited a political

conflict that has weakened the popularity and power of the Kirchner administration (a

chronology of events can be followed in http://www.clarin.com/diario/2008/07/21/

elpais/p-01719603.htm).

7. Costs incurred because of a road blockade can be substantial. For example, they may

create shortages in certain products which would increase prices—for example,

blockades in Peru made prices raise substantially—34 percent for carrots—in the capitalof Peru. (http://gestion. pe/impresa/noticia/bloqueo-carreteras-afecta-abastecimiento-

alimentos-lima/2009-06-24/5655). They may also restrict certain industries to operate

normally—for example, road blockades in Argentina had an impact in the tourism sector,

where demand for bus tickets fell more than 60 percent. (http://www.lagaceta.com.ar/

nota/276263/Argentina/Se_agrava_desabastecimiento_piquetes_rut as.html).

8. Protest activity is undoubtedly subject to the usual collective action problems. In sev-

eral of the countries in our sample in the year of analysis, there were some dominant

types of protesters (agricultural producers and unemployed piqueteros in Argentina,

indigenous organizations in Bolivia), each with its own organizational issues. Givenour emphasis on the ‘‘contextual’’ variables relating to the institutional environment

(that might encourage any of these ‘‘collectivities’’ to protest), we do not enter into

much detail about how these collective action issues are resolved. For a recent survey

of the subject, we refer the reader to Oliver, Cadena-Roa, and Strawn (2003).

9. In Argentina, even the late former president and leader of the government party had no

quandaries to declare that he was not concerned about the opposition party gaining con-

trol of the legislative committees in congress because the government party still con-

trolled the street (‘‘Si nos quieren echar de todas las comisiones, que lo hagan;

tenemos las calles del pueblo’’ available at http://m.lanacion.com.ar/1204204-kirchner-

si-nos-quieren-echar-de-todas-las-comisiones-que-lo-hagan-tenemos-las-calles-del-pueblo).

Moreover, when analyzing our survey data we have found that, in many countries, individuals

that declared being represented by parties and who reported protest participation in the last

twelve months tended to also report being close to the party of the president.









10. This kind of strategic thinking is noted by Hipsher with respect to Chile and Spain.

As argued by the author, ‘‘Political parties in Chile and Spain, which had once actively sup-

ported insurgent activities by movements and had defined democracy in terms of grassroots participation and fundamental political and economic reforms, abandoned these stra-

tegies and goals to support a limited democracy, defined as the absence of military

rule. In an attempt to preserve democratic stability and not provoke the Right, the

parties discouraged protest and encouraged institutionalized forms of political participation’’

(273, 1996).

11. The countries and respective number of observations are: Mexico (1560), Guatemala

(1538), El Salvador (1549), Honduras (1522), Nicaragua (1540), Costa Rica (1500),

Panama (1536), Colombia (1503), Ecuador (3000), Bolivia (3003), Peru (1500), Paraguay

(1166), Uruguay (1500), Brazil (1497), Venezuela (1500), Argentina (1486), and theDominican Republic (1507). Chile was also surveyed, but unfortunately no question

on protest participation was asked.

12. These data gathered from survey responses are consistent with data on actual number of

protests in the countries. For example, the correlation between the average responses per

country and the data on riots and demonstrations compiled by the Cross-National Time

Series Archive is 0.54 for 2008.

13. Variables in this group have been explored by other authors as well. Bernhagen and

Marsh (2007), for example, find that interest in politics—captured by a question on

whether the person follows politics in the media—tends to show significant and substantiveeffect on protest participation. In turn, Smith (2009) and Benson and Rochon (2004) control

for interpersonal trust under the assumption it makes it easier to take part in protests.

14. Finkel and Opp (1991) find that social network rewards account in part for individual

participation in collective political action. They analyze group membership and whether

it encourages protest.

15. Income was made comparable following Gasparini et al. (2008), where local currencies

were converted into PPP dollars of 2007.

16. The different years used for each component are due to data availability. We have tried to

take relatively long averages in order to reduce the impact of year-specific events and potential endogeneity problems in the generation of these data, which are mostly based

on expert opinions.

17. For econometric purposes, we treat at the individual level some variables that capture

collective action issues.

18. See the 2005 special issue of the Political Analysis journal (volume 13, number 4) on

multilevel analysis of large clusters survey data.

19. Ideally, we would have fit a full hierarchical model allowing for both random intercepts

and slopes. However, these specifications are computationally complex and in most cases

the maximum likelihood estimator does not converge.

20. It would be possible to estimate a two-stage regression where on the second stage the

individual-level coefficients are regressed on the aggregate-level covariates. Hanushek

(1974), Borjas (1982), and Lewis and Linzer (2005) have all proposed weighting schemes

to take care of the heteroskedasticity resulting from the fact that the dependent variable in

Machado et al. 361








the second stage is estimated. We chose, however, not to implement the two-step

approach for two reasons. First, we have a relatively small sample of countries limiting

the degrees of freedom available for the second stage estimation. Second, these modelsare very cumbersome to interpret.

21. Results for the pooled clustered jackknife standard errors are available in a working paper

by the authors. The working paper can be accessed from http://www.iadb.org/research/

pub_desc.cfm?pub_id=IDB-WP-110

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