Books
Voice and Inequality: Poverty and Political Participation in Latin America. 2021. Oxford University Press. (with Claudio Holzner).
How do poor people in Latin America participate in politics? What explains the variation in the patterns of voting, protesting, and contacting government for the region’s poorest citizens? Why are participation gaps larger in some countries than in others? This paper presents key findings from our recently published book (Voice and Inequality, Oxford University Press), which offers the first large-scale empirical analysis of political participation in Latin America, focusing on patterns of participation among the poorest citizens in each country.
We use LAPOP data from 2006-2014 for 18 Latin American countries to explain poor people’s political participation. We go beyond voting behavior to also examine participation in protests and in direct government contacting activity. We show that far from being politically inert, under certain conditions the poorest citizens in Latin America act and speak for themselves with an intensity that far exceeds their modest socioeconomic resources. Precisely because the individual resource constraints that poor people face are daunting obstacles to political activism, our explanation focuses on those features of democratic politics that create opportunities for participation that have the strongest effect on poor people’s political behavior. We argue that key institutions of democracy, namely civil society, political parties, and competitive elections, have an enormous impact on whether or not poor people turn out to vote, protest, and contact government officials. When voluntary organizations thrive in poor communities and when political parties focus their mobilization efforts on poor individuals, they respond with high levels of political activism. Contrary to the expectations in the literature, the left-turn did not necessarily reduce participatory inequalities between poor and wealthy individuals. Rather we find that the organizational capacity of political parties, their linkages to grass-roots organizations, and the strength of electoral competition are more important for reducing participation gaps in Latin American democracies.
NGOs, Political Protest, and Civil Society. 2014. Cambridge University Press.
Do non-governmental organizations (NGOs) strengthen democracy in developing democracies? Or do they undermine it? In many developing countries, NGOs are credited with aiding democracy by strengthening civil society and encouraging political participation. But participation can occur within the political system – through voting – or outside the system – through public protest. Electoral participation is often seen as the more democratically desirable of the two, but in many developing countries elections are viewed as flawed and protest can be a surprisingly effective tool for influencing policy. In the case of Bolivia, for example, democratic elections are regularly held but fraud and corruption are common, political parties are weak and changeable and the average citizen has very little confidence in elections. Political protest, in contrast, has resulted in the removal of an unpopular president, a reversal on a proposed privatization plan for water provision, and changes to tax and subsidy policies. In the context of poorly performing but nominally democratic systems, do NGOs perform a greater democratic service by promoting electoral participation or by supporting political protest?
The central finding of the book is that NGOs promote moderate political participation through formal mechanisms such as voting only in democracies where institutions are working quite well. This is a radical departure from the bulk of literature on civil society that sees NGOs and other associations as playing a role in strengthening democracy wherever they operate. Instead, I find that where democratic institutions are weak, NGOs encourage much more contentious political participation, including demonstrations, riots and protests. Except in extreme cases of poorly functioning democratic institutions, however, the political protest that results from NGO activity is not generally anti-system or incompatible with democracy – again, as long as democracy is functioning above a minimal level.
Link to Cambridge University Press
