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Political Institutions and Street Protests in Latin America

Fabiana Machado, Carlos Scartascini and Mariano Tommasi Journal of Conflict Resolution 2011 55: 340 originally published online 24 April 2011 DOI: 10.1177/0022002711400864 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jcr.sagepub.com/content/55/3/340

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Political Institutions and Street Protests in Latin America

Journal of Conflict Resolution 55(3) 340-365 The Author(s) 2011 Reprints and permission: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0022002711400864 http://jcr.sagepub.com

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. The authors 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 process conflict. 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 Neuque n. 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).

1 2

Inter-American Development Bank, Washington, DC, USA s, Victoria, Buenos Aires, Argentina a, Universidad de San Andre Departamento de Econom

Corresponding Author: Fabiana Machado, 1300 New York Avenue Northwest, Washington, DC, USA Email: fabianam@iadb.org

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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 democratic maturity and of institutional development. Yet, the study of policymaking in contemporary 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 Congress, 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. Argentina shares many cultural and structural similarities with Chile, however, its political institutions are weaker. Placed in comparative perspective, Saiegh (2010), for example, 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 prominent examples. The question we address in this article is that of the relationship between individual choices of channels to affect political decisions and the quality of political institutions. 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 institutions.1 In other cases, however, the making of policy is far less orderly, involving a considerable amount of actions taken outside formal institutions.

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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 resurgence 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 (Mej a Acosta et al. 2008), and Peru, street protests have become a very salient and meaningful way to achieve certain political objectives 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 strategic locations in the countryside are shut down by protestors. The issues they raise 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 participation. When institutions are strong, actors are more likely to participate through institutionalized arenas. When they are weak, however, protests and other unconventional 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 institutionsconsidering Congress, Courts, and the bureaucracy (explained in detail below)and the percentage of respondents to the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP; 2008) reporting protest participation in the past twelve months. We observe a clear negative 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 summarize our theoretical framework to explore the relationship between protest and institutional strength. We go beyond mainstream models of policymaking within formal institutionsdominant in the international literatureto consider the possible use of alternative political technologies such as protests. We outline a number of propositions relating individual decisions to the degree of institutionalization of the

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BOL ARG 0.25

Average protest participation

0.20 VEN EN N 0.15 PAR 0.10 NIC PAN GUA COL L MEX EX DOM BRA RA ELS CRI C URU UR R PER E ECU E HON HO ON O

0.05

0.00

0.5

1.0 1.5 2.0 Institutional strength index

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 bivariate 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 twelve months.

policymaking process. In the following section, we explore some of these propositions 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 individuallevel determinants. Moreover, we find that, in countries with weaker institutionswhere even government parties tend to foment protestindividuals who feel parties represent their constituencies better are more likely to protest. We then conclude with a brief summary and discussion.

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BOL ARG 0.25

0.20 Average protest participation R PER VEN N

ECU 0.15 PAR 0.10

HON

NIC G UGUA URU COL CRI

PAN P AN MEX ME EX E DOM O BR R BRA

0.05

ELS

0.00

0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06 0.07 Percentage who contacted member of congress

0.08

Figure 2. Contacting representatives and protest participation

Note: Line indicates the fit of a bivariate 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 twelve months. Percentage who contacted member of Congress is the percentage of respondents to the LAPOP surveys in 2008 reporting having contacted a member of congress in order to solve a problem.

Analytical Framework: Institutions and Alternative Political Technologies

Political actors, be they groupsfor example, political partiesor individuals, face various alternatives when deciding how to engage in the collective processes leading to public decisions. One set of alternatives that we call the institutionalized road includes, among other things, voting in elections, writing to representatives, designing platforms, forming political parties, bargaining in Congress, and funding think tanks. A different set of alternatives, which we have dubbed alternative political

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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 institutionalized 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 peoples decisions to take part in protests. 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 representatives 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 the Argentine 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 subdued 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 institutions. 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.

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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 channels, 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 safeguarded. 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 constituencies. Under such circumstances, peoples 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 decisions through 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 preferred 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 comparing 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 routewhich determines the size of the threat imposed on decision makersand the costs of participation. 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.

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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 citizens 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 primarily through 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 institutionalized meansfor 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 democratic 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 mechanisms 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 institutionalized process, protests are likely to have a lower impact on decisions and the former 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 formal 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 characteristics of institutions and the decision of political actors to take part in protests. First, we expect a negative correlation between institutional strength and the propensity of individuals and groups to use alternative political technologies such as protests. Protest should be more prevalent under weaker institutions, where individuals do not expect to obtain their desired political goals through the regular institutional 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.

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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 othersbased on personal traits and predispositionsindividual 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 socioeconomic 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

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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 trust in 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 organization.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 victimization may 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 understanding 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 Congress Capabilities from the Global Competitiveness Report, which focus on the effectiveness of a countrys lawmaking body. We take the average of this measure over the years 20032005. 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

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disputes, is drawn from the Fraser Institute of Economic Freedom Report (averaged over the years 20002007). Finally, Bureaucratic Quality ratings are taken from the International Country Risk Guide and averaged over the years 20002005.16 Each of these measures captures both the specificities associated with the particular 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 covariatesour index and each of its componentsand 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 calculate the standard errors. We run a logit specification given the dichotomous nature of the dependent variable, as follows: Pr yji 1 logit1 a Xji b1 Uj b2 ; for i 1; . . . ; nj and j 1; . . . ; 17; 1 where i indexes individuals, j[i] means individual i belongs to country j, yj[i] 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. nj 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 random country intercepts, as follows: Pr yji 1 log it1 aj Xji b1 Uj b2 ; for i 1; . . . ; nj and j 1; . . . ; 17 2 aj $ N ma ; s2 a ; for j 1; . . . ; 17:

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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 correlations between the estimated coefficientson individual characteristicsand 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, corroborating the claims usually found in the literature. Personal experience with corruption, as highlighted in many recent accounts of protest participation that focuses on grievances as an important motivator, is also estimated as positive and significant. Lastly in this set, individuals engagement in group activitiessuch as those promoted by churches, unions, and community groupsseem to exert a strong positive effect. This is compatible with accounts of group activism as a means of decreasing organizational costs, thus vouching for the importance of collective action issues on the individual decision to protest. Individuals 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 corroborates 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

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352 (1) 0.17 (.23) 0.16** (.07) 0.06* (.01) 0.01 (.02) 0.21* (.04) 0.08* (.03) 0.32* (.06) 0.33* (.03) 0.02 (.02) 0.66* (.03) 0.00** (.00) 0.06 (.05) 0.05* (.01) 0.07* (.02) 4.44* (.49) 16,022 17 0.21* (.04) 0.08* (.03) 0.32* (.06) 0.33* (.03) 0.03 (.02) 0.65* (.03) 0.00** (.00) 0.07 (.05) 0.05* (.01) 0.07* (.02) 3.66* (.30) 16,022 17 0.05* (.01) 0.01 (.02) 0.38** (.17) 0.05* (.01) 0.01 (.02) 0.21* (.04) 0.08* (.03) 0.32* (.06) 0.33* (.03) 0.03 (.02) 0.65* (.03) 0.00** (.00) 0.08 (.05) 0.05* (.01) 0.07* (.02) 3.67* (.29) 16,022 17 (2) (3) (4) (5) 0.09 (.19) 0.06* (.01) 0.10* (.03) 0.08* (.02) 0.21* (.04) 0.08* (.03) 0.32* (.06) 0.33* (.03) 0.03*** (.02) 0.66* (.03) 0.00** (.00) 0.05 (.05) 0.05* (.01) 0.07* (.02) 3.98* (.31) 16,022 17

Table 1. Logit Estimation Results for Protest Participation Based on Random-Intercepts Specifications

0.65** (.28)

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Legislature efficiency Bureaucracy index Judicial independence Institutional strength index Respect institutions Parties represent Institutions parties represent Experience with corruption Interpersonal trust Vote for opponent Interest in politics Understand politics Participation in group meetings Age Male Education Log (income) Constant Observations Number of countries

0.06* (.01) 0.01 (.02)

0.21* (.04) 0.08* (.03) 0.32* (.06) 0.33* (.03) 0.02 (.02) 0.66* (.03) 0.00** (.00) 0.05 (.05) 0.05* (.01) 0.07* (.02) 2.75* (.63) 16,022 17

Note: Standard errors in parentheses. *p < .01. **p < .05. ***p < .1.

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Respect institutions Parties represent Experience corruption Interpersonal trust Vote opponent Group meeting Interest politics Understand politics Age Male Education Log income Coefficients Positive, significant Positive Negative Negative, significant Variables

ARG BOL BRA COL CRI DOM ECU ELS GUA HON MEX NIC PAN PAR PER URU VEN

Countries

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 or more, corresponding to a 90 percent confidence interval around the estimate not including zero.

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 countries 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 individuals motivational attitudes tend indeed to have a positive and significant effect on 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 positive 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 are not surprising. Nor is the fact that 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. Conversely, under weaker institutions, those holding similar beliefs were more likely to protest.

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0.3

Coefficients of parties represent constituencies

0.2

0.1

0.0

0.1

0.2

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1.0

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

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

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participation. We found, however, no preliminary evidence of this relationship. Using a measure of the extent to which parties are programmatic rather than clientelistic, from Jones (2010), we found no significant relationship between participation in 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 Chilethe only country with a question on experience with clientelismreceiving material gifts from parties 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 a grain of salt, however, since we are not correcting for the fact that the dependent variable in this exercisethat is, the coefficients by countryis 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). As shown 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 specification and the use of interaction terms complicate their interpretation. For clarity of exposition, we discuss the results through the use of predicted probabilities calculated 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 14 scale), would vote for the opponent if elections were to be held soon (dummy set to 1), trusts people (set to 3 on a 14 scale), and displays a high degree of understanding of the main issues in politics (set to 5 on a 17 scale). Since experience with corruption and levels of respect for institutions also turned out to be uniformly relevant in all countries, we set these variables to their sample mean values. The same is done with the socioeconomic characteristicseducation (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.

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Predicted probabilities: protest participation

0.35 0.30 0.25 0.20 0.15 0.10 First differences: agree disagree 0 1 2 3 Institutional strength index 4

0.2

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0.0

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1 2 3 Institutional strength index

Figure 5. The effect of believing parties represent constituencies well under institutions of varying strength
Note: Vertical bars represent 90 percent confidence intervals. Triangles represent the profile of an individual 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.

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 constituencies wellwe set this item to the value of 6. The second represents an individual who believes the oppositewe set the answer to 1. All other variables are assigned the values specified earlier. Additionally, we compare these two profiles of individuals at varying levels of our institutional strength index. The panel on the left displays, 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

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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 presidents 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 institutions, 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 prominent 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 institutional 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 individuals, parties also choose between the more institutionalized versus the less institutionalized channels in representing the interests of their constituencies. In countries where political actors are more likely to play by the book, bargaining and decision making tend to be fairly institutionalized. This, in turn, generates incentives for individuals to invest in the strengthening of these institutions and on their capacities 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

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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 virtuous cycle.

Appendix: Description of Variables Employed

Institutional strength index: this measure is scaled to the interval 0low quality and 3.5high quality. It was computed based on factor analysis of four indicators:  Effectiveness of lawmaking bodies (1 very ineffective to 7 very effective) from the GCR (average over 20032005);  Fraser index of independence of the judiciary (average over 19952003);  International Country Risk Guide Bureaucracy Quality rating (average over 19842001). High points are given to countries where the bureaucracy has the strength and expertise to govern without drastic changes in policy or interruptions 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? 1not at all, 7to a great extent. Respect institutions: To what extent do you respect the political institutions of (country)? 1not at all, 7a lot. Political interest: How interested are you in politics? 1a lot, 2somewhat, 3 a little, 4not 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. 1strongly disagree, 7strongly agree. Interpersonal trust: How much do you trust people you meet for the first time? 1 trust completely, 2trust somewhat, 3trust a little, 4dont 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? 1would not vote, 2would vote for the incumbent, 3 would vote for the challenger, 4would 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 religious organization; (b) meetings of a committee or association for community improvement; (c) meetings of an association of professionals, traders, or farmers;

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(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 document are 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 analysis are available for download at the journals 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 Department 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 decentralized actors (Carey 2000) and to facilitate bargaining by creating monitoring bodies, issue linkages, 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 to be the focus of and the main entry 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.

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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 institutional 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 presidents in 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 pricesfor example, blockades in Peru made prices raise substantially34 percent for carrotsin the capital of Peru. (http://gestion. pe/impresa/noticia/bloqueo-carreteras-afecta-abastecimientoalimentos-lima/2009-06-24/5655). They may also restrict certain industries to operate normallyfor 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 several 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. Given our 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 control of the legislative committees in congress because the government party still controlled 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-kirchnersi-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.

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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 supported insurgent activities by movements and had defined democracy in terms of grassroots participation and fundamental political and economic reforms, abandoned these strategies 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 the Dominican 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 politicscaptured by a question on whether the person follows politics in the mediatends to show significant and substantive effect 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

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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 models are 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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