Social Groups and Protest During Regime Transformations in Latin America

The relation between protests and democracy remain unclear with researchers perceiving democracy as predictor, topic and consequence of protest. Hellmeier and Bernhard show that protests “increase the level of democratic quality and raises the chance of a successful democratic transition” but the research does not uncover what happens after the downshift or rise in the level of democracy and who are groups that protest during the shift in the level of democracy. Latin America is definitely a region where the democracies currently are under threat and many of them experience decline in political rights and civil liberties. Some states partially recover from the crisis of democracy (like Bolivia or Brazil), while others are in the state of long-lasting (like Nicaragua) or recent (like Peru, Chile and El Salvador) democratic decline. However, considering that Latin America is the region where protest became the conventional form of political participation, the amount of protest activity is not largely shaped by the democratic volatility. But it can be significant for the topic of protest and, therefore, mobilization of particular social groups. Instead of focusing on attitudes to democracy that proved to be ineffective constructs, social groups are studied that might be either empowered for protest due to restoration of democracy or mobilized to protect democracy due to its decline. In particular, it is hypothesized that political opposition are more likely to protest during democratic backsliding as they have partisan cues from opposition that are likely to underpin undemocratic actions of incumbents. In turn, people from disadvantaged groups are more prone to protest during democratic recovery because they suppose that there is a window of opportunities to promote their interests when the protests are less risky. Using Somma, Bargsted and Sanchez distinction, these mechanisms can be called survival and furtherance ones respectively. To test hypotheses the interaction between change in the level of democracy retrieved from V-Dem and individual variables from Americas Barometer 5 waves (2010-2018) are analyzed using mixed-effects multilevel binary logistic models. For survival protests the preference for opposition in upcoming elections is used as an independent variable and for furtherance protest – student status and ethnic/racial identity. Both hypotheses are proved to be significant. Opposition supporters are more likely to protest during democratic decline, supporting Singer’s finding that opposition supporters are better in accessing the level of democracy properly, while incumbent supporters are biased. Students and indigenous groups (the effect is not significant for mestizo, mulatto and black) are more likely to protest during democratic recovery. It shows us that while opposition supporters protest for the struggle for democracy, students or indigenous groups as previously excluded and disadvantaged groups protest when politicians are open to receive the signals from social groups that are now not afraid to mobilize. These findings show which cues are essential for protest participation amid different kinds of democratic change: during autocratization opposition political parties are the actors that are the source of mobilization that, as Pinckney and Thrilling show, can become a safeguard from democratic breakdown.