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Ritual Demonstrations versus Reactive Protests: Participation Across Mobilizing Contexts in Mexico City

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Using an innovative survey of protest participants and nonparticipants from five major street demonstrations in Mexico City in 2011 and 2012, this study tests the assumption that influences on protest participation vary across different types of events; namely, ritual demonstrations and reactive protests. The comparison is based on two assumptions: that these are two of the dominant forms of protest in contemporary Latin America, and that specifying the context for different types of social movement participation provides a better understanding of the individual mobilization process for groups seeking to defend their rights or gain new benefits. The comparative analyses reveal some crucial differences. Political interest and previous political experience are more influential in the decision to take part in reactive demonstrations. For ritual demonstrations, the decision to participate tends to be driven more by personal and organizational connections.
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Ritual Demonstrations versus Reactive Protests:
Participation Across Mobilizing Contexts
in Mexico City
María Inclán
Paul D. Almeida
ABSTRACT
Using an innovative survey of protest participants and nonparticipants from five
major street demonstrations in Mexico City in 2011 and 2012, this study tests the
assumption that influences on protest participation vary across different types of
events; namely, ritual demonstrations and reactive protests. The comparison is
based on two assumptions: that these are two of the dominant forms of protest in
contemporary Latin America, and that specifying the context for different types of
social movement participation provides a better understanding of the individual
mobilization process for groups seeking to defend their rights or gain new benefits.
The comparative analyses reveal some crucial differences. Political interest and pre-
vious political experience are more influential in the decision to take part in reac-
tive demonstrations. For ritual demonstrations, the decision to participate tends to
be driven more by personal and organizational connections.
Over the past four decades of democratic transition in Latin America, two major
forms of protest activity have often characterized social movements in the
region: ritual demonstrations and more spontaneous types of collective actions.
Ritual demonstrations include the traditional May Day marches of labor unions and
popular sectors, as well as the annual commemorations of significant historical
events and past social movement struggles, such as the massacre of students in
Mexico in 1968, the October 1944 revolution in Guatemala, the 1979 Repliegue in
Nicaragua, and the martyrdom in 1980 of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero in El
Salvador. Ritual demonstrations also include international Women’s Day marches
and LGBT pride parades, among many other examples. In some years, when protest
levels are low in a given country, ritual demonstrations may even act as the largest
mobilizations taking place. Spontaneous and reactive protests represent less-planned
collective events, such as anger at austerity measures, corruption scandals, repressive
state actions, contested election results, and fuel price hikes (e.g., the gasolinazo in
Mexico in 2017 or the Caracazo in Venezuela in 1989).
© 2017 University of Miami
DOI: 10.1111/laps.12033
María Inclán is an associate professor (profesora-investigadora) in the División de Estudios
Políticos, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas. maria.inclan@cide.edu. Paul D.
Almeida is professor and chair of the Department of Sociology, University of California,
Merced. palmeida@ucmerced.edu
This study examines the differences in protest participation between ritual and
reactive protests in five major street demonstrations in Mexico City. Such a compar-
ison highlights the conditions that bring individuals into different types of con-
tention that are commonplace in contemporary Latin America. Both types of
protests provide pathways to commemorating and achieving social change for
excluded groups in the Americas (Silva 2009). Comparing the microlevel context for
different types of social movement participation provides a better understanding of
the individual mobilization process for groups seeking to defend their rights or gain
new benefits.
Given how much the tactical repertoires of social movements vary (Clemens
1996; McCammon 2003; Taylor and Van Dyke 2004), especially across Latin
America (Silva 2009), participation dynamics also probably vary on the basis of the
type of protest. An individual’s decision to participate in an annual May Day march
of the popular sectors may differ from participation in a hastily called protest against
a new government corruption scandal (such as the mass mobilizations over corrup-
tion in Guatemala and Honduras in 2015). Therefore, scholars studying protest
mobilization have suggested that protest activity needs to be differentiated between
ritualistic and more contentious events, such as protests in response to sudden policy
changes (Klandermans 2012). By distinguishing between ritual and reactive demon-
strations, this study offers more precise frameworks for examining protest participa-
tion and the individual mobilization process in urban Latin America.
To test whether protest participation varies in different types of demonstra-
tions, this study employs a unique survey sample of protest participants and non-
participants conducted during three ritual demonstrations and two reactive protests
in Mexico City from 2011 to 2012. Very few attempts have been made to collect
systematic protest participation data in Latin America in real time across multiple
demonstrations.
This study offers three contributions to the study of protest participation in
Latin America. First, by uncovering differences in protest participation predictors
for ritual demonstrations and reactive protests, it offers a refinement to the protest
participation literature. Identifying participation pathways for different types of
demonstrations allows us to better understand protest engagement and its relation-
ship to previous political involvement and social movements.
Second, the study provides an ideal case to empirically test protest participation
related to urban movements in Latin America. Mexican civil society includes a wide
diversity of social movement struggles, ranging from land access and agricultural
debt to human rights, sexual diversity, and labor union conflicts (Cook 1996;
Williams 2001; de la Dehesa 2010). Although protest activity in Mexico City might
be unique in comparison to that of other cities in the country, such a case provides
new insight on protest participation dynamics in other cities in both developed,
stable democracies and developing ones (Trejo 2012). Gathering and analyzing
empirical evidence from such a contentious yet protest-tolerant context provides a
greater understanding about protest participation dynamics in other large cities and
capitals in Latin America. Highly populated capital cities are the preferred places for
2 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 00: 0
activists to hold protest events. These cities not only concentrate state authorities,
against whom protest activity is usually launched, but also provide social movement
actors with more opportunities to raise awareness about their causes, as large urban
areas also concentrate media and public opinion attention.
Furthermore, the real-time survey data on protest participants and nonpartici-
pants improve on protest participation data provided by nationally representative
sample studies. Nationally representative surveys provide general information about
levels of protest in a country that can be compared cross-nationally when the same
questionnaire is used. They provide information about nominal protest participa-
tion. However, they generally do not offer comparisons about participation in dif-
ferent types of protest events. National survey respondents are queried about their
participation in protest demonstrations long after the events have occurred. This
may create problems of memory error and false attribution. More important,
national surveys often do not provide contextual information on mobilization chan-
nels and dynamics (Saunders 2014) or information about specific motivations to
participate. Because the surveys this study uses were conducted in real time along-
side street demonstrations, we can be more confident about the reliability of survey
responses and the comparability of participants and nonparticipants within and
across demonstrations.
McAdam’s 1988 model of individual movement participation provides a
rationale between the incentives for low-risk and high-risk activism. The core con-
tribution of his seminal study was to demonstrate the microlevel conditions associ-
ated with extremely high-risk activism (in which participants could suffer bodily
harm or even be killed) and distinguish them from lower-cost types of events that
are more common. Thus, his contribution was to differentiate between participa-
tion in low risk/cost contexts from extremely high risk/cost political environments.
We also believe that motivations and pull factors vary between ritual and reactive
demonstrations, which are some of the most frequent forms of collective action in
Latin America. This article tests whether this is the case and offers a more refined
account of how individuals are mobilized based on the type of demonstration. Some
of the implications of these findings may also be extended to explain protest partic-
ipation in more spontaneous or reactive events, for which even more political infor-
mation, commitment, and experience may be needed.
RITUAL DEMONSTRATIONS
VS. REACTIVE PROTESTS
Klandermans (2012) defines ritual demonstrations as events that are held on the
same date every year. Ritual demonstrations are well-orchestrated and paradelike
processions that tend to celebrate identities, traditional rights or past struggles,
public performances, and anniversaries that reinforce social solidarity (Collins 2001;
Johnston 2009). They are anticipated traditional demonstrations and are found
throughout the Americas, such as May Day rallies, LGBT pride parades, or Earth
INCLÁN AND ALMEIDA: PROTEST PARTICIPATION 3
Day anniversaries. As such, their activities tend to be predictable and festive. Cere-
monial demonstrations also offer positive incentives to participate. For example,
they provide reunion opportunities among participants to take pride in their past
achievements (Saunders et al. 2012). They may also become jovial commemorations
of historical gains and struggles of a given social movement. As a consequence, ritual
demonstrations tend to have a lower threshold for individual participation because
participants face minimum levels of risk and uncertainty (Ebert and Okamoto
2013), even if they still symbolically challenge multiple societal institutions (Arm-
strong and Bernstein 2008).1In contrast, reactive protests tend to be more respon-
sive to immediate changes in the sociopolitical system or in the economy, such as
legislative decrees, police abuse, elections, or sudden price hikes (Tilly 1978; Meyer
2014). They are less-planned and less-structured events, providing a different mobi-
lizing context than ritual events. In some cases, reactive demonstrations take con-
tentious and confrontational forms (Dodson 2011). Reactive protests involve rela-
tively higher levels of risk and uncertainty, as less information is known beforehand
on the likely unfolding of events and the outcome of the mobilization.
Identifying the varying levels on which individuals engage in activist networks
and information channels for these different types of events permits us to better
understand individual participation in sudden upsurges in protests and differentiate
it from routinelike demonstrations. The distinction between ritual and reactive
demonstrations has not been widely investigated, even less so in the Latin American
context, where ritual and reactive demonstrations have become the two major forms
of popular movement mobilization in the twenty-first century. With this study, we
address this gap in the study of Latin American political participation using urban
protest events in Mexico City as an example.
A DIFFERENTIATED APPROACH
TO ACTIVISM
To identify the extent of different participation paths by type of demonstration, we
examine the primary dimensions that constitute the mobilization process. Similar to
predictions from the civic voluntarism model (Verba et al. 1995; Putnam 2000),
such an approach suggests that individuals are differentially situated in terms of civic
organization, political interests, interpersonal networks, information, identities, and
overall prior social movement experience that shape their mobilization potential
(Klandermans et al. 2008). Such a perspective combines approaches that emphasize
network ties (Snow et al. 1980; McAdam 1988; Gould 1995; Krinsky and Crossley
2014), mass or social media information flows (Earl and Kimport 2011; Bennett
and Segerberg 2013), collective identities (McAdam and Paulsen 1993; Klander-
mans et al. 2014), and political involvement (Schussman and Soule 2005). We
believe that individuals vary across these core dimensions predicting social move-
ment activism. Long-planned events should mobilize people in different ways than
less-planned protests responding to issues of the moment.
4 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 00: 0
Political Involvement
Considering the civic voluntarism model, we begin by taking into account how
interested people are in politics and how habitual it is for them to take part in social
movement–type political activities and civic organizations (Van Dyke et al. 2007;
Saunders et al. 2012). We also examine how efficacious people consider their polit-
ical participation (Lee 2010). Past political involvement provides a sense of personal
efficacy through protest engagement, making future opportunities to join street
demonstrations much more appealing than it would be to those without such expe-
riences. In general, we expect that protest participants show more past political
involvement, interest, and efficacy sentiments than nonparticipants (Saunders et al.
2012). Nonparticipants would probably not view political protest as an effective
means to express political opinions and influence social change, partly because of
their lack of experience in such events.
Because reactive protests are responses to current sociopolitical and economic
changes, participants in such events should be more likely to be informed about these
changes. They would also be more likely to be interested in politics and may have
access to the kinds of resources that encourage engaging in protest, such as civic skills
and knowhow from past political participation that gives them the confidence to join
demonstrations in the present (Schussman and Soule 2005; Van Dyke et al. 2007).
One could then argue that their political experience assists them in overcoming the
collective action problem of responding to events within a limited time frame.
Ritual demonstrations are traditional celebrations of past and present social
movements. Their more festive ambience tends to attract groups of people who are
either related or socially connected. As such, they provide social rewards to their
attendees that may function as participation-reinforcing incentives. As a result,
ritual events may attract, on average, a wider group of participants beyond the more
politically engaged activists. Therefore, they require less prior political experience.
Hence, we hypothesize that
H1. Participation in reactive protests is more likely to be driven by past political
involvement than participation in ritual demonstrations.
Personal Recruitment
Beyond prior political experience, the connections individuals maintain with others
also shape protest participation. One of the major advances of social movement
research in the past three decades resides in the recognition that general values and
beliefs alone are usually not sufficient to explain variation in individual-level partic-
ipation (McAdam 1999). Mediating between movement-sympathetic beliefs and
actual movement participation are social networks and organizations (Krinsky and
Crossley 2014). Personal networks of family, friends, neighborhood, and workplace
(Dixon and Roscigno 2003), as well as community-level organizations, act as impor-
tant reference groups in pulling receptive individuals into activism (Kitts 2000).
Recruiters are especially successful in encouraging participation among people in
INCLÁN AND ALMEIDA: PROTEST PARTICIPATION 5
groups with which they share a close social connection or bond (Lim 2008; Scacco
2010).
Several studies have shown that potential movement participants are more
likely to join collective action campaigns when they interact with already participat-
ing activists (McAdam 1988; Gould 1995; Snow et al. 1980; Passy 2001). Taken
together, personal networks provide interpersonal relationships that facilitate per-
sonal decisions to take part in social movement activities. Being personally invited
to take part in a street demonstration provides reinforcement and greater normative
pressure to potential attendees at such events (Schussman and Soule 2005; Walgrave
and Wouters 2014).
Because ritual demonstrations are festive events and provide positive rewards to
their attendees, participants in ritual events are more likely to be invited and to attend
together with their friends, relatives, peers, and colleagues. Indeed, many ritual
protest participants may not even have been aware of the event until someone in their
social circle invited them to participate. On the other hand, because participants in
reactive events are more driven by their level of prior political involvement and
awareness of the event, they would be less likely to need a direct personal invitation
to take part. In other words, they do not require a new invitation or recruitment
attempt to decide whether to take part in the event. Therefore, we hypothesize that
H2.Personal invitations are more likely to influence participation in ritual demon-
strations than participation in reactive protests.
While prior political involvement and personal recruitment may offer a com-
pelling account of the probability of joining collective action, they leave a gap in
explaining individual agency. Examining personal group identifications and attach-
ments incorporates the volitional and purposive dynamics of participation.
Mobilizing Collective Identities
Personal networks and political involvement tell us little about the importance of these
connections to an individual’s sense of self, belonging, and personal identity (Viterna
2013). People whose self-identity is strongly tied to a political movement should be
especially motivated to participate in street demonstrations of the movement or issue
in question (van Stekelenburg and Klandermans 2014). Indeed, David Snow and
Doug McAdam (2000, 47) find that “the existence of a movement provides an avenue
for the individual to act in accordance with his or her personal identity.”
Individuals are energized by group attachments. The collective sense of solidar-
ity and identification motivates future rounds of protest participation (Taylor et al.
2009; van Stekelenburg and Klandermans 2007; Stryker 2000). In contrast, non-
participants are often held back from joining nearby street demonstrations because
they lack an identity and emotional attachment to the groups organizing and par-
ticipating in the events. Because ritual demonstrations are often commemorative
events, they play a major role in reinforcing collective identities for particular sub-
groups (Collins 2004). We expect those individuals who identify with participants
6 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 00: 0
and organizations of specific ritual demonstrations to be more likely to participate,
since the collective event itself reinforces the identity in question (McPhail 1991).
These important observations notwithstanding, because of the low risks and costs of
ritual demonstrations and the immediate rewards of the festivities, many people will
participate, with lower levels of a shared identity with the other participants, than
in reactive protest events.
Participants in reactive protests also maintain identities with organizations and
fellow protestors. However, these should be stronger in comparison to the low cost
of ritual demonstrations. As already predicted, a major incentive for participation in
less-planned demonstrations should be related to an individual’s political awareness
and experience. In addition, the participant should experience a deepening of iden-
tification and solidarity with fellow activists as risk and uncertainty increase in the
type of protest activity. This activist identity is also reinforced as increasing political
experience integrates the individual with other like-minded activists over time
(McAdam 1988; McAdam and Paulsen 1993). Thus, we hypothesize,
H3. Higher levels of identification with other participants are more likely to have a
stronger influence on participation in reactive protests than ritual demonstrations.
Informational Recruitment
In addition to political involvement, personal recruitment, and mobilizing collective
identities, becoming aware of forthcoming demonstrations and rallies from different
forms of mass and online social media may also motivate individuals to participate
in demonstrations (Earl and Kimport 2011). Television and newspapers provide
indirect information for potential participants about upcoming protest events
(Kolins Givan et al. 2010). Increasingly, scholars have recognized the role of new
social media technologies in providing information about upcoming protest events
and motivating participation in demonstrations (Carty 2010; Bennett and
Segerberg 2013).
The influence of the media in mobilizing demonstrators is even more evident
when we compare the sources of information across types of events and between
protest participants and nonparticipants. We expect nonparticipants to be less aware
of upcoming demonstrations from any source. This lack of awareness and information
about an upcoming demonstration would greatly inhibit their participation. Since
routine annual demonstrations and street marches are planned in advance, partici-
pants in commemorative events are more likely to receive information about upcom-
ing activities through traditional mass media outlets and newer social media, as well as
interpersonal contacts. In contrast, reactive events are usually convoked by organiza-
tions and groups in short periods of time. Therefore, the participants would rely more
on newer social media, with their instantaneous diffusion capacity to mobilize partic-
ipants, as this would require less organizational resources and time. We expect to
observe participants in ritual demonstrations being influenced more through tradi-
tional media outlets and reactive protest participants being mobilized through newer
media channels. We formalize these arguments in the following hypotheses:
INCLÁN AND ALMEIDA: PROTEST PARTICIPATION 7
H4a. Conventional media are more likely to influence protest participation in
ritual demonstrations than in reactive protests.
H4b. New social media are more likely to influence protest participation in reactive
protests than in ritual demonstrations.
METHODS
The survey data come from five different major protest demonstrations that took
place in 2011 and 2012 in Mexico City.2After analyzing the types of events
included in the dataset and the contexts in which they occurred, we classified these
demonstrations as two different types: ritual and reactive events. The ritual events
include a commemoration of the 1968 student movement, a May Day rally, and an
LGBT Pride parade. Although we recognize that ritual events also carry demands
that react to events and political and policy decisions, because they are predicted
events, and with the passing of time, they have become annual commemorations of
past social movements. Thus, with their relative gains, we consider them ritual
events. Their now-traditional festive nature also helps us to define them as such.
The reactive events include two election-related demonstrations. We define
them as reactive events because they were more immediate collective responses to
current political developments in the country. Both of these electoral protests
occurred during Mexico’s 2012 presidential campaigns and elections: a pre-electoral
protest march against Enrique Peña Nieto, then presidential candidate of the Revo-
lutionary Institutional Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, PRI), and a post-
electoral rally called by Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the losing candidate of the
Party of the Democratic Revolution (Partido de la Revolución Democrática, PRD).
Standardized Sampling Technique
The Protest Survey in Mexico followed the standardized survey sampling technique
developed for the research project titled “Caught in the Act of Protest: Contextual-
izing Contestation” (CCC) (Klandermans et al. 2010). The CCC project requires
that the sampled demonstrations gather at least 5,000 participants. The demonstra-
tions studied here ranged between 7,000 and 15,000 demonstrators.
Because protest participants and nonparticipants are surveyed during demon-
strations, memory errors and false attributions—present in national surveys—are
reduced (Opp et al. 1995). Moreover, the CCC reports the type and the precise
timing of demonstrations. This allows for comparisons across different types of
protests and mobilizing contexts (Walgrave and Rucht 2010).
In addition, by surveying protest participants and nonparticipants during
demonstration events, the validity and reliability of the respondents’ information
regarding their participation, mobilization dynamics, and political attitudes is
increased. Furthermore, the application of the survey during protest events decreases
potential errors of misunderstanding common in mail-in surveys. According to the
8 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 00: 0
CCC methodology, potential selection bias was resolved by employing a team of
“pointers” in charge of randomly sampling protest participants for surveyors to
interview (Klandermans et al. 2010). Previous fieldwork experience has shown that
face-to-face interaction with the respondent has a high response rate (Walgrave and
Verhulst 2011).
Because all surveyed events lasted more than five hours, survey teams had
enough time to randomly sample and survey protest participants and nonpartici-
pants, even when they were rejected. The reported response rate of the five demon-
strations fluctuated between 46.64 and 79.06 percent. Table 1 shows the number of
protest participants and nonparticipants sampled in each event. Furthermore, to
guarantee that the same protest participants and nonparticipants were not surveyed
in different protest events, surveyors asked survey respondents if they had already
taken part in the study during other demonstrations.
In order to provide a context-comparable group to each protest survey, nonpar-
ticipants were also surveyed during each demonstration. Protest nonparticipants
were surveyed following the same random sampling technique in a given geographic
area. Nonparticipants were randomly selected from individuals passing in the streets
surrounding each demonstration event. They were not bystanders but passersby
(Fillieule and Tartakowsky 2013).
People near protest events in large cities provide a key comparison group of
nonparticipants because of their proximity to the demonstration, and they serve as
one of the publics targeted by the organizers (McPhail 1991; Marwell and Oliver
1993; Fillieule and Tartakowsky 2013). On average, between 8.23 and 13.85 per-
cent of our sampled nonparticipants indicated that they had been invited to the
demonstrations (see table 2). However, on average, they reported having heard
about the different demonstrations through conventional media (22.31 percent)
and the Internet (14.34 percent) in comparable rates to those reported by protest
participants (26.39 percent and 39.53 percent, respectively) (averages calculated
from those reported in table 3).
INCLÁN AND ALMEIDA: PROTEST PARTICIPATION 9
Table 1. Surveyed Protest Participants and Nonparticipants, per Protest Event
Distributed Completed Distributed Completed Response
Questionnaires: Questionnaires: Questionnaires: Questionnaires: Rate
Demonstration Participants Participants Nonparticipants Nonparticipants (%)
Ritual events
Student Movement 165 85 55 37 55.45
May Day 280 205 90 71 74.59
LGBT Pride 240 195 80 58 79.06
Reactive events
Anti-Peña march 275 199 87 47 67.95
AMLO rally 240 108 73 38 46.64
Total 1,200 792 385 251 65.80
Thus, although nonparticipants may have heard about a given demonstration
in advance, even though they were not approached by a movement recruiter, when
they faced the decision to join the demonstration, they decided not to do so. Addi-
tionally, because the questionnaire that was applied to nonparticipants included
most of the questions included for participants and was conducted in the real time
of the demonstration, comparable information was gathered on mobilizing factors
and motivations.
VARIABLES
Protest Participation Type
We coded three possible types of protest participation: 1 for those who participated
in reactive events, 2 for those who participated in ritual events, and 0 for those who
did not participate in any protest event. We use the zero category as our base cate-
gory against which the other two groups are compared. After cleaning the dataset,
we were able to collect complete data on all the variables involved in this study for
1,043 survey respondents: 485 ritual demonstrators, 307 reactive protesters, and
251 nonparticipants (166 ritual and 85 reactive bystanders), providing a broad rep-
resentation of our three core analytical groups.3
Political Involvement
Organizational membership. We used the question in the CCC survey that asks
respondents if, in the last 12 months, they were members of different listed civic
organizations.4We coded 1 if they responded that they were a member of any
organization and 0 if they were not.
Political experience. We utilized the CCC question that asks respondents about
their involvement in different political activities in the last 12 months.5Given that
most people mentioned having taken part in only one of the different political activ-
ities, we created a dichotomous variable to indicate only whether they had taken
part in any political activity in the last 12 months (= 1) or not (= 0).
Interest in politics. We included the CCC question that asks respondents to rate
their interest in politics (not at all = 0, somewhat = 1, quite interested = 2, a lot = 3).
Political efficacy. We considered the CCC question that asks respondents to
rank the effectiveness of their participation in the surveyed demonstration. A five-
point scale was used: not at all = 0, not very = 1, somewhat = 2, quite = 3, very effec-
tive = 4).
10 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 00: 0
Mobilizing Collective Identities
Identification with fellow demonstrators. We used a survey question that asks protest
participants and nonparticipants alike how much they identify themselves with the
people participating in that protest event and with the organizers of the event.6A
five-point scale was used: not at all = 0, not very much = 1, somewhat = 2, quite a
lot = 3, and a lot = 4. We worked from the assumption that varying levels of identity
were established before the protest event. Due to the high correlation between these
two variables (r = .6012), we decided to include only the variable reflecting the
respondent’s identification with fellow participants, as it reflects better the collective
identity of the group.7
Recruitment
Personal recruitment. The questionnaire includes a question that asks respondents,
“Which of the following people specifically asked you to take part in the demonstra-
tion?” Possible answers include (1) no one, (2) family, (3) friends or acquaintances,
and (4) colleagues or fellow students.
In table 2, we can observe that among all survey participants (1,043), only 112
individuals reported being invited to take part by a family member or a close friend
(10.74 percent), 146 were invited by a colleague or peer (14 percent), 29 by
acquaintances (2.78 percent), and 589 reported no one asked them to take part
(56.47 percent). When we compare ritual demonstrations and reactive protests, we
find that 72 out of 485 ritual demonstrators (14.85 percent) were invited to take
part by close relatives and friends, 113 by colleagues and peers (23.30 percent), and
15 by acquaintances (3.09 percent), and 212 participated without being invited to
INCLÁN AND ALMEIDA: PROTEST PARTICIPATION 11
Table 2. Personal Recruitment in Ritual Demonstrations and Reactive Protests
Invited by (percent)
_______________________________________________________
Family Colleagues
and and Missing
Participation Friends Peers Acquaintances No One Values Total
Ritual demonstrators 72 113 15 212 73 485
(14.85) (23.30) (3.09) (43.71) (15.06) (100)
Ritual passersby 12 11 0 99 44 166
(7.23) (6.63) (59.64) (26.5) (100)
Reactive demonstrators 21 22 14 218 32 307
(6.84) (7.17) (4.56) (71.01) (10.36) (100)
Reactive passersby 700 60 18 85
(8.24) (70.59) (21.17) (100)
Total 112 146 29 589 167 1,043
(10.74) (14) (2.78) (56.47) (16) (100)
do so (43.71 percent), while among 307 ritual protestors, 21 were invited by close
relatives and friends (6.84 percent), 22 by colleagues and peers (7.17 percent), and
14 by acquaintances (4.56 percent), and 218 participated without being invited
(71.01 percent).
The zeros reported in several of the categories made it impossible for us to run
a coherent model distinguishing between the effects that different types of personal
recruitment would have on protest participation in ritual demonstrations and reac-
tive protests. We decided to construct a dichotomous variable to indicate whether
respondents were recruited to participate by their close personal connections ( = 1)
or not ( = 0). Of 1,043 protest participants included in our analysis, 273 (26.17 per-
cent) reported having been invited to take part and 589 (56.47 percent) participated
without being invited.
Informational recruitment. We used the question in the survey that asks protest
participants and nonparticipants to state the most important source of information
through which they heard about the demonstration. Possible answers included four
different categories: (1) conventional news media (radio, television, and newspa-
pers), (2) online media and social networks, (3) personal connections (partners,
family, friends, acquaintances, fellow students or co-workers, fellow members of an
organization or association, and (4) advertisements (flyers and posters) of an organ-
ization. From these possible responses, we constructed two different dichotomous
variables to reflect whether survey respondents heard about an upcoming demon-
stration through conventional or new social media. We included advertisements and
information distributed by an organization in the conventional media category. To
avoid possible multicollinearity problems with the “personal recruitment” variable,
we do not include “personal connections” in the model.8
Sociodemographics
Education level. We used a seven-point scale to indicate whether respondents had no
education (0), completed elementary education (1), middle school (2), high school
(3), college (4), or graduate school (master’s degree 5, doctorate 6).
Self-identified social class. We used the survey question that asks respondents to
indicate if they describe themselves as a member of the lower class (1), working class
(2), lower middle class (3), upper middle (4), upper class (5), or no class (0).9
Age. Respondents were asked to indicate the year they were born. This variable
was used to compute their age.
Gender. We used the survey question that asks respondents to indicate their
gender (1 = male, 0 = female).
12 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 00: 0
Models
To ensure that our samples of ritual demonstrations and reactive protests were com-
parable groups, we ran a test of independence for complex survey data. The result
indicates that they are indeed comparable, as the F-value (1.4) for 1,130 observa-
tions is 1.49, with an r-value of 0.29. Because our dependent variable is protest par-
ticipation in two different types of demonstrations, the most appropriate estimation
method is a logistic regression, with interaction terms to address the effects of the
different protest predictors on each type of demonstration and with robust standard
errors.10 To better assess the effects of the different interacted predictors of protest
participation in ritual demonstrations and reactive protests, we calculated their pre-
dicted probabilities, holding all other variables at their observed level (Hammer and
Kalkan 2013).
Descriptive Statistics
In table 3, we can observe that protest nonparticipants show comparable sociode-
mographic characteristics to those of protest participants. All groups reported, on
average, a high school level of education (~3 = high school level). On average, they
also self-identified as pertaining to the working or middle class (~2 = lower middle
class) and gave their age as between 35 and 39 years old. According to the last wave
of the World Values Survey in Mexico, in 2012, the average level of education of
the two thousand surveyed individuals in the nationally representative sample was
also secondary/technical education; their age mean was 37; and, on average, they
also identified themselves with the lower middle class. Hence, in demographic
terms, our sample is similar to the national population.
Table 3 also shows other similarities between surveyed individuals in ritual
demonstrations and reactive protests. Between 3 and 24 percent of nonparticipants
reported having been invited to take part in ritual and reactive events. However,
between 29 and 49 percent of participants in ritual demonstrations were invited by
someone close to them, while between 14 and 23 percent of participants in reactive
events reported that someone in their personal networks invited them to take part.
Furthermore, the proportion of participants in ritual demonstrations attending
without being invited to do so ranges from 34 to 53 percent, while the proportion
of participants in reactive demonstrations ranges only from 70 to 73 percent. The
reported means by their nonparticipating counterparts were 60 percent and 70 per-
cent, respectively.
In terms of how potential demonstrators received information about an upcom-
ing demonstration, between 15 and 35 percent of participants in ritual demonstra-
tions reported having heard about an upcoming event through conventional media,
and between 7 and 48 percent of them did so though new social media on the Inter-
net. The means reported by passersby at these events ranged between 16 and 18 per-
cent and 3 and 19 percent, respectively. In comparison, between 41 and 75 percent
of participants in reactive protests expressed having heard about an upcoming protest
through new social media (Internet), and between 16 and 49 percent heard about it
INCLÁN AND ALMEIDA: PROTEST PARTICIPATION 13
14 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 00: 0
Table 3. Descriptive Statistics per Protest Event: Means and Standard Deviations
Ritual Demonstrations Reactive Protests
_____________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________
Pre- Post-
LGBT Nonparts Students Nonparts May Day Nonparts election Nonparts election Nonparts WVSaMin. Max.
Variable n = 195 n = 58 n = 85 n = 37 n = 205 n = 71 n = 199 n = 47 n = 108 n = 38 N = 2,000 value value
Organizational 0.49 0.38 0.80 0.35 0.82 0.32 0.57 0.25 0.65 0.29 0.57 0 1
member (0.50) (0.49 (0.40) (0.48) (0.39) (0.47) (0.50) (0.44) (0.48) (0.46) (0.49)
Prior experience 0.49 0.47 0.81 0.43 0.67 0.41 0.70 0.25 0.93 0.21 0.59 0 1
(0.50) (0.50) (0.39) (0.50) (0.47) (0.49) (0.46) (0.44) (0.25) (0.41) (0.49)
Political interest 1.22 1.27 1.96 1.24 1.46 0.98 2.34 1.40 2.43 1.26 2.05 0 3
(1.06) (0.93) (1.00) (1.04) (1.12) (0.85) (0.72) (1.01) (0.78) (0.92) (0.93)
Participation efficacy 2.52 2.48 2.49 1.92 2.47 2.15 3.31 2.66 2.98 2.16 0 4
(1.24) (1.49) (1.30) (1.32) (1.30) (1.18) (0.73) (1.13) (0.93) (1.26)
Collective identity 2.86 1.71 2.98 1.40 2.83 1.21 3.62 2.17 3.33 1.53 0 4
(1.13) (1.56) (1.03) (1.21) (1.21) (1.36) (0.64) (1.55) (0.95) (1.52)
Personal invitation 0.29 0.10 0.40 0.24 0.49 0.10 0.14 0.13 0.23 0.03 0
(0.45) (0.31) (0.49) (0.43) (0.50) (0.30) (0.35) (0.34) (0.42) (0.16)
No invitation 0.53 0.71 0.46 0.65 0.34 0.48 0.70 0.51 0.73 0.95 0 1
(0.50) (0.46) (0.50) (0.48) (0.47) (0.50) (0.46) (0.50) (0.44) (0.23)
Traditional media 0.15 0.17 0.35 0.16 0.31 0.18 0.16 0.19 0.49 0.47 0 1
(0.36) (0.38) (0.48) (0.37) (0.46) (0.39) (0.37) (0.40) (0.50) (0.51)
Social media 0.48 0.19 0.12 0.08 0.07 0.03 0.75 0.28 0.41 0.18 0 1
(0.50) (0.39) (0.32) (0.28) (0.26) (0.17) (0.43) (0.45) (0.49) (0.39)
Education 3.59 3.76 3.72 2.92 3.06 2.96 3.65 3.28 3.38 3.47 5.25 0 6
(0.83) (0.99) (0.94) (1.04) (1.05) (1.05) (0.91) (1.04) (1.38) (0.86) (2.33)b
(continued on next page)
INCLÁN AND ALMEIDA: PROTEST PARTICIPATION 15
Table 3. Descriptive Statistics per Protest Event: Means and Standard Deviations (continued)
Ritual Demonstrations Reactive Protests
_____________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________
Pre- Post-
LGBT Nonparts Students Nonparts May Day Nonparts election Nonparts election Nonparts WVSaMin. Max.
Variable n = 195 n = 58 n = 85 n = 37 n = 205 n = 71 n = 199 n = 47 n = 108 n = 38 N = 2,000 value value
Social status 1.95 2.15 2.55 1.65 2.66 1.70 2.27 1.94 2.51 1.68 3.31 0 5
(1.05) (0.89) (1.09) (0.89) (0.86) (0.92) (0.94) (0.84) (0.98) (1.04) (1.02)c
Age 30.38 37.69 34.21 41.51 40.87 40.31 34.83 35.19 45.78 36.65 37.48 16 84
(9.98) (13.21) (15.37) (17.07) (13.43) (15.52) (13.78) (12.14) (15.98) (13.93) (15.18)d
Gender 0.69 0.45 0.68 0.51 0.70 0.28 0.51 0.45 0.76 0.50 0.49 0 1
(0.46) (0.50) (0.47) (0.51) (0.46) (0.45) (0.50) (0.50) (0.43) (0.51) (0.50)
a2006 World Values Survey.
bScale 1–9: 1 = incomplete primary education, 5 = complete secondary or technical education, 9 = university degree.
cScale 1–5: 1 = upper class, 3 = lower middle class, 5 = lower class.
dMinimum = 18, maximum = 93.
Standard deviations in parentheses.
through conventional media. Their nonparticipant counterparts’ respective reported
means ranged between 18 and 28 percent and 19 and 47 percent.
Other differences reported in the rest of our treatment variables also make these
groups interesting to study. For example, participants in ritual and reactive demon-
strations show relevant disparities in terms of their political participation experience
and organizational membership. Between 57 and 65 percent of those participating
in reactive protests expressed having been members of civic organizations in the last
year, and between 49 and 82 percent of ritual demonstration participants men-
tioned the same. Between 70 and 93 percent of participants in reactive protests and
between 49 and 81 percent of ritual demonstration participants mentioned having
taken part in political activities in the past.
All groups also reported different levels of political interest, sense of efficacy,
and identification with fellow demonstrators. On average, reactive protest partici-
pants showed higher levels of political interest (2.34 and 2.43 out of 4), sense of effi-
cacy (3.31 and 2.98 out of 4), and collective identification (3.62 and 3.33 out of 4),
while nonparticipants near ritual demonstrations showed the lowest levels in all
these three indicators (see table 3).
If we compare these numbers to those of the last wave of the World Values
Survey in Mexico, we see that on average, 57 percent of Mexicans expressed being
an active member of a civic organization, 59 percent mentioned having taken part
in a political activity in the last year, and on a scale of 1 to 4, their interest in politics
ranked around 2.04 (see table 3). Hence, although protest participants appear
slightly more politically active than regular citizens, the percentage of all Mexicans
taking part in organizations is relatively higher, while their interest in politics is
comparable to that of protest participants.
RESULTS
The results of the logistical model are shown in table 4, while table 5 presents the
predicted probabilities of each influential explanatory variable for each demonstra-
tion type using the nonparticipant group as the comparison base category. These
results show that there are some significant differences between mobilizing factors
for ritual demonstrations and reactive protests: participants in reactive protests are
more likely to be mobilized by their level of political involvement (political interest
and experience), while participants in ritual demonstrations are more likely to be
mobilized by their organizational and social networks, as well as by their collective
identities.
The first hypothesis of this study predicted that participation in reactive
protests should be driven more by past political involvement than participation in
ritual demonstrations. The results show that in comparison to nonparticipants,
being interested in politics and having participated in political activities in the last
year has positive, statistically significant effects in influencing participation in reac-
tive protests but not in ritual demonstrations. In table 5, we can observe that for
ritual demonstrations, individuals have a relatively high probability (69 percent) of
16 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 00: 0
taking part in the events even when their interest in politics is minimal, while in
reactive protests, would-be participants have to be at least quite interested in politics
for them to decide to take part, with an 83 percent chance of joining a spontaneous
demonstration. Having little interest in politics only puts them at a 50 percent prob-
ability of participating. Figure 1 illustrates the effect more clearly.
The results regarding demonstrators’ prior political experience seem to support
this claim. In table 5 and figure 2, we can observe that the probability of participat-
ing in ritual demonstrations is already 66 percent when respondents expressed not
having taken part in any political activity in the previous year, and it increases to 81
INCLÁN AND ALMEIDA: PROTEST PARTICIPATION 17
Table 4. Logistically Modeled Results on Protest Participation Predictors
(coefficients with robust standard errors)
Coefficients
Protest Participation Predictors (robust standard errors)
Political Involvement
Interest in politics 0.002 (0.12)
Interest in politics*Reactive protests 0.73 (0.27)***
Organizational membership 1.19 (0.23)***
Organizational membership* Reactive protests –0.44 (0.46)
Political experience 0.17 (0.25)
Political experience*Reactive protests 1.51 (0.48)***
Sense of efficacy –0.009 (0.09)
Sense of efficacy*Reactive protests 0.23 (0.21)
Mobilizing Identities
Identification with participants 0.75 (0.10)***
Identification with participants* Reactive protests 0.07 (0.18)
Recruitment
Personal invitation 1.40 (0.30)***
Personal invitation*Reactive protests –0.79 (0.78)
Traditional media 0.30 (0.31)
Traditional media*Reactive protests –0.06 (0.55)
New social media 1.00 (0.37)***
New social media*Reactive protests –0.11 (0.57)
Sociodemographics
Education –0.33 (0.10)***
Self-identified social class 0.45 (0.09)***
Age –0.03 (0.007)***
Gender 0.80 (0.20)***
Type of Participation
Reactive demonstrations –2.96 (0.82)***
Number of observations: 1,043
Wald Chi2(21): 244.74
Pseudo R2: 0.4036
percent when they did, while for reactive demonstrations, having prior political
experience does make a difference in one’s decision to take part. Potential partici-
pants have a 50 percent probability of taking part in a reactive event when they do
not have prior political experience, while the probability increases to 92 percent
when they do count with such experience.
While organizational membership is one of the factors that reflects an individ-
ual’s degree of political involvement, and we have argued that participants in reac-
tive protests tend to be more politically engaged than those engaging in ritual
demonstrations, our results in table 4 show that this factor was a statistically signif-
icant predictor for protest participation only in ritual demonstrations. However,
when we look at the results in table 5, we can observe that this is so because the
probability of participating in reactive events is already relatively high (67 percent)
18 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 00: 0
Table 5. Predictive Probabilities of Significant Protest Participation Predictors
Significant Ritual Confidence Reactive Confidence
Predictors Demonstrations Intervals Protests Intervals
Political Interest
No interest 0.69 (0.02) 0.65–0.74 0.23 (0.04) 0.16–0.30
Little interest 0.71 (0.01) 0.68–0.73 0.50 (0.03) 0.43–0.57
Some interest 0.76 (0.02) 0.73–0.79 0.83 (0.02) 0.79–0.87
A lot of interest 0.84 (0.02) 0.81–0.88 0.93 (0.02) 0.90–0.96
Political Experience
With experience 0.81 (0.02) 0.77–0.84 0.92 (0.01) 0.89–0.95
No experience 0.66 (0.02) 0.62–0.70 0.50 (0.03) 0.44–0.57
Organizational Membership
Member 0.85 (0.01) 0.82–0.88 0.89 (0.02) 0.85–0.92
Not a member 0.59 (0.02) 0.54–0.63 0.67 (0.02) 0.62–0.71
Mobilizing Identities
No i.d. with protestors 0.29 (0.03) 0.23–0.35 0.08 (0.03) 0.03–0.14
Little identified 0.53 (0.02) 0.48–0.58 0.40 (0.04) 0.33–0.48
Some identified 0.75 (0.02) 0.72–0.78 0.64 (0.02) 0.53–0.66
Very identified 0.92 (0.01) 0.90–0.95 0.91 (0.02) 0.89–0.95
Recruitment
No invitation 0.67 (0.02) 0.64–0.70 0.76 (0.01) 0.73–0.80
Personal invitation 0.89 (0.02) 0.86–0.93 0.88 (0.04) 0.81–0.95
Not through social media 0.71 (0.01) 0.68–0.74 0.64 (0.02) 0.59–0.68
Through social media 0.88 (0.02) 0.83–0.93 0.91 (0.02) 0.87–0.94
Sense of Efficacy
Very ineffective 0.65 (0.03) 0 59–0.70 0.24 (0.06) 0.11–0.37
Ineffective 0.73 (0.02) 0.69–0.77 0.52 (0.04) 0.44–0.61
Indifferent 0.71 (0.02) 0.68–0.74 0.57 (0.03) 0.51–0.63
Effective 0.75 (0.01) 0.72–0.78 0.80 (0.01) 0.77–0.83
Very effective 0.81 (0.02) 0.77–0.85 0.90 (0.01) 0.87–0.93
even without belonging to an organization. It increases to 92 percent when a person
has an organizational affiliation. In comparison, in ritual demonstrations individuals
have a 59 percent likelihood of taking part in the event when they do not belong to
an organization. Being a member of an organization increases the probability of
taking part in a ritual demonstration to 85 percent.
On the basis of Schussman and Soule’s work (2005), we predicted in hypoth-
esis 2 that while personal invitations should trigger protest participation in all types
of events, their effect should be stronger in ritual demonstrations than in reactive
protests. Results in table 4 confirm this. When we look at the predicted probabilities
of this factor in table 5 and figure 3, potential participants in ritual demonstrators
have a 67 percent probability of taking part in the event when they are not invited
and 89 percent when they are, while in the context of reactive demonstrations there
is a 76 percent probability of participating without an invitation and an 88 percent
likelihood of doing so when invited.
In our third hypothesis, we predicted that a sense of collective identity with fellow
participants should be a higher motivation to join reactive protests than ritual demon-
strations. The results in table 4 add more caution and nuance to this claim. When we
look at the predicted probabilities of this factor in table 5 and better exemplified in
figure 4, we can observe that a collective identity begins to increase the probability of
participation once individuals moderately identify with fellow protest participants: 60
percent for reactive demonstrations and 75 percent for ritual demonstrations. After
those points the effect of this variable is relatively similar for both groups.
INCLÁN AND ALMEIDA: PROTEST PARTICIPATION 19
Figure 1. Interest in Politics
Our fourth hypothesis predicted that social media would have a stronger mobi-
lizing effect for participation in reactive protests, while traditional media would be
more influential in mobilizing individuals into ritual demonstrations. Results in table
4 show the opposite effect. However, when we look at table 5, we observe that social
media had a similar effect in increasing the probability of taking part in protest events
of both types. Comparing participants to nonparticipants, getting to know about a
protest event through social media increases the probability of participation of ritual
demonstrations from 71 percent, when not mobilized through social media to 88
percent when mobilized through that means, and from 64 to 91 percent in terms of
participating in reactive protests. Figure 5 illustrates this relationship.
These results reinforce our perception of ritual demonstrations as symbolic, cel-
ebratory events that commemorate past struggles and gains and that solidify per-
sonal and organizational connections. Participants in reactive protests seem to be
deciding to take part on their own, probably motivated by other considerations,
such as their ongoing involvement in other political activities and social movements.
This may be because participants in reactive protests aim at acting more in the role
of leaders, inviting others to protest events, instead of being asked to do so. Indeed,
in a separate analysis, we found that 47 percent of participants in reactive protests
invited someone else to the protest event while only 38 percent of ritual demonstra-
tion participants attempted to recruit others to the demonstrations. Thus, it should
not surprise us that participation in reactive protests appears to be significantly
20 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 00: 0
Figure 2. Political Experience
lower than in ritual demonstrations. Mobilizing leaders who are resourceful individ-
uals are usually not in the majority. Additionally, our reactive sample is relatively
smaller than our ritual one.
DISCUSSION
AND CONCLUSIONS
The protest participation literature has already demonstrated that the decision to
take part in protest activity tends to be a multidimensional process of political expe-
rience, solidarity, information knowledge, and connectedness. The results show that
while there are some common factors that mobilize participants across ritual
demonstrations and reactive protests, such as collective identities, organizational
links, and new social media, there are also different participation triggers for distinct
types of protests that commonly occur throughout Latin America. By uncovering
differences in protest participation for ritual demonstrations and reactive protests,
this study offers a refinement to the protest participation literature.
For ritual demonstrations, personal connections appear to be relatively more
important, while for reactive events, the participant’s prior political involvement is
the most significant mobilizing motivator. From this finding, we could conclude
that participants in ritual demonstrations in Mexico City conceive of them more as
social events that they attend in the company of others, while reactive demonstrators
INCLÁN AND ALMEIDA: PROTEST PARTICIPATION 21
Figure 3. Personal Recruitment
are less likely to need a personal invitation to take part and are largely motivated by
their interest in politics and their previous experience in other political activities.
This result, however, is not surprising if we consider the electoral nature of the two
reactive events and the context in which these two events occurred: the 2012 presi-
dential election that brought the PRI back to power in Mexico. Both the pre-elec-
toral march organized by the #YoSoy132 student movement and the rally held by
the losing candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to announce his intention to
form a new political party were highly politicized events. More research on other
types of reactive protests in Latin America against policy reforms, corruption scan-
dals, and economic changes might be needed to confirm this finding. We, however,
believe that our arguments follow a logical rationale in which reactive protests
attract more politically involved participants, while ritual demonstrations, which
can also be highly politicized events, tend to be celebratory commemorations of past
social movement struggles that tangentially incorporate current political demands.
We still need to deepen our knowledge about participation determinants across
specific types of demonstrations and protests to better understand mobilization
dynamics across events and political contexts in the Americas. Depending on the
type of demonstration, different factors help protest organizers and participants
overcome the barriers of collective action. The results of this study should help to
begin the discussion.
These findings contribute to the political participation literature that contends
that individual political participation experience is the most crucial factor predicting
22 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 00: 0
Figure 4. Collective Identities
current political involvement by highlighting that it is more the case with reactive
demonstrations than ritual ones. The prior build-up of individual political capital
may enable individuals to surmount the substantial obstacles of participating in less-
planned protests with uncertain outcomes in short timeframes. It is participants’
political involvement that makes them more or less likely to react to mobilization
efforts in favor of or against sudden political, economic, and policy changes. Perhaps
even prior participation in ritual demonstrations makes one more likely to engage
in more spontaneous protests. This would add another critical dimension to the
contributions of ritual protests, beyond sustaining collective memories, in that they
also provide an experiential resource for individuals to gain the desire to participate
in reactive-type protest events.
These results also help us sustain the argument that protesters will be more
likely to participate in ritual demonstrations when they are invited to do so, as
observed in other, more developed and democratically stable political systems
(Schussman and Soule 2005). Still, ritual participants seem to be slightly more influ-
enced by their personal networks and their identification with other participants.
Their level of connectedness through personal links and collective identities seems
sufficient for them to overcome the lower collective action barriers of ritual-type
demonstrations.
Finally, this study helps us challenge the notion that individual protest activity
is homogenous. It found differing correlates to participation in two major types of
demonstrations. This study analyzed only two types of demonstrations in Mexico.
INCLÁN AND ALMEIDA: PROTEST PARTICIPATION 23
Figure 5. Social Media
In the world of Latin American contentious politics, there are more varieties of
demonstrations, such as semiplanned protest events that are not annual ritual
demonstrations, and demonstrations that occur within longer-term protest cam-
paigns, such as current campaigns against political corruption and police abuse.
Future research with an even more precise classification of a broader variety of
demonstrations and the correlates of individual protest participation would enhance
our understanding of the collective action recruitment process. Also, other groups
of nonparticipants would be useful to compare to participants in different types of
demonstrations, especially those groups of nonparticipants who identify strongly
with the issues and grievances in question and have close affiliations to the organiz-
ers of the events.
NOTES
The UC MEXUS-CONACYT Collaborative Grant Program and CIDE’s Fund for
Research Support (Fondo de Apoyo a la Investigación, FAI) funded the research for this
project, in which more than 40 undergraduate CIDE students collaborated as protest sur-
veyors. Previous versions of this analysis were presented at the 2014 annual meeting of the
American Sociological Association in San Francisco. We thank Marc Dixon, David Crow,
Chad Kiewiet de Jonge, Bert Klandermans, and three anonymous reviewers for their
insights.
1. We recognize that although ritual demonstrations can often be characterized as
expressive events, participants may also make instrumental demands consistent with the cur-
rent political and economic context, such as calls to end specific austerity policies during
annual May Day marches (Cohen 1995; Klandermans 2013).
2. See the appendix for a more detailed description of the events.
3. In 1993, McAdam and Paulsen reported similar proportions of participants and non-
participants in their study of movement recruitment. Their original sample consisted of 720
participants and 239 nonparticipants, from which they were able to follow up their research
with 212 participants and 118 nonparticipants.
4. The question reads: “Could you please tell me if in the last 12 months you were a
member of the following organizations. If you are a member of several organizations listed
below, please only tell me in which of them you are most active.” Possible answers include (a)
church/religious organization, (b) union/professional organization, (c) political party, (d)
women’s organization, (e) sport/cultural organization, (f) environmental organization, (g)
LGBT organization, (h) community/neighbor organization, (i) charity organization, (j)
peace-seeking organization, (k) antidiscrimination/promigrant organization, (l) human/civil
rights organization, (m) other. The questionnaire allows respondents to define their member-
ship as active (participating in events) or passive (paying fees or just signing up). We ran sep-
arate models with each type of participation. Our results were not significantly different.
Therefore, we decided to consider both types of participation as the same. We also ran addi-
tional models filtering out cultural organizations, which could be considered as potentially
nonpolitical. Again, no significant differences emerged.
5. The question reads: “Could you please tell me what other actions you have taken to
promote or prevent a change in the last 12 months?” Possible answers include (a) contacted
a politician/local or national government official, (b) signed a petition/public letter, (c)
donated money to a political organization/group, (d) boycotted certain products, (e) wore or
24 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 00: 0
displayed a campaign badge/sticker, (f) joined a strike, (g) took part in direct action (such as
blockage, occupation, civil disobedience), (h) used violent forms of action (against property
or people).
6. The question reads: “To what extent do you identify (a) with the other people pres-
ent at the demonstration? (b) with any organization staging the demonstration?”
7. For a robustness test we ran an additional model using the respondent’s reported
identification with the demonstration’s organizers. Results did not change.
8. We ran correlations between online media, personal connections, and being asked
to participate in an event—our variable of personal recruitment. The results show a 28.3 per-
cent correlation between being asked to participate and being informed about an upcoming
event through another person (personal connections). However, negative correlations of 38.3
percent and 18 percent appeared between personal connections and online media and
between online media and being asked to participate.
9. We are aware that this information may not truly reflect the socioeconomic status
of the respondents. Yet it is the only related information the CCC survey provides.
10. As a robustness test, we also ran seemingly unrelated estimations comparing logistic
regression models for protest participation in each of the five protest events included in this
study. In both sets of models, robust standard errors were considered to control for potential
error correlation among respondents in the same event. These models are included in the
online appendix. Although some predictors appear to have different statistically significant
effects across protest participation in different demonstrations, the results of the adjusted
Wald tests show that the only predictors that had a significant effect across protests were the
participants’ degree of political interest, their political experience, and whether or not they
were personally invited to take part—confirming our previous results. Running a multilevel
model differentiating each protest event was not possible (model did not converge), given that
only five protest events are considered in this study and each of them has relatively small
numbers of observations.
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SUPPORTING INFORMATION
Additional supporting materials may be found with the online version of this article at the
publisher’s website: Appendix
28 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 00: 0
... Klandermans (1984) argued that people tend to make rational decisions about whether to participate in collective actions depending on the likely costs and benefits of their activities and their fruitfulness rather than just protesting due to complaints and grievances. In line with Klandermans' approach, most social movement scholars -though they differ in the degree to which political efficacy plays a role in protest participation -consider that political efficacy is an important factor in protest participation, in the sense that individuals who believe that their actions have an impact are more likely to participate in politics (e. g., Chan, 2016;Hsiao, 2018;Inclan & Almeida, 2017;Schussman & Soule, 2005). On the other hand, nonparticipants would presumably see political protest as an ineffective method to communicate political opinions and impact social change (e.g., Inclan & Almeida, 2017). ...
... In line with Klandermans' approach, most social movement scholars -though they differ in the degree to which political efficacy plays a role in protest participation -consider that political efficacy is an important factor in protest participation, in the sense that individuals who believe that their actions have an impact are more likely to participate in politics (e. g., Chan, 2016;Hsiao, 2018;Inclan & Almeida, 2017;Schussman & Soule, 2005). On the other hand, nonparticipants would presumably see political protest as an ineffective method to communicate political opinions and impact social change (e.g., Inclan & Almeida, 2017). ...
... The annual commemoration of the 1968 students' movement tends to be more ritualistic, ceremonial, and predictable, as it takes place every year on the same day, to commemorate the 1968 student movement's cause and its aftermath, while the march organized by the #YoSoy132 movement was an immediate contentious response to a particular event-an electoral campaign event gone wrong. As such, I consider the latter a reactive protest, one that responds to current or sudden events or policy changes (Inclán & Almeida, 2017). ...
... Previous studies on surveying contextualized protest participation in Mexico City, showed that ritual demonstrators are more likely to participate when they are mobilized through their personal or organizational connections, while protest participation of reactive protestors appears to be based more on their political interest and their experience in other political activities (Inclán & Almeida, 2017). Not only mobilizing mechanisms and factors may vary across demonstrations, but protest participants' political attitudes may differ as well (Inclán, 2019). ...
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“This rich and insightful collection arrives at the perfect historic moment. Even as the modern neoliberal university reels under the impact of the COVID pandemic, these chapters remind us that university students continue to be significant political actors.” – Professor Judith Bessant, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia “This wide-ranging volume provides the reader with a holistic understanding of the specificities of contemporary student movements within the context of neoliberal higher education.” – Dr. Sarah Pickard, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3, France “Drawing on recent cases from the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia, this volume successfully draws the study of student movements into the social movement literature.” – Professor Christopher Rootes, University of Kent, United Kingdom This book inquires into the global wave of student mobilizations that have arisen in the aftermath of the economic crisis of 2008, accounting for their historical and sociological significance. More specifically, its eleven chapters explore the role of students as political actors: their ability to build effective organizations, to make political alliances with other actors, and to win public consensus, as well as their impact on cultural, political, and policy outcomes. To do so, the volume examines case studies in England, Chile, South Africa, Quebec, and Hong Kong, covering Europe, Africa, Asia, and North and Latin America. Grouped into two major sections, the collection covers the organizational structures of student movements and their alliances and outcomes. Ultimately, this volume examines the understudied political aspects of student unrest, exploring how student mobilizations—driven by indebtedness, precariousness, the corporatization of the university, and other issues—correspond to larger processes of change with wider implications in society. Lorenzo Cini is a political sociologist on the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences of the Scuola Normale Superiore of Florence, Italy. Donatella della Porta is Professor of Political Science, Dean of the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, and Director of the PhD program in Political Science and Sociology at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, Italy. César Guzmán-Concha is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the University of Geneva, Switzerland.
... The annual commemoration of the 1968 students' movement tends to be more ritualistic, ceremonial, and predictable, as it takes place every year on the same day, to commemorate the 1968 student movement's cause and its aftermath, while the march organized by the #YoSoy132 movement was an immediate contentious response to a particular event-an electoral campaign event gone wrong. As such, I consider the latter a reactive protest, one that responds to current or sudden events or policy changes (Inclán & Almeida, 2017). ...
... Previous studies on surveying contextualized protest participation in Mexico City, showed that ritual demonstrators are more likely to participate when they are mobilized through their personal or organizational connections, while protest participation of reactive protestors appears to be based more on their political interest and their experience in other political activities (Inclán & Almeida, 2017). Not only mobilizing mechanisms and factors may vary across demonstrations, but protest participants' political attitudes may differ as well (Inclán, 2019). ...
Chapter
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Several episodes of student unrest have taken place, both in advanced and developing economies, since the turn of the twenty-first century. These protests suggest that universities have regained centrality as locus of contention in contemporary societies, but also that students—and more generally the young—have become more politically involved. The introduction of the edited volume “Student Movements in Late Neoliberalism. Dynamics of Contention and their Consequences” provides a discussion and overview of three main themes that have called the attention of recent scholarship on student activism: (i) the current transformation in the conceptions and practices of higher education; (ii) the organizational forms of student movements, including the tactics they employ; (iii) and the alliances they engage in, as well as the outcomes of their struggles. In doing so, we introduce our theoretical discussion on the topic, developed from social movement studies. More specifically, building upon research on episodes of student unrest after the 2008 financial crisis, we look at their mode of organizing and action tactics, on the one hand, and their configuration of allies and achieved outcomes, on the other. We also explore how and to what extent such aspects are to be understood as the result of strategic choices made by the student activists themselves during the process of mobilization. The broad geographical scope of the volume, with chapters dealing with events that occurred in Latin and North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, partially rectifies a bias of mainstream academia, namely the focus on cases of the global North.
... Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/46262/chapter/405480331 by OUP-Reference Gratis Access user on 24 May 2023 participation costs and how activists provide selective incentives for reducing them. Recent studies on Latin American demonstrators following the Caught in the Act of Protest methodology, which maps the motivations and mobilization trajectories of participants in major demonstrations, promise to start addressing this important gap(Inclán 2019;Inclán and Almeida 2017;Somma, Rossi, and Donoso 2020). ...
Chapter
Since the redemocratization of much of Latin America in the 1980s and a regional wave of anti-austerity protests in the 1990s, social movement studies has become an important part of sociological, political, and anthropological scholarship on the region. The subdiscipline has framed debates about formal and informal politics, spatial and relational processes, as well as economic changes in Latin America. While there is an abundant literature on particular movements in different countries across the region, there is limited coverage of the approaches, debates, and theoretical understandings of social movement studies applied to Latin America. In The Oxford Handbook of Latin American Social Movements, Federico M. Rossi presents a survey of the broad range of theoretical perspectives on social movements in Latin America. Bringing together a wide variety of viewpoints, the Handbook includes five sections: theoretical approaches to social movements, as applied to Latin America; processes and dynamics of social movements; major social movements in the region; ideational and strategic dimensions of social movements; and the relationship between political institutions and social movements. Covering key social movements and social dynamics in Latin America from the late nineteenth century to the twenty-first century, The Oxford Handbook of Latin American Social Movements is an indispensable reference for any scholar interested in social movements, protest, contentious politics, and Latin American studies.
... Social movement scholars commonly suggest that one's likelihood of participating in protests is intrinsically linked to certain psychological predispositions (Inclán and Almeida 2017;Klandermans 1984;Van Zomeren et al. 2008), though different academics place different emphases on the role of socio-psychological factors in protest participation. ...
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Many contemporary protests highlight global issues. These protests emerge as a method to influence global politics in the absence of formal structures for citizens to voice their concerns to global political leaders. Prior research establishes that political efficacy, political discussion, and political interest are important predictors of protest participation, but this body of research has not addressed the global dimensions of these variables. Using survey data from 2019 in four countries (USA, UK, France, and Canada), we examine the extent to which perceived influence on international leaders, political discussion of global affairs, and interest in global issues influence protest participation, accounting for the traditional framing of these variables in terms of national politics. We find that all variables correlate with protest participation. We also find that civic uses of Facebook increase the likelihood of protesting. Furthermore, the correlations of these variables with protest participation are consistent across the four countries. In sum, we offer a robust model predicting protest participation considering contemporary global dynamics.
... More importantly, their criticism demonstrates a dualistic view of non-violent political ritual and valiant resistance. As some studies of ritualized protest indicate, political ritual can sometimes prepare its participants for direct political actions (see Schnell 1995;Inclán and Almeida 2017). In Durkheim's terms, political ritual induces a state of collective effervescence that underlies the entire protest movement (Durkheim [1915(Durkheim [ ] 1995. ...
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In Hong Kong, the efficacy of ritualized protest has become an issue of hot debate in recent years. Whereas ritualized protest is a long-term political practice in the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement that has considerable influence, skepticism about it has grown remarkably within the radical faction of the movement. Against this background, this paper aims to offer a theoretical reflection on the role of ritualized protest in the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement. It will take an auto-ethnographic approach to reflect on the material culture of Hong Kong public protests and engage in the recent controversy over ritualized protest. This study shows that although ritualized protest can hardly achieve actual political changes in the short run, ritual sensibility is essential to the promulgation and the passing-on of social and political values. This applies not only to ritualized protests that are largely peaceful, rational, and non-violent but also to militant protests that are open to the use of violence. This emphasis on the underlying importance of ritual sensibility invites both the liberal democratic and the radical factions to introspect whether their own political praxes have portents of formalization and ossification.
Chapter
Using an innovative protest survey of protest participants and nonparticipants from two major student demonstrations in Mexico City, I test the assumption that protest participation triggers vary across protest events even for similar demonstrating groups. Building on previous research, I compare the motivations, dynamics of mobilization, and political attitudes of students taking part in a ritual demonstration (the annual commemoration of the 1968 students’ movement) and one reactive protest (a march organized by the #YoSoy132 movement in response to Enrique Peña Nieto’s presidential campaign). The results suggest that the level of students’ political interest is more influential in their decision to take part in a reactive demonstration, while for a ritual demonstration, the decision to participate tends to be driven more by their collective identity as students. These findings add to the growing literature on contextualized contestation and debunking the myth of the protestor, in this particular case of the protesting student.
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The paper examines the individual-level building blocks of getting out the vote (GOTV) for electoral parties that represent subaltern sectors in resource scarce environments. Drawing on theories of protest waves, social movement fields, and threat-induced collective action, we examine the likelihood of campaigning in left party electoral mobilization and party identification. The study implements a modified version of the Caught in the Act of Protest: Contextualizing Contestation (CCC) survey protocol and respondent selection design. We use a sympathy pool sample of over 1,200 May Day participants in Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Honduras to explain the micro-foundations of electoral proselytizing of political parties advocating for disadvantaged populations. We found that involvement in left party electoral campaigning was largely driven by resources deposited during anti-neoliberal protest waves, including prior movement-type protest, civic organizational activity, and economic threat perceptions. Campaigning for the anti-neoliberal party was also associated with a higher level of post-election party identification. The findings suggest that left parties may at times partially overcome economic and political resource deficits by mobilizing individuals deeply embedded in the social movement field.
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The paper examines the individual-level building blocks of getting out the vote (GOTV) for electoral parties that represent subaltern sectors in resource scarce environments. Drawing on theories of protest waves, social movement fields, and threat-induced collective action, we examine the likelihood of campaigning in left party electoral mobilization and party identification. The study implements a modified version of the Caught in the Act of Protest: Contextualizing Contestation (CCC) survey protocol and respondent selection design. We use a sympathy pool sample of over 1,200 May Day participants in Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Honduras to explain the micro-foundations of electoral proselytizing of political parties advocating for disadvantaged populations. We found that involvement in left party electoral campaigning was largely driven by resources deposited during anti-neoliberal protest waves, including prior movement-type protest, civic organizational activity , and economic threat perceptions. Campaigning for the anti-neoliberal party was also associated with a higher level of post-election party identification. The findings suggest that left parties may at times partially overcome economic and political resource deficits by mobilizing individuals deeply embedded in the social movement field. K E Y W O R D S : social movements; get out the vote; political parties; neoliberal; threats. Since the late 1970s, a number of major protest waves have erupted around the globe over economic reforms that reversed the gains of an expanded welfare state and social citizenship. In several of these cases, a major electoral challenge from the left followed the anti-neoliberal protest wave (Kanellopoulos and Kousis 2018; Roberts 1998 and 2014; Silva 2009). Protest waves left in their wake several enduring features in civil society. Such features include activist mobilizing experiences and skills, new and revitalized civic organizations, and novel cognitive understandings of state policy
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Este artículo analiza las emociones durante la participación en el movimiento por la igualdad de derechos de Lesbianas, Gays, Bisexuales, personas Transgénero, Intersexuales y Queer (LGTBIQ) en Argentina y Chile. En base a encuestas aplicadas in situ en su principal marcha anual, buscamos contribuir a la literatura sobre movimientos sociales especificando la relación entre emociones y acción colectiva. Demostramos que las emociones no se distribuyen aleatoriamente entre los manifestantes, sino que son moldeadas por características individuales y nacionales. Entre los manifestantes con mayor compromiso activista y mayor movilización cognitiva encontramos las emociones negativas más intensas.
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The problem of collective action is that each member of a group wants other members to make necessary sacrifices while he or she 'free rides', reaping the benefits of collective action without doing the work. Inevitably the end result is that no one does the work and the common interest is not realized. This book analyses the social pressure whereby groups solve the problem of collective action. The authors show that the problem of collective action requires a model of group process and cannot be deduced from simple models of individual behaviour. They employ formal mathematical models to emphasize the role of small subgroups of especially motivated individuals who form the 'critical mass' that sets collective action in motion. The book will be read with special interest by sociologists, social psychologists, economists and political scientists. It will also be of concern to those in industrial relations and communications research working on issues in collective action and rational choice.
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By focusing on the less turbulent years in between the social upheavals of the Paris Commune of 1871 and the 1848 Revolution, Gould reveals that while class played a pivotal role in 1848, it was neighbourhood solidarity that was a decisive organizing force in 1871. Baron Haussmann's massive urban renovation projects between 1852 and 1868 dispersed workers from Paris' centre to newly annexed districts on the outskirts of the city. Residence rather than occupation quickly became the new basis of social solidarity. Drawing on evidence derived from trial documents, marriage certificates, reports of police spies and the popular press, Gould demonstrates that this fundamental rearrangement in the patterns of social life made possible a neighbourhood insurgent movement; whereas the insurgents of 1848 fought and died in defence of their status as workers, those of 1871 did so as members of a besieged urban community.
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While numerous studies stress the crucial role of networks for social movement participation, they generally do not specify how networks affect individual behaviors. This article clarifies the role of social networks for individual social movement participation. It argues that networks perform three fundamental functions in the process leading to participation and that they intervene at different moments along this process. First, networks socialize and build individual identities—a socialization function. Second, they offer participation opportunities to individuals who are culturally sensitive to a specific political issue—a structural-connection function. Third, they shape individual preferences before individuals decide to join a move-ment—a decision-shaping function. These network functions allow us to disentangle the mechanisms at work in the process of participation. They also integrate structural and rationalist theories, which are often considered opposing explanations of individual movement participation. This article presents several hypotheses about these network functions, and uses both quantitative (survey) and qualitative (life history) data of participation in the Berne Declaration SMO to examine them.