What Shapes Political Participation of the Poorest Citizens?

This chapter presents the theoretical explanation that links core institutional features of democracy (political parties, competitive elections, civil society, and protection of democratic rights) to the political behavior of the poorest citizens. The focus is not only on those factors that boost the political activity of the poor, but those that have a disproportionately strong positive impact on poor people’s activism. The chapter argues that where civil society is strong, where political parties have the capacity and incentives to focus mobilization efforts on the poor, and where democratic institutions are strong, poor people will be able to participate at high levels.

Democracy, Political Participation, and Latin America’s Poorest Citizens

This chapter introduces the core questions the book seeks to answer. What explains the political participation of poor people? What changed during the past two decades to enable such widespread participation by poor people? How have some Latin American democracies reduced gaps in participation across income and wealth groups? What role does clientelism play in mobilizing the poor? Despite persistently high poverty rates and high economic inequality, poor people in Latin America participate in politics at very high levels. This chapter lays out this puzzle and introduces the main argument of the book: that civil society organization, political parties, and competitive elections have an enormous impact on whether or not poor people turn out to vote, protest, and contact government officials. This chapter also briefly summarizes the research design and plan of the rest of the book.

Patterns and Puzzles

This chapter describes in detail patterns of political participation in Latin America with a particular focus on the political activity of poor citizens. It also introduces the book’s measures of poverty and political participation and engages in some preliminary statistical analysis in order to rule out alternative explanations. We identify three important findings: first, the poorest individuals in Latin America now participate in politics at least as much as, if not more than, more affluent individuals; second, the relationship between wealth and political activism is not uniform across countries or acts: in some places poor people participate more than the affluent, in most countries there is no difference in overall levels of participation across social classes, and in a few countries political stratification by class continues; third, the chapter shows that poor people do vote and protest a bit less than more affluent people but contact government more. It is the frequency with which poor people contact government officials that accounts for much of the equality in political participation that the book identifies. The analysis finds little evidence that individual-level factors explain these patterns. Instead, poor individuals participate as much or more than more affluent individuals despite possessing lower levels of education, political interest, and wealth. The chapter also explores the effect that efforts at vote buying and clientelist mobilization have on poor people’s activism, showing that although clientelism is common, it not the only mechanism through which poor people are mobilized into politics.

Conclusion

The concluding chapter considers the implications of the book’s findings for the health and stability of democracy in the region and for future research. Democracy is not strong unless the voices of all people are heard and considered equally by those in power. Political equality obviously affects representation and accountability, and also impacts public policies that are likely to be more responsive to the needs of all citizens where the poor are politically active. The chapter reflects on the limitations of socioeconomic status (SES) and resource-based theories of political participation that emphasize individual-level factors and attitudes and advocates for more comparative analyses of political behavior that takes institutional factors seriously in explaining who participates and in which political activities.

Political Parties and Electoral Competition

Chapter 5 considers the effect of political mobilization efforts by political parties on the political activity of Latin America’s poorest citizens. Political parties play critical roles in mobilizing citizens in democracies, but we do not understand very well the conditions under which parties will focus their efforts on low-income individuals. This book’s framework emphasizes the organizational capacity and the electoral incentives parties have for mobilizing the poor to better understand who participates and in what kinds of activities. This chapter shows that where parties have greater organizational capacity and stronger linkages to groups in society, and where they face stiff electoral competition, poor people are more politically active, and we see more equal levels of political participation overall. The chapter also shows that dominant parties that win elections by wide margins tend to ignore the poorest citizens, even if they are leftist parties with strong rhetoric around poverty and inclusion.

Inclusion and Exclusion during the Left Turn

Chapter 6 takes a closer look at the impact of Latin America’s left turn on the political activism of poor people, and on political equality more generally. This chapter shows a surprising pattern: while the election of leftist governments did spark more political activity across the board, it did not produce more equal patterns of political participation. On the contrary, political participation is most stratified by wealth where radical-left parties or candidates govern. This chapter argues that the ideology of ruling parties matters less than expected for a number of reasons. First, due to their electoral and institutional dominance and weak organizational structure, ruling leftist parties in places like Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela had neither the capacity nor the incentives to mobilize poor citizens outside of election. This is in contrast to European contexts where leftist parties face stiff electoral competition and have strong linkages to groups in society. Second, most research based on advanced democracies assumes that poor people are core constituents of leftist parties. In Latin America, in contrast, poor people are just as likely to hold right-of-center views as left-of-center views.

Quality of Democracy

Political participation is frequently taken as an indicator of how well a democracy is working. Chapter 7 considers the relationship in reverse: what impact does quality of democracy have on the ability of poor people to participate in politics? It argues that declines in the quality of democracy have a disproportionately negative effect on the capacity of poor citizens to participate in the political process. The erosion of political rights, attacks on associations, and the erosion of political competition create barriers to participation that are more difficult for low-resource actors to overcome. As a result, where democracy is in trouble, poor people often opt out of politics at higher rates than everyone else.

Community Organizations and Mobilization from Below

Chapter 4 examines the role that community organizations play in mobilizing poor people into politics. It shows that part of the explanation for the unusually high levels of participation among poor citizens in Latin America can be traced to extraordinarily high levels of community organization. People across all social classes in Latin America are very involved in community organizations, including neighborhood associations, community groups, parent groups, professional organizations, religious groups, and women’s organizations. The chapter shows that organizations promote greater political participation by poor citizens through two mechanisms. The first operates at the community level, through the mobilizational resources and infrastructure provided by densely organized communities that reduce barriers to collective action. The second operates at the elite level, when parties and campaigns channel their political mobilization efforts through organizations rather than targeting atomized individuals. The evidence shows that the effect of involvement with community organizations has a stronger effect on political activism of poorer citizens—but only for voting and protesting, thus helping to equalize overall levels of political participation.