Redistributive Preferences and Protests in Latin America

Abstract

This article analyzes the role of individual redistributive preferences on protest participation. The article focuses on Latin America, a region that has experienced substantial protests and demonstrations in the last decade, making use of individual-level data on redistributive preferences and protest participation collected across eighteen countries in 2010, 2012, and 2014. The results show evidence for an association between strong individual preferences for redistribution and participation in protests motivated by the low quality of services and institutions, failures to reduce corruption, and perceived lower standards of living. The results are robust to alternative estimators, samples, and model specifications and not affected by endogeneity concerns.