Institutional incentives and contentious politics in post-Neoliberal era in Latin America (1985–2010)

Abstract

The article focuses on the supply-side of protest activity in Latin America in the post-neoliberal era. It argues that parties’ cohesive voting in Congress under different power constellations and parties’ linkage strategy to voters create institutional conditions of power collusion, inter-branch stalemate, or party erosion that delineates political terrain for social mobilization. First, the firm control of a single party or coalition over the executive and legislature with cohesive voting of party members in line with party leadership denotes power collusion and incites underrepresented actors to protest. Second, the dislocation in the executive-legislative relations (either with party members voting against the president’s proposals in a majority government or with cohesive opposition bloc(s) acting against the president’s will in a minority government) leads to policy immobilism and pushes legislative parties to ignite popular discontent. Third, more programmatic party linkages increase the degree of party institutionalization and predictability about policy commitment and mitigate struggles in extra-electoral arenas. The theoretical argument is tested with a battery of statistical tests that lends credence to the institutional explanations of mass mobilization and corroborated with empirical cases that show the plausibility of the statistical findings in particular contexts.