1 The study of protest participation in Mexico and its lacunae

Individual determinants that trigger protest participation: The case of Mexico City

Introduction

1 The study of protest participation in Mexico and its lacunae

In the year 2000, Mexico experienced, for the first time, a transition to democracy. For 71 years the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) governed Mexico under an authoritarian regime (Fox, 1994;

Bruhn, 2008; Almeida and Ulate, 2015). One of the consequences that Mexico suffered during the PRI regime was the lack of right to freedom of expression. Many social movements that emerged during the decades of the authoritarian regime were broken up and, in some cases, were broken up by resorting to an excessive use of force by law enforcement officials (Foweraker, 1993; Combes, 2006; Zayadskaya and Welzel, 2013). This led to a lack of development of alternative ways of political participation in Mexico compared to countries in North America or Central-Western Europe that, during those decades, were consolidating their democratic system. Due to the fact that Mexico is still a young democracy, its institutions are not well-developed either. Therefore, the channels for participating through governmental institutions — such as voting, campaign participation, public hearings or contacting governmental authorities — are not adequate ( cf.

Ayanian and Tausch, 2016).

This situation has resulted in people expressing their demands and claims, more frequently using the streets as a means of expression, since authorities are not helping or facilitating their participation in the decision-making process at an earlier stage (cf. Tartakowsky, 1998). As the conditions for participating in a conventional way are not present, people take to the streets to participate in actions considered non-conventional (Machado, Scartascini and Tommasi, 2011). The state is not fulfilling its obligations to provide security, shelter, or public services to the population;

therefore, their participation is channeled through protest actions. Protest actions in Mexico were

harshly repressed in and after the 1960s and, in one way or another, this situation persists to this day

Introduction 1 The study of protest participation in Mexico and its lacunae

despite the democratic transition in 2000. However, regardless the repression or violence that this form of participation sometimes involves, protest actions have become a common way to express inconformity.

The characteristics of Mexico are different to the characteristics of countries where the mainstream theories on social movements were developed — which are countries with consolidated democracies. Hence, to study the Mexican case, one must be aware of this difference, as one of the fundamental aims of this thesis is to evaluate the pertinence of these theories in a young democracy with an authoritarian heritage that experiences conditions of social inequality, insecurity and low levels of trust in public institutions. A question that must be asked first is whether the case of Mexico, following the mainstream theories, is going to produce similar outcomes to those that we can find in the literature, or due to the peculiarities of this country, the outcomes are going to be different. This question has led scholars to study protest participation mainly from two perspectives.

The first, taking a social movement or a protest event per se as a unit of analysis (cf. Foweraker, 1993; Bruhn, 2008; Diez, 2008; Krøvel, 2011; Saavedra, 2012; Foyer and Kervran, 2015). The second, taking the individual as a unit of analysis (cf. Combes, 2006; Inclán, Almeida, and Gómez, 2013; Combes, Tamayo, Voegtli, 2015).

Most of the scholars who adopted individuals as a unit of research did it from a qualitative perspective, and just a few of them employed quantitative methods to test the strength of the associations or correlations that exist among the different variables that play a role in the process of protest participation.

One of the lacunae that we can find in the literature on social protests in Mexico, and particularly in

Mexico City, is that most of the research works have focused on large scale mobilizations, leaving

aside the study of small protest events, which are the ones that occur every day. Large protest

events, undoubtedly, are the reaction to significant social or political changes that have a major

impact on people's daily life. For this reason, there is a particular interest in analyzing protest

actions that mobilize a large proportion of the population. For instance, the “vote by vote” protest in

2006, the “caravan for peace with justice and dignity” in 2011, the “I am #132” movement in 2012,

or more recently the Ayotzinapa movement since 2014.

Introduction 1 The study of protest participation in Mexico and its lacunae

Few studies focus on small protest events. Indeed, protest events that emerge every day in Mexico City are relatively small. Only when there is an event that has a major impact at the national or regional level do protest events reach thousands of people, otherwise on a daily basis, we can observe that on the streets of Mexico City there are protest events which range from very few to some hundreds of people. Most of these protests do not only emerge when difficult macro political, economic or social circumstances arise. Instead, they emerge when there is, for example, a lack of access to public services, shelter, when there are malpractices by the government, or when there are urban projects that affect families. These kinds of protests happen daily, and even if they are not in the interest of the whole population, they have a transversal effect since the benefits are shared directly or indirectly with everybody (Olson, 1975).

The analysis of small protest events is fundamental for three main reasons. Firstly, because small protests happen more frequently than large protests; therefore, they could provide more accurate information about the type of protest, the claims and the socio-demographic characteristic of participants. It is through small protest events, that we can better understand the way individuals use non-traditional channels of participation in order to make their voices heard. Secondly, people who participate in small protest events are less exposed to the media impact that involves large protest events. This condition could explain, more precisely, the role that informal social networks play in expressing a particular discontent, as people in small mobilizations are protesting for issues that they know of first-hand, not through media. Thirdly, in small protests the motivations for participating could be higher since small groups tend to increase the benefits of participants (Olson, 1975). Likewise, the visibility and engagement of participants is higher than in big protest events.

Another lacuna found in the literature is the study of people who do not take part in protest events.

The studies on protest demonstrations in Mexico tend to focus only on people who participate in

protest actions. These studies explain the socio-demographic composition of participants, their

motivations, their social discourse, or the construction of their identity. However, these studies also

leave aside the analysis of those people who have no interest in participating in protest events — or

people who have an interest but who do not take part in demonstrations. The study of non-protesters

is also important since they are the other face of participation. We must remember that according to

the World Values Survey (Wave 6) not more than 24% of the population (of the 60 countries where

the survey was conducted) had participated in a peaceful demonstration. This percentage decreases

when we observe the participation in other kinds of protest actions which are not considered

Introduction 1 The study of protest participation in Mexico and its lacunae

peaceful. This means that the group of non-protesters represent, in general, a considerable part of the population. The study of non-protesters is also important in order to avoid any bias when explaining why people protest. The contrast between the characteristics of protesters and non- protesters allows a better understanding of social protests and, at the same time, allows the definition of the variables that have a significant impact on the development of protest actions.

The participation in small protest events and the non-participation of individuals can be explained using structural approaches. Principally, the resource mobilization and the micro-mobilization approaches could help to explain how individuals, who in principle are detached individuals, make up a social actor, and how some of those actors mobilize while others do not. The latter question is one of the purposes of this research, to understand how some individuals within society participate in protest events while other individuals do not participate. This main question led to other questions such as, are social class, education level and the level of interest in politics variables that trigger protest participation? Do political, economic and security dissatisfaction increase the likelihood of protesting? Do the perception of danger and repression in protest events play a role in the decision for participating? Is participation in traditional or activist organizations a factor that encourages protest participation? Also, among the different social circles with which individuals interact, which one increases the likelihood of participating in a protest event?

At first sight in the case of Mexico, we could state that both groups, protesters, and non-protesters,

share common characteristics such as perceptions related to the political, economic or security

context, distrust in authorities and institutions, or the social circles they frequent. However, in order

to properly explain social protest, we need to look at situations without protest and compare them to

situations where people take action (Opp, 2009). After an exhaustive literature research, the work of

Inclán, Almeida, and Gómez (2013) – which follows the methodology of the project Caught in the

act of protest: Contextualizing Contestation (Van Stekelenburg, Walgrave, Klandermans, and

Verhulst, 2012) – is the only one that explains the determinants of protest participation, while

having people who do not take part in demonstrations as control variable. With this control group,

the authors could delimit the variables that are significantly present in individuals who participate in

protest events. The work of Inclán, Almeida, and Gómez (2013) opens a new way of studying

protest participation in Mexico. In this regard, the research developed in this thesis follows the same

approach proposed by these authors. Thus, this thesis contributes to the understanding of the

Introduction 1 The study of protest participation in Mexico and its lacunae

determinants that trigger protest participation, always taking into account the differences that exist between the characteristics of protesters and non-protesters.

2 What makes this research different

Part of the originality of this research is that I am not just studying a single type of protest or a specific social movement. Instead, this research aims to analyze any kind of protest events that happen every day in Mexico City. Many studies carried out in Mexico analyze protest events which are related to either one sector of society or one social movement in particular. For example, the teacher protests (Foweraker, 1993), the urban movement of “Antorchistas”

(Bruhn, 2008), the protests against the electoral fraud in 2006 (Combes, 2010), the protest to defend the energy sector (Tamayo, 2004) or the movement #YoSoy132 and the protests against president Peña Nieto (Cadena Roa and Serrano Campos, 2013). However, these studies only focus on one single claim, and therefore the outcomes cannot easily be compared with other protest events because of the use of different theoretical approaches or methodologies for collecting data. Likewise, there is also a tendency to study the protest movement per se. This means that scholars explain the causes that triggered the occurrence of the protest, its structure, its cycle, its political opportunities or its resources. However, few of these works concentrate their attention on the micro-level study of protest events and the effects that the meso and macro level have on it. In other words, on the study of “who” takes part in a demonstration taking the structures and the context into account.

In this dissertation, I propose a study of individuals who take part and who do not take part in protest events. As mentioned before, this type of analysis is quite new for the study of social protests in Mexico. One of its advantages is that we can have a wider view of the variables that trigger protest participation. In order to identify and analyze these variables, I use a quantitative approach, namely the coefficients of multinomial logistic regression models, which is an approach and a technique rarely used for studying individuals who participate in protest events or social movements in Mexico, since there is a tendency to study these individuals through qualitative approaches.

1 “National Torch Movement”

Introduction 2 What makes this research different

It is clear that qualitative approaches also contribute to the identification of the variables that are involved in the process of protest participation. Indeed, thanks to qualitative approaches scholars have found variables that resulted to be determinants in the individuals' decision to participate in protest events. Unfortunately, this type of approach fails to establish the strength of those variables, the effects, and the different associations that we can make between them and, importantly, we cannot properly establish the variables that differentiate participants from non-participants. For these reasons, the use of quantitative techniques could help us, on the one hand, to determine which of the different variables that explain protest participation have a significant effect on individuals, and on the other hand, to observe among all those variables which ones have a higher explanatory power.

The use of quantitative techniques for studying the variables that trigger protest participation at the individual level must be underpinned by the micro-level approaches to social movements. Micro- level approaches focus on the study of individuals, as they are the core element to study protest participation (cf. Snow, Zurcher, Ekland-Olson, 1980, Opp and Roehl, 1990; Benson and Rochon, 2004). A micro-level approach to protest participation not only allows the socio-demographic characteristics of those people who participate to be uncovered, but equally the characteristics of their social networks, their grievances, their activity in other protest events or their motivations.

To explain the different variables that play a role in the decision of individuals to take part in a protest event, I support my analysis with the study of 768 surveys, from which 384 corresponded to individuals who have never participated in a protest event, while 384 corresponded to individuals who have participated at least one time in protest demonstrations. The data of the latter group was collected from 26 protest events (18 different topics) that took place in Mexico City between January and March 2016. The data collected in the survey was analyzed using multinomial logistic regression models in order to establish the odds of demonstrating when compared a specific group of protesters with the group of non-protesters.

The period chosen to apply the questionnaire is considered as neutral regarding protest activity. For

instance, it is known that electoral periods are followed by a wave of protest activity, the same

situation happens when there is a big event that wakens a sense of indignation or injustice within

society. During this kind of period, it is more likely that individuals take part in protest

demonstrations more than they usually would. On the contrary, during periods in which events, such

Introduction 2 What makes this research different

as the aforementioned, are not taking place (neutral periods), individuals participate in protests which are more related to their everyday problems. In this sense, in neutral periods individuals demonstrate without the effects of social contagion and media influence that are present during periods of high activity. With the data collected from both groups, protesters and non-protesters, I aim to establish the characteristics that differentiate one group from the other in order to find out the determinants that encourage people to take part in a protest event.

To conduct this research work, I will focus on the analysis of three particular aspects of protest participation (three research axes), each related to a specific level of social analysis. At the micro level, I tackle the socio-demographic characteristics of protesters and non-protesters. At the meso level, the participation in traditional political or activist organizations and the participation in informal social networks. At the macro level the perceptions about the political, economic and security context and the perceptions of danger, reprisals and police violence during protest events.

Each of these axes will help develop research questions and hypotheses to analyze to what extent mainstream theories on social movements explain the case of protesters and non-protesters in Mexico City. These research axes are commonly found in the literature; however, some elements in each axis have either not yet been completely developed or explored.

In sum, as mentioned before, I do not study the causes of the protest events in depth. Therefore, I do not use a movement-centered approach because my goal is not to find out what social movements are doing nor the contexts in which they are contending nor to study their influence in policy making. Instead, I analyze the variables that have an effect on the propensity of individuals to protest. Thus, beyond the paths of pure micro, meso or macro level analyses, this research work examines these three social levels in combination to explain the individuals' likelihood to participate in protest events. That is to say, I analyze the effects of the macro or meso level on the micro level.

With this aim, I seek to determine whether the case of Mexico is going to produce similar outcomes

to those that we can find in the literature or, whether due to the peculiarities of this country the

outcomes are going to differ. Contrary to other studies which only analyze the characteristics of

protesters, in this work I analyze the characteristics of both protesters and non-protesters. The latter

is an important group of analysis, since with it we can make a real contrast to observe which

variables are more likely to trigger protest participation in individuals.

Introduction 3 The structure of the thesis and the hypotheses to be tested

3 The structure of the thesis and the hypotheses to be tested

This thesis is structured in seven chapters. Three related to theoretical and methodological aspects, and four related to the empirical research. In the first chapter, I explore the different concepts and theories which will help to develop my analyses. In the first section of this chapter, I introduce the phenomenon of protest participation as a non-institutionalized way of political participation. In the section that follows, I explain the importance of protest participation departing from two main concepts: political and protest participation. Also, I explore the difference between a protest event and a social movement, the former being the focus of this thesis. In the third section, I present an overview of the different theories related to social movements. In order to have a background, I review the classical theories such as collective behavior theory, mass society theory, and relative deprivation theory. Then, I move to the contemporary theories and present the structural and the social-constructivistic approaches to social movements. I finish this section with a brief explanation of an approach that synthesizes the structural and the social-constructivistic approaches into one single approach, which is called the structural-cognitive model.

The structural-cognitive model is important in this research work since I am starting from the premise that in order to have a better understanding of social movements and protest events one must consider the different theories and approaches that explain this phenomenon (Klandermans, 1992, 1997; Zald, 1992; Foweraker, 1995; Goodwin & Jasper, 2004, 2006; Opp, 2009: Tarrow, 2011). This premise is based on the analogy that Snow (2013) makes comparing the explanations that we have about social movements with the explanation of an elephant made by six blind men.

Each of the blind men will explain a part of the elephant, and they will explain the part they are touching in-depth. All the explanations will provide important features of the elephant, but any explanation in itself cannot give a whole picture of the animal. The same situation happens with the different approaches to social movements. That is why it is important to have different tools to explain the same phenomenon. In the last section of this chapter, I take the case of Mexico and present the approaches that have been used to study protest events and social movements.

In chapter 2, I develop the three research axes of analysis that will help understand the determinants

that trigger protest participation. Thus, in the first section, “socio-demographic characteristics”, I

explore the way the literature treats this subject in both post-industrialized and industrialized

countries. Among all the different socio-demographic variables I focus my attention on two:

Introduction 3 The structure of the thesis and the hypotheses to be tested

perceived social class, and education level. This is because, according to the World Bank and to the OECD, until 2014 the percentage of population living below the national poverty threshold in Mexico was 53.2% and the percentage of the population between 25 and 64 years old with an education level below upper secondary was 64.5%. These two variables have been broadly studied in the literature; however, according to the characteristics of the Mexican population, they could lead to different results than the ones observed in post-industrialized nations.

The second axis is related to protest participation and manifest political participation through organizations. More specifically, within manifest political participation, I focus on two types of organization. On the one hand, traditional political organizations such as political parties or trade unions. On the other hand, activist organizations such as human rights, or environmental organizations. I also expose the role that these two types of organizations play to trigger protest participation. The literature barely mentions which type of organization accounts for protest participation the most. Thus, in this section, I establish the theoretical basis to study this question hypothesizing that (H1) Individuals engaged in activist organizations are more likely to participate in protest events than individuals engaged in traditional political organizations.

Likewise, in this second axis I also tackle the effects of informal social networks on protest participation. This subsection presents a review of the importance of this kind of network. The literature on this subject is vast. It, however, barely explains the contribution that each type of social circle makes on the decision of individuals to take part in a protest event. The family, as a relevant social circle in Mexican life, leads me to hypothesize that (H2) Interactions within the family circle increase the likelihood of an individual participating in protest events more than interactions within other social circles.

In the third axis, I expose two problematics. The first, whether the dissatisfaction that individuals have with the political, economic and security context fosters or not protest participation. The second is about the effects of the perceptions of danger reprisals, and police violence on protest participation. In the literature, this subject has led to different outcomes. In some research works it has been shown that dissatisfaction leads to protest participation, but other research works state the contrary. It is clear that the variable dissatisfaction is frequently present in the population;

nevertheless, it does not always trigger protest participation. Something similar happens in the

second subject of this axis in which there is a lack of consensus between scholars, since these

Introduction 3 The structure of the thesis and the hypotheses to be tested

variables sometimes foster protest participation and sometimes deter it. However, in the literature we find a variable, the efficacy of protest events, which might help to explain this axis.

As mentioned above, this research work goes beyond the pure micro, meso or macro analysis. Thus, following the research axes, I formulated three hypotheses based on the interaction of the different levels of analysis. Hypothesis H3 considers the effects of the variable education in conjunction with the variable social class on protest participation. This hypothesis holds that Individuals with a higher education level who position themselves in the lower social class are more likely to participate in protest events than individuals who have another education level and another self- positioned social class. Hypothesis H4 observes the effects of organizations on protest participation when individuals are dissatisfied with the context. In this regard, H4 holds that Individuals dissatisfied with the political, economic or security context and who participate in traditional or activist organizations are more likely to take part in protest events than individuals who are also dissatisfied but do not participate in any kind of organization. Lastly, hypothesis H5 focuses on the effects of the efficacy of a protest event on protest participation when individuals perceive protest actions as risky. In that vein, I suggest that (H5) Under perceptions of danger, reprisal or police violence, people who perceive an efficacy in the act of protest are more likely to take part in a protest event.

In Chapter 3, I explain the methodology that I used for collecting the data and the way the

hypotheses proposed here are going to be tested. In the first section of this chapter, I present the

exploratory field research that I carried out to establish the objectives of this thesis. In the second

section, I explain the field research from which I collected the data, the instrument that I used for

surveying people, and the way I calculated the sample size of protesters and non-protesters. In the

third section, I present the process to create the database. In the fourth section, I tackle the

operationalization of the dependent and independent variables linked to the hypotheses mentioned

before. In this regard, the first axis is mainly formed of three variables, education level, self-

positioned social class and interest in politics. In the second axis, I present the variables related to

participation in organizations (either activist or traditional political) and the variables related to

informal networks. In the third axis, I focus on the variables political, economic and security

context and on the variables danger, repression, and police violence. In the fifth section of this

chapter, I explain the statistical technique that I used to analyze the data. In this regard, due to the

nature of the variables — all of them nominal —, I explain the use of the multinomial logistic

Introduction 3 The structure of the thesis and the hypotheses to be tested

regression models in order to analyze the associations between variables. Finally, I briefly present the characteristics of the 26 protest events from which the data were collected.

Chapter 4 explains who takes part in protest demonstrations in Mexico City. The first section briefly presents the background of protest demonstrations in Mexico City. Then, I present the description of the socio-demographic characteristics of protesters and non-protesters. In the section that follows, I conduct multinomial regressions to observe the effects of the socio-demographic variables on protest participation. I mainly focus on variables such as age, perceived social class, education level, interest in politics and efficacy of protest events. The results of some of these variables are similar to those that we have already read in the literature. However, the results linked to the variable perceived social class suggest different explanations about who demonstrates.

Chapter 5 addresses participation in traditional political or activist organizations and the effect of informal social networks on protest participation. This chapter integrates hypotheses H1 and H2.

Thus, in the first section, I unveil two points. On the one hand, how the engagement in organizations helps develop skills to take part in protest actions. On the other hand, how activist organizations exert more influence than traditional political organizations on protest participation.

In the second section of this chapter, I analyze informal social networks in-depth, emphasizing the role that social circles such as family, friends, and colleagues play on protest participation. I focus on four elements: sharing political opinions, being politically influenced, being asked to participate and asking other people to participate. The results indicate that neither the family nor the friends are the social groups that trigger the most protest participation as we read frequently in the literature.

In Chapter 6, I present the perceptions related to two macro-level questions: context dissatisfaction and perception of risk. In the first section of this chapter I focus on the satisfaction with the political, economic and security context with the purpose of observing to what extent these variables account for protest participation. In the second section I tackle the perception of danger, reprisals, and police violence during protest events. Firstly, I explain the effects of these perceptions on protest participation in general. Then I analyze the effects on six different types of protest actions in order to observe in which type of action individuals are more likely to participate.

In Chapter 7, the last chapter of this thesis, I bring different levels of analysis together. Thus, I

analyze two micro level variables, one meso with one macro level variable, and one macro with one

Introduction 3 The structure of the thesis and the hypotheses to be tested

micro level variable. These analyses will help to test hypotheses H3, H4, and H5. In this vein, in the first section I study the effects of lower social class individuals with a higher education level on protest participation. The second section explains the manner in which the participation in traditional political or activist organizations fosters protest participation when individuals are dissatisfied with either the political, economic or security context. In the last section of this chapter, I present the way the sense of efficacy of a protest event makes individuals more likely to demonstrate, even if they perceive that participating in protest events is dangerous, may lead to reprisal or even police violence. Likewise, I analyze this situation in six particular types of protest events.

The conclusions of this research work reveal that, in the case of Mexico, there are variables which

show results that are similar to what we can find in the literature. However, under particular

conditions these variables lead to results that open up the discussion and the debate on the analysis

of protest participation, not only in Mexico but in the Global South.