Determinants of non-conventional participation in Brazil

Abstract

The present work aims to analyse participation in demonstrations, petitions and boycotts in Brazil. Using data from both World Values Survey and a Brazilian survey ran by the University of Sao Paulo, we perform logistic regressions to assess the impact of variables such as political efficacy, political trust and education on these different types of political participation. Following previous theoretical propositions and empirical evidences about the determinants of political participation, we found that education and political interest are powerful predictors of all types of action hereby studied in many of the models we tested. The size of the city presented some interesting results: in some models it is positively related with participation, and it is more significant for activities such as petitions where the relationship seem more intuitive, such as demonstrations, suggesting that bigger cities provide not only more opportunities for political action, but are also more susceptible to this type of action due to other factors, such as cultural variables that are not usually included in the political participation models