Patterns and Puzzles

Abstract

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.