According to academic literature, civic unrest is driven by rising inequalities. But despite considerable reductions in inequality over the last decade, the numbers of Latin Americans taking to the streets to protest has soared. Why does this paradox exist? A new IDS study reveals that the real motivations for protest relate not to absolute levels of inequality but to individual’s perceptions of disparities and their beliefs around how income should be distributed.
IDS researchers analysed what motivations led individuals to mobilise and protest in 18 Latin America countries between 2010 and 2014.
The results show that individual participation in protests was largely motivated by perceptions of inequality which affected their beliefs about income distribution.
The results point to the important role of government policy in affecting perceptions of inequality and ensuring social and political stability.
Mismatch between expectations and perceived social change fuels dissent
The study explains how despite large reductions of inequality, driven by efforts to raise incomes among the poorest groups, people across Latin America remained dissatisfied with their governments, levels of corruption, and the quality of institutions and public services.
These were issues that affected predominantly the middle classes: the employed, students and educated people.
Economic conditions also mattered. Individual participation in protests was related to people’s perceptions about their current and past economic conditions, as well as by changes in national economic conditions. Social relations and networks were crucial to mobilising people’s anger and grievances into protests.
Overall, inequality reduction and economic growth have been insufficient to shift the vast majority of people’s perceptions and beliefs, and have not matched overall expectations. Social discontent, in turn, has turned into collective protests.
Lessons for policy
The research highlights the role of policy in affecting perceptions of inequality and mitigating the risk of civil unrest. Findings indicate that redistribution via cash transfers to the poorest reduce the probability of protests of the poorest, but the low quality of public services and high tax burdens have eroded the support of political institutions by the middle class. The recent choices of governments across Latin America to focus redistribution mainly on the poor (and excluding the middle class) have generated large gains in terms of poverty and inequality reduction. However, these choices may have also led to unintended consequences in terms of social and political stability when economic growth has started to slow down.
There is large scope for better government performance in terms of addressing the quality of public services as well as to improve the functioning of government institutions and reduce corruption.
All these are key factors explaining the mismatch between perceptions of inequality, distributive beliefs and absolute levels of inequality across Latin America, particularly among the protesting middle-classes.
Building the evidence base
The research fills a gap in existing literature on protests and social mobilisation by focusing on motivations at the individual level that may lead people to mobilise and protest. It also advances emerging literature on the importance of perceptions of inequality and distributive beliefs by showing not only how perceptions of inequality and distributive beliefs are formed, but also their consequences in terms of citizen mobilisation and civil protests.
There is surprisingly limited and ambiguous empirical evidence on the relationship between inequality, government policy and civil protests. This paper contributes to this area of research providing new policy lessons by showing how improvements in the quality of public services may be as important as direct social transfers in reducing the probability of individuals participating in collective protests.
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