Protest State is an important book. It provides rich empirical data to support a creative theory about a regime where protest becomes so quotidian as to become part of everyday political life (p. 179). The 2013 Gezi Park uprising in Turkey, the rise of the indignados movement in Southern Europe, Occupy Wall Street in the United States, Brazilian demonstrations that ended up with the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff in 2016, and the events of the Arab Spring show that street-based contention plays a central role in political life across the world. Protest State seeks to understand and explain variation in the forms of political participation in emerging democracies. Studying protests in Latin America, Moseley asks, “Why is protest a normal, almost routine form of political participation in certain Latin American democracies but not others?” (p. 28). The answer is that “where weak institutions and politically engaged citizenries collide, countries can morph into ‘protest states’” (p. 29). Protest states emerge as the result of a combination of political dysfunction and economic prosperity where “contentious participation becomes the default mode of voice for citizens who are engaged in political life. Instead of relying on political parties and bodies of elected officials to represent their interests, active citizens in protest states take to the streets to make claims, regardless of the issue” (p. 9).
Moseley’s argument is straightforward and comprehensive. It is the interaction of two independent variables—institutions (effective or ineffective) and political engagement (high or low)—that explains protest emergence and consolidation. Moseley argues that when “low levels of institutional development and an increasingly active and knowledgeable democratic citizenry combined, social protest is normalized” (p. 9). (Readers should see the illustrated argument in a 2 x 2 table on p. 32)
The book does terrific work in summarizing the most substantive contributions in the contentious politics literature. In fact, chapter 2 is a model for a literature review and a good background chapter for those interested in social movements, contentious politics, and protests. Focusing on “a subset of contentious politics: public protests and demonstrations by civilians targeted at government actors in democratic polities” (p. 17), the book’s argument departs from research that assumes a monolithic relationship between democratization and protest. Instead, Moseley argues that “it is precisely the ineffectiveness of formal democratic institutions ... that reduces citizens’ faith in formal vehicles for representation and pushes them to adopt more contentious, street-based tactics” (p. 9).
The book successfully combines quantitative and qualitative methods. Most of the quantitative findings rely on data provided by the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) from 2008, 2010, and 2012. These are representative national surveys of individuals from 24 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (p. 54). The book also takes subnational variation seriously by presenting in-depth case studies about protest behavior in three Argentine provinces based on fieldwork conducted from March to June 2013. Chapter 3 presents detailed quantitative data showing the different trends of protest activity across the region, combining individual- and country-level characteristics to explain protest participation at the individual level. Moseley finds that “mass-level democratic engagement has outpaced the consolidation of high-quality formal institutions in many Latin American regimes, creating a gap in terms of citizens’ demands for democratic representation and its supply” (p. 72). Chapter 4 examines questions of protest from the top, examining the political elite’s use of these strategies. The author finds that those who are more inclined to be targeted for participation-buying are also more likely to turn out to street protests and roadblocks, but not labor strikes. This finding is an interesting one for those interested in studying contentious politics and institutional politics. Chapters 5–7 focus on protests in Argentina at the subnational level. Studying the cases of Buenos Aires, Mendoza, and San Luis provinces, Moseley demonstrates the unevenness of protest within one country: protests differ not only across nation-states but also within them. He claims that “where democratic institutions are only partially flawed—as is the case in numerous developing regimes across the region and in many provinces within Argentina—and political engagement thrives, peaceful street demonstrations become a powerful tool for individuals in pursuit of effective democratic representation” (p. 177).
Despite its many contributions, the book fails to examine three dimensions that seem critical in the construction of a protest state—exit and loyalty, state repression, and protest efficacy—focusing only on the use of voice through protest. Albert O. Hirschman’s classic work (Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, 1970) teaches us that voice is one of the tools available to citizens to express their dissatisfaction. Protest State examines masterfully different voice options, but does not address the possibilities of loyalty through partisanship, participation in organizations, and exit by migration. Incorporating Hirschman’s complete framework of analysis would have made the author’s argument even more convincing. Is voice the result of the combination of ineffective political institutions and high engagement, or is it the response to the absence of exit and loyalty? Are citizens who have the opportunity to leave to another country willing to spend time and energy in organizing a protest? Examining the availability of exit options would have strengthened the book’s argument about weak institutions.
In addition, the author’s treatment of state repression is disappointing. One could argue that not all groups, regardless of subnational variation, experience the same treatment from the state and that these differences have implications for how, if, and when they protest; the unevenness of state repression of particular groups of individuals may weaken their capacity to organize and make demands on the state. By the end of the book, the author seems to recognize the critical difference between the intensity and the majority of preferences (per Robert Dahl, A Preface to Democratic Theory, 1956). “Perhaps the gravest missing piece from this book is my inattention to how systematic differences in law enforcement responses to protestors might shape protest repertoires” (p. 196).
Finally, the theory of the book does not help readers understand the relationship between street-based protest efficacy and the use of this strategy. If a street-based protest is ineffective, should we expect a decline in its use in the future? Do states in which protest is effective normalize at the same rate as states in which protest is ineffective? Given the richness of the data, the author could have selected cases and used process-tracing to study the relationship between protest efficacy and its effects on the use of the strategy over time.
Despite these quibbles, Protest State is a terrific work that makes a substantial contribution to our understanding of the rise of contention in Latin America. The book is a must-read for scholars interested in the region, social movements, and contentious politics in the Global South.
