Voice and Inequality

Understanding who participates in politics and in which kinds of activities is central to understanding how democracies work. This book offers the first large-scale empirical analysis of political participation in 18 Latin American countries, with a focus on understanding the political behavior of the region's poorest citizens. Poor people in Latin America vote, protest and contact government officials at surprisingly high levels, approaching or exceeding levels of
activism of individuals with significantly more resources and schooling. To explain this puzzling finding, we argue that key institutions of democracy including civil society, political parties, and competitive party systems are especially important for understanding the activism of poorer citizens
and, as a result, have profound effects on inequalities in political participation.