From Top to Bottom (and Back to the Top Again): Federal Spending, Sub-national Coalitions, and Protests in Argentina, 2002–2006

Abstract

Can federal-state relations affect popular protests? Using an extensive dataset measuring local protests in the Argentine provinces (2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006), I assess the effects of the president's and governors' tactical allocations on the persistence of contentious events. I analyze how the delivery of federal resources, to both provincial governments and local social organizations, affects the chances of protests occurrence and the nature of its demands. Results show that federal spending increases the frequency of protests in the Argentine provinces, particularly when provincial governments are not involved in its delivery. In addition, protest demands are sensitive to president's discretional expenditure, suggesting a different dynamics in which protests became a legitimate channel to obtain federal monies.

Inequality, Protests, and the Progressive Allocation of Cash Transfers in the Argentine Provinces

“…9. Such subnational variation has made the Argentine provinces the object of numerous analyses by political scientists and economists, studying a range of phenomena that includes differences in the degree of subnational democracy (Gibson 2005;Gervasoni 2010;Giraudy 2010); spending (Spiller and Tommasi 2007); income and inequality (Cont and Porto 2014;Porto and Cont 1998); protest (Arce 2010;Garay 2007;Giraudy 2007;Machado et al 2011;Moscovich 2012;Weitz-Shapiro 2006); and partisan competition (Calvo and Escolar 2005;Leiras 2007).…”

Subnational State Capacity and the Repression of Protest: Evidence from Mexico

“…I test these hypotheses using an original dataset of protest and response in Mexico. Recent scholarship demonstrates that subnational politics plays an important role in influencing both protest (Almeida 2003;Arce and Rice 2009;Moscovich 2012) and repression (Mackin 2016;Robertson 2011). In fact, a subnational design has important benefits specific to studying repression.…”

Los libretos de la protesta: un modelo para el estudio de la contienda política (Argentina, 1998-2005)

“…En definitiva, es en el interior donde se localizan los eventos de protesta con libreto emergente producidos fundamentalmente por mb y con demandas reactivas que se interponen a los actores subnacionales. En tal dirección, algunos estudios ponen de relieve que las dinámicas particulares de la protesta en las provincias se explican por las relaciones de los gobiernos nacional y subnacionales en relación con la asignación y distribución de recursos económicos (Moscovich, 2012). Esto confirma la tesis de Tilly (2006) respecto de que la capacidad de los gobiernos (junto a los niveles de democracia) para responder a las demandas es una de las variables que se debe atender para ex-…”