Competitiveness, Partisanship, and Subnational Protest in Argentina

Research has shown that countries with weak institutions are more likely to experience higher levels of protest as a means to achieve political objectives or express policy demands. A growing body of literature portrays Argentina as a case of widespread institutional weakness, and the country currently sustains the highest rates of protest participation in Latin America. However, existing literature has yet to explain why apparently similar subnational units within the same national democratic regime experience different levels of protest. By moving down to a subnational level of analysis, this article explores the political factors that shape protest activity across the country’s 23 provinces and the city of Buenos Aires for the period 1993–2005. It demonstrates that the electoral incentives created by shifting patterns of political competition and the nature of partisan opposition influence the spatial and temporal unevenness of subnational protest activity.