State repression and collective action

For decades, social movement scholars have sought answers to why authorities react as they do to protest. Most of the studies agree that authorities respond to behavioral threats with repression. That is, the more threatening a movement or protest event is to political elites the more likely it is to be the target of repression (Earl 2003; Earl, Soule and McCarthy 2003; Earl 2006). Yet it is not clear how this process works, and how the process varies in a context of high movilization of unemployed workers. 

Using newspaper data, in this paper I test police action during protest events in Argentina between 1998 and 2006 with the aim of understanding, what precisely do authorities respond to. Furthermore, and drawing on research on protest policing (Davenport et al 2011; Earl 2003; Earl et al 2003; Earl and Soule 2006), the criminalization of protest (Svampa & Pandolfi 2004), and on unemployed and informal workers collective action (Garay 2007) I will analyze whether protesters social class matters. Specifically, are marginal groups depicted as violent and dangerous by authorities and the media? Are pickets subject to more and harsher repression?

Put simply, the repression, control and policing of protests in democratic Latin America has not received much attention. By using newspaper data on protest events this study seeks to address this omission.