Distributive Preferences and Types of Participation in Latin America

High levels of economic inequality have characterized Latin America over the past 40 years. As economic resources have been typically associated to higher rates of electoral participation, this means for unequal contexts a high concentration of income and the transmission of economic inequality into political inequality, threatening ideals of equality and even the legitimacy of the political system. Social protests and movements have demanded more equality and redistribution in different parts of the world in the last years, raising the question of to what extent distributive demands translate into different forms of participation. Using data from the Latin American Public Opinion Project 2012 - 2014 (N app 28,000 per wave - countries=18), this paper aims at identifying different typologies of participation through latent class analysis, and then to assess to what extent distributive preferences are related to the belonging to different classes. Preliminary results from multilevel estimation show that status variables such as the educational level are positively related to classes characterized by higher participation levels. Furthermore, those with a strongest preferences for redistribution depict a higher probability to participate mostly in protest activities.