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Social Problems, 2021, 00, 1–20
doi: 10.1093/socpro/spab012
Article

Protest Waves and Social Movement Fields:

The Micro Foundations of Campaigning for
Subaltern Political Parties
Paul Almeida1, Eugenio Sosa2, Allen Cordero Ulate3, Ricardo
Argueta4

1
University of California, Merced, 2Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Honduras, 3Universidad de Costa Rica, 4Universidad de El
Salvador

A BS TR A C T
The paper examines the individual-level building blocks of getting out the vote
(GOTV) for electoral parties that represent subaltern sectors in resource scarce environ-
ments. Drawing on theories of protest waves, social movement fields, and threat-induced
collective action, we examine the likelihood of campaigning in left party electoral mobiliza-
tion and party identification. The study implements a modified version of the Caught in the
Act of Protest: Contextualizing Contestation (CCC) survey protocol and respondent selec-
tion design. We use a sympathy pool sample of over 1,200 May Day participants in Costa
Rica, El Salvador, and Honduras to explain the micro-foundations of electoral proselytizing
of political parties advocating for disadvantaged populations. We found that involvement in
left party electoral campaigning was largely driven by resources deposited during anti-
neoliberal protest waves, including prior movement-type protest, civic organizational activ-
ity, and economic threat perceptions. Campaigning for the anti-neoliberal party was also as-
sociated with a higher level of post-election party identification. The findings suggest that
left parties may at times partially overcome economic and political resource deficits by mo-
bilizing individuals deeply embedded in the social movement field.

K E Y W O R D S : social movements; get out the vote; political parties; neoliberal; threats.

Since the late 1970s, a number of major protest waves have erupted around the globe over economic
reforms that reversed the gains of an expanded welfare state and social citizenship. In several of these
cases, a major electoral challenge from the left followed the anti-neoliberal protest wave
(Kanellopoulos and Kousis 2018; Roberts 1998 and 2014; Silva 2009). Protest waves left in their
wake several enduring features in civil society. Such features include activist mobilizing experiences
and skills, new and revitalized civic organizations, and novel cognitive understandings of state policy

This research was sponsored by a grant from the University of California Pacific Rim Research Program. The authors appreciate feed-
back on earlier versions of the paper from presentations at the UCLA Political Sociology of the Global South Workshop, Texas
A&M University, CIDE (Mexico) and Tulane University. The authors also benefited from the comments provided by Kyle Dodson,
and the Social Problems reviewers. Please direct correspondence to the first author at the Department of Sociology, University of
California, Merced, 5200 N. Lake Road, Merced, CA 95343; email: palmeida@ucmerced.edu.

C The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Study of Social Problems.
V
All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

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making. The dynamics and consequences of protest waves have largely been analyzed at the macro
and meso levels of political life (Tarrow 2011). The present work draws on the long-term impacts of
protest waves to explain individual participation in campaigning for left electoral parties at the micro
level of analysis.
Because of the resource and communication power asymmetries between dominant political par-
ties and oppositional political parties on the left in the global South, weaker parties representing sub-
altern and excluded groups need to innovate methods for getting out the vote (GOTV). This need
for creative electoral mobilization strategies is largely driven by unequal access to the major means of
communication such as radio, television, newspapers, and even internet and social media. Powerful
political parties maintain access and the economic assets to inundate these venues to disseminate
campaign messages and propaganda for electoral mobilization.
Dominant parties use their financial resources to build a campaign infrastructure of slick messag-
ing, web design, and professional commercials. Equally important, these financial resources are also
used on the ground by elite parties to hire and employ armies of full time paid organizers and provide
other incentives to targeted populations to get out the vote, including via patron-client networks
(Auyero 2001; Martı Puig et al. 2014). Dominant political parties unleash all of these resource-
intensive campaign strategies in the months before voting and Election Day, shaping voter preferen-
ces before voters cast ballots.
Left parties in the global South use some of the above conventional electoral strategies, but be-
cause of the vast disparity in financial and infrastructural capital, they must recruit and deploy volun-
teers as a key human resource in more grassroots-type efforts to get out the vote in election
campaigns. The number of potential skilled volunteers substantially increases in the aftermath of a
protest wave. In the following sections we offer a framework on the mechanisms and motivations as-
sociated with left party electoral campaigning and party identification at the individual level, followed
by an empirical test of this perspective with a novel survey design targeting sympathy pools of subal-
tern parties in Central America. We use the terms subaltern, left, and anti-neoliberal parties inter-
changeably in this paper (Crehan 2016; Gramsci 1971) to emphasize that excluded and subordinated
populations in the global South are at times represented by newly formed leftist parties.1 This frame-
work is consistent with recent calls to focus on the internal agency of subaltern populations in shap-
ing political and social change (Morris 2019).

WAVES, FIELDS, AND THREATS: A THEORY OF PARTICIPATION IN

SUBALTERN ELECTORAL MOBILIZATION
As a global wave of democracy advanced across the world over the past four decades (Markoff 2015),
so has the partnership between political parties and social movements (Almeida 2010; Goldstone
2003; Hutter, Kriesi, and Lorenzini 2018; Kriesi 2015). In both stable democracies and newly democ-
ratized states, political parties devise a number of strategies to induce electoral participation and in-
crease their base of political support (McAdam and Tarrow 2013). Traditional political parties, with
the support of elite groups, largely rely on conventional campaign strategies such as advertising in the
major channels of mass communication of television, radio, newspapers, and internet-based media.
While elite parties partially count on the support of volunteers, they also benefit from employing
paid staff and organizers to mobilize for elections.
Left parties in poorer countries do not have the same level of access to major media outlets and fi-
nancial resources, placing them at a severe disadvantage. In order to make up for this lack of conven-
tional resources and communication power (Castells 2013), left parties rely on human resources and
attempt to develop grassroots-type campaign strategies. They often pool these human resources from

1 We recognize that other types of populist parties also claim to represent disadvantaged populations. Nonetheless, left parties in
the global South tend to start with a base of supporters from the popular classes consistent with Gramsci’s definition of subaltern
groups.
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a field of pre-existing social movements and popular organizations (Bermeo and Yashar 2016)—a
process referred to as “social movement partyism” whereby political parties recruit campaign volun-
teers from the social movement field (Almeida 2006 and 2010). Such “popular” electoral campaign
styles begin at the individual level.

Protest Waves and Social Movement Fields

Tarrow (2011) characterizes protest waves and cycles as sustained periods of widespread protest
across the political system involving multiple social sectors. In the aftermath of such heightened con-
tention, civil society is left with an expanded part of the citizenry with experience in social movement
activities along with new and renovated civic organizations and interpretive frames (Della Porta
2013; Snow and Benford 1992). In short, protest waves deposit a social movement community or a
social movement field of individual activists and organizations that endure for years after the peak of
popular unrest (Staggenborg 1998). This rich and fungible sediment of mobilizing experiences, skills,
and new understandings constituting the social movement field can be marshaled for a variety of pur-
poses by activists. Activists can pass this knowledge on to new recruits and entrants to the movement
field (Morris 1984) as well as use these organizational and ideational resources to campaign for like-
minded electoral political parties.
Past protest participation and civic organizational memberships often motivate individuals to con-
tinue mobilizing long after a protest wave descends when new occasions arise, including protest and
election campaigns. The interpretive frames created during a protest wave allow for ongoing under-
standings by individuals of the current political environment (Snow and Benford 1992). Over the
past two decades, in many of the protest waves in Latin America, the broader global South, and
southern Europe, the new interpretive frame generated during heightened contention cohered
around anti-neoliberalism or the struggle against the loss of social citizenship and social welfare rights
(Chase-Dunn and Almeida 2020).
Movement participation scholarship consistently finds that those recruited into protest campaigns
come from a subset of the population or pool of people that are already ideologically aligned and
sympathetic to the ideals and objectives of the movement in question as opposed to the general pub-
lic (Klandermans 1997; Stekelenburg and Klandermans 2013). Integration into left political party ac-
tivism likely follows a similar process. Those individuals who decide to participate in left electoral
activism emerge from a subset of the population with views consistent with those of the left party
running for elected offices. The analytical question then centers on which individuals in the left party
sympathy pool will go beyond voting and general ideological support of the party and actually volun-
teer to campaign to convince other people to turn out to the voting booth on election day. Because
left parties often originate from protest waves and the social movement field, their core party activists
tend to also be current or former social movement participants.

Hence, we predict that participation in left electoral activism and left party identity is much higher
among those with experience in social movement struggles and collective protest.

Anti-neoliberal protest waves also tend to leave behind a set of popular organizations as part of an
expanded social movement field. Some coming into participating in left party activism are involved in
civil society organizations such as labor unions, environmental organizations, human rights groups,
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and other civic associations. The ties to already existing
organizations make it easier to join other related activities (Brown and Brown 2003; Lim 2008;
Morris 1984), including political party organizing and political representation (Boulding and Holzner
2020; Walker and McCarthy 2010). Left party participation may simply be the political outgrowth of
other social issues that an individual spends time working on within civic associations, such as defend-
ing vulnerable groups from neoliberal policy making (e.g., austerity, subsidy cuts, privatization,
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diminishing social services, etc.). Participating in electoral politics provides an additional institutional-
ized avenue to try and implement policies of immediate concern, even after a protest wave subsides.
Additionally, some of the most effective recruiters to bring others into social movements are found in
organizational settings whereby weak-tie interpersonal networks provide more occasions to reach
new adherents (Walgrave and Routers 2014). We assume this same logic for campaigning for subal-
tern parties:

Those individuals most active in mobilizing voters for upcoming elections will be deeply enmeshed in
pre-existing civic organizations.

The logic of bloc recruitment (McAdam 1999; Oberschall 1973) also applies to left party cam-
paigning. Entire organizations may be brought into the campaign for the left party, so the greater
number of organizational affiliations would likely make one more susceptible to campaign for the
party through normative and solidarity incentives with fellow members. This was precisely the pat-
tern in Guatemala in 2019. A new political party representing the rural indigenous Mayan popula-
tion—Movimiento para la liberacion de los pueblos (MLP)—gained an unprecedented number of
votes (450,000) for a subaltern party in the Central American nation during the first round of voting.
The MLP originates from the Peasant Development Committee (CODECA), a popular organization
that had participated in anti-neoliberal protest waves, mobilized land-starved rural workers, and
worked against privatization for 25 years before turning to electoral mobilization. Desai (2001) and
Agarwala (2013) find similar dynamics in the emergence of potent left electoral parties from previous
civic organizing in India, especially in Kerala and West Bengal. The combination of pre-existing social
movements and civic organizations in civil society constitutes the social movement field or social
movement sector (McCarthy 2013), which leads us to our third hypothesis:

The deeper individuals are embedded in the field, the more likely they are to contribute volunteer la-
bor to campaigning for leftist parties.

Threats
Another force driving subaltern groups into electoral mobilization is external threat. Threats are
unwanted conditions that make groups worse off if they fail to mobilize (Almeida 2018; Goldstone
and Tilly 2001). Scholars have long focused on how external threats bring coalitions of different
groups together in social movement campaigns (Staggenborg 1986; Van Dyke and McCammon
2010). Most work has focused on opportunities and threats as macro or meso level conditions driving
social movement mobilization in terms of large groups of people engaging in collective protest events.
In the twenty-first century, it is often economic-based threats, such as economic policies tied to neo-
liberalism (e.g., austerity, privatization, price hikes, free trade), which produce massive protest waves
and bring excluded groups into the streets in large numbers (as witnessed in late 2019 in Chile,
Colombia, Ecuador, Iraq, Iran, and Lebanon).
Anti-neoliberal protest waves also generate powerful symbols, frames, and beliefs in the ideational
sphere for the interpretation of economic threats at the individual level. For example, enduring popu-
lar protest songs and slogans emerge in the protest waves that denounce the IMF, privatization as
selling off the national patrimony, neo-colonialism, and “savage” forms of capitalism. Left electoral
parties emerge in the aftermath of mass protest or are strengthened by recruiting adherents from the
anti-neoliberal protest campaigns to battle inside the legislature to terminate impending austerity
measures or welfare state cutbacks (Silva 2009). We believe at the micro level of individual behavior
that economic threats drive individuals not only into protest (Bernburg 2015; Dodson 2016), but
also into left electoral party campaigning as a continuation of the ideas produced during the anti-
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neoliberal protest wave. Those harboring misgivings about neoliberal policies that are perceived to
further debilitate the social welfare state find that electoral canvassing is one avenue to continue to re-
sist such economic-based threats, even long after the protest wave subsides. Such individuals would
be expected to participate in electoral campaigning that prevents further neoliberal policy
implementation.

Thus, we predict that the more those in the left sympathy pool are against specific neoliberal policies,
the more likely they are to participate in left party campaigning and identify with the left party.

In summary, anti-neoliberal protest waves deposit lasting mobilizing skills in the population, more
opportunities for individual participation in civic organizations supporting excluded groups, and en-
during interpretive frames—in short, an expanded social movement field. Subaltern political parties
draw their canvassers and campaigners from individuals most embedded in the social movement field
of popular organizations and social movements (Klandermans, van der Toom, and Stekelenburg
2008). The social movement field provides fungible human capital to partially overcome the resource
asymmetries between the subaltern party and well-endowed parties representing the interests of
more privileged sectors. Individuals with the most experience in mobilizing in social movements and
capacity building with popular organizations (Cossyleon and Flores 2020; Ganz 2009; Morris 1984)
are more likely recruited or motivated to volunteer and canvass for the subaltern party than those
with less experience and less embedded in the social movement field. These skilled organizers use
their “activist capital” (Van Dyke and Dixon 2013) to get out the vote for the anti-neoliberal party.
Canvassing for poor people’s parties in the global South means going door to door and organizing
massive campaign rallies and caravans that appear similar to protest waves with the same protest mu-
sic and the same kinds of persuasive and emotion-laden speeches, slogans, chants, and banners de-
nouncing neoliberal economic policies. The campaign volunteers are tasked to turn the party into a
serious electoral contender by convincing dozens of additional people to turn out and vote for the
subaltern option on Election Day.2 Door-to-door canvassing has also been found to be one of the
most efficacious voter turn-out strategies (Green and Gerber 2013; McKenna and Hahn 2014). The
energy created from actively participating in an effective electoral mobilizing drive likely reinforces
one’s strong identity with the subaltern party more than that of those who did not canvas. This deep
post-electoral commitment to the party provides the micro basis to launch future electoral campaigns
and contribute to party viability in an otherwise hostile political environment. Election success pro-
vides emotions of hope for party campaigners to carry on the struggle in the next round of electoral
contests (Markoff 2019).
We examine the above predictions by analyzing an anti-neoliberal sympathy pool of participants
in May Day parades in Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Honduras. All three countries experienced mas-
sive anti-neoliberal protest waves between 2000 and 2011 (see Table 1), involving hundreds of thou-
sands of citizens from multiple social sectors (Almeida 2014). In Central America, May Day is more
than just a labor union celebration; it represents the participation of multiple social groups, or what is
often referred to as the “popular sectors.” In May Day activities, one observes student associations,
NGOs, feminist collectives, environmentalists, indigenous people’s organizations, LGBTQ groups,
traditional labor unions along with friends and family members—it is a ritual and festive event and
an official national holiday (and not considered a disruptive protest action by most participants). The
sectors active in May Day activities represent many of the groups that participated in the anti-
neoliberal protest waves in the previous decade. The popular sectors mentioned above are consistent

2 For example, in El Salvador a week before Election Day in 2009, the leftist FMLN presidential candidate urged attendees in the
final campaign rally to mobilize 10 additional people to vote for the party on Election Day. See Luis Romero Pineda, “Torrente
rojo de 300 mil personas,” Diario CoLatino, March 9, 2009.
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Table 1. Protest Waves, May Day Events, and Left Party Election Results
Country Dates of Anti-Neoliberal Protest Number of May Day Left Party Elections and Results
Waves Participants 2014

El Salvador 1999-2005 (against privati- 50,000 Participants Date of Elections: March 9,

zation of health care and
CAFTA); 2006-2009
(campaigns against min-
ing and water
privatization)
Honduras 2000-2008 (against water
privatization and
CAFTA); 2009-2011
(against military coup)
Costa Rica 2000 (against electricity and 7,000 Participants
telecommunications pri- Survey Sample Size: 477
vatization); 2003-2007 Response Rate: 88%
(against CAFTA); 2008-
2013 (campaigns against
mining, mega-develop-
ment projects, and privati-
zation of ports and
highways)
Survey Sample Size: 516 2014 (second round presi-
Response Rate: 85% dential elections)
Left Party: FMLN (party in
power)
Results: FMLN wins presi-
dency for second term
with an unprecedented
1.5 million votes
30,000 Participants Date of Elections:
Survey Sample Size: 529 November 24, 2013
Response Rate: 81% (presidential and parlia-
mentary elections
Left Party: LIBRE (opposi-
tional party)
Results: LIBRE comes in
second place in presiden-
tial voting with 896,498
votes and breaks up cen-
tury old elite two party
system; LIBRE won 37
out of 128 legislative seats
(second most)
Date of Elections: February
2, 2014 (presidential and
parliamentary elections
first round)
Left Party: Frente Amplio
(oppositional party)
Results: Frente Amplio
comes in third place in
presidential voting with
354,479 votes and wins 9
out of 52 legislative seats
(the highest turnout for a
left party in modern
Costa Rica)

with Gramsci’s definition of subaltern groups (Crehan 2016), especially in the context of Latin
America (Svampa 2015).
We surveyed participants in the 2014 May Day parades in San Jose, Costa Rica, San Salvador, El
Salvador, and Tegucigalpa, Honduras in relation to their participation in subaltern party election cam-
paigning. These three countries offer opportune cases, as presidential elections occurred two to six
months before the May Day surveys were implemented and the left political parties made historically
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strong showings in all three countries (see Table 1). Although the majority of May Day attendees are
generally sympathetic to left-leaning ideas, participants vary greatly in their involvement in the social
movement field and their actual level of electoral participation, especially in terms of volunteering to
campaign and party identification. Hence, May Day provides access to the sympathy pool where dif-
ferences can be determined between potential party supporters and actual party campaigners that vol-
unteer to get out the vote. Other studies have shown that street demonstrations often have large
sympathy pools for left-leaning ideologies (Walgrave and Verhulst 2009). In Central America, May
Day is also a national event and holiday whereby those residing in more distant villages and cities
travel to the capital city to participate in the festive activities.

METHODS
This study uses the standardized survey design and sampling technique developed for the research
program entitled “Caught in the Act of Protest: Contextualizing Contestation” (CCC) (Inclan and
Almeida 2017; Stekelenburg et al. 2012). The study queries sympathy pools in actual collective
events on a number of issues in terms of the context and motivations for mobilizing. It provides real
time data on factors relating to political participation. In addition to the CCC project’s standard ques-
tionnaire, we added an additional module for the context of Central America with specific questions
about neoliberal economic reforms and electoral participation. Scholars using similar methods have
found that “participation in street demonstrations could be a ‘gateway’ to more established modes of
political participation” (Fillieule and Tartakowsky 2013:88). We directly test this hypothesis with our
study design by asking respondents to report their past protest experience in the aftermath of major
anti-neoliberal protest waves.
We followed the CCC sampling protocol by systematically sampling the May Day participants in
San Jose, San Salvador, and Tegucigalpa at the beginning of the street parade and during the event
(Stekelenburg et al. 2012). Groups of 35 to 40 university students organized into five teams in each
country with a group leader (pointer) carried out the survey questionnaire using the zig zag method
of choosing different demonstrators in each row of the march. The survey teams received extensive
training in educational workshops by one of the authors in the weeks prior to the march. The samples
resulted in the following response rates: Costa Rica 88 percent (67/544) N ¼ 477; El Salvador 85
percent (94/610) N ¼ 516; Honduras (81 percent) (128/657) N ¼ 529. These represent relatively
high response rates, even for face-to-face surveys in collective events (Walgrave and Verhulst 2011).3
The Costa Rica May Day parade involved around 7,000 participants, El Salvador had 50,000, and
30,000 attended in Honduras (see Table 1). The sample design allows for precise questioning about
electoral campaigning as the surveys were implemented immediately following the highest electoral
turnout for anti-neoliberal parties in Central America. In El Salvador, the leftist FMLN Party received
the most electoral support in its 20-year history as an electoral party—nearly 1.5 million votes in
March of 2014. In Honduras, the newly formed LIBRE Party received nearly 900,000 votes in the
November 2013 presidential elections and 37 parliamentary seats (effectively breaking up a century-
long two party elite system). In Costa Rica, the Frente Amplio Party received over 350,000 votes and
won nine seats in Parliament (out of 57 seats) in the February 2014 first round of balloting in presi-
dential and parliamentary elections. It was the largest number of votes for a leftist party in Costa
Rican history (See Table 1).
The leading nationally representative surveys in Latin America, such as the Latin American Public
Opinion Project (LAPOP) and the Latinobarometro, do include questions about voting behavior,
party identification, and general protest behavior. The Latinobarometro (2013) reports in its 2013

3 The ordering of the response rates from Costa Rica being the highest to Honduras recording lowest is consistent with the politi-
cal environments in the three countries. Costa Rica has one of the longest standing liberal democracies in Latin America, El
Salvador did not completely democratize until after the civil war in 1992, and Honduras recently experienced a military coup in
2009 with ongoing repression of civil society organizations into the 2010s.
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survey that left party voters participated in past protests twice as much as voters for other parties in
El Salvador and Honduras, and over three times as much in Costa Rica—an indicator of the impor-
tance of focusing on protest culture among left parties more than traditional political parties. Also,
the elite parties in the countries under study outspent the left parties in campaign financing. In the
November 2013 elections in Honduras, the dominant party (Partido Nacional) spent nearly four
times more in media advertising than the leftist LIBRE party (Meza 2014: 26). Similarly, in Costa
Rica in 2013 and 2014, the dominant Partido de Liberacion Nacional (PLN) received five times
more campaign funding than the leftist Frente Amplio Party (Tribuno Supremo de Elecciones 2018).
Similar informational and resource asymmetries are documented in El Salvador between the domi-
nant ARENA party and left parties (Rodrıguez, Padilla, and Torres 2009; Young 2020).
National level surveys in Latin America (such as LAPOP and the Latinobarometro) do not stratify
for adequate representation of the sympathy pools of subaltern parties in their sampling, nor do they
ask questions about campaigning for a party, and the timing of their data collection does not necessar-
ily correspond to the aftermath of a major election campaign. The current study design also incorpo-
rates national variations by selecting three countries in the same world region with different political
contexts, adding to our understanding of campaigning for subaltern parties in the global South be-
yond single case studies. More specifically, the left/subaltern parties are oppositional parties in two of
the cases (Costa Rica and Honduras) and the ruling party in third case (El Salvador) at the time of
the study.

Dependent Variables
Campaigning for left party. A dichotomous variable was constructed to measure the level of left
electoral campaigning of participants. The participants were asked if they actively campaigned for the
left political party in the last election style.4 Each affirmative response was given a value of 1. Those
answering negatively were assigned 0 (no left party canvassing).
Post-election identification with left party. Respondents were also asked to report the level they iden-
tified with the dominant left parties after the elections, measured as an ordinal variable. The catego-
ries ranged from no identification (0) to very strong identification with the left party (4).

Explanatory Variables
Social movement field embeddedness. We measured past social movement participation and organiza-
tional affiliation as three separate variables. Social movement participation was measured in the long
term and the short term by asking respondents how many times they have taken part in a demonstra-
tion in their lives before today, ranging from 0 (never) to 4 (more than twenty times), and for the
past 12 months from 0 (none) to 4 (more than 3 times). Because of the indeterminacy of causal tim-
ing, the short term past protest measure (protest in past 12 months) is only used to predict post-
election party identification, not campaigning. Organizational affiliation was measured by asking
respondents to identify how many different civic organizations in which they actively hold member-
ship. The variable was classified at the ordinal level ranging from 0 (no organizations) to 3 (more
than 3 organizations).
Economic threats. Economic threats of neoliberalism were examined by two measures—level of sat-
isfaction with the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and the Privatization Process
of the Public Sector. Between 2000 and 2011, all three countries experienced major anti-neoliberal
protest waves against privatization and free trade. The CAFTA question asked respondents how satis-
fied they were on a 0–10 scale with the functioning of the CAFTA Free Trade Agreement, with

4 Respondents were asked if they campaigned for a party, and if so which one. If the respondent indicated campaigning for a left
party it was coded 1 and 0 for all other responses. The left parties in Costa Rica included the Frente Amplio and the smaller
Partido de Trabajadores. In Honduras the left party was Libertad y Refundacion (LIBRE) and in El Salvador it was the Frente
Farabundo Martı para la Liberac
on Nacional (FMLN).
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response categories coded from 0 (very satisfied) to 10 (very unsatisfied). CAFTA was first passed in
El Salvador in 2004, Honduras in 2005, and Costa Rica in 2007. Hence, by the time of the survey,
respondents had years of experience living under CAFTA and anti-CAFTA protest campaigns to
shape their beliefs. The privatization measure was also asked on a 0–10 point scale with the question
of “in general how satisfied are you with the privatizations in the public sector of your country over
the past twenty years?” The response categories in the coding scheme ranged from 0 (very satisfied)
to 10 (very unsatisfied). Because of the highly skewed distribution of both economic threat covari-
ates, they were recoded into dichotomous variables with 0 indicating satisfaction with CAFTA and
privatization and 1 indicating dissatisfaction.
Social welfare state ideology and redistribution. We also control for ideological beliefs, personal effi-
cacy and demographic characteristics. Those with left-leaning ideology, such as support for state in-
tervention in the economy, a strong welfare state, and an equitable distribution of societal wealth,
would seem more likely to engage in left electoral parties than those without such beliefs. A party
with a platform that is consistent with one’s political beliefs offers a means for one to act on their
ideals and attempt to change government policy (Opp et al. 1995). Connecting ideological frames to
political action plays a key role in inducing individual participation (Klandermans 2004). Strong sup-
port for the welfare state would also more likely be associated with heightened participation and iden-
tification with left-oriented parties. In order to identify one’s level of support for social welfare
policies we asked if the government should redistribute income from the better off to those who are
less well off in a scale ranging from 1(very much in disagreement) to 5 (very much in agreement).
Individual efficacy. For individuals to act on their beliefs they must have a sense that their actions
will contribute to a desired outcome (Orum 1974). This sense of efficacy can be individual and/or
collective (McAdam 1999). Those persons that believe that individual action will make a difference
in terms of political change would be more likely to participate in electoral politics. In order to mea-
sure the sense of individual efficacy of respondents we asked them to rank the effectiveness of their
participation in influencing public policies in their country using a five-point scale (not at all ¼ 0, not
very much ¼ 1, somewhat ¼ 2, quite ¼ 3, and a lot ¼ 4).
Demographic controls. We also incorporated four demographic variables, including social class, age,
gender, and level of education achieved. Social class: Class was a subjective measure with respondents
reporting either: lower class (1), working class (2), lower middle class (3), upper middle class (4),
upper class (5), or none (“0”). Gender: in order to classify gender we coded the survey question that
asked demonstrators to indicate their gender as 0 ¼ female and 1 ¼ male. Age: respondents were
asked to indicate the year in which they were born. This variable was used to compute their current
age. Education level: we asked survey respondents to state the highest level of education they com-
pleted. A seven-point scale was used ranging from no education (1) to a doctoral degree (7).
In order to predict whether an individual participates in campaigning for a subaltern party we use
multivariate logistic regression models, determining the likelihood of campaigning for the left party
or not. Because the second dependent variable of post-election left party identification is measured at
the ordinal level, we employ an ordered logistic regression estimation model. Such a technique pre-
dicts the unit level change in the dependent variable, in this case predicting the move from no left
party identification to higher levels of left party identification. Predicted probabilities and confidence
intervals for the statistically significant covariates are also provided for both estimation models. The
descriptive statistics are listed in the Appendix Table.

RESULTS
Table 2 and Figures 1 to 4 present the results of logistic regression models on the likelihood of left
party campaigning and the predicted probabilities of the statistically significant covariates in the theo-
retical framework. Table 2 provides the logistic regression coefficients and corresponding significance
levels for the likelihood of campaigning for left parties in El Salvador, Honduras, and Costa Rica.
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Table 2. Logistic Regression Models Predicting Campaigning for Subaltern Party
Independent Variables El Salvador Honduras Costa Rica

Social Movement and Civic Participation

Past Protest (Life) .248** .200* .147
(.090) (.092) (.105)
Civic Organizations .408*** .285** .338**
(.130) (.107) (.132)
Neoliberal Threats
Anti-Free Trade .034 .841** 1.890**
(.282) (.280) (.644)
Anti- Privatization .232 .490 1.162*
(.390) (.507) (.588)
Ideology and Beliefs
Belief in Redistribution -.064 .184 .009
(.139) (.113) (.176)
Belief in Efficacy of Individual Action .283* .038 .444**
(.119) (.082) (.152)
Demographic Controls
Class .104 -.081 -.057
(.138) (.126) (.123)
Gender .204 -.297 -.164
(.234) (.200) (.233)
Age .009 -.008 -.036***
(.009) (.007) (.008)
Education -.009 .199 .022
(.096) (.082) (.100)
LR X2 50.68*** 59.29*** 87.73***
Log likelihood 247.016 309.141 231.307
Pseudo R2 .09 .09 .16
N 421 491 411

*p<.05
**p<.01
***p<.001 (two-tailed tests)
Note: Standard errors are in parentheses

Those with protest participation in the past were more likely to campaign for subaltern parties in El
Salvador and Honduras. In the context of Honduras, a multi-sectoral protest wave occurred in the
years prior to the formation of the LIBRE party in 2012 led by the Frente Nacional de Resistencia
Popular (FNRP) (Sosa 2015; Sosa and Almeida 2019). In fact, the FNRP—a loose coalition of popu-
lar movements—provided the base of support for the founding of the LIBRE political party (Sosa
2012). Similar results were found in El Salvador where a lifetime of protest participation made one
more likely to campaign for the FMLN party. Figure 1 shows that in the case of El Salvador, the pre-
dicted probability of campaigning for the party increases by 40 percent from no prior protest partici-
pation to the highest level of past protest participation on the 5 point scale (holding all other
independent variables at their mean).5 A similar margin is reported in Honduras in Figure 1 with no

5 El Salvador had the highest mean campaign participation rates of the three countries with 64 percent of respondents reporting
canvassing to get out the vote for the left party (see Appendix Table). In Honduras and Costa Rica, less than 50 percent of
respondents reported campaigning for the subaltern party (46 percent in Honduras and 38 percent in Costa Rica).
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past participation in protest having .30 probability of campaigning to get out the vote while those
reporting participating in 21 or more demonstrations with a .49 probability of canvassing for the sub-
altern party.
Table 2 and Figure 2 show that participation in civic organizations made one more likely to en-
gage in left party campaigning in all three countries. Individuals already mobilized via their organiza-
tional affiliations were much more likely to contribute volunteer time to the leftist electoral
campaign. They were motivated through civic organizational alignment with party goals or the entire
organization may have been recruited in block to support the subaltern party’s get out the vote
efforts. As reported in Figure 2, in El Salvador no civic organization participation had a predicted
probability of .50 while affiliating with three or more organizations increased the likelihood of cam-
paigning for a left party to a probability of .81. In Honduras, those ranked the highest on the organi-
zational affiliation scale have a .55 probability of campaigning for the left party. In Costa Rica, those
lacking organizational affiliations with civic groups only have a .23 probability of canvassing to get
out the vote for the left, while those ranking highest on the scale have a .45 probability.

0.8
Predicted Probability

0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
0 1 to 5 6 to 10 11 to 20 > 20
Number of Protests
El Salvador Honduras

Figure 1. Predicted Probabilities of Past Protest on Campaigning for the Party

1
0.9
0.8
Predicted Probability

0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
0 1 2 to 3 >3
Number of Organizaonal Affiliaons
El Salvador Honduras Costa Rica

Figure 2. Predicted Probabilities of Civic Organizations on Campaigning for the Party

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It is interesting to note in the case of Costa Rica, just being embedded in the field of civic organi-
zations was sufficient to engage in left party electoral mobilizing without reporting a lifetime of sub-
stantial protest participation. In fact, the community organizing skills acquired with organizational
membership (Boulding and Holzner 2020; Ganz 2009; Morris 1984) in all three countries may be
critical in parlaying those skills into canvassing and getting out the vote. Campaigning for the left in
relationship to past protest participation and organizational affiliations may be higher in El Salvador
because the subaltern party was already in power whereby some clientelistic/patronage mechanisms
may have been used to incentivize campaigning (Montoya 2018). Also, many more of the May Day
participants in El Salvador reported campaigning for the left party than in Honduras and Costa Rica
(see Appendix Table).
As reported in Table 2 and Figures 3 and 4, not only were past social movement and civic organi-
zation participation covariates found to increase leftist party campaigning, so too were perceived
threats of economic liberalization. Those expressing unsatisfactory experiences with the Central
American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) more likely campaigned for subaltern parties in
Honduras and Costa Rica. Major protest campaigns against CAFTA occurred in the mid-2000s in
Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Honduras engulfing the national territory with anti-free trade motiva-
tional appeals (Almeida 2014; Spalding 2014; see Table 1). Anti-privatization was only associated
with election campaigning for the left in Costa Rica. In Honduras, those approving of CAFTA only
had a .29 probability of campaigning for the left, while those against CAFTA had a predicted proba-
bility of .49. In Costa Rica, those in the sympathy pool who are unsatisfied with CAFTA are 3 times
more likely to campaign for a left party than those who are satisfied. Costa Rica witnessed the largest
and most enduring protest campaign against CAFTA in Central America (Raventos Vorst 2018).
CAFTA remains highly divisive in Costa Rican public opinion a decade after its passage with a slight
plurality against the free trade treaty, and a majority viewing the economic agreement as largely favor-
ing foreign capital and domestic elites (Dıaz Gonzalez and Mora Solano 2018). In El Salvador, left
sympathizers may have perceived the FMLN’s earlier electoral triumph in 2009 as removing ongoing
neoliberal threats and therefore not acting as a central motivational force for campaigning. Hence we
observe differences in campaign dynamics between leftist oppositional parties and left parties in exec-
utive power.
Free trade is one of a number of neoliberal policy measures that has mobilized subaltern
groups throughout Latin America and the global South (including in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia,
Ecuador, Guatemala, Peru, and South Korea). In both Southern Europe and Latin America, pro-
test waves against neoliberal policies have eventuated in the formation of new left parties in the
twenty-first century (Della Porta et al. 2017; Silva 2009; Somma and Donoso, forthcoming).
Electoral campaigning for anti-neoliberal parties seeks to turn back such free market-type globali-
zation policies. The above findings support the hypotheses that prior mobilization, civic organiza-
tional affiliations, and perceived economic threat drive subaltern electoral campaigning at the
micro (individual) level of political life.
Beliefs in the individual efficacy of collective action did positively influence one’s electoral cam-
paigning in both El Salvador and Costa Rica. Those believing their individual actions can change pub-
lic policies were more likely to campaign for the subaltern party. Finally, in Costa Rica, younger
people were more likely to campaign than older adults. This may be attributed to the fact that the
presidential candidate of the left was only 36 years old and mobilized a high number of university stu-
dents, as he was a former university leader involved in campus organizations in protest campaigns
against privatization.
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0.6

0.5
Predicted Probability
Sasfied Unsasfied
0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1

0
Honduras Costa Rica
Sasfacon with CAFTA

Figure 3. Predicted Probabilities of Free Trade on Campaigning for Party

0.5

0.4
Predicted Probability

0.3

0.2

0.1

0
Satisfied Unsatisfied
Sasfacon with Privazaon in Costa Rica

Figure 4. Predicted Probabilities of Privatization on Campaigning for Party

Tables 3 and 4 analyze the level of subaltern party identification post-election. These results are
based on ordered logistic regression models with the level of left party identification running from no
identification (0) to a high level (4). In these models we incorporate both campaigning for the party
and protest participation in the past 12 months as independent variables.6 Table 3 presents the or-
dered logit coefficients and Table 4 presents the predicted probabilities for the significant covariates
from the theoretical framework. Campaigning for the party was associated with higher levels of post-
election left party identification in all three countries. As Table 4 demonstrates, campaigning in-
creased the probability of identifying at the highest level with the subaltern party by four fold (hold-
ing all other covariates at their mean). The act of canvassing with a strong electoral turnout for the

6 Protest in the last 12 months was not incorporated as an independent variable in the models predicting campaigning because of
causal order. Campaigning for the party also began 12 months or longer before the date of elections, and therefore we can assume
protest occurs before for the variable of protest in the past 12 months. However, the protest over the lifetime variable does cap-
ture protest participation before the most recent election campaign and ensures that most of one’s protest activity occurred in ad-
vance of campaigning.
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Table 3. Ordered Logistic Regression Models Predicting Subaltern Party Identification
El Salvador Honduras Costa Rica
Independent Variables Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2

Social Movement and Civic Participation

Campaign for Leftist Party 1.631*** 1.757*** 2.469*** 2.547*** 3.109*** 3.111***
(.218) (.235) (.207) (.214) (.263) (.264)
Past Protest (Lifetime) .204** .156t .205*
(.082) (.084) (.100)
Past Protest (Past 12 Months) -.119 .246** .415**
(.127) (.100) (.153)
Civic Organizations .053 .121 .098 .005 .025 -.012
(.112) (.119) (.099) (.104) (.125) (.128)
Neoliberal Threats
Anti-CAFTA .030 .045 .750** .786** 1.213* 1.279**
(.246) (.268) (.257) (.265) (.516) (.515)
Anti- Privatization -.078 -.084 -.049 .201 .941* .961*
(.343) (.363) (.420) (.442) (.487) (.488)
Ideology and Beliefs
Belief in Redistribution .088 .055 .057 .035 .040 .058
(.116) (.124) (.104) (.107) (.175) (.176)
Efficacy of Individual Action .067 .190 .054 .079 .297* .284*
(.106) (.117) (.076) (.078) (.136) (.138)
Demographic Controls
Class .162 .113 .109 .111 .060 .065
(.120) (.130) (.116) (.122) (.118) (.118)
Gender -.282 -.164 .285 .198 .299 .277
(.202) (.213) (.187) (.188) (.222) (.223)
Age .011 .016* .002 .004 -.004 .002
(.008) (.008) (.007) (.007) (.007) (.007)
Education .022 .066 .059 .036 -.052 -.039
(.087) (.093) (.077) (.079) (.092) (.091)
LR X2 105.48*** 91.37*** 220.67*** 222.39*** 283.42*** 282.60***
Log likelihood 474.46 423.30 548.21 523.60 387.96 383.08
Pseudo R2 .10 .10 .17 .18 .27 .27
N 419 370 484 468 408 405
t
p<.10
*p<.05
**p<.01
***p<.001 (two-tailed tests)
Note: Standard errors are in parentheses

left appears to reinvigorate commitments to the party over those that did not canvass or participate
in getting out the vote. This renewed enthusiasm consolidates a critical mass of adherents for future
electoral mobilization and may enhance left party viability (Heaney and Rojas 2015).
Past protest over the lifetime also was associated with high party identification in all three nations.
Across all three countries moving from the lowest level of protest experience to the highest increases
the probability of strong party attachment between .10 and .20. We also included a short term mea-
sure of past protest participation to capture the immediate social movement energy (Markoff 2019)
on left party identification (Model 2). In both Honduras and Costa Rica, recent protest participation
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Table 4. Predicted Probabilities of Strongly Identifying with Subaltern Party
Independent Variables El Salvador Honduras Costa Rica

Social Movement and Civic Participation

Campaign for the Subaltern Party
0 ¼ No 0 ¼ .19 (.13, .26) 0 ¼ .08 (.06, .11) 0 ¼ .06 (.03, .08)
1 ¼ Yes 1 ¼ .58 (.52, .65) 1 ¼ .53 (.47, .60) 1 ¼ .56 (.48, .65)
Past Protest (Life)
0 ¼ Never 0 ¼ .30 (.20, .41) 0 ¼ .16 (.08, .23) 0 ¼ .10 (.05, .16)
1 ¼ 1 to 5 Demonstrations 1 ¼ .35 (.27, .43) 1 ¼ .18 (.12, .24) 1 ¼ .12 (.07, .18)
2 ¼ 6 to 10 Demonstrations 2 ¼ .40 (.34, .45) 2 ¼ .20 (.15, .25) 2 ¼ .15 (.10, .19)
3 ¼ 11 to 20 Demonstrations 3 ¼ .45 (.39, .50) 3 ¼ .23 (.19, .27) 3 ¼ .18 (.13, .22)
4 ¼ More than 20 Demonstrations 4 ¼ .50 (.42, .57) 4 ¼ .26 (.21, .31) 4 ¼ .21 (.14, .27)
Past Protest (Last 12 Months)
0 ¼ Never 0 ¼ .17 (.12, .23) 0 ¼ .11 (.06, .15)
1 ¼ 1 to 5 Demonstrations 1 ¼ .21 (.17, .25) 1 ¼ .15 (.11, .19)
2 ¼ 6 to 10 Demonstrations 2 ¼ .25 (.20, .30) 2 ¼ .21 (.15, .28)
3 ¼ 11 to 20 Demonstrations 3 ¼ .30 (.22, .38) 3 ¼ .29 (.16, .42)
4 ¼ More than 20 Demonstrations 4 ¼ .36 (.23, .48) 4 ¼ .38 (.17, .59)
Neoliberal Threats
(Model 2 in Table 3)
Anti-Free Trade
0 ¼ Satisfied with CAFTA 0 ¼ .13 (.08, .19) 0 ¼ .06 (.00, .12)
1 ¼ Unsatisfied with CAFTA 1 ¼ .25 (.21, .30) 1 ¼ .19 (.14, .24)
Anti-Privatization
0 ¼ Satisfied with Privatization 0 ¼ .08 (.01, .15)
1 ¼ Unsatisfied with Privatization 1 ¼ .18 (.13, .23)

Confidence Intervals in Parentheses

was associated with high levels of identification with the left party. Moving from the lowest level to
the highest level of protest participation in the past 12 months more than doubles the probability of
high identification with the subaltern party in both countries. Since the left party (the FMLN) was al-
ready in executive power in El Salvador, it would be expected that there would be little protest by
party supporters. Such actions would be seen as anti-left party.
In terms of neoliberal threats, those unsatisfied with CAFTA were also more likely to identify
strongly with the left party in both Honduras and Costa Rica. In Costa Rica, sentiments against pri-
vatization were also associated with higher identification for the left party. Those reporting misgivings
about privatization were twice as likely to identify at the highest level with the left party than were
those who were satisfied with privatization (see Table 4). The lack of an association of anti-
neoliberalism with campaigning or left party identification in El Salvador may be due to the historical
stamping of the founding of the party (Stinchcombe 1965). The FMLN party was first established as
a revolutionary organization to battle a repressive military government in 1980. The original grievan-
ces of state repression (i.e., repressive threat) may outweigh the newer threats of neoliberalism for
sympathizers in terms of commitments to the party. Protest waves in the more distant past over state
repression may also be shaping individual decisions to campaign and identify with the FMLN party.
Consistent with this view is that age was significant in El Salvador, with older respondents more likely
to strongly identify with the FMLN. Nonetheless, major anti-privatization and free trade protest cam-
paigns erupted in the 2000s before the FMLN became a serious electoral challenger threatening to
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win executive power (Almeida 2014). Individual efficacy was also associated with strong left party
identification in Costa Rica. Collecting data on individual campaigning while the FMLN was an oppo-
sitional party would also help address the divergence with Costa Rica and Honduras in terms of the
influence of economic threats and short-term protest participation.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

Our findings suggest that resource-poor subaltern electoral parties use the volunteer human capital of
people and supporters who are already mobilized into social movements and civic organizations from
recent protest waves. Left parties recruit the most integrated activists from within the social move-
ment field, such as individuals participating in NGOs, labor unions, community-based organizations,
environmental groups, indigenous rights associations, and women’s collectives. Indeed, the electoral
campaigns by subaltern parties themselves are difficult to distinguish from a protest cycle. Many of
the same speeches, protest songs, and styles of congregation are used in both left party election cam-
paigns and previous protest waves against neoliberal policies. Activists deeply embedded in the social
movement field are more likely to join leftist electoral campaigns than those less embedded because
it is an institutionalized extension of activities in which they are already deeply committed and have
the mobilizing know-how to contribute effectively.
The specific economic threats of neoliberal measures provide an additional incentive to join in
and actively participate in left party campaigning, even after the termination of a protest wave.
Economic threats tied to the wider transition of a liberalized economy with fewer social protections
place individuals in a defensive stance as they try to protect social citizenship rights to public health
care, subsidized food, transportation, education, pensions, agricultural inputs, and utilities. Indeed,
such policies of cutting back the welfare state erupted into another global wave of anti-austerity pro-
tests between August and December of 2019 (with massive demonstrations in Haiti, France,
Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran). Anti-neoliberal political parties provide one
long-term platform to resist these perceived and ongoing threats of eroding social welfare and may
benefit from previous protest waves that already generated powerful anti-austerity frames for individ-
ual perceptions. Neoliberal policy threats are much more specific than general ideological beliefs.
This may explain why some of the most successful left parties of the past decade and a half (in terms
of electoral gains) have focused campaigning on neoliberal threats of privatization (Bolivia, Costa
Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Uruguay), Free Trade (Costa Rica, Ecuador), and IMF austerity
(Argentina, Spain, and Greece) (Anria 2018; Della Porta et al. 2017; Kousis 2016).
In temporal terms, these successful electoral campaigns appear to be especially efficacious when
they occur in the aftermath of an anti-neoliberal protest wave (Silva 2009). The potent and trium-
phant left parties likely pieced together their electoral campaigns at the beginning of the electoral cy-
cle with the support of participants in the previous protest wave as their core base of support. El
Salvador and Costa Rica witnessed major anti-neoliberal protest waves in the 2000s, while Honduras
sustained more mass mobilization into the 2010s (Sosa 2012). Protest waves expand the social move-
ment field depositing a rich and fungible resource infrastructure of popular organizations and individ-
uals with social movement mobilizing experiences.
Based on our micro-foundations argument, we would expect subaltern parties to emerge, if they
surface at all, after prolonged protest waves (Bermeo and Yashar 2016; Roberts 1998). Future re-
search should compare across electoral campaigns and countries to develop even more precise corre-
lates of left electoral activism. For example, massive protests and roadblocks in Bolivia in 2020 by
subaltern sectors occurred just months before the presidential and parliamentary elections that
brought the anti-neoliberal MAS party back to executive and legislative power. The CCC research de-
sign and cross-national research teams are especially well-placed to undertake more comparative
work. May Day parades provide one venue to reach the sympathy pool and decipher the conditions
of the individuals that go beyond general ideological support or voting and actually volunteer
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substantial time to participate in left electoral campaigns. Building more precise longitudinal designs
will also improve our understanding of causal sequences between social movement and electoral par-
ticipation at the individual level.
Other types of threats and grievances should also be explored within our framework of the micro
foundations of campaigning and identification with progressive political parties. The current global
ecological threat of climate change likely motivated environmental movement activists to re-double
their electoral canvassing efforts at the national level in the 2019 European Parliamentary elections to
give Green Party candidates in their respective countries enough votes to push back on the tide of
growing rightwing populism (Graham-Harrison 2019). The Chicano-based La Raza Unida Party, ac-
tive in the US Southwest and beyond in the 1970s, was built from prior protests, community-based
activists, civic organizations and the racialized threat (Zepeda-Millan 2017) of ongoing discrimination
against the Mexican-American population (Navarro 2000). Exploring contexts beyond neoliberalism
in Latin America will assist in building cumulative knowledge on how disadvantaged populations can
more effectively organize for change within electoral institutions. The present study suggests that one
pathway for subaltern parties to overcome economic and political resource deficits resides in mobiliz-
ing individuals deeply embedded in the social movement field to get out the vote.

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Table Appendix. Descriptive Statistics

Variables El Salvador Mean (Standard Honduras Mean (Standard Costa Rica Mean (Standard
Deviation) Minimum/ Deviation) Minimum/ Deviation) Minimum/
Maximum (N) Maximum (N) Maximum (N)

Age 38.8 39.94 37.51

(14.2) (14.73) (16.14)
13-83 14-84 17-91
(501) (522) (476)
Gender .354 .407 .489
0¼Male (.479) (.492) (.500)
1¼ Female 0-1 0-1 0-1
(500) (518) (474)
Education 4.09 3.7 4.23
(1.24) (1.29) (1.28)
1-7 1-7 1-7
(506) (522) (469)
Class Identification 2.14 2.27 2.48
(.792) (.765) (.971)
0-5 0-5 0-5
(507) (522) (472)
Individual Efficacy 4.04 3.91 4.11
(.964) (1.23) (.929)
1-5 1-5 1-5
(466) (521) (468)
Belief in Redistribution 4.42 4.50 4.57
(.831) (.929) (.746)
1-5 1-5 1-5
(499) (527) (475)
Anti-Privatization .911 .941 .876
(.285) (.235) (.330)
0-1 0-1 0-1
(continued)
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Table Appendix. Descriptive Statistics(continued)
Variables El Salvador Mean (Standard Honduras Mean (Standard Costa Rica Mean (Standard
Deviation) Minimum/ Deviation) Minimum/ Deviation) Minimum/
Maximum (N) Maximum (N) Maximum (N)

(516) (529) (469)

Anti-Free Trade .783 .800 .878
(.413) (.401) (.327)
0-1 0-1 0-1
(511) (529) (468)
Civic Organizations 1.43 1.62 1.58
(.928) (.926) (.922)
0-3 0-3 0-3
(504) (529) (470)
Past Protest 2.70 3.13 2.65
(Life) (1.35) (1.18) (1.29)
0-4 0-4 0-4
(504) (528) (476)
Past Protest 1.19 1.46 1.21
(Last 12 Months) (.897) (1.03) (.779)
0-4 0-4 0-4
(430) (510) (473)
Left Party Campaign .640 .459 .381
(.480) (.499) (.486)
0-1 0-1 0-1
(492) (529) (441)
Left Party Identification 2.99 2.14 1.82
(1.23) (1.70) (1.78)
0-4 0-4 0-4
(507) (522) (472)