Protest and Social Concertation
Jose Aleman
setting, and secondarily, the ideological orientation of the main government and
opposition parties.
In the case of the most militant forms of protest, the addition of control variables
reveals that violent protests increase in the presence of inflation. The interpretation for
this is straightforward – inflation increases wage militancy in anticipation of declines in
real wages. The effect of this variable, however, is very small compared to the size and
significance of the effect for the variables of more immediate interest.
Take the case of a country like Chile with a center-left government and a very
flexible labor market. In 1998, the degree of wage regulation went from moderate (3) to
low (4) under the third Concertación government. Does this change result in the same
increase in the level of strikes as a change from low (4) to very low (5)? Why not
reformulate the question and ask instead what the largest impact is of changes to the
wage regime as government intervention in wage setting decreses from high (2) to very
low (5)? This is unlikely to happen in any particular country over a short time period. In
fact, no country in our sample of new democracies exhibits the highest and lowest
possible values on this variable. As a diagnostic to our model, however, the question is
worth asking.
This experiment in effect tells us that under a left government, the number of
overall protests evidences a slow but steady increase as government involvement goes
from high to very low. The effect on violent protests, however, is even more dramatic. To
be fair, this happens from a very low level. Nevertheless, the effect of a one unit change
in x as wage regulation goes from low (4) to very low (5) alone is almost 50%.
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Convention