The Four Faces of Political Participation in Argentina: Using Latent Class Analysis to Study Political Behavior

Abstract

In this paper we use latent class analysis to identify the four faces of political participation. Previous research has generally focused on conventional forms of political participation (for example, voting), with some research looking as well at unconventional forms of political participation, like protesting. Moreover, most research studies these forms of participation separately. However, citizens actually engage in both conventional and unconventional participation simultaneously, and here we present a methodology that can identify citizens who engage in both, neither, or only one form of participation. Using our approach, we examine a series of hypotheses about how social, political, and economic grievances lead citizens to engage in each face of political participation. We apply this methodology to recent survey data from Argentina, which we argue is an excellent case for studying both forms of participation simultaneously. This application demonstrates the utility of the latent class approach for studying the four faces of political participation.