High-risk participation: Demanding peace and justice amid criminal violence
| Author | Sandra Ley |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00223433221085441 |
| Published date | 01 November 2022 |
| Date | 01 November 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Regular Articles |
High-risk participation: Demanding peace
and justice amid criminal violence
Sandra Ley
Political Studies Division, Centro de Investigacio
´n y Docencia Econo
´micas, Mexico City
Abstract
When and why do citizens living amid criminal violence pour into the streets to demand peace and justice, regardless
of the risks that protesting in such a context may entail? While victimization experiences provide an initial motivation
for participation in protests, this article finds that social networks play a fundamental role for mobilization against
insecurity. At an emotional level, socialization within networks helps transform the feelings of individual fear that
crime evokes into collective anger that represents potential for action. As individuals become more engaged with one
another, their feelings are transformed from being exclusively self-oriented towards other-oriented. Additionally,
denser network interactions insulate participants from coercion and generate support mechanisms for their members,
creating a sense of security. Thus, networks have the power to transform perceptions of the risks and effectiveness
associated with their collective action against crime. Supporting evidence for this argument is derived from original
survey data collected in Mexico in 2012. Additionally, in-depth interviews with protest participants reveal the
mechanisms through which social networks stimulate protest participation, among both victims and non-victims.
This article contributes to the prevailing literature on victimization and political participation and provides new
answers on when and how experience with violence can encourage involvement in politics and promote democratic
accountability.
Keywords
organized crime, protest, social networks
Why do citizens decide to take to the streets to demand
their rights, despite the high risks such actions may
entail? This is a question economists, sociologists, and
political scientists have attempted to answer from differ-
ent perspectives. A particularly puzzling issue is the
occurrence of protest in the midst of violence. The liter-
ature on contentious politics has mainly focused on how
state-led violence shapes protest. Much less is known
about how organized crime-related violence affects pro-
test. This article seeks to understand the mechanisms
that enable non-electoral forms of participation in reac-
tion to crime and insecurity amid violent contexts.
As violence has risen dramatically across the Latin
American region, citizens have poured into the streets
to denounce civilian victimization, expose violence, and
demand peace and justice. However, given the prevailing
criminal violence, protest against crime faces major risks.
Collective action efforts that make calls for justice and
push for a stronger security policy can threaten criminals,
who can subsequently use violence against protesters. At
the same time, since criminal activity depends on the
collusion between organized criminal groups and state
agents (Snyder & Dura
´n-Martı
´nez, 2009; Trejo & Ley,
2020), authorities do not necessarily have incentives to
always resolve cases and administer justice effectively and
may also retaliate against protesters to avoid the disman-
tling of protection networks in which they participate.
Therefore, not only are there minimal chances for protest
to affect security policies and achieve justice, but parti-
cipating citizens face a double threat: retaliation from
criminal groups as well as reprisals from corrupted or
coopted state authorities. Given the risks that protest
Corresponding author:
sandra.ley@cide.edu
Journal of Peace Research
2022, Vol. 59(6) 794–809
ªThe Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/00223433221085441
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in the midst of criminal violence involves, as well as the
minimal benefits derived from it, this article seeks to
understand the circumstances under which civilians act
collectively to demand peace and justice while others
remain inactive.
Previous works have focused exclusively on the role
that victimization plays in non-electoral participation. I
argue that while victimization experiences provide an
initial motivation for the organization of protests against
insecurity, social networks play a fundamental role in
citizen participation in reaction to crime. Networks are
crucial for both instrumental and non-instrumental rea-
sons. Socialization within networks helps transform the
paralyzing emotions often associated with living amid
violence into potential for action. In addition, network
interaction reshapes perceptions of the effectiveness and
risks of such collective efforts. I expect network effects to
be greater among victims, but acknowledge that network
engagement can also influence non-victims’ decision to
participate in protests against crime. To test this argu-
ment, I rely on the Mexican case – which exhibits a
dramatic increase of criminal violence over the past
decade – and examine participation in protest activity
related to issues of crime and insecurity. By combining
original survey data, participant observation, and in-
depth interviews with participants of such protests, this
article helps show the micro-level logic of non-electoral
participation in the midst of criminal violence.
The article is organized as follows. First, I examine the
literature on victimization and participation. Next, I
explore the logic of collective action against crime amid
criminal violence and subsequently develop my argument
on the roleof social networksand their importancefor such
citizen efforts. I then provide an overview of citizen mobi-
lization in reaction to violence in Mexico, as well as the
challenges that participants have been confronted with.
Based on the Mexican case, I present individual-level evi-
dence showingthat citizens embeddedin social networks –
regardless of their victimization status – are more likely to
participate in protests against insecurity than ‘socially dis-
connected’individuals.To understand the processthrough
which networks transform emotions and reshape percep-
tions of the risks associated with participation against crime
amid violence, I also present evidence from qualitative
interviews with protest participants.
Violence, victimization, and non-electoral
forms of participation
Studies on the consequences of violence have found a
positive relationship between victimization experiences
and various non-electoral forms of participation (Bellows
& Miguel, 2009; Blattman, 2009; Bateson, 2012).
Under these views, the concept of disengaged and alie-
nated victims has little support. Instead, victims are
conceptualized as social and political activists, able to
overcome any potential risks that collective action may
entail.
Two main explanations have been provided to explain
the positive relationship between violent victimization
and participation. First, under post-traumatic growth
theory, individuals who go through a traumatic experi-
ence are expected to have a greater sense of personal
strength, which pushes them to participate in politics
(Blattman, 2009). A second explanation suggests that
emotions play influential roles in political behavior, espe-
cially in political participation (Jasper, 1998; Marcus,
Neuman & MacKuen, 2000). In this case, increased
participation is a way for victims to express their feelings
of anger and frustration and mitigate the emotional con-
sequences of victimization (Bateson, 2012).
The relationship between a victim’s emotions and
subsequent behavior, however, is not straightforward
(Shorter & Tilly, 1974). Moreover, anger is not the
only possible reaction to crime. While some victims may
experience anger (Ditton et al., 1999), others may expe-
rience fear (Guerra, Huesmann & Spindler, 2003;
Fowler et al., 2009). Each emotion has disparate beha-
vioral consequences. Unlike anger, fear has been associ-
ated with feelings of inefficacy, heightened vigilance,
increased sensitivity to threat, pessimism, and behavior
avoidance (Macmillan, 2001; Huddy, Feldman & Cass-
ese, 2007; Pearlman, 2013; Young, 2019). How victims
overcome fear and anger and decide to take action are
issues that the prevailing literature has failed to address.
Even if we assume that victims seek participation
opportunities to ‘constructively express their anger and
frustration’ (Bateson, 2012: 572), we must consider that
not all victims participate in such collective efforts.
Furthermore, despite the difficulty of collective action
in response to crime (Schedler, 2015), in the face of
rising violence or injustice some non-victims become
politically active (Bell-Martin, 2019). Why don’t all vic-
tims participate and why are there non-victims who take
action on behalf of those who are victims? The victimi-
zation argument does not provide a complete explana-
tion on the logic of collective action against crime amid
violence.
Finally, by focusing on victimization and its relation-
ship with broad forms of participation, extant studies
have failed to consider the challenges faced by collective
efforts in reaction to crime, particularly in the midst of
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