Abstract

CONTRERAS-IBANEZ, Carlos César; CORREA ROMERO, Fredi Everardo  and  GARCIA Y BARRAGAN, Luis Felipe. Unconventional Political Participation Protesting Cultures vs. Institutional Cultures. Polis [online]. 2005, vol.1, n.1, pp.181-210. ISSN 2594-0686.

The present study concentrates its attention in the interpretative effort of the different logics for participation, both conventionally and nonconventionally, in the frame of one specific political event (the plebiscite occurred in September of 2002 in Mexico City), which allows contrasting some analytical lines about those identities implied. Our results, grounded on survey research, point to the existence of two symbolic spaces separate for its position regarding the law: In one hand, the logic of lawful protest, but at the same time superposing it, the extra-legal action, without overriding the first. The “dual” actor here implied seems to be not incorporated to theoretical accounts for political participation, which usually conceptualizes both types of participation as extremes in only one continuum. With this identity analysis we try to describe those elements behind the new citizen, who seem able to jump from one conventional expression to another that confront authority, and back, with which we ask for new questions about the future of our political processes.

Keywords : Political participation; political culture; social identity; protests and demonstrations; political actors.