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Protests over resource extraction have increased in Latin America in recent years. However, significant variation exists in the region in terms of citizen's willingness to protest against resource extraction. We argue that this variation is based on the interaction of factors at both the individual and state levels. Individual-level characteristics, such as social engagement, influence the likelihood of protest activity. State-level characteristics, such as the quality of governance, also present opportunities for engaged individuals to challenge resource extraction. Following political mediation theory, we argue that collective action strategies are likely to be more productive in some political contexts than in others. Thus socially engaged citizens in highquality governance environments are more willing to participate in protests over resource extraction visa -vis their counterparts in low-quality governance settings. We utilize survey data and state-level governance data across Latin America to determine why some individuals are willing to demonstrate against resource extraction while others are not.

Human rights advocates have been argued to be working as part of a larger “network” of actors supporting the respect and security of individuals. However, until recently, much scholarship in this area has used “network” as a synonym for “connected actors” instead of examining the network characteristics of advocacy actors and the ways in which the nature of the advocacy network could influence human rights outcomes. This chapter examines the growing literature that focuses on human rights advocacy using network theory and methodologies. It outlines both global and local data collection efforts and the state of the literature and addresses how this literature has drawn on the larger political networks literature. It concludes with a call for future work on how the network characteristics of advocacy actors influences both which human rights issues receive international attention and whether this attention translates into improvements in human rights practices on the ground.

This chapter reviews the contributions of the existing literature and shows how an approach based on individual attitudes fills important gaps in the current scholarship. It develops the theoretical arguments about social engagement and how it helps to differentiate individuals who oppose mining from those who support these activities. It emphasizes what individuals get from participation in local organizations (e.g., critical information about mining threats, empowerment, a community worldview free of mining) and how these outcomes work to shape or reinforce views about mining. The chapter also situates the threats and opportunities presented by mining by drawing attention to the nature of claims over extractive activities, which we categorized as either rejection or redistribution claims. The chapter concludes by explaining the selection of case studies and the research methodology informing the empirical analysis.

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