I should probably go read these papers but I had some questions: for the papers that show that there was an increase in Democratic votes in counties with protests (both for the Women's March and BLM), are we also talking about counties that voted Republican? Or are we only talking about Democratic-voting counties?
I ask because I suspect that the mechanism of persuasion of protests in the US might be significantly different than other countries that are not as ideologically polarized. As Erica says above, the logic of protests might be different when there's a single ruler who does something truly unpopular (the recent South Korean protests against the declaration of martial law) and everyone turns up against the action. But in US protests, what's the composition of Blue and Red voters, especially the US has gotten more and more polarized?
Fabio Rojas and Michael Heaney find in "Party in the Street," their analysis of the Iraq War protests, that these protests were dominated by Democrats in the Bush years but most of the Democrats stopped participating once Obama became president and continued the Iraq war (even as he took steps to start winding it down).
I suspect also that because protests in the US are organized by one team (Red or Blue), they don't seem to be oriented much around persuading people who may be skeptical of them. For instance, the protest in Berkeley recently seemed to me to be aimed mostly at people who already believed in academic freedom rather than convincing people who are agnostic on academic freedom and/or skeptical of universities.
Thanks for your questions! Reviewing the BLM paper, if anything protests seem to have had greater effects in Redder counties:
> Our results demonstrate that BLM protests caused a marked shift in local support for the Democratic party. An analysis of mechanisms shows that this effect cannot be fully attributed to increased voter mobilization, and that protests also shifted people’s attitudes about racial disparities. This result suggests that BLM protests caused a progressive shift among Independent or Republican-leaning voters. Heterogeneity analyses show that the effect of protests is larger in counties with relatively small, white, and low-educated populations.
However, note that there’s also more room for increases in places that do not already vote Dem. So just numerically we would expect to see greater changes there if protests have bipartisan effects.
I'm wondering how relevant Chenowith's data is to the current situation. Was she mostly looking at truly autocratic regimes with unelected dictators and mass movements were able to oust them? Or does her data include pressure campaigns in democratic countries? The reason I ask is b/c the big question on my mind with the protests is: What exactly is the goal? Assuming we're not gonna impeach Trump for a third time (please God, no), what is there to do other than pressure Republican members of Congress to stand up to him?
Thanks for the survey of the literature!
I should probably go read these papers but I had some questions: for the papers that show that there was an increase in Democratic votes in counties with protests (both for the Women's March and BLM), are we also talking about counties that voted Republican? Or are we only talking about Democratic-voting counties?
I ask because I suspect that the mechanism of persuasion of protests in the US might be significantly different than other countries that are not as ideologically polarized. As Erica says above, the logic of protests might be different when there's a single ruler who does something truly unpopular (the recent South Korean protests against the declaration of martial law) and everyone turns up against the action. But in US protests, what's the composition of Blue and Red voters, especially the US has gotten more and more polarized?
Fabio Rojas and Michael Heaney find in "Party in the Street," their analysis of the Iraq War protests, that these protests were dominated by Democrats in the Bush years but most of the Democrats stopped participating once Obama became president and continued the Iraq war (even as he took steps to start winding it down).
I suspect also that because protests in the US are organized by one team (Red or Blue), they don't seem to be oriented much around persuading people who may be skeptical of them. For instance, the protest in Berkeley recently seemed to me to be aimed mostly at people who already believed in academic freedom rather than convincing people who are agnostic on academic freedom and/or skeptical of universities.
Thanks for your questions! Reviewing the BLM paper, if anything protests seem to have had greater effects in Redder counties:
> Our results demonstrate that BLM protests caused a marked shift in local support for the Democratic party. An analysis of mechanisms shows that this effect cannot be fully attributed to increased voter mobilization, and that protests also shifted people’s attitudes about racial disparities. This result suggests that BLM protests caused a progressive shift among Independent or Republican-leaning voters. Heterogeneity analyses show that the effect of protests is larger in counties with relatively small, white, and low-educated populations.
However, note that there’s also more room for increases in places that do not already vote Dem. So just numerically we would expect to see greater changes there if protests have bipartisan effects.
That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for writing!
I'm wondering how relevant Chenowith's data is to the current situation. Was she mostly looking at truly autocratic regimes with unelected dictators and mass movements were able to oust them? Or does her data include pressure campaigns in democratic countries? The reason I ask is b/c the big question on my mind with the protests is: What exactly is the goal? Assuming we're not gonna impeach Trump for a third time (please God, no), what is there to do other than pressure Republican members of Congress to stand up to him?
Their dataset includes many truly autocratic regimes, yes.
The question of goal is a really good one!