Effects of Democracy and Inequality on Soft Political Protest in Europe: Exploring the European Social Survey Data

Abstract

In this cross-national study, soft political-protest behavior is defined as participation in a legal demonstration, signing a petition, or contacting government officials. We find that in Europe in 2006 (1) the proportion of political protesters is significantly higher in old democracies than in the new, predominantly postcommunist, democracies, and (2) the greater the income inequality in both old and new democracies, the lower the proportion of political protesters. These two regularities, established for country-level data, hold even if the democracy index and gross domestic product per capita are controlled. Using individual-level data, we find that in all countries included in the European Social Survey trust in both parliament and social position positively influences the probability of individuals' protest behavior. Combining both levels of analysis, we pay particular attention to the effects of two macro-characteristics: old/new democracies and income inequality. Both of these characteristics prove to be significant predictors of soft political-protest behavior.

Economic Inequality and Nonviolent Protest*

“…What little work has been done, moreover, has arrived at diverging conclusions. Nollert () found that inequality has a positive effect on protest, while Dubrow, Slomczynski, and Tomescu‐Dubrow () found the opposite, that inequality has a negative relationship with protest. Balme and Chabanet (:68) concluded that inequality bears no important relationship to protest at all…”

“…First, each study examined only a small number of different contexts of economic inequality, between 11 and 26; with so few observations, the instability of the results obtained is not surprising. Second, their models of protest are underspecified: Nollert () and Balme and Chabanet () considered only bivariate relationships between inequality and protest, while the only other aspect of context included in the two‐level model presented by Dubrow, Slomczynski, and Tomescu‐Dubrow () was whether the country's democracy was only recently established. None assess the plausibly important role of variation in political institutions in encouraging or dampening protest activity, a potentially serious source of spuriousness given arguments linking institutional arrangements to economic inequality (see, e.g., Iversen and Soskice, ).…”

Political trust, extra-representational participation and the openness of political systems

“…In line with social movement literature, these studies focus on the direct effects of institutional elements of the political context on the amount of such activities. Country selection determines whether studies focus on general measures of democratic development (e.g., Anderson and Mendes, 2006;Dalton et al, 2010) or on specific aspects of the political opportunity structure faced by protesters in democracies (e.g., Dubrow et al, 2008;Fatke and Freitag, 2013;Morales, 2009;Spina, 2014;van der Meer et al, 2009;Vráblíková, 2014). In general, studies report stronger positive effects on the level of ERP when it comes to democratic development as compared to the variation found among democracies.…”

Income distribution and political participation: a multilevel analysis

“…Not surprisingly, scholars have also empirically analyzed the effects of economic inequality on citizens' memberships in political groups (Alesina and La Ferrara 2000), participation in political meetings, petitioning, working for a political party (Uslaner and Brown 2005;Dubrow et al 2008) and political violence (Muller and Seligson 1987;Abbink et al 2011;Baten and Mumme 2013). Unfortunately, the results provided by these studies are not univocal; some found income inequality to be inversely related to participation in political groups (Alesina and La Ferrara 2000), others found little support for a direct effect of inequality on participation in meetings, petitioning or work for political parties (Uslaner and Brown 2005).…”