Group Size and Protest Mobilization across Movements and Countermovements

Abstract

Many social movements face fierce resistance in the form of a countermovement. Therefore, when deciding to become politically active, a movement supporter has to consider both her own movement’s activity and that of the opponent. This paper studies the decision of a movement supporter to attend a protest when faced with a counterprotest. We implement two field experiments among supporters of a right- and left-leaning movement ahead of two protest–counterprotest interactions in Germany. Supporters were exposed to low or high official estimates about their own and the opposing group’s turnout. We find that the size of the opposing group has no effect on supporters’ protest intentions. However, as the own protest gets larger, supporters of the right-leaning movement become less while supporters of the left-leaning movement become more willing to protest. We argue that the difference is best explained by stronger social motives on the political left.

Dynamical modelling of street protests using the Yellow Vest Movement and Khabarovsk as case studies

“…As one important example of this kind of problem, understanding dynamics of street protests, as well as riots and social unrest more generally, has long been a focus of research 9 , 32 , 33 , 39 . Over the last decade, it has been attracting a growing attention 6 , 16 , 31 , 38 motivated by events such as London riots 2011, the Arab Spring, the Yellow Vest Movement, Extinction Rebellion, and others. Mathematical modelling has been shown to be an efficient tool to reveal typical patterns in the protests dynamics and identify factors and processes that affect the intensity and duration of the unrest 10 , 24 , 25 , 57 .…”

Choosing The Best Incentives for Belief Elicitation with an Application to Political Protests

“…Suppose subjects believe that some outcome x ∈ [0, 1] is distributed according to f , a probability density function over [0, 1]. In Cantoni et al (2019) and Hager et al (2022a), for instance, x is the percentage of the participants from the study who plan to participate in a political protest. In Bursztyn et al (2020), it is the percentage of Saudi husbands who believe women should be allowed to work outside the home.…”

“…Certain experimental designs do not provide any incentives for subjects when they report their beliefs about others' protest attendance. For example, Hager et al (2022a) simply ask "How many protesters do you think will attend the AfD protest?" and "how many people will participate in the respective protests?…”

“…To be clear, our analysis does not aim to refute or reverse any regression results from Cantoni et al (2019). Rather, we use it as a prominent example of how elicitation schemes 3 We also discuss Hager et al (2022a); Jarke-Neuert et al (2021); Hager et al (2022b) that use a similar research design and where our insights also apply. influence the interpretation of economic data: The scheme used in Cantoni et al (2019) allows alternative interpretations of their results, and such interpretations are meaningful to what we can learn about the empirical validity of strategic complementarity.…”

Contentious Politics in a Digital World: Studies on Social Activism, Protest, and Polarization

“…The result of these competing processes is an increased polarization both between parties and among the electorate (Layman et al, 2006). Regarding civil society, we are increasingly seeing the mutual challenge of movements and counter-movements along ideological lines (Hager et al, 2021;Vüllers & Hellmeier, 2022). The reasons behind this increasing polarization are multiple and go beyond the scope of this thematic issue.…”