Protests and reputation

Abstract

Protests take place for a variety of reasons. In this paper we focus on protests that have a well defined objective, that is in conflict with the objectives of the government. Hence the success or failure of a protest movement depends crucially on how the government responds. We assume that government types are private information so that governments have an interest in building a reputation to deter protestors. We extend the standard reputation framework to one where potential protesters in the domestic jurisdiction are competing in a common market with protestors of a foreign jurisdiction, resulting in a situation where domestic governments care about the decisions of foreign governments. We derive conditions under which an equilibrium with "contagion" in protests might exist: protests that start in one jurisdiction spread to others. Finally we use our results to interpret the Fuel tax protests in France and England that took place in 2000 as well as the three successive pro-democracy revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan in 2003-05. * We are grateful for comments from Massimo Morelli, Alain Trannoy and an anonymous referee.

Electoral terms and terrorism

“…A weak government has no incentive to bluff and to defend when attacked early in its electoral term, because it knows that only strong terrorists would attack in this case, and because strong terrorists attack anyway again later in the term. This proposition is in stark contrast to the results in Kreps and Wilson (1982) and Buenrostro et al (2007), where a weak monopolist or a weak government may feign strength. This difference arises because the same terrorists can decide repeatedly to attack in our model, while Kreps and Wilson (1982) and Buenrostro et al (2007) assume that there are different potential entrants and protestants in every period.…”

“…This proposition is in stark contrast to the results in Kreps and Wilson (1982) and Buenrostro et al (2007), where a weak monopolist or a weak government may feign strength. This difference arises because the same terrorists can decide repeatedly to attack in our model, while Kreps and Wilson (1982) and Buenrostro et al (2007) assume that there are different potential entrants and protestants in every period. It follows from their analysis that a weak government may also make a show of strength in our model if tomorrow's terrorists are likely to be weak even when today's terrorists are strong.…”

“…Methodologically, our framework builds on earlier work on reputation and imperfect information by Kreps and Wilson (1982), and its application to protests by Buenrostro et al (2007). But while these contributions assume that there is a new potential attacker (e.g., a new potential entrant or a new protest group) in every period, we assume that the same terrorists can attack repeatedly.…”

Mobilization, Repression, and Revolution: Grievances and Opportunities in Contentious Politics

“…Modeling dissidents as a unitary actor does not allow addressing collective action problems (Lichbach 1995(Lichbach , 1998Olson 1965;Tullock 1971), coordination and information problems (Boix and Svolik 2009;Edmond 2013;Persson and Tabellini 2009;Shadmehr and Bernhardt 2011), the role of vanguards (Bueno de Mesquita 2010; Shadmehr and Bernhardt 2013), the endogenous choice of the revolutionary agenda (De-Nardo 1985;Shadmehr 2014), the role of networks (Chwe 2000(Chwe , 2001Diani and McAdam 2003;Siegel 2011), coalition formation (Foran 2005;Parsa 2000), divisions among opposition groups (Lust-Okar 2005), scale shift (Tarrow and McAdam 2005), and mecha-nisms such as diffusion and contagion (Buenrosto, Dhillon, and Wooders 2007), brokerage (Diani 2003), certification, and boundary action (McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2004;Tilly and Tarrow 2007). The main limitations stem from two simplifying assumptions: unitary actors and limited time horizon.…”

Youth, Revolution, and Repression

“…2. Age structure is absent in the large body of theoretical literature that features revolution and repression Robinson 2001, 2006;Besley and Persson 2011;Boix 2003;Bueno de Mesquita 2010;Buenrostro et al 2007;Casper and Tyson 2014;Chamley 1999;Chen et al forthcoming;Chen and Xu 2014;DeNardo 1985;Dunning 2008;Edmond 2013;Egorov et al 2009;Ellis andFender 2011, 2014;Epstein et al 2012;Fearon 2011;Ginkel and Smith 1999;Hollyer et al forthcoming;Leventoglu 2005;Lohmann 1994; Meirowitz and Tucker 2013;Persson and Tabellini 2009;Shadmehr forthcoming;Shadmehr and Bernhardt 2011;Svolik 2013;Tyson and Smith 2013). With the exception of Goldstone (1991Goldstone ( , 2001 and Nordås and Davenport (2013), age structure is also absent in the mainstream sociological theories of revolutions that focus on political opportunities (Tarrow 1998;Tilly 1978Tilly , 2004, the intensity of grievances (Buechler 2004;Gurr 1970), or the nature of the state (Goodwin 2001;Parsa 2000;Skocpol 1979;Wilkinson 2009). threat is subtle.…”