Protests

Cantoni, Davide, Kao, Andrew, Yang, David Y. and Yuchtman, Noam (2024) Protests. Annual Review of Economics, 16. ISSN 1941-1383 (In Press)

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Abstract

Citizens have long taken to the streets to demand change, expressing political views that may otherwise be suppressed. Protests have produced change at local, national, and international scales, including spectacular moments of political and social transformation. We document five new empirical patterns describing 1.2 million protest events across 218 countries between 1980 and 2020. First, autocracies and weak democracies experienced a trend break in protests during the Arab Spring. Second, protest movements also rose in importance following the Arab Spring. Third, protest movements geographically diffuse over time, spiking to their peak, before falling off. Fourth, a country’s year-to-year economic performance is not strongly correlated with protests; individual values are predictive of protest participation. Fifth, the US, China, and Russia are the most over-represented countries by their share of academic studies. We discuss each pattern’s connections to the existing literature and anticipate paths for future work.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2024 Annual Review of Economics
Divisions:	LSE
Subjects:	J Political Science H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory
JEL classification:	D - Microeconomics > D7 - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making > D72 - Economic Models of Political Processes: Rent-Seeking, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior P - Economic Systems > P0 - General > P00 - General
Date Deposited:	20 May 2024 11:51
Last Modified:	16 Jul 2024 11:45
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/123527

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