Large protest more effective, non-violent ones more potent, unified goals win more support. And police oppression tends to help… The science of protest
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
Excellent and keep-able piece from Nature on the science of protests. An opening extract below:
Protests are erupting around the globe. Thousands have broken out since October over the Israel–Hamas conflict. Farmers massed this year in Germany, Belgium, India and many other countries in clashes over new rules. And demonstrators last month set fire to the trademark Olympic rings in Paris to protest against the games being held there this summer, as part of a bid for higher wages.
Researchers say that these events are part of a broader trend. The number of protests each year more than tripled between 2006 and 2020 according to one global study, thanks to demonstrations about political regimes, injustice, inequality, climate change and more1 (see ‘Protests on the rise’). “That increase in activism has eclipsed even the turbulent 1960s,” says Lisa Mueller, who studies social movements at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota. “We really are in an empirically exceptional time of global protests.”
But are protests effective at driving change? Politicians rarely admit it, but “the honest answer is ‘sometimes’,” says Mueller, who is one of several social and political scientists studying the question. Research shows that protests can influence media coverage, public opinion, policy and politics — at least in the short term.
For instance, studies suggest that civil-rights protests in the 1960s and the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in 2020 changed voting behaviour and even flipped elections, although not always in the way that protesters intended.
Protests can also help to spur longer-term changes in public opinion — yet such influences are harder to trace.
Researchers are gaining insights into which factors boost the impact of demonstrations and other campaigns:
Large protests seem more effective than small ones;
Non-violent protests appear to be more potent than violent ones;
Unified goals might achieve more than diffuse demands do.
Repression — by police, for instance — can win more support for protesters.
Some researchers are trying to use the findings to help activists and social movements. “It’s a vibrant time to be studying protests,” Mueller says.
“Social protest and larger-scale social action is a way to generate social change — but that doesn’t mean it always will,” says Eric Shuman, a social psychologist at New York University who works in this field. “And we’re still trying to figure out when it will and when it won’t.”
More here (and here). We will be exploring the Social Change Lab, mentioned further on in this piece, in the next few weeks.