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Social Groups and the Effectiveness of Protests

Author

Listed:
  • Marco Battaglini
  • Rebecca B. Morton
  • Eleonora Patacchini
Abstract
We present an informational theory of public protests, according to which public protests allow citizens to aggregate privately dispersed information and signal it to the policy maker. The model predicts that information sharing of signals within social groups can facilitate information aggregation when the social groups are sufficiently large even when it is not predicted with individual signals. We use experiments in the laboratory and on Amazon Mechanical Turk to test these predictions. We find that information sharing in social groups significantly affects citizens' protest decisions and as a consequence mitigates the effects of high conflict, leading to greater efficiency in policy makers' choices. Our experiments highlight that social media can play an important role in protests beyond simply a way in which citizens can coordinate their actions; and indeed that the information aggregation and the coordination motives behind public protests are intimately connected and cannot be conceptually separated.

Suggested Citation

  • Marco Battaglini & Rebecca B. Morton & Eleonora Patacchini, 2020. "Social Groups and the Effectiveness of Protests," NBER Working Papers 26757, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26757
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    3. Tajika, Tomoya, 2024. "Informed Consumers Undermine Product Protests," MPRA Paper 122143, University Library of Munich, Germany.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D78 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Positive Analysis of Policy Formulation and Implementation

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