These 3 factors make a difference in whether protests work
Obviously, no two protests are the same. Here’s what successful ones have in common.
The civil rights movement and more recent social movements, like the tea party, succeeded because they worked hard on three key factors: organization, messaging and nonviolence.
Organization. Protesting isn’t enough. Protesters have to be organized in a way that lets them keep pushing for the movement’s goals. In an article that received quite a bit of media attention, Andreas Madestam (Stockholm University), Daniel Shoag (Harvard Kennedy School), Stan Veuger (American Enterprise Institute), and David Yanagizawa-Drott (University of Zurich) showed that the tea party made significant political gains in large part because, after the first Tax Day protests in April 2009, local groups stayed involved. Theda Skocpol of Harvard University and Vanessa Williamson of the Brookings Institution found that frequent grass-roots meetings, funded by such organizations as the Koch-run Americans for Prosperity, helped the tea partiers push the Republican Party rightward.
Messaging. Second, does the message resonate for more people than just the core supporters? This is especially important for groups that seek to persuade either tepid supporters or those who have yet to make up their mind.
Movements can do this in various ways. Its core supporters could personally persuade others — maybe through their social networks — or they could frame their grievances and goals in a way that appeals to core values such as patriotism, equality and freedom, to name a few.
For instance, the tea party’s name and core message of limited government harked back to the founding of the United States and its principle of individual freedom.
Nonviolence. Third and last, is the movement nonviolent? Erica Chenoweth of the University of Denver and Maria J. Stephan of the United States Institute of Peace find that, across the world, nonviolent movements tend to be about twice as effective as violent ones.
For example, research by Omar Wasow at Princeton University suggests that violent riots after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination dramatically reduced the vote for the Democratic Party in 1968. A recent working paper by Ryan Enos, Aaron Kaufman and Melissa Sands of Harvard University suggests that violent protests can still be effective as long as they prompt supporters to become politically mobilized.
To be successful, social movements need not do all three of the above. But consistently succeeding at least one of these features makes a big difference.
