Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has excellent videos of protests in Iran.

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Dictators and Demonstrators:

Sharing Strategies on Repression and Reform

A Graduate Student and Practitioner Symposium

Presented By

The Center for Democracy and Civil Society at Georgetown University

In Cooperation With

Freedom House & the Forum for the Study of Democracy

December 10th, 2009

10:00 AM – 1:00 PM

Council on Foreign Relations

1777 F Street, NW, Washington, DC 20006

From Rangoon to Tehran, demonstrators continually adopt new strategies and technologies in their struggles against oppressive regimes. However, demonstrators are not the only ones adapting. In an effort to preempt demonstrators, authoritarians manage access to technologies, cooperate in regional organizations, and learn from each other. Contending dictators and demonstrators are aware of this competitive learning, but we know little about which side is more adaptable and under what conditions.

Demonstrators: 10:00a.m. – 11:20 a.m.

Commentator: Thomas O. Melia, Deputy Executive Director, Freedom House

Gabrielle Bardall, International Foundation for Electoral Systems

Kilic Kanat, Department of Political Science, Syracuse University

Laura Mottaz, Center for International Media Assistance, National Endowment for Democracy

J. Hunter Price, Department of Political Science, Trinity University

Dictators: 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Commentator: Daniel Brumberg, Associate Professor of Political Science at Georgetown University and Acting Director of the Muslim World Initiative at the US Institute for Peace.

Lauren Albright, Department of Political Science, Temple University

Sheena Chestnut, Department of Political Science, Harvard University

Jeanne Elone, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University

Brandon Yonder, National Endowment for Democracy

Refreshments will be served

RSVP by December 8 to cdacsconference@gmail.com

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Yeah, what he said.

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Barry Bearak had an article on protests in South Africa in yesterday’s New York Times that fits well with my recent post on why people protest.

Bearak makes clear that it is difficult to attribute the protests to poor governance:

Oddly enough, the protests can be seen as a measure of progress as well as frustration. Since the arrival of democracy 15 years ago, the percentages of households with access to piped water, a flush toilet or a connection to the power grid have notably increased…The places most ripe for unrest are neither the poorest communities nor those with the longest backlog in setting up services. Most commonly, the protests are rooted in informal settlements that have sprung up near urban areas, where the poor who do not receive government services rub up against the poor who do.

Rather, the article confirms three of the big points I made in the post.  One, protests result from a small group of people who have the ability and incentive to mobilize a population.  Two, the subject of protests is likely to be the concerns of the leaders who organize them, regardless of whether they are a broad social concern.  Three, protest is perhaps more common in South Africa than most other democracies because organizers have widespread access to strategies that worked well in the past.

The Siyathemba protests began with a meeting of disgruntled young people, some of them members of political youth groups, others players on sports teams. They compiled a list of their many grievances…The list of grievances was left at the municipal town hall…After a mass mobilization on a Sunday, protestors took to the streets…“People knew how to act from the days of the liberation struggle,” said Mr. Maya, the protest leader.

President Jacob Zuma’s strategy of dealing with the protests by blaming elected local officials (as the article implies) seems likely to fail even if it boosts his popularity in the short-run.  Since elected local officials are overwhelmingly members of the Zuma’s African National Congress (ANC), sooner or later holding them responsible for these problems will no longer be credible.

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Why do people protest?  This is an issue that I have been pondering from a practical and a theoretical level for some time.  I go to South Africa once or twice a year and each time I go the level of protest seems higher than my previous visit.  Recent protests have made parts of the country almost ungovernable.  From observing these patterns, I began to wonder why people protest about a certain issue.

If you ask people in South Africa who are familiar with the protests or active in them, they will tell you that people are protesting because they are angry about the government’s lack of performance on various economic issues, such as services like water and electricity, jobs, and housing.  However, this can’t be correct.  In the first place, the Government of South Africa has been reasonably responsive to these demands.  While the poor do not live well in South Africa, the government does provide free basic electricity and water, it has built millions of new homes, and has reasonable social welfare policies for a country at its level of development.  In addition, public opinion data demonstrates that South Africans are reasonably content with their existing government.  Moreover, levels of satisfaction are similar to those of a much poorer but equally as democratic country – Ghana – where protests are extremely rare.

More broadly, the argument that people protest because they reflect the public mood about important issues doesn’t hold.  Consider three current protests:

1. US: Against health care reform
2. UK: Climate change
3. South Africa: Better services, jobs, and housing

There is a curious pattern to these protests that suggests it is about far more than about anger over broad public concerns.  In the UK and the US, protests are not focused on issues that most people cite as a major issue.  Moreover, as far as I know there have been no widespread protests around jobs and the economy in either country.  Rather, people are mobilizing around more marginal concerns from the point of view of society in general.  In South Africa, public opinion data do not suggest widespread dissatisfaction around the topics of the protests: half the population say the government is managing the economy well or fairly well, 42% say it is doing a good job raising standards of the poor, and 50% trust the ruling African National Congress (ANC).  While no government would be proud of these ratings, they don’t seem to be as low as the massive amounts of protest would suggest.

Having dispensed with the argument that protests occur around citizens’ most salient concerns, what is a more reasonable way to figuring our why people protest around an issue?  Most important, we need to recognize that the level of protest we observe is a very small fraction of the potential amount.  After all, in every society there is always going to some group of people who are going to be angry about some issue.  Thus, most of the time, we observe only a very small amount of protest relative to the potential set of areas where protest could occur.  In trying to understand why we see protest in the areas we do, this strikes me as the most fundamental point.

I suggest that the reason we only see a small amount of protest relative to the amount that could exist is because protest is subject to a massive collective action problem.  The costs for an individual to mobilize a population are typically far greater than the benefits he or she can expect from any policy changes that derive from protesting.  For example, if your main concern is about the employment situation in your country, while you may benefit from policy changes that create more jobs, it is in your individual interest to work hard at your existing job to keep it or look for a job if you do not have one, not protest.  As a result, most protests won’t occur because most people will not find it in their self-interest to organize one.  Mobilizing people requires time, ability, and incentive.  Thus, only those who have the time, skills, and incentive to organize (e.g., people who care a lot about the issue or stand to gain/lose substantially from any policy changes) will do so.  Thus, we come to the first implication about protest: it will reflect the priorities of those who organize them.  These may or may not be the most exigent concerns of the society.  The problem does not end there, however.  Even after you have mobilized the population, you still need to create a window of opportunity to protest.  There seem to be two ways this can occur.  One, an event occurs that creates a window of opportunity (such as the Obama Administration getting serious about health care reform).  Two, you care so passionately about the issue that you make your own window (as this article on climate change protest in the UK seems to suggest).

From the above, we can hypothesize that protest around an issue will occur when those who have the incentive and ability to do so find or create the opportunity.  I think this does a nice job of explaining why we see the protests that we do.  In the US, a small number of large insurance firms stand to lose a lot of money if the government provides health care.  The insurance firms have solved their collective action problem because each one has a strong incentive to organize even if others do not because of the amount of money it could lose.  When the Obama Administration showed it was serious, the window of opportunity materialized.  Hence we observe protest against health care reform.  In the UK, the people protesting appear to enjoy it.  They have solved their collective action problem and created their window of opportunity because they derive benefits from the act of protesting.  In South Africa we see significant amounts of protest at the local level due to the fight against apartheid.  Like today, during apartheid there were massive protests at the local level on economic issues like housing and jobs, and those who participated wrote a lot about it.  South African organizers at the local level today can easily solve their collective action problem and create their window of opportunity because they have widespread access to strategies that worked well in the past in their country on the issues around which they are mobilizing.

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For a while I have been interested in the violent protests that are a daily occurrence in South Africa.  The subject has caught my attention not only because of their frequency, but also because of the targets and methods protestors employ, for example killing elected officials.  When I was in South Africa a few weeks ago, municipal employees protested by dumping garbage in the street and vandalizing government property.  These demonstrations fascinated me because government employees protested by creating unpleasant work for themselves when they returned to their job.

Today’s protests top the ones I have mentioned above.  In Pretoria, South Africa’s capital, approximately 1500 to 2000 members of the South Africa National Defense Force held an illegal march, destroying government and private property.  The most interesting part for me was the standoff between the police and the soldiers:

The protest turned violent when marchers arriving at the Union Buildings [the office of the President] were not allowed access to the property. According to media reports, police fired rubber bullets at protesters who refused to disperse after handing over a memorandum of grievances.

You know you have a serious governance problem when the police fire rubber bullets at soldiers who are protesting illegally and violently.

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