The Power of Words: State Reactions to Protest Announcements

Abstract

Organizations often announce their protest activities prior to their implementation to mobilize awareness, recruit supporters, and receive media attention. We are interested in the effectiveness of protest announcementsthat is, under what conditions governments make concessions to avoid having an announced protest take place. Governments assess the costs and benefits of providing concessions by taking into account the level of credible threat of the announced protest and the costs related to concessions. We test these assumptions with a unique data set on protest announcements and concessions in Nepal (2007Nepal ( -2010. Using cross-sectional regressions, we demonstrate that protest announcements by unions, announcements with highly threatening tactics and announcements with minimal demands will bring about concessions from the government. We contribute to the growing literature on different protest tactics by providing systematic empirical evidence, for the first time, on the effectiveness of mere protest announcements.

Voting for Militants: Rebel Elections in Civil War

“…Mundy (2011, 289) notes that using “the ability of small groups to inflict massive casualties [as the defining criteria] gets to the ambiguity of organizational-capacity thresholds.” In her study of rebel remobilization, Daly (2016, 22) asserts that local networks “equate with capacity” and capacity is the ability of an organization to resolve principal-agent and information problems (Daly 2016, 72; see also Staniland 2014). Vüllers and Schwarz (2019, 373) suggest that information on organization membership would be essential for states to determine the “capacity” of an organization.…”

The value of sub-national data: The dynamics of contentious politics in Nepal

“…Given that the NPCED originates from national news sources, it may not be exempt from this source of bias. However, national newspapers are more likely to report low turnout and nonviolent events than international news agencies because readers are particularly interested in such national events (Herkenrath and Knoll, 2011; Vüllers and Schwarz, 2019). The NPCED thus offers a comparative advantage relative to other data collection efforts which are only based on international media.…”

“…The country experienced a significant number of contentious events with geographical differences in terms of economic centers, population density, settlement areas of ethnic groups and war zones (Holtermann, 2016; Lawoti and Hangen, 2013). Moreover, Nepal dealt with a transition phase to a new constitution despite having low state capacity following the civil war (Vüllers and Schwarz, 2019; Upreti et al, 2013). These features are also representative of diverse post-conflict countries such as Afghanistan, El Salvdor and Ivory Coast.…”

State Concessions and Protest Mobilization in Authoritarian Regimes

“…Despite a few notable exceptions (Butcher & Pinckney, 2022; Cunningham, 2011; Klein & Regan, 2018; Mueller, 2022; Vüllers & Schwarz, 2019), the rich literature on the government’s responses to protest has predominantly focused on state repression and its implications for protesters (Carey, 2006; Davenport, 2007; Opp & Roehl, 1990; Steinert-Threlkeld et al, 2021). Less attention has been paid to what happens when a concession is granted.…”