Unpopular Protest: Mass Mobilization and Attitudes to Democracy in Post-Mubarak Egypt

Abstract

Political science has long debated the significance of protest during a democratic transition, but attention has been largely confined to its impact on elite support for democracy. Contributing to scholarship on the attitudinal consequences of mobilization, we examine how protest shaped popular perceptions of democracy during the post-Mubarak transition in Egypt. We do this by matching Wave II of the Arab Barometer survey with geo-referenced protest events reported in Arabic-language newspapers. Our results show that Egyptians came to hold less favourable attitudes to democracy following sustained protest in their district. We find that this relationship was especially pronounced in areas where protestors launched longerlasting, static street protests that targeted public space. Qualitative case details illustrate how such tactics could disrupt everyday life and impact livelihoods. These findings highlight one way in which popular support for democracy can be eroded during a transition. Tore Wig, and three anonymous reviewers gave valuable comments and suggestions. We also thank Margit Tavits for her feedback and guidance. Rania AbdelNaeem, Steven Brooke, and Sarah ElMasry generously shared data on the 2005 Egyptian elections, while Michael Robbins provided us with a restricted version of the Arab Barometer and patiently answered questions about the survey methodology. Neil Ketchley the deployment of the survey saw workers, activists, and local residents stage over 2,000 protests across the country. For identification we use an instrumental variable that exploits respondents' spatial relationship to protest ecologies that emerged during the 25th January Revolution.Our results suggest that Egyptians came to hold more negative attitudes to democracy following sustained protest in their district. In such areas, survey respondents were more likely to associate democracy with economic and moral threat, indecisive government, and instability. Disaggregating our measure of mobilization, we find that this relationship was especially pronounced in areas where protestors used longer-lasting, street-level tactics that disrupted public space. Qualitative case details attest to the fallout of this protest and suggest that popular disquiet was related to the negative impact of protest on livelihoods and the routine practices of everyday life.In making sense of these findings, we argue that the high levels of mobilization witnessed in the post-Mubarak transition caused some Egyptians to update their view of how democracy functions in practice. Transitional periods are often low information settings characterized by a high level of uncertainty in which citizens are forming opinions about the emerging nature of a democratic regime (Mattes and Bratton 2007; Meirowitz and Tucker 2013). In such settings, direct experience can serve as a key source of, or shortcut for, information (Mattes and Bratton 2007). Crucially, protest elicits concessions by inflicting a cost on authorities and this can have knock-on effects for broader public...

In sight, in mind: Spatial proximity to protest sites and changes in peoples' political attitudes

“…For example, focussing on the context of the United States civil rights protests in the 1960s, Andrews et al (2016) found that white Southerners became more supportive of anti-segregation protests if they lived in counties where the sit-in movements occurred. By contrast, Ketchley and El-Rayyes (2021) observed an opposite pattern during Egypt's democratic transition, in which sustained protests swayed public opinion against democracy.…”

“…Specifically, Wallace et al (2014) showed that large-scale protests with over 10,000 participants during the United States civil rights movement generated feelings of political alienation among citizens within a 100-mile radius. Likewise, during the Egyptian democratic transition, Ketchley and El-Rayyes (2021) found that the sustained street protests resulted in inconvenience and economic loss, consequently lowering local residents' support for democracy within the census district.…”

“…Besides, as we are mainly interested in the attitudinal changes among bystanders, protesters or participants of the movement are excluded here (N = 1346 individuals). After deleting 19 individuals with missing values on selected variables, we are left with 1327 unique individuals and 2654 person-year observations for analysis.4.2 | MeasurementAdhering to the practice established in related studies(Andrews et al, 2016;Branton et al, 2015;Ketchley & El-Rayyes, 2021), we adopt a dichotomous variable to measure individuals' spatial proximity to the nearest protest site, with one indicating nearby residents (i.e., the treatment group) and 0 indicating faraway residents (i.e., the control group). Although our geo-spatial data allow us to calculate the precise distance between an individual's home…”

The Nearness of Youth: Spatial and Temporal Effects of Protests on Political Attitudes in Chile

“…This study has several limitations, which future research may address. As other studies using survey data point out (Muñoz and Anduiza 2019, 11-12;Ketchley and El-Rayyes forthcoming), panel data would be ideal to analyze the effect of protest proximity on attitudes over time and to address endogeneity issues. Ad hoc survey sampling should also ensure that particularly (un)eventful periods and places are not overrepresented.…”

“…However, their insights are limited, for two reasons. First, most of the studies using survey data use only one survey wave (Branton et al 2015;Ketchley and El-Rayyes forthcoming;Wallace et al 2014) or are limited to measuring the attitudes of a specific subpopulation (Andrews et al 2016;Branton et al 2015;Wallace et al 2014), a certain location (Muñoz and Anduiza 2019), or episodes during particularly contentious periods (Andrews et al 2016;Ketchley and El-Rayyes forthcoming;Mazumder 2018). Most, therefore, do not analyze the effect of protest proximity on nationally representative samples across the years and with significant variation in protest exposure over time.…”