Strategic Substitution and the Paradox of Revolution: Theory and Evidence

• In Event: Dynamics of Protest and Mass Mobilization

Abstract

Many events that changed the world started with a protest. The Boston Tea Party in 1773 culminated in the American Revolution; a peaceful movement in 1989 tore down the Berlin Wall and ended the Cold War. Despite their significance, how protests occur and induce regime changes remain topics of debate among social scientists. Nowadays many protests are decentralized in nature. And according to existing theories, massive turnout is expected in these movements mainly under strategic complementarity. However, evidence from lab-in-the field experiments has found that strategic substitution was at work in some cases (Cantoni, Yang, Yuchtman, & Zhang. 2019. Quarterly Journal of Economics 134: 1021–1077; Hager, Hensel, Hermle, & Roth. 2022. American Political Science Review 116: 1051–1066). The inconsistency gives rise to the puzzle: how large-scale protests can happen under the shadow of free-riding and government crackdowns when strategic substitution prevails. In this study we develop a formal model of protests and pivotal voting, which endogenizes strategic complementarity and substitution under multiple threshold equilibria. The model explains why and when strategic substitution and crackdowns can lead to massive turnout and regime changes. To test our theory, we constructed an original dataset detailing the deployment of tear gas during the 2019 protests in Hong Kong. Using geo-coded data and instrumental variable estimation, we find that repression significantly widens the electoral support for pro-democracy candidates and increases their chance of winning in the subsequent local election, a finding that lends support to our model. Results from placebo tests further confirm the treatment effect of tear gas deployment on election outcomes. Overall, our study challenges the assumptions of deterrence and strategic complementarity in existing protest models. It also proposes a novel mechanism that explains why and when repression can do a disservice to governments.

Authors

• Pui Hang Wong, Maastricht University

• Tsz Nga Wong