Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgments
- 1 The Promise of Protest
- 2 Costly Protest and Political Representation
- 3 How Legislators Perceive Collective Action
- 4 How the Average Legislator Responds
- 5 The Limits of Costly Protest
- 6 Costly Protest in a Digitized World
- 7 The Democratic Value of Costly Protest
- 8 Appendices
- Bibliography
- Index
- Books in the Series
4 - How the Average Legislator Responds
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2022
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgments
- 1 The Promise of Protest
- 2 Costly Protest and Political Representation
- 3 How Legislators Perceive Collective Action
- 4 How the Average Legislator Responds
- 5 The Limits of Costly Protest
- 6 Costly Protest in a Digitized World
- 7 The Democratic Value of Costly Protest
- 8 Appendices
- Bibliography
- Index
- Books in the Series
Summary
This chapter relies on the Dynamics of Collective Action (DCA) dataset to empirically test the claim that legislators are more likely to represent costlier protest. Gause limits the analyses to protests reported in the New York Times from 1991 through 1995. This period avoids notable social movement activity and enables a more straightforward, albeit conservative, analysis.
Gause only assesses Civil Rights, Minority Issues, and Civil Liberties protest demands. This issue area embraces civil rights issues relating to abortion, hate crimes, the First Amendment, education, affirmative action, and immigration. It also covers discrimination based on gender, age, sex, sexuality, race, and religion.
Gause finds that the issues protesters raise vary with protesters’ resource capacities. The results also show that legislators are more likely to support issues raised during protests than those not raised during protest. Further, the likelihood of legislative support increases with protest costs. The results hold even while considering other salience measures: protest’s size, media attention, and disruptiveness. Finally, placebo tests suggest that the findings are unlikely to be spurious.
Keywords
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- Information
- The Advantage of DisadvantageCostly Protest and Political Representation for Marginalized Groups, pp. 83 - 119Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022