This chapter grounds the manuscript’s argument in debates about persisting inequalities in participation and representation. It starts with an overview of collective action in the United States. It describes how American colonists united in collective action events like the Boston Tea Party to demand representation in the British Parliament and how those efforts led to the Declaration of Independence and the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which proclaim the legitimacy and right of protest.

Next, the chapter provides definitions for protest, collective action, resource disparities, and protest costs. The chapter also describes differences in protest costs for groups of different resource capacities. It discusses why legislators might be responsive to protest efforts, particularly those by lower-resource groups. Finally, the chapter describes how the book will develop the central argument that legislators are most likely to support the protest demands of politically marginalized groups.

This chapter presents a theory of costly protest and legislative behavior. The theory contributes to a growing literature on legislators’ responsiveness to collective action demands. It answers an open question: are the groups with the most to gain from representation the most likely to benefit legislatively from protest efforts?

The theory suggests that it is not only likely but strategic for legislators to more frequently support the interests of protesters than non-protesters. The strategic representation of protest goals is especially likely when protesters have fewer resources to engage in collective action. Legislators’ greater support of low-resource groups relative to high-resource groups occurs because costly protest is a stronger indication of protesters’ intense desire for representation. Groups with lower resources can only protest when issue salience is high. Conversely, high-resource groups can protest regardless of their issue salience. Any legislator who ignores salient collective action demands risks electoral participation that could jeopardize their reelection.

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.