Francisco, Ron
1996
Coercion and Protest: An Empirical Test in Two Democratic States
American Journal of Political Science
40
4
1179-1204
The theory of protest under varying levels of coercion forms the context for an investigation of the data on protest coercion in Germany and Northern Ireland for 11 years (1982-92), aggregated weekly. The standard inverted-U hypothesis is tested against competing unstable (protest and coercion diverge and oscillate); backlash (coercion increases protest); and adaptation (protesters change tactics after coercion) hypotheses. Three forms of the biological predator-prey model are estimated with two- and three-stage least squares and supplemented with a Bayesian updating test. The predator-prey mechanism fits the German data well, even in a context of low coercion. The results cast doubt on the inverted-U hypothesis, support the backlash hypothesis and strengthen the evidence that protesters adapt. Northern Ireland's terror-based protest and coercion did not conform as well to the predator-prey model, but protesters did adapt in a separate test of Bayesian updating.
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