Why People Protest: Explaining Participation in Collective Action

Revolution is too difficult to be empirically studied. Revolutionary collective action can be defined as “simultaneous large-scale and spatially diffused protest”. This definition captures the complexity of the phenomenon in terms of three features- think about them as sufficient conditions- that should accompany protest for a collective action situation to be described as “revolutionary” collective action, as follows: a. Number of Actors. Although Olson (1968) argues that there is a negative relationship between group size and the propensity to participate in collective action as the increase in the number of participants makes the individual unnoticeable and decreases the marginal profit of participation, others like Schelling (1978:41) argues that “[sometimes] there is “immunity in numbers”. Between both arguments, it remains as the first obvious feature of revolutionary collective action is the large number of participants. This is even more important when individuals protest in authoritarian contexts where freedom of expression is expected and so is violence from security apparatus. b. Spatial Diffusion. A second distinctive feature of revolutionary collective action is its simultaneous spread over space. While some studies refer to the spatial dimension when analysing the spread of revolutionary vibes across countries, spatial dispersion here is confined to the sub-state units, be it states in federal systems, cantons in confederal system, cities, counties, or governorates…etc. Of course, this spatial diffusion in itself signals successful coordination efforts of the organizing agents. Yet, as a feature of revolutionary collective action, the importance of the momentum’s spatial diffusion is double fold. On one side, some are concerned with the peripheries-centre relationship, the level of urbanization and how the state controls the revolution. On the other side, another group of scholars put more emphasis on the city as an interactional field where distinctive features, be it static (population density, size, area, distance from the capital) (Kuran. 1989) or dynamic (social relations, information cascading and resources) contribute to individuals’ mobilizability (Lohmann.1994). My concern about the sub-state unit, aka the city, falls under the rubric of the dynamic/relational aspect of the latter. c. Time Synchronization. The third feature of revolutionary collective action is its simultaneity across different sub-state units. People act together in different places at the same time to express their dissatisfaction and desire for change. However, it is noteworthy that features of spatial diffusion and time synchronization might interact. Charlesworth (1983) compared rural protests in British and French cities in the 1800s and the line of analysis showed that sometimes spatial diffusion takes place over time. In other words, riots start in one city, and because of media coverage showing what happened in neighbouring cities, it became contagion that other cities start to riot as well. For this, if we cannot study revolutions as they happen or detect the simultaneous nature of people’s collective actions, it can be relegated for now to protest as the core/essential component. Next is to question the spatial diffusion of this collective action situation. Accordingly, this thesis main research question can be simplified to be: when/under what conditions do individuals protest? Related to this is the following three questions: 1. How can the interaction between social and political trust affect individuals’ decision to participate in collective action? 2. How can the interaction between social and political trust affect individuals’ (non)compliance with social and political authorities? 3. How can the interaction between social and political trust explain the spatial diffusion of collective action? The reason why trust is chosen as the main explanatory variable will be explained in detail in the literature review and the theoretical framework.