Wednesday30Apr 2025
"Protests and Policy: How Violent Tactics and Protestor Race Shape Outcomes"
Smith Institute Talk with James Druckman
Wednesday, April 30, 2025
4:00 p.m. - 5:15 p.m. PST
Abstract: Protests constitute a primary way that members of the public signal their preferences to policymakers. Whether protests impact policy depends on the reactions of various stakeholders including members of the public (who decide to join or not), civic leaders (who decide to provide organizational support or not) and public officials (who alter policy positions or not). How these actors respond, in turn, varies based on features of the protests such as the tactics employed and the race of most protesters. We unravel these dimensions of protest with parallel experiments among the public, those in civic organizations, and public officials. We find that violent protests generate universal disapproval; additionally, civic leaders prefer to not aid such protests and citizens prefer to not join them. Yet, those same violent protests generate more policy support among public officials. More generally, protests with a majority of Black participants sway policy beliefs (regardless of violence), possibly due to perceptions of a costly resource signal. The findings provide a holistic picture of how protests influence politics and policy, showing that violent tactics are a double edge sword and majority Black protests can be notably effective.
Bio: James N. Druckman is the Martin Brewer Anderson Professor of Political Science at the University of Rochester. Druckman has published approximately 200 articles and book chapters in political science, communication, economics, science, and psychology journals. He has authored, co-authored, or co-edited seven books. His recent books include Partisan Hostility and American Democracy: Explaining Political Divides (University of Chicago Press, 2024), Equality Unfulfilled: How Title IX's Policy Design Undermines Change to College Sports (Cambridge University Press, 2023), and Experimental Thinking: A Primer on Social Science Experiments (Cambridge University Press, 2022). He is the co-PI of Time-sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences and the Civic Health and Institutions Project.
You can contact the event organizer, Molly Holloway at mholloway@chapman.edu.
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