Under what conditions do protests demanding democracy occur? When do these protests lead to democratization? Dawn Brancati’s Democracy Protests: Origins, Features and Significance masterfully tackles these important and timely questions. Using an original data set covering 180 countries between 1989 and 2011, the book shows compelling evidence that economic crises make “democracy protests” more likely to occur. These effects arise, the author argues, not only because economic crises spawn discontent with governments and with authoritarianism but also because they increase support for opposition candidates who are more likely to organize protests, especially in election periods. Consistent with this argument, she shows that the effects of economic crises on democracy protests are strongest in election years and strongest when electoral fraud is rampant.
What are the factors shaping the response to these protests? Using an impressive array of measures capturing government responses to democracy protests, Brancati shows that although governments do not accommodate democracy protests very often, larger protests are more likely to lead to government accommodation and removal of the chief executive, as well as to democratization. In particular, one of the chapters compellingly shows that subsequent democratization was explicitly linked with protests in a full two-thirds of the cases in which protests were followed by democratization. It is interesting, however, that the types or cohesiveness of demands made by protestors were found to have had no bearing on government responses to the protest, or on democratization.
Democracy Protests makes several important contributions to the field of comparative politics. While it is perhaps not surprising that economic crises engender discontent or even mobilization, it is not immediately obvious why economic grievances should translate into political or democratic grievances. Brancati offers compelling reasons why people might associate a poorly performing economy with their country’s lack of democracy. For example, authoritarian leaders may be more likely to engage in ostentatious spending in times of crises, and she provides examples of cases where such spending led to large-scale popular discontent. Another important reason could be corruption and, indeed, the results from the statistical analysis show that less corruption is associated with a lower likelihood of democracy protests. A compelling feature of the statistical analyses is their reliance not just on objective indicators of economic crises but also on subjective measures focusing on citizens’ perceptions. These results provide convincing evidence that economic grievances within the population translate to political grievances in the form of democracy protests.
An additional contribution of the book is the rich descriptive evidence it provides on the occurrence of these protests and how it has varied across the globe and over time. The book yields fascinating insights into the characteristics of such protests—their primary organizers, their size, duration, demands, and strategies—and the range of government responses to them. These descriptive data provide a strong foundation for future research by helping to spawn new questions: What conditions shape the type and cohesiveness of demands that protesters make? When do democracy protests turn violent? The data will also aid scholars working on studies of protests in single countries or regions to situate their own research in a global context.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the book is a welcome addition to a central question in the field of comparative politics: How do economic factors shape democratization? Democracy Protests yields fresh insights into this literature by providing evidence for an important causal pathway leading from economic crises to democratization. Economic crises, the author shows, shape the size of democracy protests and, in turn, larger democracy protests are more likely to lead to democratization. She also advances our understanding of the ways in which economic development could shape the likelihood of democratic transitions, showing that higher levels of economic development mitigate the likelihood that economic crises will lead to democracy protests.
Brancati’s argument and findings also give rise to several interesting and important questions for future research. The first concerns the conditions under which discontent over economic issues evolve into protests about a lack of democracy. In particular, Chapter 3 provides examples of cases of protests in Burma and Yemen that initially focused on economic issues but that evolved into “democracy protests.” Although such examples may not be the norm, they do suggest a larger point, which is that it may not be the economic crises themselves but the inadequacy of government responses to popular discontent about the economy that leads to citizens’ demands for greater democracy.
This idea has interesting parallels in the argument made by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson in Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (2006). According to their argument, citizens who have the ability to revolt against the government are not satisfied with policy concessions made by elites, because any promise by elites to maintain these policy concessions in future periods is not credible. In this context, democracy is a mechanism that allows elites to credibly commit to future policy concessions through the transfer of power. This argument can be used to shed further light on Brancati’s findings. In particular, Acemoglu and Robinson suggest that the effect of economic crises on democracy protests should be mitigated by factors that help government elites make credible policy concessions to citizens in the absence of democracy. Testing this implication of the argument could help further elucidate the theoretical microfoundations of Brancati’s argument linking economic crises to democracy protests.
This book also should spur a greater interest in understanding the political conditions under which economic crises get translated into democracy protests. It draws our attention to the important fact that the vast majority of democracy protests are not spontaneous, and that the majority of these protests are organized by political parties or candidates, rather than by civil society groups. Since not all economic crises lead to democracy protests, a key question that arises from this finding is concerns the conditions under which opposition parties decide to mobilize democracy protests, as opposed to using other means to marshal support. The author’s findings shed some light on this question by showing that economic crises are more likely to give rise to democracy protests when elections are fraudulent, when the incumbent stays in power, and when there is a low margin of victory.
An important question that Brancati does not take up, however, concerns the institutional factors that could shape the relationship between economic crises and democracy protests. This question is especially pertinent in light of previous work by scholars such as Jennifer Gandhi and Joseph Wright, showing that institutions in authoritarian regimes often serve as a channel for opposition demands and interests. Do these institutions also shape the likelihood that opposition parties will resort to organizing democracy protests? Addressing this question would provide an interesting context in which to examine the empirical validity of Samuel Huntington’s influential argument that societal demands are more likely to get expressed through noninstitutional channels when levels of political institutionalization are low.
Delving deeper into the role of opposition parties in organizing democracy protests would also help shed light on whether these protests are driven primarily by elite interests or by mass discontent. My own research on democratization at the village level in India shows that although grassroots democratization is often considered to be a bottom-up process, it emerged in India largely as a result of competition between elites within the same party and not in response to pressures from below. Applying this insight to Brancati’s work, an interesting question to consider is the extent to which democracy protests are similarly driven by the strategic considerations of elites. A closer examination of the incentives of the individual actors involved in organizing democracy protests, and the conditions under which they are successful, would help elucidate this question.
Finally, given my own interest in understanding the causes and consequences of democratic local governance, this book also motivates an interest in understanding whether and how the presence of democratic institutions at the local level shapes democracy protests. Are democracy protests less likely when nationally authoritarian governments have instituted democratic procedures at the local level? To what extent do democracy protests incorporate demands for greater democratization at local levels of government? Was it common or rare for national rulers to respond to democracy protests at least in part by introducing local democratization? Answers to these questions would help clarify the origins and consequences of democracy protests, as well as the factors that drive local democratization reforms.
Overall, Democracy Protests is a compelling book that not only helps us answer some of the most important and timely questions in the field of comparative politics but also opens up avenues for exciting new research. The book is essential reading not only for scholars interested in protests but also for scholars interested in broader debates on the causes of democratization and on the political effects of economic crises.
