 Focal Moments and Protests in Autocracies: How Pro-democracy Anniversaries Shape Dissent in ChinaErin Baggott Carter and Brett L. Carter Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2020, vol. 64, issue 10, 1796-1827 Abstract: Social scientists have long observed that focal points enable citizens to coordinate collective action. For antiregime protests in autocracies, however, focal points also enable repressive governments to prepare in advance. We propose a theory to explain when citizens are likely to employ focal points to organize antiregime protests. Our key insight is that tacit coordination is most critical when explicit coordination is costly. Empirically, we use our theory to identify a setting where focal points are likely to be salient and then argue that the anniversaries of failed pro-democracy movements satisfy conditions for focality. In China, we find that the anniversaries of failed pro-democracy movements occasion nearly 30 percent more protests than any other day. Protests during pro-democracy anniversaries are more likely to employ “rights-conscious†discourse, which scholars have argued is code for democratic resistance, and to be repressed by the government. We find no similar trends for other holidays. Keywords: collective action; autocratic politics; China; repression; social movements (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jocore:v:64:y:2020:i:10:p:1796-1827 Access Statistics for this article More articles in Journal of Conflict Resolution from Peace Science Society (International) |
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