Are Actions Costlier Than Words? Formal Models of Protester-Police Dynamic Interactions and Evidence from Empirical Analysis

Sargis Karavardanyan ()
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Sargis Karavardanyan: University of California

SN Operations Research Forum, 2021, vol. 2, issue 4, 1-29

Abstract: Abstract Why do some protests face police repression while others are tolerated? This article formulates signaling game models to analyze the dynamic interaction between police and protesters in autocratic and democratic regimes. The theoretical framework of formal models suggests that low profile protester actions like peaceful marches with shouts avoid repressive police responses as opposed to high profile actions like close proximity contacts with the police. The equilibrium outcomes of our games are analyzed with empirical specifications that draw on two rich datasets. The empirical results of multinomial linear regression (MLR) models support the claim that police are likelier to repress protests which use aggressive actions. These results are one explanation for the Law of Coercive Responsiveness [14]. The robustness analysis of longitudinal data on protest events in the USA from 1960 to 1995 provides additional insights into the mechanism that protests relying on aggressive actions are more likely to face police violence.

Keywords: Protest and repression; Signaling games; Risk and uncertainty; Collective decision making; Cooperation; Authoritarianism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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DOI: 10.1007/s43069-021-00099-4

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