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Economic grievances and political protest

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2026

Thomas Kurer ,
Silja Häusermann ,
Bruno Wüest  and
Matthias Enggist
Thomas Kurer
Affiliation:
Harvard University, USA
Silja Häusermann
Affiliation:
University of Zurich, Switzerland
Bruno Wüest
Affiliation:
University of Zurich, Switzerland
Matthias Enggist
Affiliation:
Harvard University, USA
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Abstract

How do economic grievances affect citizens’ inclination to protest? Given rising levels of inequality and widespread economic hardship in the aftermath of the Great Recession, this question is crucial for political science: if adverse economic conditions depress citizens’ engagement, as many contributions have argued, then the economic crisis may well feed into a crisis of democracy. However, the existing research on the link between economic grievances and political participation remains empirically inconclusive. It is argued in this article that this is due to two distinct shortcomings, which are effectively addressed by combining the strengths of political economy and social movement theories. Based on ESS and EU‐SILC data from 2006–2012, as well as newly collected data on political protest in 28 European countries, a novel, more fine‐grained conceptualisation of objective economic grievances considerably improves our understanding of the direct link between economic grievances and protest behaviour. While structural economic disadvantage (i.e., the level of grievances) unambiguously de‐mobilises individuals, the deterioration of economic prospects (i.e., a change in grievances) instead increases political activity. Revealing these two countervailing effects provides an important clarification that helps reconcile many seemingly conflicting findings in the existing literature. Second, the article shows that the level of political mobilisation substantially moderates this direct link between individual hardship and political activity. In a strongly mobilised environment, even structural economic disadvantage is no longer an impediment to political participation. There is a strong political message in this interacting factor: if the presence of organised and visible political action is a decisive signal for citizens that conditions the micro‐level link between economic grievances and protest, then democracy itself – that is, organised collective action – can help sustain political equality and prevent the vicious circle of democratic erosion.

Keywords

protestparticipationeconomic grievancesdeprivationpolitical mobilisation

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Type
Original Articles
Information
European Journal of Political Research , Volume 58 , Issue 3 , August 2019 , pp. 866 - 892
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 European Consortium for Political Research

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Footnotes

Correction added on 26 June 2019, after initial online publication. A duplicate of this article was published under the DOI 10.1111/1475‐6765.12311. This duplicate has now been deleted and its DOI redirected to this version of the article.

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