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5 - Minority Protest and the Early Stages of Governmental Responsiveness in the Electoral Process

from Part I - Anxieties of Power, Influence, and Representation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 May 2019

By
Daniel Gillion  and
Patricia Posey
Edited by
Frances E. Lee  and
Nolan McCarty
Frances E. Lee
Affiliation:
University of Maryland, College Park
Nolan McCarty
Affiliation:
Princeton University, New Jersey
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Summary

Does minority political protest lead to governmental responsiveness? Although minority protest has played a large role in conveying minority grievances to government since the civil rights era, little is known of how marginalized voices navigate a majoritarian political system to influence the behavior of political officials. Using protest data that spans across several decades into a post–civil rights era, we show that minority protests have a large effect on the early stages of governmental responsiveness, but the influence of minority protest actions are heavily linked to the party system. Placing protests on an ideological scale, we find that protests that express liberal issues increases vote share for Democratic candidates, while protests that espouse conservative issues offer Republican candidates a greater share of the two-party vote. However, minority protests, which often express liberal concerns, uniquely lead to a greater percentage of the two-party vote share for Democratic candidates. In addition, this study shows that minority protest produces a “vulnerability effect,” which leads quality candidates to enter subsequent races to challenge incumbents.

Keywords

ProtestElectionsRaceSocial MovementsVoter TurnoutMinorityPolitical Party

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Chapter
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Can America Govern Itself? , pp. 93 - 119
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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