Why Democracy Protests Do Not Diffuse

What is it about?

One of the primary international factors proposed to explain the geographic and temporal clustering of democracy is the diffusion of democracy protests. Democracy protests are thought to diffuse across countries, primarily, through a demonstration effect, whereby protests in one country cause protests in another based on the positive information that they convey about the likelihood of successful protests elsewhere and, secondarily, through the actions of transnational activists. In contrast to this view, we argue that, in general, democracy protests are not likely to diffuse across countries because the motivation for and the outcome of democracy protests result from domestic processes that are unaffected or undermined by the occurrence of democracy protests in other countries. Our statistical analysis supports this argument. Using daily data on the onset of democracy protests around the world between 1989 and 2011, we find that in this period, democracy protests were not significantly more likely to occur in countries when democracy protests had occurred in neighboring countries, either in general or in ways consistent with the expectations of diffusion arguments.

Featured Image

Photo by Harry Gillen on Unsplash

Photo by Harry Gillen on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The article challenges a view common in the media and among scholars that democracy protests, as well as other types of anti-government protests (e., the Color Revolutions and Arab Spring protests) spread from country to country, and offers and explanation for why they do not.