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Protests, riots, social movements, civil wars… Why do people participate? Hiba Zerrougui PhD student at McGill, Political Science [email protected]

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Page 1: Why do people participate

Protests, riots, social movements, civil wars…

Why do people participate?

Hiba Zerrougui

PhD student at McGill, Political Science

[email protected]

Page 2: Why do people participate

WHY DO PEOPLE PARTICIPATE?

1. Definition

2. Early explanations: popular mobilization as an irrational phenomenon

3. Political participation as a rational phenomenona) Instrumental rationality conducive to political participation

b) Value rationality conducive to political participation

4. Qualifying political participation: vertical and horizontal networks

Page 3: Why do people participate

DEFINITION: POLITICAL BEHAVIOR

• Refers to the observable activity of political actors• Focus on ordinary people

• A wide range of political activities:• Elections, protests, riots, lootings, rebellions, war, ethnic cleansing,

terrorist attacks…

• Analysis at the individual level: • Distinction between why collective action occur and why people choose

to participate in collective action

Page 4: Why do people participate

EARLY “EXPLANATIONS”: POPULAR PARTICIPATION AS

AN IRRATIONAL BEHAVIOR

Crowd theory– Origins in nineteenth century Europe– Gustave Le Bon, founding father of crowd

theory (1896)– Role of emotions: collective action as an

emotional relief– Ordinary people’s political participation

framed as the “mob”, “masses” or “crowd” • Exerts an irrational, unconscious, and

inferior mental influence upon society• A degenerate social force: destructive and

lead to chaos

Page 5: Why do people participate

EARLY EXPLANATIONS: LEGACY OF “THE IRRATIONAL

ANGRY MOB”

In the popular culture“An angry mob gathered after burning Christian housesin Lahore, Pakistan, March 9, 2013”. A mob ofhundreds of people in Lahore attacked a Christianneighborhood after hearing accusations that aChristian man had committed blasphemy againstIslam's prophet. (AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary, NYT)

In the newsThe entire town of Springfield – transformed into anangry mob – makes its way to the Simpson household,seeking revenge for a catastrophe triggered byHomer’s epic stupidity.(The Simpsons, movie 2007)

Page 6: Why do people participate

EARLY EXPLANATIONS: IMPLICATIONS OF “THE

IRRATIONAL ANGRY MOB”A security discourse when facing

public demonstrations…

Three days before the Tunisian dictator fled to Saudi Arabia, the French foreign minister, MichèleAlliot-Marie, outraged liberals and human rights activists by proposing to dispatch French security forces to Tunis to shore up the unpopular regime. (The Guardian, 17 Jan. 2011)

Tunisian police and protesters in central Tunis, February 11th

2013

“We suggest that the worldwide renowned expertise of our security

forces provide a solution to the security issues of this type [in the context of the Arab uprisings]. It is

the reason why we suggest that the two countries [Tunisia and Algeria] allow us […] to act so that the right to protests is upheld with security

guarantees”.

Translated from French, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pHO

RBsfNR8

Page 7: Why do people participate

A CRITIQUE OF “EARLY EXPLANATIONS”

• Pejorative connotation of ordinary people’s collective action

• Elitist conceptualisation of political participation• Perspective of the elite on ordinary people’s participation to politics

• Disregards history: • The crowd has gained credibility as an active and rational agent of historical

change, ex: the US civil rights and anti-Vietnam war social movements

• Treating the crowd as an abstract phenomenon, the same in all contexts

• Political participation can be explained because it is patterned

Page 8: Why do people participate

POLITICAL PARTICIPATION AS A RATIONAL PHENOMENON: RATIONAL CHOICE APPROACH

• Rational choice?• Conceptualize social phenomena as the result of individual strategic choices

• Individuals as the basic unit of analysis

• So: decompose social phenomena into sequences of individual actions

• Importance of instrumental rationality:• Choosing the most efficient means to a desired end

• Implication: • Decision to participate in a collective action is the result of a positive cost-

benefit calculus

Page 9: Why do people participate

RATIONAL CHOICE: THE LOGIC OF COLLECTIVE ACTION

• “The Logic of Collective Action” (Olson, 1965)• Collective action? A mean for individuals to access

collective good (an end)• Collective good? Something that all participants in

the group desire and that, by its nature, is inherently shared between all the members of the group.

• Puzzle: Tension between collective and individual interests in accessing collective good• Individual actors perceive the cost of acting

individually to access a particular public good as exceeding the benefits of this public good (when they are part of a large group of actors).

Page 10: Why do people participate

RATIONAL CHOICE: THE LOGIC OF COLLECTIVE ACTION

Why individuals may not act to obtain a collective good?

• Example: Action against climate change• The international community (states) do not

want to suffer the consequence of global warming and desire a more stable climate

• However, states are not necessarily willing to individually take the action necessary to ensure this collective good (stable climate).

• Incentives to cheat (free-rider problem): • It’s not possible to exclude actors from

benefiting from a public good

Page 11: Why do people participate

RATIONAL CHOICE: THE LOGIC OF COLLECTIVE ACTION

So then, when do people engage in collective action?

– When it is made compulsory

– When high level of social pressure(informal constraints)

– When people are offered individual incentives.

• Example: Unions– Mandatory membership

– Incentives (free lunch)

Page 12: Why do people participate

RATIONAL CHOICE: THE LIMITS OF THE LOGIC OF

COLLECTIVE ACTION

Voluntary participation in big groups is irrational…• The individual costs are higher than the payoffs

But then:• Where all these unions come from if nobody at the first place wanted

to freely participate in them ?• How can we explain the emergence of the state?

Limit: • Does not account for collective action emergence, but only for

political participation in the context of collective action’s perpetuation

Page 13: Why do people participate

RATIONAL CHOICE: THE LOGIC OF GROUP CONFLICT

• “One for All: The Logic of Group Conflict”, Hardin (1995)

• Historical context – Ethnic violence and nationalist movements, which

have been as irrational.

• Addresses the motivations of individuals involved in particular types of collective action

– Involving “alter group” and conflict

– Instances where a group seeks collectively a benefit that can only be reached through the suppression of other groups’ interests.

Page 14: Why do people participate

RATIONAL CHOICE: THE LOGIC OF GROUP CONFLICT

In this context, collective action is explained by two mechanisms:

(1) Individuals’ identification to a group• the fact to be subjectively committed to a group rather than to share

characteristics of a group

• Because their “self-interest can successfully be matched with group interests”

(2) Individuals act on behalf of a group through a game of coordination:

“My joining in a coordination of group X contributes to the power of group X, thereby increasing the likelihood of the group’s gaining its objectives, which will

benefit me along with all the other members of X.”

Page 15: Why do people participate

RATIONAL CHOICE: THE LOGIC OF GROUP CONFLICT

• Example: Genocide in Rwanda– Two alter groups: Hutu and Tutsi– Seeking a public good: control of the state– In a context of group competition: exclusionary

political projects– So, people had interests in identifying with one

particular “ethnic” group– Coordination game:The more individuals participate, the more likely their group has a chance in accessing to the public good they are seeking and the less likely the other group will be able to exclude their group from it.

Page 16: Why do people participate

VALUE RATIONALITY: EXPLAINING NATIONALISM, SELF-IMMOLATION, ETHNIC CONFLICTS…“Nationalism, Ethnic Conflict, and Rationality”

Varshney’s (2003) puzzle:

• To explain participation in seemingly irrational behavior

• When individuals persist in their engagement for a cause even when the costs are higher than the benefit.

• So that instrumental rationality is not enough to account for certain behavior

• Cases: struggles for self-determination and particular actions such as self-immolation, suicide bombers, etc.

In June of 1963, Vietnamese Buddhist monk immolation in Saigon in response to the persecution of Buddhists by South Vietnam’s catholic regime. Photo: AP

Page 17: Why do people participate

VALUE RATIONALITY: EXPLAINING NATIONALISM, SELF-IMMOLATION, ETHNIC CONFLICTS…Main argument:

• Importance of value rationality: • Action which is taken because of the intrinsic

value of the action itself, regardless of its consequences

• Involve great personal sacrifices

• Value-rationality provides the micro-foundations of the conflict:• To mobilize on the basis of an identity

• While conflict’s evolution relies on the use of instrumental rationality:• coalition building, strategies, etc.

Value vs instrumental rationality illustrated.

Page 18: Why do people participate

QUALIFYING POLITICAL PARTICIPATION: A SOCIOLOGICAL APPROACH TO POLITICAL BEHAVIOR

• Qualifying political participation?– It is not enough to consider why people participate, but also under which

conditions they participate

– So to understand their varying level of commitment

• Mobilization is made through social networks and these networks color the evolution of a collective action

– Political participation in a collective action is not random

– Individuals are connected with each other through different types social networks

– Distinction between horizontal and vertical networks

Page 19: Why do people participate

HORIZONTAL SOCIAL NETWORKS

Collective action is usually thought to be composed of individuals tied through horizontal social networks:

• It follows specific lines of social categorization and organization such as ethnicity, gender, or class.

• Tend to be homogeneous

• Implication: collective action relying on the participation of individuals along horizontal lines regroups like-minded individuals

But other scholars have argued that collective action can be the result of more complex dynamics…

Page 20: Why do people participate

VERTICAL SOCIAL NETWORKS

But collective action can also be the result of the mobilization of vertical ties:

• Define patron-clients relations – an unequal relationship entered freely (voluntary) – involving a two-way exchange between a patron of a higher socioeconomic

status and a client of a lower one– for mutual “benefits”– but they also tend to perpetuate a hierarchical social order.

• How patron-clients relations encourage participation in collective action?– Patrons use their influence /resources to provide protection / benefits to clients – Clients, in turn, reciprocate by offering support and assistance, potentially votes,

attending rallies, etc.

Page 21: Why do people participate

VERTICAL NETWORKS AND POLITICAL PARTICIPATION: AN EXAMPLE

Argentina, attendance in political rallies of the Peronist party

• Peronist patrons target individuals living in slums and recruit them to participate in party activities in exchange of goods.

• People who attend rallies receive in return:JobsMedicinePairs of sneakers for their kidsFood, etc.

Page 22: Why do people participate

VERTICAL NETWORKS AND POLITICAL PARTICIPATION: ANOTHER EXAMPLE

Argentina, episodes of lootings in 2001

• Context of severe and protracted economic crisis

• Lootings were organized and publicizedby the Peronist Party, which controls a large patronage network

• The Peronist patrons namely ensured that police intervention would not occur in these lootings so that people could freely loot the supermarkets (Auyero 2008)

Page 23: Why do people participate

VERTICAL NETWORKS: IMPLICATIONS FOR POLITICAL

PARTICIPATION

Potential negative effects: – Reinforcing social order or promoting social change?

• It is problematic to assume that any instance of collective action promotes change (example: lootings in 2001 in Argentina)

– Problematize agency of individuals engaged in patronage politics• Instrumentalization (manipulation) of the disenfranchised by the political

and economic elites (example: Peronist rallies in Argentina)

– No clear commitment to a cause• Individuals involved in patronage networks and participating to a

particular collective action as a result of clientelistic bargain are not necessarily supporting its underlying cause.

Page 24: Why do people participate

HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL NETWORKS: NOT

NECESSARILY MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE

Internal variation:

• a collective action can use both clientelistic arrangements and horizontal networks to recruit its constituency

Example: Islamist women

• The coexistence of two logics of recruitment and participation among Islamist women in Egypt:

– Vertical ties : vote buying in rural and urban Egypt

– Horizontal ties : ideologically based recruitment in university campus, unions, etc.