Professional Documents
Culture Documents
VOLUME 26
NUMBER 1
2010
97109
97
Introduction
Why do individuals participate in protest activities?
A large number of explanatory factors have been
employed in theory and empirical research to explain
protest behaviour.1 There are still several unresolved
issues. This article elaborates three of them.
One issue is endogeneity: does a feedback effect
between the determinants of protest and protest
behaviour exist? Although it is commonly assumed
that there is a unidirectional effect of the determinants
of protest on protest behaviour, it is still possible that
protest activity promotes the factors usually considered
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98
99
100
Social incentives
Political
discontent
Political
discontent
+
+ +
Perceived
personal
influence
Perceived
personal
influence
+
+
+
Protest
participation
- +
+
Moral
incentives
+
Social
incentives
Social
incentives
+
Moral
incentives
Protest
participation
101
102
Note: The expressions printed in bold are the names of the scales.
Measurement
It is common in panel analyses to construct scales such
as political discontent with the same items in each
wave. This is not always possibleand not meaningful
eitherwhen the data refer to extremely different
situations. For example, political discontent in 1989
under communist rule and in 1993 after communism
is radically different. Among the major issues of
discontent in 1989 were the travel restrictions to
Political protest 1989: Working for an opposition group, participating in peace prayers and other church
activities, refusal to vote, refusal to become member in the SED (the socialist party) or a similar organization (four
answer categories for each item: had not taken the action into account (Code 1), had thought about performing
the action but had not performed it (Code 2), had engaged in that action once (Code 3) or several times
(Code 4)). Frequency of participation in the Monday demonstrations before 9 October 1989 (value range 14).
Political protest 1993, 1996, 1998: Working with or founding a citizen initiative, organizing or participating in
demonstrations, collecting signatures or sign petitions, writing letters to newspapers or members of parliaments.
Answer categories as for political protest 1989 (value range 14, see before).
Political discontent 1989: Discontent (five categories, very satisfied with Code 1 to very dissatisfied with
Code 4) with: the environment, the existence of two German states, the possibility for free speech, the demands
of the socialist party SED, the surveillance by the secret police (Stasi), the possibilities of a fair political trial, the
possibilities of traveling to Western countries.
Political discontent 1993, 1996, 1998: Discontent with: the environment, the unification of GDR and former FRG,
possibility of free speech, policy of the federal government regarding asylum seekers, violence against foreigners by
rightist radicals, work of the Treuhand (privatization agency), adopting the laws of the former FRG for the new
Germany after unification (categories as before).
Perceived personal influence 1989: Respondents were asked to what extent it was likely [five categories, from very
unlikely (Code 1) to very likely (Code 5)] that they could have changed the situation in the former GDR by
working for an opposition group, participating in peace prayers and other church activities, refusal to vote, refusal
to become member in the SED or a similar organization.
Perceived personal influence 1993, 1996, 1998: Respondents were asked how they assessed their personal
possibilities to change the political or economic situation in the new states by performing the actions used in
the political protest scales (see above). Answer categories for each action from very unlikely (Code 1) to very
likely (Code 4).
Moral incentives 1989, 1993, 1996, 1998: Agreement to the following items (five categories, from fully disagree
to fully agree, Codes 15): Protest is a duty in case of high discontent, one should not only participate in case
of expected success, participation is a duty even if not enough others are ready to participate, politics should not
be left to politicians.
Social incentives 1989, 1993, 1996, 1998: Additive scale, consisting of the following items or subscales:
membership in protest encouraging groups, expectations of reference persons to protest; number of critical friends,
number of critical colleagues. Value range 14.
Modelling Strategy
The hypotheses outlined above imply that a change
in the independent variables at a certain point in time
brings about a change in the dependent variables later
on. Hence we include the lagged dependent variable
as a further independent variable. Thus, we test the
impact of independent variables on the conditional
change of the dependent variable (e.g. Finkel, 1995).
A problem of testing only lagged effects is that we
do not know how long it takes until a change in an
independent variable affects the dependent variable.
To the extent that the underlying social-psychological
mechanisms are realized at a faster rate than the
23-year intervals between the surveys, we might
nonetheless find simultaneous effects of the independent
variables (i.e. effects on the dependent variable at
the same wave). In order to control for this possibility,
we include both lagged and simultaneous effects.
Testing for simultaneous effects is not equivalent to
a cross-sectional design because of the inclusion of
the lagged dependent variable. This means that we test
the effects of an independent variable of a given wave
(such as discontent) on a dependent variable (such
Results
Protest as a Dependent Variable:
The IncentivesProtest Model
To test the baseline proposition that protest is determined by political discontent, influence, moral and
social incentives we first estimated a cross-sectional
model of wave 1. The reason is that the data of this
wave refer to the situation under communist rule in
1989 that was very different from the situation after
unification. As Figure 2 indicates, all incentives of wave
1 have relatively strong and significant effects on
protest in wave 1 and not on protest in later waves.
It is worth noting that this model has the highest
103
104
Wave 1 (1990)
Wave 2 (1993)
Political
discontent
Political
discontent
.26**
Protest
.10
.25**
.26**
Protest
R2 =.27**
.20**
Moral
incentives
. 16**
Social
incentives
Influence
Influence
.16**
.38**
.16**
.15**
.21**
Protest
.10*
.23**
R = .36**
.34**
Protest
R 2 = .30**
Moral
incentives
Moral
incentives
.21**
Social
incentives
Political
discontent
Social
incentives
.20**
Social
incentives
Figure 2 Protest as a dependent and independent variable: confirmed relationships (standardized coefficients). Model
fit for all equations (Figures 2 and 4): Chi-square 170.34, df 130, P 0.01, RMSEA 0.038. significant at the
0.05 level, significant at the 0.01 level, one-tailed tests. (0.05 level: t between 1.65 and 2.35; 0.01 level: t greater
than 2.35.)
Note: This figure depicits only the causes and effects of protest. For the relationship between the incentives see Figure 4.
R2 = .39
.16**
.20**
Moral
incentives
.36**
Wave 4 (1998)
Political
discontent
.11*
Influence
Influence
.34**
Wave 3 (1996)
r = .21
Discontent 1993
(wave 2)
X3
(31= -.08)
r = .32
r = .48
Discontent 1989
(wave 1) X2
31 = (r31r32r21)/(1r221)
These results confirm the protest-influence proposition: protest in 1989 has a statistically significant effect
on perceived influence in 1993 ( 0.14). The effect
of influence 1989 is not statistically significant. An
alternative proposition would be that not protest 1989
but protest 1993 explains perceived influence 1993
best. The results are:
INFLUENCE93 0:41 PROTEST93
t5:84
Protest 1989
(wave 1)
X1
105
106
Wave 1 (1990)
Wave 2 (1993)
.32**
Political
discontent
Wave 3 (1996)
.36**
.43**
Political
discontent
R2 = .10**
.14*
Influence
R2 = .20**
Influence
Influence
.32**
.13**
R =
.17**
Protest
.27**
Protest
.20**
.14**
Moral
incentives
.28**
R2 = .17**
.27**
Social
incentives
R2 = .19**
.28**
Moral
incentives
.24**
.24**
.16**
.13*
R2 = .23**
.17**
Social
incentives
R2 = .26**
.11*
.20** Moral
incentives
.23**
.25**
.15**
R2 = .28**
.36**
Social
incentives
R2 = .28**
Figure 4 Public goods and selective incentives as dependent and independent variables: confirmed relationships
(standardized coefficients). Model fit for all equations (Figures 2 and 4): Chi-Square 170.34, df 130, p .01,
RMSEA .38. significant at the .05 level, significant at the .01 level, one-tailed tests. (.05 level: t between 1.65 and 2.35;
.01 level: t greater than 2.35.)
Note: This figure does not depict the causes and effects of protest. See Figure 3.
.19**
Social
incentives
R2 = .24**
Protest
.24**
Political
discontent
R2 = .21**
.13*
Moral
incentives
Political
discontent
.30**
Influence
Protest
Wave 4 (1998)
+
Social
incentives
+
+
Political
discontent
+
Protest
+
+
Moral
incentives
Perceived +
political
influence
107
108
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
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Authors Addresses
Karl-Dieter Opp (to whom correspondence should be
addressed), Sulkyweg 22, 22159 Hamburg,
Germany. E-mail: opp@sozio.uni-leipzig.de
Bernhard Kittel, Carl-von-Ossietzky Universitat
Oldenburg, Institut fur Sozialwissenschaften,
26111 Oldenburg, Germany, E-mail: bernhard.kittel@uni-oldenburg.de
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