Political Mobilization and Government Targeting: When Do Dissidents Challenge the State?

Abstract

Activist groups face a number of strategic challenges when pursuing social change. Among the most important is selecting the appropriate target for protest activity. Yet, scholars have typically focused on dissident–government interactions, rather than the entire range of potential targets. Why, then, do dissidents choose to target the state rather than other social actors such as firms, rival ethnic groups, the press, and so on? We argue that dissident target choice is shaped by the interaction of dissident demands and regime characteristics. When the state is highly central in generating particular grievances, dissidents will be more likely to target the state; however, this also depends on the degree of state responsiveness to opposition movements. We highlight how state control over the economy shapes economic protest, how democracy conditions political protest, and how ethnic discrimination discourages anti-state protest. The results of our quantitative analysis of protest events in Africa and Latin America demonstrate that there is an interactive effect between contextual features of the state and the specific demands of activists.