Many protesters under authoritarian rule are “narrow in scope, involving only one or a few neighborhoods, villages, or groups of laid-off workers” and focus on demands that “have to do only with material interests and local grievances” (Lorentzen, 2013, p. 131). These protests typically blame local authorities and express loyalty to the political system. However, in the internet age, pro-democracy advocates often endorse and co-opt these local policy protests for their own ends. Does being endorsed by pro-democracy activists undermine support for these local policy protesters? Building on research suggesting that non-activists often perceive activists as extreme, I theorize that associating with pro-democratic frames can undermine support for local policy protesters by making the protesters seem more extreme and their protests less legal. Using an internet survey experiment in Vietnam, I find support for my argument. These findings highlight a challenge to building pro-democracy coalitions under authoritarian rule.
AronowP.BaronJ.PinsonL. (2019). A note on dropping experimental subjects who fail a manipulation check. Political Analysis, 27(4), 572–589. https://doi.org/10.1017/pan.2019.5
2.
BashirN.LockwoodP.ChasteenA. L.NadolnyD.NoyesI. (2013). The ironic impact of activists: Negative stereotypes reduce social change influence. European Journal of Social Psychology, 43(7), 614–626. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.1983
3.
BeininJ. (2012). The rise of Egypt’s workers. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
4.
BeissingerM. R. (2002). Nationalist mobilization and the collapse of the soviet state. Cambridge University Press.
5.
BrancatiD. (2016). Democracy protests: Origins, features, and significance. Cambridge University Press.
6.
BrewerM. (1999). The psychology of prejudice: Ingroup love or outgroup hate?Journal of Social Issues, 55(3), 429–444. https://doi.org/10.1111/0022-4537.00126
7.
CaiY. (2008). Power Structure and Regime Resilience: Contentious Politics in China. British Journal of Political Science, 38(3), 411–432. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123408000215
8.
ChauL. M. (2019). “Extremely rightful” resistance: Land appropriation and rural agitation in contemporary Vietnam. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 49(3), 343–364. https://doi.org/10.1080/00472336.2018.1517896
9.
ChenX. (2012). Social protest and contentious authoritarianism in China. Cambridge University Press.
10.
ChenowethE.LewisO. (2013). Unpacking nonviolent campaigns: Introducing the NAVCO 2.0 dataset. Journal of Peace Research, 50(3), 415–423. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343312471551
11.
DobsonW. J. (2012). The dictator’s learning curve: Inside the global battle for democracy. New York: Random House.
12.
EdwardsP.ArnonD. (2019). Violence on many sides: Framing effects on protest and support for repression. British Journal of Political Science, 51(2), 488–506. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0007123419000413
13.
EvansA. B.Jr. (2012). Protests and civil society in Russia: The struggle for the Khimki forest. Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 45(3–4), 233–242. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.postcomstud.2012.06.002
14.
FeinbergM.WillerR.KovacheffC. (2020). The activist’s dilemma: Extreme protest actions reduce popular support for social movements. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 119(5), 1086–1111. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000230
15.
FryeT.BorisovaE. (2019). Elections, protest, and trust in government: A natural experiment from Russia. The Journal of Politics, 81(3), 820–832. https://doi.org/10.1086/702944
16.
FuD. (2018). Mobilizing without the masses: Control and contention in China. Cambridge University Press.
17.
HarmsE. (2012). Beauty as control in the new Saigon: Eviction, new urban zones, and atomized dissent in a Southeast Asian city. American Ethnologist, 39(4), 735–750. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1425.2012.01392.x
ImaiK.KeeleL.TingleyD.YamamotoT. (2011). Unpacking the black box of causality: Learning about causal mechanisms from experimental and observational studies. American Political Science Review, 105(4), 765–789. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003055411000414
20.
InglehartR.WelzelC. (2005). Modernization, cultural change, and democracy: The human development sequence. Cambridge University Press.
21.
JasperJ. M. (2004). A strategic approach to collective action: Looking for agency in social-movement choices. Mobilization: An International Quarterly, 9(1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.17813/maiq.9.1.m112677546p63361
22.
KerkvlietB. J. T. (2014). Protests over land in Vietnam: Rightful resistance and more. Journal of Vietnamese Studies, 9(3), 19–54. https://doi.org/10.1525/vs.2014.9.3.19
23.
KerkvlietB. T. (2019). Speaking out in Vietnam: Public political criticism in a communist party-ruled nation. s.l.: Cornell University Press.
24.
KetchleyN.El-RayyesT. (2020). Unpopular protest: Mass mobilization and attitudes to democracy in post-mubarak Egypt. The Journal of Politics, 83(1), 291–305. https://doi.org/10.1086/709298
25.
KimS. (2000). The politics of democratization in Korea: The role of civil society. s.l.: University of Pittsburgh Pre.
LichbachM. I. (1987). Deterence or escalation? The puzzle of aggregate studies of repression and dissent. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 31(2), 266–297. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002787031002003
29.
LohmannS. (1994). The dynamics of informational cascades: The monday demonstrations in leipzig, east Germany, 1989–91 (pp. 42–101). World Politics.
30.
LorentzenP. L. (2013). Regularizing rioting: Permitting public protest in an authoritarian regime. Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 8(2), 127–158. https://doi.org/10.1561/100.00012051
31.
LupuY.WallaceG. (2019). Violence, nonviolence, and the effects of international human rights law. American Journal of Political Science, 63(2), 411–426. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12416
32.
MaozI.McCauleyC. (2008). Threat, dehumanization, and support for retaliatory aggressive policies in asymmetric conflict. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 52(1), 93–116. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002707308597
33.
MarkussenT.NgoQ.-T. (2019). Economic and non-economic returns to communist party membership in Vietnam. World Development, 122(October 2019), 370–384. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2019.06.002
34.
McDermottR. (2011). Internal and external validity. In DruckmanJ. N.GreenD. P.KuklinskiJ. H.LupiaA. (Eds.), Cambridge handbook of experimental political science (pp. 27–40). Cambridge University Press.
McLeodD. M.HertogJ. K. (1992). The manufacture of ‘public opinion’ by reporters: Informal cues for public perceptions of protest groups. Discourse & Society, 3(3), 259–275. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926592003003001
37.
MontgomeryJ.NyhanB.TorresM. (2018). How conditioning on post-treatment variables can ruin your experiment and what to do about it. American Journal of Political Science, 62(3), 760–775. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12357
38.
MorozovE. (2011). The dark side of interner freedom: The net delusion. Public Affairs.
39.
MuralidharanK.RomeroM.WuthrichK. (2019). Factorial designs, model selection, and (incorrect) inference in randomized experiments. Unpublished Manuscript.
40.
MyersD. J.CanigliaB. S. (2004). All the rioting that’s fit to print: Selection effects in national newspaper coverage of civil disorders, 1968–1969. American Sociological Review, 69(4), 519–543. https://doi.org/10.1177/000312240406900403
O’BrienK. J.LiL. (2006). Rightful resistance in rural China. Cambridge University Press.
46.
OngL. (2022). The street and the ballot box: Interactions between social movements and electoral politics in authoritarian contexts. Cambridge University Press.
47.
PanJ.SiegelA. A. (2020). How Saudi crackdowns fail to silence online dissent. American Political Science Review, 114(1), 109–125. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003055419000650
48.
ParkC. M. Y. (2019). “Our lands are our lives”: Gendered experiences of resistance to land grabbing in rural Cambodia. Feminist Economics, 25(4), 21–44. https://doi.org/10.1080/13545701.2018.1503417
49.
RobertsonG. (2010). The politics of protest in hybrid regimes: Managing dissent in post-communist Russia. Cambridge University Press.
50.
SchockK. (2005). Unarmed insurrections: People power movements in nondemocracies. University of Minnesota Press.
51.
ScottJ. C. (1990). Weapons of the weak: Everyday forms of peasant resistance. s.l.: Yale University Press.
52.
SteinhardtH. C.WuF. (2016). In the name of the public: Environmental protest and the changing landscape of popular contention in China. The China Journal, 75, 61–82. https://doi.org/10.1086/684010
53.
StenhouseN.HeinrichR. (2019). Breaking negative stereotypes of climate activists: A conjoint experiment. Science Communication, 41(3), 339–368. https://doi.org/10.1177/1075547019848766
54.
TertytchnayaK.LankinaT. (2020). Electoral protests and political attitudes under electoral authoritarianism. The Journal of Politics, 82(1), 285–299. https://doi.org/10.1086/705815
55.
ThurberC. (2019). Social ties and the Strategy of civil resistance. International Studies Quarterly, 63, 974–986. https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqz049
56.
TrejoG. (2012). Popular movements in autocracies: Religion, repression, and indigenous collective action in Mexico. Cambridge University Press.
57.
TruongM. (2023). Replication data for: The “ironic impact” of pro-democracy activists: How pro-democratic frames undermine support for local policy-based protests in authoritarian regimes. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/QN8SR4
58.
TruongM.SchulerP. (2021). The salience of the northern and southern identity in Vietnam. Asian Politics & Policy, 13(1), 18–36. https://doi.org/10.1111/aspp.12567
59.
TufekciZ. (2017). Twitter and tear gas: The fragility of networked protest. Yale University Press.
60.
WoutersR. (2013). From the street to the screen: Characteristics of protest events as determinants of television news coverage. Mobilization: An International Quarterly, 18(1), 83–105. https://doi.org/10.17813/maiq.18.1.y6067731j4844067
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
