Dear colleagues,

Thank you for taking the time to read this manuscript. I wrote it as a chapter to be included in an edited volume looking into how protest waves are realigning democratic politics around the world. The editors explicitly asked me to take up the issue of how these protests are influencing democratic reform. Consequently, I have spent a lot of time in the chapter defining what constitutes reform and discussing how to measure it. My goal in this endeavor has not been to formulate a new theory, but to answer what amounts to a more empirical question. I welcome any comments or suggestions that you may have.

José Alemán

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CHAPTER 9: PROTEST AND INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE, In Protest and Democracy, forthcoming, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2014.

Scholars interested in social movements have for decades debated democracy’s effect on

dissent – that is, whether democracy increases or dampens protest. Comparatively speaking, less

has been written about how political protest affects democracy (Giugni 1998, 1999). Once a

democratic regime is installed, the expectation is that violent challenges will decline while

nonviolent protest flourishes (Schatzman 2005).1 While social protest is linked with measures of

good governance (Welzel et al. 2005, 140), little is known about what precise dimensions of

democracy social protest affects. This chapter takes up the issue of how recent protest waves are

contributing to institutional reforms in democratic countries.

The need to study how protest affects democratic politics stems not only from our limited

knowledge in this area, but also from the reality that protest is a familiar manifestation of

political behavior in modern democratic settings (Dalton et al. 2010; Johnston 2011). Some time

ago, students of contentious politics began to speak of protest as so common and expected a form

of political participation in democracies that they coined the term “modular” to refer to its use by

multiple constituencies with diverse objectives (Tarrow 1998, 37-40). Little, however, is known

about the consequences of these forms of political engagement. While protestors may not have to

fear for their personal integrity (political imprisonment, torture, disappearance, or extra judicial

killing) in most democracies today, many new democracies do not live up to their full potential

in the areas of representativeness, accountability, equality and participation (Foweraker and

Krznaric 2000, 2003, 314-315; Freedom House 2012; Lijphart 1993, 149). Instead, some are far

from attaining the ideal of a political system that, in perfecting these attributes, creates the

conditions for broad and equal citizenship among its subjects (Tilly 2007).2

2

The current wave of democratization gives us then the opportunity to examine how

protest may be realigning democratic politics around the world. More specifically, the chapter

looks at how social protest contributes to institutional reforms in both new and established

democracies, leaving for another chapter the question of changes in government policies

stemming from protest activity. It is by now well established that social movements can bring

about three types of changes in their immediate and surrounding environment: elevating the

status of challengers vis-à-vis third parties and authorities; catalyzing changes in policy; and

bringing about transformations in society, the political system, and/or prevailing beliefs

(Kitschelt 1986; Giugni 1998, 1999). Social movement scholars have particularly focused on

policy changes as a measurable outcome of political activity since these changes can be easily

measured and explained (Giugni 1999, xxii). Our data and empirical approach do not allow us to

say much about changes in particular government policies. Instead, the analysis in this chapter

pays more attention to systemic changes, both because they matter in their own right, and

because they can also alter power relations between various social movements and their

surroundings.

The chapter evaluates changes in the protection of civil and workers’ rights, changes that

have made democratic regimes more inclusive (or participatory), and increases in the ability of

other branches of government to constrain chief executives. The most robust findings to emerge

in regards to the effect of social protest on these dimensions of democratic governance is that

anti-government demonstrations help constrain the power of the executive, particularly in more

developed democracies. The results also indicate that riots have adverse effects on human rights,

particularly in more developed countries. Their effect on human rights, however, is positive in

3

the presence of judicial independence. A few words are in order regarding the choice of these

changes as indicators of democratic reform.

Markers of democratic reform

The most expansive definitions of liberal democracy sketch a vision of society where

certain spheres of private activity are beyond the reach of the state. Individuals in these

democracies are not only granted equal treatment before the law, but are also protected from the

uneven and arbitrary exercise of state power and from abuse by third parties, majorities or

unelected veto groups. These conceptualizations of democracy are very difficult to operationalize

however, and may reflect unique Western values and experiences. Consequently, I do not make

an attempt to hold democracies to such high evaluative standards.

For the purposes of this chapter, I will take the existence of many imperfect democracies

– particularly in the developing world – as a reality and argue that, although a political regime

cannot be fully democratic unless its citizens enjoy a great deal of autonomy, legal protection,

collective representation, meaningful participation, and political accountability, changes that

result in a more accountable and participatory political system can be considered indicators of

democratic reform. I make the assumption that guaranteeing and protecting certain human rights

helps democracies become more equitable and representative, but the analysis I present is more

definitive with respect to changes that make democracies more participatory and accountable.3

Political scientists tend to focus on representation and participation, the two processes that serve

to minimally distinguish democratic regimes from their alternatives, but how governments create

political accountability is equally important. I have selected four measures of reform for

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consideration: the protection of civil and workers’ rights, higher electoral participation, and more

constrained executives.

Since Robert Dahl’s (1971) treatise on democracy, scholars have debated whether human

rights should be understood as part and parcel of the definition of political regimes, or as factors

that facilitate the functioning of these regimes, but are not constitutive of their basic properties.

While some call for separating “elements of repression that are necessary to the definition of

democracy” from “those that democracy is likely to influence once it has been established”

(Davenport 2007, 101), others do not regard countries that tolerate civil rights violations as

democratic. Absent these basic rights, the argument goes, any formal guarantees democracy

makes are rendered meaningless because citizens are unable to express their preferences and

have them weighted equally by their representatives or those who claim to compete for such a

role (Munck 2009, 126). Some go as far as to note that countries that are constitutional

democracies but violate civil rights be more appropriately considered as examples of an all-

together different regime category – competitive authoritarianism (Levitsky and Way 2002).

The question then is whether we should lump regime characteristics – the ability of

politicians to run for office and compete for citizen support in the presence of free and fair

elections and institutions that empower citizens – with the state’s ability to engage in coercive

activity that restricts or abrogates basic civil rights such as the freedoms of expression,

association and assembly (Davenport 2007, 101). In deciding between these two competing

positions, I note that democracy’s effect on human rights is conditional, that is, it depends on the

level of democracy a country has attained and the existence of an environment conducive to

domestic and international tranquility (Davenport 2007, 9). Only the most stable and

consolidated democracies continuously uphold the fundamental rights of all their citizens (Bueno

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de Mesquita et al. 2005). As such, the word “reform” to refer to the protection of these rights

may be somewhat of a misnomer because it implies that once a country has achieved the highest

possible human rights score, it cannot revert to a more repressive situation. However,

democracies cum regimes do not automatically protect civil rights; countries have to work

continuously to uphold these rights, a characteristic of all the reforms considered here.

Dahl (1971, 3) himself defined “polyarchy”4 as a political system that provides eight

institutional guarantees: the freedom to form and join organizations, freedom of expression, the

right to vote, the right to compete for political support; and the existence of broad eligibility for

public office, alternative sources of information, free and fair elections, and institutions for

linking government policies to votes and other expressions of citizens’ preferences. As we can

see, five of these guarantees invoke the words “freedom”, “free” or “right”.

Historically, freedom from state coercive behavior went hand in hand with increased

representation and participation (Diamond 1999; Zakaria 2004). In last few decades, however,

many new democracies demonstrate severe deficiencies in their ability to guarantee and protect

various human rights (e.g., Foweraker and Krznaric 2002). In some countries, the government is

technically chosen through popular contests, but civil liberties may not be fully guaranteed or

extensively protected (Freedom House, 2012). The phenomenon led some to refer to these

countries as “illiberal democracies” (Collier and Levitsky 1997, 440; Diamond 1999, 4).5 As a

result, after ascertaining that various rights and liberties are empirically related to many of the

indicators political scientists use to measure democracy, I assess the effects of protest on one

component of this rights measure, workers’ rights, as well as on the full measure of civil rights.

Collective labor rights are considered distinct from more basic human rights such as civil

rights and political freedoms (Mosley and Uno 2007, 924) even though democracies should

6

uniformly guarantee them. Of particular interest to us then is the extent to which some countries

also provide other employment-related protections to workers.6 This leads me to consider

workers rights as instances of reform and to examine them separately from other rights. Workers

rights refer to the freedom of association at the workplace and the right to bargain collectively

with employers, as well as “the prohibition on the use of any form of forced or compulsory labor;

a minimum age for the employment of children; and acceptable conditions of work with respect

to minimum wages, hours of work, and occupational safety and health” (Cingranelli and

Richards 2010).7

Dahl also claimed that there is a logical or definitional correspondence between the eight

institutional guarantees he enumerated and one or both of his political regime dimensions –

contestation and inclusiveness (Coppedge et al. 2008, 633). Contestation refers to the existence

of parties and politicians from which citizens can choose the one(s) most closely aligned with

their preferences. Inclusiveness refers to the ability of as many citizens as possible to participate

in the selection of their leaders and policies.

Dahl’s framework is known as minimalist, that is, as including as few elements as

necessary to make it possible to use analytically. In this conception, democracy is simply a set of

procedures that are certain (known to all) for arriving at outcomes that are uncertain and

collectively binding (Przeworski 1991). Dahl’s framework, however, begs asking to what extent

regime definitions should include characteristics of the political system that transcend the

process of forming a government. As Munck (2009, 124-5) and others have persuasively argued,

empowering the demos to have a periodic say in the making of state policies does not guarantee

these policies will be congruent with the wishes of a majority or even a subset of the people; the

government should also, thorough its actions, remain accountable to the people, particularly in

7

the middle of the electoral cycle when the people are not able to use the ballot box to pass

judgment on their elected representatives.8

The third set of reforms to be evaluated concerns then not human rights, but changes in

political institutions or their operation. Western democratic theory has a strong normative

preference for polities where the executive has parity with or is subordinate to a legislature,

ruling party, and/or other accountability groups.9 The presence of strong presidents that do not

seem very accountable to other branches of government, particularly in Latin America, has led

some to contrast these systems, which O’Donnell (1994) referred to as “delegative democracies”,

with truly representative ones.10 I see this phenomenon, however, as more symptomatic of

diminished accountability than attenuated representation.11 Consequently, I ask to what extent

checks and balances are empirically related to Dahl’s regime dimensions and examine the

possibility that political protest may push democracies in the direction of more political

accountability. I also examine the effect political protest is having on the level of inclusiveness

(or rather the quality of participation) in the world’s democracies. The next session describes the

measures of political protest used in the analysis and their expected effects.

Predictors of democratic reform

The analysis relies on yearly counts of three indicators of mass political protest – anti-

government demonstrations, general strikes, and riots, all derived from Banks (2007) Cross-

National Time-Series Data Archive (CNTSDA). Anti-government demonstrations are peaceful

rallies of at least 100 participants; general strikes are coordinated campaigns of disruption

involving at least 1,000 workers and more than one employer; and riots are violent

8

demonstrations by more than 100 citizens.12 For various reasons, these indicators are suitable for

the analysis I present.

First, previous research (Schatzman 2005, 298) has distinguished theoretically and

empirically between political challenges that aim to overthrow the ruling regime, and those that

attempt “to affect policy and leadership, usually through nonviolent means.” The two types of

challenge are usually referred to as “rebellion” and “protest”, with anti-government

demonstrations, general strikes, and riots constituting the protest dimension. Secondly, not only

is the CNTSDA one of the most widely used sources of political data; 13 these three indicators are

also common in studies of social protest, regime change, and political conflict (e.g., Schatzman

2005).

Thirdly, in a world where “the effects of social movements are often indirect, unintended,

and sometimes even in contradiction to their goals” (Giugni 1998, 386), the indicators are

proximate enough to the outcomes we want to assess – democratic reforms, to enable us to draw

valid causal inferences. Demonstrations and general strikes, for example, refer to actions that

target the national/central government explicitly, but exclude rallies whose primary targets are

third parties. At the same time, they are not too proximate to render the analysis tautological. The

measures, that is, do not reduce dissidents’ goals to their participation in one of these events, as

in the case of other contentious events coded by Banks such as guerrilla warfare and revolutions,

allowing us to move analytically from a focus on immediate outcomes to the medium- and long-

term consequences of social movement behavior (Giugni 1998).

Finally, the fact that these events are high profile, and that consistency in coding has

been maintained across time and space, means that bias resulting from underreporting of events

not deemed newsworthy by the media is not likely to be very large. Since all the countries

9

analyzed are democracies, the reported event counts should also be fairly accurate. Nevertheless,

this does not mean media reports are completely free of bias and as such I take certain

precautions (which I detail in the empirical section) to ensure that the results are robust to these

potential problems.

Although the analysis stops short of suggesting possible processes or mechanisms that

link political protest to reform14, it does take advantage of historically contingent political

opportunity structures that may condition the effects of protest on society (Giugni 1998, xxi).

Defined as “consistent-but not necessarily formal or permanent dimensions of the political

environment that provide incentives for people to undertake collective action by affecting their

expectations for success or failure” (Tarrow, 1994, 85), the concept of political opportunities is

designed to capture variables that mediate the relationship between direct action on the one hand

and the political system, economy, or society on the other (Koopmans 1999, 105). The chapter

evaluates three variables that may condition the effects of protest on institutional reform: the

level of development, the partisan alignment across and within different branches of government,

and judicial independence. A few paragraphs are in order about the choice of each of these

variables.

Students of contentious politics have identified the level of development as a crucial

mediator of political protest (Dalton et al. 2010). Countries that are more developed have

populations that are more urbanized, educated and self-expressive, all variables that have been

found to lead to a greater incidence of mass protests. Large urban concentrations, for example,

make dissidents easier to recruit and organize, thereby facilitating the formation of opposition

movements (Tilly 1978, 82). Citizens of more developed and urbanized environments are in turn

more educated and autonomous. In so doing, they not only possess the capacity to engage in

10

more frequent and visible forms of collective action, but also the identities that place a premium

on presenting demands to the government and third parties for consideration.

It is also widely accepted that the most democratic countries are the most economically

developed (Aleman and Yang 2011), although the effect of development on democracy appears

to vary by dimension of democracy examined and region of world (Foweraker and Landmand

2004). The measure of development used, derived from the World Development Indicators, is

per capita GDP in current international dollars, measured at purchasing power parity (PPP).15

A second political opportunity structure considered here is the partisan alignment within

and across different branches of government (policy disagreement). Dissidents may find it

easier/more difficult to mobilize when their ideological allies/opponents hold positions in the

various branches of government. Their success may also depend critically on how cohesive

ideologically and institutionally the government is (Johnston 2011, 39-40). The measure of

cohesion I use, the Political Constraints (POLCON) index, is based on a spatial model of

congruence in party control within and across branches of government (Henisz and Zelner 2010).

The index, which ranges from 0 to 1 (0 being the most cohesive, 1 the least), can be used to

indicate how far particular branches of government deviate from an existing policy regime.16

The third and final political opportunity structure I examine is the presence of an

independent judiciary, which some see as central to the concept of the rule of law (Carothers,

2006). An independent judiciary is linked to the existence of liberal democracy because it is

alleged to protect not only individuals from the uneven and arbitrary exercise of state power, but

also minorities from the whims of majorities or unelected veto groups such as the military and

big business. Yet, as Helmke and Rosenbluth (2009) have argued, it is precisely in those

countries where the rule of law and an independent judiciary seem to be most needed where they

11

are harder to find. For data on this institution I rely on Cingranelli and Richards (2010), who

provide a measure of judicial independence that seems to be inspired by de jure considerations of

what a fully independent judiciary would look like while distinguishing between de facto partial

and no judicial independence (Ríos-Figueroa and Staton 2011, 10).

Although an independent judiciary seems to be part of the definition of a constrained

executive (Marshall et al. 2011, 24), the pairwise correlation between these two variables for the

sample of countries I analyze is actually not large (r=0.45; p<0.000). As Helmke and Rosenbluth

(2009, 358) make clear, many poor and newer democracies are characterized by a great deal of

judicial instability even after consolidating their democratic regimes along other dimensions. The

notion of judicial independence also appears to be logically connected to the fragmentation of

power expected of highly competitive political systems and its attendant manifestation, policy

disagreement among and within the different branches of government. While the correlation

between judicial independence and the policy disagreement indicator in the sample analyzed is

statistically significant, it is not very high (r=0.25; p<0.000). Consequently, I make use of both

as mediators of the effect of political protest on institutional reforms. Before proceeding with a

discussion of the estimation strategy and results, I provide a brief description of the control

variables used in the regression models.

Contestation is included as a control in all models except in the model for executive

constraints (which, as a factor analysis indicates, is a component of contestation). A great deal of

variation in political regimes is due to this dimension (Coppedge 2012). Consequently,

contestation is expected to have a positive association with worker’s rights, human rights, and

inclusiveness.

12

Durability controls for the possibility that older democracies score higher in all empirical

measures of reform. Specifically, democratic political regimes engage in fewer violations of

physical integrity rights, particularly the longer a country manages to avoid these violations

(Carey 2008). Durability is a measure of the length of time since the last regime transition

derived from the Polity IV project (Marshall et al. 2011).

Ethnic fractionalization has long been seen as detrimental to democracy. Societal

pluralism can cause different ethnic groups to struggle for control of the state (Alesina et al.

2003, 173), which can result in lower inclusiveness, less constrained executives, and less respect

for human rights. The measure used is an index based on ethno-politically relevant groups from

the Ethnic Power Relations dataset (Weidmann et al. 2009).

Market inequality. Inequality in pre-tax, pre-transfer income has long been considered

detrimental to democratic stability (Houle 2009). Great gaps in the income different classes

receive may create grievances that make the wealthy less prone to tolerate the less well-off in the

political arena. As a result, market inequality could make democratic reforms more difficult to

propose and implement. The measure of inequality used is the pre-tax, pre-transfer Gini

coefficient from the Standardized World Income Inequality Database (Solt 2012).

Oil Rents. Countries that depend on natural resource wealth have long been considered

inauspicious for democratic rule (Ross 2012). The unusually large rents oil generates reduce the

need to tax the population, thereby depriving it of collective representation. Oil rents should also

reduce accountability since the recipients of these rents tend to be state owned enterprises (with

the exception of oil companies in the United States, which are in private hands). I use an

indicator of oil rents from the World Development Indicators database that measures the

13

difference between the value of crude oil production at world prices and total costs of production

(as a percentage of GDP).

Globalization. There is no scholarly consensus on the effect of trade and capital flows on

democracy (Coppedge 2012, 301-2). More openness to trade is known to improve labor

conditions in particular (Flanagan 2006), but less is known about its effects on other aspects of

democratic governance. I use a measure of economic globalization developed by Axel Dreher

(2006) that weighs financial and trade flows as a percentage of GDP.17

The following section introduces the methodology used.

Empirical approach

The approach I follow is to first derive a series of indicators of political regimes that can

be used as a baseline in the subsequent analysis of democratic reform. Following Dahl (1971), I

conceive of regimes as exhibiting a certain number of dimensions that are empirically verifiable

and that make some countries minimally democratic. Some of these dimensions can be used

subsequently to explain particular reforms if we suspect that there is a relationship between the

two. Alternatively, individual components of these dimensions can be identified as indicators of

particular reforms and evaluated further. As the reader can surmise, my approach is heavily

inductive as I seek to build on the theoretical and empirical work of scholars that have thought

about how best to conceptualize and measure political regimes.

In a widely cited study, Coppedge et al. (2008) confirmed the existence of Dahl’s (1971)

two regime dimensions – contestation and inclusiveness – for the post World War II period.

Using exploratory factor analysis, the authors examined the most commonly used indicators of

political regimes and found that for most years, they indeed clustered in two clearly distinct yet

14

correlated empirical dimensions which they identified as “contestation” and “inclusiveness”. The

most recent time period they examine, 1981-2000, overlaps to some extent with the time period

in my analysis (1994-2007), but one of the variables they factor-analyzed, Bollen’s extent of the

suffrage indexing the percentage of the population twenty years or older that has the right to vote

in national elections, did not extend past the year 2000. Nevertheless, I created a similar measure

by calculating the voting age population as a percentage of the overall population, and was

indeed able to reproduce the results in Coppedge et al. (2008) using all fourteen variables they

included.18 Similar to Coppedge et al. (2008), who were able to explain 71% of the variance in

their data, the overall variance explained by my analysis was 69%.

I then made a few adjustments to their analysis. First, I dropped one of the variables they

used, the ordinal indicator of civil liberties from Freedom House, and added Freedom’s House’s

indicator of freedom of the press. My rationale for doing this is that the civil liberties measure is

a comprehensive inventory not only of basic freedoms such as the freedoms of expression,

association, and assembly, but also of institutions designed to uphold these freedoms such as an

independent judiciary and the rule of law. Freedom House also includes in this measure property

and economic rights that are best examined as outcomes rather than included de jure in a regime

definition. The adjustments, however, should not change the results too much since the civil

liberties indicator includes information on freedom of expression, association, and assembly that

is already coded separately.19

Next, I added to this list a number of variables tapping into other rights and freedoms

that, if upheld and protected, should render democracies more representative, participatory,

accountable, and egalitarian. These include the rights to physical integrity aggregated as an

index, worker’s rights, the right to freedom of religious worship, women’s social rights, and

15

women’s economic rights, all derived from the CIRI Human Rights Data Project (Cingranelli and

Richards 2010). Although these rights are all enumerated in the Freedom House ordinal measure

of civil liberties, it is important to analyze them separately since Dahl himself did not draw links

between particular rights and his two regime dimensions. The overall variance explained was

still approximately 68%. Table 1 presents the rotated factor loadings and unique variances for the

nineteen variables examined.

TABLE 1 HERE

As Table 1 indicates, three factors – which I have named “Human rights”,

“Contestation”, and “Inclusiveness”, are clearly recognizable in the data. The factors can be

easily interpreted since they delineate readily noticeable patterns among the variables. The first

factor, for example, groups most of the civil and political rights that serve to distinguish

democracies from autocracies such as the freedoms of speech, association, and electoral self-

determination, as well as the rights to physical integrity, workers’ rights, and freedom of

religion. The factor loadings imply that it is impossible for governments to engage in extensive

civil rights violations without also abrogating some political rights. The high loadings of freedom

of the press and the competitiveness of participation on this factor indicate that these are both

features of the political system that help guarantee and uphold these rights.20

Component number 2, which I have labeled “Contestation”, correlates highly with

features of the political system that help make political participation more competitive such as

having the smaller parties capture a greater share of the votes cast in parliamentary or

presidential elections (witness the high loading of competition on this factor), or an executive

that is subordinate to or faces parity with other branches of government (executive constraints).

16

The variables indexing openness and competitiveness of executive recruitment also load highly

on this factor.21

Finally, the third factor groups the variables suffrage, women’s political rights,

participation, women’s economic rights, and women’s social rights. The latter two are the only

rights not significantly loading in the “Human rights” dimension and it is noticeable in this

regard that they correlate strongly with other measures of participation. We live in times when

suffrage restrictions based on gender, race, educational or other ascriptive qualifications have

become increasingly rare. As a result, my interpretation of these patterns is that by granting

women economic, social and political rights, countries elevate their status vis-à-vis that of men

and hence ensure greater and perhaps qualitatively more meaningful political participation.

The factors also correlate moderately with one another, their pairwise correlations

ranging from 0.42 in the case of factors 1 and 2, to 0.51 in the case of factors 1 and 3.

Furthermore, with the exception of women’s political rights and workers’ rights, which have

relatively high uniqueness scores, all other variables seem very relevant to the analysis. Worker’s

rights will of course merit its own analysis apart from other human rights, the latter being

defined empirically by the factor scores from the first dimension.

This initial phase of the analysis helps me then generate scores for the two regime

dimensions previously discussed, contestation and inclusiveness, and an additional dimension –

human rights. The factor analyses allow me thus to verify the validity of selecting two individual

components from these factors – workers’ rights and executive constraints – for more in-depth

analysis. The scores from the exploratory factor analysis can also be used as independent

variables in the subsequent stage of the analysis.

17

Workers’ rights is originally coded as an ordinal variable with three categories – “[a]

score of 0 indicates that workers’ rights were severely restricted; a score of 1 indicates that

workers’ rights were somewhat restricted; and a score of 2 indicates that workers’ rights were

fully protected during the year in question” (Cingranelli and Richards 2010). “Executive

constraints” is originally a seven-point categorical variable, but in our analysis only categories 5,

6, and 7 are present. Category 5 is reserved for countries in which “the executive has more

effective authority than any accountability group but is subject to substantial constraints by

them” (Marshall et al. 2011, 25); level 6 is an intermediate category, and 7 is reserved for

countries in which there is executive parity or subordination to other groups or branches of

government. Since these categories are not numerous enough to approximate a continuous

variable but the distances separating them are not precisely known, I created two new

dichotomous variables indicating full protection of workers’ rights (versus the presence of some

restrictions), and full constraints on the executive (versus the presence of some executive

prerogatives) respectively.

Estimation and Results

In determining the population of countries suitable for the analysis, I decided to employ a

qualitative judgment of what countries would at least qualify as minimally or procedurally

democratic. According to the Polity IV codebook, 5 is the first value at which there are

substantial limitations on executive power. To be a democracy then, a country had to have a

value of 1 in Cheibub’s dichotomous coding of democratic regimes and a value of 5 or more in

Polity’s measure of executive constraints (“xconst”). Finally, I also excluded those observations

where authority characteristics are not stable due to civil war, foreign occupation, or a protracted

18

regime transition. If a Polity score of 6 or greater, a commonly used metric, is used instead to

delineate the relevant population, the sample only increases by 4 observations, providing

confidence in the procedure used to select the population. Table 2 presents a list of countries

included in the analysis.

TABLE 2 HERE

Turning now to the empirical analysis, the regression equations estimated are of two

kinds: random effects logit models for the two dichotomous variables – workers’ rights and

executive constraints – and OLS with random effects for human rights and inclusiveness. The

choice of logit in the case of workers’ rights and executive constraints is dictated by the nature of

these dependent variables.22

For the OLS models, coefficients have been standardized so as to be able to compare

their magnitudes directly, reflecting the number of standard deviations a dependent variable will

change, per standard deviation increase (decrease) in the predictor variables. Since the models

include many stock variables, I expect most of the variation they explain to be cross-sectional

rather than time-series.

OLS models estimated on panel data are prone to three familiar threats to valid causal

inference: serial correlation, contemporaneous correlation, and heteroskedasticity. I use a robust

cluster estimator for the covariance matrix to correct standard errors in the presence of any

pattern of heteroskedasticity and correlation of the errors within units. I also add year fixed

effects to control for any common shocks countries may experience that would cause

contemporaneous correlation in the errors. As a check on the robustness of the results, I also

estimate mixed effects logit and OLS models that more appropriately control for another source

19

of heterogeneity in the data: country-specific, time-invariant unobserved factors. These factors

are usually modeled using varying intercept parameters for countries.

Multiple intercepts are usually interpreted as offsets from a dropped group intercept. A

more efficient method, however, is to model these intercepts directly by placing a common

distribution around them. By employing varying intercepts for countries, variation in country

effects is estimated conditional on the data and parameters of the model. This partial pooling is

particularly desirable for unbalanced panels since it allows more accurate estimates of country

effects. Partial pooling also alleviates the problem of slow-moving or completely time-invariant

predictors that are correlated with the country effects (Shor et al., 2007:168).

Finally, the models control for endogeneity between social protest and worker’s rights

on the one hand, and social protest and executive constraints on the other. An argument could be

made that protests, rather than the cause of more or less protection for workers and more or less

constrained executives, could be a response to a lack of rights or heavy-handed executives.

Although this endogeneity cannot be completely removed, I address the problem by lagging anti-

government demonstrations, general strikes, and riots by one year in these two models. I also lag

the variables policy disagreement and judicial independence in the model for executive

constraints, removing their interactions with demonstrations, strikes, and riots. This also

removes from the analysis the possibility that, in response to a heavy-handed executive, the

judiciary acts less independently or citizens vote in a divided government. Table 3 presents the

results of the four regression models estimated.23

TABLE 3 HERE

20

As the R^2s in Table 3 indicate, the models for human rights and inclusiveness explain

approximately two-thirds of the variance in the data. Twice as much of that variation is cross-

sectional than time-series in the first model, thrice as much in the second. The results for the

most part support the hypothesized relationships, particularly for the stock variables expected to

control for the historical tendency of certain countries to be more democratic than others. The

one major exception is the negative and very significant relationship between contestation and

all three dependent variables it helps predict. A lowess smoother plot (not shown) indicates that

contestation is for the most part positively associated with inclusiveness; not so, however, for the

relationship between contestation and human rights. This, moreover, is not simply an artifact of

pooling established and new democracies, as the relationship holds among established

democracies as well (driven in the latter case by countries such as Colombia, Venezuela, India,

and Israel). This finding merits further investigation.

Since the analysis includes both stock and flow variables for seventy-eight countries,

we would expect the results to be weighed against significant effects of protest activity on

democratic reforms, particularly since the protest event variables have been interacted with

features of the political opportunity structure. When either a continuous or dichotomous variable

is interacted with another continuous or dichotomous variable, the coefficient on the individual

variables return their effect when the other variable is 0. This combination of values is

technically implausible in the case of GDP per capita since this variable by definition cannot

take the value of 0. Consequently, we can go ahead and focus on statistically significant findings

(for interactions with GDP per capita) even in the absence of statistical significance for the

individual coefficients. The results indicate that higher levels of development help democracies

become less repressive in the presence of demonstrations and more inclusive in the presence of

21

strikes, but more repressive in the presence of riots. Riots, however, increase respect for human

rights in the presence of judicial independence. Riots in the previous year and governments that

are more ideologically fragmented are also associated with less constrained executives in the

following year. An independent judiciary in the previous year, however, helps safeguard

executive parity in the current year.

I next performed robustness checks using mixed effects models (not reported) for all

dependent variables except executive constraints.24 All results are robust to country specific

unobserved factors except the finding that general strikes increase the level of inclusiveness in

more developed countries, which loses its significance.

Conclusion

This chapter has systematically examined the contribution of social protest to

democratic reforms around the world. The effect of protest on the democracy can be small and

inconsistent, as the results make clear. As expected, other variables seem more important to the

quality of democracy around the world. Nevertheless, in at least two areas, social protest is

having profound effects in the quality of democracy: respect for human rights, and executive

constraints. Peaceful protests and general strikes are prompting countries to increase respect for

human rights and executives to behave less heavy-handedly, particularly in the more developed

democracies. Not surprisingly, riots can sometimes diminish the quality of democratic

governance by prompting governments to engage in human rights violations or executives to

behave more heavy-handedly. The upside is that judicial independence can significantly prevent

governments from repressing riots.

22

With respect to the political opportunity variables that can be expected to condition the

effect of social protest on democracy, the results are also in line with expectations and augur well

for the future of democratic governance. By the standards laid out in this chapter, countries

become more democratic, that is, they guarantee and protect human rights more and

circumscribe the power and prerogatives of the executive more, the more developed their

economies and the more independent their judiciaries. Somewhat surprisingly, workers rights

seem to be more immune to these effects, tending to increase in response to a divided

government and the absence of large income inequalities, oil rents, and ethnic fractionalization.

It would have been encouraging to find evidence of social protest leading to more respect for

worker’s rights and more inclusiveness, which was not the case. Nevertheless, the results

presented in this chapter demonstrate that social protest is helping realign democratic politics

around the world. They also call for more attention to the precise mechanisms linking social

protest to more respect for human rights and more constrained executives.

23

Table 1. Dimensions of Political Regimes, 1994-2007

VariableComponent

1Component2 Component3 Uniqueness

SourceFreedom of the press 0.6661 0.2612 0.1546 0.176 Freedom HousePolitical rights -0.5831 -0.4895 -0.0714 0.1012 Freedom HouseCompetitiveness of participation 0.5478 0.2604 0.1796 0.3367 Polity IVExecutive constraints 0.4201 0.6621 0.0202 0.1305 Polity IVRegime -0.2299 -0.5878 -0.2108 0.2783 CheibubFreedom of speech 0.6955 0.1939 -0.0005 0.3662 CIRI Human RightsCompetition 0.4126 0.5496 0.0421 0.2966 VanhanenFreedom of association 0.7428 0.2105 -0.0904 0.3507 CIRI Human RightsFreedom of electoral self-determination 0.6324 0.3936 -0.0556 0.2897 CIRI Human RightsCompetitiveness of executive recruitment 0.23 0.8339 -0.0121 0.1031 Polity IVSuffrage -0.1137 0.3006 0.7363 0.2595 IDEAWomen's political rights 0.1782 -0.1034 0.5346 0.6427 CIRI Human RightsParticipation -0.1604 0.2379 0.7755 0.3006 VanhanenOpenness of executive recruitment -0.2496 0.8678 0.0629 0.3266 Polity IVPhysical integrity rights index 0.5583 -0.165 0.3834 0.434 CIRI Human RightsWorkers' rights 0.5399 -0.1019 0.2937 0.5255 CIRI Human RightsFreedom of religion 0.8677 -0.0783 -0.2403 0.4336 CIRI Human RightsWomen's economic rights 0.0382 -0.0605 0.7999 0.3717 CIRI Human RightsWomen's social rights 0.0967 -0.0137 0.8099 0.2667 CIRI Human RightsVariance explained (%) 53 8.46 7Notes: Scores calculated using data for all countries regardless of their political regime (autocracy or democracy). High loadings, indicative of belonging to a factor, are in bold. Uniqueness is the variance that is not shared with other variables, that is, an indicator of how relevant the variable is to the factor model (the more unique, the less relevant).

24

Table 2. Countries included in the analysis

AlbaniaArgentinaArmeniaAustraliaAustriaBangladeshBelgiumBeninBoliviaBrazilBulgariaCanadaChileColombiaCosta RicaCroatiaCzech RepublicDenmarkDominican RepublicEcuadorEl SalvadorEstoniaFinlandFranceGeorgiaGermanyGermany WestGhanaGreeceGuatemalaHondurasHungaryIndiaIndonesiaIrelandIsraelItalyJamaicaJapanKenya

Korea SouthKyrgyzstanLatviaLithuaniaMacedoniaMexicoMoldovaMongoliaNepalNetherlandsNew ZealandNicaraguaNigeriaNorwayPakistanPanamaPapua New GuineaParaguayPeruPhilippinesPolandPortugalRomaniaSenegalSlovakiaSloveniaSpainSri LankaSwedenSwitzerlandThailandTrinidad and TobagoTurkeyUkraineUnited KingdomUnited StatesUruguayVenezuela

25

Table 3. Determinants of Political Reforms, 1994-2007.

Independent variable Workers’ Rights

Human Rights

Executive Constraints

Inclusiveness

Contestation -9.354*** -0.892*** -0.610***(1.457) (0.081) (0.095)

Durability 0.019 0.079* -0.046* 0.158***(0.015) (0.041) (0.027) (0.055)

Fractionalization -3.691* -0.136** 0.265 -0.305***(1.947) (0.064) (4.392) (0.088)

GDP per capita 0.000 0.152*** 0.001*** 0.294***(0.000) (0.048) (0.000) (0.073)

Market inequality -0.118*** 0.023 -0.054 -0.143***(0.042) (0.025) (0.050) (0.036)

Oil rents -0.134** -0.172** -0.285*** -0.076(0.060) (0.070) (0.084) (0.072)

Globalization 0.024 0.186*** 0.049* 0.165***(0.018) (0.045) (0.028) (0.050)

Demonstrations -0.015 0.537 0.521* -0.444(0.619) (0.396) (0.313) (0.451)

General strikes 0.252 0.127 0.660 0.175(1.418) (0.298) (0.527) (0.299)

Riots 1.821 -1.371** 0.140 -0.468(1.271) (0.631) (0.322) (0.457)

GDP*demonstrations -0.000 0.047*** -0.000* 0.001(0.000) (0.018) (0.000) (0.025)

GDP*strikes 0.000 -0.002 -0.000 0.020*(0.000) (0.014) (0.000) (0.010)

GDP*riots -0.000 -0.044* -0.000 0.010(0.000) (0.023) (0.000) (0.022)

Policy disagreement 3.842** 0.002 -0.024(1.787) (0.032) (0.036)

Disagreement*demonstrations

0.711 -0.020 -0.034

(1.191) (0.025) (0.024)Disagreement*strikes -2.886 -0.020 -0.008

(3.071) (0.020) (0.017)Disagreement*riots -7.875** 0.048* 0.002

(3.134) (0.027) (0.027)Judicial independence 2.088*** 28.193*** 12.354*

(0.633) (4.698) (6.620)Independence*demonstrations

-0.170 -4.554 3.840

(0.347) (3.368) (3.809)Independence*strikes 0.217 -0.929 -1.500

(0.884) (2.462) (2.469)

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Independence*riots 1.012 11.092** 4.073(0.687) (5.310) (3.785)

Policy disagreement t−1 -3.981**(1.570)

Judicialindependencet−1 1.068**(0.453)

Demonstrationst−1 0.250 0.099(0.170) (0.131)

General strikest−1 -0.098 0.335(0.358) (0.264)

Riotst−1 -0.249 -0.386**(0.205) (0.160)

Economic growtht−1 -0.028(0.047)

R2 0.68 0.62Number of countries 76 76 78 76Number of observations: 731 731 1411 731

Notes: Coefficients reported in columns 1 and 3; standardized coefficients in columns 2 and 4. Standard errors in parenthesis in columns 1 and 3; robust cluster standard errors in columns 2 and 4. Models in columns 2 and 4 also include year fixed effects (not reported). All models include a constant (not reported).

27

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1 The late twentieth- and early twenty-first century brought democracy to a greater number of countries than ever before (Doorenspleet 2005). Since 1974, political protest has played a role in producing democratic transitions. Witness, for example, the color revolutions in the post-communist world (Diamond 2008, 191) and the Arab Spring that began in North Africa in 2011 and is still being felt throughout the Middle East. 2 For a regime to be truly democratic, citizens also have to be protected from arbitrary state action and engage in binding consultation on state policies and personnel. 3 It should be clear by now that I am using the terms ‘equitable’ and ‘emancipative’ interchangeably.4 Dahl used the term polyarchy – rule by the many – as a synonym for democracy, which he regarded as an ideal political regime. Democracies, Dahl implied, must “have substance, quality, and meaning. They must, over time, hear people’s voices, engage their participation, tolerate their protests, protect their freedoms, and respond to their needs” (Diamond 2008, 292). 5 The distinction between illiberal and liberal democracies originated from the observation that during the latter part of the Third Wave, “human rights violations have become widespread in countries that are formally democratic” (Diamond 1999, 34). Countries where competition to determine who rules does not ensure outcomes such as “high levels of freedom, equality, transparency, [and] social justice” (Diamond 2008, 23) are also referred to as formal or electoral democracies (Inglehart and Welzel 2005; Munck 2009). Some refer to democracies that ensure these outcomes as ‘liberal democracies’ (Freedom House 2012). Others go still further when they claim that corruption can prevent a government from being institutionally effective and hence accountable to the people (Inglehart and Welzel 2005, 154). They thus speak of ‘effective democracy’ as a combination of liberal democracy and an environment free of corruption. For a full definition of the term ‘electoral democracy’ and a comparison with ‘liberal democracy’, see the methodological appendix in Freedom House’s “Freedom in the World 2012” report, available at http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world-2012/methodology.6 Surprisingly, out of the 731 country-year observations in my dataset, 83 belong to countries that do not provide the most minimal protection for workers’ rights according to Cingranelli and Richards’ (2010) coding.7 The complete definition of this and other human rights examined here can be found at http://ciri.binghamton.edu/documentation/ciri_variables_short_descriptions.pdf. 8 Dahl’s thinking has changed in this respect over the years. In Polyarchy, he seemed to privilege accountability over representation when he stipulated that “government policies depend on votes and other expressions of preference”. In Democracy and Its Critics, the requirement changed to the view that control over government decisions about policy be vested constitutionally in elected officials (Dahl 1989, 221). 9 This is evident in how one of the most popular indicators of political regimes, the Polity IV project, codes countries on one of their authority characteristics, executive constraints. See Polity IV Project: Political Regimes Characteristics and Transitions, 1800-2010 Dataset Users’ Manual, page 25, available at http://www.systemicpeace.org/inscr/p4manualv2010.pdf.10 Other terms used to describe this phenomenon are hyper-presidentialism and “caesarism” (Casper 2007).11 See Mackin (2008, 14), for example, for a similar interpretation.12 For precise definitions of these variables, see http://dss.princeton.edu/access_data/codebooks/banks.pdf. 13 http://www.databanksinternational.com/14 One possible mechanism through which a social movement organization may bring about change is through its incorporation in the policymaking apparatus of the state. See Giugni et al. 1998 on this point.15 http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators.16 More precisely, the index is calculated using the number of independent branches of government with veto power over policy change combined with measures of heterogeneity in party composition within the legislative and executive branches and congruence in party control across branches. A veto player is an individual, party, or political institution that can stop a change in policy from the status quo. See Henisz and Zelner (2010) for a more in depth discussion of this index. One of these veto players, the legislature, has been identified as a crucial explanator of cross-national variation in protest across Western European democracies (Nam 2007). According to Kitschelt (1986: 63), “the capacity of legislatures to develop and control policies independently of the executive” is a critical measure of its power. Since a weak legislature is unable to act as in intermediary between citizens and the government, dissidents in countries with a weak legislature cannot easily expect access to the government for the purposes of making their demands. Therefore, they are more inclined to protest than citizens in countries with a strong legislature. Although sympathetic to this view, I also note that the power of legislatures vis-à-vis executives and their role in motivating social protests cannot be divorced from the larger question of the effect of executive constraints on the quality of democracy. Furthermore, since executive constraints are correlated with policy alignment between and within partisan and constitutional veto players, I opt to use the latter to try to explain variation in the former.17 http://globalization.kof.ethz.ch/18 My data on voting age populations comes from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA 2012). http://www.idea.int/vt/. In the interest of saving space, I do not include definitions of the other thirteen variables. For descriptions of the remaining variables, see Coppedge et al. (2008).19 See Cingranelli and Richards’ (2010) Human Rights Data Project. 20 The political rights index is negatively signed because higher values imply fewer rights. 21 Cheibub’s categorical regime variable is negatively signed because higher values imply more autocratic, specifically less constrained, political regimes.

22 For a one-unit increase in contestation, for example, the expected change in log odds of workers’ rights is -9.35.23 Because O’Donnell (1994) attributes the phenomenon of delegative democracy in part to the severity of the socioeconomic problems that newly installed democratic governments have inherited, I also control for lagged economic growth in the model for executive constraints. 24 It was not possible to achieve convergence for this model.