Why Bother? S

Cambridge University Press 978-1-108-47522-8 — Why Bother? S. Erdem Aytaç , Susan C. Stokes Frontmatter More Information

Why Bother?

Why do vote-suppression efforts sometimes fail? Why does police repression of demonstrators sometimes turn localized protests into massive, national movements? How do politicians and activists manip- ulate people’s emotions to get them involved? The authors of Why Bother? offer a new theory of why people take part in collective action in politics and test it in the contexts of voting and protesting. They develop the idea that just as there are costs of participation in politics, there are also costs of abstention – intrinsic and psychological but no less real for that. That abstention can be psychically costly helps explain real-world patterns that are anomalies for existing theories, such as that sometimes increases in costs of participation are followed by more participation, not less. The book draws on a wealth of survey data, interviews, and experimental results from a range of countries, including the United States, Britain, Brazil, Sweden, and Turkey.

S. Erdem Aytaç is an assistant professor in the Department of Interna- tional Relations at Koç University in Istanbul, Turkey. He received his Ph.D. in political science from Yale University in 2014. Aytaç’s research interests lie in political behavior with a focus on democratic account- ability and political participation. His previous work has appeared in the Journal of Politics, Comparative Political Behavior, British Jour- nal of Political Science, Political Behavior, and the Journal of Conﬂict Resolution, among other journals. He is the recipient of the 2016 Young Scientist Award of Science Academy (Turkey) and the 2018 Sakıp Sabancı International Research Award. Susan C. Stokes is the Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Ser- vice Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and past chair of the Yale Political Science Department. She is the author of Mandates and Democracy: Neoliberalism by Surprise in Latin America (Cam- bridge) and co-author of Brokers, Voters, and Clientelism: The Puzzle of Distributive Politics (Cambridge).

Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics

General Editors

Kathleen Thelen Massachusetts Institute of Technology Erik Wibbels Duke University

Associate Editors

Catherine Boone London School of Economics Thad Dunning University of California, Berkeley Anna Grzymala-Busse Stanford University Torben Iversen Harvard University Stathis Kalyvas Yale University Margaret Levi Stanford University Helen Milner Princeton University Frances Rosenbluth Yale University Susan Stokes University of Chicago Tariq Thachil Vanderbilt University Series Founder

Peter Lange Duke University Other Books in the Series

Christopher Adolph, Bankers, Bureaucrats, and Central Bank Politics: The Myth of Neutrality Michael Albertus, Autocracy and Redistribution: The Politics of Land Reform Santiago Anria, When Movements Become Parties: The Bolivian MAS in Comparative Perspective BenW.Ansell,From the Ballot to the Blackboard: The Redistributive Political Economy of Education Ben W. Ansell, David J. Samuels, Inequality and Democratization: An Elite-Competition Approach Leonardo R. Arriola, Multi-Ethnic Coalitions in Africa: Business Financing of Opposition Election Campaigns David Austen-Smith, Jeffry A. Frieden, Miriam A. Golden, Karl Ove Moene, and Adam Przeworski, eds., Selected Works of Michael Wallerstein: The Political Economy of Inequality, Unions, and Social Democracy Andy Baker, The Market and the Masses in Latin America: Policy Reform and Consumption in Liberalizing Economies

Continued after the index

Why Bother? Rethinking Participation in Elections and Protests

S. ERDEM AYTAÇ Koç University

SUSAN C. STOKES University of Chicago

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www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108475228 DOI: 10.1017/9781108690416 c S. Erdem Aytaç and Susan C. Stokes 2019 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2019 Printed in the United States of America by Sheridan Books, Inc. A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Aytaç, S. Erdem, 1980– author. | Stokes, Susan Carol, author. Title: Why bother? : rethinking participation in elections and protests / S. Erdem Aytaç, Koç University, Susan C. Stokes, University of Chicago. Description: New York : Cambridge University Press, [2018] | Series: Cambridge studies in comparative politics | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identiers: LCCN 2018035529 | ISBN 9781108475228 Subjects: LCSH: Political participation. | Voter turnout. | Voting – Abstention. | Voting research. | Protest movements – Political aspects. Classication: LCC JF799 .A93 2018 | DDC 323/.042–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018035529

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Erdem: For my family. Susan: For Lewyn and Arlo, future participants.

Contents

List of Figures page viii List of Tables ix Preface and Acknowledgments xi

1 Introduction: Rethinking Political Participation 1 2 Theories of Voter Participation: A Review and a New Approach 13 3 Testing the Costly Abstention Theory of Turnout 37 4 Theories of Protest Participation: A Review and a New Approach 68 5 Testing the Costly Abstention Theory of Protest Participation 83 6 The Emotional Origins of Collective Action 103 7 Conclusions: Criticisms, Extensions, and Democratic Theory 128

Bibliography 137 Index 150

vii

Figures

3.1 Turnout in the US presidential and midterm congressional elections, 1960–2016 page 39 3.2 Respondents’ assessments of chances for a presidential tie in the United States 43 3.3 Distribution of responses to the outcome question in the Turnout experiment 49 3.4 The average likelihood of voting across treatment conditions in the Turnout experiment 50 3.5 Negative affect emotions across experimental groups in the Abstention experiment 55 3.6 Negative affect emotions across experimental groups in the (Important, Close) election group of the Abstention experiment 56 3.7 The average likelihood of voting across treatment conditions, unweighted and weighted data 66 3.8 Negative affect emotions across experimental groups in the Abstention experiment, weighted data 67 4.1 The impact of repression on the costs of abstention and participation 81 6.1 Bounce-back effect among the unemployed in the United States 105 6.2 Unemployment rate and proportion of economy-related words in presidential challengers’ nomination acceptance speeches in the United States, 1976–2016 107 6.3 Istanbul 2015 survey: images used in the Repression treatment 116

viii

Tables

2.1 Correlates of turnout in Britain and Sweden – BES and SNES 2010 page 15 3.1 Setup of the Turnout experiment 49 3.2 Treatment vignettes in the Abstention experiment 53 3.3 Experimental conditions and vignettes in the Duty experiment 58 3.4 Manipulation checks for the Duty experiment 59 3.5 Average treatment effects in the Duty experiment 60 3.6 Views on civic duty versus duty to abstain 61 3.7 Turnout among the majority and minority groups in the Group turnout experiment 63 3.8 Turnout, Abstention, and Group turnout experiments – Sample descriptives 65 3.9 Duty experiment – sample descriptives 65 5.1 Data sources in Turkey, Brazil, and Ukraine 86 5.2 Protesters’ goals according to participants and nonparticipants, Istanbul 88 5.3 Protesters’ goals according to participants and nonparticipants, São Paulo 89 5.4 Protesters’ motivations, Istanbul 90 5.5 Reasons for joining the protests, São Paulo 91 5.6 Reasons for joining the protests, Kiev 91 5.7 Istanbul: average treatment effects 100 5.8 São Paulo: average treatment effects 101 5.9 Kiev: average treatment effects 102 6.1 Experimental treatment vignettes in the Unemployment experiment 108 6.2 Average treatment effects in the Unemployment experiment 110 6.3 Being angry about the economy and turnout—BES 2010 112 6.4 Being angry about immigration or the war in Afghanistan and turnout—BES 2010 113

x List of Tables

6.5 Being angry about parties and turnout—SNES 2010 114 6.6 Outcome questions in the Istanbul 2015 Repression experiment: potential mediators 118 6.7 Average treatment effects on willingness to protest 119 6.8 Average treatment effects on potential mediators 120 6.9 Mediation analysis of the impact of repression on protest participation 123 6.10 Istanbul 2015 Repression experiment: respondent characteristics 126

Preface and Acknowledgments

When social scientists try to explain why people bother to take part in politics, they often fall back on a cost-benet framework. If the benets of going to the polls or into the streets outweigh the costs, people act; if the costs outweigh the benets, they stay home. On the surface the formulation seems reasonable, if a little vague. But the cost-benet approach leads to several paradoxes and anomalies. One is the prediction, widely explored by scholars, that almost no one will vote in mass elections. Other anomalies have gone relatively unnoticed but are also troubling. The cost-benet approach implies that people’s participation decisions have little to do with how much they care about the outcome of the collective action in which they are considering taking part. One person thinks the sky will fall in if the wrong candidate wins or the protest fails; another sees nothing important at stake, whatever the outcome. By standard accounts, the rst person is not more likely to take part than the second one. Another implication of the cost-benet approach is that escalations in the costs of participation should always be followed by reductions in the num- bers of people taking part. In fact, it is not unusual for participation to remain unchanged or even grow in the wake of higher costs of participation. As we complete this book, two recent events remind us of this anomaly. In the open- ing days of 2018, protesters took to the streets in Mashhad, Iran’s second largest city. The protests were met with predictable brutality. But the spike in costs of participation was followed not by a rapid containment of the protests; instead they spread to many other Iranian cities. This dynamic is not uncom- mon. We show in several settings that a surge in protests does not simply follow but is often caused by police brutality. A few weeks earlier and half a world away, an event occurred that was perhaps as surprising as widespread protests in authoritarian Iran: a Democrat won a US Senate seat in the state of Alabama. One reason for his victory is that African-American voters turned out at high rates. Alabama is one of several southern states that have in recent years passed strict voter ID laws. The

xii Preface and Acknowledgments

laws are widely viewed as efforts to suppress turnout among African-American voters. But in the 2017 Senate election, the turnout rate among registered black voters was higher than the rate among registered white voters. Why did African-Americans in Alabama turn out to vote at high rates in an era when the costs of voting, in money, time, and trouble, had risen? Accord- ing to some political scientists, the depressive effects of voter ID laws were countered by heavy voter mobilization – turnout was high despite voter ID laws.1 There is undoubtedly a good deal of truth in this interpretation. But an activist involved in get-out-the-vote efforts in Alabama’s black communities offered a different reason. LaTosha Brown saw the voter ID laws as having a mobilizing impact in themselves. “Historically and traditionally, there has been a strong voice of resistance to [measures] that are undemocratic.” In other words, African-American turnout spiked not despite, but because of voter ID laws. We wrote this book in search of a theory that turns these facts – which are anomalies in cost-benet accounts – into predictions. Many people helped us develop the ideas and carry out the research in this book. Our greatest debt is to our coauthors. Luis Schiumerini joined us in our study of social movements, and coauthored articles from which we draw in Chapters 5 and 6. Eli Rau worked with us on research into unemployment and turnout, which we draw on in Chapter 6. We are also indebted to our excellent research assistants. Melis Laebens and Gülay Türkmen-Dervi¸soglu˘ assisted us in our research into the Gezi Park uprising in Turkey. Leonid Peisakhin and Anastasia Rosovskaya undertook interviews in Kiev about Ukraine’s Euro- maidan protests. Simge Andı, Ezgi Elçi, Fatih Erol, and Firuze Simay Sezgin provided help with literature reviews and graphics in the book. Maria Tyrberg helped us navigate Swedish National Election Studies data, and Nedim Barut assisted with the implementation of our Istanbul survey in Chapter 6. We are grateful for institutional support from Koç and Yale Universities. Zeynep Gürhan-Canlı, Dean of the College of Administrative Sciences and Economics of Koç, and Ian Shapiro, Director of Yale’s MacMillan Center of International and Area Studies, provided support and encouragement, for which we are very grateful. The MacMillan Center is the home of the Yale Pro- gram on Democracy (YPD). In YPD workshops, we received invaluable advice from Kate Baldwin, Ana de la O, Germán Feierherd, Hélène Landemore, Adria Lawrence, Virginia Oliveros, David Rueda, Inga Saikkonen, Milan Svolik, and Tariq Thachil. We are also grateful to Steven Wilkinson, chair of Yale’s Polit- ical Science Department, for his support and friendship. Sue Stokes spent a year at the Russell Sage Foundation, where her “fellow fellows” gave helpful

1 Political scientist Eitan Hersh told the New York Times, “These laws are complicated to assess. Alabama was a place where there was a lot of campaigning, and when campaigns liven up, you have a lot of mobilization efforts.” “Black Turnout in Alabama Complicates Debate on Voting Laws,” December 24, 2017.

Preface and Acknowledgments xiii

input. She is especially grateful to Elizabeth Cohen, Mona Lynch, Phil Cook, and Tom Palfrey, as well as to Sheldon Danziger, Suzanne Nichols, and the Foundation’s staff. We received terric feedback from several other scholars: Mark Beissinger, Ali Çarkoglu,˘ Andy Eggers, Tim Feddersen, Miriam Golden, Greg Huber, Edgar Kaiser, Özge Kemahlıoglu,˘ Timur Kuran, Jodi LaPorte, Margaret Levi, Doug McAdam, Ezequiel Gonzalez Ocantos, Karl-Dieter Opp, Henrik Oscarsson, Shmulik Nili, Tom Palfrey, Steve Pincus, Hari Ramesh, Bryn Rosen- feld, David Rueda, Andy Sabl, Anastasia Shesterinina, Jazmin Sierra, Nick Valentino, and Elisabeth Wood. We would also like to acknowledge and thank the participants of seminars at Yale, the University of Essex, Sabancı Uni- versity, Koç University, Princeton University, Northwestern University, New York University, the University of Maryland, Bogaziçi˘ University, Univer- sity of Rochester, Texas A&M University, Bahçe¸sehirUniversity, Georgetown University, the University of Chicago, and University of Gothenburg. Robert Dreesen, our editor at Cambridge University Press, encouraged us and managed the project through the review process with great efciency and kindness. We are very grateful, as we are as well to two anonymous review- ers and to Kathleen Thelen and Erik Wibbels, editors of Comparative Politics series. We are also grateful to Jackie Grant and Robert Judkins at CUP and to Anya Hastwell for their assistance on the manuscript. Erdem thanks his wife, Büke, for her love, encouragement, and especially for her patience as I spent several late nights on Skype to discuss the project with Sue. Our title comes from a suggestion offered by Jan King, at a dinner Sue enjoyed with Jan and Tony King and with Steve Pincus. Sue thanks Jan for her pithy phrase. We miss Tony.