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Democracy Protests: Origins, Significance and Consequences. By Brancati Dawn . New York : Cambridge University Press , 2016. 228p. $99.99 cloth, $29.99 paper.
Critical Dialogues
Under what conditions do protests demanding democracy occur? When do these protests lead to democratization? Dawn Brancati's Democracy Protests: Origins, Features and Significance masterfully tackles these important and timely questions. Using an original data set covering 180 countries between 1989 and 2011, the book shows compelling evidence that economic crises make "democracy protests" more likely to occur. These effects arise, the author argues, not only because economic crises spawn discontent with governments and with authoritarianism but also because they increase support for opposition candidates who are more likely to organize protests, especially in election periods. Consistent with this argument, she shows that the effects of economic crises on democracy protests are strongest in election years and strongest when electoral fraud is rampant.
What are the factors shaping the response to these protests? Using an impressive array of measures capturing government responses to democracy protests, Brancati shows that although governments do not accommodate democracy protests very often, larger protests are more likely to lead to government accommodation and removal of the chief executive, as well as to democratization. In particular, one of the chapters compellingly shows that subsequent democratization was explicitly linked with protests in a full two-thirds of the cases in which protests were followed by democratization. It is interesting, however, that the types or cohesiveness of demands made by protestors were found to have had no bearing on government responses to the protest, or on democratization.
Democracy Protests makes several important contributions to the field of comparative politics. While it is perhaps not surprising that economic crises engender discontent or even mobilization, it is not immediately obvious why economic grievances should translate into political or democratic grievances. Brancati offers compelling reasons why people might associate a poorly performing economy with their country's lack of democracy. For example, authoritarian leaders may be more likely to engage in ostentatious spending in times of crises, and she provides examples of cases where such spending led to large-scale popular discontent. Another important reason could be corruption and, indeed, the results from the statistical analysis show that...