Do democratic revolutions ‘activate’ participants? The case of Tunisia
| Author | Peter J Schraeder,David Doherty,Kirstie L Dobbs |
| Published date | 01 May 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0263395719840240 |
| Date | 01 May 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
840240POL0010.1177/0263395719840240PoliticsDoherty et al.
research-article2019
Article
Politics
2020, Vol. 40(2) 170 –188
Do democratic revolutions
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‘activate’ participants? The
https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395719840240
DOI: 10.1177/0263395719840240
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case of Tunisia
David Doherty , Peter J Schraeder
and Kirstie L Dobbs
Loyola University Chicago, USA
Abstract
The democratic transition in Tunisia and free and fair elections that followed offer a unique
opportunity to assess whether the experience of participating in successful political efforts
translates into subsequent political participation. We consider whether participation in a
democratic revolution is associated with greater rates of participation in nascent ‘normal’
democratic processes. Leveraging data from two surveys fielded in the wake of the revolution
and the Constituent Assembly elections that followed, we find scant evidence of a relationship
between protest participation and subsequent turnout. We also consider the possibility that
young – presumably more impressionable – Tunisians were more likely to be ‘activated’ by protest
participation. However, our findings run directly counter to this expectation. Our findings show
that the socializing effects of monumental historical events can be strikingly circumscribed.
Keywords
political behaviour, political socialization, protest, revolutions, turnout
Received: 31st July 2018; Revised version received: 1st March 2019; Accepted: 5th March 2019
A key determinant of voter turnout is whether individuals have internalized participatory
norms and come to think of themselves as ‘political’. Existing work shows that momen-
tous political events can ‘activate’ this type of identity – persistently shaping individuals’
political dispositions and behaviours. These influences appear to be particularly pro-
nounced among the youth. We consider the case of the Tunisian Revolution where anti-
government protests led to the ouster of a long-standing autocrat in early 2011 (Redissi
et al., 2012; Schraeder and Redissi, 2011). Unlike many revolutions, protesters’ efforts
led to dramatic, unambiguous democratic reforms including the establishment of free and
fair elections soon after the revolution (e.g. Brownlee et al., 2015). We marshal data from
Corresponding author:
David Doherty, Department of Political Science, Loyola University Chicago, 3rd Floor, Coffey Hall, 1032 W.
Sheridan Road, Chicago, IL 60660, USA.
Email: ddoherty@luc.edu
Doherty et al.
171
an original survey, two of the authors (Schraeder and Doherty) fielded in Tunisia in 2012,
as well as from the third wave of the Arab Barometer, to examine the relationship between
participation in the revolution and participation in the elections held in October of 2011.
Our evidence casts doubt on the notion that engagement in dramatic political events nec-
essarily ‘activates’ participants. We make two contributions.
First, although existing work has examined patterns of voter participation in the wake
of democratic transitions (Bratton, 1999; Pacek et al., 2009), no work that we are aware
of leverages individual-level data to examine the relationship between participation in a
democratic revolution and turnout in subsequent elections. We take advantage of a unique
opportunity to do so. The large sample of respondents in our original survey (N = 3067)
includes 572 respondents who reported participating in the revolutionary protests – which
ousted a long-standing authoritarian regime – and had an opportunity to practice ‘normal’
politics soon after. Their first opportunity to vote was in genuinely contested, free and fair
elections to select a national Constituent Assembly that would be charged with writing a
new constitution (Freedom House, 2012). This rapid sequence of events left little oppor-
tunity for participants to become despondent about the established political system
(Meirowitz and Tucker, 2013). This would appear to be a ‘most likely case’ scenario
(King et al., 1994) for finding a pattern consistent with the expectation that participation
in a highly salient, successful political action can foster a sense of political efficacy and
activate a broader participatory identity. However, participation in the revolution was
associated with little more than a trivial (and, in spite of our large sample, statistically
insignificant) increase in the likelihood that an individual would participate in newly real-
ized democratic institutions. Similar analysis using data from the third wave of the Arab
Barometer – as well as analysis stacking these two data sets – also yields a null relation-
ship between protest participation and turnout.
Second, we consider the possibility that the weak aggregate relationship between pro-
test participation and voting masks a dynamic where some protesters were more affected
by the experience than others. Existing research suggests that young adults tend to be
particularly susceptible to the effects of major events and experiences because their social
identities are more malleable. If so, the experience of engaging in successful political
action of historic proportions should have left a particularly pronounced impression on
young Tunisians. Our findings run counter to this expectation: the relationship between
protest participation and turnout is essentially zero among young Tunisians and signifi-
cantly stronger among older individuals. In additional analysis, we find little support for
the expectation that this finding stems from a distinctive pattern of political attitudes
among young Tunisian protesters. However, we find evidence consistent with the notion
that, to the extent participation in the revolution politically socialized young Tunisians, it
did so narrowly: young protesters were no more likely to vote in the elections than their
non-protesting counterparts, but were substantially more likely to participate in the pro-
tests that followed the elections.
Socialized in the streets?
The internalization of socially defined norms and process of coming to think of oneself as
someone who participates appears to play a far more central role in the decision to turn out
than instrumental considerations (Riker and Ordeshook, 1968). Early researchers recog-
nized that, once established, a participatory identity may express itself persistently over
time (e.g. Campbell et al., 1960). More recently, novel field experiments have demonstrated
172
Politics 40(2)
that external forces can foster the formation of this type of participatory identity. Specifically,
inducing an individual to participate in one political act can lead to an enduring habit of
participation (Cutts et al., 2009; Gerber et al., 2003; Green and Shachar, 2000). In short, the
decision to participate has a strong habitual component (Aldrich et al., 2011).
Here, we focus on a force that existing work suggests can leave a lasting stamp on
individuals’ political views and identities: a major political event (e.g. Mazumder, 2018;
Miller and Shanks, 1996; Pacheco, 2008; Sears and Valentino, 1997; Sherkat and Blocker,
1997). Historical events are likely to be particularly consequential when a given individ-
ual is intimately connected to those events. For example, youth who were abducted and
conscripted during Uganda’s civil war were significantly more likely to vote and partici-
pate more broadly following the war (Blattman, 2009). The experience of conscription
appears to have activated a lasting political identity among these individuals. Similarly,
individuals who participated in the Civil Rights Movement in the United States were
more likely to engage in an array of participatory activities even many years later (e.g.
Jennings, 2002, but see Sherkat and Blocker, 1997). In other work, Parkin (1968) found
that participation in one social movement predicted participation in other forms of politi-
cal engagement.
Joining anti-government protests under an autocracy can be risky. Dictatorships,
including the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia, often employ violent tactics against citizens who
challenge their hold on power (Bellin, 2012; Camau and Geisser, 2003; Hibou, 2006;
Svolik, 2012). The potential for violence may be particularly high when authoritarian
regimes sense that their hold over power is threatened. This was clearly the case when the
Ben Ali dictatorship on 24 December 2010 went beyond the standard authoritarian fare of
tear gas, clubs, and rubber bullets to unleash the use of deadly force against protestors
(Amnesty International, 2011). It is estimated that at least 300 were killed and more than
700 were wounded during protests in December 2010–January 2011 that led to the down-
fall of the Ben Ali regime (Schraeder and Redissi, 2011). Thus, participants found them-
selves engaged in a political effort that was salient and costly.
Existing work suggests that there is reason to expect the experience of successfully
overcoming a collective action problem to lead people to update their subjective percep-
tions regarding the calculus of political participation. For example, Kanazawa (1998)
draws on the stochastic learning model proposed by Macy (1989). He posits that although
the objective probability that an individual’s efforts will prove pivotal in deciding a politi-
cal outcome is typically vanishingly small, when people observe a correlation between
their efforts...
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