Learning to lose : election outcomes, democratic

Abstract

Do democratic elections and experience with democracy affect citizens’ propensity to engage in political protest? If so, how?We develop amodel of protest potential based on the incentives election winners and losers face in new and established democratic systems. Using surveys conducted by the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) in seventeen democracies around the globe, we compare the effect of being in the political minority or majority after an election on political protest potential. We find that being in the political minority heightens citizens’ political protest potential. Moreover, we find that the effect of losing on protest potential is significantly greater in new democracies relative to established ones. These findings provide systematic evidence that election outcomes should be considered important indicators of political protest potential, and they imply that this effect is particularly salient in countries whose democratic institutions are relatively new and potentially more unstable.