On the Informativeness of Strategic Protest

This paper develops a model to investigate the interaction between policymaking and strategic protest. Protesting citizens demand policy reforms by protesting against the status quo, but differ in their preference for the directions of the reform. The size of the protest informs policymaker about the average citizen’s preference, thereby influencing the outcome of the policymaking. We find that, in equilibrium, citizens’ protest strategy exhibits strategic complementary, thereby reducing the informativeness of the strategic protest. We further discuss how government inefficiency influences the citizens’ strategic consideration and shapes the informativeness of strategic protest