Protest and Legislative Behavior in Perilous Times

Abstract

Abstract A long-standing tradition in the study of social movements documents the multitude of ways protest “matters” for policy and politics. LaGina Gause's book, The Advantage of Disadvantage makes a contribution to this literature. Gause develops a formal theory of the influence of protest on legislative behavior and representation and tests it with data from a range of empirical sources. She finds that protest is most effective for disadvantaged groups. What is admirable here is the attempt to integrate the study of social movements with the study of legislative behavior. But limitations that result from an exclusive reliance on quantitative analysis ultimately weaken the strength of her claims. That said, given the proliferation of protest movements around the world, we need to better understand how movement politics influence legislative politics. This is especially true for the mature democracies of the West where Far Right, nationalist, racist, and fascist movements seek to move from fringe to center by manipulating the institutions of electoral politics to undermine democracy itself. The review article concludes with thoughts on an expanded inquiry into the dynamics of contention of today's rightwing political movements.