Focal Moments and Protests in Autocracies: How Pro-democracy Anniversaries Shape Dissent in China

• Author: Brett L. Carter,Erin Baggott Carter
• Published date: 01 November 2020
• Date: 01 November 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0022002720932995
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Focal Moments and

Protests in Autocracies:

How Pro-democracy

Anniversaries Shape

Dissent in China

Erin Baggott Carter

1

and Brett L. Carter

1

Abstract

Social scientists have long observed that focal points enable citizens to coordinate

collective action. For antiregime protests in autocracies, however, focal points also

enable repressive governments to prepare in advance. We propose a theory to

explain when citizens are likely to employ focal points to organize antiregime

protests. Our key insight is that tacit coordination is most critical when explicit

coordination is costly. Empirically, we use our theory to identify a setting where

focal points are likely to be salient and then argue that the anniversaries of failed

pro-democracy movements satisfy conditions for focality. In China, we find that the

anniversaries of failed pro-democracy movements occasion nearly 30 percent more

protests than any other day. Protests during pro-democracy anniversaries are

more likely to employ “rights-conscious” discourse, which scholars have argued is

code for democratic resistance, and to be repressed by the government. We find

no similar trends for other holidays.

Keywords

collective action, autocratic politics, China, repression, social movements

1

Department of Political Science and International Relations, University of Southern California,

Los Angeles, CA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Erin Baggott Carter, Department of Political Science and International Relations, University of Southern

California, 3518 Trousdale Pkwy, VKC 330, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA.

Email: baggott@usc.edu

Journal of Conflict Resolution

2020, Vol. 64(10) 1796-1827

ªThe Author(s) 2020

Article reuse guidelines:

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DOI: 10.1177/0022002720932995

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The dynamics of autocratic politics have undergone important shifts since the end of

the Cold War. As the rate of coups declines (Marinov and Goemans 2014), mass

protests increasingly constitute a key threat to autocratic survival. In turn, scholars

have sought to understand their dynamics: who participates (Rosenfeld 2017), how

protesters organize (Howard and Hussain 2013; Steinert-Threlkeld et al. 2015;

Christensen and Garfias 2018), and whether violence is effective (Chenoweth and

Stephan 2011).

This article asks when antiregime protests emerge in autocracies: whether there

exists a well-defined calendar of collective action. We propose a theory to explain

when citizens employ focal points to coordinate antiregime protests. We build on

two insights. First, scholars of collective action have long observed that focal points

facilitate coordination; we refer to this as a coordination effect. For citizens in

autocracies, however, using focal points to coordinate protests entails risks. If cit-

izens in autocracies are aware of focal points, then so too are governments. In turn,

governments should prepare in advance: by incarcerating activists (Truex 2019),

deploying security forces, or censoring media to block coordination (King, Pan, and

Roberts 2013, 2017). As a result, it may be optimal for protesters in autocracies to

avoid relying on focal points for coordination. We refer to this as a repression effect.

We argue that the coordination effect dominates the repression effect when the

threat of repression is most salient. In these environments, the coordination advan-

tages afforded by focal points are sufficiently important to outweigh the forgone

element of surprise. We regard focal points as the product of a community’s cultural

touchstones and historical traumas; they are context specific and may also be geo-

graphic or temporal. Our empirical strategy, then, is to identify one potential source

of focal points and then focus on a setting where, our theory suggests, citizens are

likely to employ focal points to coordinate protests. We argue that the anniversaries

of failed pro-democracy movements constitute one source of focal points. These

anniversaries remind citizens of long-standing antiregime sentiment and that their

compatriots were willing to challenge the regime in the past. To underscore their

temporal nature, we refer to them as “focal moments.”These anniversaries may also

be used by activists to remind citize ns of regime crimes. We refer to this as a

memory effect that activists attempt to sustain and repressive governments often

attempt to purge.

Empirically, we focus on China where the government’s record of repression

should render focal moments especia lly salient. China is an attractive empi rical

setting for reasons of data availability as well. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP)

has repressed several pro-democracy movements since seizing power in 1949. Since

the anniversaries of these failed pro-democracy movements recur annually, we can

measure just how much stronger is the mobilizational power of these anniversaries

relative to other politically relevant dates. We find that the anniversaries of China’s

failed pro-democracy movements experience nearly 30 percent more protests than

the typical day. The odds that a protest emerges are between 27 percent and 37

percent greater, and the probability of a protest spike, which we define below,

Carter and Carter 1797

increases by nearly 50 percent. Focal moment protests are nearly twice as likely to

be repressed by the government. Using tools from computational linguistics, we also

show that protesters during pro-democracy anniversaries are far more likely to

embrace “rights consciousness,”which many scholars suggest is code for demo-

cratic resistance (Bernstein and Lü 2003; Goldman 2005; L. Li 2010; Pei 2010;

Wong 2011; J. Chen 2013). We find no evidence that other political, cultural, ethnic,

or religious anniversaries constitute focal moments for protest.

This article makes several broader contributions. First, scholars have long recog-

nized that government repression can backfire: by exacerbating the grievances it

sought to suppress (Goldstone and Tilly 2009; Lawrence 2017). However, it remains

unclear precisely why, or when, this backlash occurs. Opp and Roehl (1990) suggest

that repression pushes previously acquiescent citizens to oppose the government,

while Siegel (2011) argues that backlash is more common when victims occupy

central positions in social networks. We show that, by giving citizens focal points

with which to mobilize, state repression creates recurring opportunities for collective

action long into the future. In turn, this advances a growing literature about the

causes and consequences of antiregime protests. Drawing on the Colored Revolu-

tions in Eastern Europe and the Arab Spring in the Middle East and North Africa,

scholars have sought to explain when and why elections foster protests. Many

explanations focus on the political and economic conditions under which elections

occur (Tucker 2007; Hyde 2011; Hafner-Burton, Hyde, and Jablonski 2014; Saleh-

yan and Linebarger 2015; Brancati 2016). We show that a range of other dates

constitute critical focal moments for protest as well.

Second, this article contributes to a growing literature about the politics of mem-

ory in autocracies. It is increasingly clear that repressive governments attempt to

suppress memories of regime crimes (King, Pan, and Roberts 2013; Truex 2019).

Our results are consistent with the possibility that citizens keep historical memories

alive by engaging in collective action: to remind their neighbors that, despite the

regime’s best efforts, others have not forgotten. We thus extend a literature from

transitional justice about how societies commemorate atrocities after civil violence

and dictatorship (de Brito, Gonzaléz-Enríque z, and Aguilar 2001; Gibson 2004;

Balcells, Palanza, and Voytas 2018). We show that the struggle between memory

and forgetting conditions politics in profound ways well before dictatorships fall.

The anniversaries of failed pro-democracy movements are focal moments for col-

lective action, and so, repressive governments have incentives to purge them from

historical memory. To keep those memories alive—and to sustain the focal moments

that enable tacit coordination—activists have incentives to organize protests on pro-

democracy anniversaries as well.

These results also advance our understanding of politics in China. Perhaps

inspired by the CCP’s apparent strength, some scholars believe that collective action

poses no fundamental threat: because it abides state-determined taboos (Perry 2008),

because popular support for the CCP is relatively strong (Dickson 2015), or because

the regime can manage protests when they emerge (Nathan 2003). X. Chen (2012, 6)

1798 Journal of Conflict Resolution 64(10)