Chaos on Campus: Universities and Mass Political Protest

Sirianne Dahlum,Tore Wig

doi:10.1177/0010414020919902

Sirianne Dahlum, Tore Wig

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414020919902

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Abstract

History suggests universities are hotbeds of political protest. However, the generality and causal nature of this relationship has never been quantified. This article investigates whether universities give rise to political protest, drawing on geocoded information on the location and characteristics of universities and protest events in the 1991–2016 period, at the subnational level in 62 countries in Africa and Central America. Our analysis indicates that university establishments increase protest. We use a difference-in-differences and fixed-effect framework leveraging the temporal variation in universities within subnational grid-cells to estimate the effect of universities on protest. Our analysis indicates that localities with increases in number of universities experience more protest. We suggest a causal interpretation, after performing different tests to evaluate whether this reflects confounding trends specific to locations that establish universities, finding no support for this. We also provide descriptive evidence on the nature of university-related protests, showing that they are more likely to emerge in dictatorships and that protests in university locations are more likely to concern democracy and human rights. These findings yield important general insights into universities’ role as drivers of contentious collective action.

Highlights

Universities are often considered hotbeds of political protest
We pose the questions: Do locations with more universities see more political protest? If so, do universities induce these protests? And what are the characteristics of university-related protests? Protest events come in many different forms, ranging from spontaneous and apolitical riots to large-scale and organized demonstrations aiming to overthrow regimes
We find that university-related protests are more often concerned with political issues such as democracy and human rights, but less commonly related to economic grievances and food-concerns

Summary

Introduction

Universities are often considered hotbeds of political protest. Images of student protests in the 1960s, on campuses such as Berkeley and La Sorbonne, are iconic examples of student radicalism and revolt. Our finding that universities facilitate protest is consistent with the claims of “modernization theory,” connecting economic modernization more generally (of which education is an instance) to societal change driven by collective action (Inglehart & Welzel, 2005; Welzel, 2013). It speaks to recent findings on how modern social infrastructures—such as communication technology and education—conduces political instability and mass uprisings (e.g., Dafoe & Lyall, 2015)

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