Abstract

There is abundant literature on individual-level characteristics that encourage citizens to participate in political demonstrations. However, empirical studies on demobilization and factors that prevent people from joining protests remain scarce. In this paper, I zero in on the perceived risks of political participation. Two questions are examined: first, how protest willingness is shaped by perceived risks, and second, what political and socio-economic factors explain risk perception. I answer these questions using the representative sample of 800 Hungarian university students from the Active Youth Survey (2019). Hungary has a special position in Europe because it is defined neither as a liberal democracy nor as sheer autocracy, but an ‘illiberal regime’. In non-democratic illiberal societies the state does not apply overt repressive techniques against dissident groups, although protest participation is still not a riskless form of political action, as regarded in developed democracies. I apply logistic regression models to predict both protest willingness and perceived risks of protest. Results confirm the importance of risks in extra-parliamentary protest politics, since almost half of the university students see their participation in demonstrations as somewhat risky. Regression models show that perceived risks are to some extent politicized, but risks have their own significant role in explaining protest (un)willingness.

Highlights

  • Recent review articles (Earl, 2011; Honari, 2018) about state repression, and the threats and risks of political participation emphasize that there is hardly any study on the link between political participation and its risks

  • Incarcerating and shooting demonstrators is not happening in Hungary, yet as we found, in 2014 citizens saw demonstrations as somewhat risky (Majtényi, Kopper and Susánszky, 2019)

  • Hungarian university students have positive attitudes towards political protest participation. 38 per cent would participate in demonstrations if they were dissatisfied with a measure of the government (5 and 6 on the six-point scale), which indicates relatively strong political activity

Read more

Summary

Introduction

Recent review articles (Earl, 2011; Honari, 2018) about state repression, and the threats and risks of political participation emphasize that there is hardly any study on the link between political participation and its risks. I study how perceived risks predict willingness to participate in protest participation, and I analyse how socio-economic and political factors shape risk perception. To answer these research questions, I use the representative sample of Hungarian university students (the fourth round of the Active Youth Survey (2019), N=800) and apply logistic regression models to predict both protest willingness and three different types of perceived risks, namely friends’ disapproval, counter protesters’ and police attacks. Some of the existing research on the link between perceived risks and protest participation was conducted in non-democratic countries like Egypt (Ayanian and Tausch, 2016), Zimbabwe (Young, 2019), or the communist East Germany (Opp and Roehl, 1990), where engagement in protests was regarded as risky, and where physical retaliation or state repression were part of everyday politics. After presenting the results, I discuss the findings and show that risks could demobilize and encourage university students to take part in demonstrations against the government

Micro theories of protest participation
Perceived risks and costs of protest participation
Previous research on perceived risks and protest participation
Risks of protest participation in illiberal Hungary
Hypotheses
Data and methods
Willingness to protest participation and its perceived risks
How do perceived risks relate to protest willingness?
Explaining perceived risks
Discussions and conclusion
Full Text
Published version (Free)

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call