Macro-Tolerance and Protest: Does a Culture of Political Intolerance Dampen Dissent?

Abstract

Political tolerance has long been regarded as one of the most important democratic values because a culture of intolerance is thought to result in conformity and a fear of dissent. Although widely endorsed, this claim has received little direct empirical support. Using the new method of multilevel regression with post-stratification to measure state levels of tolerance, or macro-tolerance, and automated event data to measure state rates of protest, we test whether cultures of intolerance do indeed inhibit public expressions of dissent. Because cultures of intolerance are likely endogenous to prior levels of protest, we use an instrumental variable to estimate the causal effect of culture on political action. We find that macro-tolerance has a positive and substantial effect on rates of protest. Our findings have implications for normative theories of free speech, for scholarship on protest and political tolerance, and for the measurement of macro-opinion in the United States.