Contentious Activities, Disrespectful Protesters: Effect of Protest Context on Protest Support and Mobilization Across Ideology and Authoritarianism

Protest is a tool more often wielded by the political left than right. Somewhat surprisingly, there has been little careful investigation of this asymmetry to date. I show that by examining how the protest context interacts with individual-level differences in ideology and authoritarianism, we gain insight into the protest asymmetry and the dynamics of public protest support and mobilization potential. Using an experimental design, I find that contentious protests and protesters that are disrespectful of police reduce public support, and that liberals and conservatives, and nonauthoritarians and authoritarians, are affected by the protest context in different ways. In my study, conservatives were found to be less supportive than liberals of protests that were disrespectful of police and were demobilized by violent protests. For authoritarians, however, violence did not decrease their support or mobilization. Rather, what decreased support and mobilization among authoritarians were protests that were disrespectful of authorities.