The Paradox of Confrontation: Experimental Evidence on the Audience Effects of Protests∗

Do protests increase political engagement among the general public? It is often necessary for social movements to induce widespread political engagement in order to gain leverage over elected officials, but this consequence of protest activity has never been tested or verified. Indeed, empirical research on the public effects of protests has largely been handicapped by methodological limitations. I designed a two-pronged experimental design that causally identifies the effects of protest exposure. The first stage uses a vignette experiment in Mexico to capture indirect exposure, and the second stage uses a field experiment to directly expose the same respondents to real street protests. All of the treatments for the vignette and field experiments piggyback off of the 2014-2015 protests against organized crime in Mexico. Through this two-pronged experiment, I find that the form of exposure is critical in identifying the engaging effects of protests. While the general public might become enthusiastic and engaged upon hearing news of mass mobilization, the same people tend to disengage when faced with an actual protest.