Democracy Incongruence and Protest

Abstract

The literature on protest argues that economic grievances against the government increase the likelihood of a protest. However, the literature offers little explanation for why some states with good economic performance, such as South Korea and China in the 1980s, experienced severe protests. This study suggests that even though a state has a high income level, if its political institutions do not satisfy citizens’ demands for democracy caused by economic development, citizens would have political grievances against their government. If citizens share such political grievances, their civil society would have the group-level perception of discrepancy between their demand for democracy and their government’s institutional supply of political rights, called democracy incongruence. As the level of democracy incongruence in a state increases, the citizens are willing to participate in protest to express political grievances against the government. Empirical results support this argument.