I don’t know much about the mechanisms, but based on the evidence I reviewed, I can say a few things:
Protests do attract media coverage. I don’t know how important that media coverage is.
If you look at Table 2 in my post, I listed the effect of protests in terms of votes per protester. The studies in Table 2 found that one protester caused 3–12 people to change their votes (or to go from not voting → voting), so the effect can’t just come from the behavior of protesters themselves. The BLM study also measured votes per protester but I didn’t include it because it failed to establish causality.
Let’s presume for a minute that the BLM study found a causal relationship. It found a smaller effect than the other studies (fewer votes per protester). It also controlled for non-local effects, so it only measured the effects of protests in a county with vote changes in the same county. Perhaps the smaller effect in the BLM study is due to between-protest variation or confounding variables, but it might be that non-local effects account for most of the impact of protests. The study’s replication data is publicly available so it should be possible to test this.
Edit: Social Change Lab also has a review on what types of protests are most effective. I haven’t reviewed the evidence in detail but my sense is it’s mostly weak; still better than no evidence.
I don’t know much about the mechanisms, but based on the evidence I reviewed, I can say a few things:
Protests do attract media coverage. I don’t know how important that media coverage is.
If you look at Table 2 in my post, I listed the effect of protests in terms of votes per protester. The studies in Table 2 found that one protester caused 3–12 people to change their votes (or to go from not voting → voting), so the effect can’t just come from the behavior of protesters themselves. The BLM study also measured votes per protester but I didn’t include it because it failed to establish causality.
Let’s presume for a minute that the BLM study found a causal relationship. It found a smaller effect than the other studies (fewer votes per protester). It also controlled for non-local effects, so it only measured the effects of protests in a county with vote changes in the same county. Perhaps the smaller effect in the BLM study is due to between-protest variation or confounding variables, but it might be that non-local effects account for most of the impact of protests. The study’s replication data is publicly available so it should be possible to test this.
Edit: Social Change Lab also has a review on what types of protests are most effective. I haven’t reviewed the evidence in detail but my sense is it’s mostly weak; still better than no evidence.