Crowd Cohesion and Protest Outcomes

Amidst an unprecedented swell in global protest, scholars and activists wrestle with the question of why protests succeed or fail. I explore a new answer: more cohesive crowds, where protesters agree on their demands, are more likely to win concessions than less cohesive crowds. Drawing on psychology and linguistics, I theorize that cohesive demands are more comprehensible and thus persuasive. I test this theory with a multimethod approach. First, I use cross-national data from 97 protests to estimate the relationship between crowd cohesion and subsequent concessions, applying natural language processing to measure cohesion in participants’ self-reported motivations. Second, a survey experiment in South Africa tests the causal effects of crowd cohesion and assesses comprehensibility of demands as the mechanism driving concessions. Third, case studies of two British protests demonstrate the theory in real-world settings. My findings suggest that activists can improve their odds of success by coordinating around a common goal.