Perceptions of Justice and Protest Participation in Yemen

• In Event: 463 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 14. Perception and Social Movement Participation

Abstract

This paper attempts to further theoretical and empirical understanding of the relationship between perceptions of justice and protest participation. Leveraging social psychological theories of justice, I explore how perceptions of the justness of the Government of Yemen (GoY), the Yemeni courts, and Yemeni security forces relate to self-reported participation in peaceful protests in Yemen. Using regression techniques on a robust dataset collected in Yemen directly following a period of sustained collective action against the GoY, I show that perceptions of justice play an important role in protest participation. Specifically, I find that in Yemen, individuals who perceive the security forces as just in arresting only those individuals who have done wrong are significantly more likely to report having participated in a peaceful protest. These findings increase understanding of differential participation in authoritarian contexts by showing that in repressive contexts both perceptions of justice and injustice matter for protest participation.

Author

• Matthew K. Linford, University of Notre Dame