British Journal of Politics & International Relations
Emotional protesters: Protest out of anger or stay home in fear?
2025-12-01
How do repressive state tactics used in response to protests affect individuals’ willingness to continue protesting? Particularly, does repression increase or decrease individual protesters’ willingness to continue participating in a protest movement once the protest is already underway? Prominent theories of collective action tend to explain how state repression impacts protest differently. I address this puzzle and aim to contribute to the literature on protest by explaining the effects of different forms of repression on protest continuity through protesters’ emotions as mediating factors. I argue that soft repression in the first round of a protest movement angers protesters and provokes them to continue protesting in the subsequent stage of the event. Hard repression leads to fear and deters participation in the second round. I collect novel data from Argentina and the United States via two different online survey experiments. The results partially support the theoretical expectations.