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Does protest influence political representation?
If so, which groups are most likely to benefit from collective action?
The Advantage of Disadvantage: Costly Protest and Political Representation for Marginalized Groups (Cambridge UP, 2022) makes a provocative claim: protests are
most effective for disadvantaged groups. According to author LaGina
Gause, legislators are more responsive to protesters than
non-protesters, and after protesting, racial and ethnic minorities,
people with low incomes, and other low-resource groups are more likely
than white and affluent protesters to gain representation. Gause also
demonstrates that online protests are less effective than in-person
protests. Drawing on literature from across the social sciences as well
as formal theory, a survey of policymakers, quantitative data, and vivid
examples of protests throughout U.S. history, The Advantage of
Disadvantage provides invaluable insights for scholars and activists
seeking to understand how groups gain representation through protesting.
LaGina Gause is an Assistant Professor at the University of California, San Diego. Her research interests are at the intersection of U.S. political institutions and political behavior with a focus on racial and ethnic politics, inequality, protest, and representation. Before joining the department of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego as an assistant professor, she was a Democracy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School. She tweets @LaGina_Gause.
Host Ursula Hackett is Senior Lecturer in Politics at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her Cambridge University Press book America's Voucher Politics: How Elites Learned to Hide the State won the 2021 Education Politics and Policy Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association. Her writing guide Brilliant Essays is published by Macmillan Study Skills. She tweets @UrsulaBHackett.
Ursula Hackett is Reader in Politics at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is the author of America’s Voucher Politics: How Elites Learned to Hide the State (Cambridge University Press, 2020).