Can protests overcome the collective action problem?
I identify three ways to profound change
Another summer, another summer of protest…and yet nothing changes…Or does it? What would it take?
Most protests change nothing. People vent, other people counter, issues get linked with other issues, protagonists grow, identities become confused, people turn this way and that to find their champions, information shatters their illusions, misinformation ruins the ethos of others, the caucus splinters, and protests blow out.
This is the collective action problem. Getting people, who otherwise do not act collectively, to act collectively, long enough to achieve an objective (such as: control the borders) is almost impossible. People normally do not collect except at micro levels, such as the family group, which is often factious too. As the protest becomes bigger, the collective becomes more factious, even as organizers step up.
An election is an opportunity for all voters to act collectively, but they’re still acting largely as individuals. Even after an election, majorities can be denied, as the elite proved for years after the Brexit referendum.
The government is larger and better organized than most protests. While it has factions and rogues, they have a self-interest in uniting against external critics. It already has spin doctors, public diplomats, press officers, and public channels – poised to predict, pre-empt, and counter protests.
Increasingly, governments seek allies in nominally private organizations, whose organizers are actually professional protesters, paid to push certain politics. Some are paid by Middle Eastern governments (pro-Palestine groups), wealthy foreign ideologues (Antifa), virtue-signalling corporations (BLM), and even the British government (Stand Up To Racism).
Increasingly, institutions that once acted as checks and balances on the political administration act as its enforcers: courts, constabularies, schools, universities, local governments, and media. I’m going to call them the ‘collective-collectives.’
Thence, politics looks bipolar: minority against majority, elite against populace, ‘articulate classes’ against inarticulate, collective-collectives against the uncollected.
The elite uses its opponents’ problems of collection, action, and articulation as evidence for lack of reason, information, or education – even for lack of legitimacy. For instance, some anti-Brexiteers lobbied for a ‘people’s vote,’ as if the majority that voted for Brexit in 2016 aren’t people!
Nothing I have written above suggests that current protests against asylum hotels can persist, although protesters might take credit for the timing of Reform’s latest manifesto, and the government’s tinkering with asylum-claimants’ rights to bring their families.
The season too is against them. Protests peak in August, the normative month for hot, dry, long days and vacation. Now, most Britons are returning to work or school. The weather will worsen, the days will shorten.
Still, perhaps this season is different. Perhaps the ‘raise the colours’ movement suggests persistence.
Let’s consider what it would take. I categorize three ways to decisive collective action:
