The upcoming research seminar will be led by Professor Amir Abdul Reda on Thursday, April 10th at 12:30 p.m. Professor Abdul Reda will examine the protest cycle during the covid-19 pandemic in Europe, emphasizing the role of strategic policymaking in crisis management.

ABSTRACT: 

In times of crisis, why do some containment policies face more civil unrest than others? Whatdoesthis tell us about the ways in which policymakers should introduce restrictive yet common good policies during times of crisis? In this paper, we challenge the conventional wisdom about the reasons why people protest against Covid-19 policies. We argue that, besides other political and institutional factors that have been commonly examined in social science, civil unrest against pandemic related policies are heavily driven by the material pain caused by the containment policies themselves. We develop a hardship theory of civil unrest to stringency policies during the pandemic by reengaging with a well trodden, decades old literature on material pain and protests. To test our theory, we use time-series cross-section data for 22 European countries spanning 2020 to 2022 (inclusive) and disaggregated at the region level. Based on this new data, we show that protests rise in relation to an intricate relationship between the severity of policies implemented to fight Covid-19, and a range of material pain (or support) variables. This is substantial for policymakers, as we show that economic support policies can effectively mitigate the propensity for protests at very specific times in the pandemic, being otherwise potentially wasted money. Our results are significant because they highlight the importance of timely and adequate governmental intervention during crises to optimize social cohesion against a common threat, and optimal use of public funds.