New book offers scientific evidence to help protest movements be more successful

While protests across the U.S. and the globe continue to erupt with remarkable frequency, they are also failing at historical rates to achieve their stated goals. By relying on instincts more than data, protesters fighting for causes like social justice, democracy, and environmental protection risk adopting tactics that not only fail to meet their objectives, but could even backfire. 

In her new book, “The New Science of Social Change: A Modern Handbook for Activists,” Dr. Lisa Mueller, associate professor of political science, applies a social scientist’s rigor to uncover why protest movements succeed or fail and how activists can use data and real-world evidence to produce more and lasting change. 

What inspired you to write this handbook?

A couple of things. One is academic and the other is more personal. My academic inspiration was apparently choosing the “wrong” research question for my first book, which was about why protests happen. When I was presenting the finished book, especially to policy-oriented audiences like at the State Department, some people told me diplomatically, but without mincing words, that it was modestly interesting to know why protests happen and why people join them, but they really want to know when protests work. Why do they succeed at winning their goals? Why do they fail? Can we predict these things? And so I dusted off my ego and went back to work. 

My personal inspiration is a sense of responsibility. I’m a citizen of the world, not just a social scientist. And like everyone, I witness a constant parade of injustices. And I ask myself, what can I do about that? Am I doing enough? Does my vote matter? Is my activism worthwhile and what can make it more effective? And then I thought, maybe I can help to answer such questions as a scholar-activist. But it was important for me to make the research available to people who were in the trenches who can take this exciting scientific knowledge about what works and what doesn’t and put it to work for social justice, in combination with their rich experiential knowledge.

When you discuss activism in your book, what do you mean?

It’s a fair question, but I sometimes wave my hand over definitional debates because they are interminable and can distract from the productive work I want to do, which is communicating the scientific findings. At the same time, in the introduction, I talk about how I intend to understand activism very expansively, to include not just the most visible, conspicuous forms of activism, like shouting into a megaphone, but also a lot of the clandestine and sometimes thankless and unsung heroism that activists, especially women activists, have historically performed. And so the book includes examples like the so-called “abortion underground,” where coalitions of Mexican and American activists living in Mexico transport abortion medications over the border into Texas for broader distribution. These folks are deliberately avoiding the megaphone, but they are bold activists nevertheless. I dedicate an entire chapter to activist fundraising, which at first may seem really bland, but it is essential to make major movements get off the ground and succeed – and I learned through my research that the world of fundraising is actually quite fascinating. For instance, the “martyrdom effect” means that people give more money when they have to slightly suffer for the opportunity to donate. So, in short, I define activism as not just protest. 

What’s the Evidence Revolution and why is it important for the social sciences?

The Evidence Revolution refers to the increasing appreciation for and uptake of rigorous scientific evidence to produce better outcomes. It happened at different times in different fields, but overall, it’s mostly a 21st century phenomenon, except in the medical field, which was one of the earliest movers. For whatever reason, even though humans have been demanding the most rigorous evidence for the safety and efficacy of drugs for a long time, we have not until quite recently done the same in other areas of life. 

Little by little this has been changing. We see this in finance, with corporate consultants working to increase profits using evidence-based approaches. Elections are now highly data-driven. Three economists shared the Nobel Prize in 2019 for applying randomized controlled trials to test anti-poverty programs. In sports, we learned through Moneyball that the evidence revolution completely overhauled how managers and coaches get the best performance out of their athletes. We see this almost everywhere except in actual revolutions. 

One of the reasons why is that, over recent decades, research on social movements and protest became technical and increasingly specialized, alienating scholars of social movements from the movements themselves. And as I write in the book, this has had advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that the research we have now on what works and what doesn’t in activism is objectively way better than it was before. For example, we can say with a higher degree of certainty than ever that violence almost always backfires, or that cohesive demands are more persuasive than jumbled demands, or that so-called “slacktivists” can help instead of hurt a movement. 

The big downfall of this increased scientific rigor, however, is the growing rift between the scientists and the people who could potentially benefit from their research. Likewise, scientists need to listen to activists if they want to do their best work – to choose the most pressing research questions, identify the key hypotheses to test, and ensure that they are researching ethically. And that comes back to why I wrote the book. It’s almost like an olive branch or an act of diplomacy to reconnect the activists and the people who study them. Because if we can’t do that right on either side, then we are probably leaving many victories on the table. 

What are some basic recommendations you can give protest leaders in terms of ensuring their activism is more effective? 

The evidence strongly suggests that violence does not pay. It’s not just a matter of choosing nonviolence, it’s also a matter of really displaying your nonviolence, and doing everything you can to prevent the media from erroneously portraying you as violent. We know from a variety of experimental and non-experimental studies that, unsurprisingly, certain demographics are viewed as more violent than they actually are, or at least more deserving of repression for the same level of violence as folks from less marginalized groups. And so seizing the narrative around your own activism is incredibly important. 

Another subtlety in the violence literature is that when the violence is not initiated by the activists, but instead it’s suffered by the activists in the form of repression, that can actually help build public support for the movement. Repression is terrible, but when it happens, activists can turn it around as a weapon to advance their causes.