LEGISLATION AS A MEAN TO STIFLE PROTEST? A quantitative study of democracies

Abstract

Some researchers and Human Rights advocates speak of democracies as shrinking the space for protests using legal measures. But do democracies really respond to threatening protest in this way? This study aims to test whether there is evidence for this, or not, using material based on media searches. The study spans over 19 democracies between the years 1990-2020 and seeks to expand on theories of repression to see if there is a possibility that legislation can be a state response to protest. The result of the study is that laws on public order are found to be weakly correlated to violent protests, something that can indicate the possibility that threatening protest is met with legislation in democratic countries. The findings also confirm what countless other research has established, that repressive acts that include deadly violence against protests such as shootings or killings are rare in democracies, more common is arrests or crowd dispersal.