Effective activism for the reasonable activist

Measured actions and measured results

The mechanisms of effective activism are similar to the mechanisms which enable effective altruism. Cost to benefit ratio (an alternative is the price to performance ratio) is the criteria for determining if a course of action delivers "more bang for your buck". One of the first questions an effective activist might ask is: "is protesting an effective means for causing political changes?". Another question could be: "under which conditions are protests the most effective means for causing political changes?". Many criteria could influence the effectiveness of political protesting and under certain situations, environments, periods in time, the political protest may be effective. Of course when the conditions are not favorable for political protesting then protesting may not be valuable and may even be counter-productive.

Our key question is what this framework predicts for the reduced form effect of weather on policy, βt. If weather and pc are both perfectly observable to policymakers, it is obvious that policy should not differ across districts (βt = 0). Policymakers will simply adjust the number of protesters for the weather effect. This simple case suggests that Bayesian learning is unlikely to drive our results. That said, it is, indeed, a simple example. Suppose, instead, that the quality of information through which protest size reflects underlying preferences depends on the weather. Weather could then affect incumbents’ beliefs about voter preferences. A straightforward example is a situation in which policymakers get their information from newspapers, and newspapers only view large protests as newsworthy.

Many tools from mathematics, investing, and critical decision making, can help an individual to determine which course of action would be best for them based on their own particular circumstances, positions, risks, etc. Different people may have different options which make sense for them. Risk to benefit analysis, pro and con lists, cost vs benefit, price to performance ratio. Additionally the weather can have influence on the effectiveness of a protest, as can the coverage by the media, as a protest registers the interest or preferences of the public to policy makers. as these public may be potential voters. In specific it is a protesting when it works provokes a Bayesian learning process.

In Lohmann’s framework, protests affect policy through a Bayesian learning process.

When they observe a surprisingly large number of protesters, policymakers update their
beliefs about preferences and the policy they choose to set.13

In the case where it is a Bayesian learning process then politicians will get their information perhaps from polls, newspapers, or media coverage of the protests. Politicians and policy makers in general have to care about the result of the polls.

To avoid a complicated signaling game, we assume that people protest sincerely, because they like to express their political preferences. We make the natural assumption that the payoff from protesting, h(gi,c), is strictly increasing in the benefit of the proposed policy, h0 > 0. There is,therefore, a cutoff value above which voters will protest and below which they will not,

Assuming protesters are rational then a protester would expect a return on their time investment. Hours spent protesting is in the expectation that the reward or payoff will be the attention of policy makers who will then learn their point of view and potentially change the policies. Assuming protesters are honest (and I don't assume this), then this may be true but I would say it is possible there are fake protests, false flags, paid protesters, paid agitators, and provocateurs. For this reason protesting probably does include mostly honest protesters but not every protester will be an honest protester.

What causes our neighbors to change their minds?

The main way to change policy is to change the mind of our neighbors. An effective activist cannot get around changing the minds of people which requires debates, updating the moral norms, the social norms, tracking opinion polls, in a sense it is a media operation. In order to change the mind of our neighbors we have to know what our neighbors actually think and this is why free speech is so important. Censorship doesn't change how our neighbors think but it only changes what they say and when censorship policies are enforced using vigilante methods then it only encourages dishonesty as our neighbors will find it in their self interest to either not reveal their political preferences or to pretend to share our political preferences. For this reason censorship does not seem to be particularly valuable if free speech can be shown to be an effective tool for reasonable activists. I cannot conclude with certainty that free speech is an effective tool but it does seem to be a necessary tool because how can you know what policies to set as a politician if you don't know what anyone really thinks because people say what they think the average citizen or local would want to hear?

What is the goal of activism in the first place?

Activists want to change political policies. An activist will use the tools of their trade, which can include free speech, boycotting, etc. Examples of activists could be the vegan community, where vegans believe that by refusing to buy animal products they can reduce the suffering of animals. The point of the vegan community is to reduce animal suffering, and the means all vegans take to achieve this is a boycott of animal products. It is within the rights of individuals to not buy or support anything they believe is morally wrong, whether it be war, animal suffering, and other concerns. If activists find they are not achieving their goals by their current methods then a constant state of reassessment and refinement is necessary. For example do academic studies and statistics show that the boycott of animal products is having an effect on the meat and animal exploitation industry? Measuring the effects of the boycott is just as important as doing the boycott in the first place and if it is determined that the boycott is having a limited effect then perhaps new approaches must be taken such as developing fake meat or lab grown meat, or finding ways to reduce the suffering of animals that are being consumed. It could be shown someday that lab grown meat ultimately is what allows for the vast majority of the population to go vegan because it would reduce the argument to entirely a moral argument which vegans can win by merely changing moral norms.

What do you care about enough to apply the tactic of activism and how would you go about it?

A question for the community so we can all learn what is and isn't effective activism, what do you care enough about to apply political activism and how would you apply it? If you are currently an activist please share your experience, what has shown to be effective and what has shown to be ineffective?

References

Madestam, A., Shoag, D., Veuger, S., & Yanagizawa-Drott, D. (2013). Do political protests matter? evidence from the tea party movement. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, qjt021.
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