Protest shows participants and bystanders how many others already agree

The argument

The second argument concerns information, and it is addressed less to those in power than to everyone else. Proponents of this position argue that people who hold an unpopular-seeming view usually cannot tell how unpopular it actually is. Each of them knows their own opinion and suspects they are alone in it, and that suspicion is itself what keeps them quiet, since the cost of speaking first falls on whoever speaks first. A protest, on this account, resolves that uncertainty in public and all at once. Proponents argue that a person who turns up expecting a few hundred and finds a filled square learns something they had no other way of learning, and so does every onlooker and every official watching. The grievance stops being a private complaint and becomes a visible constituency, which is a different political object. They add that this is why turnout matters so much more than argument at a demonstration: the content is the count. Proponents argue that the consequences follow from there. People who now know they are many are willing to say so at work, in their families and at the ballot box; those who were sympathetic but silent join; and politicians who had treated the position as marginal have to revise their estimate of what it costs to oppose it. On this account protest is effective not because it converts anyone on the day but because it destroys the impression of isolation that kept a majority or a substantial minority from acting like one. The argument concludes that protests work by making support visible, and that visible support is what changes political calculations.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics answer that a crowd is a poor measure of support, because attendance depends on who lives nearby, who can take the day off and who is organised, so a filled square shows mobilisation rather than numbers and can badly mislead everyone reading it. They add that the signal runs both ways: a demonstration also tells the people who disagree how many they are, and the counter-mobilisation it provokes is frequently larger. Critics further note that if the real work is done by making support visible, then surveys, membership figures and elections do that more accurately and at far lower cost, which makes protest redundant on its own account.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] People estimate how widely a view is shared from conversation, elections, surveys and the media they consume, so the isolation the premise describes is not the normal condition. [Rejecting P2] A turnout measures organisation, geography and who can take a day off rather than the size of the support, so what onlookers observe is a misleading figure. [Rejecting P3] The signal also reaches opponents, whose counter-mobilisation is frequently larger, so politicians may revise their estimate in the other direction. [Rejecting C] At most it follows that visible support changes political calculations, in which case elections and membership figures do the same work more accurately and at lower cost.