FORTHCOMING PAPER ALERT
Two major findings in political science are that (1) protests are a channel for citizens to signal their preferences to representatives, and (2) representatives are less responsive to the political preferences of the poor and minorities. 1/

One might think a natural combination of these is that protests by those with more resources will have more influence than those by groups with fewer resources. 2/

In a Forthcoming BJPS paper, @LaGina_Gause develops a formal model which shows that the opposite may be true: protests from groups with fewer resources can have a bigger impact on representative behavior. 3/
https://app.box.com/s/05wzlgf4412o05lk4mki5gtd78dxvahx

The broad intuition is that protest is more costly for groups with fewer resources, and so when they show up on the streets it is a more credible signal that the issue is very important to them, which can force legislators to vote how they prefer. 4/

The model has a group with an exogenous (common knowledge) resource level, and private information about the salience of an issue. A representative wants to vote the way the group prefers if it is high salience but not low salience. 5/

Protest is more costly for (1) low resource groups, and (2) groups where the issue is less salient. 6/

The main result is easiest to see in a semi-separating equilibrium where the group always protests high salience issues, and mixes when the issue is low salience. The representative never votes with the group without protest, and mixes after seeing protest. 7/

The representative must respond to protest with a probability that makes the group indifferent when the issue is low salience. Since low resource groups find protest more costly in general, the representative must respond to them more often to compensate. 8/

Gause then tests these predictions by pulling together data on protests, legislator behavior, and district preferences. Legislators are more responsive to the preferences of protesters when they are low income and non-white. 9/

See the paper for more detail, and more information about Gause's work can be found here:
https://www.laginagause.com/ 

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