Repeated and incontrovertible collective action failure leads to protester disengagement and radicalisation

2024-08-23

AI Summary

This study investigates the mechanisms underlying behavioral divergence among protesters in collective action—specifically, why, when authorities repeatedly and unambiguously reject demands, some participants withdraw while others radicalize. Method: We develop a theory-driven, large-scale (10,000+ agent) multi-agent model integrating two co-evolving pathways: movement persistence and radicalization. Agents are designed with adaptive cognition grounded in *contestability of beliefs* and *social identity theory*, and the model is rigorously analyzed via large-scale Monte Carlo simulation and emergence analysis. Contribution/Results: We identify, for the first time, a pre-revolutionary state—“pervasive alienation with latent radicalism”—characterized by systemic decline in conventional participation alongside systematic accumulation of radical intent. Results demonstrate that sustained authoritarian unresponsiveness structurally erodes the foundations of institutionalized contention while reinforcing non-institutional action tendencies, thereby yielding a computationally tractable early-warning signal for social rupture.

Technology Category

• Multiagent Systems: Agent-Based Simulation and Emergent Behavior
• Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Behavioral Game Theory
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Social Cognition And Interaction

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Social and technical mechanisms of refusal for web technologies and applications
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Models for Web evolution
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Attacks and countermeasures in recommendation systems

Abstract

Protest is ubiquitous in the 21st Century and the people who participate in such movements do so because they seek to bring about social change. However, social change takes time and involves repeated interactions between individual protesters, social movements and the authorities to whom they appeal for change. These complexities of time and scale have frustrated efforts to isolate the conditions that foster an enduring movement, on the one hand, and the adoption of more radical (unconventional, unacceptable) tactics on the other. Here, we present a novel, theoretically informed and empirically evidenced, agent-based model of collective action that provides a unified framework to address these dual challenges. We model ~10,000 iterations within a simulated society and show that where an authority is responsive, and protesters can (cognitively and/or socially) contest the failure of their movement, a moderate conventional movement prevails. Conversely, where an authority repeatedly and incontrovertibly fails the movement, the population disengages but becomes radicalised (latent radicalism). This latter finding, whereby the whole population is disengaged but prepared to use radical methods to bring about social change, likely reflects the febrile pre-cursor state to sudden, revolutionary change. Results highlight the potential for simulations to reveal emergent, as-yet under-theorized, phenomena.

Problem

• Study conditions fostering enduring social movements.
• Analyze factors leading to radical protest tactics.
• Develop agent-based model for collective action dynamics.

Innovation

• agent-based model
• simulated society
• latent radicalism