Networks of Dissent: Social Leaders and Protest in an Autocracy

This paper examines how network ties between local social leaders influenced the diffusion of mass protests in an autocracy. We focus on the Protestant Church and the Peaceful Revolution in East Germany. To quantify the role of leader networks in protest diffusion, we compile biographical records of over 1,600 Protestant pastors and construct network ties based on shared employment histories. Our findings reveal that network connections led to an increase in protest diffusion by 7.1 percentage points in a given week. Evidence from quasi-random connections, placebo networks, and an IV strategy supports a causal interpretation of these results.

Buggle, Johannes, Max Deter und Martin Lange (forthcoming), Networks of Dissent: Social Leaders and Protest in an Autocracy, The Economic Journal