One of the sub-themes in American security discourse in the Trump years has been the potential for reassertion of legislative power. After decades of ever-expanding executive control over everything from wars abroad to policing at home, many in Congress have sought to get themselves back at the table as a co-equal branch of government and play a bigger role in important security policy decisions. This week and next, we’ll use Deep Dive to look at recent research on what might happen if those efforts succeed. How might legislative responses to today’s concerns differ from executive responses?

In a forthcoming paper in the British Journal of Political Science, University of California San Diego political scientist LaGina Gause develops a formal model to explain why legislative bodies are more responsive to some protests than to others. Given how politics usually go, it would be reasonable to think that the kinds of people who enjoy societal advantages — that is, rich people with privileged racial and gender identities — would be more likely to be heard in the halls of power when they take to the streets. Instead, Gause argues, some forms of protest are more effective at driving legislative action when less privileged people do it.

Protests can send a lot of messages to a lot of different audiences at once, but to legislators they say one thing: the subject of these protests matters to the protesters and it should matter to you, too. For legislators, who may have differing priorities and policy preferences but still want to keep their jobs in the next election, the question is how much it matters. Is this protest a sign that inaction on a given issue is a political death knell, or will the issue actually blow over well before the next time voters go to the polls? As Gause points out, the main way legislators can gauge how serious the protesters are is the cost they incur by protesting. All other things being equal, a person willing to be arrested for a cause likely cares more about that cause than someone who is only willing to black out their Instagram.

Of course, very few things are equal, and some people have to give up more to protest than others. For people who have fewer resources at their disposal, marching in the streets is much more costly relative to the cost for people who have savings, can take time off from work and have less reason to fear police violence if they march. In Gause’s model, therefore, legislators place more value on protests by under-resourced people than by others because their protests demonstrate a commitment to the issue that is harder to discern among those with more cushion.

Gause found evidence for her model in data from the US Congress. Looking at votes on civil rights issues in the early 1990s, Gause was able to track whether protests made a difference in legislative action, and whether the identity of protesters made a difference. Her less surprising finding is that collective action got the goods — Congress was more likely to act on an issue if people protested about it than if they just told pollsters that they cared about it. More surprising, but confirming her theory, Gause found that legislators valued protests by low-income people and racial and ethnic minorities higher than protests by richer, whiter groups. When people put it all on the line in the street, Congress was much more willing to listen.

The World spoke to Zimbabwean author Tsitsi Dangarembga about the ongoing protests in her country against President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s economic management and response to COVID-19. Dangarembga was arrested at a protest in Harare, and was released on bail. She told The World that “the future of Zimbabwe looks troubled” but that she has hope because now “I have a sense that Zimbabweans are willing to take some risks — not huge risks, because we know how repressive reactions from the government can be. But I do feel that Zimbabweans are becoming bolder at talking about the issues and the repression.”

Jonathan Hunt marked the 75th anniversary of the United States’ nuclear attack on Hiroshima, Japan, by recounting the story of Red Cross official Fritz Bilfinger, who was sent to Hiroshima shortly after the bombing to determine if the US had committed a war crime by unleashing a new, horrific weapon on a city full of civilians. Bilfinger described the scenes he found as “surpassing all imagination,” with ground zero a wasteland and hospitals struggling to treat irradiated patients. Decades later, The Red Cross finally adopted Bilfinger’s recommendation that the organization support a total ban on nuclear weapons.

Rupa Shenoy reported on the case of Ding Jaixi, a Chinese pro-democracy activist who has been held incommunicado by the Chinese government since December. Ding is a longtime activist — he protested at Tiananmen Square in 1989 — and is a leader in the Citizens Movement, a Chinese reformist organization. He was collecting signatures on a petition urging government officials to disclose family assets when he was arrested by plainclothes officers. Other detained Citizens Movement organizers have been released since, but Ding has not even been allowed to see a lawyer. His family has not heard from him and does not know where he is being held.

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