Introduction

In authoritarian regimes, protesting is risky. Individual protesters are likely to face dire consequences such as police brutality, unfair trials, imprisonment, torture, or even death. Occasionally, however, an anti-regime protest will achieve a high turnout, which helps to reduce the personal risk of participation. For example, drawing on the experience of the “colored revolutions” in some former Soviet Union countries, Thompson and Kuntz (2004) and Tucker (2007) point out that blatant electoral fraud facilitates protests against authoritarian regimes by providing a focal point for mass mobilization. Because “stolen elections” create a widespread discontent in society, citizens know that the protest turnout would be huge. As a result, the risk that individual protesters will be singled out by the repressive apparatus becomes small.

It is important to note that even for anti-regime protests with huge turnout, such as those of the “colored revolutions,” the number of protesters is always a tiny fraction of the population. This is not surprising because ordinary citizens tend to be risk-averse. However disgruntled, they may not tolerate even a modicum of the risk associated with state repression. In addition, people need to work, attend school, hang out with friends, or take care of children. The chance that any individual protester will be able to have a decisive influence on the protest outcome is vanishingly small. For these reasons, rational individuals should not participate in a protest, however low the probability of state repression is.