Replication Data for: Protest Brokers and the Technology of Mobilization: Evidence from South Africa

Why do some communities protest to demand change, while other seemingly similar communities do not? A large body of literature has found that elites play an important role in this regard, and documented the wide variety of mobilization tactics they use. While such arguments go some way towards explaining protest patterns, however, the literature has so far struggled to explain why some elites are able to employ these mobilization tactics so much more effectively than others. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in South Africa, I argue that closer attention to the technology of mobilization helps to explain these patterns. Specifically, I identify the critical role played by protest brokers – intermediaries who connect elites desiring mobilization with potential protesters. Without these brokers, I argue, many elites lack the local knowledge, connections, and trust necessary to mobilize collective action, significantly decreasing the likelihood of protest occurrence, and helping to explain where protests happen.

Replication data includes:
1. Two replication datasets (SJL_CPS_Replication Dataset & SJL_CPS_Replication Dataset Apartheid)
2. R code to create Table C.2: Regression Analysis (for case selection)
3. South African Protest Dataset (SAPD) codebook to accompany the subset SAPD data in the replication datasets
4. Overview of Data – a document containing information on all the variables in the two replication datasets