Protest Matters: The Effects of Protests on Economic Redistribution

Abstract

Can citizen-led protests lead to meaningful economic redistribution and nudge governments to increase their efforts to redistribute fiscal resources? We study the effects of protests on fiscal redistribution using evidence from Nigeria. We digitised 26 years of public finance data from 1988 to 2016 to examine the effects of protests on intergovernmental transfers. We find that protests increase transfers to protesting regions, but only in areas that are politically aligned with disbursing governments. Protesters also face increased police violence. Non-protest conflicts do not affect transfers and protests do not affect non-transfer revenue. The results show that protests can influence fiscal redistribution.