War of attrition in the streets: Rethinking the dynamics of protest participation, by Sofía Correa
For VoxDEV
Why do some protests grow quickly into large movements that force governments to respond, whereas others slowly die out? What drives individuals to join and what determines when a government decides to concede?Understanding the dynamics of protest participation has long been a focus of economics and social sciences (Yang and Yuchtman 2024). Seminal work by Granovetter (1978) and Kuran (1989) showed how individual decisions—based on differing thresholds for joining—can trigger cascading participation. More recently, Enikolopov et al. (2023) introduced a model where participation is shaped by social image concerns, assuming government behaviour as fixed, finding that protest participation tends to decline over time.
My research presents a new economic model that advances this literature by jointly modelling the strategic behaviour of both protesters and the government (Correa 2025). Grounded in game theory, it views protests not as static episodes but as dynamic contests with distinct phases—rising tensions and potential concessions. Methodologically, the model resembles a war of attrition (Hendricks et al. 1988, Gieczewski 2025), where both sides endure costs over time, each waiting for the other to yield.
In contrast to earlier models, this framework captures how protests often involve long periods of standoff, grow to a critical point, and then decline, not because the cause has weakened, but because the government strategically concedes and the perceived benefit of continued participation falls.
Read the full article on VoxDEV.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sofía Correa is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering at the Universidad de Chile. She earned her Ph.D. in Economics from New York University. Her research focuses on applied theory, with a particular interest in political economy.
