Social Movements and Preferences for Redistribution: A Public Opinion Study

What is the role of protests in shaping preferences for redistribution? Classic rational choice models predicting a positive effect of inequality on redistributive policies have been reinterpreted by incorporating the role of power relations within countries. However, there is little empirical evidence connecting political mobilization with redistributive demands. The literature on redistributive demands has highlighted the importance of perceptions in shaping preferences for redistribution, while we still know little about whether this experimental evidence might translate to reality. As beliefs or informational cues -and their effects on preferences for redistribution- have been proven very stable over time, only political crises, such as those provoked by important social movements, seem to change such cultural and informational environments. To test these expectations, I rely on a most-likely case approach with an ‘unexpected event during survey design’ methodology, studying the effect of a number of protests: anti-austerity waves in 2011 in Portugal and Spain, and the French gilets jaunes in 2018 and their spillover effects in Belgium and Switzerland. The results show that these protests led to higher redistributive demands, providing new insights into inequality and mobilization research. Moreover, they translate the findings from the experimental literature on preferences for redistribution to actual political contexts.