Explaining revolutions from below: East Germany in 1989.
Independent Review › Vol. 3 Nbr. 1, June 1998
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Summary
An individual's likelihood of protesting an established form of government can be expressed in a model that incorporates levels of discontent and perceived influence. The intensity of discontent is weighted by the perceived ability to generate change, taking into account both costs and benefits. A sense of obligation to participate also provides a moral incentive.
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Explaining revolutions from below: East Germany in 1989.
Explaining the revolutions of 1989 and 1990 in East Germany and other East European countries presents a challenge to social scientists. Despite the likelihood of severe repression, hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens took to the streets and succeeded in overturning incumbent regimes. The theory of collective action, based on Mancur Olson's seminal work (1965), holds that unless strong positive selective incentives exist and costs of participation are low, an individual in a large group has no incentive to participate in collective action, because an individual has no significant influence on the provision of a public good such as more political freedom. In the former communist countries, a single ordinary citizen did not have any influence to bring about change, and it is highly unlikely that there were positive selective incentives that could match the high costs of repression facing individuals. Yet the prediction of very low participation rates turned out to be false. How can this outcome be explained?
My associates and I have provided a detailed theoretical model to explain the protests and government reactions in 1989 in East Germany (Opp and Gem 1993; Opp 1994; Opp, Voss, and Gem 1995). In regard to the emerging protests, we tested the basic theoretical argument with survey data collected in 1990 about the situation in Leipzig in 1989. That city was the scene of the first demonstration in East Germany-with more than 70,000 participants--that was not crushed by the regime. The Leipzig demonstration set the pace for the demise of the communist state. Su...See the full content of this document
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