Protest Matters: The Effects of Protests on Economic Redistribution, Belinda Archibong, Chinemelu Okafor, Evans Osabuohien and Tom Moerenhout

Can citizen-led protests lead to meaningful economic redistribution and nudge governments to increase redistributive efforts of fiscal resources? We study the effects of protests on fiscal redistribution using evidence from Nigeria. We digitized twenty-six 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. Evidence from the large-scale 2012 Occupy Nigeria protests confirms these results. Protesters also face increased police violence. The results show that protests can influence fiscal redistribution.