Expert survey on social movements and protest (Social Change Lab)

We surveyed 120 social and political scientists whose research focuses on social movements. The questions tackled topics such as what makes social movements succeed or fail to meet their goals, the use of specific tactics such as nonviolent disruption, the role of action logic in protest and the relative effectiveness of targeting different stakeholders. We also asked experts to respond to questions specifically addressing the climate and animal advocacy movements. The survey was designed in partnership with Ruud Wouters (Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Tilburg University) and the analysis was completed in partnership with Apollo Academic Surveys. The full results, without our additional analysis and commentary, can be seen on the Apollo website.

Some notable findings were:

• 90% of experts thought that non-violent climate protests targeting the government are at least somewhat effective overall.
• In terms of what makes social movements succeed, experts thought the most important governance and organisational factor is the ability to ‘mobilise and scale quickly in response to external events’. Decentralised decision making was thought to be the least important factor.
• Experts thought the most important tactical and strategic factor for success is ‘the strategic use of nonviolent disruptive tactics’, ranking it as more important than focusing on gaining media coverage or having ambitious goals.
• 69% of experts thought that disruptive tactics are effective for issues (such as climate change) that have high public awareness and support. For issues with high awareness but low support (such as anti-vaccination), only 30% thought disruptive tactics are effective.
• The most important internal factors that can threaten success were ‘internal conflict or movement infighting’ and a ‘lack of clear political objectives’.
• Experts considered the most successful social movements of the last twenty years to be the LGBTQ+ and BLM movements.