IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/drm/wpaper/2023-23.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Is participatory democracy in line with social protest? Evidence from the French Yellow Vests movement

Author

Listed:
  • Benjamin Monnery
  • François-Charles Wolff

Abstract

Participatory democracy and public consultations are increasingly being used to shape public policy or resolve political issues. In France, the Grand Débat was launched in early 2019 as a democratic response to the Yellow Vests movement, a massive grassroots social protest. With more than 500,000 participants, the Grand Débat platform was interpreted as a popular success by the government and the media, but little is known about which citizens expressed their opinions online. Although participants on the platform were anonymous and only answered public policy questions, we are able to infer their support for the Yellow Vests movement by using a second platform (a Facebook app) that asks similar questions as well as support for the Yellow Vests. We find that a large majority of participants in the Grand Débat did not support the Yellow Vests movement, in contrast to the general population at the time. This is evidence of a strong self-selection of participants on political grounds, resulting in a biased representation of French public opinion.

Suggested Citation

  • Benjamin Monnery & François-Charles Wolff, 2023. "Is participatory democracy in line with social protest? Evidence from the French Yellow Vests movement," EconomiX Working Papers 2023-23, University of Paris Nanterre, EconomiX.
    • Handle: RePEc:drm:wpaper:2023-23
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://economix.fr/pdf/dt/2023/WP_EcoX_2023-23.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gorodnichenko, Yuriy & Pham, Tho & Talavera, Oleksandr, 2021. "Social media, sentiment and public opinions: Evidence from #Brexit and #USElection," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 136(C).
    2. Aragonès, Enriqueta & Sánchez-Pagés, Santiago, 2009. "A theory of participatory democracy based on the real case of Porto Alegre," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 56-72, January.
    3. Hamza Bennani & Pauline Gandré & Benjamin Monnery, 2020. "Les déterminants locaux de la participation numérique au grand débat national : une analyse économétrique," Revue économique, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 71(4), pages 715-737.
    4. Hainmueller, Jens & Xu, Yiqing, 2013. "ebalance: A Stata Package for Entropy Balancing," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 54(i07).
    5. Ioannis Theodossiou & Alexandros Zangelidis, 2020. "Inequality and Participative Democracy: A Self‐Reinforcing Mechanism," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 66(1), pages 74-93, March.
    6. Sergei Guriev & Elias Papaioannou, 2022. "The Political Economy of Populism," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 60(3), pages 753-832, September.
    7. Emanuel V. Towfigh & Sebastian J. Goerg & Andreas Glöckner & Philip Leifeld & Aniol Llorente-Saguer & Sophie Bade & Carlos Kurschilgen, 2016. "Do direct-democratic procedures lead to higher acceptance than political representation?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 167(1), pages 47-65, April.
    8. Feng Shi & Misha Teplitskiy & Eamon Duede & James A. Evans, 2019. "The wisdom of polarized crowds," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 3(4), pages 329-336, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Manuel Funke & Moritz Schularick & Christoph Trebesch, 2023. "Populist Leaders and the Economy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 113(12), pages 3249-3288, December.
    2. Maximiliano Marzetti & Rok Spruk, 2023. "Long-Term Economic Effects of Populist Legal Reforms: Evidence from Argentina," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 65(1), pages 60-95, March.
    3. Adrian Nicholas Gachet, 2022. "Help Me Help You? Populism and Distributive Politics in Ecuador," Economics Discussion Paper Series 2205, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    4. Vigvári, Gábor, 2022. "Transzformáció és a populizmus a visegrádi országokban [Transformation and populism in the V4 countries]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(3), pages 339-366.
    5. Marco Manacorda & Guido Tabellini & Andrea Tesei, 2022. "Mobile internet and the rise of political tribalism in Europe," CEP Discussion Papers dp1877, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    6. Otrachshenko, Vladimir & Tyurina, Elena & Nagapetyan, Artur, 2022. "The economic value of the Glass Beach: Contingent valuation and life satisfaction approaches," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 198(C).
    7. Daniel Fackler & Lisa Hölscher & Claus Schnabel & Antje Weyh, 2022. "Does working at a start-up pay off?," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 58(4), pages 2211-2233, April.
    8. Renata Baborska & Emilio Hernandez & Emiliano Magrini & Cristian Morales-Opazo, 2020. "The impact of financial inclusion on rural food security experience: A perspective from low-and middle-income countries," Review of Development Finance Journal, Chartered Institute of Development Finance, vol. 10(2), pages 1-18.
    9. Boasiako, Kwabena Antwi & Adasi Manu, Sylvester & Antwi-Darko, Nana Yaw, 2022. "Does financing influence the sensitivity of cash and investment to asset tangibility?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    10. Campo, Francesco & Giunti, Sara & Mendola, Mariapia, 2024. "Refugee crisis and right-wing populism: Evidence from the Italian Dispersal Policy," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 168(C).
    11. Eriksson, Katherine & Alsan, Marcella & Niemesh, Gregory T., 2020. "Understanding the Success of the Know-Nothing Party," CEPR Discussion Papers 15562, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    12. Ajzenman, Nicolás & Aksoy, Cevat Giray & Guriev, Sergei, 2022. "Exposure to transit migration: Public attitudes and entrepreneurship," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    13. Carreño Bustos, José Gabo & Huizinga, Harry & Uras, Burak, 2024. "Flexible Labor Contracts, Firm-specific Pay, and Wages," Discussion Paper 2024-010, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    14. Desai, Raj M. & Olofsgård, Anders, 2019. "Can the poor organize? Public goods and self-help groups in rural India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 33-52.
    15. Themann, Michael & Koch, Nicolas, 2021. "Catching up and falling behind: Cross-country evidence on the impact of the EU ETS on firm productivity," Ruhr Economic Papers 904, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    16. Everding, Jakob & Marcus, Jan, 2020. "The effect of unemployment on the smoking behavior of couples," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 29(2), pages 154-170.
    17. Monica Martinez-Bravo & Carlos Sanz, 2022. "The Management of the Pandemic and its Effects on Trust and Accountability," Working Papers wp2022_2207, CEMFI.
    18. Vincenzo Carrieri & Apostolos Davillas & Andrew M. Jones, 2023. "Equality of opportunity and the expansion of higher education in the UK," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 69(4), pages 861-885, December.
    19. Best, Rohan & Sinha, Kompal, 2021. "Fuel poverty policy: Go big or go home insulation," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    20. Duede, Eamon & Teplitskiy, Misha & Lakhani, Karim & Evans, James, 2024. "Being together in place as a catalyst for scientific advance," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(2).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    participatory democracy; social protest; public opinion; selection on observables and unobservables;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • C53 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Forecasting and Prediction Models; Simulation Methods

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:drm:wpaper:2023-23. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Valerie Mignon (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/modemfr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.