When Protests Matter: Mobilization and Parties’ Commitment to Social Justice Amid Rising Inequality

Over the past decades, inequality has increased steadily across post-industrial societies, intensifying public demands for state intervention to reduce income disparities. Yet, it remains unclear whether and under what conditions political parties have responded to these demands by enhancing their commitment to inequality reduction. While responsiveness to citizens’ preferences is a foundational criterion for democratic quality, a growing body of research points to a striking disconnect between the policy positions of political elites and the preferences of economically disadvantaged citizens.
This article contributes to the literature on party responsiveness by examining under what conditions parties react to rising inequality. In contrast to much of the existing work, which focuses on electoral channels of engagement, we investigate the role of protest as a driver of responsiveness. Specifically, while previous studies have shown that electoral participation can moderate the effects of inequality on party behavior (Pontusson and Rueda, 2010), our central argument is that parties’ responses to inequality are conditional on the mobilization of low-income citizens through protest. We also add to the existing literature by focusing on how and which parties react to increasing inequality and mobilization. First, we distinguish between symbolic and substantial responsiveness, investigating whether parties respond to rising inequality by enhancing their symbolic commitment to an abstract ideal of social justice and/or by enhancing their programmatic commitment to redistribution via welfare state expansion. Second, we explore whether parties’ symbolic and substantive responsiveness to inequality and protest mobilization is shaped by ideology.
Empirically, we test our expectations using a combined dataset of party manifestos, protest event data, and income inequality indicators across 28 European democracies from 2000 to 2020. Our results show that rising inequality prompts parties to increase their symbolic commitment to social justice, but only in contexts of high protest mobilization. However, protest has no comparable effect on parties’ policy proposals or programmatic commitments. This gap between discourse and action suggests that while protest may raise the salience of inequality, it may be insufficient to translate rhetorical responsiveness into substantive policy engagement.