New Scientist - USA (2019-06-22)

(Antfer) #1
22 June 2019 | New Scientist | 21

Extinction Rebellion
protests have disrupted
London in recent months

goal. The bill became law in March
2010 and still stands today.
Veuger says the effects of
protest may be more local, or more
diffuse. “The ACA passed before
the first election in the fall of 2010
in which the Tea Party could have
an impact. But they were still
successful. Nothing along those
lines has passed after the 2010
midterms,” he says.
The effects of protest can also
hit policy-makers where it hurts:
the economy. Daron Acemoglu
at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology and his colleagues
looked at how the Egyptian stock
market was affected by the mass
demonstrations in Tahrir Square
in Cairo in 2011, which ended
with the resignation of president
Hosni Mubarak.
The team analysed stock returns
of 177 firms listed on the Egyptian
stock exchange between 2005
and 2013 and found that more
protesters in the streets led to
lower market valuations for those
firms whose shareholders and
board members were connected
to the National Democratic Party,
the party of Mubarak. A turnout
of 500,000 protesters in Tahrir
Square was correlated with a
0.8 per cent lower valuation in
those companies than the firms
unaffiliated with members of the
political party in power.
Economic pressure can affect
policy-makers and the same goes
for social change. For example,
although the Women’s March
suffered from not having specific
policy goals, that doesn’t mean it
wasn’t successful, says Hennessey.
After January 2017, the MeToo
movement to bring to light and
end sexual violence really took
hold. “I don’t think the MeToo
movement would have gained
traction in the same way without
it. You need a crack and then the
water starts to seep in,” she says. ❚

protests in their districts.
Larger protests correlated with
higher turnout at subsequent
town hall meetings with
congressional leaders, while
smaller protests lowered the
probability of a representative’s
vote aligning with protesters’
demands by 8.7 per cent.
And every Tea Party protester

in a district was related to an
increase of between seven and
15 Republican voters in the area.
The sustained Tea Party protests
also led to more media coverage
of the movement and its aims to
limit government spending, and
added members and financial
contributions to the movement.
It wasn’t fully successful,
however. When it came to
major national legislation, such
as the Affordable Care Act (ACA)
healthcare bill that was so
vehemently opposed by the
Tea Party that the movement’s
proponents in Congress shut
down the government over it,
the protesters didn’t achieve their

invasion of Iraq, yet it still went
ahead. Although the marches
rallied people to the cause, they
ultimately failed to change the
policy the movement opposed.
Still, protests do sometimes
appear to directly affect policy,
as a case study of the Tea Party
movement in the US found.
In April 2009, there were a
series of rallies that began with
hundreds of thousands of people
gathering in US cities to protest
against spending by the Obama
administration. That was followed
by rallies throughout the following
spring and summer targeting local
taxes and budgeting decisions.
According to Stan Veuger at
the American Enterprise Institute,
they were successful. He and his
colleagues analysed the sizes
of these protests and measured
related changes in voting patterns
and policy change by comparing
the way members of Congress
voted before and after the protests.
They found that members of
Congress were more likely to vote
conservatively – in line with Tea
Party principles – after large

▲ Tiny bagels
Spare a thought for those
brunching in the Bronze
Age. Archaeologists have
found what seem to be
3000-year-old bagels.
You’d need a lot – they are
just 3 centimetres across.

▲ Space oddity
It is one giant leap for DJs.
Luca Parmitano is due
to perform the first DJ set
from space in August
from the International
Space Station.

▼ Fake CEOs
A video of Facebook’s Mark
Zuckerberg speaking with
the emotion of a robot has
appeared online. Yes, we
were surprised it was an
AI-generated fake too.

▼ Face control
Your face could soon be
your passport. But if data
breaches occur, like the US
one last week, you may
need to get a new face ...

▼ Blood crystals
It is a new age for the
new age. Healing crystals
are having a revival,
but mining them is bad
news for the planet.

Working
hypothesis
Sorting the week’s
supernovae from
the absolute zeros

More Insight online
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“It wasn’t people with
Molotov cocktails and
bandannas. It was Sharon
from down the street”

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