IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0319837.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Understanding street protests: from a mathematical model to protest management

Author

Listed:
  • Sergei Petrovskii
  • Maxim Shishlenin
  • Anton Glukhov

Abstract

Street protests have been a common feature of human society for many centuries. They often act as a driver of social changes but they may also disrupt everyday life and lead to considerable economic losses. Understanding of factors that may affect the duration of street protests and the number of participants is a problem of pivotal importance. Mathematical modelling is an efficient research approach to study this problem. Here we present a novel modelling framework that takes into account heterogeneity of protesters behaviour and the effect of policing. Using the 2018–2019 Yellow Vest Movement in France as a case study, we show that our model is in a very good agreement with data. We also show that a moderate increase in the efficiency of police actions on particular days may have a significant effect on protest’s intensity and duration. Our findings open a possibility for a more efficient protests management.

Suggested Citation

  • Sergei Petrovskii & Maxim Shishlenin & Anton Glukhov, 2025. "Understanding street protests: from a mathematical model to protest management," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 20(4), pages 1-18, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0319837
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0319837
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0319837
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0319837&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0319837?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hager, Anselm & Hensel, Lukas & Hermle, Johannes & Roth, Christopher, 2022. "Group Size and Protest Mobilization across Movements and Countermovements," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 116(3), pages 1051-1066, August.
    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. repec:osf:osfxxx:85mjs_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Anselm Hager & Lukas Hensel & Johannes Hermle & Christopher Roth, 2024. "Political Activists are Not Driven by Instrumental Motives: Evidence from Two Natural Field Experiments," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 274, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    3. Nathan Canen & Anujit Chakraborty, 2022. "Choosing The Best Incentives for Belief Elicitation with an Application to Political Protests," Papers 2210.12549, arXiv.org.
    4. Strauch, Rebecca & Jansesberger, Viktoria & Koos, Sebastian & Spilker, Gabriele, 2024. "Voices of change in the Global South: Understanding the dynamics of environmental protest," Working Papers 37, University of Konstanz, Cluster of Excellence "The Politics of Inequality. Perceptions, Participation and Policies".
    5. Canen, Nathan & Chakraborty, Anujit, 2023. "Belief elicitation in political protest experiments: When the mode does not teach us about incentives to protest," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 216(C), pages 320-331.

    More about this item

    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:plo:pone00:0319837. 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: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    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.