How stable are the public’s assumptions about the legitimacy of contentious tactics? Previous studies show that the public hold a set of assumptions about what counts as legitimate and illegitimate tactics. We enrich this literature by studying the stability of these assumptions through the case of partisan protesting in the United States. Leveraging panel data collected during the 2020 Black Lives Matter and anti-lockdown protests as well as two preregistered survey experiments, we provide the first methodologically rigorous study of the short-term stability of these assumptions. We find that tactics are understood as inherently more legitimate when they are currently carried out by members of the partisan ingroup as opposed to its outgroup. However, although we do find an effect of contention, this is relatively moderate. The assumptions remain remarkably stable. This underscores the consolidated nature of the tactics in the United States and tempers fears of democratic decline in the realm of contention.

中文翻译：

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文化竞争模型的稳定性和波动性


公众对有争议的策略的合法性的假设有多稳定？以前的研究表明，公众对什么是合法和非法策略持有一系列假设。我们通过美国党派抗议的案例来研究这些假设的稳定性，从而丰富了这些文献。利用在 2020 年 Black Lives Matter 和反封锁抗议活动期间收集的面板数据以及两个预先注册的调查实验，我们对这些假设的短期稳定性进行了首次方法论严格的研究。我们发现，当策略目前由党派内部群体的成员而不是其外部群体的成员执行时，它们被理解为本质上更合法。然而，尽管我们确实发现了争用的影响，但这种影响相对较小。假设仍然非常稳定。这凸显了美国策略的整合性，并缓和了对争论领域民主衰落的担忧。