What about only radicals protesting?
What about only radicals protesting? If all radicals protest, then there is a total of 100 protestors, so each radical’s payoff is That’s not good enough to make protesting optimal: there just aren’t enough rad- icals in society to sustain an equilibrium protest with only their participation. However, if both radicals and progressives protest, then a progressive’s payoff is
Hence, all of the progressives are out there demon- strating, and we know that the radicals will be out there with them. By contrast, a bourgeois wants no part of such a demonstration, as his payoff from protest- ing is It is then an equilibrium for only radicals and progressives to protest.
Finally, it is also an equilibrium for everyone to protest. If a bourgeois ex- pects all other citizens to participate, the payoff from joining them is
which makes protesting optimal. It is then opti- mal for the radicals and progressives to participate as well.
In sum, equilibrium can involve the total absence of demonstrations, a modest demonstration with 40% of the citizens, and massive demonstrations with full participation. How deep into a society a protest will draw depends on the citizens’ expectations. If they expect a massive protest, then there’ll be one; if they expect no turnout, then that is what there will be. It is all about expec- tations and, from the citizens’ perspective, about coordinating on the belief that there will be a high level of participation.
Some of the issues just raised were central to the mass protests that led to the collapse of the authoritarian regime of the German Democratic Republic (GDR).10 Amidst increasing dissatisfaction with the quality of life and the absence of basic freedoms, the people of the GDR city of Leipzig launched a growing series of protests beginning in September 1989. They all took place on Monday because, around 6:00 in the evening, people would come out of church after religious services. They would then cross the central square of Karl-Marx-Platz and pick up more people as they walked through the city. On September 25, more than 6,000 people partici- pated and called for political liberalization. By the following Monday, the protests had risen to almost 18,000. Then came the critical protest the Monday after that:11
On October 9 a third demonstration took place against the background of an ominous rumor that spread quickly through Leipzig (and was later con- firmed): [general secretary Erich] Honecker himself had signed the Schießbefehl (order to shoot) for a Chinese solution to the protest. . . . At 5:45 P.M., just fifteen minutes before the end of the peace prayers, the po- lice and the military withdrew, and about sixty thousand unarmed, fright- ened, and yet determined people demonstrated peacefully. . . . The demon- stration broke the back of the regime. . . . Over 100,000 people demon- strated on October 16; 245,000 on October 23; about 285,000 on October 30; and 325,000 on November 6. Meanwhile, mass demonstrations erupted all over the GDR.
5,000(� 50 � 500 � 20,000),
�9,950(� 50 � 201 � 20,000).
2,000(� 50 � 200 � 8,000).
�1,000(� 50 � 100 � 6,000).
�5,950(� 50 � 1 � 6,000),
5.4 Selecting among Nash Equilibria 137
TABLE 5.8 shows the growth of protests throughout the GDR. These protests had no leader and were the creation of many people acting on their own, but presumably with the anticipation that others would do the same. The power of the people ruled the day, as these protests led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the unification of East and West Germany.
A Mass Demonstration at the Berlin Wall