A political demonstration is an action by a mass group or collection of groups of people in favor of a political or other cause. Political demonstrations can also take form of people protesting against a cause of concern. These demonstrations can be nonviolent or violent, or may start as nonviolent and then turn violent depending on the circumstances. Collecting more information about what citizens want when they demonstrate against governments, how they demonstrate, and how governments respond allows us to analyze the data in order to assess the political priorities of citizenries around the world.

Data Description

The Mass Mobilization Project has compiled a data set spanning the last three decades documenting protests from around the world. The goal of the project is to understand citizen movements against governments and how those governments respond. The Principle Investigators for the project are David H. Clark (Binghamton University) and Patrick M. Regan (University of Notre Dame). The Mass Mobilization project is sponsored by the Political Instability Task Force (PITF) which is funded by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The data are available here.