Youth and LGBTQ+ participation in nonviolent action

This report introduces the Women in Resistance + (WiRe+) dataset, which includes novel measures of youth and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer + (LGBTQ+) participation in maximalist nonviolent campaigns from 1990-2020. The data reveals that movements with extensive youth participation tend to succeed, and that youth participation is associated with improvements to democratic quality in the post-campaign period. However, youth participation is associated with increased repression, even though movements with high youth participation are not more likely to resort to violence. LGBTQ+ participation is strongly associated with youth frontline participation and the presence of youth organizations in social movements. And worryingly, beyond broad improvements to democracy, neither youth nor LGBTQ+ participation is associated with improvements to material wellbeing for those groups in post-campaign periods. Thus, while youth and LGBTQ+ participation in social movements may have inclusive democratizing effects, movements and their supporters must do more to empower these actors with the tools, skills, and enabling environment needed for their own political advocacy.