In Minneapolis, what began as local organizing against an aggressive federal immigration crackdown has quickly grown into widespread protests against the federal government’s perceived disregard for basic constitutional rights and impunity for state violence. But will the demonstrations actually change anything?

In countries experiencing democratic decline, mass protests can feel decisive in the moment, but they aren’t guaranteed to translate into meaningful change. Recent experience from other backsliding and illiberal democracies suggests that whether protests succeed in constraining executive overreach, fizzle out, or backfire is often shaped by three main factors: the nature of the protests, the coalitions that protesters manage to build, and the ability to translate street muscle into political power. The ongoing protests against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Minneapolis and beyond offer a timely test of these dynamics in the United States.

In Minneapolis, what began as local organizing against an aggressive federal immigration crackdown has quickly grown into widespread protests against the federal government’s perceived disregard for basic constitutional rights and impunity for state violence. But will the demonstrations actually change anything?

In countries experiencing democratic decline, mass protests can feel decisive in the moment, but they aren’t guaranteed to translate into meaningful change. Recent experience from other backsliding and illiberal democracies suggests that whether protests succeed in constraining executive overreach, fizzle out, or backfire is often shaped by three main factors: the nature of the protests, the coalitions that protesters manage to build, and the ability to translate street muscle into political power. The ongoing protests against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Minneapolis and beyond offer a timely test of these dynamics in the United States.

Let’s start with the nature of the protests: Nonviolence is crucial to cultivating and maintaining broad public support. In backsliding democracies, governments face real constraints on their use of force. In contrast to dictatorships such as Iran, security forces in democracies cannot deploy mass violence against peaceful protesters without risking significant legal and political backlash.

However, when protests turn violent or involve property destruction, public sympathy erodesquickly. This, in turn, makes it easier for governments to justify aggressive policing, legal intimidation, and stigmatizing rhetoric to counter popular mobilization, as well as spinning these tactics to members of their coalition as a legitimate response to riots and disorder.

Polish citizens mobilizing against the politicization of the judiciary in 2015 took this lesson to heart, placing great emphasis on appearing nonaggressive. In present-day Serbia, student protesters have similarly worked hard to keep their demonstrations peaceful, including by disbanding when confronted by provocateurs seeking to instigate unrest. In the United States, the “No Kings” rallies last year and the recent anti-ICE protests have likewise remainedlargely nonviolent, despite aggressive law enforcement tactics. The widespread Black Lives Matter protests following the killing of George Floyd in 2020, by contrast, included some pockets of violence and property damage, and demonstrated the challenge of containing such behavior as movements grow. Even when most protesters are peaceful, media coverage tends to foreground and amplify violent events, thereby distorting public perceptions.

Second, mass protests are more difficult to dismiss or repress if they draw from many different parts of society and cut into the ruling leader’s or party’s base of support. Pro-democracy protests are often driven by urban, educated, and middle-class citizens concentrated in opposition strongholds. This pattern makes these movements less threatening to illiberal governments. The 2013 protests in Turkey, for instance, were triggered by public opposition to an urban redevelopment project at Istanbul’s Gezi Park. Most of the protesters were young, left-wing, and educated, which made it easier for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to paint them as radical extremists and violently suppress them without losing his base.

A similar problem afflicted the Komitet Obrony Demokracji (KOD) movement that mobilized democracy defenders in Poland between 2015 and 2017. Although KOD protests drew large crowds, most participants were opposition supporters from the country’s biggest cities. The movement never expanded to the vast rural areas that made up the bulk of the ruling Law and Justice party’s constituency. While KOD activists succeeded in drawing attention to the political capture of Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal and other illiberal measures, they failed to reverse these developments or catalyze opposition victories in the 2019 and 2020 elections.

By contrast, Serbia’s ongoing student movement has been successful in broadening its coalition over the past year, increasing its support even among those who have traditionally backed the ruling government. To do so, protesters have built bridges to earlier protest movements, including those led by teachers and farmers. They have staunchly distanced themselves from the political opposition and traditional civil society actors, thereby broadening their appeal to citizens skeptical of politicians and elites writ large (and undercutting key lines of governmental attack). They have also engaged in targeted outreach to rural areas, such as by organizing marches through different parts of the country. As a result, the movement marks the biggest challenge to Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and the ruling Serbian Progressive Party to date.

Finally, mass protests have proven most effective at stemming democratic erosion if they can bring their momentum into the halls of government. Nonviolent resistance can politicize citizens, generate new civic ties, and slow down or even reverse unpopular policies. In flawed democracies that still have functioning elections, however, the longer-term impact of protests often depends on translating street pressure into institutional action, whether by empowering courts and legislators to act more decisively, fueling divisions in the ruling coalition, or channeling citizen discontent into elections.

In Poland, for instance, civic organizations played a critical role in channeling the energy unleashed by the 2020 mass protests against new abortion restrictions into voter turnout initiatives ahead of the 2023 parliamentary elections, using a wide variety of digital tools. One study found that on average, each eligible voter was exposed at least 13 times to messages encouraging them to vote. In other words, pro-democracy advocates did not assume that previous protests against the government would automatically drive voter turnout and pursued targeted initiatives to get young people invested in the elections. In the end, record levels of youth turnout proved decisive in defeating the ruling Law and Justice government and halting the country’s trajectory of democratic erosion.

In another recent example, South Koreans took to the streets in December 2024 after President Yoon Suk-yeol, of the conservative People Power Party (PPP), abruptly declared martial law (a move that was quickly blocked by the country’s National Assembly). Widespread public opposition—including among a majority of conservative voters—created pressure on some conservative lawmakers to distance themselves from the president’s actions. While a first vote to impeach Yoon failed, 12 PPP legislators switched sides to join the opposition in a second vote, ultimately impeaching him.

In Serbia, meanwhile, protesters’ reluctance to work with the opposition has complicated their efforts to exert electoral influence. By rejecting any party slogans or affiliations and centering their demands on corruption, justice, and accountability rather than a sweeping ideological program, Serbian students have brought in new allies that previous Serbian pro-democracy movements struggled to reach. This approach, however, has come at the cost of strained relations with some opposition parties and values-aligned civil society groups. Students are now spearheading their own electoral list for the next elections.

The Serbian example highlights an important tension in coalition-building. In polarized societies, movements expand more easily beyond existing lines of polarization if their goals and messaging remain focused and nonpartisan. Yet this can make it more difficult to connect with existing opposition parties, particularly if these are widely distrusted.

Protest movements in Minnesota and the United States writ large will have to grapple with similar strategic questions. For example, there is often a trade-off between goals and tactics that energize a movement’s core supporters and those that sustain the broadest possible coalition. Given that many of U.S. President Donald Trump’s immigration policies remain popular with a significant share of the electorate, demands focused on reigning in ICE’s abuses of power, investigating recent killings, and protecting the rule of law are likely to attract more cross-cutting support. More maximalist goals, such as abolishing ICE or halting deportations altogether, may galvanize activists and the Democratic Party’s base, but they also risk narrowing the movement’s appeal.

In the aftermath of the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, groups across the country organized “ICE Out of Everywhere” protests on Jan. 30. The organizers behind last year’s “No Kings” demonstrations have also announced a new wave of mass mobilization planned for this spring. As in other democracies under strain, the political impact of these protests will depend in large part on community organizers and advocates connecting their movements to a broader political strategy. This could include creating channels for voter registration and mobilization ahead of the midterm elections, foregrounding messages that appeal to and reach wide shares of the electorate and that counteract polarization, and increasing pressure on Republican lawmakers in competitive districts. If such channels fail to emerge, protests can become a recurring expression of dissent that ultimately does not change existing power structures or political faultlines.