Rules Consciousness or Rights Consciousness? A Structural Equation Model of the Relationship between Sociopolitical Values and the Protest Potential among Chinese Citizens

Research on protests and social movements in China has mushroomed alongside the rising occurrences of mass incidents. What drives up citizens’ protest potential, however, has led to two competing theories: the “rights consciousness” view and the “rules consciousness” view. By fitting structural equation model on a nationally representative survey dataset, this paper specifies and estimates these two competing explanations of an individual’s...