What Factors Drive Legislators’ Response to Crises? Evaluating Actions and Behaviour under a Violent Protest Climate in Nigeria.

What are the factors that drive how legislative actors respond and manage protests during social movements? Protests are taken as a feature of democratic expression. However, when they escalate into extreme violence, threatening lives and property, they also impact on how legislators as key governance actors channel the direction of their choices. Among many theoretical explanations, we single out the rational choice theory (RCT) as an analytical framework to assess Nigeria’s 2020 #EndSARS protests. This is because of the RCT’s explanatory focus on how macro-societal, meso-institutional and microindividual level factors shape actors’ preferences, limiting decision making options. During #EndSARS, legislators and legislative symbols were targeted by peaceful and violent protesters alike, and we draw on this to analyse the extent to which the RCT provides explanations for legislative behaviour and the rationality of legislative choices on the one hand, and how the actions demonstrate legislative preferences in responses to protesters, on the other hand. Drawing on secondary data sources complemented with interviews with legislators, we argue instead that the explanations to variations and similarities in the behaviour of legislators during violent protests are largely domiciled at an adjusted meso-level of action where new stakeholders, interests and complex decision-making problems. This, in turn, limits alternatives, patronage and the wider engagement that should inform legislative interventions. To navigate this, legislators adopt a collective than individualised approach to engaging with protest stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]