'What Is Is Always Becoming What Ought to Be': How Political Action Generates a Participation Norm

There are different processes that lead to the emergence of norms. One process begins with a behavioural regularity. It is often claimed in the literature that if such a behavioural regularity has been established the respective behaviour turns into a norm: what is becomes what ought to be. This paper addresses the question whether this proposition is a general law, or whether it holds only under certain conditions. To answer this question the focus is on a particular kind of behaviour, viz. political protest behaviour. The question is then whether and, if so, under what conditions political action generates a norm to participate. In the first part, some propositions are suggested which are then tested with a two-wave panel study. One finding is that political action affects the acceptance of a protest norm indirectly. The intervening variables are norm-generating incentives. The data indicate that protesters are exposed to these incentives to a particularly high extent.