Prof. Aseem Prakash and colleague Prof. Nives Dolšak ask whether the stunt on the Mona Lisa will help with climate issues.
"Last week, a climate activist threw a pastry at the Mona Lisa in Paris’ Louvre Museum...
This was not an impulsive act because the vandal put on a wig and faked a disability to use a wheelchair. So, what might have been the vandal’s “theory of policy change”?
We speculate it was something along the following lines: a dramatic act will draw public attention to climate issues and create demand for climate action.
Social movements deploy several tactics, disruption being one of them. Think of sit-ins, walk-outs, marches, hunger strikes, and consumer boycotts. The theory is that disruption raises issue salience and imposes costs on the disrupted actors, motivating them to change behavior or adopt new policies."