The Cobra Effect: why managing by metrics backfires

With the growing momentum of the “No Kings” protests, activists have increasingly turned to the 3.5% rule—Erica Chenoweth’s observation, based on over a century of historical data, that once a protest movement mobilizes 3.5% of the population, it achieves its goals within a year. As a result, many have begun to treat the 3.5% threshold as a primary objective. Not so fast. Even Chenoweth herself has cautioned that the rule is “a descriptive finding, not necessarily a prescriptive one.” Her sub...