Author(s) Chonghyun Choi and Dongwook Kim Keywords protest, democracy, social movement, contentious politics, Asia Abstract What determines cross-national variations in the extent of anti-government protests in Asia? Anti-government protests have surged across Asia in recent years, with many contributing to consequential political change. However, systematic cross-national comparison of the determinants of protests inAsia is still largelymissing. This article fills this important gap by quantitatively examining the explanatory power of the three main theories of contentious politics—grievance, resource mobilization, and political process theories—in the Asian context with new data on anti-government protests in all 25 Asian states from 1990 to 2016. The analysis finds that urbanization, information and communication technology, and regional demonstration effects are the strong catalysts of anti-government protests inAsia,while repressive state capacity particularly dampens protests. The findings offer important insights into the dynamics of the anti-government protests that have become increasingly salient in Asian politics. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/jea.2019.23 Author(s) Bio Chonghyun Choi (chonghyunchoi@gmail.com), who received his PhD from the University of Notre Dame, is Lecturer in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea. His research interests include political economy of distribution and redistribution, regime change, and labor politics. His dissertation examines the distributional consequences of democracy, with a focus on the reasons why democracy does not always reduce inequality. Dongwook Kim (corresponding author, dongwook.kim@anu.edu.au), who received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is Lecturer in the School of Politics and International Relations at the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. He was CDDRL Hewlett Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University, Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Chicago, and Assistant Professor of Political Science at Marquette University. He specializes in human rights, international law and organizations, and transnational nongovernmental activism. His research has appeared in International Organization and European Journal of International Relations.