Abstract
Having incorporated the characteristics of Chinese politics, this article puts forward an exploratory analytic framework for understanding protest success and points out how political opportunities and protest frames can explain protest success. Political opportunities not only include direct intervention by the central government but also support from state-sponsored media and favourable policies and laws. This article uses the method of fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to compare 40 socially influential cases of anti-demolition protests in China. The results show that the co-presence of central government intervention and supportive reports from central state-sponsored media—which this study calls “multi-channelled forceful intervention”—is a sufficient condition for protest success. Further, “multi-channelled forceful intervention” depends on a favourable institutional environment and protestors’ strategic use of multiple frames. This article not only enriches the studies on protest results but also expands on the theory of political opportunity structures and the study of protest frames.
Highlights
Having incorporated the characteristics of Chinese politics, this article puts forward an exploratory analytic framework for understanding protest success and points out how political opportunities and protest frames can explain protest success
This study attempts to make three contributions to existing studies of protests: (1) it tests, albeit in a preliminary way, how well the existing literature on social movements can explain protest success in China; (2) by incorporating characteristics of China’s political system and the theoretical insights provided by the existing studies of protests in China, it sums up the conditions for successful protests in an authoritarian state, while pointing out the importance of political opportunities and protest frames; (3) it proposes and examines the influence of supportive reports from central state-sponsored media and favourable institutions on protest success so as to enhance our understanding of political opportunity structures in China
Based on the above discussion, we argue that frames may increase the chance of intervention from the central government by generating resonance between the state and protest demands, and this is more likely to occur when frames are derived from fundamental socio-political cultures
Summary
Factors shaping protest success in Western and Chinese societies Western literature has explained the outcomes of social movements from the perspectives of organizational features, protest tactics, frames, public opinion, and political opportunities (Amenta & Caren 2004; Giugni 1998). Such signals are not a direct indication of a willingness to intervene, they help protestors discover political opportunities, thereby strengthening protestors’ confidence and improving their ability to mobilize further support from the public This dynamic may affect the local governments’ responding strategies and central government’s intervention paths, which eventually help protests achieve success. Since existing research has rarely explained Chinese anti-demolition protests from the perspective of frames, this article does not directly put forward specific propositions in regard to the effects of frames; instead, we aim to reveal associational patterns between frames and protest success through cross-case comparison
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