Relative deprivation and political protest

Abstract

The article reveals political protest as one of the major factors of political system development in society. In particular, possibilities of methodological synthesis, deprivation theory in terms of political protest development are considered. Deprivation phenomenon's psychological nature is stressed. Distinc-tions between relative deprivation and absolute one are considered. The authors prove the deprivation's influence on mobilization of protest movements providing examples. The relative deprivation's classifica¬tion including progressive, aspirational and decremental deprivation is used. The relative deprivation theory refers to the ideas that frustration and feelings of discontent de¬pend on purposes of a person or a group of people. Relative deprivation feelings emerge when important tagets of people tunr out to be unreal or blocked by political elites or society. As the central concept in the explanation of protest movements relative deprivation is often considered as well as the central concept in when explaining protest movements also it is used to describe and give understanding to the factors that trigger social movements. Protest activity appears from relative deprivation collective feelings. Absolute deprivation is a key factor of protest movements in poor countries, unlike relative deprivation.