Anti-government Protest Research Articles

Revolutionary tribunals of the Tambov province 1918–1922

Importance. Reforming the public administration system is impossible without analyzing and taking into account the historical experience of the activities of punitive authorities. Revolutionary tribunals, created as a weapon in the fight against opponents of the Bolshevik regime, became a form of legitimization of state violence. Studying the mechanism of functioning of these bodies of the Soviet system has important heuristic significance, along with the need for public understanding of the role of repression in the fight against social protest. Modern scientific publications testify to the attention of researchers to this problem. An analysis of the historiography of the issue gives grounds to assert that a promising direction in the study of the topic of “revolutionary justice” is the analysis of the activities of provincial revolutionary tribunals, as well as clarification of the nature of their relationships with other repressive authorities.Materials and Methods. The source base for this work consists of materials identified in the funds of central and local archives and introduced into scientific circulation, most of them for the first time. The documents used made it possible to study the process of organization and practical activities of revolutionary tribunals in the Tambov province of the period 1918–1922. Factual material related to the struggle of these bodies with peasant protest is extracted from materials of local periodicals. The work used a systematic approach, as well as general scientific and historical research methods.Results and Discussion. An analysis of the process of creating revolutionary tribunals in the Tambov province is carried out. Their place and functionality in the management system, as well as the criteria for personnel selection of their employees, are established. The role of the military revolutionary tribunal in the fight against mass desertion is studied. The nature of the relationship between the provincial regional tribunal and the local Cheka is clarified. Based on investigative materials and sentences, the nature of the charges and penalties applied to peasants, participants in rural “rebellions”, as well as food workers who committed violence during the seizure of grain are established. The repressive activities of the Tambov provincial RVT and its visiting sessions to combat and prosecute both armed rebels and the civilian population of the village assisting them are considered.Conclusion. Based on a wide range of archival and other sources, it is established that the activities of the revolutionary tribunals of the Tambov province in the period 1918–1922 was punitive in nature and aimed at suppressing anti-government protest.

Fandom in Action: Online Mobilisation of Thai Youth in the 2020-2021 Anti-Government Protests

The convergence of social media with political communication and the emergence of celebrity politics have significantly altered the landscape of political participation, particularly among the younger generation. Yet, comprehensive research on online political fandom remains limited despite its critical intersection with politics and digital media. This study addresses this gap, focusing on the in-depth case study of the 2020-2021 Thai anti-government protest. It scrutinises how tech-savvy Thai youth, propelled by political fandom surrounding Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, a Future Forward Party opposition leader, harnessed social media and pre-existing online networks to organise these anti-government protests. Despite lacking a formal hierarchy, their organisational prowess, especially in information dissemination, highlights the intricate interplay of political fandom, social media, and youth mobilisation. By employing a trace interview method and conducting semi-structured interviews, the study explores how political fans transitioned from online engagement to active protest participation. The evidence contributes to a nuanced understanding of how fandom culture shapes their political judgment and behaviour. Participants in this study are political fans who publicly engage with politics on social media and participate in large-scale protests offline. They were recruited through a two-step process: first, the Twitter API identified users with high engagement in political fandom and anti-government hashtags. Then, a snowball sampling method extended the participant pool based on referrals from initial interviewees. A thematic analysis was conducted on the interview transcripts. The initial findings indicate that the influence of charismatic political figures, the empowerment of the fan community, and the belief that online political expression is ineffective draw participants toward offline participation. The resemblance between the political fandom of Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit and the more mainstream popular fandoms highlights the importance of considering the role of popular culture influences in shaping people’s political behaviours, particularly in contemporary digital communication technologies. In conclusion, this study aims to uncover the intricate relationship between political fandoms, social media, and offline activism and to emphasise the pervasive influence of popular culture on political behaviours in the digital age.

Guns and Democracy: Anti-System Attitudes, Protest, and Support for Violence Among Pandemic Gun-Buyers

The last decade has given rise to substantial concern about democratic backsliding in the U.S. Manifestations include decreased trust in government, conspiratorial beliefs, contentious protests, and support for political violence. Surprisingly, prior work has not explored how these attitudes and behaviors relate to gun-buying, an action that provides people with the means to challenge the state. We address this topic by focusing on the unprecedented gun-buying surge during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a survey with over 32,000 respondents, we find that—relative to pre-existing gun owners (who did not buy during the pandemic) and the non-gun-owning public—pandemic gun-buyers are more likely to distrust government, believe in conspiracies, protest, and support political violence. These anti-government views and protest behaviors are especially likely among those who bought guns for political reasons. Our findings highlight a crucial dynamic underlying the recent spike in gun sales with consequences for American democracy.

‘Stand Against the Wiles of the Devil’: Interpreting QAnon as a Pseudo-Christian Extremist Movement

The religious dimensions of the QAnon movement and links with political violence have been noted by researchers. This paper furthers this scholarship by conducting an analysis of 121 religious images taken from QAnon Telegram channels over 18 months. Through adopting semiotic and hermeneutical theory, it is argued that QAnon religious imagery can be categorised into a series of types, all influenced by Christian theological themes. When interpreted in a Christian context, these images reveal a close relationship with US-based Christian evangelicalism and with Christian liberation theology movements. By presenting contemporary politics as an eschatological battle between the oppressed and oppressors, framed as the QAnon community versus the devil, the QAnon movement encourages political activism closely analogous to Christian liberation theology movements. This contributes to an explanatory framework for the connections between QAnon followers and anti-government protest and violence during the Covid-19 pandemic and the 6 January storming of the US Capitol.

Art in protest discourses – on the example of the Belarusian anti-government protest movement

In protest discourses the problem of using aesthetic and artistic elements lies in the centre of attention. The authors draw empirical material from the Belarusian protest movement, especially the anti-government protests of 2020. In the current study the problem of the use of aesthetic elements in protest discourses is considered in two aspects: 1) in the aspect of artistic activism, i.e. the involvement of artists in resistance activities; 2) in terms of the use of aesthetic speech acts in various forms of protest activity, i.e. as a special rhetorical tool with emphatic and persuasive function, but also as a means of expression with the satisfying function. As a result of this dichotomy, the article is divided into two parts. The authors point out that even though public art is not developed in Belarus (e.g. in the field of visual arts), aesthetic creativity is a very characteristic feature of both street poster discourses and forms of protest in the Internet.

Rallying Around Empty Signifiers: Understanding and Defiing Anit-Givernemnt Protest in the Netherlands

As in many other parts of Europe, anti-government protest has been a topic of political and academic discussion in the Netherlands for some years. The definition of what anti-government protest entails and which groups and individuals it refers to is not as straightforward as it may seem. Where other institutions have attempted to place anti-governmental protest movements in frameworks of traditional extremist movements, the Dutch authorities describe the anti-government protestors as a group that is characterised by its pluriformity and fluidity. In 2022, they have even changed the term ‘anti-governmental’ to ‘anti-institutional’ to more broadly refer to the set of targets that the movement opposes, which includes government, but also the media, the scientific community, experts and the judicial system. In this paper we try to understand the anti-government, or anti-institutional, protest in the Netherlands using a different lens. We use Ernesto Laclau’s discourse theory and its concept of empty signifiers to show how opposed interests and goals can be seen as a unified ideology to its proponents. Instead of trying to primarily define the group of people who are anti-government by their actions or characteristics, we look at how those actors define themselves and how they see their struggle against the authorities. We describe the rise and dynamics of anti-government protest in the Netherlands since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on “genealogies” and the eclectic topics of the protest movement. We compare our observations with the definition of anti-governmental protest and the anti-institutional narrative as used by the authorities. We arrive at the conclusion that analysing the anti-government protest through the lens of their shared ideas and grievances gives us more insight into the nature and dynamics of this movement than solely looking through the lens of the potential threat to the

Proposed Polish Advertisement Levies – An Efficient Source of Public Income or Instruments of the Political Battle?

This article analyses the bill of 2nd February 2021 on additional revenues of the National Health Fund, the National Fund for the Protection of Historical Monuments and the establishment of a Fund for the Support of Culture and National Heritage in the Media Area. The draft legislation, the announcement of which has triggered an unprecedented blackout protest in private media as well as a mass anti-government protest on the Internet, provides for the introduction of new public levies called advertisement contributions and the establishment of a new state special-purpose fund – the Fund for the Support of Culture and National Heritage in the Media Area. The aim of the article is to identify and present those provisions of the draft act which have evoked most controversies and have given rise to the stiff social resistance to the proposal. The first part of the paper is devoted to the assessment of the regulations within the context of the objective of the bill that was declared by the drafters in the legislative rationale. The analysis carried out has supported the assumption that providing adequate finances for those special-purpose funds that are strongly involved in remedying the consequences of the SARS CoV-2 epidemic was not a genuine purpose of the bill. It also leads to the conclusion that there is no constitutional justification for such a special-purpose levy. In the second part, the controversies over technical components of the advertising levies have been presented and analysed. On the basis of this analysis, it is possible to conclude that some of the qualitative and quantitative elements of the so-called advertisement contributions may give rise to interpretative doubts. The implementation of the research objectives made it possible to formulate a thesis that the advertisement contributions, as drafted, would not be efficient instruments of fair taxation of digital economy but rather would form instruments for achieving certain political objectives.

English

The last decades witnessed the emergence of transitional justice as a global norm which obliges post-conflict transitioning states to address systematic past human rights violations through purposeful judicial and non-judicial mechanisms. While its typical architecture focused on formal transitions, the dynamics of non-regime transitions and compliance is often neglected in transitional justice literature, and the measures also signify manifold challenges. This article attempted to assess the beleaguered transitional justice measures implemented in Ethiopia’s current troubled non-regime transition which came after the authoritarian and Marxist TPLF/EPRDF regime collapsed in 2018 after violent anti-government protest. Consequently, under the new hybrid elites’ leadership, host of justice measures were implemented but they unfolded in the absence of both typical transition and guiding transition roadmap. Through the lens of compliance and resistance in transitional justice, the article finds that rather than addressing legacies of atrocious past, the flawed and instrumentalist implementation of contested justice processes and the mismanagement of the narrow window of opportunity led to unprecedented societal violence and new political complexities. The Ethiopian case, therefore, reveals that seeking the retributive transitional justice measure in the absence of typical regime change and inter-elites bargain, and in an ethnically polarized political transition exacerbate inter-elite discord, bolster ethnic-supported resistance from predecessor elites, and harbor the risk of resurgence of new violence. Hence, it falls short of achieving the compliance with the transitional justice norm such as ensuring accountability (fighting impunity), adequately addressing past wrongs through judicial and non-judicial means and also ensuring non-recurrence of the same in the future.   Key words: Transitional justice, compliance, challenges, Ethiopia, non-regime transition.

Międzynarodowe aspekty retoryki „People’s Daily” podczas protestów w Hongkongu w 2019 roku

The paper analyzes media coverage of Hong Kong’s anti-government protest movement triggered by the proposal of amendments to the extradition law in 2019 as presented in the “People’s Daily”, the main online English-language state media in the People’s Republic of China. This article focuses in particular on the analysis of the narrative related to the international aspects of the protests, i.e., on descriptions of foreign attempts to influence the internal affairs of Hong Kong and China, undermining the principle of “one country, two systems”, or attempts to conduct the so-called color revolution. The way the protests are presented in the “People’s Daily” is therefore interesting as an example of a narrative related to the protection of China’s territorial integrity and defense against foreign interference in China’s internal affairs, especially in the context of Beijing’s pursuit of the full unification of the country.

Bottom-up populism: How relative deprivation and populist attitudes mobilize leaderless anti-government protest

The present research focuses on populism as a bottom-up phenomenon that emerges from shared perceptions of relative deprivation. We predict that by serving as a shared ideological basis, populist attitudes can mobilize leaderless anti-government protest across ideological boundaries. We test this prediction in the context of the French Yellow Vests movement. Using a sample of French citizens (N = 562), we compare the effects of different indicators of relative deprivation on Yellow Vest protest participation and the extent to which populist attitudes account for these relationships. Results indicate that protests were fuelled by indicators of relative deprivation at the individual and group levels. Populist attitudes were best predicted by vertical comparisons between “the people” and “the elite” and fully accounted for the relationship between this type of group relative deprivation and protesting. Conversely, populist attitudes only partially accounted for the relationships between protesting and traditional measures of relative deprivation that either contrast natives with immigrants or individuals with fellow citizens. The findings strengthen the understanding of populism as a “thin centred” belief set that can unite and mobilize those who feel unfairly disadvantaged compared to a socio-political elite.

POLICING ANTI-GOVERNMENT PROTESTS DURING THE CORONAVIRUS CRISIS IN POLAND: BETWEEN ESCALATED FORCE AND NEGOTIATED MANAGEMENT

Abstract. This research aims to give insight into the processes of public interaction between the police and antigovernment protesters during the Coronavirus Crisis in Poland by evaluating crowd control mechanisms. It addresses the research question: where does the model of anti-government protest policing developed by the Polish Police during the Covid-19 pandemic lie on a continuum of antinomic ideal types of escalated force and negotiated management? The research is embedded in studies on protest policing and draws on an intertextual qualitative analysis of police statements and media news. It shows that the policing of protests was closer to escalated force. However, a hybrid model was involved that combined elements of coercion and negotiation. In terms of protecting the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and police tolerance for community disruption, this particular form of policing is close to escalated force. Still, the communication between the police and the assembly participants, the extent and manner of the arrests closely mirrored both models. One dimension, the extent and nature of the force used, indicated negotiated management. Keywords: protest policing, contention, contentious politics, de-democratisation, Coronavirus Crisis, Poland

The October 2019 Protest Movement in Iraq. An Analysis of the 'Early Moments' of the Mobilisation

On 1 October 2019, a wide-ranging anti-government protest took to the streets in Baghdad. Grievances included unemployment, a lack of basic services, the absence of social justice, and endemic corruption in political and economic institutions. Despite swift and severe state repression, the protest snowballed into a countrywide mobilisation encompassing the central-southern governorates to become the largest protest movement to challenge Iraq's post-2003 political order. By granting analytical weight to the role of early riser activists, this paper focuses on the factors that shaped activists' decisions and lead to different forms of spontaneous participation involving both sympathisers and bystanders. In so doing, it draws attention to the non-hierarchical structure of the movement and its diffused communication strategy, the repression as a moral shock and the rhetoric of protest slogans. At the crossroads between social movement studies and Iraqi studies, this article contributes to both bodies of scholarship with empirical research. On one hand, it enriches social movement literature by shedding light on strategies and actions adopted by activists operating in non-liberal contexts. On the other hand, it enriches Iraqi political studies by demonstrating that the country hosts a vibrant sphere of contentious politics, a sphere that deserves ample scrutiny.

Framing enemies by the state television: delegitimization of anti-government protest participants during the first wave of the pandemic in Poland

ABSTRACT This article aims to explain how and why the ruling party used the state television to delegitimize protesters during the first wave of the pandemic in Poland. The main argument is that the limitation of freedom of assembly provided the state-owned broadcaster with a new means of delegitimizing the current enemies. The dominant strategy, outcasting, assumed the categorizing of political opponents as madmen and criminals. By showing the protesters as notorious and multiple offenders, the state television diminished their credibility and deprived them of legitimacy in their political roles in order to stabilize antidemocratic tendencies and reduce the threat of political system breakdown that came from ordinary Poles whose non-compliance took the form of protests and oppositional actors responsible for organizing resistance. The media also addressed the risk stemming from intra-elite splits. The opposition to the democratic backsliding, erosion of the rule of law, and political rights violations, which deviated from the ruling party’s course, was on a par with a revolt over the government. Gaining support for the ruling party and taking it away from its opponents aimed to limit dissidents’ resources and the need to repress them.

Antigovernment Protests and Commitment to Democratic Principles

ABSTRACT While antigovernment protests have been widespread across the world in recent years, it is still not well understood why people protest their governments. This study addresses this question and asks why some individuals participate in antigovernment protests, while others don’t. I argue that commitment to democratic values is essential to understanding participation in antigovernment protest: individuals who are committed to democratic values are more likely to participate in an antigovernment protest. With broader implications for political protests in political regimes other than consolidated democracies, this research explores recent widespread protests in Georgia and finds evidence consistent with its primary argument.

Socio-Economic Development and Protests

Abstract The current article investigates societal indicators associated with economic development that may account for the strong positive correlation between GDP per capita and protest intensity. The authors’ tests reveal that the expansion of democratization, education, and urbanization are one of the main influences accounting for this positive relationship between GDP per capita growth and anti-government protest intensity. Moreover, when controlling for these factors, the relationship between GDP per capita and anti-state protests becomes negative indicating that the forces associated with economic development at a certain point play a larger role than economic growth itself. The results of this study, thus, have implications for both Resource Mobilization and Cultural Theorists due to the fact that further GDP per capita growth becomes an inhibitor of protests in the high-income countries instead of a promoter.

Disentangling Societal Discontent and Intergroup Threat: Explaining Actions Towards Refugees and Towards the State

In debates about migration in Western countries, citizens’ concerns about immigrant groups often go hand in hand with concerns about the decline of society as a whole. Societal discontent, however, is a distinct concept and may have its own relations with immigration attitudes, over and above the role of perceived immigrant threat. In a survey of a representative sample of Dutch people (N = 1239), we disentangled societal discontent from intergroup threat with respect to their relationship with different kinds of action intentions regarding refugees (both pro and anti) and intentions regarding the government. Unsurprisingly, societal discontent predicted support for anti-government protest (which was strikingly high). More importantly, societal discontent independently predicted both pro-refugee and anti-refugee action intentions, over and above intergroup threat. These associations were moderated by intergroup threat: only when refugees were experienced as a threat did discontent predict anti-refugee action intentions. On the other hand, societal discontent predicted more pro-refugee action intentions, but only when people experienced refugees as an enrichment. Thus, despite populist rhetoric, societal discontent is not always tied to anti-immigrant actions. This suggests that refugee sentiments and societal discontent are not exchangeable: societal discontent plays an important role in reactions to immigration.

10 years of the Syrian conflict: a time to act and not merely to remember

10 years of the Syrian conflict: a time to act and not merely to remember

The Fury Archives: Female Citizenship, Human Rights, and the International Avant-Gardes by Jill Richards

Reviewed by: The Fury Archives: Female Citizenship, Human Rights, and the International Avant-Gardes by Jill Richards Linda Roland Danil, Dr. (bio) Jill Richards, The Fury Archives: Female Citizenship, Human Rights, and the International Avant-Gardes (Columbia University Press 2020), ISBN: 9780231197113 (paperback), 344 pages. Already at the outset of her rich and varied book, Jill Richards makes her intent clear: her aim is to “assemble a transatlantic archive of female citizenship.”1 Richards’ analysis is contextualized in wider narratives of women’s rights [End Page 831] during the period generally referred to as feminism’s first wave during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Moreover, rather than focus on female citizenship as a priori constituted through shared histories of exclusion and as being underpinned by histories and experiences of shared pain and suffering—Richards focuses on the female/woman as a subject of action. Richards therefore considers women arsonists, industrial saboteurs, queer resistance cells, and suffrage rioters, among others. The thesis of Richards’ book is that women’s rights movements and the historical avant-gardes became entangled in “an often vexed but hugely influential relationship of reciprocal construction.”2 In her analysis, Richards further draws on a wide range of sources, and includes parliamentary inquiries, police reports, mug shots, and propaganda booklets, among others. Specifically, Richards’ book is situated within the historical timeframe when first wave feminism and institutional human rights emerged at the same time as Dada and surrealism, and asks—how can these currents be understood alongside each other and as part of the same historical period? More specific still, Richards focuses on the little-known but significant entanglement between women’s rights movements and the international avant-gardes, with that interweaving having partly arisen through a mutual dependence on a socialist international that provided financial backing for the distribution of radical newspapers, journals and pamphlets across the Atlantic. The individuals (not always women) that populate the book’s pages are endlessly fascinating, intelligent, creative, and principled. In the analysis of the intersection between art and politics, Richards writes about women such as Paulette Nardal, who produced a black feminist periodical and served as an area expert for the newly founded United Nations; Leonora Carrington, the surrealist painter, was a refugee a number of times over and fled to Mexico in fear of reprisal for her involvement in anti-government protest meetings; Til Brugman joined the Dutch resistance; the Dada artist Hannah Höch was an advocate for birth control reform and her work was condemned as ‘degenerate art’ by the Nazis; the novelist Rebecca West rioted with the suffragettes. Other individuals include the gender non-conforming artist Claude Cahun and their partner, Marcel Moore— who were both sent to a prisoner of war camp for their participation in the French resistance. Not all of the individuals in question were admirable or even remotely likable, however—think of the despicable Marie Huot, the nineteenth century secretary of the League Against Vivisection—who claimed to have disposed of new-born puppies by tying a heavy stone around their necks and then tossing them into a body of water. In another anecdote, Huot apparently imparted the advice that housecat populations could be controlled by directly taking the kittens away from the mother and drowning them in a pot of water closed with a heavy lid. Huot allegedly argued that the same could be done for unwanted human infants, and further advocated for the entire extinction of humanity through the use of birth control. In an engaging discussion in which Huot is first brought up, Richards discusses the notion of proletarian “birth strikes” or womb strikes, in which women would deploy birth control as a form of strike against the production of people to feed [End Page 832] to future war machines and the industrial production of commodities. Through this view, “the limitation of reproduction would deprive capitalism of workers and soldiers to exploit, eventually resulting in a world-wide revolution.”3 Here, workers took control of (self)reproduction in a biopolitical form of resistance against the state, and rather than reproductive rights being framed through the language of the human right to privacy to be granted by the...

Oil price volatility and political unrest: Prudence and protest in producer and consumer societies, 1980–2013

Revenue from oil makes countries susceptible to the “resource curse” since rulers have ready access to finance for buying off opposition rather than reform. We explore this issue by examining whether oil price volatility affects anti-government unrest. We argue that in oil-producing countries, low price years generate anti-government protest conditional on a state's access to foreign exchange reserves. The prudent management of oil revenue during boom years can allow some oil-rich states to manage political dissent while others fail. Contrarily, in oil-importing countries, high oil price years increase anti-government dissent, but again, conditional on access to foreign exchange reserves, which allow governments to ease the pain of austerity. Using panel data covering 165 countries between 1980 and 2013 (34 years), we find clear evidence in support of these propositions. Oil-producer countries that are able to resist political Dutch disease and save for “rainy days” are more capable of weathering low-price years. Similarly, oil import-dependent states face higher dissent during high oil price years, but conditional on access to foreign reserves. These results are in line with others that show that some oil producers avoid civil war through heavy public spending. Oil-rich countries should manage oil revenues in ways that allow them to survive the low price years, perhaps by avoiding both economic and political Dutch disease, which will only lead to inevitable regime challenge. The results are robust to alternative data, measurement, sample size, and estimation methods.

Corruption Perceptions and Contentious Politics in Africa: How Different Types of Corruption Have Shaped Africa’s Third Wave of Protest

Does corruption increase general and anti-government protest? Scholarship has produced seemingly incompatible results, with some research demonstrating a strong connection between corruption and the onset of contentious politics and other research finding that heightened perceptions of corruption decrease activism. This article addresses this puzzle by examining how different types of corruption condition diverging contentious outcomes. Focusing on two highly salient forms of corruption in the African context—elite corruption and police corruption—this article argues that the different consequences, salience, and costs associated with these two forms help to condition whether citizens rise up or stay home. This argument is tested via two methods. First, it draws from a survey experiment conducted in five Nigerian states in 2017. The survey experiment tests whether exposure to different types of corruption affects willingness to join in protests. Second, it draws from statistical analysis of geo-located perceptions of corruption and protest across Africa, incorporating checks for both collinearity and endogeneity into the model. The statistical analysis examines whether heightened perceptions of corruption correlate with increased counts of general and anti-government protest. The results from both methods demonstrate that elite corruption is positively correlated with protest, whereas police corruption is not.