Contentious Collective Action Research Articles

Trust and social movements: A new research agenda

Social movement studies clearly suggest that trust matters for processes of social mobilization: When engaging in costly, and potentially risky, contentious collective action on a common goal, activists and groups rely on the expectation that fellow protestors and allies will not fail them. To date, however, we lack research that explains which types of trust shape the emergence and evolution of social movements. Trust, we argue, is not simply an independent variable influencing mobilization, but is itself shaped—built, stabilized, weakened, or even destroyed—over the course of collective contentious action. To set the stage for a corresponding research agenda, this introduction to the special issue “Trust and Social Movements” bridges the gap between research on trust and social movement studies and clarifies the complex conceptual relationship between various types of trust and the dynamics of social mobilization. Furthermore, we identify overarching research questions, summarize the contributions to the special issue, and discuss key findings.

Urbanization and political change in Africa

Abstract Urbanization is transforming the human and political geography of Africa. While a growing body of research explores the urban dimensions of clientelism, contentious action, and social mobilization, there has been less attention given to the ways in which this demographic megatrend is influencing political change more broadly. We argue that the political implications of African urbanization are contingent on local conditions and experiences; there are no deterministic associations between urbanization and political change. To better understand the mechanisms linking urbanization to politics, we argue that a place-based approach is needed. We illustrate this by reviewing and highlighting how urbanization may affect (i) the nature and balance of citizen preferences; (ii) the composition, interests, and influence of elite actors; (iii) forms of political mobilization; (iv) shifting gender roles; (v) the role of civil society in political processes; and (vi) the likelihood and manifestations of contentious collective action. We conclude with a discussion of directions for further research.

Informal Institutions and Community Development Protests: Evidence from Sub-municipal Localities in Mexico

Why are citizens in some communities able to protest to bring attention to their grievances, while not in others? While a long literature has contended that informal civil society institutions facilitate contentious collective action, not all organizations do so, and some might even discourage it. I argue in this article that inclusive institutions— open to everyone in a community—facilitate protests, while non-inclusive institutions uniting some particularistic sub-groups within communities hinder them. The former provide communities with broad social networks fostering communal unity, while the latter erode communal unity through provoking internal conflicts. I provide evidence for this theory in the sub-municipal context of Mexico, using statistical analysis of data from an original survey of sub-municipal community presidents and qualitative fieldwork evidence from Puebla and Tlaxcala.

Mobilising and constraining: the dynamics of human rights discourse in two Mexican social movements

ABSTRACT Mobilising human rights discourse in pursuit of justice by local social movements is often treated as a straightforward process. However, social movement practice is rooted in domestic socio-political culture, the ability to affectively engage publics and envision ‘political horizons’. Human rights discourse is often deployed in this process, but the dynamics involved have both enabling and constraining features which movement participants exploit, negotiate and disagree over. This article explores scholarship on human rights, social movements and democracy to examine these dynamics through the reflections of participants in two recent social mobilisations in Mexico: the Movement for Peace and Justice with Dignity and Ayotzinapa 43. Both movements arose in response to abuses and impunity in the context of spiralling state and non-state actor violence and corruption in Mexico, but also challenged the dominant political narratives of Mexico’s democratic development. They focused on the justice demands of victims, but also involved plural groups, many hoping for wider change. Human rights discourse featured in each movement, but they were not human rights movements, raising important questions about how human rights discourse is understood, made meaningful but also kept in check as part of sustaining contentious collective action.

Protests in Postwar Societies: Grievances and Contentious Collective Action in Kosovo

AbstractMost research on protests has been conducted in peaceful societies, whereas we know far less about contentious collective action in postwar contexts. To fill this gap, we offer a theory that perceived ethnic grievances related to group security and group status are particularly likely to generate protest mobilization in postwar societies. To test this theory and alternative hypotheses, we investigate trends in protest behavior in postwar Kosovo using an original protest event dataset and existing survey data. We find that protest behavior in postwar Kosovo is significantly shaped by perceived ethnic grievances: the majority of protest grievances center around group security and group status concerns. Protests about economic justice or good governance demands are significantly rarer. Using data from existing surveys, we also investigate the determinants of variation in individual protest participation. Our analysis reveals that perceived ethnic discrimination is strongly associated with individual protest participation in Kosovo.

When Ants Beset the Elephant: Rent Extraction and Resistance on China's E-commerce Platform

AbstractE-commerce in China has developed and expanded rapidly in recent years. Conflicts and confrontations have accumulated in parallel. Using Taobao e-marketplace – one pillar platform of the Alibaba group – as its case, this article aims to analyse the developmental logic and profit-seeking strategies of e-commerce capitalism in China and beyond. It also investigates how small online merchants responded to and resisted the particular rent-extractive and exclusive mechanisms designed by the platform. I attempt to identify the emerging responses from below to both the creative and destructive sides of this newest capitalist development in China. I argue that, despite the militancy and innovation involved in these movements, and despite the use of Maoist rhetoric borrowed from the past, the contentious collective actions (online or offline) organized by these small online merchants lack the solidarity, the shared identity and consciousness, and the powerful ideological language observed among the “traditional” working class in industrial capitalism, and hence they are more improvised, transient, and easily defeated.

Contesting large-scale land acquisitions in the Global South

• The analysis synthesizes the case study literature to explain how communities contest large-scale agricultural investment. • Communities use varied tactics, mostly from the repertoires of everyday resistance, collective action, and rights-based means. • Rural communities face unfavorable circumstances for organized protests. • Certain political opportunities and involvement of local leaders enable contentious collective action or rights-based resistance. As agricultural investors have acquired large tracts of land in the Global South recently, many affected communities and civil society groups have contested what they perceive as land grabbing. These communities have struggled to retain their land, protect their livelihoods, or benefit from the investment. There has been much academic interest in these conflicts. Studying the emerging literature, this review identifies the main theoretical perspectives and synthesizes the case study evidence. The goal is to better understand how communities contest large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) and to explain their tactics. For this purpose, a sample was collected that consists of 46 studies and 28 LSLA cases from the Global South. Since most of these studies adopt single theoretical perspectives from resistance research, the present study links multiple theoretical strands, most importantly everyday resistance, contentious politics, and legal mobilization. Based on the cases reviewed, the analysis shows that the tactics of contention are diverse but can also be grouped into three repertoires. It is found that affected communities use everyday resistance mostly when they face particularly unfavorable circumstances. In contrast, certain political opportunities and involvement of local leaders enable organized protests through either collective action or rights-based contention. Overall, this study contributes to the literature not only by bringing together case observations to see the big picture, but also by identifying the main repertoires, tentative frequencies of tactics, and less relevant circumstances and mechanisms. In practical terms, the findings suggest that development and civil society actors can play important roles for assisting rural populations and local leaders in fending off land grabs.

Extractivism of the poor: Natural resource commodification and its discontents

In a recent series of articles, ecological distribution conflicts scholars present descriptive statistical analyses backing Joan Martinez-Alier (2002)’s thesis on the environmentalism of the poor. In their collaborative Environmental Justice Atlas (EJAtlas), their Peru sample reports a success rate of 24% in stopping projects. We contend that successful resistance represents only 2-5% of the total universe of Peru mining conflicts. Our claim is built on the study of 517 conflicts in Peru between 2005 and 2019, as registered by the Ombudsperson's Office. The evidence suggests, moreover, that contentious collective action commonly subordinates environmental justice causes to conventional economic concerns and resolutions, resulting in mining conflicts unfolding into compensation schemes and better deal settlements. Our straightforward interpretation is that while negative impacts are complex phenomena not homogeneously experienced among and within local communities, across space and over time, natural resource commodification brings with it the promise of local development opportunities. We draw a complementary extractivism of the poor hypothesis: there are diverse forms of (bitter) accommodation with or (structured) involvement in natural resource commodification of the poor and the indigenous.

Trabajadores de los hidrocarburos en la Patagonia Austral. La conflictividad del trabajo en YPF (2003-2019)

En el presente artículo nos proponemos dar cuenta de la conflictividad protagonizada por los trabajadores en relación a la empresa hidrocarburífera YPF, en el Golfo San Jorge, durante los años 2003-2019. Abordamos la conflictividad en relación con los cambios ocurridos en la empresa y en la política sectorial durante el período abordado. En este sentido, contemplamos distintas etapas de YPF (privada, bajo control mayoritario estatal y los cambios de gestión en ésta última etapa de la empresa). La estrategia metodológica radica en el análisis de un catálogo de episodios de acciones colectivas contenciosas, de elaboración propia, con base en la prensa. Hacemos hincapié en los actores protagonistas de la acción, las demandas esgrimidas y las formas de acción.

Regímenes híbridos y acción colectiva contenciosa: El control de la acción contenciosa en Ecuador durante el gobierno de Rafael Correa, en el período 2008-2013

En el presente artículo se analiza el desarrollo de la acción colectiva contenciosa en Ecuador, en el período 2008-2013, y la estrategia de control social adoptada por el gobierno ecuatoriano en dicho período. Se somete a prueba la hipótesis de que las estrategias de control social implantadas por el gobierno ecuatoriano son producto la relación entre debilidad institucional y manejo arbitrario del poder que caracteriza a un régimen híbrido – del que en este artículo se ofrece una nueva conceptualización- y, al mismo tiempo, un mecanismo para profundizar dicha relación.

The Resilience of Democracy

COVID-19 has not only affected the daily lives of people around the world, but it has also further contributed to the retreat of democracy worldwide. While the decline in the democratic quality of states started more than a decade ago, this debilitating pandemic has accelerated the erosion of democratic norms and processes. In attempts to control the pandemic, governments around the world have stifled civil liberties, implemented illiberal policies, pounced on the political opposition, and even suspended elections. As a highly contagious virus, COVID-19 pushed political leaders to assume stronger emergency powers to counter its spread. With more power comes possible opportunities for its abuse. Strongmen or populist leaders have taken advantage of the pandemic to further increase censorship, enhance surveillance, and disrupt elections. These draconian measures have little regard for human rights and globally accepted democratic norms. Because of this health crisis, at least 80 countries are now experiencing a lower quality of democracy and respect for civil liberties and human rights.1 COVID-19 added more fuel to democracy's burning flames.2 Emergency measures led to the suspension of parliamentary debates as they were seen as a waste of time and resources. This closed the opportunity for opposition politicians to scrutinize policies in abetting the pandemic. In some countries, the right to assembly has been banned to enforce social distancing rules. Autocratic and populist governments have taken advantage of the general atmosphere of fear and alarm to harass dissidents and silence critics. Other acts that weakened the quality of democracy involve restricting the flow of information, harassing critical media, and accusing critics as purveyors of “fake news” or labeled as “enemies of the state”. This is quite stark among democracies old and new, for example, in my country, the Philippines. Despite this general trend, citizens and institutions in a handful of democracies are pushing back. COVID-19 did not prevent popular mobilization around the world. These diverse political protests comprised of demonstrations against the strict and constraining policies related to controlling the pandemic like in Germany and the United States. But in Thailand and Hong Kong, the protests are also about the autocratic governments and the clamor to restore democratic rule. Student activists and the youth are front and center in this particular episode of contentious collective action in these countries. In Asia, not even COVID-19 can prevent citizens in pushing for political rights and realize their aspirations for a more liberal and democratic society. This resilience for democracy is not only manifested in the streets, but equally important in the ballot box. Elections had to overcome the challenges of COVID-19 in countries like Taiwan, New Zealand, and the United States. Pending the formal announcement of the results of the U.S. presidential elections, it is projected that Donald Trump will lost his reelection bid. In the Asia-Pacific region, people have given new and clear electoral mandates to President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand. It is not a coincidence that these two female leaders have successfully curbed the COVID-19 pandemic in their respective countries due to their swift, innovative, evidence-based, and people-centered approach to containing the spread of the virus. These models clearly showed that there is another way to combat COVID-19 without sacrificing democratic norms and practices. In other words, democracy can only be saved from the pandemic with more democracy. In this issue of Asian Politics & Policy, we offer an array of excellent research articles and reviews on a host of topics ranging from populism, decentralization, democratization, maritime cooperation, welfare states, and voting behavior. A common thread running between these articles is the analysis and examination of democratic regimes and their public policies. As Asia and the world continue to battle the COVID-19 virus, it is my hope that democracy will not only survive, but it will also evolve in a way that it could thrive and offer new possibilities for popular participation, mobilization, and empowerment. Lastly, I hope APP readers will appreciate the new design of the journal. This is not just to improve the journal's look but will also improve efficiency in the production process.

The value of sub-national data: The dynamics of contentious politics in Nepal

Over the last decade, a renewed interest in the empirical analysis of contentious politics has led to significant improvements in the quality and quantity of data. The related wave of research has thus turned to analysis of the dynamics of contentious politics from a comparative perspective. Unfortunately, these studies use country level datasets for their analysis, creating a mismatch between the original actor-based theoretical framework and the empirical conceptualization of contentious collective action. We discuss the conceptual challenges this theoretical-empirical gap generates and highlight how contentious dynamics can be studied with a bottom-up sub-national approach. To do so, we present a new fine-grained dataset of contentious collective action in post-conflict Nepal (2007 to 2010). We descriptively show how this type of data can help us improve our understanding of repertoires of contentious politics. This paper highlights the relevance of gathering information on active organizations to study the inherent dynamics of contentious politics.

Abstentions in 2014 and 2019 Indonesian elections: Case study of pro-democracy activists

This article discusses how the dynamics of the abstentions phenomenon among pro-democracy activists in the 2014-2019 general election in Indonesia. While pro-democracy activists have increasingly chosen “struggle within”, there are still critical groups that have voted for abstentions in 2014-2019 general election. Charles Tilly’s concept of collective action and contentious politics is used in this study. This study uses a qualitative approach to the type of case study research. Researchers explore data through in-depth interviews as primary data and secondary data is extracted through library research. The analysis is carried out with the abstractive inductive logic. This research shows that abstentions are contentious collective actions. The abstentions movement was born from a network of pro-democracy activists who have been engaged in advocacy work. Abstentions carried out in protest against the authorities and the boycott of the election. The boycott choice is contentious politics.

THE RISE OF A TRANSNATIONAL MOVEMENT TO PROTECT PRIVACY*

Scholars have long found profound normative and structural differences between the privacy movements of Europe and the United States, alongside incompatible regimes of regulation. After 9/11, both Europe and the U.S. adopted increasingly intrusive digital security measures, which impinged on the privacy of commercial and personal data. Both the overlap in privacy regimes and the securitization of the two regimes were uncovered by Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013. The eventual result was the passage of a European privacy protection regulation, the General Data Protection Regulation, in 2016 and greater transnational diffusion and transnational cooperation among European and American privacy activists. But has this convergence produced a transnational movement for privacy? Studying three mechanisms of transnational mobilization—externalization, diffusion, and collective transnationalism—this article employs a political opportunity framework to understand how international events have increased the inclination and the capacity of nationally and regionally based privacy groups to come together in contentious collective action.

Chaos on Campus: Universities and Mass Political Protest

History suggests universities are hotbeds of political protest. However, the generality and causal nature of this relationship has never been quantified. This article investigates whether universities give rise to political protest, drawing on geocoded information on the location and characteristics of universities and protest events in the 1991–2016 period, at the subnational level in 62 countries in Africa and Central America. Our analysis indicates that university establishments increase protest. We use a difference-in-differences and fixed-effect framework leveraging the temporal variation in universities within subnational grid-cells to estimate the effect of universities on protest. Our analysis indicates that localities with increases in number of universities experience more protest. We suggest a causal interpretation, after performing different tests to evaluate whether this reflects confounding trends specific to locations that establish universities, finding no support for this. We also provide descriptive evidence on the nature of university-related protests, showing that they are more likely to emerge in dictatorships and that protests in university locations are more likely to concern democracy and human rights. These findings yield important general insights into universities’ role as drivers of contentious collective action.

How strikes can arise: sequences of interaction in the genesis of a total strike in Madrid Underground

ABSTRACT Workers’ responses to austerity measures during the Great Recession were multiple and diverse. When and why they opted for contentious collective actions instead of reluctant acquiescence is still a subject of debate. In this article, I revisit the issue by examining the genesis of a total strike in Madrid Underground in June 2010, which occurred in response to a wage cut applied to this publicly owned enterprise. By drawing upon union communications produced at the time of the events and semi-directive interviews conducted with union representatives and ordinary workers, I retrace the sequences of interaction between workers, unions, the company management, and the regional government, which eventually led to the total strike. The findings reveal that the question of ‘how’ is as important as the ‘why’: the relationship between the wage cut and the strike is in fact anything but direct. Rather, the strike resulted from a largely unintended ‘composition effect’ – a combination of nested interactions between multiple and interdependent players.

The Contribution of Social Movement Theory to Understanding Genocide

Recent years have witnessed a turn in the field of contentious politics toward the study of political violence, yet scholars have yet to focus their lens on genocide. Moreover, research on genocide is characterized by fundamental disagreements about its definition, origins, and dynamics, leading to a lack of generalizable theory. As a remedy, this article suggests that research on genocide can be improved by incorporating concepts from social movements. After reviewing the history of research on social movements and genocide, I analyze civilian participation in the Rwandan genocide as an example of how social movement theory helps explain civilian mobilization for genocide. Finally, I propose that a contentious politics approach to genocide would consider it one among many forms of contentious collective action, analyzable within the existing framework of social movement theory.

Social movements and the politics of care: empathy, solidarity and eviction blockades

ABSTRACTThis paper develops a perspective of mobilization based on the ethics of care to explore the complexities of political solidarity in social movements. On the one hand, it is interested in the reasons why commonly aggrieved individuals do not always collaborate to confront their oppression. On the other, it explores why sometimes people initiate mobilization for causes that do not benefit them directly. From a care perspective, aggrieved individuals may not mobilize to confront their troubles because some of their caring needs (emotional, identity, and participatory) are not covered. At the same time, empathy motivates people not affected by a grievance to initiate mobilization in support of the oppressed collective. Internal solidarity among those aggrieved may be created during the process of mobilization through care work. The analytical relevance of this model is demonstrated explaining the mobilization of the ‘Platform of Those Affected by Mortgages’, the biggest housing organization in Spain. A care-based approach to mobilization contributes to our analysis of contentious collective action by helping to better understand the complexities of political solidarity and the mechanisms through which organizations foster solidarity among their members.

Scale shift in international tax justice: comparing the UK and Australia from 2008 to 2016

ABSTRACTInternational tax justice issues, such as corporate tax avoidance, have gained particular salience over the past decade in an environment of financial instability and government austerity. Civil society involvement has ranged from trade unions and NGOs calling for parliamentary inquiries to civil disobedience by less established actors. Since the international financial crisis, how have levels of contentious collective action around these issues waxed and waned? Is contentiousness associated most with domestic politics or global media events like the Panama Papers? This paper uses an original hand-coded dataset from five national newspapers in the United Kingdom and Australia between 2008 and 2016. Political claims analysis (PCA) was used to collect all instances of claims around international tax justice and compare the types of actions and the different frames used by civil society actors. In both countries, mobilising grievances are generated most strongly in the period after domestic austerity policies are introduced. The qualitative coding provides evidence of accompanying frame alignment in these periods, as international taxation is problematized in terms of national revenue, demonstrating scale shift from the global to the national political stage.

Framing and counter-framing a Peace March in Russia: the use of Twitter during a hybrid war

ABSTRACTFraming is vital to the capacity of social movements to enlist popular support and sustain contentious collective action. Using the case of a Peace March held in Moscow on 21 September 2014, the article examines how antiwar activists and their opponents framed a protest against Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. The study argues that different interpretations of patriotism underpinned divergent evaluations of the conflict and the construction of opposing identities. An analysis of Twitter posts on the eve of the march shows that peace activists positioned themselves as citizens with high moral standards and a healthy dose of patriotism, criticized the Russian government for military intervention in Ukraine, and called for a peaceful conflict resolution. In turn, opponents of the march considered themselves as real patriots and their adversaries as national traitors, denied Russia’s military presence in Ukraine, and fomented an attack on critics of Russian foreign policy. The study contributes to social movement literature by analyzing the framing of antiwar activism on a social media platform in the midst of a hybrid war, marked by a great deal of ambiguity and deception about causes, dynamics, and consequences of military operations by state and non-state actors.