Opposition Movements Research Articles

The development of the Communist Party within the left movement of Venezuela (1928—1945)

The article analyzes the relationship of the communist movement with other left-wing opposition parties and movements from the very beginning of the formation of opposition to the dictatorial regime of Juan Vicente Gomez in the 1920s until the military coup in 1945. The commitment to the formation of a political party solely on the basis of the proletarian electorate had a decisive importance in the issue of interaction of communists with the rest of the Venezuelan opposition and led to the loss of the Communist Party's ability to lead the masses in the struggle against the regime in the period after the dissolution, which was reflected in the events that occurred after the dissolution of the Third, Communist, International. The work is based on a structuralist approach to the historical process and, while analyzing the development of the Communist Party within the framework of the left movement through the study of domestic and foreign bibliography, is based on archival documents of the III Comintern Communist International. In the article, the author identifies the features and main trends in the development of the Communist Party of Venezuela, and comes to conclusions about the role of the communist movement in the development of the left movement of Venezuela and its role in the development of the left movement. The development of the Communist Party of the country of Venezuela at the first stages of its development directly depended on the policy of the Comintern of Moscow, which could sometimes lead to erroneous decisions that led to a split in the ranks of the Venezuelan communists and the loss of potential allies.

Identity, Repression, and the Collapse of Apartheid

Scholars emphasize that an influx of resources during the 1980s lowered the costs of collective action and nourished a mass nonviolent anti-apartheid movement that eventually brought down the incumbent regime. Utilising a discourse theoretic approach, this study demonstrates that the 1976 Soweto massacre along with its antecedent organisational campaign waged by the Black Consciousness movement (BCM) were pivotal, yet overlooked historical factors that contributed to the apartheid collapse. While the Soweto massacre led to the detainment of BCM leadership and the death of leader Steve Biko, the event of white police killing black unarmed students in June of 1976 backfired and revealed central antagonisms and contradictions underpinning the apartheid project. Only once political identities were dislocated did the possibility arise for a unified mass opposition movement to form. Alongside weighing economic costs under threat of state repression, this study demonstrates that historical waves of revolutionary mobilisation are also influenced by identity and meanings that get attribute to repressive events by publics.

Dynamics of Political Entrepreneurship among the Elites in Post-Colonial Zimbabwe

The political arena is now abounding with people who either live ‘off’ or ‘for’ politics. The ferocious competition for people’s votes is akin to economic competition and as this study submits, the politicians are just like business people. Both productive and predatory profit opportunities have pervaded the Zimbabwean political arena where politics is a type of business. Political positions have afforded some people access to economic resources, making politics the quickest way to untold and unending riches. As a result, the political landscape has invited abuse of power thereby decimating not the physical being but the entire moral fibre of the nation. This study shows how Zimbabwean political leaders have turned out to be the primary controllers and distributors of power and resources with the capacity to penetrate society politically and secure their hegemony. Reference is made to politicians belonging to the ruling party Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), where politicians from either party have exhibited, though not uniformly, patterns of misconduct characteristic of political entrepreneurship. This paper applies the theory of the entrepreneur to political behaviour for the purpose of identifying political entrepreneurs and analytically distinguishing them from other government agents.

Prosopographic portrait of the founding fathers of the Ukrainian independent state and the Republic of Lithuania: a comparative analysis

The prosopographic portraits of the founding fathers of the Ukrainian independent state and the Republic of Lithuania, restored in 1990 and 1991, are revealed. The research is based on general scientific and special historical methods, among which the comparative method and the method of prosopography occupy a special place. The first part of the article is dedicated to the leaders of those sociopolitical organizations that formed the core of the opposition movement against the dictatorship of the Communist Party - Vytautas Landsbergis, Vyacheslav Chornovol and Levko Lukyanenko. Thanks to the appropriate methodological tools, it was possible to reveal the common and distinctive features of leaders in both countries: national-democratic bias, duration of dissident activity, belonging to one or another social stratum, participation in political activities, personal contribution to the development of the country's independence, etc. Attention was also drawn to the fact that the leader of the national-democratic forces of Lithuania V. Landsbergis was the highest political figure of the Restorative Seimas for almost three years (1990-1992), while the leaders of the Ukrainian democratic movement were given mediocre roles in the shadow of the communists. Which at that time dominated the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. The second part of the study paints a prosopographic portrait of the first presidents of Ukraine and the Republic of Lithuania. Ukraine is considered number one here because the institution of the presidency was founded on its territory in 1991, and in Lithuania in 1993. Despite the fact that the presidency of Leonid Kravchuk and Algirdas Brazauskas is considered taking into account the time factor, it depicts significant differences in the strategies of the state behavior of these two natives of the same communist system, who were almost the same age. In particular, this concerns the issue of distancing from the Russian Federation and the country's geopolitical choice of joining the European Union and NATO. Thus, in conclusion, we see that the path to independence in both countries was paved by national-democratic movements led by the intelligentsia. However, not everyone achieved the final result of the activity. We also notice that both in Ukraine and in Lithuania, former Communist Party members became the first presidents.

IRAN: PROBLEMS AND PROTESTS

This paper analyzes the causes, course, driving forces, modus operandi, and goals of the September-November 2022 protest movement in Iran following the death of a girl detained by the patrol guidance police for wearing an inappropriate hijab. A comparison is made between the ongoing protests and the opposition movements of previous years. The article begins with a brief analysis of the economic situation in the country during the first year of President Raisi's government, and reveals the main problems of economic development. The authors proceed from the fact that the economic crisis as a result of the imposition of sanctions has not been overcome, despite the positive growth of the country's GDP in the last two years. The problems in the social and cultural sphere are exacerbated as a result of generational changes, and the limitations of political life as a result of the consolidation of power in the hands of radical conservative forces. Their attempts to increase control over the observance of Islamic norms of dress and behavior, bans on cultural events lead to increased discontent in Iranian society. Young generations are actively fighting for freedom of choice and the right to make their own decisions. Society's conflict potential is increasing, which threatens the existence of the Islamic Republic. The government's efforts to suppress the movements by force do not lead to their extinguishment, and the forms of protest are changing. While radical forces call for harsher reprisals against protesters, many politicians of both moderate conservative and liberal orientations call for public dialogue and reforms in order to solve the most serious problems and preserve the Islamic regime.

Parafia w Krasiczynie jako ośrodek wsparcia dla opozycji demokratycznej i niezależnego ruchu chłopskiego oraz centrum pomocy społecznej w okresie stanu wojennego i po nim

[The Parish in Krasiczyn as a centre of support of democratic opposition and independent peasant movement and a centre of social assistance during martial law in Poland and thereafter] The aim of another publication in “Rocznik Przemyski”, which falls under the project of “oral history”, is to preserve for posterity significant events in the Przemyśl region which took place not so long ago, whose participants are still alive and have agreed to bear first-hand testimonies. This paper focuses on the role of the Roman Catholic St. Martin parish church in Krasiczyn during a crucial period in our history, i.e. the birth of democratic opposition based on the “Solidarity” movement and then public resistance after martial law had been introduced in Poland. The article consists of five parts: introduction, presentation of Rev. Stanisław Bartmiński, calendar of events between 1970 and 2008, accounts by people who in the 1970s and later, particularly during the martial law, had contact with the Krasiczyn parish, and short biographies of the interlocutors and people mentioned in the interviews. The publication is complete with the afterword of the then parish priest, Rev. Stanisław Bartmiński. The collected testimonies show the social, cultural and charity-oriented role of the Krasiczyn church rectory and its head priest, in particular Krasiczyn as the place of meetings of peasant activists who laid the foundations of independent organizations of individual farmers, as a relief centre for democratic opposition activists and later a regional relief center for the people oppressed for their Solidarity activity. Part of the material also concerns organizing in the early 1990s camps for children of Polish origin from Ukraine as well as Ukrainian children harmed during the Chernobyl catastrophe.

Educational and scientific programmes for the citizens of Belarus as an example of science diplomacy – a political and legal analysis

Owing to current events in Belarus (political and social, including the economic crisis and the ongoing activities that are having a negative impact on the functioning of opposition movements), the country is becoming an arena of competition for influence. In the context of the subject of this analysis, rivalry, especially in terms of the influence of other states on Belarusian society, is of key importance. Science diplomacy may be a tool of competition for influence. The fact that science diplomacy can be both a tool with which to cooperate with other countries in the region and a tool of competition for influence is of key importance in analysing this problem. The scientific potential of the Belarusian community is also of interest to other countries, including Ukraine, Lithuania, and Germany. The effective and efficient implementation of science diplomacy activities towards Belarus is undoubtedly in line with the well-understood Polish national interest. The aim of the article was to conduct a political and legal analysis of the process by which Poland is using science diplomacy as a tool for influencing the scientific community of Belarus. Another research goal was to analyse the activities undertaken by two other countries in the region – Ukraine and Lithuania – with respect to science diplomacy. The article also aimed to analyse the formal and legal conditions related to the normative solutions used in the countries under analysis, enabling the undertaking and implementation of education by Belarusian citizens. The educational and scientific programmes offered to students and scientists from Belarus in Poland were also subject to legal analyses. The whole analysis is supplemented and concluded by an attempt to evaluate the effectiveness of the activities carried out so far.

Do movimento popular ao parlamento:Comunicação estratégica e a conquista da legitimidade pública. Estudo de caso: PAN (Pessoas – Animais – Natureza)

Strategic communication has progressively claimed a broader role in society, and in fos-tering social capital, civic engagement, and democracy. Thus, activism has received much attention in public relations theory and practice. In the Portuguese case, PAN fits this con-cern in line with the new political parties founded bottom-up by activists’ social opposition movements. In 2015, PAN managed to enter a parliamentary system that had remained in-accessible to new political parties for almost 20 years. This study is based on a qualitative methodology, anchored in the discursive analysis of public relations positioning elements in the original manifesto of the grassroots movement that originated PAN. A tag cloud‐gen-erating software (wordArt.com) was also used to analyze word frequency and identify the main themes of the document. In-depth interviews with PAN policymakers were carried out to analyze how the party communication strategies may have impacted its significant growth. Findings indicate that a strategic approach to communication influenced the transition from a civic movement to a formal parliamentary party. PAN’s manifesto was discur-sively constructed to position the movement as trustworthy with high ethical and moral standards. PAN used the possibilities of social media to build a collective identity, from the grassroots, based on specific narratives.

State-civil society relations in Gramsci, Poulantzas and Bourdieu: Strategic implications for the degrowth movement

Degrowth thought and strategies suffer from a tension between viewing the state as incapable of initiating transformational change and making a political appeal to it to do precisely this via targeted eco-social policies. While a small number of academic papers has theoretically addressed this tension, there is a lack in research on the strategic implications arising from conceptualizations of the state and state-civil society relations within degrowth/postgrowth approaches. Responding to the generally increased interest in strategic reasoning within the degrowth movement, the present paper examines the state theories of Antonio Gramsci, Nicos Poulantzas and Pierre Bourdieu under these auspices. It first compares and contrasts the three theories in respect to general characteristics of state-civil society relations. Subsequently, the paper addresses principles of domination, crisis and corresponding openings for oppositional movements. The discussion reflects on the main findings and identifies critical strategic implications.

Close but not too close: opposition network strategy and democratization in Zambia

ABSTRACT Current literature finds that democratization is most likely when opposition social movements have initiated a political transition. Yet little work has disaggregated bottom-up transitions to suggest when this effect obtains. This article examines a case not widely known in the social movements’ literature: the 1991 political transition in Zambia. It proposes a novel theoretical avenue to help explain this case’s incomplete democratic transition. The piece re-conceptualizes the opposition movement as a multi-organizational actor network. I argue that opposition movements face strong incentives to unify through either centralizing around a single organization or creating a dense network of multiple, overlapping connections. The strategy they pursue affects the transitional political landscape. Highly centralized opposition networks are likely to lead to less democratic outcomes while dense decentralized networks will have more democratic outcomes. I find that high centralization by the opposition in Zambia undermined political accountability during the transition and limited Zambia’s democratic progress.

Brave New World Order: The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the Rise of Iraqi Shī‘ī Identity Politics

ABSTRACT This article uses the history of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the largest Shī‘ī Islamist organization within the exiled Iraqi opposition movement, as a case study to delineate how the meaning, function, and salience of sectarian identities are affected by political and social changes at the local, regional, and international level. To this end, this work identifies and explains a discursive shift observed in SCIRI’s publications produced during its tenure as an Iraqi opposition group. Whereas SCIRI’s publications during the Iran-Iraq War emphasized that its brand of Islamic government would represent all Iraqis regardless of their religious or ethnic affiliation, following the war’s conclusion the Council strove to portray its leaders as the primary defenders of Shī‘ī interests in Iraq and focused near exclusively on the need to protect the rights of Iraq Shī‘ī. It argues that several key developments account for the Supreme Council’s adoption of a Shī‘ī-centric political stance during the 1990s, namely: the internationalization and unification of the Iraqi opposition movement in the aftermath of the 1991 March Uprisings and the post-Cold War environment within which the exiled Iraqi opposition was operating. When considered collectively, beyond demonstrating the contingency and complexity of the advent of Shī‘ī identity politics within Iraqi opposition circles throughout the 1990s, these findings suggest the importance of taking into consideration larger, global trends as contributing factors when conceptualizing how subnational forms of identification acquire heighted social and political salience.

The management of disciplinary cases in the South African public service post-2009 to the 2018 era

Background: Poor management of disciplinary cases in the South African public service departments is on the rise. The management of disciplinary cases, amongst other things, has drawn considerable criticism from within the public sector, various media outlets, interest groups and even opposition movements. The government has adopted progressive discipline prescripts to inculcate and promote a culture of professional ethics and accountability. In the workplace, objectivity, consistency and fairness are an important part of healthy employer–employee ties.Aim: The study sought to obtain an in-depth understanding of disciplinary cases and describe the challenges senior managers face when managing disciplinary cases in the public service departments.Setting: Both the national and provincial public service departments of South Africa.Methods: The study adopted qualitative modernistic research approach. Semi-structured electronic questionnaire was used to collect views from 751 senior managers.Results: Public service employees are deprived of organisational justice because of weaknesses associated with the discipline management. This is because management of disciplinary cases and sanctions in most national and provincial departments in the public service is perilous and incongruent with the discipline management prescripts.Conclusion: Based on the findings, the current practices do not deter future violations of discipline management prescripts; inconsistent, unfairness and injustice application of sanctions and management of cases and future misconduct in the workplace. Therefore, the authors recommend the use of team-based and progressive discipline to ensure that staff contribute effectively, efficiently and ethically to the goals of the government. The present study contributes to the existing body of knowledge on human resource management and organisational behaviour and provides a platform that broadens an understanding of the amplifying toxic management of disciplinary cases in the South African public service context.

Transnational Dimensions of Moroccan Gender History

Transnational Dimensions of Moroccan Gender History

RUSSIAN YOUTH ABOUT RUSSIA, UKRAINE, AND BELARUS — IMAGES OF COUNTRIES AND PEOPLES

The main goal of the present examination was to study the ideas of the Russian youth about Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus under existing social and political conditions. To this end, in 2018-2020, in a number of Moscow universities, sociological research was carried out, studying the images of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus as perceived by Russian students. As far back as 30 years ago, the Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians had been perceived as three tight-knit ethnic groups within a broader category of East Slavs, but with the collapse of the Soviet Union, three independent states were formed, whose fates began to develop in different ways. At the present time complicated by all sorts of political controversies between the three countries under consideration, it seems important to know how these countries, their leaders, and peoples appear to the young people of Russia, what their attitude is to certain significant recent political events, namely the events in Ukraine, and to the opposition movement in their own country. The main research method was a sociological survey plus a certain amount of psychological testing. In total, 600 people were interviewed in several major universities in Moscow. The materials were then processed using the SPSS computer program. Also, the students were asked to present their perceptions of the country, its people, and its leadership in drawings, making the images as emblematic as possible. The results of the study showed that despite the difficult socio-political situation, Russian youth demonstrate a rather positive attitude towards their own country and its leadership; they regret the conflict in Ukraine, sympathize with its people, and condemn the ongoing civil war in the east of the country. Russians perceive Belarus as a friendly country with which it is necessary to strengthen cooperation. The research materials may be useful to specialists dealing with the ethnic issues in the three countries and with their political, economic, and cultural construction.

Negotiating civic space in Lebanon: The potential of non-sectarian movements

ABSTRACT Shrinking civic space is a global trend in governance impeding citizens’ enjoyment of the fundamental freedoms of association, expression and peaceful assembly. While deeply affected by this phenomenon, civil society organizations and collectives in Lebanon have cultivated a series of non-sectarian opposition movements that warrant an assessment of how these may contribute to reconciling deeply divided identities. The authors examine the specific challenges imposed on civil society in Lebanon’s hybrid democratic setting, where power and resources are allocated along confession-based cleavages. Additionally, they discuss the strategies through which Lebanese civil society collectives push back against government pressures and defend, as well as expand, their available room for manoeuvre. The strategies of two recent opposition movements are analysed: (i) the coalition ‘Kollouna Watani’, a crossover into politics for the 2018 Lebanese elections by actors originally associated with civil society organizations, and (ii) the mass protest movement starting in October 2019. The findings highlight these non-sectarian movements’ potential to promote cooperation among the fragmented realms of civil society, as well as the hardships of challenging well-established elites and their interests via formal politicization. In doing so, they also show the potential and agency of civil society to counter the phenomenon of shrinking civic space.

Errata

Erratum for the article: Hoover, Elizabeth. “Fires were lit inside them”. Review of International American Studies, 12 (1/2019), 11-44. https://doi.org/10.31261/rias.7391
 The article "The Fires Were Lit Inside Them: The Pyropolitics of Water Protector Camps at Standing Rock" by Elizabeth Hoover, published in the Spring/Summer issue of Volume 12 of RIAS is regretfully missing a citation. Much of the history of the NoDAPL movement on pages 18-19 was drawn from a presentation compiled by Jennifer Weston, a Standing Rock Sioux Tribal member, educator, and language advocate who has been working tirelessly to inform the public about the Standing Rock Dakota Access Pipeline Opposition movement.

When an Efficient Use of Strategic Communication (Public Diplomacy and Public Relations) to Internationalize a Domestic Conflict Is Not Enough to Gain International Political Support: The Catalan Case (2012-2017)

ABSTRACT One of the main goals of the Catalan nationalist movement toward independence initiated in 2012 was to internationalize the conflict between, in theory, two sides: Catalonia and Spain. In the case of Catalonia, its storytelling tried to offer to the world the view of an entire society intensely mobilized in pro of freedom and independence by peaceful methods, while Spain would be incarnated in an elitist irreducible and defensive government closed to reason and negotiation. This article describes the use of strategic communication (mainly public diplomacy and public relations), a soft power and post-modern resource, by the pro-independence movement in opposition to the use of modern and hard power means by Spain’s government (including appeal to courts, police, and financial pressure, among other means). It describes the efficient use of strategic communication, including para-diplomacy efforts as well as positive press coverage and even “fake news”, by the Catalan pro-independence movement. Nonetheless, the movement was not able to gain the political support of supra-national organizations like the European Union (EU), the United Nations (UN) or even some major powers such as Germany, which had supported other independence processes in the past. The conclusion is that an efficient use of strategic communication seems to have its limits in the internationalization of internal conflicts and in altering the political status quo when the threatened nation state, in this case Spain, has a solid international position and good democratic credentials.

The Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) As an Opposition Force in The Joko Widodo’s Era in 2014-2020

FPI (Islamic Defenders Front) is a mass organization that has consistently positioned itself as the opposition since the reformation. However, during the Jokowi era, the FPI's opposition was more dominant than during before Jokowi era. Using Robert A. Dahl's opposition theory and Maurice Duverger's pressure group theory, as well as qualitative methods, this study wants to see the reasons for FPI as an opposition, FPI's affiliation with Joko Widodo's political opponents. It then analyzes the relationship between ideological and political aspects. This study shows that the FPI oppositional movement is divided into two. That is, the FPI oppositional movement is based on ideological aspects and based on political aspects. This includes da'wah, political support for Jokowi's opponents, and oppressive movements such as the 212 movements. FPI can strengthen identity politics because FPI often uses SARA issues in its movement as a radical Islamic organization.

Epidemiology of suicide in the Tricity metropolitan area in northern Poland 1980–2009: Evidence of influence by political and socioeconomic changes

ObjectivesThe paper presents the results of the statistical analyses of completed suicides in the Tri-City area, Poland from 1980 to 2009. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the trait dynamics of completed suicides in the context of drastic political and socioeconomic transformations. MethodsStatistical analysis of approximately 30,000 autopsy cases, including 3885 suicides, was performed. All data were evaluated using the STATISTICA version 10 software. ResultsThe analyses revealed an increasing number of suicide completers. Men committed suicide more frequently and were younger than female suicide committers. We observed also an increase in the mean age of suicide completers. More suicides occurred in the spring and summer compared to autumn and winter seasons. The most common method of suicide was hanging. ConclusionsThe results of this study suggest temporal changes in trends, methods and social profile of suicide attempters related to political and socioeconomic changes in Poland in the years 1980–2009. These included the activity of the opposition movement “Solidarity”, the introduction of martial law in December 1981, the fall of communism and democratization processes, and the shifting from the system of a centrally planned economy to a neoliberal capitalism.

‘Good Muslim, bad Muslim’ in Togo: religious minority identity construction amid a sociopolitical crisis (2017–2018)

AbstractIn Togo, the opposition movement behind the anti-government protests that broke out in 2017–2018 appears to reflect a greater role for Islam in politics. Tikpi Atchadam, leader of the Parti National Panafricain, was the preeminent figure in the movement, having built a solid grassroots base among his fellow Muslims. This article examines the unique role that Muslim leaders played in these protests, as well as the Faure Gnassingbé regime's strategic response. The ruling party made spurious claims against Muslim opponents, associating them with a dangerous wave of political Islam. I argue that by portraying Atchadam as the leader of a radical ethnic and religious movement with Islamist goals, Faure Gnassingbé and his supporters sought to weaken this emerging challenger and deter members of the public from backing calls for political change. The strategy also helped garner support from Western countries while simultaneously driving a wedge between Muslim community leaders.