Political Mobilization Research Articles

Building Party Support Abroad: Turkish Diaspora Organisations in Germany and the UK

This article covers a unique form of political mobilisation within the Turkey-originated diasporic community in Europe that formed after Turkey introduced external voting in 2012. Although existing literature has paid attention to the impact of homeland political parties on external voting rights and diaspora organisations’ role in electoral campaigns, these organisations’ impact on members’ mobilisation capacities for certain homeland parties remains understudied. This article tackles this topic by first comparing Turkey-originated diaspora organisations in Germany and the UK. Secondly, it guides future empirical work on the impact of the diaspora organisations on remote partisans’ political orientation by taking the dominant emigrant profile in a residence country dimension into the study of external voting. Focusing on eligible Turkish citizens, the findings of this article are based on participant observation and 60 in-depth interviews conducted with remote voters who participated in the mobilisation of Turkey-based political parties in Germany between 2018 and 2023 and in the UK between 2021 and 2023 through diaspora organisations.

Wall-building policy: nationalist space management and borderphobia as right-wing populists' tools for doing authoritarian politics

The article analyses the situation that arose after the crisis on the Poland-Belarus border in the second half of 2021. The authors use the term “borderphobia” to describe social, political and propaganda mechanisms that became a form of border space management used to legitimize and gain support for the actions taken by the right-wing populist government in Poland. The phenomenon of borderphobia can be a symbol of the symbiosis between political authoritarianism, nationalism and economic neoliberalism: the combination of these three forces affects the development of the “border industry” in Europe and in the world. The policy based on borderphobia facilitates the suspension of civil rights in the border area: this is what happened in Poland, where a state of emergency was introduced in the border area under the pretext of “border protection.” The case of building the wall on the Polish-Belarusian border can also show how the nationalist right in Poland can use the borderphobic discourse for political mobilization and in an election campaign to maintain their influence and political power in the country. The article indicates that although the leaders of right-wing populist parties believe that the slogans of defending the “security border” and building border walls can bring them political benefits, the example of the Law and Justice (PiS) party in Poland has shown that this is not always the case.

“Yugoslavia has Nothing. Yugoslavia has No Bread. But Hungary Gives Us Bread”: Access to Food and (Dis)loyalty in a “Redeemed” Yugoslav Borderland

Abstract This article illustrates the socioeconomic background of rural political discontent in the post-imperial Yugoslav border region Prekmurje. The author argues that during the post-Habsburg political transition and ensuing social transformation, the fundamental lack of loyalty to the Yugoslav state among an important segment of the rural population of Prekmurje was rooted in insufficient access to food. Documents of court proceedings, official state reports, and findings of individuals with deep understandings of the situation on the ground reveal that this rural political mobilization was not so much a reflection of Hungarian propaganda or a “lack of appropriate national identification” among the local population—although, of course, these two factors cannot be ignored in a contested and linguistically and ethnically diverse region—but rather an outcome of the impoverishment of large sections of the peasant population.

NARRATIVE OF IDENTITY POLITICS IN THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS OF THE REPUBLIC OF INDONESIA: CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Objective: This research investigates the effects of social media on the quality and functioning of democracy in Indonesia, especially in relation to the 2017 DKI Governor Election and the upcoming 2024 presidential election. Social media is a vital platform for political participation, mobilization and expression, as it enables citizens to access information, voice their opinions and engage with diverse perspectives. However, social media also poses risks and challenges for democracy, as it can be used to manipulate public opinion, spread misinformation and incite violence.
 
 Theoritical framework: The influence of negative campaigns on voting behavior and political participation has also been a focus of research, with studies analyzing the impact of campaign narratives and media attention on election outcomes. In this context, many studies have highlighted how campaigns dominated by negative narratives can influence voters' opinions and attitudes. Negative campaigns tend to focus attention on the weaknesses and defects of political opponents, often leading to polarization and dissatisfaction with the political process as a whole. Apart from that, the role of the media in strengthening or balancing the campaign narrative is also an important aspect to be researched. The mass media has great power in strengthening the narratives conveyed by candidates and political parties through the coverage, analysis and opinions they convey to the public. In this case, media attention to certain campaign narratives can influence voter perceptions and preferences.
 
 Methods: The research examines how social media was used by different political actors and groups to support or oppose Anies Baswedan, who was a candidate for the governor of DKI Jakarta in 2017 and is now a presidential candidate backed by the Nasdem Party, PKB and PKS. The research also analyzes the impact of social media on the political culture and values of the Indonesian society, as well as the opportunities and limitations for enhancing democratic accountability and transparency through social media. The data collection methods include interviews, document analysis and internet-based sources and social media from 2016 to 2017
 
 Result & Conclusion: The research findings show that social media has both positive and negative effects on democracy, as it can foster civic engagement, deliberation and pluralism, but also create polarization, distrust and intolerance. Social media is the third most popular medium for spreading campaign content, after television and newspapers. The campaign content in the 2017 DKI Governor election was then used in a national context to undermine Anies Baswedan as a presidential candidate, who was backed by the Nasdem Party and PKB, who were his political adversaries in the 2017 DKI Jakarta Governor election.
 
 Research Implications: Highlights the importance of responsible social media strategies to support democracy, recommending enhanced digital literacy and content regulation.
 
 Originality/Value: Provides a unique analysis of the impact of social media on political elections in Indonesia, offering insights into changing campaign strategies and socio-political interactions.

Mobilizing and Sustaining Affect - Toward a Transindividual Self: A Study in Social Dramaturgy. By Ana Vujanović and Bojana Cvejić . Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Sarma, and Multimedijalni Institute, 2022; 338 pp.; €20.00, paper. - Performing Resilience for Systemic Pain. By Meghan Moe Beitiks. Routledge, 2022; 160 pp.; illustrations. $157.84, cloth, $52.95 paper, e-book available. - Performances do

The world is going through processes of change that emphasize the role of affect in fueling political mobilization and collective protest. Distinctive geopolitical affects emerge in different territories: Can affect both perform and sustain social change?

How Culture Was Planned: Shanghai’s Troupe-Relocation Project in the 1950s

Abstract: This article examines Shanghai’s troupe-relocation project in the second half of the 1950s. I argue that this project, by its nature, represented the way of resource allocation in a “planned culture” system, in which the state sought to replace the market and dominate the allocation of cultural resources. Popular culture hence was to be transformed from a market-based business into a section of the “planned culture” system under the Party-state. In the “planned culture” system, Shanghai’s troupe-relocation project, on the one hand, was aiming at providing cultural facilities for the inland industrial cities under construction and state welfare for the working class; on the other hand, it was beneficial for balancing the supply and demand in the local theatre market. Since yueju (yue opera), a local theatrical genre performed in the Shaoxing dialect, played a significant role in the troupe-relocation project, this article focuses on the stories of two yueju troupes, Xinxin and Chunguang. Migrating from Shanghai to northwestern industrial cities during the First Five-Year Plan (1953–1957), their considerations and reactions to political mobilization, their lives in new environments, and their destiny in the post-Mao era reflected the connection between the “planned culture” and planned economy, as well as the interplay between state planning and the cultural market. Their stories expose the inherent flaws of the “planned culture” system: First, it was undeniable that the economic cost of the “planned culture” was enormous. Second, administrative orders made resource allocation inefficient and inflexible .

From Human Rights to Citizens' Rights? Democratic Framing Contests and Refugee Politics in South Korea

In 2018, the South Korean government denied refugee status to all but two of the almost 500 Yemenis who, fleeing civil war in their home country, had arrived earlier in the year on the resort island of Jeju. This decision was made in the context of a short-lived but intense public backlash, even though the overall number of refugees has remained consistently low. Three years later, nearly 400 Afghans were evacuated to South Korea with government support and little controversy. What explains these different patterns of refugee politicization in South Korea? I argue that the 2018 episode of anti-refugee activism in South Korea does not follow the typical script in immigration politics which pits "natives" against "outsiders"; rather, it is a reflection of internal political divisions. In this article, I focus on political framing contests involving governmental and non-governmental actors that draw upon prior rhetorical frames of political mobilization which had developed in a broader context of state-building, development, and democratization. The 2018 Jeju "crisis" was partially a reaction against state-led multiculturalism (damunhwa), which had gained momentum since the 2000s. It also signalled a political backlash against previous decades of social and political movements that framed labour rights, migrant workers' rights, and other minority rights as a necessary expansion of human rights befitting a responsible "advanced nation." At the same time, the varied responses to the arrival of Yemenis in 2018 and Afghans in 2021 show that the coherence and resonance of competing political frames during key moments can help explain the type and degree of political mobilization on refugee policy. Furthermore, these comparative case studies show that South Korean attitudes toward refugees have not settled into stable political-economic coalitions and remain contested and in flux.

Sword of Damocles hanging over grassroots cadres in China: Understanding the accountability in campaign-style enforcement

The ‘campaign-style enforcement’ is a forceful policy instrument employed by Chinese authorities to address emergencies and intractable issues. However, the accountability embedded in campaign-style enforcement is largely overlooked, leading to the unclear dynamics of political mobilization at the grassroots level. While prior studies suggest that cadres in China are primarily motivated by promotion opportunities based on their political performance, this study, through a grounded-theory approach involving 557 penalized cadres in Hubei Province, argues that grassroots cadres are more likely mobilized by the stringent accountability system rather than by career promotion. Furthermore, this research develops a theoretical framework to elucidate what conditions may trigger accountability and how it drives grassroots political mobilization in the campaign-style enforcement.

Hydropolitical potentialities in a post-'Day Zero' Cape Town: "Sensemaking" and the Cape Flats Aquifer

In the context of the climate crisis, water as a natural resource is under threat globally, and the Global South is of critical interest for political ecological studies. This article argues that environmental crises such as the "Day Zero" drought in 2018 in Cape Town (South Africa) can create possibilities for reformulating the deeply unequal hydropolitics stemming from colonial and apartheid regimes. The drought has enabled the politicisation of underground water, examined through an ethnographic study of a small-scale farming organisation in the Philippi Horticultural Area (PHA) of Cape Town. While tracking ways to secure the protection of natural resources such as aquifers in urban areas, the article further considers how such forms of activism around underground water have sought to "make the invisible, visible," thereby developing more inclusive forms of sensemaking. By providing an analysis of activism taking place during and after a period of acute water scarcity, it contributes to scholarship on emergent political ecological mobilisation in the climate crisis in the Global South.

The political economy of economic upgrading in Central Eastern Europe

ABSTRACT The paper explores the political conditions favourable to economic upgrading in democratic non-corporatist emerging economies with a focus on CEE countries as characteristic examples. While the existing literature has assumed this polity type to be the least favourable for designing and implementing effective industrial policies because of a lack of bureaucratic ‘embedded autonomy’, the paper argues that this is not to suggest that such industrial policies and economic upgrading are rare in these economies, but rather that they involve different mechanisms of political mobilisation and support. To identify these mechanisms, the paper adopts a social bloc-based framework and applies it to an in-depth study of Estonia, a strong upgrader in the region in terms of its increased economic specialisation in ICT-based services. The paper finds that a lack of ‘embedded autonomy’ can effectively be supplanted by the embeddedness of private actors in the state administration and political decision-making through a network-based configuration of the social bloc and a shared upgrading ideology leading to a conflation of private interests with national development goals.

Cyber-Politics: Social Media's Influence on Political Mobilization

Commencing with the recognition of social media's profound impact on political mobilisation, this research seeks to conduct an in-depth investigation into the intricate relationship between social media and political engagement, acknowledging the significant influence of digital platforms on civic participation. Employing a methodologically rigorous mixed-methods approach, combining qualitative content analysis and secondary data for quantitative analysis, the study systematically examines the nuanced dynamics of political discourse, information dissemination, and network structures within major social media domains. Guided by Social Movement Theory, the theoretical framework illuminates the instrumental role played by online communities and influencers in shaping contemporary political movements. Preliminary findings emphasize the pivotal contribution of social media to information dissemination, community-building endeavours, and activist initiatives. However, the research also identifies challenges related to misinformation and polarization, highlighting the need for a nuanced understanding of the multifaceted relationship between social media and political engagement. Aligned with a referenced study, this research enhances understanding of the influence exerted by digital spaces on civic engagement, providing a holistic examination of policy discourse, information distribution, and network structures across major social media channels. Establishing a foundation for future research, the study offers pragmatic insights to policymakers, facilitating the discerning utilization of social media platforms for constructive mobilization while mitigating deleterious consequences in the contemporary digital milieu.

Citizen participation during the 2014 protest in Burkina Faso: Aspiring to a ‘good state’

Abstract Analyses of the 2014 protest in Burkina Faso have predominantly focused on some of the movement’s major activists, to the neglect of ordinary citizens. Yet, while citizens’ participation in Burkina Faso in 2014 echoed to some extent the agendas of activists, it built on citizens’ own political subjectivities. Drawing on original interviews and Afrobarometer survey data, we show that Burkinabè citizens were motivated to protest by unmet expectations of the ‘good state’, as experienced in their daily existence in the sense of hardship and unequal treatment by the political system. These expectations and aspirations reflected citizens’ deeper political beliefs or political subjectivities, as already expressed in years prior to the 2014 political crisis. Overall, the article shows how looking at protest from the bottom-up can shift our understanding of political mobilization and its motives: citizen protest constitutes its own political phenomenon, in Burkina Faso and beyond, and should not be subsumed by analyses largely derived from speaking to major activists.

Homo Novus in the Conquest of the Empire: The Playful Element in Fascist Propaganda and Pedagogy: A Case Study

The Italo-Ethiopian War (1935–1936) represents, par excellence, the war of fascism for fascism. It is no coincidence that the extensive use of military resources was accompanied by an extraordinary propaganda campaign, which also had clear and evident pedagogical implications. The regime, at the peak of its consensus and in the full deployment of its totalitarian vocation, took on the objective of raising the young and very young generations “to the level of the Empire.” The pedagogical project of the homo novus experienced a qualitative leap. The combination of war and Africa, filled with heroic fascination and ancestral mystery, stroke the imagination of teachers, educators, textbook compilers, and, similarly, excited the imagination of the youth. The enthusiasm generated by propaganda, or the propaganda itself artificially returned to the public sphere, promoted the psychological dynamics of “celebration” and play. Although fascist pedagogy underestimated the relationship between learning and play, the playful element actually emerged as an important factor in political mobilization and, above all, imperialistic education. The didactic strategies of elementary school teachers, developed in preparation for and during the African conflict, are proof of this. However, even the private industry aligned itself with the pedagogical influences of the regime, introducing a wide variety of toys on the market that served to shape an imperialist, warlike, chauvinistic, and racist mentality. The province of Perugia is undoubtedly an interesting field of investigation: on the territory of the “capital of the fascist revolution,” starting from 1923, governing groups making loyalty to the Duce the driving force of their political rise took over the institutional and administrative structures. But that’s not all: unlike elsewhere, the Gentile reform enjoyed widespread consensus in Perugia from the beginning. Moreover, the majority of teachers joined Mussolini’s movement from the very beginning.

The Activism and Radicalism Intention Scales (ARIS) as a Measure of Political Mobilization: Verification of Factor Structure and Invariance across Gender in a Sample of Polish Academic Youth

ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to fill the gap related to the lack of Polish-language scales for measuring political mobilization. Therefore, we developed the Polish version of the Activism-Radicalism Intention Scales (ARIS) and assessed its psychometric properties in a sample of academic youth. In an online survey, 767 students completed ARIS and other questionnaires assessing related constructs. Using the confirmatory factor analysis, we investigated the bi-factorial structure that should best fit the theoretical concept underlying the ARIS. In this way, we extended the original factor analysis conducted by the scale’s authors, which was based on exploratory analytic methods. Furthermore, we verified the reliability, dimensionality, and multi-group measurement invariance across gender and construct validity. The results confirmed that the scale has a bi-factorial structure. The reliability of the ARIS is high, and scale is characterized by partial strict invariance across gender and satisfactory construct validity. In conclusion, we positively assessed the utility of the Polish version of the ARIS. Therefore, the scale can be successfully used in research on Polish society, the aim of which is to monitor the level of the political participation of Poles and to identify individuals and groups that are politically uninvolved or prone to radicalization.

Confronting or incorporating middle-class nation-building? Right-wing responses in the pan-Canadian context

ABSTRACT Canada is often praised for successfully integrating ethnically diverse immigrants into its multicultural nation, so successful indeed that the country has been considered an exception to the twenty-first-century right-wing populist wave. The recent ascent of political mobilization associated with right-wing populist repertoires across Canada, however, has exposed the need to revisit the exceptionalism thesis. With this goal in mind, our article examines the contemporary right-wing responses to the Liberal Party of Canada’s (LPC) post-2015 discourses and policies on immigration and multiculturalism. Building on existing scholarship, we first characterize the LPC’s approach as a nation-building project with strong middle-class partialities that emphasize high skills and human capital. We then explore how right-wing parties oppose or embrace this ‘middle-class nation-building’. Qualitatively analyzing the platforms of center-right parties and those further to the right at the federal and provincial levels (Alberta and Québec), we observe three prevalent response types: those that follow a cultural logic to prioritize identity and values, an economic logic to underline merit and contribution, or a combination of the two. Besides modulating the Canadian exceptionalism thesis, our findings complicate the assumed dichotomy between market-based and cultural forms of nationalism, as political actors can merge them in various permutations.

What Do Apologies Apologize for? Rearrangements of State Violence

What do apologies apologize for? More precisely, what do the apologies regularly pronounced by states for some atrocity or other actually accomplish? This question animates my article. State apologies became an integral element of global political culture in the early 21st century. These politics of regret are reshaping Canadian national culture, most pronouncedly with the apologies for the Indian Residential School System ( CBC News 2008a; McIntyre 2017) and the Komagata Maru ( CBC News 2008b; Trudeau 2016). While Public Inquiries and Royal Commissions have long served as state responses to political mobilization, deployment of the machinery of regret has fast become the predictable response to accusations of atrocities, including genocide, enslavement and racial violence. Drawing on Frantz Fanon’s and Walter Benjamin’s ideas on violence, colonial in the case of Fanon (1961), law in that of Benjamin (1996), I examine the apologies delivered to Indigenous peoples and South-Asian diasporic communities by the Canadian state. Locating these pronouncements in the histories of violence they index, I demonstrate how such apologies function as techniques of violence that advance settler power structures and narratives of nationhood. My argument here is that apologies are themselves acts of violence which rework histories of brutalization to meet the political destabilizations of the present. Apologies thus reorganize the racial violence of settler societies, drawing sections of subjugated populations into waging this violence and, in the process, derail resurgent politics of decolonization, abolitionism and anti-racism.

Social and Political Mobilisation on Reservation Policy in Bihar: A Historical Contour

Presently, reservation stands as one of the significant issues in Indian politics. Its relevance has heightened with political mobilisation centred around reservation politics, particularly in Bihar politics. Bihar, one of the most diverse states in terms of population, is stratified based on caste and class consciousness. The distribution pattern of the reservation system in Bihar has always held a unique position in the prospects of reservation politics in India. The present paper focuses on the historical evolution of the reservation pattern in Bihar. Furthermore, it analyses how socio-political mobilisation has occurred in the shadow of reservation politics. This study also highlights the role of reservation politics in shaping political consciousness. It discusses the pivotal movement on mobilisation in Bihar's social justice policies and emphasises the long-term influence of reservation politics on the state's political environment.

Mass media and social networks in the modern politics of Kazakhstan

Relevance. Kazakhstan has recently joined the group of countries affected by the concept of "networked social movements". Since 2013, many blogs have started to appear on YouTube and Facebook. Using social networks blogs, political activists have begun to voice their discontent and question the legitimacy of the political regime that has emerged since independence in 1990. While social movements and controversial politics are integral to political systems, autocratic regimes are inherently opposed to controversial collective action because they contribute to the destruction of such regimes. Purpose. The goal of such regimes is to retain power as long as possible. The Internet provides new channels for citizens' voices, minority perspectives and political mobilisation. Methodology. Blogs, online forums, Facebook, and Twitter are already providing citizens with a new form of the public sphere and an alternative source of news and information, which is seen as a new platform for exchanging news. Data from blogs and print media were taken, which reported on the worst civil conflict in the post-Soviet history of Kazakhstan. Consequently, many information sources supported the government's claims. Results. This example demonstrates both the importance of an active online community in Kazakhstan and the government's understanding of the importance of online interaction with its citizens. What can be learned from the Zhanaozen case about the role of social networks on the Internet in political transformation in Kazakhstan? What role does the government of Kazakhstan play in combating political dissent through cyberspace? Conclusions. This study will contribute to a better understanding of current political processes in Kazakhstan and demonstrate the link between the increased use of social networks on the Internet and political activism in Kazakhstan.

Political mobilisation and socioeconomic inequality in policy congruence

AbstractIn recent years, scholars have observed that political parties’ policy positions frequently fit the preferences of well‐to‐do voters better than those of the less well‐to‐do; a phenomenon known as policy congruence inequality. While the existence of inequality in policy congruence is well‐established, we currently only have a modest understanding of the causes of it. We develop an argument proposing that the political mobilisation of citizens with low socioeconomic status (SES) both in the parliamentary channel, in the form of high turnout, and in the extra‐parliamentary channel, in the form of high union density, is pivotal. Both high turnout and union density force parties to pay more attention to the preferences of the disadvantaged, thereby creating lower policy congruence inequality. To test the argument, we have collected and harmonised election surveys and party manifestos covering 90 elections in Australia, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States, covering several decades until today, yielding more than 120,000 voter–party dyads. Employing this new dataset, our results confirm that the political mobilisation of citizens with low SES is a strong predictor of policy congruence inequality. This finding nuances the conclusion of extant research by showing that low‐SES citizens are not always on the losing side politically. It also implies the important role of maintaining or maybe even increasing turnout and union membership among the disadvantaged in society. Places where either turnout or union density is slipping in these years are likely to witness further increases in policy congruence inequality in the years to come.

Introduction. The political mobilisation of criminal law and its resistance in the Global South

The articles presented in this special issue explore the relationship between politics and law in the context of the Global South. While some of the contributions examined this relationship through the symbolic power of the law, others focused on how violence is embedded into the relationship between law and politics. The first group, which focused on the symbolic dimension of power relations, dug into struggles to either accommodate political projects into the existing law or whenever such interpretation was not possible, to propose new legislation consistent with those political goals. Meanwhile, the other group of contributions, those who paid special attention to the association between law and violence, described how the relationship between politics and law is centred disputed legitimacy of law in those societies. This introduction discusses how these two approaches complement each other and offer us a better understanding of the particular role law plays in societies in the Global South.