Pro-democracy Protests Research Articles

Participatory study of policy process for wildlife conservation and ecotourism in Eswatini: A multiple streams analysis

By the 1950 s, overhunting in the African Kingdom of Eswatini drove most of its wildlife to extinction. In 2022, Eswatini has one of the most robust conservation success stories in all of Southern Africa and yet has received minimal scholarly attention. Using the Multiple Streams Framework, to understand a complex system, we analyze 40 interviews and 34 policy documents to study variation in problems, policy, and politics across four different types of conservation areas: Community Based Wildlife Protected Areas, a Royal National Park, a Parastatal National Park, and a Privately Managed Protected Area. Our research is participatory, meaning Eswatini conservation professionals played a role in shaping research design and questions and collecting data. We found that policy solutions common to all institutions include 1) the absolute decision-making power of the king, 2) the stringent wildlife protection law in the 1953 Game Act, and 3) a surprisingly conducive space for communities to enact community-based conservation amidst an authoritarian monarchy. The most important problems include economic challenges (e.g. poverty) and climate change. Politics play a role, with unprecedented, violent pro-democracy protests in the summer of 2021 with activists calling for increased human rights considerations, a problem that spills into the wildlife conservation sector. Findings can be used by policy-makers seeking to replicate conservation successes elsewhere, or to enact reforms in the Eswatini system to enable its proven system of wildlife conservation to adapt and endure.

Thailand’s 2020–2021 Pro-Democracy Protests: Diversity, Conflict, and Solidarity

Beyond its popular characterisation as an “anti-monarchy youth movement,” Thailand’s 2020–2021 pro-democracy movement brought together a diverse range of agendas, including feminism, poverty, and education reform along with shared political demands. This article explores these different agendas, their relationship to the protests, and their implications for the collective identity of democracy protestors. Drawing from 17 in-depth interviews with protestors, it was found that the protests were not only a platform to express political positions but also for pedagogical socialisation, where protestors learned about different social issues and the struggles of other protestors. These processes led them to understand authoritarianism and democracy with a structural lens, where in addition to authoritarian government and the monarchy, the protestors aim to uproot various institutions exercising practices or cultures resembling that of the authoritarian regime. Their understanding of democracy was similarly expansive, going beyond parliamentary politics to accommodate issues within their daily lived experience. The protestors retained a sense of solidarity by conceiving of democracy as necessarily entailing a diversity of views and subsequently disagreements and conflicts. The protestors’ structural approach means the 2020–2021 protests were unique and a novel development from previous protests in Thailand.

Small Governing Coalition in Hong Kong and its Impact on Political Freedom

Small Governing Coalition in Hong Kong and its Impact on Political Freedom

Twitter and the protest movement in Thailand: A thematic analysis of highly retweeted tweets during the pro-democracy protests

In 2021, there were over 1,516 street protests across Thailand, with government forces deployed to disperse protests over 60 times nationwide. Twitter, like the physical protest sites, became an extremely active platform. This paper aims to understand key content with the highest number of retweets during the call for democracy in Thailand in 2021, specifically under the hashtags #28FebMob, #18JulMob, and #7AugMob, through thematic analysis. The findings indicate five key themes conveyed through tweets, namely information dissemination, grievance expression, moral support, mobilization, and calls for action. The study also shows that most of the content conveyed frustration against state power and was highly subjective rather than stating protest objectives or calling for more forces. The characteristics of the tweets were also related to ongoing circumstances of the actual protests at the time, which differed widely depending on the specific event.

Political Discourse in China: How Does China Frame Hong Kong Protests to Its Domestic Audience?

The Hong Kong pro-democracy protests, starting from June 9, 2019, have presented a challenge to the Chinese regime. How has Chinese official media responded to this crisis on the internet? How has the regime framed the anti-regime protests to its mainland audience? In this paper, I describe the strategies used by the Chinese propaganda apparatus to enhance regime resilience. Using text analysis and data collected from Chinese official media, I show that China uses three main discursive devices in reporting on the Hong Kong protests to its domestic audience. First, the regime draws a clear line between in-group and out-group members. Second, the regime tries to promote internal solidarity by emphasizing unifying values such as nationalism and patriotism among in-group members to prevent influence from out-group members. Finally, the regime presents an external enemy to its domestic audience. In addition, using data collected from The New York Times, I also show a comparison between the Western framing and the Chinese framing of the movement.

‘You are not a loan’: contentious debt politics since the North Atlantic Financial Crisis

ABSTRACT Debt has constituted a pivotal theme of both older and more recent mobilizations and critical public debate. While academia has started new discussions about debt relations, literature on resistance against debt is relatively scarce and mostly focuses on the Global South before the North Atlantic Financial Crisis. The aim of this article is to contribute to filling this gap by studying debt-centered movements in recent anti-austerity politics. The article will argue that the 2007/2008 financial crisis has exacerbated debt-related grievances in the Global North to a degree already common across the Global South. I will argue that and show how in response to this spillover established debt abolition networks decided to now also work on Northern debt, while new movement networks for debt justice emerged from within and as a constitutive part of the 2010/2011 anti-austerity and pro-democracy protests.

The Thai Translation of Un violador en tu camino: A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis

In Thailand, the advocacy group Feminist Liberation that emerged alongside the pro-democracy protests in mid-2020 following the COVID-19 pandemic translated Un violador en tu camino , a song composed and performed publicly by Chilean feminist collective Las Tesis and since hailed as a feminist anthem, into Thai as Sita Lui Fai and adapted the original choreography to construct their public discourse around gender-based violence. To answer the overarching question of how transnational feminism was enabled by translation, this paper investigates how the Chilean feminist discourse has changed upon introduction into the target context using Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) multimodal critical discourse analysis of the Thai translation and its choreography. The results show that while both versions similarly highlight the structural cause of gender-based violence, the Chilean lyrics place greater focus on feminist theoretical pedagogy in contrast to the Thai translation’s function as an affective vehicle for anger as exemplified by the adoption of a more colloquial term for “patriarchy”, the choice of specific pronouns to challenge Thai seniority culture, and the emotionally charged modifications to the original choreography. With multiple references to the monarchy, the song has been re-signified to reflect the reality of gender oppression specific to Thailand. Translation has thus served as a tool through which transnational feminism has been fostered. Feminist Liberation’s collaboration with other advocacy groups additionally indicated their intersectional framework where LGBTQ+ rights, reproductive healthcare, students’ rights are inextricably linked to the goal of gender equality.

The Arab Spring, a setback for gender equality? Evidence from the Gallup World Poll

Combining a unique dataset from the Gallup World Poll for the period 2009–2018 with Wolfsfeld et al.’s (2013) protest index, we evaluate the impact of the Arab Spring pro-democracy protests on gender equality in eleven Middle Eastern and North African countries. We use a difference-in-differences approach and find a negative impact of mass protests on female access to labor markets and support for women’s rights in the years following the events. In particular, a one-standard-deviation increase in the protest intensity lowered female participation rates by 3.7 % points. Likewise, Arab Spring protests significantly lowered support for women’s legal rights, occupational rights, and divorce rights. Findings are robust to different samples, alternative model specifications, omitted variable bias, and an alternative protest measure from Steinert-Threlkeld (2017). Regarding potential mechanisms, we suggest that a shift in the Arab zeitgeist towards a less secular society might help explain our findings.

US policy to Hong Kong after its handover to China

This article studies evolvement of the United States’ post-colonial Hong Kong (HK) policy from liberalism to realism. The author considers factors influencing this policy and differences between the White House/State Department and Congress in assessment of and reaction to developments in HK and responses to them. In 1992 Congress passed the United States-HK Policy Act which treated HK as a non-sovereign entity distinct from China, made the US a quasi-guarantor of HK’s autonomy and provided a framework for the advancement of US’s grand liberal strategy towards HK in pursuit of promotion of Western-style democracy in this special administrative region of China. During the first seventeen years after HK’s handover to China the US government paid little attention to HK and avoided public criticism of HK and China’s authorities over slow pace of territory’s democratization while some prominent anti-China hawks in Congress were unrestrained in such criticism. Pro-democracy protests of 2014 in HK did not alter US government’s cautious approach to HK. The Obama administration probably hoped for gradual democratic reforms in HK. Washington’s policy towards HK made a dramatic turn in 2018 on the back of rapidly deteriorating Sino-US relations after Donald Trump came to power. The Trump administration was disillusioned with the liberal agenda and was very eager to actively play a HK card against Beijing. Large scale 2019 protests/riots in HK, challenging China’s sovereignty over the territory, were publicly supported and in fact encouraged by top officials of the Trump administration and prominent Congressmen. After Beijing imposed the national security law (NSL) on HK in June 2020 anti-government movement was crashed. This prompted Trump to strip HK of certain privileges under the HK Policy Act. Due to NSL Washington lost many HK allies, its influence in the territory diminished and its ability to promote American democracy agenda was hampered. NSL signifies a final transition from American liberal strategy to realism vis-à-vis HK which is now fully covered by US’s China containment strategy. Washington will likely reduce its economic exposure to HK and use deep-seated anti-Beijing attitudes of some Hongkongers to undermine stability of this vulnerable territory of China.

Iconic 21st Century Activist "T-Shirt and Tote-Bag" Combination Is Hard to Miss These Days!

Iconic 21st Century Activist "T-Shirt and Tote-Bag" Combination Is Hard to Miss These Days!

Protesting for autocracy: economic vulnerability and anti-democratic protest attendance in Tunisia

ABSTRACT Economic vulnerability has been linked to pro-democracy protests in autocracies. This study suggests that the economically vulnerable are also more likely to participate in protests in support of autocracy in democracies. When democratically-elected governments are perceived as incapable of resolving economic problems, but are not democratically removable, the economically vulnerable should gather and call for an authoritarian takeover. The theory is tested through a representative survey of 1,000 Tunisian respondents. Results show underemployed Tunisians are generally more likely to say they would attend protests demanding military intervention and significantly more than protests demanding local reform. The findings suggest that just as economically vulnerable individuals can destabilize autocracies through protest, they can also destabilize unconsolidated democracies through public agitation for authoritarianism.

“Mobs” or “Pro-democracy Protesters”: A Comparative Analysis of US and Chinese News Discourses of Domestic and Foreign Protests

ABSTRACT This article comparatively analyzes discourses that U.S. newspaper, The New York Times, and Chinese news outlet, The Global Times, constructed about the Hong Kong and Black Lives Matter protests. It finds that as Sino-U.S. relations have deteriorated to the lowest point in this century (Usher 2020), the selected U.S. news coverage of the domestic and international protests appeared to correspond to the tense relations. Nonetheless, the chosen Chinese news media’s negative portrayal of the overseas protesters suggests that in addition to international relations, a country’s racial background and national ideologies might also contribute to how news discourses about domestic and international protests are constructed.

Virtuous Shirking and Social Distance: Concept Measurement in the Context of Militarized Response to Nonviolent Revolution

As a concept-measurement exercise, this article explores social distance in the context of confrontations between soldiers and pro-democracy protesters. While existing work has applied this concept in terms of structural, mostly static factors, this article explores the use of potential dynamic measures for this concept. To show these situational factors at work and highlight their potential contribution as new measures for social distance, this article uses a research design that holds relatively constant the traditional, structural measures while varying the social-distance outcome experienced in each campaign. The cases employed are East Germany 1989, Romania 1989, and South Korea 1980. The article particularly focuses on the protest tactics of fraternization and messaging, as well as regime tactics affecting opportunities for each, confirming both as useful additional measures of the concept of social distance. It also nominates other potential measures based on evidence that emerges inductively in the case reviews.

Swimming in the Dark

Swimming in the Dark

‘Unseeing’ Photography: Academic Freedom and Human Rights after Tiananmen

This paper explores the presentation of a contentious image in the space of an international classroom. The image, known as Tank Man, has come to signify much more than the student pro-democracy protests, and subsequent government response in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989. Seen by the West to exemplify a ‘moral bottom-line’ regarding China’s human rights abuses, it has been subsequently banned in China. How might presentation of this image be problematic for those students compromised by what they should not see? What are the limits of ‘academic freedom’ in such situations? The issue of whether to reproduce the image in this article serves as an interesting case in point. We develop a practice of unseeing that may help us understand how an image can reduce complex historical relations to a divisive symbol of national interest. We consider the West’s own hypocrisy in its reference to China’s human rights record through an image that often remains only partially analyzed by those who claim to see it.

Introduction

Introduction

Youth participation during Thailand’s 2020-2021 political turmoil

ABSTRACT In the 2020–2021 pro-democracy protests in Thailand, an unprecedented number of high school students participated on all levels: from organizing rallies to small symbolic actions. To better understand this phenomenon, we engaged 691 Thai students from diverse backgrounds to write a letter to a recipient on the other side of the political divide. Participants were asked to reflect upon their hopes and fears for Thailand’s political future and explain why their civic engagement is personally, socially, and politically important. Utilizing the ladder of youth participation and other succeeding frameworks in the field, we explored the students’ perception of their political participation in three facets: aspirations of young people, their justification for their participation, and responses from the adults in their lives. We find that while the students have clear and well-articulated reasons for their participation, they are hindered and resisted by their parents or teachers who disagree with their political views.

The politicization of everyday life: understanding the impact of the 2019 Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Protests on pro-democracy protesters’ political participation in Hong Kong

ABSTRACT The 2019 Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill protests in Hong Kong culminated in diverse forms of political participation, but as yet little attention has been paid to the impact on the pro-democracy movement at the micro-level. This paper explores pro-democracy protesters’ evolving views of politics and their new modes of political participation during and after the protests. Using interview data, this paper shows that participants in the pro-democracy movement have increasingly recognized the inseparable relationship between everyday life and political life. This paper examines two forms of everyday political participation – political consumption and digital activism – that have been widely deployed by protesters to express political claims, circulate political information, and garner support from local and international audiences. While the politicization of everyday life provided impetus to street demonstrations in 2019, it has continued despite the adoption of a wider scope of repressive measures by the Chinese and Hong Kong governments after the protests. Through the case of Hong Kong, this paper demonstrates how, in an authoritarian context, everyday resistance is applied to struggle for regime change and democratization.

Textualizing YouTube: Cultivating Bonds of Community via an Online Collaborative Platform in Hong Kong

Textualizing YouTube:Cultivating Bonds of Community via an Online Collaborative Platform in Hong Kong Ka Lee Wong (bio) Introduction Swallow Life (燕子生命) is an online collaborative platform in Hong Kong that aims to cultivate bonds of community and provide entertainment to political prisoners who participated in the pro-democracy protests. In 2019 and 2020, the largest waves of protests in Hong Kong responded to increasing forms of authoritarian control exercised by mainland China in the city. More than 10,000 protesters were arrested and around 3,000 individuals were prosecuted for offenses related to the protest. In view of this, an anonymous group of local Hong Kongers established an online platform, Swallow Life, to consolidate resources to help improve the lives of the imprisoned protesters. On their website, Swallow Life hosts a wide range of guidelines and suggestions about detention, bail, trial, sentence, and inmate visitation, so that protesters and their families can prepare for and plan their responses to the initial arrest and detention. The platform is unique in the sense that it attempts to create a network of community for the detainees through various forms of online collaboration. Besides arranging pen pals for prisoners, it also initiates a special service called "YouTube Streaming Box" (YouTube 機頂盒) to simulate an online experience for inmates who have no access to the internet in prison. To enable detainees to "watch" YouTube videos in prison, Swallow Life invites volunteers to help convert YouTube videos to a format accepted by the local detention facilities. Every week, volunteers upload transcripts of YouTube videos on the platform so that either volunteers on the platform, inmates' pen pals, or families can download and then send the printouts to prison. This [End Page 25] textualization of YouTube videos stretches our understanding of what is meant by media shareability: the circulation of online videos in prison is not made possible by an effortless click of a share button, but is enabled by the labor involved in connecting volunteers and converting videos to a format approved by local prisons. In this essay, I reflect on how this labor-intensive process to textualize and distribute YouTube videos prompts us to rethink what media shareability means. I contend that Swallow Life's practice of sharing YouTube videos is not a form of clicktivism where netizens perform their support to a political cause with an effortless click of a share button. Instead, the platform demonstrates the power of bottom-up participatory culture by fostering an intimate community offline, where volunteers can bond with the arrested protesters, sharing not just their popular media but also emotional support. Context: The Largest Scale Protests in Hong Kong's History The waves of protests in Hong Kong were triggered by the local government's proposal in March 2019 to amend the extradition law. When the amendment is stipulated, anyone who commits crimes in Hong Kong or other places that have extradition treaties with the city will possibly be sent back to mainland China for trial. This is very concerning for the local people, because it will mean the end of the independent status of Hong Kong's judicial system. An independent judicial system, along with other civil rights including the right to assembly, publish, and demonstrate, ought to be sustained in the city until 2046, according to the Sino-British Joint Declaration. The latter was signed by the United Kingdom and China in 1984 and determined the future of the then-British colony Hong Kong, which was then handed over from the UK to China in 1997. The proposed extradition law triggered much anxiety in Hong Kong. Many believed that the law signified a more direct control by China in the city; thus, they would not be able to enjoy as high a level of autonomy as before. The two large-scale Sunday marches on June 9 and June 16, 2019, which were attended by 1.3 and 2 million people respectively, were the beginning of a series of protests in the city where 7 million people reside. The Hong Kong government did not take heed of these oppositions; instead, they decided to proceed with passing the law, while stepping up to suppress the protests with the police...

„Dumna dziewczyna w bieli"

The article is part of the discussion on women’s political participation, their involvement in social movements and protests which are concentrated on the power shift and democratisation of the political system. The text focuses on the case study of Belarusian women’s participation in anti-regime and pro-democracy protests following the rigged presidential election of 9 August 2020.The aim of the article is to answer questions about the reasons for women’s involvement in the 2020 protests in Belarus and the methods of action used by them. The article also analyses the differences and similarities between the women’s protests in Belarus and pro-democracy protests oriented towards power change in other countries.