Protest Activity Research Articles

Venciendo la Desesperación Cristalizada

Racism and xenophobic discrimination in the Dominican Republic, especially state policies against black people of Haitian origin, oppress a community with a long history of exploitation and resistance in the country every day. This oppression affects, in multiple ways, the life and health of those who engage in social activism and the defense of human rights, and who do so under constant threat of repression and even death, in a context where far right organizations frequently work in coordination with authorities to block protest and public action. Although racism is institutionalized and structural in nature, state authorities advance negationist discourses, minimizing or denying grave historical facts such as the massacre of 1937, the racist campaign against the late politician José Francisco Peña Gómez, the law 168-13 that retroactively removed the nationality of more than four generations of person of Haitian origin. The combination of a struggle that is increasingly better endowed with theoretical tools and politics to change this reality of racist oppression and the realization of studies on the wear and tear that racism imposes on our health, enable us to deepen perspectives of liberation for new generations of activists.

Enhancing service delivery via Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) at uMzimkhulu Local Municipality, South Africa

Municipalities in South Africa face numerous challenges that hinder efficient service delivery. One of these challenges is the lack of implementation of required services, leading to citizen dissatisfaction and protest actions. This study aims to investigate methods for improving service delivery in public institutions in South Africa through the implementation of work-integrated learning (WIL) programmes. Data for this study was collected from the uMzimkhulu local municipality in KwaZulu-Natal, specifically from the Harry Gwala District. A total of 56 participants took part in the study, including 28 WIL students and 28 mentors. This ensured representation from all departments within the municipality. Two separate sets of questionnaires were used to collect data from these two groups. Data analysis was performed using the Statistics Packaging for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 27. The study identified several challenges that currently hinder the effective implementation of WIL programmes within the municipality. As a result, it is recommended that the municipality provide training for WIL students and establish efficient monitoring and evaluation processes for the WIL programmes. Additionally, the municipality should involve students in WIL programmes in matters related to progressive initiatives and provide further support to enhance their ability to handle client services. It is also advised that the municipality prioritise the development of facilities and resources for WIL students to fully engage them in their work.

“We are the Revolution, Abroad”: Diaspora Protests, Identity Construction, and the Remaking of Citizenship in the 2019 Lebanese Thawra

Abstract Diasporas are often viewed as mirrors for their homeland’s politics. The Lebanese diaspora’s involvement in the 2019 Thawra, however, established the diaspora as a locus for autonomous and disruptive political action. Through an analysis of the spatialities of protest, this paper analyses the diaspora’s involvement in the Thawra, its implications for the protest movement, and for the diaspora itself. It argues that diaspora protests gave rise to new tactics and protest repertoires. These mirrored protest activity on the ground, supported protestors in Lebanon, and constituted the diaspora as a locus for contestation and claims-making. Moreover, the diaspora’s mobilization in the Thawra contributed to the consolidation of diasporic identity and the construction of alternative societal imaginaries and conceptions of citizenship that challenge Lebanon’s state-centric and sectarian citizenship regime. This paper thus makes the case for reassessing the autonomous political role of diasporas to gain a fuller understanding of transnational protest dynamics, solidarities, and citizenship beyond the boundaries of the nation-state.

The Privatization of Protest: Demobilization and the Emergence of Political Violence in the Aftermath of Local Protest Campaigns

The processual approach to political violence suggests a close link between nonviolent and violent tactical repertoires. Yet in doing so it excludes cases where violence appears to appear in the absence of public protest activity. This article traces how political violence emerges in the aftermath of local protest campaigns against migrant accommodation. Developing the concept of the privatization of protest, the article shows how the demobilization of protest contributes to a process where grievances are reframed into private frustrations rather than objects of political contention. Transformed as such, persistent patterns of intermittent political violence can sometimes grow out of private interactions, even in the absence of any consistent public protest. Applying the conceptual apparatus of frames, emotions, opportunities and to a paired process tracing of episodes of protest against Swedish migrant accommodation in 2007-2008 and 2012-2017, the article maps the causal mechanisms that create facilitative conditions for violence, sometimes long after the decline of nonviolent protest. Extending its discussion beyond the case of Sweden, it links the processual approach to adjacent discussions on the link between micro- and meso-level causes of political violence.

Political Participation of the Youth of St. Petersburg on the Example of Protest Activity

Political Participation of the Youth of St. Petersburg on the Example of Protest Activity

The 2024 General Elections in Indonesia: Issues of Political Dynasties, Electoral Fraud, and The Emergence of A National Protest Movements

This research aims to explain the phenomenon of political dynasties, electoral fraud, and protest movements during the 2024 General Elections in Indonesia. By using a qualitative descriptive method, this research focuses on aspects related to the main factors of the emergence of political dynasties, electoral fraud, and protest movements in the 2024 election based on secondary data obtained from online news sources. Data collection process was carried out through reading the news articles using the keywords “political dynasties”, “electoral fraud”, “protest movements”, and “2024 General Elections”. Data analysis was conducted through content analysis of news texts to obtain accurate data, descriptive insights and thematically explore the data inductively. The findings in this study show that the issues of political dynasties, electoral fraud, and the national protest movements in the 2024 General Elections are a series of interconnected phenomena. In addition, this study also reccomends further research on the importance of understanding public perceptions of political dynasties, the issue of electoral fraud, and protest actions against active voters in the 2024 General Elections using an empirical approach.

SOME ASPECTS OF ENSURING INTERNAL SECURITY OF RUSSIA AT THE PRESENT STAGE OF DEVELOPMENT OF CIVILIZATIONS

The article examines some aspects of ensuring Russia's internal security at the present stage of the development of civilizations. The purpose of the study is to identify the impact of internal threats, including terrorist ones, on the national security of the country. This is necessary for a fundamental revision of state policy, scientific apparatus and clarification of the fundamental conceptual documents on ensuring security from internal threats. Conclusions. As a result of the conducted research, the authors conclude that at present, the increase in threats emanating from individual countries and affecting the security of the Russian Federation is not decreasing but continues to increase. Means of economic, political, diplomatic, and informational pressure are actively used against Russia to exacerbate the inter-civilizational conflict, delegitimize it within the international community and destabilize the political situation inside the country, which can lead to the loss of identity and cultural and historical heritage. The social contradictions that arise in society lead to the emergence of protest activity of citizens, which must be controlled by state and public security institutions. The emphasis is placed on the need for timely changes in the legal framework governing anti-terrorist activities. Based on the results of the analysis, problems of organizational and legal regulation have been identified that require the elimination of negative factors at the state level. Proposals are being made to improve anti-terrorist activities in Russia and the need for a set of measures to ensure its legal support, as well as the use of existing potential.

Трансформация партийной системы Грузии в начале XXI века

This article consists the detailed overview of the transformations of party system of Georgia at the beginning of the current century, since the time of «Rose Revolution» to present days. It considers the main events of «Rose Revolution» and the results of parliamentary elections in Georgia, between 2003 and 2020. Author also pays attention to the biggest conflicts between the governing party and the opposition, including «Rose Revolution» and the massive protest actions against the policy of the governing party, which have been organized by the oppositional parties. It reveals the political conflict between the governing party and the current president of Georgia, which may affect the party system of Georgia.

Cultural dissonance: heritage protests and their implications for heritage-making in settler colonial cities

ABSTRACT Heritage-making’s intrinsic dissonance has been thoroughly established in the field of critical heritage studies, and yet it is a reality that continues to be obscured in heritage practice in settler colonial cities. Authorised heritage discourse continues to project existing state-led systems of heritage-making as a self-evident ‘public good’ for current and future generations. In settler colonial cities, this increasingly includes attempts to incorporate Indigenous views and values into its framing. However, existing statutory processes that uphold normative approaches prove resilient to change. Continued prioritisation of tangible artefact amid private property rights impairs the heritage field’s ability to acknowledge alternative possibilities and to genuinely engage in decolonising transformation. This paper examines three cases where heritage dissonance has erupted into protest and protection action outside of the authorised heritage discourse: the Old Swan Brewery in Perth, Western Australia; Ihumātao in Auckland, New Zealand; and the West Berkeley Shellmound in Berkeley, California. It analyses the contestation of values that led to protest action, what ‘authorised’ attempts were made to heritagise each case and to what result. In so doing, the paper demonstrates how existing processes of statutory heritage-making continue to be inadequate for Indigenous and emerging heritage aspirations.

Relationship of Protest Activity with the Social Tension Dynamics in the South-East Asian Countries

The article is devoted to testing the method of forecasting major conflicts in countries of Southeast Asia. The method is based on the assumption of the social tension growth in the last years before the event. Tensions are not definitely linked to protest activity. They contribute to socio-political or ethno-political mobilization, which can lead to the destabilization of society. Therefore, with high rates of tension growth in the country, the probability of serious conflicts increases. For a quantitative assessment of the social tension in the countries of Southeast Asia, the most relevant statistical indicator is the suicides number. We assume that the five-year growth rate of the tension indicator (the level of conflict) exceeding a certain threshold value indicates the possibility of major protests. The calculations carried out for the Southeast Asian countries made it possible to estimate the probability of major conflicts with an accuracy close to the machine learning methods. The use of the proposed indicator for the analysis of socio-political processes in the countries of Southeast Asia made it possible to explain their similarities in countries with different economic, demographic, political and cultural characteristics, i. e. obtain additional information characterizing in these countries the stability or conflict risk.

Temporal and Cross-Regional Variance in Environmental Protest Activity of Russians (2007–2021)

The environmental movement in Russia has been a most institutionalized form of collective action. Originating from the Soviet period and gaining momentum in late 1980s, it survived the 1990s’ dramatic transformations as well as the changes in political opportunity structure in the 2000–2010s. Extant scholarship on environmental activism in Russia has been largely focused on case-studies of regional mass-mobilization, such as environmental campaigns at Shiyes station in Archangelsk. The paper represents the first systematic study of cross-regional variance in environmental collective action in Russia. Drawing on three datasets, we trace the general evolution of environmental protests in the period from 2007 to 2021 and provide a typology of Russian regions. The latter allows us to classify Russian regions by intensity and sustainability of eco-mobilisation. We demonstrate that, despite narrowing opportunities, the intensity of environmental protests during the last decade has been on the rise. The typology allows us to describe the existing variance and suggest new questions on the nature and factors of environmental protest activity in Russian regions.

Performative Protest Actions in the Baltic States Against Sexual Violence in Russia’s War in Ukraine

Performative Protest Actions in the Baltic States Against Sexual Violence in Russia’s War in Ukraine

Convergence in action: framing the climate crisis at the 2021 Pre-COP counter-summit in Milan

ABSTRACT With the emergence of Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion, youth climate activism has attracted increasing attention. Climate strikes are part of a long trajectory of mobilizations for climate justice, rooted in global justice and environmental struggles. Although research on social movements has analyzed differences and continuities within these, there have been few systematic comparisons between youth climate strikes and ‘traditional’ climate justice marches. Our paper contributes to fill this gap. We focus on the framing of climate change in two different protest actions that took place in Milan, Italy, during the Pre-COP26 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2021: a climate strike by Fridays for Future, and a ‘traditional’ climate justice march by a wide coalition of actors. Relying on protest surveys and qualitative interviews, we discuss differences, similarities, and spaces for convergence among activists in these different fora, focusing on the framing of climate change, and on the meanings attached to ‘system change’.

Local protest event analysis: providing a more comprehensive picture?

In exploring protest dynamics, Protest Event Analysis (PEA) has proven an indispensable analytic tool. Despite various improvements, PEA faces continuous challenges, notably the reproduction of media-specific selection biases. This research note aims to contribute to the literature seeking to mitigate these issues by exploring the potential of PEA based on local newspaper data, which tend to be less selective in their protest reporting. The article introduces an original local PEA dataset in Germany (2000–2020) and systematically compares it to existing national-level PEA data for Germany. The analysis shows that while both datasets pick up similar trends in terms of mobilisation waves, national level data focus on shorter periods of intense protest activity. Furthermore, issues of protest differ: material and social issues (including labour and environmental issues) are more prominent in local data, while cultural issues (including immigration and gender) are more prominent in national-level data.

The statistical and dynamic modeling of the first part of the 2013-2014 Euromaidan protests in Ukraine: The Revolution of Dignity and preceding times.

Ukraine's tug-of-war between Russia and the West has had significant and lasting consequences for the country. In 2013, Viktor Yanukovych, the Ukrainian president aligned with Russia, opted against signing an association agreement with the European Union. This agreement aimed to facilitate trade and travel between the EU and Ukraine. This decision sparked widespread protests that coalesced in Kyiv's Maidan Square, eventually becoming known as the Euromaidan protests. In this study, we analyze the protest data from 2013, sourced from Ukraine's Center for Social and Labor Research. Despite the dataset's limitations and occasional inconsistencies, we demonstrate the extraction of valuable insights and the construction of a descriptive model from such data. Our investigation reveals a pre-existing state of self-excitation within the system even before the onset of the Euromaidan protests. This self-excitation intensified during the Euromaidan protests. A statistical analysis indicates that the government's utilization of force correlates with increased future protests, exacerbating rather than quelling the protest movement. Furthermore, we introduce the implementation of Hawkes process models to comprehend the spatiotemporal dynamics of the protest activity. Our findings highlight that, while protest activities spread across the entire country, the driving force behind the dynamics of these protests was the level of activity in Kyiv. Furthermore, in contrast to prior research that emphasized geographical proximity as a key predictor of event propagation, our study illustrates that the political alignment among oblasts, which are the distinct municipalities comprising Ukraine, had a more profound impact than mere geographic distance. This underscores the significance of social and cultural factors in molding the trajectory of political movements.

Victimological Characteristics of the Personality of a Victim of Crime — Participant of Public Mass Events: Concept and Typology of Victims

The article considers certain aspects of the victimological characteristics of the personality of the victim of a crime — participant in public mass events (including protest actions). Based on the conducted research, the author proposed the concept of the personality of a crime victim — participant in public mass events (including protest actions). The identity of the victim of a crime — participant in public mass events (including protest actions) has significant features that are due to a number of factors. The author’s approach to the typology of crime victims — participants of public mass events is given. Among the victims of crime — participants in public mass events (including protest actions), as by analogy, the typology of victims of crime can be distinguished: accidental victims, situational victims and professional victims. The study of the identity of the victim of a crime — participant in public mass events allows us to form an idea of the mechanism of committing a crime during and at the venue of public mass events (including protest actions) and to compile a victimological characteristic of the analyzed crimes. The active application by law enforcement agencies in practice of the achievements of victimology in relation to the crimes under consideration makes it possible to predict the future behavior of the victim of a crime — a participant in public mass events (including protest actions), ultimately — will lead to minimizing the victims of the analyzed crimes.

Neoliberal Feminism and Women's Protest Motivation

A popular form of neoliberal feminism seeks to advance gender equality in leadership and beyond by encouraging women to be resilient as individuals. By locating career advancement as within an individual's control, recent research has shown that this focus subtly shifts the blame for gender inequality onto women and reduces support for needed structural changes to tackle gender discrimination. We extend research into neoliberal feminism by examining anticipated negative effects on women's protest motivation. Across four studies in the United Kingdom (total N = 1,168), undergraduate women students and employed women with university degrees in both the control and resilience conditions first read about gender inequality. Participants in the neoliberal feminist conditions then read messages promoting individual resilience as key to women's advancement (Study 1–3) or participated in activities designed to build their own resilience as individuals to help them advance (Study 4). In Studies 1, 3, and 4, participants in the neoliberal feminist conditions compared to the control had lower collective action intentions – a negative effect that was either indirect, via reduced perceptions of gender discrimination (Studies 1 and 4) and reduced anger over inequality (Study 1), or direct (Study 3). Together, these studies provided partial support for our hypothesis that neoliberal feminism can undermine women's protest motivation. Future research can help establish how contextual and other factors contribute to the strength of these effects and explore how feminists can better harness messages of resilience. To advance gender equality, our findings suggest that advocates should focus less on individualistic solutions and more on addressing structural barriers, laying the groundwork for effective protest action and social change. Additional online materials for this article are available on PWQ's website at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/03616843241238176 .

Chinese Religious Practice as Protest

This essay explores how and why protestors from the 2019 anti-ELAB (Extradition Law Amendment Bill) movement turned to popular Chinese religious practice for political dissent, and simultaneously tracks the negotiation of emerging sociocultural identities of Hong Kongers in the face of political upheaval. Attempting to pressure the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government into meeting their demands, protestors adopted a wide range of tactics that brought protest activities to previously unaffected residential districts. Although no less hectic than other months during the movement, August 2019 also produced indelible moments of nonviolent innovation that attracted international media coverage. One of the protest events from this fertile period, the Hong Kong–wide Night Assemblies for Freeing Spirits, Almsgiving, Prayers for Merit, and Removal of Evil 全港超幽佈施祈褔除惡晚會, was held on August 9, 2019, in the districts of Wong Tai Sin and Shatin and specifically centered religious practice as a creative and potent source of political expression. To better understand this intersection of religion, politics, and identity in Hong Kong, this article analyzes protestors’ ritual utterances and interview responses from the protest event's proceedings.

Support for Social Movements

The factors that contribute to support for social movements and penalizing extreme protest actions are not well understood; this study aims to identify those factors. We tested three hypotheses in this study. Hypothesis 1 expects that support for the goal of the movement will go down when presented with more extreme protest actions. Hypothesis 2 predicts that the size of the extremity penalty will depend on the framing of the movement (group versus goal of the movement). Hypothesis 3 predicts that the effect of framing on the size of extremity penalty will depend on the described morality of the movement. One pilot study and two experimental studies were conducted, with a 2x2 manipulation and ratings of ten protest actions. Data were collected via an online survey (consisting of 336 undergraduate students) and were analyzed using multilevel models. Results showed that as protest actions became more extreme, support for the movement decreased. Study 1A found larger extremity penalties when the framing of the movement was focused on the group compared to the goal of the movement. Additionally, morality moderated the interaction of framing and extremity. Study 1B found larger extremity penalties when the group was perceived as highly moral. This study identified that extremity levels, framings of the movement and perceived morality act as factors influencing extremity penalties. Identifying these factors encourages a better understanding of how social movements can become more effective. For the full text, please visit https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/undergraduate_honors_theses/pv63g1800.

Violent demonstrations in marginal territories and their place in politics: A case study in Lo Hermida, Santiago de Chile

This article aims to investigate violent demonstrations in marginal territories of Santiago de Chile and their political dimension, studying the territorial deployment of structural violence, transgressive protest actions, and subjectivation processes. These three dimensions tell us about the political, social, and territorial intertwining of violent demonstrations, based on Jacques Rancière's framework. We conducted a case study in Lo Hermida, a highly politicized self-constructed neighborhood born in the 1970s that is currently surrounded by transportation infrastructure and upscale urban developments. Using secondary sources, semi-structured interviews, and photo-elicitation with 14 residents of Lo Hermida, we show the way in which structural violence is experienced across the territory, how transgressive protest actions are carried out in violent demonstrations throughout it, and how processes of political subjectivation unfold from this. The conclusions emphasize the incorporation of the political-subjective dimension in the understanding of violence in marginal territories, highlighting its emergent characteristics in space.