Protest Activity Research Articles

Exploring transterranean activism as a research site beyond local protest sites

Increased interest in the spatial dimension of protests and activism has led to both the material spatial condition of protest activities and their spatial effect entering academic debate. With Social Movements being a dominant paradigm for activism which focuses on strategic localization and scalar tactics, an emphasis has been put on political activities in proximity to either centralized power or to actor communities and networks. On the fringes of Social Movements, however, smaller types of direct action have been emerging in places outside of conventional, landed spaces. Chinese and Japanese nationalists symbolically contesting national authority over islands in the Pacific, Environmentalists blockading oil platforms in the North Sea, refugee rights groups preventing air-based deportations and nationalists attempting to prevent human rights groups from saving drowning migrants have in common that the site of their activities are beyond the traditional power base of the state on solid ground and make use of specific sets of laws and regulations. This paper argues that transterranean spaces encompass an interplay of state and non-state actors heavily impacted by their location. As these spaces exist beyond the mainland, they share a lack of presence of both state and society. Both state agencies and activists have to adapt their strategies during successive contentions. I conceptualize this relationship as contentious configurations shaping these interactions: Vertical Activist-State, horizontal activist-activist and interconnected state-state contentious configurations. They serve as heuristic tool to analyze protest dynamics in transterranean spaces by highlighting both state power and actor’s engagement with it. With technological advancements and increased access to transterranean, such contentions are likely to increase.

Memory Activism as Advocacy for Transitional Justice: Memory Laws, Mass Graves and Impunity in Spain

ABSTRACT∞ Transitional justice in Spain is still an ongoing process. This article examines the impact of memory laws and the rise of the radical right on transitional justice measures and the historical memory movement in Spain. It contends that the continued application of the 46/1977 Amnesty Law and the campaigning by radical right party Vox to repeal memory laws left a legal vacuum that precipitated interventions by memory activist groups. It is argued that these protest actions are a form of advocacy for participatory transitional justice. The article first focuses on Andalusia’s 2017 memory law and the rise of Vox in the region. Subsequently, it examines the effect of the state’s Democratic Memory Law (2022) on memory and justice measures and argues that both bottom-up approaches by civil society organizations and top-down measures by state actors are essential to transform Spain into a society anchored in the five pillars of transitional justice.

Politically engaged but unwilling to protest: analyzing the role of authoritarian orientations and internet use on protest participation behavior

ABSTRACT Several studies have investigated the effects of internet use on protest participation behavior. However, fewer have explored how personal dispositions of individuals moderate the impact of the internet. This study explores the relationship between political engagement, internet use, authoritarian orientation, and protest participation in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, and Myanmar. First, analysis of fourth-wave of the Asian Barometer survey data suggests a political engagement-driven stratification in protest participation across all settings. Second, internet use is positively associated with protest participation but only in authoritarian states, and citizens’ authoritarian orientation reduces the likelihood of protest action. Third, high authoritarian orientation subdues the participatory benefits of internet use for politically engaged citizens. Overall, the study confirms that politically engaged citizens are more capable of exploiting the benefits offered by the internet. Still, authoritarianism can inhibit the mobilizing potentials presented by the internet. The theoretical importance of attitudinal factors in protest participation is discussed.

Practices of health citizenship in South Africa: a case study of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) in Khayelitsha, Cape Town

This article examines the Treatment Action Campaign’s (TAC) evolution and attrition as a social movement organisation to discern its implications for practices of health citizenship at the grassroots level. A qualitative approach to case study research was used to collect and analyse data. Practices of health citizenship were framed around the integration of biomedical knowledge and people’s experiences of grassroots activism. By exploring how the TAC’s brand of activism filtered down to the community level, the findings reveal the importance of diverse forms of activist-led collective action in promoting health-seeking behaviour. These comprise activist-led branch meetings, community workshops, health promotion talks at clinics and community radio stations, as well as protest action at community clinics. Findings indicate that participation in TAC-led activism in Khayelitsha is not a passive form of responsible HIV citizenship. Rather, it is an active process through which TAC members integrate their lived experiences with biomedical knowledge to construct meanings and articulate grievances to enhance the quality of health service delivery in their community. Also, although the TAC’s practices of health citizenship have not changed significantly over time, its campaigns have evolved based on contextual factors. These practices have entrenched ways of being, doing and knowing that have become an important resource for activist-led health promotion. Key stakeholders in government and civil society can harness these practices to strengthen health systems.

Institutional incentives and contentious politics in post-Neoliberal era in Latin America (1985–2010)

The article focuses on the supply-side of protest activity in Latin America in the post-neoliberal era. It argues that parties’ cohesive voting in Congress under different power constellations and parties’ linkage strategy to voters create institutional conditions of power collusion, inter-branch stalemate, or party erosion that delineates political terrain for social mobilization. First, the firm control of a single party or coalition over the executive and legislature with cohesive voting of party members in line with party leadership denotes power collusion and incites underrepresented actors to protest. Second, the dislocation in the executive-legislative relations (either with party members voting against the president’s proposals in a majority government or with cohesive opposition bloc(s) acting against the president’s will in a minority government) leads to policy immobilism and pushes legislative parties to ignite popular discontent. Third, more programmatic party linkages increase the degree of party institutionalization and predictability about policy commitment and mitigate struggles in extra-electoral arenas. The theoretical argument is tested with a battery of statistical tests that lends credence to the institutional explanations of mass mobilization and corroborated with empirical cases that show the plausibility of the statistical findings in particular contexts.

The Limits of Social Media Mobilization: How Protest Movements Adapt to Social Media Logic

The emergence of social networking sites offers protest movements new ways to mobilize for action and draw attention to their issues. However, relying on social media also creates challenges, as social media follow their own principles. If protest movements want to be visible in news feeds, they have to adapt to so-called social media logic, as originally postulated in mediatization research. The principles of social media have been conceptualized. However, there is a lack of empirical research on how political actors perceive and orient to this logic, how they learn about it, and the consequences for mobilization (i.e., communicating protest issues as well as taking protest action). As protest movements are an integral part of modern democracies, use social media somewhat intensively, and usually build on a fluid network structure that allows us to examine adaptation processes in greater detail, they are particularly suitable for addressing these questions. Semi-structured interviews with activists organizing protest actions or managing social media accounts from 29 movement organizations in Germany (<em>N</em> = 33) revealed that protest movements have internalized social media logic and paid attention to not only the design but also the timing of posts to suit algorithms. The protest organizations generally built on their experience with social media. The degree to which they followed these principles was based on available resources. Limits of this adaptation arose, for example, if sensitive or negative content rarely produced likes or, increasingly, personalization evoked a presumed hierarchy within the movements.

The Strength of the Strengthless: Women, Aged, and Disabled People as a Subversive Force in the Belarusian Protest Movement 2020

ABSTRACT This article examines the Belarusian protests of 2020, triggered by the rigged presidential election results and the illegal disproportionate use of force by the authorities. Given that most protesters were apolitical before 2020, the article seeks to clarify how it happened that passive vulnerable individuals were unprecedentedly mobilized for sustained collective political action. The author focuses on protest actions organized by particularly vulnerable social groups (women, pensioners, the disabled) and reveals their importance for the democratic protest against the patriarchal-authoritarian order. The article traces three stages in the protest development: the moment of traumatic shaking, the caesura of the political sublime, and the rapid scale of the peaceful protest movement characteristically represented by the social groups in question. It is argued that their protest actions had a subversive effect with respect to the autocratic rule and re-actualized an alternative normative and axiological horizon in a given life-world.

Why the 2020 Belarusian Protests Failed to Oust Lukashenka

AbstractThis article uses a comparison with Ukraine to investigate why protests against Lukashenka in 2020 failed to oust the Belarusian dictator. First, in contrast to his counterparts in Ukraine, Lukashenka successfully built new authoritarian economic and coercive institutions in the 1990s that raised the costs of opposition activity and reduced challengers’ access to business support. Second, Belarus has lacked a strong national identity that was critical to opposition success in Ukraine. In Ukraine, relatively powerful anti-Russian nationalism repeatedly motivated a core group of anti-incumbent activists and facilitated the opposition’s control over local power structures that supported protest activities at critical moments. In Belarus, weak national identity and consequent dearth of committed activists in national government institutions in the 1990s hampered efforts to challenge Lukashenka’s consolidation of authoritarian power. In addition, weaker national identity undermined the capacity of opposition forces to control local power structures that might have aided opposition protest.

Nonprofit Organizations and Political Protest: Social Media Coverage of Protest Action by Public Organizations

There are quite a few groups of actors in Russia who have their own unique interests and influence the country's political system. In general, all interests can be divided into three large clusters: state, commercial, and public. However, it should be noted that often these interests do not coincide with each other, which can lead to conflict situations. In such cases, one of the response options may be the use of various forms of protest, including rallies, marches and pickets. These forms of protest are widely used by both citizens and domestic nonprofit organizations. This article examines how nonprofit organizations cover protests that occurred between 2020 and 2022. The authors examine the different approaches these organizations take to draw attention to the issues they face. Nonprofit organizations are uniquely positioned to draw attention to important issues and changes in the country, and to work for the public good. They can act as a powerful tool for civic engagement. In this article we also look at the various forms of protest that nonprofit organizations use and how they can influence the political life of the country.

Social media in black lives matter movement: amplifying or reducing gaps in protest participation?

ABSTRACT This study explores the role of social media in the Black Lives Matter (BLM) Movement by examining how social media news use impacts BLM protest action. Theoretically, we go beyond the frequently discussed relationship between social media and protest participation and examine how grievances, political efficacy, and racial identity conditionally impact the influence of social media on protest engagement. The findings suggest that social media news use amplifies, rather than reduces, the gaps between engaged and disengaged citizens regarding protest participation, particularly in the online sphere. These indicate that social media is not an equalizing tool for BLM participation.

Poland as Gilead. Pop culture fiction and performative protests in the era of the pandemic

The use of iconic popular culture symbols is an increasingly common strategy applied by social protest organizers. The Guy Fawkes mask from the ‘V for Vendetta’ comic book became a symbol of the Anonymous group, and later of the Occupy Wall Street movement. The Salvador Dalí mask, popularized in the ‘La casa de papel’ Netflix series, was used in street protests in Spain and Italy. Motifs taken from the HBO adaptation of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ novel gained high visibility in thousands of women’s protests against the introduction of the de facto abortion ban in Poland. Basing on images documenting the Polish protests published in social media, we demonstrate how popular culture symbols are transformed into cultural codes which bridge on-street and online protest actions. This connection has become crucial in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using qualitative visual content analysis, we prepared a classification of the symbols employed. Our contribution to the theory of performative protests is to reveal the importance of analogies with the political series that Polish protesters have used by means of the general connotation: Poland is Gilead.

JOURNEY THROUGH THE PAST: A CONTINUITY OF ECOLOGICAL CHALLENGES

While ecological challenges are more and more systematically placed at the heart of the news, with the multiplication of activist groups carrying out sometimes violent actions of protest, it is usual to consider that environmental degradation is relatively recent. It is true that the first alarmist reports date from the early 1970s. However, numerous historical studies underline that ecological challenges were extremely significant as early as the Middle Ages in Europe, which forced political authorities to intervene to successfully limit environmental degradation in cities. A review of history sheds light on current issues, highlighting the importance of political interventionism to meet ecological challenges.

Crime as Protest, Protest as Crime

Abstract This special issue explores the complex and multifaceted relationship between crime and protest. Crime may in some circumstances be considered a legitimate form of resistance against oppressive authorities. It may also be seen as an unacceptable form of violence or a symptom of social disorganization. Similarly, while protest is a tool for promoting social justice, it may be criminalized and treated as a threat to public order. The articles in this issue draw on a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to examine various aspects of the relationship between crime and protest. They explore strategies used by governments to suppress dissent, the relationship between moderate and radical protest actions, and the ways in which marginalized groups challenge the designations of illegality by immigration regimes. The articles demonstrate how crime and protest are deeply intertwined, and they provide new insights into the complexities of social activism and the challenges faced by those who engage in it.

The Criminalization of Climate Change Protest

Abstract This article examines the strategies used by a democratic state to suppress dissent by criminalizing social protest activities. We compile and tabulate new legislation in Australia affecting protest rights from 2010 to 2020. Using data collected from the Facebook pages of 728 environmental groups and climate-related arrests reported in media articles, we then examine connections between climate change protest and protest criminalization in Australia between 2010 and 2019. Australian governments are shown to have criminalized climate protest via large-scale arrests by introducing laws curtailing protest freedoms and expanding police and corporate discretionary power in the application of those laws. State, corporate, and media actors are shown to engage in the rhetorical criminalization of climate protest, portraying protesters as threats to economic and political interests and to national security. However, the ongoing growth of climate change activism indicates that these criminalization strategies seeking to prevent climate protest may have been largely ineffective.

State Concessions and Protest Mobilization in Authoritarian Regimes

Autocrats typically respond with coercion when citizens take to the streets demanding political reform. Sometimes, however, they tolerate mass protests and even give in to protesters’ demands. While the effect of coercion on mobilization is well-studied, we know less about the role of concession-making. We argue that accommodating demands is rarely an effective strategy in demobilizing opposition movements. Authoritarian rulers are usually neither willing nor able to fully address protesters’ dynamic demands, nor can they offer credible commitments. We conduct a quantitative analysis using multiple cross-national data sets to empirically assess the relationship between concessions by the government and subsequent mass mobilization. By analyzing protest events in temporal and spatial proximity, we estimate the effect of making concessions on protest mobilization at the subnational level in 18 autocracies from 1991 to 2012. Our results indicate that concessions are associated with a significant and substantive increase in subsequent protest activity.

Protest in Mpofana, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa: narratives and strategies

ABSTRACT Mpofana protests are characteristic of local protest actions occurring across South Africa. In 2014 Mpofana Municipality was placed under administration by the provincial authority and one of the reasons cited for this were high levels of protest. This paper focuses on Mpofana protests to examine demands for ‘service delivery’ and citizenship as well as political strategy with regards local level leadership. The paper also considers the narratives and strategies around protest in the context of the ‘neoliberal citizen’ and ‘market’ approaches to citizenship. It draws on a qualitative study comprising focus groups conducted across three Mpofana wards. The paper suggests that in Mpofana there are clear struggles for the attainment of social citizenship in the context of a divide between those who have no access to work and wages and those who have access to income and assets. Citizenship attainment struggles are interwoven with failed patronage networks, and processes of piercing the ‘common sense’ appear through protesters questioning local leadership and proposing solutions for change. There is also evidence in Mpofana though of the ‘depoliticised subject’ fostered by the neoliberal doctrine where the language of protest is cast in market terms.

Harnessing self-management to tackle grand challenges: the points-based participation architecture of São Paulo’s housing movement

We propose that hierarchical organizations can engender and sustain the collaboration of large numbers of autonomous actors by establishing self-managed, mission-aligned collectives. Informing our claim are preliminary findings from an ongoing study of the housing movement in São Paulo, Brazil. Unexpectedly, we find that hierarchical Social Movement Organizations (SMOs) have, for more than three decades, incentivized broad-based voluntary engagement in protest actions aimed at formulating new housing policy by educating and encouraging low-income families to join collectives tasked with developing and self-managing new housing projects. We trace the sustainability of this participation architecture to an SMO-designed, points-based system, which functions as an integrating mechanism affording: (1) goal alignment between large numbers of autonomous actors and the leadership of a hierarchical organization; (2) voluntary engagement by autonomous actors in activities that simultaneously address local and higher order goals; (3) role and task allocation without legal control or close oversight; and (4) retention within the participation architecture by equipping autonomous actors with structure and measurable progress towards local goals and fairly distributing benefits of collective work. We discuss implications to our understanding of how to achieve concerted action at scale towards a grand challenge.

Taxing the rich but not the capitalists: Direct taxation in Sisi’s Egypt (2014-2021)

ABSTRACT How come authoritarian regimes target certain social constituencies with direct taxation more successfully than others? This article addresses the recent surge in Egypt’s property tax revenues since 2014, which has almost exclusively fallen on the shoulders of rich property-owners in urban areas. Conversely, similar efforts to collect capital gains taxes from investors in the stock market failed miserably during the same interval. What might explain such disparity between property-and capital-holders under Sisi’s rule? Invoking Albert Hirschman’s paradigm, I argue that rich property holders in urban areas could be pressed successfully for direct taxation because they lacked viable exit options given the immobile nature of their assets, the national scope of property taxes, underdeveloped financial system and the inflation-context. Even though they had a voice, it could be ignored with minimal political and economic repercussions for the ruling regime, given the lack of intermediate channels. Conversely, large and concentrated capital holders could utilize the more mobile nature of their assets to credibly threat exit, amid the regime’s desperate need for re-launching the economy. Moreover, they could voice their protest and coordinate collective economic action on sectoral or cross-sectoral basis without much need for intermediaries. Specific to Egypt, the contrast of both simultaneous processes of direct taxation might inform us of the class dynamics of the Sisi regime, which could adopt relatively progressive direct taxation in some areas like real-estate property despite the overwhelming regressive fiscal reforms while showing a terminally limited ability to effectively collect direct taxes on big capital holders.

Civic skill-acts, group identity, and intentions to engage in protest actions among university students in Hong Kong

AbstractThis study examined the mediating role of civic skill-acts and direct associations of group identity on intentions to engage in peaceful or radical protest actions (i.e., activism or radicalism intentions respectively). A sample of 526 university students in Hong Kong was surveyed. The findings suggested that political identity complementarily mediated the relationship between joining political activities and radicalism intentions. Religious identity and ethnic/racial identity each have an indirect-only mediation to activism as well as radicalism intentions when mediated by community activities and responding activities respectively. Finally, political identity and economic identity each have direct-only mediations to activism intentions respectively. These results suggest that although group identity and civic skill-acts uniquely contribute to protest intentions, the inter-relationship is complicated by the type of group identity, civic skill-act, and protest activity studied. Recommendations for future studies are discussed in light of the findings.

Факторы формирования и методы измерения социального недовольства в российских исследованиях

Based on a review of Russian studies, the article presents the conceptual aspects of the analysis of social discontent, which is a necessary condition for mass political action. The author pays special attention to the causes of the emergence and spread of discontent in society. An important subject of research is the influence of social networks on the formation of mass discontent and the involvement of citizens in protest activity. Measurements of social dissatisfaction note the use of proven sociological methods and new cybermetric capabilities, which together can constitute strong hybrid research methods.