Protest Tactics Research Articles

Understanding How Young People Do Activism

While social movement research employs “tactical repertoire” to emphasize protest tactics directed at the state, literature on youth activism globally indicates that young people do politics outside the realm of formal political spheres. Youth activism on body politics in Latin America offers evidence that enhances conceptual tools intended for understanding how young people make claims and toward whom they make them. This article takes young activists’ strategies as its point of departure through a study that explored how young people perceived their activism to advance sexual health in Ecuador and Peru. Young activists employed a range of interconnected strategies that went beyond protests directed at the state, including responding to adult allies, carrying out social advocacy among youth, building organizations, carrying out political advocacy, and developing themselves as activists. Strategies were shaped by the degree to which young activists negotiated alternative notions of “youth” with different actors.

Charting the coevolution of cyberprotest and counteraction

The authors systematically investigate the evolution of the modern information and communication technologies (ICTs) and the associated changes in protest – related tactics employed by two main stakeholders in the contemporary contentious political processes – dissenters and incumbent political authorities. Through in-depth investigation of the cyberprotest cases in the former Soviet states of Belarus, Moldova, Russia, and Ukraine, which occurred during the last decade, a coherent outline is developed of the co-evolution of the ICT-enabled protest tactics of the main counterparts in the contemporary political struggle in these countries. Particularly, it was found that there were at least three highly distinguishable levels of development of modern ICTs and the associated types of protest-related tactics employed by the main stakeholders in these events. It was established that as soon as the authorities were able to effectively counteract the previous ICT-enabled tactics by the dissenters, new developments in modern ICTs always empowered the latter to devise new effective strategies to overcome previously successful counterrevolutionary measures of the political authorities.

Protests and civil society in Russia: The struggle for the Khimki Forest

The main question on which this article focuses is this: What conditions determine whether a group carrying out protests in Russia is more likely to be successful in attracting support by recruiting people to participate in its activities and gaining sympathy from many members of the population? There is strong agreement among experts on Russian society and politics that protests in defense of abstract, general rights do not appeal to most citizens. This article focuses on groups using protest tactics that have been more successful in gaining support, such as the Defenders of the Khimki Forest. The evidence that is presented in this article suggests that Russians are more likely to take part in protests by an organized group if it seeks remedies for concrete problems that directly affect them and their families. The appeal to felt needs that are grounded in everyday experiences also seems to be an important factor that helps a group to evoke a favorable response toward its actions among broad circles of the general public. For those doing scholarly research, to interpret the development of civil society in Russia mainly in terms of the struggles of human rights groups and political opposition movements would lead the researchers to neglect the activities of most social organizations in Russia.

Social Movement Organizational Collaboration: Networks of Learning and the Diffusion of Protest Tactics, 1960–1995

This article examines the diffusion of protest tactics among social movement organizations (SMOs) through their collaboration in protest groups. Using a longitudinal data set of SMO protest activity between 1960 and 1995, the authors adapt novel methods for dealing with two forms of selection and measurement bias in network analysis: (i) the mechanism that renders some SMOs more likely to select into collaboration and (ii) the notion that diffusion is an artifact of homophily or indirect learning rather than influence. The authors find that collaboration is an important channel of tactical diffusion and that SMOs with broader tactical repertoires adopt more tactics via their collaboration with other SMOs, but only up to a point. Engaging in more collaboration also makes SMOs more active transmitters and adopters of new tactics. Finally, initial overlap in respective tactical repertoires facilitates the diffusion of tactics among collaborating SMOs.

Shutting down the streets: political violence and social control in the global era

1 What Is Going On? 2 The Geography of Global Governance: Spatial Dynamics of Controlling Dissent 3 Toward a Political Economy of the Social Control of Dissent 4 Policing Alterglobalization Dissent 5 A Taxonomy of Political Violence 6 Antirepression: Resisting the Social Control of Dissent 7 Democracy Out of Order Appendix A: Summits Directly Observed by Authors Appendix B: Of Stones and Flowers: John Holloway and Vittorio Sergi on Protest Tactics Appendix C: Suggestions for Future Research Notes Bibliography Index About the Authors

Taking Control or Losing Control? Activist Narratives of Provocation and Collective Violence

This article examines the complex relationship between political agency, responsibility, and collective violence in connection with political protest. Contemporary Danish and Swedish left-wing activist narratives of police provocations at political protest events are analysed to clarify how provocation and its relation to the outbreak of violence are retrospectively constructed in radical milieus. Three ‘provocation plots’ are identified that, respectively, present (1) the interaction as purely a matter of attack and defence, (2) provocation as a cause of anger leading to retaliation, and (3) provocation as a trigger bringing about a redefinition of the situation that then offers an opportunity for violence. Subsequent negotiations among political activists regarding the position of moral high ground revolved around the issue of whether responding to the provocation in each of these cases meant taking or losing control of the situation. Internet discussion forums are highlighted as important arenas for debates among members of protest coalitions and in broader social movement milieus in which the interpretation of protest events and their implications for future protest tactics is negotiated. In the cases considered, storytelling after violent events was used to make sense of, and evaluate, often quite chaotic and ambiguous processes of violent confrontation, suggesting itself as a key to understanding the micro-dynamics of how social movement repertoires of action are maintained and developed.

Securitizing America: Strategic Incapacitation and the Policing of Protest Since the 11 September 2001 Terrorist Attacks

AbstractDuring the 1970s, the predominant strategy of protest policing shifted from ‘escalated force’ and repression of protesters to one of ‘negotiated management’ and mutual cooperation with protesters. Following the failures of negotiated management at the 1999 World Trade Organization demonstrations in Seattle, law enforcement quickly developed a new social control strategy, referred to here as ‘strategic incapacitation’. The US police response to the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks quickened the pace of police adoption of this new strategy, which emphasizes the goals of ‘securitizing society’ and isolating or neutralizing the sources of potential disruption. These goals are accomplished through (1) the use of surveillance and information sharing as a way to assess and monitor risks, (2) the use of pre‐emptive arrests and less‐lethal weapons to selectively disrupt or incapacitate protesters that engage in disruptive protest tactics or might do so, and (3) the extensive control of space in order to isolate and contain disruptive protesters actual or potential. In a comparative fashion, this paper examines the shifts in United States policing strategies over the last 50 years and uses illustrative cases from national conventions, the global justice movement and the anti‐war movement to show how strategic incapacitation has become a leading social control strategy used in the policing of protests since 9/11. It concludes by identifying promising questions for future research.

The Struggle for Public Education in California: Introduction

When then-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger cut the California higher education budget by 20 percent in 2009, the largest protests erupted on University of California campuses than had been seen in the United States since the 1960s. The struggle for public education was the culmination of a state Republican Party that had for years maintained effective minority rule by grafting the tax wedge onto the racial wedge and a Democratic opposition that came to accept the description of public infrastructure as a “safety net” for society's alleged losers. University administrators themselves suppressed public support for public funding by touting privatization measures as significant solutions, though these represented only marginal revenue increases. The media was largely indifferent to faculty and staff protests about loss of pay and cuts to education but showed surprising sympathy to students' fears that the fee hikes would deny them access to a bachelor's degree. While UC administrators systematically denied that public funding cuts would seriously damage educational access for low-income students or students of color, student movements reconnected these issues, constantly noting the links between reduced funding, reduced access, and racial discrimination. Along with democratic consensus making and the place of nonviolence in protest tactics, race was also a key issue around which activist coalitions broke down. Despite movement infighting, the student struggle for public education forced a quietly antieducation governor to stop cutting the higher education sector, brought international attention to the decline of public higher education in the United States, and produced public sympathy for the beneficiaries of the public sector for one of the few times in recent decades.

Protests under a Semi-Authoritarian Regime in Russia

The main question on which this paper focuses is this: What conditions determine whether a group carrying out protests in Russia is more likely to be successful in attracting support by recruiting people to participate in its activities and gaining sympathy from the majority of the population? There is strong agreement among experts on Russian society and politics that protests in defense of abstract, general rights do not appeal to most citizens. This paper focuses on groups using protest tactics that have been more successful in gaining support, such as the Defenders of the Khimki Forest. The evidence that is presented in this paper suggests that Russians are more likely to take part in an organized group if it seeks remedies for concrete problems that directly affect them and their families. The appeal to felt needs that are grounded in everyday experiences also seems to be an important factor that helps a group to evoke a favorable response toward its actions among broad circles of the general public. For those doing scholarly research, to interpret the development of civil society in Russia mainly in terms of the struggles of human rights groups and political opposition movements would lead the researchers to neglect the activities of most social organizations in Russia and the complex realities of the settings in which those organizations strive to serve the interests of their members.

In Favor of Tipping the Balance: Animal Rights Activists in Defense of Residential Picketing

AbstractThis discussion focuses on the rationales employed by animal rights activists to explain their involvement in, and support of, protest tactics that are controversial both inside and outside the animal rights movement. The paper centers on the use of residential picketing (“home demos”) in a campaign against a private, multinational animal testing firm. Using ethnographic data and semistructured interviews with activists, the discussion demonstrates that these activists are aware of the marginality of their tactics. Despite some ambivalence, however, activists accept full responsibility for their actions and justify their behavior by utilizing supportive rationales that stress the perceived efficacy of home demos. Specifically, they appeal to the immediate and long-term psychological and direct and indirect material impacts on protest targets. These narratives are explored as constructions that are shaped and disseminated within the context of the state’s preoccupation with “ecoterrorism” and the movement’s internal debates regarding acceptable protest tactics.

Hacker Politics and Publics

In recent months, much of the world’s attention has turned to Anonymous, the rhizomatic, digitally based protest movement, and WikiLeaks, the tightly controlled organization famous for facilitating whistleblowing and publishing classified and secret materials. Although it is too early to assess the longterm impact of either of these, their interventions have already proved to be significant and notable. For instance, Anonymous has catalyzed debates as to whether distributed denialofservice attacks are a legitimate protest tactic, while WikiLeaks has spurred often heated reflections on the changing face of journalism. These two examples of digitally based politics warrant sustained attention to provide an analysis that should also exceed, even if it draws from, the materials, such as manifestos and memoirs produced by these technological actors. One way to start building a deeper analytic of these political forms is by comparing their different faces. On the surface, the two examples I opened with are strikingly different: WikiLeaks is associated, almost entirely, with one figure, Julian Assange, whose personality is as much the subject of news as is the exclusive organization he helped build. In contrast, Anonymous is premised on a robust antileader, anticelebrity ethic, and its operations are open to all who care to contribute. Despite these and other differences, Anonymous and WikiLeaks still belong to the same family. This association is not only because Anonymous supported WikiLeaks by launching distributed denialofservice attacks against PayPal and MasterCard after they terminated services for WikiLeaks in December 2010; more fundamentally, they are but two examples of a much broader set of political interventions orchestrated by geeks and hackers. Although these types of politics have grown in visibility in the previous two decades, commentators tend to lack an adequate terminology by which to grasp their source and their significance.

SUPA, Selma, and Stevenson: The Politics of Solidarity in mid-1960s Toronto

The year 1965 represents a critical moment in the development and transformation of activist and student politics in the city of Toronto. This article explores the involvement of young Canadian activists with a variety of causes, such as support for African American Civil Rights, opposition to American imperialism, and the movement against the war in Vietnam. By matching their own political aspirations with those of their New Left counterparts in the United States, these activists participated in a larger transaction of radical thought, transformative strategies, protest tactics, and democratic alternatives. The adoption of this affective politics of solidarity was ultimately key to the emergence of more local, community-based activism, as well as the sharpening of an anti-imperialist critique within the emergent New Left in Canada.

Protest, Deterrence, and Escalation: The Strategic Calculus of Government Repression

The theoretical literature on government repression has mostly taken a choice theoretic perspective, wherein either the protest group optimally chooses a protest tactic in response to government behavior or the government optimally chooses a repression strategy. This approach is insufficient for capturing the strategic nature of protest and repression. The theoretical shortcomings of this approach are reflected in contradictory empirical findings on the effects of repression on dissent. The article develops an extensive strategic game between the government and an opposition group that allows one to identify the conditions for successful deterrence or protest. Introducing incomplete information and a third-party threat additionally produces equilibria with repression and escalating violence. The model produces novel testable hypotheses that shed new light on the effect of repression on dissent, the likelihood of violence, and the possibility of a coup. Implications for the domestic democratic peace and “murder in the middle” hypothesis are drawn.

‘Being in the Spaces where Decisions are Made’: Reproductive Rights Advocacy and Policy Influence in Two Regions of Peru

In the 1990s, some segments of Latin American feminist movements shifted to advocacy strategies to influence government policies. Long-standing social movement theories predict that this tactical change to institutional means has two possible consequences for a movement: either it gains greater influence over policy arenas and becomes more effective in achieving outcomes, or it loses capacity to carry out protest tactics and becomes less effective in achieving outcomes. However, empirical studies on Latin American feminist organizations intervening in policies, and recent social movement theorizing, indicate that the relationship between social movements and policy influence is more complex. Moreover, these theories have been formulated based on empirical studies in contexts with established democratic frameworks and institutions. The study presented here employed Grounded Theory to examine inductively the research questions of how reproductive rights organizations carry out advocacy to influence government policies in Peru. Data was collected through participant observation and focus group discussions among two reproductive rights coalitions in the regions of Arequipa and Cusco. The findings indicate that the reproductive rights coalitions develop a multiplicity of interactions with government officials, as a means to influence policies through various channels and handle constraints on their ability to act as independent pressure groups. In addition, the findings show that the coalitions deal with a wide range of factors to influence policies: organizational capacity, advocacy strategies, issue frames, relationships with other policy actors as well as political and social aspects that facilitate or hinder advocacy. The study concludes that the relationship between social movements and policy influence is more complex than portrayed by long-standing theories. Instead, the findings are consistent with, and enhance the scholarship on Latin American feminist organizations involved in policies, as well as recent social movement theorizing that takes into account how various factors affect social movement influence on policies.

The Power of "Troublemaking": Protest Tactics and Their Efficacy in China

The Power of "Troublemaking": Protest Tactics and Their Efficacy in China

Mediated Resistance: The Construction of Neoliberal Citizenship in the Immigrant Rights Movement

On 25 March 2006, between 500 000 and 1 million protesters took to the streets of Los Angeles to protest anti-immigrant legislation. The march was the largest in Los Angeles history, and astounded organizers, participants and pundits alike. Spanish-language mass and news media played an important role in mobilizing support and shaping the tactics of protest used during the march. This critical reading of the media coverage highlights the ways in which the Spanish-language media reporting served to promote an extremely limited model of citizenship and political agency particularly suited to neoliberal, post-9/11 tactics of governance and control. This paper also examines how these discourses are taken up by pro-immigrant protesters themselves, who internalize these discourses of citizenship and legitimacy.

A Moral Evaluation of Online Business Protest Tactics and Implications for Stakeholder Management

A Moral Evaluation of Online Business Protest Tactics and Implications for Stakeholder Management

Towards an Analysis of the ‘Success’ of UK Green Protests

The UK Climate Camp protests of 2007 are an important moment in an ongoing analysis of the success of ‘green protests’ in the UK. A legacy of knowledge transfer between activist groups, NGOs and UK publics is visible; in the initiation and development of recent climate-related protests, their key frames (the stakes raised), targets and forms of mobilisation, and the allies the protestors were able to attract. Defining terms (success in particular) is difficult, due to multiple differences in aims and objectives among a variety of social actors. The paper identifies a complex spectrum of green perspectives among activists and broader green networks. UK green protest success is defined and identified in terms of capacity building; protest waves spanning several activist generations have framed important sustainability citizenship stakes with broad public resonance and uptake. The use of protest tactics among broader publics is also a significant legacy. However, the mainstreaming of green stakes and their co-option — ‘green washing’ — is causing clashes between ‘strong green’ and ‘weak green’ perspectives, particularly around issues of green consumption, power relations and political economy. These struggles over green stakes and strategies re-emphasise long-standing difficulties with defining protest success. This is an ongoing narrative.

On the picket line: strategies of working-class women during the Depression

On the Picket Line uncovers the voices of working-class women, particularly those active in the Communist Party, U.S.A., in order to examine how these individuals confronted the tensions between their roles as workers, wives, mothers, and consumers. Combining critical analysis, Marxist and feminist theory, and labor history, Mary E. Triece analyzes the protest tactics employed by working-class women to challenge dominant ideologies surrounding domesticity. She details the rhetorical strategies used by women to argue for their rights as workers in the paid labor force and as caregivers in the home. Their overtly coercive tactics included numerous sit-ins, strikes, and boycotts that won tangible gains for working poor and unemployed women. The book also gives voice to influential figures in the 1930s labor movement (many of whom were members of the Communist Party, U.S.A.), such as Ella Reeve Bloor, Margaret Cowl, Anna Damon, Ann Burlak, and Grace Hutchins. Triece ultimately argues that these confrontational protest tactics of the 1930s remain relevant in today's fights for more humane workplaces and better living conditions.

A Conceptual Framework for Online Business Protest Tactics and Criteria for Their Effectiveness

In this article, the authors lay the foundation for the emerging area of research on online protest tactics mobilized against business. The authors offer a definition of online business protest tactics and distinguish them from related activities such as electronic civil disobedience and cybercrime. They also appeal to the interest-group literature as one theoretical foundation for this area of research. Based on the degree to which each tactic involves intrusion, disruption, or damage, the authors categorize the array of online business protest tactics into a typology, providing definitions and illustrative examples from the business press for each. They advance a dualistic framework to evaluate the intermediate and ultimate effectiveness of the various online business protest tactics using a set of criteria relevant to both online and off-line environments, and conclude by suggesting avenues for future research.