Suchergebnisse

Political participation is generally taken for an important asset for democracy. In Western settings, participation moved from classical forms as voting and supporting political parties to new, unconventional forms, as protest. During this important change from conventional types of political action, new social categories previously excluded, as women, have been brought in. What about Romanian political participation? Is it as unequal as the former Western conventional participation was many decades ago? And protest, is it the same as in Western settings? If the Western participation is no less than the same kind of participation but by new means of expression, as acknowledged by some scholars, is it the same in Romania? Could one take protest in Romania as undermining the legitimacy of democracy? The conclusion is that Romanian protesters resemble by and large to their Western counterparts and that they are not a serious threat for the still incipient Romanian democracy.

Between 1870 and 1900 American farmers organized in the Grange, the Alliances, and the Peoples (Populist) Party and protested against a variety of economic ills. Economic historians have generally explained the farm organizations and the protests in the same way that the farmers themselves explained them—in terms of low agricultural prices and high costs of inputs resulting in part from the monopolistic organization of the suppliers of those inputs. However, there now exists considerable evidence indicating that the economic conditions of the time were not: as the farmers depicted them, thus raising two questions: (1) if the farmers' statements about their economic state cannot be accepted as historical fact, then why were the farmers so angry? and (2) why did they choose to protest the issues which they did?

Wenige Wochen nach den Protesten gegen die katastrophalen Auswirkungen der neoliberalen Politik des peruanischen Präsidenten Alberto Fujimori wurde nun auch das angrenzende Ekuador von heftigen Ausschreitungen erschüttert. Die derzeitige Krise in Ekuador weist dabei ähnliche Charakteristika auf: Abwertung der Landeswährung, Dollarisierung der Wirtschaft, Protestdemonstrationen und deren gewalttätige Niederschlagung. (Lat.am Nachr/DÜI)

How do radical movements seeking fundamental social change engage with nearer-term policy dilemmas? Disciplinary boundaries and practical obstacles have limited research into protester policy engagement. Using a hybrid method combining participant-observation and expert-led focus groups, we document activist attitudes concerning controversial climate policy options. Data gathered at 'Climate Camps' in six national contexts are presented alongside evidence from similar 'participant-instigator' events at Green Party conferences. We find activists engaged in direct action outside the established political system had policy knowledge and agendas comparable to or surpassing those active within the system. Support for radical change appears correlated with – rather than opposed to – knowledge and interest in policy agendas. As climate protests escalate it is important to understand 'protester policy engagement' – the processing, production and communication of changes proposed from a position outside the established political system and to theorise this with, rather than in contradistinction to, social movement identity.

How do radical movements seeking fundamental social change engage with nearer-term policy dilemmas? Disciplinary boundaries and practical obstacles have limited research into protester policy engagement. Using a hybrid method combining participant-observation and expert-led focus groups, we document activist attitudes concerning controversial climate policy options. Data gathered at 'Climate Camps' in six national contexts are presented alongside evidence from similar 'participant-instigator' events at Green Party conferences. We find activists engaged in direct action outside the established political system had policy knowledge and agendas comparable to or surpassing those active within the system. Support for radical change appears correlated with – rather than opposed to – knowledge and interest in policy agendas. As climate protests escalate it is important to understand 'protester policy engagement' – the processing, production and communication of changes proposed from a position outside the established political system and to theorise this with, rather than in contradistinction to, social movement identity.

This article problematizes the role played by a football fan club—Çarşı—in one of the largest social movements in Turkish political history, the Gezi Park protests of June 2013. The authors suggest that as "unusual suspects" in social movements, Çarşı's role in the Gezi Park protests can be understood with the conceptual toolbox provided by theories of contentious politics. Since action repertoires, or "known sequences for acting together," are key to contentious politics and social movements, Çarşı's organized and effective performance during the Gezi Park protests shows how previous encounters with the police can be decisive in terms of social upheavals. This study suggests that Çarşı members, who were already accustomed to making ethical judgments on a variety of issues both political and non-political, should be taken as a prominent example of how supporters on terraces and fan clubs facilitate the framing processes described by the social movement literature.

The activist use of Facebook pages in the 2011 movements of the Egyptian revolution and the Spanish Indignados saw phases of exponential growth in user engagement in proximity to key protest events, signaled by spikes in likes and comments. This article analyzes these episodes as moments of digital enthusiasm facilitated by emotional communication on political Facebook pages. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative analysis of Facebook data, I argue that two elements concurred to build moments of digital enthusiasm: (a) the hopeful narrative produced by activist admins managing political Facebook pages, and (b) the receptivity and cooperation of ordinary Internet users who overwhelmingly reinforced the message put forward by activist admins. This emotional dialogue between admins and users generated a process of emotional contagion that helped establish propitious psychological conditions for mass protest participation. Moments of digital enthusiasm demonstrate the power of social media and emotional communication in mass protest mobilization. However, they also highlight the risk of evanescence of collective action in a digital age.

This study focuses on the Hong Kong Lennon Walls and the communications posted there. We assert that the physical placement of COVID-19 related images on the Lennon Walls of Hong Kong and the replication of symbols and iconography from the Umbrella Movement and the Anti-ELAB Movement situated COVID-19 discourse not only physically within but also symbolically within the contentious politics of Hong Kong. We conclude that the messages and images posted on Lennon Walls between January and April 2020 have used COVID-19 to extend public expression of sentiment on the debates around the Hong Kong government and to further mobilize a sense of Hong Kong identity against China. The findings contribute to the understandings of how the cultural politics surrounding the pandemic became a collective action frame in the mobilization of a localized Hong Kong political identity against the Hong Kong and Chinese governments. (China Q/GIGA)

Received 10.03.2020. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the information on current social protests, which was published in the leading Latin American news websites and actively discussed on the social media platforms to identify the main causes of public discontent and the main problems discussed by Latin Americans. The first part of the paper provides an overview of the materials on the social movements of the fall of 2019, which were published in the news websites, which are the most popular in Latin America, and have the greatest influence, and the biggest Internet traffic volume. The second part is devoted to an overview of hashtags on the topic of mass protests that have gained huge popularity among Latin American users on the biggest social media platforms. A review of informational articles on the autumn social movements, which were published in the leading Latin American newspapers, revealed the main points of view on the factors and causes of these events, and the main problems discussed by Latin Americans. An appeal to various sources, both the countries in which the protests took place and the states that have passed such a crisis, will help readers to see the current socio-political situation in a new way. Acknowledgements. Support from the Individual Research Program of the School of World economy and International Affairs at National Research University – Higher School of Economics is gratefully acknowledged.

AbstractStudies of public contentious action in response to mineral resource extraction have rarely employed quantitative methods. In a highly disaggregated statistical analysis we examine local protest dynamics in Bolivia and argue for a political conditioning of the so-called resource curse. We find that mineral gas resources spark disputes over both extraction and rent redistribution at the local level, and that this relationship is especially pronounced where the population has highly heterogenous political values and interests. In contrast, where the population is relatively united in their political views, significantly fewer protests occur.