Rough days in democracies: Comparing protests in democracies

Abstract.  Democratic political institutions are generally designed to channel public opinion; yet citizens often take to the streets in protest. Why would citizens, provided with formal mechanisms to affect the policy process, resort to extraordinary means? This article argues that the strength of representative institutions influences the likelihood of protest. The democratic institution literature does not address the issue of protest and in the protest literature effects of the democratic governmental structure have been largely underestimated. However, the diversity in government formats across democratic states and the corresponding variation in amount of protests leads one to question the relationship between them. This article identifies the variation in the scale of protests among democratic regimes in Western European countries using the European Protest and Coercion Data and explains protest using variation in the forms of government. Protesters in democratic countries with a weak legislature find it difficult to deliver their demands to government due to the institutional environment. Therefore, they are more inclined to protest than citizens in countries with a strong legislature. This argument is tested along with other structural variables and supported by results from testing models using ordinary least squares with panel-corrected standard errors.     

Hong Kong's protests hint at deeper problems for China

The current protests reflect underlying political, social and cultural fissures between Hong Kong and mainland China. How this immediate test is handled could prove fundamentally important to the integrity of the country and government.     

Immigrant protests in Toronto: diaspora and Sri Lanka's civil war

As Sri Lanka's civil war escalated in the spring of 2009, protests led by the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora in Toronto appealed for an immediate ceasefire agreement between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Held simultaneously in Chennai, London, and Oslo, the protests called for an end to the hostilities in Sri Lanka as well as recognition of the legitimacy of Tamil Eelam, a separate nation state for Tamils in Sri Lanka. Based on interviews and media coverage in Toronto, this article investigates how these ‘immigrant protests’ constituted ‘transnational acts of citizenship’. I examine the Toronto protests through three acts in the protest that challenged the exclusions of national citizenship by moving from Toronto's streets, statist discourses of Canadian citizenship, and the violence of war in Sri Lanka. Although these transnational acts of citizenship were rendered inaudible in public culture, the article concludes by exploring the possibilities of citizenship and belonging in the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora following the defeat of the LTTE.     

Fraud,grievances, and post-election protests in competitive authoritarian regimes

Why does election fraud trigger protest in the aftermath of some competitive authoritarian elections but not others? It is often argued that post-election protests occur when information about fraud confirms and reinforces mass grievances against the regime. However, grievances are not universal in autocracies. By focusing on whether government spending primarily benefits the ruling coalition or the masses—thereby affecting economic inequality and mass grievances—the theoretical argument in this article demonstrates how fraud both can lead to post-election protests and work in the autocratic government's favor. I find evidence for the theoretical argument in an analysis of 628 competitive elections in 98 authoritarian regimes (1950–2010). More broadly, the article advances our understanding of competitive elections in autocracies by focusing on how autocratic governments pursue multiple election strategies to promote regime stability and how combinations of strategies affect popular mobilization.     

Regional government in the Sudan

Decentralization has been a central concern in the Sudan and has inspired a far reaching restructuring of government. Following a transfer of substantial functions from central government ministries to province councils in 1979 new regional governments were created in 1980 as a level of government between provinces and the central government. This article describes the reasons for the introduction of regional government, the aims for it and the structure of government created.     

Invisible Labour: The Political Economy of Reintegration in South Sudan

This article considers the 2005–12 Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) programme in South Sudan. Current DDR practice centres on ex-combatants' reintegration through encouraging entrepreneurship and self-employment and thereby their willingness to take risks and responsibility. However, South Sudan's DDR programme invisibilizes and obscures the ex-combatants' endogenous capacity to adapt and generate an income. Based on in-depth interviews with participants of the DDR programme and key stakeholders, the article argues that DDR interventions seldom capture the labour market experience of demobilized combatants. The article concludes that self-employment is the solution to the process of reintegration, empowerment and ultimately a key to statebuilding.     

Sudan and South Sudan: identity,citizenship, and democracy in plural societies

This article discusses the institutional legacy of colonialism and how that has affected citizenship in Sudan and South Sudan. It argues that the colonial project made a legal distinction, especially in how citizenship was defined. It outlines problems facing Sudan and South Sudan and the challenges in managing a diverse population. It argues that a failure to build a democratic polity by resorting to ethnic federalism will divide the country along ethnic lines and prevent the emergence of a truly inclusive nation. Finally, the article discusses an alternative solution to the political crisis facing both Sudan and South Sudan, namely citizenship and the establishment of an inclusive framework to manage diverse populations within a unified nation. The article concludes with a discussion of the New Sudan Framework by situating it within the larger debate on democratic nation-building while also discussing its alignment with regional and international law.     

Conflict and impasse in South Sudan

President Salva Kiir and exiled first vice president Riek Machar, the two key political figures in South Sudan, remain at odds, and there is little sign of a political solution to the country's three-year-old civil war. There is some hope that the African Union will energise efforts to enforce the 2015 peace agreement and promote political dialogue.     

The politics of social assistance in South Africa: How protests and electoral politics shape the Child Support Grant

Since the 1990s, South Africa, like many other countries from the Global South, has provided extensive social assistance for the poor. The literature on these policies, however, is largely dominated by structuralist accounts, and it largely overlooks political factors. We conducted quantitative analyses regarding the South African flagship Child Support Grant (CSG) program and investigated how contentious and electoral political dynamics jointly shape the provision of this program. Based on a logistic regression analysis, we measured the effect of protest participation, voting preference, and their interaction on the likelihood of CSG receipt. Our analysis showed that CSG receipt is much higher among “uncontentious supporters” of ANC and “contentious nonsupporters,” as well as those who join violent protests. This lends support for our argument that CSG is being used as a tool for electoral politics and containment of unrest, providing fresh evidence for political mediation theories of social policy.     

Local Government and decentralization in the Sudan

The establishment of an effective local government system has been imperative in the Sudan both on account of the vast scale of the country and the decentralization policies of successive governments. District councils were initially established in 1951 following the Marshall Report, but were by stages superseded as budgetary authorities, and reduced to unimportance by the People's Local Government System in 1971, which vested responsibility in Councils at the Provincial level. The subsequent difficulties experienced by this system indicate the value of the District, now renamed Area, as a level for a multipurpose local authority in the Sudan, and explain the reemphasis of this level in the 1981 Local Government Act. This article summarizes the experience leading up to the 1981 Act, and examines the extent to which the new legislation offers an effective structure. The finance of local government, a recurrent problem in the Sudan, emerges as a critical issue, together with the future role of the Provincial Commissioner.     

The Religious State in the Sudan: A Preliminary Characterization of the Debacle

The performance of the Islamist state in the Sudan shows clear signs of disintegration. Its totalitarian grip over the country and its population is dramatically restrained by internal and external factors that have been working together since the regime's formative years. Despite the religious nature of the regime's ideology, religion has played a key role in the discourse of its opponents. The paper outlines some of the factors that have contributed to the regime's disintegration.     

Repression,spontaneity, and collective action: the 2013 Turkish Gezi protests

Scholars have identified various conditions that influence the formation of spontaneous collective action. Certain types of opposition strategies and geographic conditions make it likelier for protesters to be able to overcome reactive repression and keep mobilizing after experiencing state violence. As such, it is still unclear why a small protest sometimes diffuses into an unforeseen mass wave of dissent. Through examination of Turkish civil society, this study introduces a framework to explain the emergence of the 2013 Gezi protest, which was the largest in the Adalet ve Kalk?nma Partisi (Justice and Development Party) government-led era of Turkish politics. A sequence of mechanisms including viral diffusion, elite updating/cover-up, public outrage, and coordination are categorized and linked to previously identified antecedent conditions as well as Twitter activity of social movement organizations which took part in the protests. The framework advances our knowledge of repression backfire by identifying its causal mechanisms and classifying a configuration of conditions under which the phenomenon is likely to empirically take place.     

South Sudan: The Elusive Quest for a Resilient Social Contract?

ABSTRACT

After its hard-won independence in 2011, South Sudan slid quickly into violent conflict and became a theatre of enormous human suffering. This article attempts to answer the question of what went wrong, and what prospects exist for South Sudanese to forge a resilient social contract to build and sustain peace. It employs an analytical framework postulating three drivers of such a contract, at the heart of which is how core issues of conflict that underpin violent conflict and fragility have been addressed. The research findings underscore that the way the ruling elites managed the transition to statehood, the development of exclusive weak institutions, and frail social cohesion have all served to undermine peace and the development of a resilient social contract. Core issues of conflict have not been addressed, witnessed by the eruption of civil war in 2013. While the 2015 Peace Agreement provides, at least on paper, the basis for forging a new social contract that holds promise for sustaining peace, building inclusive institutions and nurturing social cohesion, its realization requires political will, strategic leadership, and a national vision, which are currently in short supply.     

An assessment of reasons behind service delivery protests: A case of Greater Tzaneen Municipality

This article aimed at assessing the underlying factors behind municipal service delivery protests at Greater Tzaneen Local Municipality. South African municipalities also form part of concerned public entities in terms of service delivery backlogs and protests behind service delivery. Over the past few years, South Africa has experienced a large number of protests against poor and insufficient service delivery across most municipalities in various provinces. An increase in service delivery protests in South African municipalities, as regularly seen in various media platforms such as newspapers, television, and social media, makes it necessary for policymakers, government practitioners, and scholars to understand the underlying factors behind service delivery protests. This paper is also intended to assess if whether community members protest due to poor or sufficient service delivery. It is quite evident that some people take advantage of the protests to their best interests rather than protesting for better service delivery. To accomplish the aim of this paper, a desktop research approach was applied to validate the argument and to uncover the underlying factors of service delivery protests. From the literature perspective, it is learnt that poverty, political instability, corruption, nepotism, and lack of public participatory are underlying factors behind service delivery protests. Despite some of the success of the post‐apartheid South African government, the country still faces serious challenges of high unemployment, poverty, inequality, and political instability. These are some of the key factors that culminate in citizens on streets protesting or expressing their dissatisfaction over the problem of poor service delivery.     

The revival of ‘native administration’ in the Sudan: A pragmatic view

The basic theme of this paper is to trace the pragmatic attempts of different governments in the Sudan to revive the system of native administration. The need for this revival became clear shortly before the overthrow of Nimeiry's government in April 1985. The approaches to this revival followed two main lines. The first approach adopted piecemeal reforms initiated by individual regional governments before 1986. In the second approach the central government adopted a comprehensive strategy to revive native administration. The implications of these attempts and their expected influence on the new multi-party system in the Sudan are briefly analysed in this paper. The data for this article was collected by the author while touring the Eastern and Western regions with an ILO project identification team between March and June 1986 as a consultant on local government and popular participation.