Contacting and Complaining: Political Participation and the Failure of Democracy in Russia

This article analyzes mass political participation as a factor contributing to the failure of Russian democracy. Data from public opinion surveys and firsthand interviews are used to evaluate patterns in Russian citizens' engagement in nonvoting political participation from the late Soviet era to the present. The article asks whether Russians expanded their participation in acts constraining elites, such as party-development work and protests, and investigates practices of contacting public officials, considering the implications of contacting for the deepening of democratic institutions. The factors contributing to patterns of participation, including the weakness of Russia's party system and the paucity of Russian civil society, are also discussed.     

Political participation in Latvia 1987–2001

Abstract

Political participation is crucial to democracy; we discuss its main features during three stages. The years 1988–91 are marked by anti-regime mobilization and extensive mass activism in support for restoring independence. After a “normalizing” phase between 1992–98 we note contradictory trends in more recent years. Next to conventional political participation one notes increasing protests, referendum initiatives, and corrupt ways of gaining influence.     

Ritual Demonstrations versus Reactive Protests: Participation Across Mobilizing Contexts in Mexico City

Using an innovative survey of protest participants and nonparticipants from five major street demonstrations in Mexico City in 2011 and 2012, this study tests the assumption that influences on protest participation vary across different types of events; namely, ritual demonstrations and reactive protests. The comparison is based on two assumptions: that these are two of the dominant forms of protest in contemporary Latin America, and that specifying the context for different types of social movement participation provides a better understanding of the individual mobilization process for groups seeking to defend their rights or gain new benefits. The comparative analyses reveal some crucial differences. Political interest and previous political experience are more influential in the decision to take part in reactive demonstrations. For ritual demonstrations, the decision to participate tends to be driven more by personal and organizational connections.     

Relative deprivation,protests and voting in Kenya

While protests and voting are forms of political participation, their theoretical and empirical literature has largely developed independently and remains unintegrated, despite a possible common causal mechanism. This paper explores the possibility that perceptions of relative deprivation could be a common causal mechanism. It identifies three forms of relative deprivation – intra-personal, inter-personal, and fraternalistic. Using the Afrobarometer survey data for Kenya, the paper tests the influence of each of the three forms of relative deprivation on the likelihood of voting or participating in protests. The results show that intra-personal relative deprivation influences the likelihood of protesting and voting, by raising the former while reducing the latter. However, inter-personal and fraternalistic relative deprivations are not significant predictors of the likelihood of either protesting or voting.     

The International Monetary Fund,Party System Institutionalization,and Protest in Latin America

Extant studies have documented a positive correlation between country participation in International Monetary Fund–sponsored programs and collective protests in Latin America. However, anecdotal evidence indicates that there is a great deal of variation in the number of protests in recipient countries across the region. This article provides a theoretical argument that explains how the fund interacts with the level of party system institutionalization to affect the level of protest. The main prediction is that the level of protest decreases in recipient countries when the level of party system institutionalization is high. Empirical results from a sample of 16 Latin American democracies observed from 1982 to 2007 provide strong statistical and substantive support for the main hypothesis.     

Las reformas políticas en el gobierno de Sebastián Piñera Chile, 2010-2013

This paper analyzes political reforms carried out by Sebastián Piñera’s government in Chile. Te reforms considered are those that his Coalition for Change campaigned on as part of the presidential and legislative elections in 2009. Tese reforms promised an improvement in the quality of democracy, and promised its consolidation, including increased political participation, in order to counter the most common criticisms of institutions of representation. Throughout this process, the government showed little receptivity to proposals coming from other sectors, both of the ruling coalition and the opposition; furthermore, it paid scant attention to growing citizen protests and their demands voiced since his second year of government. Te information analyzed conveys little progress in decentralization and in the importance that players with veto powers were gaining within the ruling coalition.     

Observing protest: media use and student involvement on 7 April 2010 in Bishkek,Kyrgyzstan

Individuals in and around protests are generally classified as either participants or nonparticipants. However, observers witnessing protests can also play an important role in collective actions by sharing their experiences. This paper explores the characteristics of observers during the 7 April 2010 demonstrations in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Based on data collected via a survey of university students, I demonstrate that protest observers differed from nonparticipants on a range of variables. A key factor differentiating student observers from nonparticipants was their online activity prior to the protests. Logistic regressions show that students with higher rates of online activity were significantly and substantially more likely to be protest observers than nonparticipants. These findings provide empirical evidence for categorizing observation as a distinct level of protest involvement, shed light on the demonstration in Bishkek on 7 April 2010, and suggest that examining online activity can contribute to a better understanding of protest involvement levels.     

Stones on the Road: The Politics of Participation and the Generation of Crisis in Bolivia

This paper demonstrates that recent protests in Bolivia must be linked to the failure of efforts to improve democratic participation in the country. It argues that such failures can be traced to a history of prejudices in national development and society and persistent biases and contradictions within international development policy and institutions. Despite these obstacles, the paper concludes that ideas for appropriate development and realistic alternatives for change to government and democracy are visible in recent critical development thinking and amongst the different social and cultural groupings involved in the demonstrations.     

The prostitute

Migrant domestic workers rarely take part in — let alone organize — public protests in the countries where they work. Public protests are virtually unheard of among migrant domestic workers in Singapore, Taiwan, and Malaysia, and especially in the Middle East and the Gulf States. Over the past decade and a half, however, migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong — mostly Filipinas and Indonesian women — have become highly active, organizing and participating in political protests. Hong Kong's migrant domestic workers protest in a place where they are guest workers and temporary migrants, denied the opportunity of becoming legal citizens or permanent residents. Increasingly, these workers, their grassroots activist organizations, and the nongovernmental organizations with which they are affiliated frame their concerns in terms of global, transnational, and human rights, not merely local migrant worker rights. This article takes the “Consulate Hopping Protest and Hall of Shame Awards” event — part of the anti-World Trade Organization protests in Hong Kong in 2005 — as an ethnographic example of domestic worker protest and as an entrée through which to ask what it is about Hong Kong and about the position of women migrant workers — whose mobility and voice is both a product and a symptom of globalization — that literally permits public protests and shapes their form and content. The article illustrates how migrant workers’ protests and activism have been shaped by domestic worker subjectivities, by the dynamics of inter-ethnic worker affiliations, and by the sociohistorical context of Hong Kong as a post-colonial “global city” and a “neoliberal space of exception.”     

Democratic Deficit, the Global Trade System and 11 September

This short paper examines the Howard government's engagement with the World Trade Organization through the prism of two events: the S11 anti-globalisation protests and the 11 September terrorist attacks against the United States. Several policy dilemmas are highlighted including: concerns about the accountability and legitimacy of global political institutions (democratic deficit); the government's reluctance to expand public participation in trade policy-making; and the preference for bilateral rather than multilateral trade agreements. Together these developments have undermined Australia's commitment to multilateralism and a "rules-based" system for international trade, and have subjected Australia to the asymmetries of power that were traditionally mitigated by global political institutions.     

Class or Citizenship? Debating Workplace Conflict in China

While a new working class is in the process of remaking itself in China, the latest trend in labour studies has rejected the Marxist tradition which sees the social relations of production as the point of departure for analysing workplace conflict. According to the new current, influenced by post-structuralism, class is only one of the identities articulated by workers, and it can be understood only with reference to their discourses. By critically evaluating an important book by Ching Kwan Lee (Against the Law: Labor Protests in China's Rustbelt and Sunbelt), this article suggests that her approach generalising workers' protests with the notion of citizenship cannot satisfactorily explain the changing pattern of labour protests in China since 2004. By using fieldwork data and connecting the analysis of the social relations of production with the changing patterns of workers' struggle, this paper argues that migrant workers protests are a significant part of the emerging class conflict in China.     

International Tobacco Politics and the Question of Social Movements in the Middle East: A Comparative Analysis of Ottoman and Iranian Cases

A proliferation of scholarly works offering a variety of modernization experiences facilitated an understanding of social protests in non-western settings. Focusing on the initial stages of modern social movements in Iran and the Ottoman Empire, this study makes a comparative analysis of the tobacco protests at the turn of the twentieth century. The social protests against foreign tobacco monopolies are regarded as a key moment for the emergence of modern social movements in these countries. Scrutinizing the negotiation strategies, social value systems and political structures of these countries, it is suggested that these tobacco protests played a catalytic role in the process of capitalist incorporation and adaptation to the accompanying value systems of modernism and liberal democracy.     

The political psychology of participation in Turkey: civic engagement,basic values,political sophistication and the young

This article aims to understand the recent heightened levels of mobilization and unconventional political participation in Turkey. We use a political psychology model that highlights the impact of civic engagement, political sophistication, and values on conventional and unconventional participation. We argue that these factors will be significant predictors of unconventional participation setting it apart from conventional political behaviour, which will be driven by simpler considerations. We expect these qualitative differences in the drivers of conventional and unconventional participation to go beyond age and gender differences and highlight the complexity of political decision-making in Turkey’s electoral authoritarian system. We use the 2012 World Value Survey to test our hypotheses, with a nationally representative sample of Turkish citizens. We find significant variations in the role of values, sophistication and levels of civic engagement for conventional and unconventional participation when controlling for age, gender and left–right ideological orientations. Our findings confirm the complex considerations that drive citizens’ engagement with politics and can be useful to explaining recent political developments in Turkey involving youth, public mobilization and protests, but also mainstream voting choices.     

Integration of Indigenous Knowledge Systems in Natural Resources Management in Hurungwe District,Zimbabwe

The study explores the Korekore culture in a bid to show its relevance to modern society's natural resources management in Zimbabwe. The main argument of the article is that the Korekore people have indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) that need to be tapped and integrated in modern-day natural resources management in Zimbabwe and elsewhere. The article argues that if blended with modern technologies, IKS can serve as effective intervention strategies that can mitigate the challenges faced in natural resources management. Adopting a qualitative research design in a case study approach, purposive sampling and snowballing techniques were used to select participants with in-depth knowledge on traditional beliefs and practices in natural resources management. The data collection tools included interviews, questionnaires, and peer-reviewed journal articles analysis. The study observed that the Korekore cultural beliefs and practices are not only relevant at local level, but are consistent with the principles of the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations and United Nations Working Group on Traditional Resources Rights.     

HEARTED EFFORTS BY THE MOGOGELO COMMUNITY TO PROTECT TRADITIONAL SITES BY MEANS OF PUBLIC PARTICIPATION FORUMS: A REVIEW REPORT

ABSTRACT

Traditional values, especially those regarding ancestral graves, crafts, beliefs, songs, dances and languages, are part of Africa's oldest heritage. These existed prior to knowledge of sustainable development or any legal framework to enforce conservation. Development was, in the past, community-centred without constraints to these antiquities. Current legislation acknowledges the necessity of stakeholders’ consent, that is, the consent of community residents. This was the case with the development of a photovoltaic solar energy project in the Mogogelo community in the North West province in South Africa, where environmental practitioners were required as legislated to conduct an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). Among these specialist studies was the Heritage Impact Assessment (HIA). This article is based on the interest shown by the community and the standoff that arose over the allocation of the project site and the conservation of traditional values. Using a public participation process as a social forum, this report highlights the degree of traditional knowledge and legislative awareness within the community about its right to protect heritage resources.     

Capturing ethnicity: the case of Ukraine

Abstract

Building on past survey-based studies of ethnic identity, we employ the case of Ukraine to demonstrate the importance of taking seriously the multidimensionality of ethnicity, even in a country that is regarded as deeply divided. Drawing on relational theory, we identify four dimensions of ethnicity that are each important in distinctive ways in Ukraine: individual language preference, language embeddedness, ethnolinguistic identity, and nationality. Using original survey data collected in May 2014, we show that the choice of one over the other can be highly consequential for the conclusions one draws about ethnicity’s role in shaping attitudes (e.g. to NATO membership), actions (e.g. participation in the Euromaidan protests), and the anticipation of outgroups’ behavior (e.g. expectations of a Russian invasion). Moreover, we call attention to the importance of including the right control variables for precisely interpreting any posited effects of ethnicity, making specific recommendations for future survey research on ethnic identity in Ukraine.     

Theoretische Überlegungen zur Entstehung von Gewalt in Protesten: Eine situative mechanismische Erklärung

This paper connects recent findings in sociology, criminology, social psychology and neurosciences to develop a mechanism-based explanation of the emergence of protest violence. The theoretical considerations connect Charles Tilly’s and Sidney Tarrow’s relational sociology with Randall Collins’ emotions-based micro-sociology of violent confrontations and Herbert Blumer’s symbolic interactionism. The goal is to contribute to the development of a mid-range theory that can explain the emergence of violence in generally peaceful protests conclusively and that is empirically verifiable. The paper assumes that instead of protesters’ or police officers’ motivations and strategies, three situational factors are crucial for the emergence of violence in protests: interaction, emotion and interpretation during the protest event. Due to actors’ situational interpretation specific combinations of interactions form relational processes that trigger emotional mechanism of “tension and fear”, as conceptualized by Collins. Together with “emotional dominance” during the protest, tension and fear forms the emotional process of “attacking the weak” and thereby prompts violence even in protests of generally peaceful protest groups.     

Understanding young citizens’ political participation in Turkey: does ‘being young’ matter?

Participation is key to the discussions of democracy and justice. For all citizens, no matter their differences, having the ability to participate is a difficult but required condition for a just and democratic political community. Based on the recent research on citizenship in Turkey, this article aims to explore, first, whether young citizens’ political participation shows a different pattern when compared to the rest of the population and, second, whether being young still determines the outcome when controlled for demographical factors and economic status. We then question whether belonging to different collective identities plays a different role in the way young citizens participate, and how. Last, mostly focusing on young citizens’ perceptions of the Gezi Park protests, the paper will discuss the role of politicized collective identities in the formation of conventional and unconventional political participation.     

Putin,Popular Protests,and Political Trajectories in Russia: A Comparative Perspective

During December 2011, large-scale, anti-regime protests erupted across Russia. What do the Russian uprisings reveal about popular challenges to authoritarian rule and the political trajectory of contemporary Russian authoritarianism? This study identifies two models of citizen mobilization against authoritarian leaders, one focusing on street-based protests and the other using elections as the key arena for launching popular challenges. Three factors encouraging both models are analyzed: declining public support for the regime; growing evidence that leaders are no longer invincible; and changing political opportunities for the opposition. The extent to which these conditions are present in Russia and what this ledger suggests about plausible political trajectories there are evaluated.     

A REPORT OF THE 2019 HONG KONG PROTESTS

This article is written by a former Royal Hong Kong Police of?cer whose service included Special Branch engaged in counter-terrorism intelligence, and who is currently resident in Hong Kong. It offers a detailed chronological overview of the development of the 2019 protests in Hong Kong; analyses the problems with the political response on the part of the Hong Kong and Beijing governments; it also looks at the tactics employed by the protesters, and critically examines the tactical and strategic response to the protests by the Hong Kong police. It also discusses the broader social and economic causes of the protests, and how the Hong Kong government might best respond to these challenges.