The power of protest on policing: Black Lives Matter protest and civilian evaluation of the police

In 2020, police brutality against Black Americans catalyzed Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests across all 50 states. Though BLM protests continue to permeate society, few scholars explore how these protests change Americans' perceptions of the police. To investigate this phenomenon more meticulously, we administered an online survey experiment—oversampling Black American participants—to measure how protest culture, specifically BLM protests, influences civilians' perceptions of the police. Our survey found that (1) Black American participants have a lower evaluation of police performance, but a higher evaluation of the BLM Movement than White American participants; (2) the presence of a general protest negatively impacts peoples' perception of safety, police trustworthiness, and police performance; and (3) a BLM protest casts a stronger effect on White American participants than on Black American participants. Using Critical Race Theory and QuantCrit these findings suggest that the visibility of BLM protests changes both Black and White perceptions of the police to varying degrees.     

Economic grievances and political protest

How do economic grievances affect citizens’ inclination to protest? Given rising levels of inequality and widespread economic hardship in the aftermath of the Great Recession, this question is crucial for political science: if adverse economic conditions depress citizens’ engagement, as many contributions have argued, then the economic crisis may well feed into a crisis of democracy. However, the existing research on the link between economic grievances and political participation remains empirically inconclusive. It is argued in this article that this is due to two distinct shortcomings, which are effectively addressed by combining the strengths of political economy and social movement theories. Based on ESS and EU-SILC data from 2006–2012, as well as newly collected data on political protest in 28 European countries, a novel, more fine-grained conceptualisation of objective economic grievances considerably improves our understanding of the direct link between economic grievances and protest behaviour. While structural economic disadvantage (i.e., the level of grievances) unambiguously de-mobilises individuals, the deterioration of economic prospects (i.e., a change in grievances) instead increases political activity. Revealing these two countervailing effects provides an important clarification that helps reconcile many seemingly conflicting findings in the existing literature. Second, the article shows that the level of political mobilisation substantially moderates this direct link between individual hardship and political activity. In a strongly mobilised environment, even structural economic disadvantage is no longer an impediment to political participation. There is a strong political message in this interacting factor: if the presence of organised and visible political action is a decisive signal for citizens that conditions the micro-level link between economic grievances and protest, then democracy itself – that is, organised collective action – can help sustain political equality and prevent the vicious circle of democratic erosion.     

Immigrant protest: an introduction

The last decade has witnessed an explosion of ‘immigrant protests’, political mobilizations by irregular migrants and pro-migrant activists. This special issue on ‘immigrant protest’ has emerged in response to this rise in the visibility of immigrant protests, and its central aim is to contribute to the growing body of scholarship on migrant resistance movements and to consider the implications of these struggles for critical understandings of citizenship. This introduction maps out some of the central issues and themes emerging from the contributions to this issue, exploring the tensions between integrationist and autonomous approaches and theories of migrant activism and resistance and between migrant and activist strategies of invisibility and visibility. By bringing immigrant protests to the heart of debates about citizenship, we hope to further extend discussions about the limits and the possibilities of citizenship as the material and conceptual horizon of critical social analysis and political participation and practice today.     

The euro for China: too important to fail and too difficult to rescue

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze China's strategy in relation to the euro. The first section summarizes China's active support to the single currency since its creation up to the first phase of the current Eurozone debt crisis. It shows how China has used a two-pronged approach. It has developed a public campaign in favor of the euro, especially when the market sentiment has been bearish on the single currency, and it has continued to be an active player in the European sovereign debt markets. The second part explains why China has been so supportive. Beijing wants to move away from dollar hegemony and thus it favors a tripolar monetary system based on the US dollar, the euro and the Chinese renminbi (RMB). With this aim, and despite the crisis, China has continued to diversify its foreign reserves into the euro making it by now ‘too important to fail’, not only because China holds roughly $1 trillion in euro-denominated assets, but also because for China the Eurozone is a crucial market and an important strategic counterweight to US dominance in world affairs. Finally, the third part focuses on how by the end of 2011 China switches to a more cautious approach due to the difficulty involved in rescuing the Eurozone. Domestic pressures, public outcry in Europe against being saved by China, the unwillingness of the European leaders to enter into strategic bargaining and Germany's strategy to use sovereign bond spreads as a market mechanism to create ‘more Europe’ have convinced policy-makers in Beijing to keep a lower profile while making sure the value of the euro remains stable.     

Public opinion polarisation and protest behaviour

Does an increasing divide in normative notions within a population influence citizens’ political protest behaviour? This article explores whether public opinion polarisation stimulates individuals to attend lawful demonstrations. In line with relative deprivation theory, it is argued that in an environment of polarisation, individuals’ normative notions are threatened, increasing the probability that they will actively participate in the political decision‐making process. Using the European Social Survey from the period 2002–2014 and focusing on subnational regions, multilevel analyses are conducted. Thereby a new index to measure public opinion polarisation is introduced. Depending on the issue, empirical results confirm the effect of polarisation. While average citizens are not motivated to demonstrate over the issue of whether people from other countries are a cultural threat, they are motivated by the issues of reducing inequality and of homosexuality. The article goes on to examine in a second step whether ideological extremism makes individuals more susceptible to environmental opinion polarisation. Findings show that members of the far left are more likely to protest when their social environment is divided over the issue of income inequality. In contrast, members of the far right are motivated by rising polarisation regarding homosexuality. In sum, citizens become mobilised as their beliefs and values are threatened by public opinion polarisation.     

Impossible protest: noborders in Calais

Since the closure of the Red Cross refugee reception centre in Sangatte, undocumented migrants in Calais hoping to cross the border to Britain have been forced to take refuge in a number of squatted migrant camps, locally known by all as ‘the jungles.’ Unauthorised shanty-like residences built by the migrants themselves, living conditions in the camps are very poor. In June 2009, European ‘noborder’ activists set up a week-long protest camp in the area with the intention of confronting the authorities over their treatment of undocumented migrants. In this article, we analyse the June 2009 noborder camp as an instance of ‘immigrant protest.’ Drawing on ethnographic materials and Jacques Rancière's work on politics and aesthetics, we construct a typology of forms of border control through which to analyse the different ways in which the politics of the noborder camp were staged, performed and policed. Developing a critique of policing practices which threatened to make immigrant protest ‘impossible’, we highlight moments of protest which, through the affirmation of an ‘axiomatic’ equality, disrupted and disarticulated the borders between citizens and non-citizens, the political and non-political.     

Local government and urban protest in Colombia

This article examines how urban conflict in Colombia is highlighting important features of local government in that country. Four interrelated questions are asked: (a) What is the role of local government in the provision of public goods and services in urban communities? (b) To what extent has local government been the target of urban community protest? (c) Has local government taken on a petitioner role by being a participant in urban community protest? (d) Does urban protest threaten the system of political domination of which local government is an integral part? The article points to certain key features of local government in Colombia that may be built upon in order to create a more progressive, democratic and community-based system of local government. There are, however, powerful political constraints on this occurring.     

The Racialization of British Politics

The idea of 'race' was an important part of the post-1945 political and ideological context within which migration from the New Commonwealth began. This is demonstrated by an analysis of an important policy document which provides a foundation upon which to evaluate the character and significance of racism in the subsequent political process. This evaluation contrasts and comments upon rival accounts of the impact of racism offered by writers who have analysed official government files from the period. The paper concludes by arguing against a conception of racism which presumes that it is a constant and unchanging ideological bloc within the British political process.