Information and Values in Popular Protests: Costa Rica in 2000

The mass demonstrations in Costa Rica in 2000 opposing a government initiative to deregulate the electricity and telecommunications markets point to the importance of the paths of communication between the people and government leaders to understand mass political mobilisation. This article explains the surprising reaction of the Costa Rican public by focusing on the unwillingness or inability of the policy-makers to articulate their position in a way acceptable to the citizenry, leaving public space under the dominant influence of social organisations that opposed the initiative.     

Contesting the ‘Active’ in active citizenship: youth activism in Cape Town,South Africa

ABSTRACT

In post-apartheid South Africa, efforts to encourage practices of citizenship and new citizens who will act in ways that support communities and the nation are promoted by government policies and networks of international organizations, civil society groups, and NGOs. In this paper, we analyse the pedagogy of citizenship that is common in these efforts and the role of ‘active citizenship’ within it. Relying on interviews with leaders of NGOs and activist groups and on participatory research with six organizations, we examine the ways in which different meanings and aspects of active citizenship are mobilized. Active citizenship is often dismissed depoliticizing citizenship and dampening dissent. The activists we interviewed and with whom we worked, however, challenge that critique. A central issue in our analysis are competing views as to whether active citizenship should be evaluated in terms of ‘effectiveness’ or ‘disruption.’ While some agents might incline toward effective and incremental change, many youth activists understand active citizenship as a tool that enables radical, disruptive acts capable of decolonizing South African society. Their use of active citizenship points to the need to avoid conflating citizenship with particular political goals and to not assume that active citizenship is necessarily and unequivocally enrolled in post-political consensus.     

The Dynamics of the Demobilization of the Protest Campaign in Assam

This study highlights the role that critical events play in the demobilization of protest campaigns. Social movement scholars suggest that protest campaigns demobilize as a consequence of polarization within the campaign or the cooptation of the campaign leaders. I offer critical events as an alternative causal mechanism and argue that protest campaigns in ethnically divided societies are particularly combustible, as they have the potential to trigger unintended or unorchestrated communal violence. When such violence occurs, elite strategies change, mass support declines, and the campaign demobilizes. An empirical investigation of the dynamics of the demobilization phase of the anti-foreigner protest campaign in Assam, India, between 1979 and 1985 confirms this argument. A single group analysis is conducted to compare the dynamics of the campaign before and after the communal violence by using time series event data collected from The Indian Express, a national newspaper. The study has wider implications for the literature on collective action, as it illuminates the dynamic and complex nature of protest campaigns.     

Predicting Revolt: Fragility Indexes and the Level of Violence and Instability in the Arab Spring

This article is one of the first to systematically assess the ability of state fragility measures to predict violent protests and adverse regime changes in countries. We focus on the Arab Spring as an example of a situation that such measures ought to predict. Through a variety of analyses, we find that none of the measures are predictive. We then create a simple model using the literature of protest and revolts to predict both the level of violence and the extent of regime change in the Arab Spring countries. This simpler model does a better job of predicting the level of involvement in the Arab Spring than any of the complex State Fragility Indexes. Thus, the goal of this article is not to explain the causes of the Arab Spring, but to add to the discussion of the predictive value of measures of instability.     

Political activism in Iran: strategies for survival,possibilities for resistance and authoritarianism

This article examines mobilizations and activism in authoritarian settings by considering the case of Iran. By focusing on the transformation of activism since the 1990s and the green movement, it advances an explanation of how oppositional political groups have been able to survive and produce forms of resistant subjectivity despite authoritarian constraints. In order to do so, the article brings together two scholarly traditions, namely Social Movement Theory (SMT) and the study of subjectivity and resistance as framed by Sari Hanafi. SMT explains how activists have been able to navigate repression and create opportunities for mobilization while shifting between formal and informal politics. The study of subjectivity helps conceptualize the type of subjects or political citizens that authoritarian environments generate. The article builds on field research with activists conducted in Iran and Turkey between 2007 and 2016. It argues that authoritarian constraints allow autonomous activism to flourish while emptying of meaning the regime-sanctioned political infrastructures.     

行政抗诉证明标准问题浅论

行政抗诉证明标准既具有行政诉讼证明标准的多级性、中间性和复合性特征,又具有不同于行政诉讼证明标准的复查性、救济性、监督性的特点。行政抗诉应当综合考虑被诉行政行为类型、行政行为对行政相对人的影响程度以及行政抗诉工作的特点,构建包括优势证明标准、一般证明标准、严格证明标准在内的多元证明标准。     

Protest in South Africa: motives and meanings

South Africa is experiencing record levels of protest. Interpretations of protest fall into two groups. First, there is the argument that protests represent only limited rebellion and that though unruly, they are a mechanism for political re-engagement. A second understanding links “new social movements” that address general grievances to wider hegemonic challenges. This article addresses the issue of whether these upsurges in militant mobilization threaten or complement democratic procedures. The article draws from a study of two protest “hotspots” in Durban.     

Social movements,protest movements and cross-ideological coalitions – the Arab uprisings re-appraised

This article explores the utility of social movement theory, reviewing conceptual developments and its application to Middle East cases before examining its relevance to the Arab uprisings. The initial youth-led new social movements were non-ideological, leaderless, and lacking in clear organizational structures. As the protest movements spread, they grew to encompass a diverse array of other movements and actors: The breadth and diversity of these coalitions made the successful achievement of their core demands for regime change possible. However, the persistence of ideological cleavages within them made agreement on the post-regime change political order near impossible.     

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.     

瑕疵证据排除规则在民事检察抗诉中的运用

瑕疵证据主要是指在形成过程或者形式、审查程序等方面不合法的证据。瑕疵证据不同于非法证据,瑕疵证据的收集并未侵害他人合法权益或者违反法律禁止性规定,但由于瑕疵证据存在瑕疵,其证明力受到削弱或者消解,需要其他证据予以补强,且如果证据存在重大瑕疵,法律规定其不能被采信作为认定事实的依据。人民法院生效判决、裁定采信了存在重大瑕疵的证据并作为认定事实的主要证据的,检察机关应当提出抗诉。