Table Of ContentSocieties and Political Orders in Transition
Nina Belyaeva
Victor Albert
Dmitry G. Zaytsev Editors
Protest
Publics
Toward a New Concept of Mass
Civic Action
Societies and Political Orders in Transition
Serieseditors
AlexanderChepurenko
HigherSchoolofEconomics,NationalResearchUniversity,Moscow,Russia
SteinUgelvikLarsen
UniversityofBergen,Bergen,Norway
WilliamReisinger
DepartmentofPoliticalScience,UniversityofIowa,IowaCity,Iowa,USA
Managingeditors
EkimArbatli
HigherSchoolofEconomics,NationalResearchUniversity,Moscow,Russia
DinaRosenberg
HigherSchoolofEconomics,NationalResearchUniversity,Moscow,Russia
AigulMavletova
HigherSchoolofEconomics,NationalResearchUniversity,Moscow,Russia
This book series presents scientific and scholarly studies focusing on societies and
political orders in transition, for example in Central and Eastern Europe but also
elsewhere in the world. By comparing established societies, characterized by well-
establishedmarketeconomiesandwell-functioningdemocracies,withpost-socialist
societies,oftencharacterizedbyemergingmarketsandfragilepoliticalsystems,the
series identifiesandanalyzesfactorsinfluencingchangeandcontinuityinsocieties
and political orders. These factors include state capacity to establish formal and
informal rules, democratic institutions, forms of social structuration, political
regimes, levels of corruption, specificity of political cultures, as well as types and
orientationofpoliticalandeconomicelites.
This series welcomes monographs and edited volumes from a variety of disci-
plines and approaches, such as political and social sciences and economics, which
areaccessibletobothacademicsandinterestedgeneralreaders.
Topics may include, but are not limited to, democratization, regime change,
changingsocialnorms,migration,etc.
Moreinformationaboutthisseriesathttp://www.springer.com/series/15626
InternationalAdvisoryBoard:
Bluhm,Katharina;FreieUniversitðtBerlin,Germany
Buckley, Cynthia; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Sociological
Research,USA
Cox,Terry;CentralandEastEuropeanStudies,UniversityofGlasgow,UK
Fish,Steve;BerkeleyUniversity,USA
Ilyin,Michail;NationalResearchUniversiyHigherSchoolofEconomics,Russia
Melville,Andrei;NationalResearchUniversityHigherSchoolofEconomics,Russia
Radaev,Vadim;NationalResearchUniversityHigherSchoolofEconomics,Russia
(cid:129) (cid:129)
Nina Belyaeva Victor Albert Dmitry G. Zaytsev
Editors
Protest Publics
Toward a New Concept of Mass Civic Action
Editors
NinaBelyaeva VictorAlbert
PublicPolicyDepartment,School PublicPolicyDepartment,School
ofPoliticalScience,Higher ofPoliticalScience,Higher
SchoolofEconomics SchoolofEconomics
NationalResearchUniversity NationalResearchUniversity
Moscow,Russia Moscow,Russia
DmitryG.Zaytsev
InternationalLaboratoryforApplied
NetworkResearch
NationalResearchUniversityHigher
SchoolofEconomics(NRUHSE)
Moscow,Russia
ISSN2511-2201 ISSN2511-221X (electronic)
SocietiesandPoliticalOrdersinTransition
ISBN978-3-030-05474-8 ISBN978-3-030-05475-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05475-5
©SpringerNatureSwitzerlandAG2019
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Foreword
ManybrilliantnewideashavecomeoutofRussiansocialscience:SimonKuznet’s
invention of national accounts, Wassily Leontief’s input-output tables, and Pitirim
Sorokin’shistoricalsociology.Thisbookprovidesanothermajorcontributionfrom
Russia—as all three editors are from the Russian National Research University
Higher School of Economics—to the analysis of social dynamics—the concept of
“ProtestPublics.”
Our understanding of social protest has changed dramatically over the last
century.Newconceptsarosewithbothadvancesinthesocialsciencesandchanges
inthecharacterofprotestandtheactorswhocarryitout.Inthenineteenthcentury,
Charles Mackay (1841) and Gustave Le Bon (1896) treated crowd behavior as a
manifestation of delusions and irrational mob psychology. In the mid-twentieth
century, George Rudé (1964), Neil Smelser (1963), and Herbert Blumer (1969),
bycontrast,treatedcrowdbehavior—nowgiventhemorescientificterm“collective
behavior”—as purposive, responding to wider social dysfunction, and generated
throughsharedunderstandingsoftheaimsofprotests.
Inresponsetothestudent,feminist,andcivilrightsprotestsofthe1960s,scholars
suchasWilliamGamson,CharlesTilly,DougMcAdam,andSidneyTarrowframed
socialprotestastheactionsofexcludedordisadvantagedgroupsindemocraciesto
seekinclusioninmainstreampoliticaldiscourseandpolicy.Gamson(1975)argued
that a key determinant of social movement success was their degree of internal
organization. Tilly (1978) emphasized the need for protest groups to acquire
resources, including financial support and strength in numbers, to sustain their
actions. McAdam (1982) introduced the notion of “political opportunity”—that is,
weakness or divisions within state authorities or those resisting the protest move-
ment’sgoals.Tarrow(1994),fromhisfocusonItalianlabormovements,addedthe
idea ofsocial movementprotest cycles, notingthat protest goesthroughrising and
falling phases as the internal and external conditions of a movement change
overtime.
Yet in the last two decades of the twentieth century, it became clear that these
formulations were not adequate to explain ongoing social protest events. First, it
v
vi Foreword
became obvious that protests were not only undertaken by disadvantaged or
excluded groups. Movements of the well-to-do and sophisticated, who simply felt
thattheirparticularpolicygoalswerebeingneglectedbygovernments,aroseinthe
leading democracies. These included the antinuclear, environmental, and animal
rights movements in Europe, Japan, and the USA, and most importantly, the Tea
PartymovementintheUSA.
Second, as demonstrated by Jack A. Goldstone (2004) and others (Goldstone
2003), social movementactivity indemocracieswas notlimitedtoorganizingpro-
tests in support of excluded groups; rather all kinds of movements employed both
public protests and other kinds of activities to change policy, including lawsuits,
political campaigns, participation in hearings and expert panels, lobbying officials,
andevenlaunchingpoliticalparties(suchastheGreenPartiesinEurope)orseeking
totakeoverexistingpartiesinordertoelectpoliticalleaderstoenacttheirprograms.
Protestactivitywasoftenjustoneelementofamultifacetedportfolioofactionsthat
socialmovementswouldemploytopursuetheirgoals.
Third,fromthelate1980supthrough2015,therehavearisenmultipleexamples
ofvastandsustainedsocialprotestsinauthoritariansocieties.Suchsocietiesseemed
to offer far less scope for protestors to organize, acquire resources, and take
advantage of political opportunities. In some cases, formal organizations were at
the core of such protest activity: in Poland, the Solidarity labor movement and the
CatholicChurch playedcrucialroles,asdidtheLutheranChurchinEastGermany
andtheMuslimBrotherhoodorprofessionalorganizationsofLawyersandTeachers
inseveraloftheArabnations.Yetinmanycaseshugecrowdsseemedtoassemble
almost spontaneously, in a manifestation of outrage to conditions such as state
corruption, inequality, or fraudulent elections spurred by the sharing of ideas and
viewsonsocialmedia.
Whetherinauthoritarianregimes(suchastheRussianFederationunderVladimir
PutinorEgyptunderHosniMubarak),hybridregimes(suchasTurkeyunderRecep
Tayyip Erdoğan prior to2018 or Ukraine underViktor Yanukovych), ordemocra-
cies (as in Spain and Greece and other democracies in the wake of the Great
Recession and austerity policies), such large protests, not produced by any previ-
ouslyformallyorganizedmovementorganizationandmakingeffectiveuseofsocial
media,seemtobeagloballywidespreadphenomenon.
Inthisvolume,NinaBelyaevawithhertwocoeditorsVictorAlbertandDmitry
Zaytsev and contributors from different countries explore these events, developing
theoretical and comparative approaches that help us understand how they are
generatedandhowthey unfold.Usingtheframeworkof“protestpublics”—a term
that beautifully identifies events when a large section of the public has mobilized
itself for protests—they have created an important new conceptual scheme. This
volume shows how powerful this scheme is in explaining the global wave of
distinctiveprotestevents.
“Protestpublics”areclearlyimportantintoday’sworld.Buttheyhavegivenrise
toavastrangeofdifferentoutcomes.Heretheearlierconceptsof“politicaloppor-
tunities,”andtheblendingofprotestwithothertactics,againbecomerelevant.
Foreword vii
Insomecases,theactionsofprotestpublicsachievequicksuccess.Agovernment
that is not united, or not secure in its position, may simply back away from the
policies that have caused outrage once a large protest public has assembled. For
example, in the case of the Gezi Park protests in Turkey (discussed in chapter
“‘Shoulder to Shoulder Against Fascism’: Publics in the Gezi Protests”), the
Erdogan regime backed away from its plans to bulldoze the park and replace it
withnewstructures.SimilarlyinIceland(examinedinchapters“SoStrong,YetSo
Weak: The Emergence of Protest Publics in Iceland in the Wake of the Financial
Crisis”and“Protestersasthe‘ChallengersoftheStatusQuo’inEmbeddedDemoc-
racies:TheCasesofIceland,theUnitedKingdom,andtheUnitedStates”),protests
against the follies of the major banks led the government to undertake special
investigations and an exceptional restructuring of government and the financial
sector unlike any other country in Europe. In other cases, protest publics achieve
massivemobilizationbutthenfadeoutandendwithoutanyeffect.Iwitnessedthis
myselfinbothNewYorkCity(theOccupyWallStreetMovement)andHongKong
(the Umbrella Movements, so named for the umbrellas protestors used to shield
themselves from tear gas). In New York City, Occupy Wall Street stunned people
withthescaleofitsspontaneousdemonstrationsandencampmentsandthepowerof
itsslogan“wearethe99%.”YetneithertheUSgovernmentnorthemajorfinancial
sectorsfeltanydeeppressuretochange,andtheprotestsfadedoutwithoutimpact.
In Hong Kong, even larger protests arose. Initial student protests demanding more
democracy for Hong Kong were met with a harsh and violent police response. In
outrageatthisaction,hundredsofthousandsofHongKongerssuddenlyfilledevery
majorthoroughfare,closingdownthemajorarteriesofthecommercialcenter.Over
thenextfewmonths,demonstrationspersistedbutthenumberofprotestorsdeclined,
untiltheprotestsfinallyendedwhenpoliceclearedtheremnantsfromthecitycenter.
Themainlandgovernment,however,whoseantidemocraticpolicieswerethetarget
ofthemassiveprotests,remaineduntouchedandunmoved.Evenvastandsustained
protests thus had no success against opponents who remained secure and gave no
“politicalopportunity”forproteststowreakchange.
Two other trajectories for protest publics also appeared. In many authoritarian
countries, the protest publics found common cause with civil society and profes-
sional organizations that had opposed the existing regime. Outrage over particular
events,conditions,orpoliciesthendevelopedintosustainedcampaignstooverturn
theexistinggovernment,unitingmultiplenetworksacrosssociety.Inthecommunist
countriesofEasternEuropein1989–1991andintheArabcountriesin2010–2011
(discussedhereinchapter“ProtestPublicsasthe‘Triggers’ofPoliticalChangesin
HybridRegimes:TheCasesofTunisia,Morocco,andEgypt”),protestpublicsacted
as triggers for successful revolutions. In many democratic countries, a similar
extension and formalization of protest arose, but in these cases through the protest
public melding with or giving rise to political parties which then successfully
supportednewcandidatesforhighoffice.InItaly,protestpublicstriggeredtherise
of the Five-Star party in Italy (examined in chapter “Five Stars of Change: The
Transformation of Italian Protest Publics Through Grillo’s Blog”). Similarly, pro-
cessesarose elsewhereinsouthernEurope(exploredinchapters“The Grammar of
viii Foreword
Protest Publics in Skopje, Macedonia, May 2015,” “Retracing Protest Publics in
Portugal:AGenerationinTrouble,”and“TheTransformingRoleofProtestPublics
in Processes of Sociopolitical Change in the Global South and Southern Europe:
From Occasional Challengers to Institutionalized Watchdogs. Conclusion: The
CommonFeaturesandDifferentRolesofProtestPublicsinPoliticalContestation”).
In the USA, protest publics have arisen in response to many actions of Donald
TrumpasPresident,particularlyhistreatmentofwomenandimmigrants;theyhope
totriggerasweepingDemocraticPartyvictoryinthe2018midtermelections.
Protest publics have therefore become a key event structure in the political
dynamics of modern nations. Even in India and Bangladesh (examined in chapter
“EmergentProtestPublicsinIndiaandBangladesh:AComparativeStudyofAnti-
corruption and Shahbag Protests”) and in Indonesia and Malaysia, protest publics
responding to corruption are challenging or changing governments. Elsewhere,
protestpublicshaveproducedrevolutions,politicalrealignments,andpolicyshifts.
Thisvolumeprovidesvitalnewinsightsintothesecriticalevents.Icongratulate
Belyaevaandhercolleaguesandcontributorsontheirresearchadvances,whichwill
benefitallscholarsofsocialmovementsandsocialprotests.
VirginiaE.andJohnT.Hazel,Jr.Chair JackA.Goldstone
GeorgeMasonUniversity,
Fairfax,VA,USA
MercatusCenter
GeorgeMasonUniversity,Fairfax,
VA,USA
WoodrowWilsonInternationalCenter,
Washington,DC,USA
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