scholarly journals Group Size and Protest Mobilization across Movements and Countermovements

Author(s):  
ANSELM HAGER ◽  
LUKAS HENSEL ◽  
JOHANNES HERMLE ◽  
CHRISTOPHER ROTH

Many social movements face fierce resistance in the form of a countermovement. Therefore, when deciding to become politically active, a movement supporter has to consider both her own movement’s activity and that of the opponent. This paper studies the decision of a movement supporter to attend a protest when faced with a counterprotest. We implement two field experiments among supporters of a right- and left-leaning movement ahead of two protest–counterprotest interactions in Germany. Supporters were exposed to low or high official estimates about their own and the opposing group’s turnout. We find that the size of the opposing group has no effect on supporters’ protest intentions. However, as the own protest gets larger, supporters of the right-leaning movement become less while supporters of the left-leaning movement become more willing to protest. We argue that the difference is best explained by stronger social motives on the political left.

1962 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-391
Author(s):  
H. Tint

The patriotism of the French underwent a far-reaching reorientation between 1871 and 1940. Understood as the readiness to do one's best for one's country, if necessary by fighting for it, the most significant change that affected French patriotic feeling during this period is its shift from the political left to the right. Popular response to the republican call to arms after the fall of the Empire in 1870 was to know no future parallel in its magnitude and enthusiasm. Excluded from positions of political prominence, the working classes and their leaders soon came to think that if they had a patrie, it was not the Third Republic. On the other hand, the right after a century of forgetfulness, rediscovered the old patriotic slogans as the left discarded them. And it used them with considerable skill to its political advantage. But the difference between left- and right-wing patriotism is that defeat in 1870 brought to power a man determined to fight against heavy odds, Gambetta; while defeat in 1940 brought to power a man determined to capitulate before the enemy, Pétain. And yet it has to be recognized that the origins of this transformation are to be found in the policies of the same Gambetta who, no doubt deservedly, is commonly hailed as the Jacobin hero of French resistance in 1870–1.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 56-60
Author(s):  
Ishan Kashyap Hazarika ◽  
Sourabh Rai ◽  
Anjali Verma

While numerous studies have documented the difference in choice behaviour of the political Left and the Right, the effect of situations of a crisis on political choices have remained unexplored. This study aims to record and analyse such effects and investigate if any differences or similarities appear in the two groups. The study uses an experimental approach to the problem. Samples of leftists and rightists in India are randomly provided with forms to vote in either a normal situation or a hypothetical situation of crisis. The difference in voting behaviour in the two scenarios is noted. The difference in the change in the voting behaviour of the Left and the Right is also noted. It is found as expected that under normal circumstances, the Left and the Right have different voting patterns. But under crisis, when their leader performs badly, they shift to the opposite leader with almost the same probability. Also, not only the effect, but the voting patterns themselves become very similar during crises. The behaviour of the Left and Right sustain differences only in normal circumstances, but under crises, the differences may no longer remain extant.


2021 ◽  
pp. 20-57
Author(s):  
Benjamin Holtzman

During the late 1960s and 1970s, extensive disinvestment and an eviscerated real estate market led landlords of low-income housing to walk away from their real estate holdings, leaving thousands of buildings unoccupied and often city-owned due to nonpayment of taxes. In response, Latinx, African American, and some white residents protested the blight these buildings brought to their neighborhoods by directly occupying and seeking ownership of abandoned buildings through a process they called urban homesteading. Activists framed homesteading as a self-help initiative, often emphasizing their own ingenuity over state resources as the key to solving the problems of low-income urban neighborhoods. Such framing was understandable given the unstable economic terrain of the 1970s and won activists support not just from the political left, but also the right. But it also positioned homesteading as demonstrating the superiority of private-citizen and private sector–led revitalization in ways that left homesteading projects vulnerable as it became clear how necessary government resources would be to their success.


2010 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan E. Alevy ◽  
Oscar Cristi ◽  
Oscar Melo

Field experiments were conducted with farmers in the Limari Valley of Chile to test extant theory on right-to-choose auctions. Water volumes that differed by reservoir source and time of availability were offered for sale by the research team. The auctions were supplemented by protocols to elicit risk and time preferences of bidders. We find that the right-to-choose auctions raise significantly more revenue than the benchmark sequential auction. Risk attitudes explain a substantial amount of the difference in bidding between auction institutions, consonant with received theory. The auction bidding revealed distinct preferences for water types, which has implications for market re-design.


2001 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 359-370
Author(s):  
Matti Peltonen

Sweden and Finland reviewed their alcohol control policies in the 1950s at more or less the same time. Sweden abolished its ration book system and lifted restrictions on the sale of medium strength beer, Finland in turn revised its mechanisms for controlling the purchase of alcohol, a version of the Bratt system. In Sweden, alcohol consumption increased sharply and the number of drunkenness offences doubled. In Finland, by contrast, nothing happened. Why? History provides one possible source of explanation. The Swedish version of the Bratt system was much stricter (with monthly rations allocated on the basis of social class and sex) and therefore there was greater pressure towards a liberalisation of alcohol policy than was the case in Finland. During the war and in the post-war years Finland had a strong labour movement, which was keen to underline and demonstrate that the working class were in every respect decent and upright people. The debate that was touched off by the General Strike in 1956 is particularly interesting. On the political right, workers were frequently portrayed as heavy drinkers; the political left worked hard to fend off this propaganda attack. In this kind of atmosphere it was impossible to seriously call for a liberalisation of alcohol control policy in Finland.


2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (65) ◽  
pp. 369-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Henrique Bortoluci

Abstract From the late 1970s until the early 1990s, the issue of the right to housing in São Paulo’s peripheral neighborhoods was pursued side by side with a questioning of the political character of design and construction techniques and an attempt to reframe the construction site as a space of cooperation and political education. This article addresses how this articulation between architects and urban social movements led to an innovation of organizational practices within those movements, transformations in the field of architecture, and the local emergence of the idea of the “right to architecture.”


1966 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald E. Ginter

In November 1792 John Reeves, with the explicit approval and active sup-port of both the government and the Windhamite Whigs, and with the countenance of the duke of Portland and his friends, instituted a movement of loyalist associations which quickly spread throughout the country. The movement was founded in reaction to an enthusiastic resurgence of British radical activity which followed the defeat of the combined armies under the duke of Brunswick, and it rallied a now militant conservative sentiment in favour of detecting and suppressing by intimidation and public prosecution all allegedly seditious activities. This crisis in public opinion, which was at once the parent and the offspring of the loyalist association movement, was not the first to have occurred in 1792. An earlier crisis occurred in favour of the political left during the late spring of 1792 and was followed by a relatively mild reaction to the right. It seems clear that, during the earlier months of 1792 at least, there were considerable bodies of both conservative and liberal opinion of various shades in the country. But by the beginning of the following year the complexity and ferment of the political scene had become so great that it is not at all clear to what extent or how rapidly liberal opinion had been supplanted in the country by conservative sentiment. The purpose of this paper is to reassess the nature, effect and significance of the loyalist association movement by undertaking a more careful examination of the phraseology of many of its addresses and declarations as well as of the proceedings and circumstances peculiar to the meetings in which they were approved.


2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 29-54
Author(s):  
Adam Wielomski

DIALECTICS ‘WE’–‘ALIENS’ IN RIGHT-WING POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 1789–1945 The aim of the author of this text is to polemicize with the stereotype according to which nationalism is a synonym of the “extreme right.” For this purpose the method of historical exemplification was used. Part I of this text is devoted to defining the concept of the “right” and to present the supporters of the French Revolution and other 19th-century revolutions, their idea of nationalism, the nation-state and sovereignty of the nation. This presentation shows that up to 1890 nationalism is located in the revolutionary left. The first nationalists are Jacobins. The counter-revolutionary right is opposed to nationalism. For this right, nationalism is combined with the idea of empowering nations to the rights of self-determination, which is closely connected with the idea of people’s sovereignty. This situation persists until 1870–1914, when the ideas of national sovereignty are implemented in the politics of the modern states. However, the liberal state does not meet the expectations of nationalists, because it neglects the interests of the nation as the highest value. That is the cause for them moving from the political left to the right part of the political scene, replacing the legitimist right. The latter is annihilated with the decline of aristocracy. In the 19th century, the left is nationalistic and xenophobic. We find clear racist sympathies on the left. The political right does not recognize the right of nations to self-determination, the idea of ethnic boundaries. It is cosmopolitan.


2017 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 137
Author(s):  
Campbell Jones

This paper arises from a request to report to the Future of Work Commission on the question of the value of work in the past, present, and future politics of the Left. This task is complicated, however, by the complexity of the meaning of the terms Left and Right. It is only when we are clear about the meanings of Left and Right that we can be clear about the very different kinds of politics that will result from taking a Left position on work. This paper seeks to clarify what a Left politics of work might look like today. This requires in the first place an analysis of the respective value of work to the political Left and Right, to which end I argue that what distinguishes the Left and the Right regarding the value of work is not simply the quantity of value or dignity that is attributed to work. Rather, Left and Right depart in a fundamental ontological confrontation regarding the nature of what work is and the existence of the bodies from which work issues. This analysis therefore raises deeper questions regarding the very distinction between the Left and the Right.  


Author(s):  
Jochen Böhler

Chapter 2 highlights the fragmentation within Polish society in partition times, during the Great War, and in its after-battles. While the political left prior to 1914 prepared for armed struggle, the right preferred a tactic of “organic change.” During the Great War, genuine Polish military formations became the incarnation of Polish independence. But they formed on opposing sides of the frontline, and were, in terms of numbers, insignificant, while most Polish soldiers served as cannon fodder in the ranks of the imperial armies. Following independence in late 1918, most peasants—80 percent of the Polish-speaking population in Central Europe—mistrusted the “national project” and did not follow the call to arms voluntarily. The Polish Army from the start had to struggle with a serious shortage of soldiers, armament, and provisions. A functioning united national army and chain of command needed years to materialize.


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