scholarly journals Reassembling the Political: Placing Contentious Politics in Jordan

2015 ◽  
pp. 437-465
Author(s):  
Pascal Debruyne ◽  
Christopher Parker
Keyword(s):  
Contentious Politics ◽  
The Political

Agonistic Conflict as a Distinct Type of Contentious Politics: Learning from Protests For and Against Asylum Seekers in Israel

2021 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-118
Author(s):  
Tali Hatuka ◽  
Miryam Wijler
Keyword(s):  
State Policy ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Distinct Type ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Shared Knowledge ◽  
The Political ◽  
Court Decisions ◽  
The Relationship

This paper focuses on a particular form of protest that emerges in what this paper calls an 'agonistic environment'. It defines the latter as a form of contentious politics within deliberative democracies in which concurrence rather than estrangement is more likely to define the relationship between citizens and the state. It then asks what is the nature of conflict in such environments, and will activism in the settings be more or less likely to generate change. Finally, it considers whether protest in agonistic environments produces a form of shared knowledge among parties to the conflict, particularly with respect to the possibility of change and how best to achieve it? In exploring these questions, the paper focuses on the political dynamics in Israel associated with the wave of African asylum seekers who arrived from 2010 to 2012, most of whom originated from Eritrea and Sudan. Using a quantitative approach, the paper analyses this agonistic environment focusing on two dimensions: (a) protest events; and (b) state policy and juridical decisions as well as legal initiatives aimed at challenging state policy and relevant court decisions. By highlighting the scalar mismatch between protests focused on delimited urban spaces and responses of authorities at the scale of the nation – in this case, legal rulings – the paper further advances our understanding of agonistic conflict and how it produces change.

How Protesters and the State Learn From One Another: Spiraling Repertoires of Contention and Repression in Ukraine, 1990-2014

2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (9) ◽  
pp. 1271-1298
Author(s):  
Olga Zelinska
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Protest ◽  
Technological Environment ◽  
Orange Revolution ◽  
The Government ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Over Time

This article employs a contentious politics framework to examine the mobilization–repression nexus as it occurred in Ukraine from the 1990 Revolution on Granite, through the 2000-2001 Ukraine without Kuchma campaign and the 2004 Orange Revolution, to the 2013-2014 Euromaidan movement. Comparative analysis of these four cases suggests that developments in both the contentious and repressive repertoires resembled spirals: each campaign became more complex and of longer duration than the last, and each was driven by the repeated protester–government interactions and by the political, economic, and technological environment that changed over time. In the transit from autocracy to democracy, Ukrainian activists adopted and “normalized” political protest much more quickly than did the authorities. The activists creatively innovated as they borrowed from earlier dissent traditions and from other social movements abroad. For the government, the process of learning how to manage contention with means other than their usual repression tactics was much longer, and it is not over. As it slowly transits from Soviet past to democracy, Ukraine continues its development into a “social movement society.”

scholarly journals The Contentious Politics of Social Policy expansion in Latin America

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (3 - Sup2) ◽  
pp. 189-205
Author(s):  
César Guzmán-Concha ◽  
Rossella Ciccia
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Cash Transfers ◽  
Conditional Cash Transfers ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Environment ◽  
Social Policy Reform ◽  
The Relationship

Latin America witnessed a resurgence of protests during the 1990s and early 2000s. Citizens took to the streets to protest against the liberalization of public services and rising levels of inequalities and poverty. This situation partly changed in the decade of the 2000s when the region experienced a period of sustained social policy expansion intended to extend protections to formerly excluded groups. Did popular mobilization have an influence on the turn toward universalism in Latin American social policy? This paper explores this question by looking at the relationship between protest, the strength of the Left and the adoption of expansive reforms in healthcare, conditional cash transfers and noncontributory pensions. The findings bring support to the idea that protest is a relevant aspect of the politics of social policy reform, although its effects are both sensitive to other characteristics of the political environment and the particular policy dimension considered. 

Conclusions

2021 ◽  
pp. 138-162
Author(s):  
Kate J. Neville
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Scaling Up ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
Commodity Chains ◽  
Energy Technologies ◽  
Crisis Events ◽  
New Energy ◽  
Political Economies

The final chapter revisits the intersection of political economy and multiscale protest around biofuels and fracking, offering an integrated look at the campaigns that have emerged around these new energy sources. It considers the implications of the book’s findings about the political economy dimensions of contentious politics for other resource debates, with particular attention to other emerging energy technologies: wind, solar, and hydro. Further, the concluding chapter interrogates the technological optimism and commitment to economic growth that underpins these developments. It pays attention to alternative political economies, including social and Indigenous economies and models of degrowth, with consideration of how these models might advance environmental justice. The chapter considers the ways in which scaling up energy production—often justified as a response to crisis events—increases distance in commodity chains by dislocating control from local communities, externalizing local costs, and separating the accrual of benefits from the bearing of burdens.

Michael P. Hanagan, Leslie Page Moch, Wayne te Brake, eds., Challenging Authority: The Historical Study of Contentious Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998. vii + 284 pp. $54.95 cloth; $21.95 paper.

2000 ◽  
Vol 57 ◽  
pp. 137-139
Author(s):  
Ron Krabill
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
The Political ◽  
University Of Minnesota ◽  
The Past ◽  
Charles Tilly ◽  
Daunting Task

To create a festschrift in honor of a scholar as important as Charles Tilly is a daunting task. To their credit, the editors and authors of Challenging Authority successfully provide a thoughtful and particularly readable glimpse into both the past and the future of the study of contentious politics, a field in which Tilly's contributions have been undeniably crucial. From more traditional interpretations of Tilly's work to innovations in chapters by Kim Voss and Marc W. Steinberg, this volume displays the wide array of applications and insights provided by the political process model for studying collective action, whether in medieval Spain or 1989 China. However, the volume moves only in fits and starts toward the new “relational structuralism” (xix) that the editors herald as coalescing around the study of collective action.

scholarly journals Beyond the Contours of Normally Acceptable Political Violence: Is Cameroon a Conflict/Transitional Society in the Offing?

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
Avitus A Agbor ◽  
Esther E Njieassam
Keyword(s):  
Political Violence ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
State Action ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Transitional Society ◽  
The People ◽  
Political Problem ◽  
Republic Of The Congo

Legal scholars and other social scientists agree that political violence comprising assaults on civil and political liberties may occur in the context of contentious politics. Unfortunately, there have been instances in history where such politics is marked by intermittent attacks against people's rights and freedoms. Such attacks occur when politics has gone sour, and there are times when the violence exceeds the bounds of what is acceptable. From the documented atrocities of Nazi Germany, the horrendous crimes of the regime of Slobodan Milosevic in the former Yugoslavia, the outrageous crimes perpetrated during the genocide in Rwanda, the shameful and despicable inhumanities inflicted on the people of Darfur in the Sudan, and the violence in post-electoral Kenya, to the bloodshed in areas like Mali, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, etc, violent conflict has punctuated world history. Added to this list of countries is Cameroon, which in the last quarter of 2016 degenerated into a hotspot of political violence in the English-speaking regions. The perpetration of political violence in Cameroon has raised serious questions that may be relevant not only to the resolution of the political problem that gave rise to the violence but also to laying the foundations of a post-conflict Cameroon that is united and honours the principles of truth, justice and reconciliation. This paper describes some of the salient occurrences of political violence in Cameroon and argues that the presence of specific elements elevates this violence to the level of a serious crime in international law. It is argued herein that crimes against humanity may have been committed during the state action against the Anglophones in Cameroon. It is also argued that the political character of the violence, added to the scale of the victimisation and its systematic and protracted nature, qualify Cameroon as a transitional society engaged in conflict that is in need of transitional justice. Reflecting on the extent of the suffering of the victims of such political violence, this paper discusses the function of the justice system in establishing the truth and holding the perpetrators accountable. Past instances of political violence in Cameroon have been glossed over, but in our opinion, healing a fragmented and disunited Cameroon with its history of grave violations of human rights requires that the perpetrators be held accountable, and that truth and justice should prevail. Such considerations should be factored into the legal and political architecture of a post-conflict, transitional Cameroon.  

The Political Geography of Nationalist Protest in China: Cities and the 2012 Anti-Japanese Protests

2015 ◽  
Vol 222 ◽  
pp. 403-429 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy L. Wallace ◽  
Jessica Chen Weiss
Keyword(s):  
College Graduates ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Opportunity Structure ◽  
Political Opportunity ◽  
Opportunity Structure ◽  
Social Unrest ◽  
Chinese Nationalism ◽  
Original Dataset ◽  
Common Target

AbstractWhy do some Chinese cities take part in waves of nationalist protest but not others? Nationalist protest remains an important but understudied topic within the study of contentious politics in China, particularly at the subnational level. Relative to other protests, nationalist mobilization is more clustered in time and geographically widespread, uniting citizens in different cities against a common target. Although the literature has debated the degree of state-led and grassroots influence on Chinese nationalism, we argue that it is important to consider both the propensity of citizens to mobilize and local government fears of instability. Analysing an original dataset of 377 anti-Japanese protests across 208 of 287 Chinese prefectural cities, we find that both state-led patriotism and the availability of collective action resources were positively associated with nationalist protest, particularly “biographically available” populations of students and migrants. In addition, the government's role was not monolithically facilitative. Fears of social unrest shaped the local political opportunity structure, with anti-Japanese protests less likely in cities with larger populations of unemployed college graduates and ethnic minorities and more likely in cities with established leaders.

scholarly journals The Curious Case of ‘Schools’ of IR: From the Sociology to the Geopolitics of Knowledge

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 429-454 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yongjin Zhang ◽  
Peter Marcus Kristensen
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Sociology Of Knowledge ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Core ◽  
A Site ◽  
Epistemic Diversity ◽  
Recent Insight

Abstract This article interrogates the questions evoked by the curious case of ‘schools’ of thought in International Relations (IR) through the twin perspectives of the sociology of knowledge and geopolitics of knowledge. Drawing inspirations from the tradition of the sociology of IR pioneered by E. H. Carr, the paper first explores how geo-epistemic diversity can help understand the sociologically problematic nature of IR knowledge production in the existing discipline. Taking cues from Randall Collins’s sociology of philosophies, the article moves to identify four clusters of sociological conditions and dynamics that, we argue, facilitate the formation and sustain the operation of schools of thought in IR. Taking seriously the recent insight from geopolitics of knowledge, the article then looks at why and how school labelling constitutes a battleground for contestation and legitimation of knowledge. While the ‘core’ uses the school label to create a parallel, and explicitly inferior, universe of knowledge production to localize theoretical noises from the peripheries, the school label, we argue, has been proactively appropriated by those at peripheries and semi-peripheries for three strategic purposes: to engage in a purposely contentious politics, to question the claim of the American ‘core’ as the creator, depositor, and distributor of universal knowledge, and to unveil the geo-historical linkage between the political and the epistemic. School labelling matters, we further argue, because it has become a site of contestation of geopolitics of knowledge and reflects the perils and promises in our collective pursuit of constructing a truly global IR.

The Communist Roots of Zapatismo and the Zapatista Uprising

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 167-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Gunderson
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Political ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Theoretical Status ◽  
The Social ◽  
Zapatista National Liberation Army ◽  
Late Nineteenth

This study suggests that communist politics had much deeper roots in the larger indigenous-campesino movement that formed the social base of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (ezln) than has previously been acknowledged. Tracing the political development of the indigenous communities of Chiapas, Mexico from the late nineteenth century to the founding of the ezln in 1983, it examines the influence of several currents of revolutionary socialist and communist theory and practice on the Zapatistas. It concludes with a call for further investigation into the theoretical status of communism as a category of a critical theory of contentious politics.

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