Taking Back Civic Space: Nonviolent Protests and Pushbacks against Autocratic Restrictions in Thailand

Protest ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-108
Author(s):  
Janjira Sombatpoonsiri ◽  
Thammachat Kri-aksorn
Keyword(s):  
Public Participation ◽  
Political Space ◽  
Popular Protest ◽  
Nonviolent Action ◽  
Mass Participation ◽  
Civic Space

Abstract The year of 2020 witnessed the eruption of Thailand’s largest and longest-lasting mass demonstrations since the 2014 military putsch. Despite threats of crackdown, protesters leveraged a host of innovative nonviolent actions to reclaim political space that the regime had previously squeezed. This article sheds light on key mechanisms that underpin nonviolent actions’ ability to push back against a trend of shrinking space. We argue that the logic of nonviolent action, tactical and digital creativity, and counteracting repression operates in tandem. First, specific forms of nonviolent action carved out space for popular protest and increased public participation in it despite regime hindrances. Second, particularly tactical and digital creativity sustained this mass participation by reversing some effects of repression. Third, nonviolent responses to this repression encouraged further anti-regime mobilization. We conclude our analysis with some caveats. The Thai case shows that keeping regained space can be difficult.

The Street as Political Space: Walking as Protest, Graffiti, and the Student Carnivalization of Belgrade

2001 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Milena Dragićević-Šešić
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Analytical Study ◽  
Authoritarian Regime ◽  
Local Elections ◽  
Political Space ◽  
Student Protests ◽  
Popular Protest ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century ◽  
Slobodan Milosevic

Western assumptions of unthinking Serbian support for the policies of Slobodan Milošević were upset by the success of popular protest in securing his removal in the autumn of 2000. In fact, just three years after his accession to power in 1989, there had already been massive student protests against the Balkan War, and these were repeated and surpassed in the winter of 1996–97, when Milošević tried to disregard the success of the opposition in the local elections of that November. The student protests quickly took a theatricalized form, and their recurrent modes – graffiti, banners, street processions – were successfully carnivalized, to become popular performative events. This feature provides a chronology of the main developments to complement the more analytical study by Milena Dragićević-Šešić of the nature of this organic but ironic response to an authoritarian regime, which gave old traditions a late twentieth-century voice.

Integrating Socio-Economic Considerations into Biosafety Decisions: The Role of Public Participation

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindsey Fransen ◽  
Antonio La Vina ◽  
Fabian Dayrit ◽  
Loraine Gatlabayan ◽  
Dwi Andreas Santosa ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Participation ◽  
Economic Considerations

Interrelationships among selected measures of nonviolence and nonviolent action

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corey J. Clarke ◽  
Daniel M. Mayton ◽  
Emi Yamasaki ◽  
Samuel D. Carlson ◽  
Lori L. Parrish
Keyword(s):  
Nonviolent Action

Open Budgetary Meetings Amid a Pandemic: Assessing Connecticut’s Various Pathways to Public Engagement During COVID-19

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 55-76
Author(s):  
Jodie Gil ◽  
Jonathan L Wharton
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Public Participation ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
Multiple Perspectives ◽  
Public Meetings ◽  
Open Meeting

This qualitative analysis of public participation in Connecticut open meetings highlights how Connecticut communities adjusted when the state’s open meeting law was temporarily revised under emergency order during COVID-19. A survey of officials in 95 municipalities found a majority had the same or more participation in budget deliberations during that time. Only about a quarter saw decreased public participation. A closer look at four communities highlights specific challenges and successes during the sudden shift in public meetings. Connecticut’s varied forms of government give multiple perspectives, which can provide insight for other communities looking to expand virtual access to open meetings.

Dialogues

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 53-59
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
New Spain ◽  
American Art ◽  
Historical Trauma ◽  
State Building ◽  
University Of California ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Political Space ◽  
California Missions ◽  
The University

The California missions, whose original church spaces and visual programs were produced by Iberian, Mexican, and Native artisans between 1769 and 1823, occupy an ambiguous chronological, geographical, and political space. They occupy lands that have pertained to conflicting territorialities: from Native nations, to New Spain, to Mexico, to the modern multicultural California. The physical and visual landscapes of the missions have been sites of complex and often incongruous religious experiences; historical trauma and romantic vision; Indigenous genocide, exploitation, resistance, and survivance; state building and global enterprise. This Dialogues section brings together critical voices, including especially the voices of California Indian scholars, to interrogate received models for thinking about the art historical legacies of the California missions. Together, the contributing authors move beyond and across borders and promote new decolonial strategies that strive to be responsive to the experience of California Indian communities and nations. This conversation emerges from cross-disciplinary relationships established at a two-day conference, “‘American’ Art and the Legacy of Conquest: Art at California’s Missions in the Global 18th–20th Centuries,” sponsored by the Terra Foundation for American Art and held at the University of California, Los Angeles, in November 2019.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document