social movement and protest Flashcards
what is social movements and protests?
a theoretical analytical tool to study political phenomena
what is contentious politics?
- politics of challenges
- sporadic spikes of protests
- relatively few people protests compared to the size of the population
- co-ordinated and organised
- politics of interpretation different events
performative and emotions
how are protest events defined?
collective claim making via interaction among a set of actors when at least one of these actors is the government
how do we empirically study (protests)of social movements
protest event analysis:
- use newspapers or police records who make note of protests and how many people were present ect to code the events of the protests
what % of hunagrians have portested
around only 5%
considering its a communist party
most countries % of population who have participated in social protest
only 10-15%
what is politics of challenges?
an underdog with no formal political power trying to influence policy change
whats the different between protests and social movements?
- protests are a method of getting demands across
- social movements: are actors working together based on thier shared collective identities
what is the defintion of a social movement?
- network of informal interactions between a plurality of individuals., groups and organisation
- engaging in politics or cultural conflicts
- glued togethere based on their shared identieis
how do we study social movements
interviews with activists or movement leaders
survey of the organisations
emotion of social movements
to ask people to do something that they wouldn’t usually do in-their free time to participate in something that will probably fail
its the emotion of the issue that drive people to be involved
what are the three main theories explaining protests and social movements
- political opportunity structures (macro)
- mobilising resources (meso)
- framing (micro)
what is political opportunity structure:
- the formal and informal features of the political structure of the state shapes the incentives for protests
- characteristics such as weak coalitions or uncertain elections give social movement actors the inscentive to step in and be successful:
this is because politicians who want to gain power but dont have enough support are more likely to listen to demands and act on them in order to gain support more likely than. a government with a strong majority
how does POS explain why movements mobilise in some countries rather than others
- countries with decenteralised power sources that have power to check other power sources (like the check and balence system in the US)
are likely to see more movements as there are more points on entry to influence, and if one fails you can try another
wehreas in countries with power sharing coalitions they are unlikely to listen to the demands of social movements if it goes against the party they are trying to work with
how does POS explain why protests appear in some-periods. and not others.
configuration of political actors:
when political actors are weak
what is mobilising resources?
groups need infrastructure and resources social movement. organisations operate like business. firms strategically. mobilising resources to reduce costs for actions
types of reources?
- material (money to buy offices and campaign)
- human (passionate revolutionaries who are dedicated to the cause
- individual and organisation networks (different groups coming together and sharing their resources)
- appropriate use of someone else’s members (if a group in society perfectly fits the demographic would would want to support your cause you can taget them instead of having to generate support alone)
ex.targetting of black churches in the civil rights movements
what is framing and culture?
strategically generated interpretaion and understanding of an event that gets people mobilised
need to congativley liberate to do this
what is cognitive liberation?
the idea that social movements propose a different view on political issues which people may not have realised before and inspire them to protest consistently for this issue
for example 400 years ago gender equality wasn’t a thing but ti was through the first waves of feminism people were cognitively liberated and now people protest for women a lot
what are the three framing steps?
1) diagnostic:
diagnoses what the problem is such as job insecurity
2) prognostic: narrative and interpretation of what will happen in the future
3) motivational frames: slogans that call to action (stop the war ect)
