Week 6 & 7: Mobilizational Repertoires, Response of Order to Protest

Question 1

Who authored protest repertoire?

Answer 1

Tilly

Question 2

What is protest repertoire? What are some examples?

Answer 2

A limited set of routines that are learned, shared, and acted out through a relatively deliberate process of choice
Ex: Protesting whiskey taxes in Pennsylvania in 1794 & Protesting the murder of George Floyd

Question 3

What is the traditional repertoire?

Answer 3

1. Parochial
2. Bifurcated
3. Particular

Question 4

What is the modern protest repertoire?

Answer 4

1. Cosmopolitan — spans localities
2. Autonomous — direct communication between claimants and national centers of power
3. Modular — easily transferred

Question 5

What is the protest repertoire according to Tilly?

Answer 5

“A limited set of routines that are learned, shared, and acted out through a relatively deliberate process of choice”
1. Deliberate process of choice — participants in collective contention are constantly innovating in small ways as part of strategic interaction
2. Shared & learned — definition of diffusion is the spread of that innovation through direct/indirect channels across members of a social system. Communications & learning are critical to how repertoires function.
3. Limited set of routines — people know the general rules of performance & vary performance to meet the purpose

Question 6

How do people learn the traditional repertoire?

Answer 6

• relied on local systems of knowledge
• occurred within a situation in which mass communications did not exist
• sharing and learning confined geographically to local and neighboring communities

Question 7

How do people learn the modern repertoire?

Answer 7

• systematized knowledge
• mass communications systems
• real-time monitoring

Question 8

What limits repertoires in an era of mass literacy & communications?

Answer 8

• less systems of learning & human memory
• more technological capabilities and the vulnerabilities of the objections against
• which tactics are deployed

Question 9

What are the 3 ways a government can respond to protest?

Answer 9

1. Ignore the protests & hope they will exhaust themselves
2. Repress the protestors
3. Give the protestors concessions

Question 10

Why can protest sometimes not be ignored?

Answer 10

1. Regimes have different tolerance levels for protest
2. The disruption caused by protest may force a government response
3. When movements have widespread resonance, governments that depend upon public support suffer costs by ignoring them
4. Ignoring protest can sometimes trigger emotional responses (anger) that can increase mobilization

Question 11

What is the definition of repression?

Answer 11

Various tactics aimed at the disruption of challengers. Can be before, during, or after acts of protest. Can be direct or subtle. Surveillance — gathering information that can eventually be used to disrupt. Is more than just coercion

Question 12

What is the definition of concessions?

Answer 12

Acts of government that meet the demands of protestors
- can be minimal or highly substantive
- can meet demands partially or in toto
- can make concessions without intending to implement them
- can have the appearance of addressing demands without actually do so
- co-optation: providing rewards to individual members of an opposition without making major concessions to the broader demands of the opposition

Question 13

What kind of relationship does the collective action paradigm perspective create?

Answer 13

Linear negative relationship

Question 14

What kind of relationship does the grievance perspective create?

Answer 14

Linear positive relationship

Question 15

What does Lichbach (1987) say is more likely to incite more protest?

Answer 15

A government that simultaneously represses a protesting movement while rewarding the movement through concessions for having engaged in the protest is likely to incite more protest.

Question 16

What are the contextual factors that affect reactions to repression?

Answer 16

• regime cohesion and capabilities: how unified it is, are splits visible, does the regime have the institutional capacity to sustain repression, the morale of the military and the police
• regime-type: in democratic governments, violence against protestors is seen as challenging core aspects of regime legitimacy – in authoritarian regime it is expected that the regime will not tolerate protest, so that challenges in an authoritarian regime multiple when the regime actually begins to tolerate some protest.
• who is targeted? leaders or followers

Question 17

When can concessions increase mobilization?

Answer 17

• when they demonstrate the vulnerability of the government, thereby encouraging protestors to make further demands or encourage additional groups to mobilize.
• when the government does not seem serious, falls far short of expectations, comes too late, can generate anger, and becomes the source of backlash mobilization

Question 18

What are the principal-agent issues involved in protest policing?

Answer 18

• arises when there is a conflict between an individual (the principal) and another person charged with representing the individual (the agent)
• police as ‘street-level bureaucrats’ with significant discretion
• not all police violence ordered from above (some is in interaction with protestors)

Question 19

When is the protest policing as a government repertoire? Examples?

Answer 19

• there is repeated activity carried out by large-scale organizations with standard operating procedures (repertoires), but sometimes extraordinary discretion on the group
  Ex: English Riot Act of 1714 & Amritsar Massacre in 1919

Question 20

What is the protest policing style?

Answer 20

The fundamental assumptions and standard operating procedures that the police bring to the police-protestor relationship?

Question 21

What are the dimensions of protest policing?

Answer 21

1. the degree of force used
2. the number of prohibited behaviors
3. the number of repressed groups
4. the degree to which police respect the law
5. the degree to which the police act to prevent protest from taking place in the first place, or react to protest as it occurs
6. the degree to which the police seek to communicate with protestors or are confrontational toward them
7. whether the police are rigid or flexible

Question 22

What are the two models of the professionalization of policing?

Answer 22

1. French model of “king’s police” – armed police who live in barracks; a specialized, disciplined, militarized force for crowd control
2. British model of ‘citizens police’ – unarmed force integrated into the community and more autonomous from political power

Question 23

What is the ‘soft’ protest policing style?

Answer 23

1. the role of police is not just to enforce the law, but also to protect First Amendment rights
2. limit or manage the disruption caused by protest rather than prevent them from occurring
3. emphasis on communication and planning between protestors and the police: goal is ‘to establish a climate of mutual confidence, with the organizers being persuaded that the police will respect their undertaking’ – the role of permits and protest planning (even planned arrests)
4. arrests are used only as a last resort (under-enforcement of the law)
5. only a minimum of necessary force is allowed

Question 24

What was the crisis of ‘soft’ protest policing style in the 2000s and 2010s?

Answer 24

• the anti-globalization movement, BLM, the rejection of negotiated policing
• the re-militarization of protest policing and selective use of the militarized style
• the commercialization of police militarization