Resistance and Repression in Global Peripheries: Rethinking the Authoritarian-Democratic Divide

Abstract

The first two decades of the 21st century have been amongst the most contentious in modern world history. Protest movements around the world, ranging from mass revolutionary uprisings to single-issue campaigns, have generated a sense of virtually permanent unrest. The causes of this surge in global protest are varied: rising costs of living and inequality, corruption and nepotism, major wars, intensifying climate change, populism, political polarization, anti-immigration sentiment, and more. Whatever the points of departure for contemporary protest movements, we are clearly living in turbulent times. Scholarship on social movements is tracking these turbulent times in often forensic detail, generating insights into both movements (their demographic make-up, repertoires, and organisational forms) and states (particularly their coercive strategies). At the same time, researchers are increasingly bringing together dynamics of resistance and repression, highlighting the relational back-and-forth that takes place between movements and states. This panel contributes to research on the relational dynamics of resistance and repression within contemporary episodes of contentious politics in two main ways: First, it highlights the centrality of ‘peripheries’ and ‘semi-peripheries’ to global protest movements. From the invasion of Iraq in 2003 to the 2010-11 Arab Uprisings, and onto contemporary uprisings in countries as diverse as Indonesia, Nepal, Serbia and Morocco, contentious politics has often emerged from ‘peripheral’ and ‘semi-peripheral’ spaces. By ‘periphery’, we mean structurally disadvantaged geographies experiencing subordination or marginality within larger political and economic structures. By ‘semi-periphery’, we mean ‘in-between’ polities that neither reside at the ‘core’ of these structures nor are wholly subordinate to them. Peripheral and semi-peripheral spaces are highly vulnerable to global crises and under significant pressure to ‘modernise’. They are also often marked by authoritarianism and experiences of protracted austerity. Unsurprisingly, therefore, they are frequently at the leading-edge of contentious episodes. Papers in this panel examine trajectories of resistance and repression within these spaces, theorising the dynamics that characterise them. Second, and linked, our focus on peripheral and semi-peripheral spaces opens up insights into the relationship between contentious movements and regime type, particularly the distinction between democratic and authoritarian polities. Democracies are increasingly under pressure from both within (through populism) and without (through the hold of authoritarianism globally). Facing these dual pressures, many democracies are treating protest movements as existential threats, introducing legislation and strategies that criminalise even non-violent movements. Many of these strategies emulate those in authoritarian settings, including semi-peripheral and peripheral states. As a result, the gap between democratic and authoritarian regimes is closing. Through careful quantitative and qualitative analysis, papers will examine whether, today, democracies and authoritarian states share more than they differ in how they approach contentious movements.

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