This book examines a recent movement for political reform in Malaysia, contrasting the experience both with past initiatives in Malaysia and with a contemporaneous reform movement in Indonesia, to help us understand how and when coalitions unite reformers from civil and political societies, and how these coalitions engage with the state and society.

Although grass-roots social movements are an important force of social and political change, they quite often fail to achieve their lofty goals. Similarly, the inability of research to systematically explain the impact of such movements stands in sharp contrast to their emotional appeal. Protest, Opportunities, and Mechanisms attempts to rejuvenate current scholarship by developing a comprehensive theory of social movements and political change. In addition to reviewing the existing literature on the political outcomes of social movements, this volume analyzes the examples of the American civil rights movement and anti-nuclear energy efforts in eighteen countries to forge a new understanding of their momentous impact.

From Egypt to South Africa, Nigeria to Ethiopia, a new force for political change is emerging across Africa: popular protest. Widespread urban uprisings by youth, the unemployed, trade unions, activists, writers, artists, and religious groups are challenging injustice and inequality. What is driving this new wave of protest? Is it the key to substantive political change? Drawing on interviews and in-depth analysis, Adam Branch and Zachariah Mampilly offer a penetrating assessment of contemporary African protests, situating the current popular activism within its historical and regional contexts.

"Explores protesting as an act of faith . . . How to Read a Protest argues that the women's marches of 2017 didn't just help shape and fuel a moment—they actually created one."—Masha Gessen, The New Yorker O, the Oprah Magazine’s “14 Best Political Books to Read Before the 2018 Midterm Election” "A fascinating and detailed history of American mass demonstrations."—Publishers Weekly When millions of people took to the streets for the 2017 Women’s Marches, there was an unmistakable air of uprising, a sense that these marches were launching a powerful new movement to resist a dangerous presidency. But the work that protests do often can’t be seen in the moment. It feels empowering to march, and record numbers of Americans have joined anti-Trump demonstrations, but when and why does marching matter? What exactly do protests do, and how do they help movements win? In this original and richly illustrated account, organizer and journalist L.A. Kauffman delves into the history of America’s major demonstrations, beginning with the legendary 1963 March on Washington, to reveal the ways protests work and how their character has shifted over time. Using the signs that demonstrators carry as clues to how protests are organized, Kauffman explores the nuanced relationship between the way movements are made and the impact they have. How to Read a Protest sheds new light on the catalytic power of collective action and the decentralized, bottom-up, women-led model for organizing that has transformed what movements look like and what they can accomplish.

Is protest broken? Micah White, co-creator of Occupy Wall Street, thinks so. Disruptive tactics have failed to halt the rise of Donald Trump. Movements ranging from Black Lives Matter to environmentalism are leaving activists frustrated. Meanwhile, recent years have witnessed the largest protests in human history. Yet these mass mobilizations no longer change society. Now activism is at a crossroads: innovation or irrelevance. In The End of Protest Micah White heralds the future of activism. Drawing on his unique experience with Occupy Wall Street, a contagious protest that spread to eighty-two countries, White articulates a unified theory of revolution and eight principles of tactical innovation that are destined to catalyze the next generation of social movements. Despite global challenges—catastrophic climate change, economic collapse and the decline of democracy—White finds reason for optimism: the end of protest inaugurates a new era of social change. On the horizon are increasingly sophisticated movements that will emerge in a bid to challenge elections, govern cities and reorient the way we live. Activists will reshape society by forming a global political party capable of winning elections worldwide. In this provocative playbook, White offers three bold, revolutionary scenarios for harnessing the creativity of people from across the political spectrum. He also shows how social movements are created and how they spread, how materialism limits contemporary activism, and why we must re-conceive protest in timelines of centuries, not days. Rigorous, original and compelling, The End of Protest is an exhilarating vision of an all-encompassing revolution of revolution.

Essays on the justification, strategy, and limits of mass protests and political dissent In Protest and Dissent, the latest installment of the NOMOS series, distinguished scholars from the fields of political science, law, and philosophy provide a fresh, interdisciplinary perspective on the potential—and limits—of mass protest and disobedience in today’s age. Featuring ten timely essays, the contributors address a number of contemporary movements, from Black Lives Matter and the Women’s March, to Occupy Wall Street and Standing Rock. Ultimately, this volume challenges us to re-imagine the boundaries between civil and uncivil disagreement, political reform and radical transformation, and democratic ends and means. Protest and Dissent offers thought-provoking insights into a new era of political resistance.

From Protest to Parties provides a unique window into the politics of mobilization and protest in closed political regimes, and sheds light on how the choices of political elites affect organizational development. The book draws upon an in-depth analysis of 3 countries in Anglophone Africa: Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Kenya

Recent years have seen an enormous increase in protests across the world in which citizens have challenged what they see as a deterioration of democratic institutions and the very civil, political and social rights that form the basis of democratic life. Beginning with Iceland in 2008, and then forcefully in Egypt, Tunisia, Spain, Greece and Portugal, or more recently in Peru, Brazil, Russia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Ukraine, people have taken to the streets against what they perceive as a rampant and dangerous corruption of democracy, with a distinct focus on inequality and suffering. This timely new book addresses the anti-austerity social movements of which these protests form part, mobilizing in the context of a crisis of neoliberalism. Donatella della Porta shows that, in order to understand their main facets in terms of social basis, strategy, and identity and organizational structures, we should look at the specific characteristics of the socioeconomic, cultural and political context in which they developed. The result is an important and insightful contribution to understanding a key issue of our times, which will be of interest to students and scholars of political and economic sociology, political science and social movement studies, as well as political activists.

Why is social protest a normal, almost routine form of political participation in certain Latin American democracies, but not others? In light of surging protests in countries like Argentina, Brazil, and Peru, this book answers this question through a focus on recent trends in the quality of governance and socioeconomic development in the region. Specifically, it argues that increasingly engaged citizenries -- forged by economic growth and technological advances -- coupled with dysfunctional political institutions have fueled more radical modes of participation in Latin America, as citizens' demands for government responsiveness have overwhelmed many regimes' capacity to provide it. Where weak institutions and politically engaged citizenries collide, countries can morph into "protest states," where contentious participation becomes so common as to render it a conventional characteristic of everyday political life. Drawing on cross-national surveys from Latin America and a case study of Argentina, which includes a rich dataset of protest events and dozens of interviews with political elites and citizen activists, Mason W. Moseley tests his explanation against other leading theories in the contentious politics literature. But rather than emphasizing how worsening economic conditions and mounting grievances fuel protest, this book builds the case that it is actually the improvement of economic conditions amidst low quality political institutions that lies at the root of surging contention in the region. Protest State offers a comprehensive study of one of the most intriguing puzzles in Latin American politics today: in the midst of an unprecedented era of democratic governments and economic prosperity, why are so many people protesting?

Tillie Olsen's fiction and nonfiction portray, with all their harsh contours, the lives of people who cannot speak for themselves or whose words have been forgotten or ignored. Olsen's writing is neither serene nor despairing. In this sensitive thematic reading, Mara Faulkner shows that its most subversive function is the assertion that human life can be other than and more than it is. Olsen's promise of full creative life aims to make her readers forever dissatisfied with physical, emotional, and intellectual starvation. Faulkner finds in Olsen's writing a triple-layered pattern combining protest against oppression (blight), celebration of courage and strength (fruit), and the heartening dream of a radically transformed future world (possibility). She focuses on four of Olsen's main themes - motherhood, the relationship between men and women, community, and language - and shows how, because of social and economic circumstances, potentially creative tensions become destructive contradictions: motherhood stifles women's lives, patriarchy and poverty turn men into enemies of women and children, communities force their members into betrayal, and language distorts or erases human experience. Olsen reveals, according to Faulkner, the overlapping oppressions of class, race, gender, nationality, education, and age that both link people and set them apart. Yet, she refuses to exalt suffering and deprivation. In this comprehensive examination of a literature of social consciousness, Faulkner approaches Olsen's works within their historical, social, and political contexts without treating them as propaganda. In fact, she shows that it is Olsen's compressed, poetic style that gives her writing itsrevolutionary power. She illuminates both the author's individual talent and the traditions in which her works were created - traditions of women writers of color, writers of the working class, and writers who were immigrants or children of immigrants.