Democracy, Difference, & Destabilization: Making Sense of Recent Global Protests

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Session Description

Threats to democracy and the desire for more responsive government as well as ethnic, racial, and class-based differences have catalyzed a wave of mass protest over the past year that has destabilized governments around the globe. What issues are driving demonstrators' demands for reform? Who are the participants and what shapes their decision to join? What is the relationship between protests occurring in different countries and regions? How have governments' responded and what, if anything, have they learned from the experience of other embattled governments? This roundtable brings together experts on protest and contentious politics in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and South Asia to discuss and debate these questions and put recent events in historical and comparative perspective. Participants will draw on their own published and ongoing work on protest in China/Hong Kong, Colombia, Ecuador, Haiti, India, Indonesia, Malawi, Niger, Russia, Senegal, and Ukraine to offer insights of interest to scholars and policy audiences alike.

Sub Unit

• Division 44: Democracy and Autocracy

Chair

• Susan C. Stokes University of Chicago

Presenters

• Mark Beissinger Princeton University

• Noam Lupu Vanderbilt University

• Ashutosh Varshney Brown University

• Jessica Chen Weiss Cornell University

• Bryn Rosenfeld Cornell University