The Political Dynamics and Challenges of Mass Protesting: A Global Perspective

In the last few years civic activism has intensified across the globe. It is also changing shape as new forms of civil society activity proliferate. The emerging activism is varied in nature, and complex in its implications for global democracy. It involves large-scale protest, but also less contentious community mobilisation – and is taking on multiple ideological agendas. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has been studying these trends through a network of scholars closely engaged with such activism in different world regions. The GIGA’s Research Programme 1 “Accountability and Participation” investigates the politics of social movements and protest in its two research teams.

This joint GIGA/Carnegie Foundation event will discuss the innovative forms of participation emerging in democratic and authoritarian contexts by offering a general overview of the new civic activism, as explored in a recent book by Richard Youngs, in a more recent Carnegie report that considers the understudied question of what happens when high-profile protests die down, and through case studies of protests occurring recently in the four GIGA world regions.