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Instruction Mode: Online
The Arab uprisings of 2010/2011 brought renewed attention to the power of ordinary citizens to collectively overthrow their governments. Recent protest movements in the United States, Belarus, and Hong Kong underscore citizens’ ability to act collectively in pursuit of political change.This course introduces students to some of the core scholarship in the field of contentious politics by examining the politics of resistance, protest, and revolution. In doing so, the course addresses a range of questions: What tools do aggrieved citizens have to make claims against their governments, especially in non-democratic contexts? When and why do people act collectively to make those claims? How do governments respond to various forms of protest and how do those tactics affect future protest? Why do social movements emerge and what determines their success? How do we define revolutions? Why do some succeed, and others fail? Examples discussed include protest dynamics in Russia, and China, the civil rights movement in the United States, the Iranian revolution, the color revolutions in Eastern Europe and the Arab uprisings.