Protest Public as the Drivers of Political Changes in Russia and Brazil: Comparative Analysis

Type Working Paper
Title Protest Public as the Drivers of Political Changes in Russia and Brazil: Comparative Analysis
Author(s)
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 2014
URL http://paperroom.ipsa.org/papers/paper_34283.pdf
Abstract
Based on the 2-year research projects “Discrete mathematical models for political analysis of democratic institutions and human rights”, that were presented on the World Congress - 2012 in Madrid, we put forward following theses. First, democratic development is a multidimensional (nonlinear) process that is affected (influenced) by diverse number of factors and actors, which could be called drivers. Therefore democratic development is not “a movement on the vector”, but a collection of political changes that in sum could be seen as “a movement on the nonlinear trajectory”. Second, it is important to distinguish three types of democratic development: democratization of authoritarian states (establishment of the institutions of “polyarchy”), democracy changes in “defected democracies” (overcoming the defects of “polyarchy”) and democratic development of “embedded democracies” (increasing “quality of democracy”). Third, democratization of authoritarian states is mostly driven by factors (e.g., economy crisis, development of civil society and protest activity, crisis of elites’ legitimacy); democracy changes in “defected democracies” and democratic development of “embedded democracies” are mostly driven by actors (e.g. international organizations, civil organizations, elites). Following the logic of political changes (regime change is not necessarily a democratic development) a new focus of deepening the research has to be put on Protest Public as the drivers of political changes. Protest Public became an important actor of political change both in authoritarian and democratic states (“Occupy movement” in USA and Europe, “Arab spring”, protests in Russia, Brazil and Turkey). But few researches try to understand: How can protest public impact on the political change? How and when does protest public impact on the democratic development? When does protest public become a driver of political regime changes or democratic development? What are the mechanisms of such “driving”?

Related studies

»