Comparative Politics

B17(b) - Contention, Resistance, and Knowledge Production in Repressive Contexts

Date: Jun 5 | Time: 10:15am to 11:45am | Location:

Chair/Président/Présidente : Noaman Ali (University of Bath)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Selin Bengi Gumrukcu (Rutgers New Brunswick)

Instrumentalizing Human Rights: The Backstage and Frontstage of Blacklisted Workers' Movement: Filiz Kahraman (University of Toronto)
Abstract: Has international human rights law become a tool that only the global elite can use? Some scholars argue that human rights can empower advocacy groups to lead successful naming and shaming campaigns that put pressure on governments. Others point out that human rights law and institutions are only accessible to well-funded and transnationally connected NGOs and that using these frameworks risks depoliticizing activists’ demands. Yet, we have few empirical studies that examine whether and how international human rights institutions can mobilize social movements where people who experience the violations are the protagonists in their own struggle. Drawing on a case study of blacklisted workers’ movement in the UK, I argue that human rights institutions can catalyze social movements, but not in the ways most human rights scholars would have expected. Activists do not necessarily take part in collective action because they are inspired by the promise of attaining their human rights. Instead, I suggest that activists can adopt an instrumental approach to human rights which produces a duality in the movement. In the frontstage of their public campaigns, activists seize the opportunities and resources presented by human rights to raise awareness about their grievances among the public and pressure the government. In the backstage, where they are away from public scrutiny, human rights norms do not shape activists’ ideological commitments, collective identity, or solidarity ties.

Politics unusual? Uganda's neoliberal consensus and the politics of popular opposition: Luke Melchiorre (Universidad de los Andes)
Abstract: What key ideas drive contemporary social movements in Africa, and how do they challenge prevailing neoliberal views on democracy, development, and the role of African states in the global world order? This article addresses these questions through an analysis of the Ugandan case, focusing on the political rise of Robert Kyagulanyi, also known as Bobi Wine, and his People Power movement. Since his entry into formal politics in 2017, Kyagulanyi’s populist project has posed a formidable threat to the 38-year-old regime of Yoweri Museveni and his National Resistance Movement (NRM) government. Beyond its immediate political objective of “removing a dictatorship”, however, Kyagulanyi’s use of a language of “liberation” invites a deeper examination of his ideological commitments. In analyzing this aspect of his movement, I argue that, despite his deployment of revolutionary symbolism and discourse, Kyagulanyi and his movement’s ultimate embrace of formal party politics with its attendant fixation on elections, its repeated espousals of a commitment to (neo)liberal good governance, and its attempts to position itself “to the West” of the Museveni regime on key questions of foreign policy, have all demonstrated an inability or unwillingness on the part of his movement to imagine politics beyond Uganda’s well-established neoliberal consensus. Based on over 75 interviews with People Power leaders, Ugandan politicians, activists, and journalists conducted during two research trips to Uganda since 2019, along with an analysis of thousands of newspaper articles and 4,503 of Kyagulanyi's tweets since 2017, this article reveals how neoliberal ideas continue to shape not only the ruling ideologies and governance practices in African states but also the ideological commitments of those who seek to challenge them.

When Taking to the Streets Delivers the Goods: Protesting as Everyday Life in Autocratic Algeria: Hiba Zerrougui (McGill), Juan Wang (McGill)
Abstract: In Algeria, an authoritarian regime led by an opaque military leadership, there is a daily occurrence of protests. Since the end of the civil war, local uprisings remain a norm. People block highways by burning tires to ask for better access to water or electricity; patients organize sit-ins in hospitals to denounce deadly delays for organ transplants; unemployed young men perform self-mutilations in front of local official buildings to denounce their marginalization; etc. These protests are not led by seasoned activists, but rather by ordinary people, who mobilize their informal care networks of friends, families, and neighbors. These protests are minimized in the literature as rent-seeking and distinguished from what is considered "political" (associated with democratization). And yet, they constitute an unavoidable reality that structures most Algerians’ day-to-day state-society relations. Pushing back against scholarly narratives of protest normalization in autocracies coinciding with either state domination or its incremental deliquescence, this paper provides an alternative framework to make sense of routine violence and contestation. Protesting as everyday life refers to the politics of getting-by, both as state actors and ordinary people. It constitutes forms of social interactions where the ‘street’ meets the state to tackle community problems, and where protests are complex social spaces where resilience is renegotiated through everyday struggles. Protesting as everyday life is lived as a form of protracted violent governance, where crises overlap and become the master frame on which collective action and public policy are constructed. Based on a narrative analysis of 2937 coded protest events in Algeria, archival and fieldwork research, this paper aims to recenter scholarly debate on (autocratic) state fragility and sources of resilience in the politics of everyday life. It asks how and why different forms of political violence are intertwined in policies and initiatives aiming at providing basic public goods and services in contexts of state fragility, as well as how ordinary people contend with this violence in their everyday lives.