Our concluding chapter examines race, civil society, and social movements. What do political actors do when the chain of democratic accountability and responsiveness is broken? How do we understand the origins of protest movements and more radical forms of political participation? How do ordinary citizens in a diverse democracy contest and claim power for the people and effect change?

In this chapter, I discuss how the protests of April 2019 initiated by the Kazakh Spring activists led to growing feelings of injustice and the necessity for more protest. This chapter is devoted to the contextualization and explanation of why and how the protest movement of Oyan, Qazaqstan emerged in the corridors of the courthouses on the days of the activists’ trials. The paradox of the authoritarian regime is revealed in these contexts. Still unable to adapt to the new conditions or see how the socio-political landscape had changed since Nazarbayev’s resignation, his authoritarian regime machine continued to operate in the same repressive manner by arresting and harassing dissidents and protestors. Unlike previous periods, protestors’ arrests fuelled even more unrest and led to the organization of the protest movement Oyan, Qazaqstan, which publicly launched their programme to democratise Kazakhstan in June 2019.

In this chapter, we presented Black youth’s reflections on summer 2020 and the powerful protest movement for Black lives that reverberated about the globe. Young Black changemakers saw summer 2020 as a watershed moment in which real changes toward racial justice were happening. Summer 2020 connected Black youth’s personal experiences of racism to a historic movement for racial justice, continuing a legacy of fighting for racial justice. Alongside profound joy, inspiration, and hope, Black youth experienced sadness, frustration, numbness, anger, and fear. We captured these youth’s feelings while they were living through this momentous time, and they were still in the midst of processing the moment, their feelings, and their role in the movement. Summer 2020 activated agency, critical knowledge, and action for some, and for others, the movement advanced and solidified their purposeful commitments to racial justice for now and into the future.

Chapter 9 reveals that the circular patterns of norm renegotiation manifest at the national level in India’s broader women’s movement. It describes the history of this movement and then use ACLED data on all women-led protest events in India from 2016 to 2021 to illustrate the breadth of women’s collective mobilization and the range of demands raised. Women most often come together to protest more explicitly gendered issues, such as gender-based violence. However, many women-led protests focus on other demands, including improved government accountability and service delivery. The nature of women’s demand-making suggests possibilities for both gender equality and improved governance with their political inclusion. Finally, it documents broader patterns of resistance to women’s collective action at the national scale, documenting a range of explicit instances of violent backlash and summarizing the rise of the men’s rights movement in India. This provides further evidence of male coercion and suggests conditions under which women’s collective action can succeed.

Volume 2 of The Cambridge History of Global Migrations presents an authoritative overview of the various continuities and changes in migration and globalization from the 1800s to the present day. Despite revolutionary changes in communication technologies, the growing accessibility of long-distance travel, and globalization across major economies, the rise of nation-states empowered immigration regulation and bureaucratic capacities for enforcement that curtailed migration. One major theme worldwide across the post-1800 centuries was the differentiation between “skilled” and “unskilled” workers, often considered through a racialized lens; it emerged as the primary divide between greater rights of immigration and citizenship for the former, and confinement to temporary or unauthorized migrant status for the latter. Through thirty-one chapters, this volume further evaluates the long global history of migration; and it shows that despite the increased disciplinary systems, the primacy of migration remains and continues to shape political, economic, and social landscapes around the world.

This chapter examines the consolidation of Pahlavi rule after the removal of Reza Shah from power, especially after 1953, when the reign of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was reestablished following a CIA-sponsored coup. The chapter explores the tenuous beginnings of the reign of the new Shah, the increasing legislative and policy-making significance of the Majles in the 1940s, and the era of oil nationalization, from 1951 to 1953. Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq was successful in getting the powers of the monarchy to be significantly reduced, but his overthrow was followed by the restoration of absolute monarchy built on a massive army and a feared secret service called SAVAK. Ultimately, however, the Pahlavi state failed to incorporate within its orbit and its social base remained weak. As the oil revenues began to lag, and the state was forced into making “housecleaning” concessions, it began to crumble under the weight of the gathering storm.

This chapter investigates the extent to which the #FeesMustFall social movement protests of 2015 and 2016 at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, used violence as an ideological weapon to cause social change in the higher education sector. Applying thematic analysis of interviews conducted with eleven stakeholders (including student activists, university management staff, academic union, and government representatives), and data from tweets collected between October 8 and 20, 2015 and September 19 and October 11, 2016, the chapter argues that the movement used violence to disrupt the inherent systematic violence of the state and university space that has hindered students’ socioeconomic and cultural development. Results further show that the movement’s adoption of violence was influenced by Franz Fanon’s “On Violence,” which resulted in the contestation of ideas by the different stakeholders on ways of achieving social change.

Creating new parties is hard. It requires the development of permanent or at least semipermanent mechanisms of (1) horizontal coordination and (2) vertical interest aggregation. In Latin America, new “electoral vehicles” – organizations that do not meet one or more of the above criteria – are everywhere. Few of these electoral vehicles become political parties in the full sense of the term This chapter offers an account of one of Latin America’s rare party-building successes – the Bolivian MAS (Movement toward Socialism). It explains an under-theorized path to party-building, via autonomous social movements, and shows how movements can shape party organizational models. The analysis reveals that the MAS meets the two criteria for successful party building but retains strikingly fluid organizational attributes. In the absence of strong national and local party structures that can serve as “transmission belts,” it accomplishes horizontal coordination and vertical aggregation through predominantly informal channels, rather than through party structures. The chapter describes these informal channels and discusses their effects on broader issues related to democratic representation, responsiveness, and accountability.

To what extent can an ethnographic sensibility enhance comparison? We argue that approaching comparison with an ethnographic sensibility – that is, being sensitive to how informants make sense of their worlds and incorporating meaning into our analyses – can strengthen comparative qualitative research. Adopting an ethnographic sensibility would enhance the quality of scholarly arguments by incorporating the processes through which actors ascribe meanings to their lived experiences and the political processes in which they are enmeshed. Because social science arguments often involve accounts of individual actors’ interests, ideas, or impressions, it is imperative to place such cognitive arguments in a broader cultural context. Adopting an ethnographic sensibility requires attention not only to that context but also to the political and social meanings which make that context intelligible. We elaborate these arguments through the lens of two comparative ethnographic works: a study of political mobilization in Bolivia and Mexico and a study of vigilantism in two South African townships.

This book, based on a dataset with 2,214 abolitionist events, makes the case that the campaign for the abolition of slavery in Brazil was a structured and lasting network of activists, associations, and public demonstrations, a national social movement. In this sense, this study shows civil society mobilization was not a particular feature of Anglo-American abolitionism.The Brazilian abolitionist movement's actions are explained here from a relational perspective, focusing on its contentious relations – in the public space and inside political institutions – with governments as well as with a pro-slavery countermovement. Besides, the book places Brazil in a global history of abolitionist movements, showing how local activists hooked onto the global abolitionist network and appropriated the repertoire of contention – rhetoric, strategies, and political performances – put together by previous anti-slavery movements. Brazilians adapted this repertoire to local political tradition. Given the formal link between church and State in Brazil, abolitionists preferred secular rhetoric and theater to propaganda. In this sense, it was more modern than the somewhat religiously embedded Anglo-Saxon abolitionism.

This book argued that the Brazilian antislavery mobilization proved to be a national social movement. The movement chose strategies according to a shifting balance of power, giving to the government´s tolerance or repression, the availability of allies, and the pro-slavery countermovement´s strength. This relational dynamic movement/state/countermovement forced abolitionists to favor successful demonstrations in the public space, field candidates for political institutions, and civil disobedience.Three mechanisms explain the geographical expansion and continuity of Brazilian abolitionism through two decades: the building up of national activism networks, portable activism styles (easily reproducible political performances) and political brokers (the key broker was André Rebouças). Brazilian abolitionists relied on a repertoire of former antislavery movements and adapted it to local political traditions. Givem the formal link between church and State in Brazil, abolitionists used secular rhetoric and theater as propaganda. In this sense, it was more modern than the somewhat religiously embedded Anglo-Saxon abolitionism. This study shows civil society mobilization was not a particular feature of Anglo-American abolitionism. Besides, it demonstrated the placement of national actors in a global network of activism, making a case for including Brazil in the transnational history of abolitionism.