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During the 1970s, the predominant strategy of protest policing shifted from 'escalated force' and repression of protesters to one of 'negotiated management' and mutual cooperation with protesters. Following the failures of negotiated management at the 1999 World Trade Organization demonstrations in Seattle, law enforcement quickly developed a new social control strategy, referred to here as 'strategic incapacitation'. The US police response to the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks quickened the pace of police adoption of this new strategy, which emphasizes the goals of 'securitizing society' and isolating or neutralizing the sources of potential disruption. These goals are accomplished through (1) the use of surveillance and information sharing as a way to assess and monitor risks, (2) the use of pre-emptive arrests and less-lethal weapons to selectively disrupt or incapacitate protesters that engage in disruptive protest tactics or might do so, and (3) the extensive control of space in order to isolate and contain disruptive protesters actual or potential. In a comparative fashion, this paper examines the shifts in United States policing strategies over the last 50 years and uses illustrative cases from national conventions, the global justice movement and the anti-war movement to show how strategic incapacitation has become a leading social control strategy used in the policing of protests since 9 ⁄ 11. It concludes by identifying promising questions for future research.

We examine how tactical innovations introduced by transgressive protesters during the Seattle cycle of protests contributed to the end of a long, relatively stable period of détente between police and protesters in the United States. Case studies of the demonstrations staged by the AFL-CIO and the Direct Action Network (DAN) during the 1999 WTO protests are used to reveal the divergent capacity of the negotiated management style of policing protest to control contained and transgressive protesters. We argue that the transgressive protesters' tactics, organizational structure, and decision-making processes all frustrated police attempts to control their demonstrations and contributed to DAN's ability to shut down the opening day of the WTO. We conclude by developing a framework for understanding how police responded in subsequent protests using what we describe as "strategic incapacitation" and by proposing research questions about the impact of this style of policing on subsequent protests in the U.S. and other Western democracies.

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The article establishes which determinants contribute to involvement in the European environmental movement, whether participants in the movement are unique from participants in other new social movements (NSMs), and the effects of biographical availability and national social structure on environmental activism. Relevant questions include the way values, education and income, family responsibilities, national economic development and population density influence differential participation in the movement across nations. This study relies on data from Eurobarometer 25, a biannual questionnaire administered across 12 European Union nations to examine the influence of individual factors, and data from Eurostat to test the influence of national social structural factors on participation. Participation is measured by whether respondents contributed money to environmental organizations and/or participated in environmental associations, local restoration projects or demonstrations to protect the environment. Logistic regression is utilized to test hypotheses about the relationship to participation. The findings suggest that environmental activism is influenced primarily by postmaterialist values and beliefs, higher education and income, and living in nations with lower levels of poverty, unemployment and agricultural employment and greater population density. This study contradicts previous findings on the importance of biographical availability. Participants in the Western European environmental movement are similar to and different from participants in other NSMs. Ironically, those benefiting most from industrialization and its corresponding environmental impacts are more likely to engage in environmental activism.