Sustaining Collective Action in Urbanizing China

Abstract

In recent years there has been a proliferation of scholarship on protests and other forms of collective action in China. Important insights have been gained into how conflicts between social groups and local governments begin, which strategies and instruments protesters apply, and under which circumstances protests are likely to succeed or fail. However, comparatively little is known about the mobilizing structures and how such collective action can be sustained over a long period of time, in some instances over several years. Such perseverance would be remarkable even in a democracy, but it is more so in an authoritarian system where the risks of participating in collective action are higher and the chances to succeed much smaller. This article compares the development of public protests in two research locations and identifies four factors instrumental to overcoming the formidable challenges of sustaining collective action in China: the continuing existence of substantial grievances; the re-activation of strong social ties; the presence of unifying frames; and an adaptive protest leadership. The comparison shows that the last factor is particularly crucial: while the two villages were similar in all other respects, leadership in village B was far more adaptive than in village A, which goes a long way towards explaining why collective action could be sustained twice as long in village B.

Repression Backfires: tactical radicalization and protest spectacle in rural China

“…Repression precipitated tactical change, and physical evidence of disproportionate force gave the tent-sitters striking props that made their performances more moving. This is a reminder that a tendency toward tactical escalation in China that has been associated with failure, 80 defending one's honor in the face of non-responsiveness, 81 and acclaim (or pressure) from followers, 82 can also spring from policing mistakes and popular reactions that increase the dramaturgical power of a performance and draw onlookers to a spectacle that the authorities and protesters have jointly created. contention succeed and others do not.…”

Repression Backfires: tactical radicalization and protest spectacle in rural China

“…Repression precipitated tactical change, and physical evidence of disproportionate force gave the tent-sitters striking props that made their performances more moving. This is a reminder that a tendency toward tactical escalation in China that has been associated with failure, 80 defending one's honor in the face of non-responsiveness 81 and acclaim (or pressure) from followers, 82 can also spring from policing mistakes and popular reactions that increase the dramaturgical power of a performance and draw onlookers to a spectacle that the authorities and protesters have jointly created.…”

Collective Resistance under Authoritarianism: Elite–Mass Strategies in an Experimental Game

“…Existing scholarship on this subject has identified a host of factors to explain mass mobilization and participation in collective action, including structural conditions influencing cost-benefit calculations and political opportunities (Bernstein and Lu 2003;Bueno de Mesquita 2010;O'Brien 2008;O'Brien and Li 2006), social capital and organizational resources (Deng and O'Brien 2013;Hurst et al 2015;Tsai 2007), and the availability of competent political leadership (Kuang and Göbel 2013;Li and O'Brien 2008). Recent studies have begun to examine how the course of collective action depends on the interplay between mass strategies to coordinate citizens and elite efforts to counteract the masses and maintain the upper hand (Cai 2008;Chen 2014;Deng and O'Brien 2013;Li and O'Brien 2008).…”