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Motivation: A decade has passed since the outbreak of the so‐called Arab Spring, which led to regime changes in several Arab countries. However, these public protests demonstrated their ineffectiveness in bringing about political and economic improvements, nor did they facilitate a peaceful transition to democracy in Arab countries. Purpose: This article attempts to discuss the obstacles to democratic transformation in Arab countries and the methods that should be followed to achieve democratic transformation, along with showing the international community's response to the Arab Spring. Approach and methods: This article relies on a descriptive, methodological, and analytical approach to the obstacles to democratic transformation in Arab countries by analysing the events and results of the Arab Spring. Findings: The democratic transformation in Arab countries does not require as much concerted effort to protect the right to peaceful assembly as it does to safeguard other rights from violations resulting from certain practices. This is primarily due to significant differences between ideological, intellectual, and political groups within society. Furthermore, democratic transformation in Arab countries necessitates the collective efforts of the international community, particularly Western nations such as the United States, employing a credible and transparent approach free from political or economic interests. These external factors are crucial when it comes to either facilitating or hindering the democratic transition and the implementation of democratic reforms. Policy implications: The Arab Spring showed that peaceful democratic transitions and the conditions for the continuation or replacement of authoritarian regimes require the approval and support of some countries that are devoid of political or economic interests, as they are external factors that can influence and hinder the democratic transition or ensure democratic reforms. This is especially true because public protests are no longer simply a sign of resistance to the regime but rather are rather a potential advance warning of rebellion and the overthrow of said regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In terms of Chapter 7 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996, the South African municipalities are mandated to provide service to local citizens in a sustainable manner. However, the municipalities in South Africa face many challenges in delivering public services. Some of the key challenges towards sustainable service delivery includes among others, lack of ethical leadership within municipal governance structures, political interference, rampant corruption, skills deficiency, lack of institutional capacity and financial resources, public protests, mismanagement, and lack of proper consultation. Considering these challenges, the study aims to explore issues affecting leadership in realising sustainable service delivery in South African municipalities. To realize this, the study employed a qualitative research methodology. The study reviewed secondary data to validate its objective. The study initially sampled a hundred (n-100) studies as the target size, but only forty-four (n-44) studies were found relevant and were cited accordingly while fifty-six (n-56) studies were excluded. To collect data, an electronic search was conducted in different databases namely, Google Scholar, Google, Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Scopus and university repositories. The data was collected from December 2023 -- March 2024. The author has reviewed previous studies published from 2005-2024. The thematic content analysis approach was utilised in analysing the data. This study has embraced the Servant Leadership Theory pioneered by Robert K. Greenleaf in the 1970s to understand key challenges affecting leadership in realizing service delivery in municipalities. Drawing insights from reviewed studies, it becomes evident that the prevalent lack of ethical leadership affects the delivery of basic services. Public protests have become a norm, caused by dissatisfaction with living conditions, corruption, and mismanagement of public funds. Based on these findings, the study recommends the need to foster a culture of ethical leadership and accountability within municipal government, along with strengthening oversight mechanisms to combat corruption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While invalid voting is often treated as protest behavior in an electoral context, its association with actual political protests has not yet been empirically demonstrated. The relative scarcity of research on the topic is likely due to the hybrid nature of invalid voting as a both formal and informal political gesture. The novel availability of event-based data for public protests in Latin America allows for testing whether their occurrence is connected with changes in spoiled and blank ballots. Using an appropriate dynamic regression model covering variations in the 148 intervals between Latin American legislative elections in the 1979–2021 period, this study finds a strong connection between the emergence of antigovernment protests and surges in invalid voting (and vice versa). This relationship still holds at parity of economic conditions and it is reinforced by a lack of alternation in the party of power. Conversely, the appearance of workers' strikes appears to work as a substitute for this behavior, which is also chosen by voters when democracy deteriorates, while corruption has no independent impact on invalid voting. Overall this work's findings promise to send the research agenda on invalid voting in a new direction, previously unexplored because of an absence of fitting data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper presents a case study about the drilling of offshore oil and gas in mainland Portugal, a process that ended with the cancelation of all contracts. It aimed to better understand the argumentative and value dynamics involved in how municipalities, populations, civic organizations, and others successfully contested the central government decision of prospection. Since the press was one of the main stages for this conflict, it was important to analyze how it presented the respective arguments to society. Articles on this topic were collected from the two widely read national newspapers “Correio da Manhã” and “Público” in the culmination period of this confrontation, which occurred between June 2016 and December 2018. In total, 155 articles were found, 61.3% (n = 95) from “Público” and 38.7% (n = 60) from “Correio da Manhã.” The quantitative analysis focused on the number of news per month and the frequency of themes, as well as the frequency of actors and arguments used against and in favor of exploitation on the news. Thematic analysis was used to qualitatively assess the articulation of arguments in the two opposing views. Results show that, in both newspapers, the majority of articles focused on the positions and actions of those opposing prospection, as the Government and other actors in favor of drilling were much less active in presenting its arguments. Overall, the analysis suggests two different strategies: (a) a strong argumentative synergy between a wide range of actors against offshore prospection. Their concerted arguments defended multiple values, including public participation in political decisions, protecting local communities and places from environmental risks, countering climate change, and protecting local economic activities. (b) The Government was usually isolated in its arguments with the occasional exception of oil companies or representatives of the national industry. The scarce arguments used by these actors evoked mostly national economic values, with little engagement with other societal goals. This study suggests that the large mobilization of different sectors of society, their use of a convergent and wide range of arguments, and the lack of engagement of the Government in a dialogical argumentation were crucial to delegitimize the latter’s political decision.

This text is intersection and analysis of all forms of the student resistance to regime in Serbia since 1944 until 1990. The resistance to revolutionary government was destroyed by repression in first few years after Second World War and hushed during ’50s. After second half of ’60s it culminated, particularly in years after Tito’s death. The highest intensity of active societal resistance in self-management socialism was reached in period 1966–1972 and after that 1982–1990. In the end of 60’s new postwar generations were looking for their own political direction. Radical student movements and demonstrations, turbulences in the world were spilling over and raising political temperature in the country. This tendency coincided with campaign of liberalization after 1966 (fall of Aleksandar Ranković) and relative declining authority of the state, party and security services and the death of Josip Broz Tito as the main pillar of the regime. Global crises of communism in the ’80s and increasing economic crisis in SFRY was strengthening the intensity of resistance.

In August this year it will have been 50 years since the armies of five Warsaw Pact states invaded Czechoslovakia. Nevertheless, new recollections of eye-witnesses, which help create and refine our picture of those events, continue to appear. At the time of the Prague Spring Ivo Masařík was 27 years old, had completed his university education and was working at the General Directorate of the Fire Service in Prague. He began keeping notes of what he had seen on the first day of the occupation, 21 August 1968, when he learned from the radio that troops were occupying the country. Like thousands of other citizens he took to the streets. He didn't become actively involved in the resistance against the occupiers but instead spent days crisscrossing central Prague, recording and photographing the unfolding occupation. During the day he observed and in the evenings he wrote notes, which literally constitute a first-hand account. Masařík's photographs from that time are being made public for the first time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars overwhelmingly adopt the case study method when analyzing causal conditions inducing anti-dam-protests. We have carried out the first medium-N-study on this topic analyzing public opposition to 12 dam projects in Asia. For this purpose, we employ a fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) which is based on a thorough review of scholarly writings and press reports on the dam projects at question as well as an online survey and semi-structured interviews. We identify two causal recipes sufficient for the emergence of significant anti-dam-protests. First, lacking social safeguards in combination with the presence of political opportunity structures and higher levels of development are sufficient for significant anti-dam-protests to emerge. Second, lacking social safeguards in combination with rampant corruption and environmental risk induce these protests. Current scholarly literature particuarly emphasizes political opportunity structures and development as causal conditions inducing significant protests. Our findings build on this literature to highlight the importance of project-specific conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Arts & Social Sciences (JASS) is the property of Sultan Qaboos University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Middle East Yearbook / Ortadoğu Yıllığı is the property of Bilgi Kultur Dernegi (Knowledge & Culture Association) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article explores the control measures used by the government to handle public protests and political revolutions. Topics discussed include an assessment of the geopolitical changes which started in the late 20th century, a description of the scenarios which can lead to a political revolution in the country, and the promotion of a culture of tradition and patriotism to the country's younger generation.

During the current COVID-19 pandemic, most governments around the world have adopted strict COVID-19 lockdown measures. In Denmark, mainly from January to March 2021, an anonymous protest group called Men in Black organized demonstrations against the Danish COVID-19 lockdown measures in the three major cities in Denmark. Based on an online survey that we carried out in March 2021 in the Danish population aged 16 years and above ( n = 2692), we analyze the individual-level factors behind supporting these demonstrations. Based on ordered logit regressions, the results show that being Muslim and being self-employed (business owner) was positively related to supporting the demonstrations, and that age and living in a city municipality was negatively related to supporting the demonstrations. Based on structural equation modeling (SEM), the results showed that the municipal COVID-19 incidence rate mediates the effect of living in a city municipality, that institutional trust mediates the effect of being Muslim, and that COVID-19 health concerns and institutional trust mediate the effect of age. Overall, economic stress among business owners, health concerns, and institutional trust were found to be the main predictors of supporting the demonstrations against the COVID-19 lockdown measures in Denmark.

Melbourne’s Regent and Plaza theatres opened in Collins Street in 1929. For more than forty years, these grand picture palaces were among Melbourne’s most treasured cinemas, favourites together with the Capitol Theatre in Swanston Street and the State Theatre in Flinders Street. Often called ‘palaces of dreams’, they were part of a glamorous entertainment era, when a night out at the movies was an event, and an afternoon matinee was a treat. Not even the Regent’s two-year closure, as a result of the fire that destroyed the auditorium in 1945, could dampen the enthusiasm of its Melbourne audiences. By the 1960s, however, the grand picture palaces were no longer in vogue and were becoming uneconomical to run. The State Theatre closed in 1962 and was later converted into two theatres. The Capitol closed in 1964, but when it re-opened eighteen months later a shopping arcade had been built in the lower part of the auditorium. After investigating the option of converting the Regent into two theatres, its owner, Hoyts, opted to develop a smaller multi-cinema complex in Bourke Street instead. The company sold the Regent and Plaza theatres to the City of Melbourne in 1969 and in 1970 the doors of the Regent and Plaza closed for what many people thought was the last time. Melbourne City Council bought the Regent and Plaza in order to control development around the site of the proposed City Square on the corner of Swanston and Collins Streets. The theatres seemed destined to fall victim to the wrecker’s ball. But if the 1960s was the decade of development, the 1970s was the decade of preservation. Protests against the demolition of historic buildings occurred around Australia, often with the controversial support of the building unions. The architectural profession debated the issues of preservation versus development of dynamic modern buildings. Both the State and Federal Governments were forced to introduce legislation to protect the nation’s built heritage. In Victoria the Liberal Government, under then Premier Rupert Hamer, introduced the Historic Buildings Act in 1974. The campaign to save the Regent and Plaza theatres was one of the battles of this preservation war.

Slovenian trade unions – after the changes in the early 1990s and then a period of stabilisation at relatively high levels of density which lasted for more than a decade – have, in the second half of the last decade, and in accordance with the gradual, irreversible long-term changes in the employment structure and the recent contextual pressures, started to decline rapidly. We have found that the intensity of this change, which started to occur when Slovenia entered the EU, is comparable to the massive changes of the early 1990s. Analysis shows us that, within just a few years, the trade union density rate dropped from 40 per cent to less than 30. The share of unionised blue-collar workers is declining relatively rapidly. Unionisation within public services is stable and/or growing, but not intensively enough to substitute for losses in manufacturing industry. In the concluding part of the article we try to offer – in a sketchy, stylised manner – some explanations for this quite dramatic, unfavourable trend, which have their roots in the twin aims of Slovenia's transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the rise of ‘citizen journalism’ and considers its implications for the policing and news media reporting of public protests in the twenty-first century. Our research focuses on the use and impact of multi-media technologies during the 2009 G20 Summit Protests in London and evaluates their role in shaping the subsequent representation of ‘protest as news’. The classic concepts of ‘inferential structure’ (Lang and Lang 1955) and ‘hierarchy of credibility’ (Becker 1967) are re-situated within the context of the 24–7 news mediasphere to analyse the transition in news media focus at G20 from ‘protester violence’ to ‘police violence’. This transition is understood in terms of three key issues: the capacity of technologically empowered citizen journalists to produce information that challenges the ‘official’ version of events; the inclination of professional and citizen journalists to actively seek out and use that information; and the existence of an information-communications marketplace that sustains the commodification and mass consumption of adversarial, anti-establishment news. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Teorija in Praksa is the property of Teorija in Praksa and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article contemplates a new alliance between whistleblowing and protesting. This is done in the context of seeking more powerful interventions in the fight against corruption in business and government. The prevailing view that whistleblowing and protesting are unconnectable forms of ethical resistance is challenged. The article argues that whistleblowing and protesting may have enormous untapped synergistic potential. This position is considered within a two-level analysis that recognizes the twin intersecting realities of people and structures in the fight against corruption. On the first level, the article elucidates how men and women of conscience use individual and/or collective strategies to expose and correct wrongdoing across two landscapes: the organization and the 'street' (public protests). On the second level, the focus goes beyond engaged individuals and collectivities using different landscapes for moral purposes, to a position that treats these landscapes as more than passive backdrops. They are seen as highly interactive action zones that variously promote or obstruct anti-corruption measures despite individual and collective action to the contrary. The article concludes with pointers for future research in this largely unexplored area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study was to assess the relationship between public protests and county-level, novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) hospitalization rates across California. Publicly available data were included in the analysis from 55 of 58 California state counties (29 March-14 October 2020). Mixed-effects negative binomial regression models were used to examine the relationship between daily county-level COVID-19 hospitalizations and two main exposure variables: any vs. no protests and 1 or >1 protest vs. no protests on a given county-day. COVID-19 hospitalizations were used as a proxy for viral transmission since such rates are less sensitive to temporal changes in testing access/availability. Models included covariates for daily county mobility, county-level characteristics, and time trends. Models also included a county-population offset and a two-week lag for the association between exposure and outcome. No significant associations were observed between protest exposures and COVID-19 hospitalization rates among the 55 counties. We did not find evidence to suggest that public protests were associated with COVID-19 hospitalization within California counties. These findings support the notion that protesting during a pandemic may be safe, ostensibly, so long as evidence-based precautionary measures are taken.

In August this year it will have been 50 years since the armies of five Warsaw Pact states invaded Czechoslovakia. Nevertheless, new recollections of eye-witnesses, which help create and refine our picture of those events, continue to appear. At the time of the Prague Spring Ivo Masařík was 27 years old, had completed his university education and was working at the General Directorate of the Fire Service in Prague. He began keeping notes of what he had seen on the first day of the occupation, 21 August 1968, when he learned from the radio that troops were occupying the country. Like thousands of other citizens he took to the streets. He didn't become actively involved in the resistance against the occupiers but instead spent days crisscrossing central Prague, recording and photographing the unfolding occupation. During the day he observed and in the evenings he wrote notes, which literally constitute a first-hand account. Masařík's photographs from that time are being made public for the first time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seemingly due to their technological availability, online petitions have become a very popular way for citizens to express their concerns and public demands. Yet the legitimacy and effectiveness of such citizens' initiatives depend primarily on the social and political context within which their use is embedded. Here a case study of an online Petition Against the Construction of Gas Terminals in the Bay of" Trieste is presented in order to analyse the complexity of processes which led to the effective mobilisation of citizens by means of the Internet, media framing of the issue and finally parliamentary discussion of the issue. Specifically, I am concerned with questions of the legitimacy and effectiveness of this specific online citizens' initiative. Research methods employed were in-depth interviews with organisers of the petition, a survey among signatories of the petition, a content analysis of media reports and an analysis of official documents referring to the planned construction of gas terminals in the Bay of Trieste. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]