Category: Political Participation
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Empirical Research on Protests and Social Movements in Central and Eastern Europe: Conference 2025
Empirical Research on Protests and Social Movements in Central and Eastern Europe: State of the Art Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences (IFiS PAN)72 Nowy Swiat, Warsaw, Poland December 4 – 5, 2025 About Major events in Europe over the last two decades — financial crises, rising populism, EU skepticism, pandemic, and…
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Every protest is an imagined future
Protests often emerge from a mix of grievance and hope – i.e., dissatisfaction with the present with an aim to change it for the better. Whereas street protests are commonly understood as physical, dynamic, interactive, and collective expressions of objection and dissent, less common is the idea that this form of collective action is future-oriented;…
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Prefiguration, or “Be the Change”
Prefiguration is the future-oriented construction of political alternatives during protest and movement-building, where activists reflect their political goals and values within the processes of their movements. This post is a summary of the well-cited article on the topic by Luke Yates, “Prefigurative politics and social movement strategy: The roles of prefiguration in the reproduction, mobilisation…
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NCN Grant on Pandemic Protests in Poland: Activities in 2024
We, the research team funded by the National Science Centre (NCN), Poland (2021/43/B/HS6/01155) grant entitled “The Construction of Post-Pandemic Society: Covid-19 Street Protest in Poland,” presented several papers, and published a couple of articles and a book review, in 2024. Published articles in 2024 Dubrow, Joshua K., Anna Radiukiewicz, and Alan Żukowski. “Government justification of…
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NCN Grant on Pandemic Protests in Poland: Presentation Abstracts in 2023
We, the research team funded by the National Science Centre (NCN), Poland (2021/43/B/HS6/01155) grant entitled “The Construction of Post-Pandemic Society: Covid-19 Street Protest in Poland,” presented three papers in 2023. One of them was “Reconstructions of the Covid-19 Protests in Poland: Using Text, Pictures, and Video Data to Derive Visions of Social Change” at WZB…
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Reconstructing Protests with Text and A/V: Conference Abstract
We presented a paper called, “Reconstructions of the Covid-19 Protests in Poland: Using Text, Pictures, and Video Data to Derive Visions of Social Change.” See also: NCN Grant on Pandemic Protests in Poland: Presentation Abstracts in 2023 This presentation and the paper we submitted for the conference was funded by the National Science Centre (NCN),…
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Naomi Klein on Disaster Capitalism and Political Change
Why does the news seem overwhelming? How can we get past the “shock” and change the world for the better? In this post, we present the ideas of Naomi Klein, a renowned author and activist whose work has made a significant impact on discussions surrounding social change. Klein’s thoughts and theories help us understand the…
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President Obama on Money in Politics
The influence of money in politics continues to undermine American democracy. Despite former President Obama’s well-intentioned efforts to tackle this pervasive problem, his administration’s attempts fell short. We explore Obama’s fight against the corrupting power of money in politics, including the various initiatives he championed and the obstacles he faced, such as the Citizens United…
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Piketty: Policy, Institutions, and a Brief History of Equality
Does equality rise? What is the role of policy, institutions, and collective mobilization for increasing equality? This post delves into the work of French economist Thomas Piketty, whose influential books examine wealth and income inequality. Piketty highlights the long-term trend towards greater political, economic, and social equality, driven by political mobilizations, social struggles, and institutional…
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Effects of Political Inequality on Society
Inequality — economic, political, social — is at the heart of society’s troubles. Political inequality is a particular kind and it has many definitions. In the main, it refers to structured differences in influence and outcomes of political processes. What are the effects of political inequality on society? Here we explore the consequences of political…
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Political Parties: Images and Policy Reputations
What are party images? What is a policy reputation? In the course of their lives, political parties acquire policy reputations. That is, individuals and groups evaluate a party’s position on the issues of the day. The totality of these perceptions is referred to as their “party image”. Distinct issues fragment party images, such that a…
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Power Inequality: Trends in Europe
Inequality is generally understood as long-standing structured differences in social, economic, legal, and political resources. Inequalities intersect, such that power inequality is associated with economic, legal, social, and political inequality. What is power inequality? Power inequality is defined as structured differences in the capacity of principals to realize their will against the interests and efforts…
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Zolberg’s Moments of Madness
I summarize and critique a classic article in the fields of protest and social movements by Aristide R. Zolberg, “Moments of madness.” Politics & Society 2, no. 2 (1972): 183-207. See also… Zolberg’s Thesis Zolberg’s thesis, designed to help us understand social and political change, is simple. During an intense social and political situation, such…
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Youth and Political Participation
What does “Youth” or “Young” mean in political participation studies? Most studies of political participation that feature multivariate regression use age as a linear variable. The few that do present “age groups” (i.e. age ranges) as a series of dichotomous variables can differ quite a bit on how to conceptualize “youth” and “young” For example,…
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Visions of a Post-Pandemic Society via Street Protest in Poland: NCN Grant (2021/43/B/HS6/01155)
We are looking for hired a post-doctoral scholar and a graduate research assistant to be part of the research team led by dr. hab. Joshua K. Dubrow at IFiS PAN on the implementation of the international research project funded by the National Science Centre, Poland (2021/43/B/HS6/01155) entitled “The Construction of Post-Pandemic Society: Covid-19 Street Protest…
Political Inequality: A blog since 2010 