Title: Taking to the Streets: Understanding Protest in Contemporary South Africa
Abstract: This paper asks why some communities turn to and violent conflict with the state, while others seek to work within political systems and refrain from more contentious activities. Through an in-depth examination of protests over the provision of government services in post-apartheid South Africa, it argues that violent protests are more likely in areas with a history of anti-apartheid protest, because such areas have developed a of protest that makes both elites and citizens more likely to turn to, approve of, and successfully employ behavior. Although such a culture is a necessary part of the explanation, however, it is not on its own sufficient, and this paper argues further that protests are most likely when elites within an area with this culture of are engaged in tight political competition. This is because, in such circumstances, the challenging elite has an incentive to encourage (in order to highlight the failures of the incumbent), while the culture of that exists enables him, and his supporters, to more easily arrange it. Evidence to support these arguments comes from a series of quantitative regressions using two new datasets, along with over 100 interviews from 10 months of fieldwork.
Publication Year: 2016
Publication Date: 2016-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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