LIST OF PANELS

Both social movements and political parties play a crucial role in the social and political life of contemporary democracies. While they do not pretend to take part in the decision-making processes directly, they tend to influence the political processes by changing the society on a grassroots level via direct action, the transformation of discursive structures, creating new values, etc. The existence of social movements, struggling for their own interests is widely considered as an indicator of a strong civil society and healthy democracy. They also remain the main driving force behind changing public policy agenda, putting forward democratic values and principles of more effective public administration in authoritarian regimes. Understandably, the latter treat social movements as an existential threat, and try to repress and co-opt them: for example, the recent response of the regimes in Russian and Belarus to the actions of peaceful movements remain to show that the authoritarian leaders are very much aware of the potential dangers brought about social movements.

The conventional response to this threat has been to suppress self-organization in the society by blocking communication channels, cracking down on independent organizations and networks, and promoting loyalist movements. However, advances in technology, including the proliferation of social media and other online communication platforms, and modern social and demographic trends diminish the efficacy of such ‘traditional’ strategies. Economic development, education, and urbanization raise awareness of public issues and accumulate the capacity for collective action, which is increasingly difficult to keep under the lid.

We hypothesize, that in such new realities, instead of suppressing collective action per se, authoritarian regimes opt to manage and control it, trying to re-direct the energy of a fledgling civil society away from political activities towards more innocuous apolitical undertakings. Those, while absorbing and defusing the collective action potential, are not politically destabilizing and in fact, could be playing into the regime’s hands. This approach is gaining popularity among autocracies and hybrid regimes, but its efficacy has limits, as demonstrated by the cases of some modern states, such as mentioned before.

At the same time, such countries witnessed a boom of apolitical civil society activities dealing with various issues, including social welfare; community development; environmental protection; preservation and promotion of the culture, language, and heritage; and, more recently, mitigating the COVID-19 pandemic. Acceptance depended on whether collective actions were “constructive” and “apolitical,” addressing specific problems, instead of demanding systemic change.

This panel provides a platform for discussing various approaches to the analysis of the phenomenon of social movements as the driving force for political change. The main objectives of the panel are as follows:

- to study the narratives of social movements in different countries and regions;

- to analyze the processes of institutionalization of social movements in authoritarianisms and democracies;

- to compare approaches and existing models of social movements’ analysis;

- to share different visions on strategies and instruments of putting forward democratic changes in authoritarian and democratic states;

- to provide policy advice for the decision-makers cooperating with social movements.

In a sense, the changes taking place within civil societies are the reflection of challenges that governments cannot manage rapidly. Society as a flexible organism reacts faster than a bureaucratic system, especially if that system is characterized by rigidity of regulatory mechanisms and inertia. The people’s thirst for quick qualitative transformations being significantly intensified via globalization spurs the state to move faster towards public demand and growing social needs. And the managerial unwillingness to accelerate under these impulses leads to the emergence of protest moods. This raises the need to reconcile the interests and needs of society with the political will.

This panel provides a platform for discussing various kinds of interaction between social movements and policy-makers, reflecting the tendency of the former to aspire both to express their voice in democracies and to retreat to apolitical initiatives in a repressive political environment. We welcome the papers including, but not limited to the following topics:

- Narratives of social movements in different countries;

- The political, economic, and social reasons of the protests;

- The role of social movements in the democratization of public relations and public administration;

- Differences in strategies, repertoires of collective action in authoritarian and democratic states,

- Transnational social movements and global issues of protest;

- The gender aspect of social movements;

- The role of social movements in the development and strengthening of the foundations of democracy, reforms of decentralization/centralization in public administration;

- The ways social movements pursue their goals in countries with underdeveloped institutes of civil society;

- Information-communicative technologies and innovations used by social movements to influence public policy.

In a nutshell, this panel is opened for the theoretical analysis of SM and case studies of countries that experienced transformations in public policy under the influence of social movements. We would like to accept papers observing the transformations, taking place because of social movements’ involvement, be it in cultural, political, or economic spheres, as well as submissions, discussing strategies of social movements in varying contexts and the corresponding response from the side of political regimes. We especially welcome papers that are explicitly interdisciplinary and that foster discussion of public administration styles and strategies to struggle against the authoritarian regime.