This article initiates a conversation on how contemporary Eastern European peripheralization and the hegemony of the energy transition impact social struggles, introducing the concept of “Periphery in Movement.” Through the examination of Serbia’s anti-extractivist movement against the mining corporation Rio Tinto, we ground this concept through three core specificities. The first is the power imbalance positioning the movement in opposition to corporate interests, the European Union, and national elites. The second is the conflictual convergence of civil actors, who have undergone significant ideological and practical transformations from the Yugoslav Wars to the present. The third specificity is the “how” of Periphery in Movement and its new political propositionalities and potentials. Periphery in Movement expands beyond traditional civil society and social movement studies by addressing struggles at the Eastern European periphery that build propositional and life-preserving resistance.

Taiwanese politics is often characterized as being dominated by two camps: the “blue” camp, which supports the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), and the “green” camp, which supports the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). However, a substantial portion of the electorate identifies as independent, representing one of the largest but least studied groups in Taiwan’s political landscape. This study examines how independent voters differed from partisan voters in their responses to one of the most defining political moments in recent years, the legislative reform, and the subsequent Bluebird movement, one of the largest social protests in Taiwan since 2014. Drawing on two waves of original survey data, we find that independents were more likely to adopt the KMT’s framing of the protests and related legislative reforms. However, independent voters had greater support than blue camp supporters for democratic practices, despite their alignment over the Bluebird movement. These findings advance understanding of Taiwan’s electoral blocs, the dynamics of movement–party relations and the contours of democratic support among its citizens.

Christian Nationalism has been an increasing focus of scholars as it has seemingly come to dominate much of the Republican Party and its voters. Existing research, however, has focused almost exclusively on individual attitudes. In this article, I examine a key piece of the Christian Nationalist agenda, policy change at the state level, seeking to change individuals’ perception of the religious foundations of the United States through symbolic legislation. I focus on Project Blitz, an organization that creates model bills for state legislators to introduce all over the country. Project Blitz is an explicitly Christian Nationalist effort, and its origins and supporters help demonstrate a key missing piece of the scholarly and popular conversation about Christian Nationalism: the current power and influence of Christian Nationalist attitudes and activities is based on the historical influence of the Christian Right social movement.

The article offers a study of housing movements in Budapest and Bucharest, with the main focus on the developments since the financial crisis of 2008, stressing the role that both structural and contingent factors play in shaping the dynamics of this “field of contention.” It is argued that a structural view is enlightening for understanding the factors that form the interactive field between activists, such as differences in social positionality as well as ideological conflicts. Moreover, conceiving of a structurally produced field of contention can help explain the differences in housing contention in the two cities. The analysis situates housing movements and their allied, parallel, or opposing actors within the long-term processes of urbanization and global dynamics of commodification, including housing financialization. It demonstrates that to understand how structural and political factors interact in a complex field of contention, attention to processes beyond short-term local movements is necessary.

This paper describes how the Brazilian Landless Movement fostered an insurgent citizenship among the poor. We describe three core organizational practices of this movement that supported this insurgent citizenship. We find that these practices bear striking resemblance to the practices of other civil society organizations (CSOs), including social service organizations, when they support the empowerment of marginalized communities. The identification of common practices suggests that despite the differences among CSOs, these distinctions may be less stark than assumed and that there may be common causal pathways between CSOs and insurgent citizenship.

Political control is pervasive in authoritarian contexts; however, the use of economic instruments as a means of political repression has been underexplored. Embedded in Hong Kong’s political upheavals triggered by the 2019 extradition bill, this paper underpins the erosion of Hong Kong’s political environment by analysing economic pressure exerted on businesses, or ‘economic repression’, to eliminate, convert, and/or silence their dissenting behaviour. Drawing on Earl’s repression typology, it distinguishes between two forms of repression: economic channelling and economic duress. The former involves covert actions that increase the operational costs of targeted businesses, including administrative inspections and the severance of economic ties, while the latter embodies overt actions that disrupt their operations, such as asset freezes and vandalism of shop premises. Although both businesses and individuals may be subject to economic repression, this paper pays special attention to businesses, as their responses have far-reaching implications for the political and economic landscape. Employing the cases of Cathay Pacific, Taipan Bakery, Apple Daily, and Chickeeduck, which were well-known players in their respective industries in 2019–2021, it is observed that economic channelling was usually deployed at a defiant company first, followed by economic duress if the target did not conform to the new political norms. Economic repression not only stifles political resistance in the marketplace but also hampers the competitiveness of the international financial city.

Examining an all-but-forgotten episode of large-scale protest at the 1970 annual meeting of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Copenhagen, Denmark, this article asks how officials at the World Bank understood and reacted to such protest. How did they characterise the protestors’ demands in the moment? Why and how did they feel the need to respond, and what strategies did they use to do so? And what does that response tell us about how officials at the World Bank understood about the relationship between development and social upheaval? Using heretofore unexamined institutional records, this article argues that already in 1970, World Bank officials were deeply concerned with public opinion about their institutions in both the developed and developing worlds—and therefore found themselves having to reckon with the riots that threatened to derail not just their meetings, but their mission.

This qualitative research investigates the growing social activism against the trend of desecularization within non-religious state education in Israel, employing a social movement framework. By conducting in-depth interviews with individuals engaged in this activism, the study examined the ideological frameworks of the actors, their perceived organizational structures for mobilization, and their view of political opportunities used to uphold secular principles in the Israeli educational system. The study contributes to social movement research by highlighting secular motivations, often overlooked in favor of faith-based activism, and addresses the limited literature on desecularization in public education. It also underscores the nonlinear progress of secularization and liberalism in Israel, noting a sense that the tendency toward desecularization has been gaining momentum in certain parts of society. This research enhances understanding of desecularization as a social movement in education and informs broader discussions on the intersections of religion, culture, and governance in democracies.

This article makes use of network analysis to examine the establishment of the War Convicted Benefit Society (Sensō jukei-sha sewa-kai), an influential advocacy group in the popular movement that pushed for amnesty for Japanese war criminals from 1952 to 1958. By graphing the networks created by members of the Society, I demonstrate that early Occupation policies, precisely those that convicted and purged these old elites and resulted in the detention of many of them in Sugamo prison, actually created a new network of conservative power figures by linking the otherwise unconnected old mid-rank military network and the old colonial/political elite network to rally around their common experience of being “prosecuted.”

What determines why some protest events last only a single day while others can stretch over multiple days? This study presents the first cross-national quantitative analysis of the factors that shape protest event duration. This study argues that protest event duration is the function of factors that increase momentum (e.g. protest size, location and participants) while also examining whether repression attenuates such momentum. Using the Armed Conflict Location Event Data, this study employs two multilevel statistical methods to examine the factors that matter. First, the study examines the day-by-day factors that shape whether a protest will continue the next day. Second, the study examines the overall duration of events. The analyses find strong support that protests in capitals and urban areas, as well as protests featuring students, labour unions and professional organizations, last longer, while repression does truncate events.