About this Research Topic
This Research Topic seeks to understand how democratic and economic policy shifts in fields such as human rights, gender equality, social justice, accountability and judicial independence are achieved by pro-democracy social forces in the wake of mass popular uprisings in the context of the European Neighborhood. It also seeks to assess the conditions under which pro-democracy social forces are blocked in their ability to achieve concrete policy gains. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the European Neighbourhood has been experiencing popular uprisings shifting back and forth from authoritarian to democratic regimes. While the literature on the relationship between mass popular uprisings, democratization and re-authoritarization has been somewhat limited, the state of the art can be identified in three strands of research. First are studies situated within democratic transition theory, with the emphasis is placed on explaining structural outcomes. Second are statistical analysis seeking to identify the mechanisms that explain the positive relationship between non-violent uprising and democratization. Third is the research within the field of contentious politics, which, drawing on social movement theory that allows for opponents to promote democratization through means outside formal
institutional politics.
The Research Topic on “Configurations for Democratic, Economic and Policy Shifts after Popular Uprisings in European Neighbourhood" starts from an identified puzzle: in cases of mass popular uprising in authoritarian or hybrid regimes – regardless of overall outcome – why do bottom-up social/political forces achieve some democratic small-scale gains while others are blocked? With the research question in mind, the Research Topic has three overarching objectives: (1) Make a contribution to the research on the relationship between popular uprisings and democratization by shifting the analytical focus away from top-down and institutional explanations of success or failure of democratic transition to the micro-level, bottom-up relational and interactionist dynamics within smaller episodes; (2) Through comparative analysis, identify mechanisms, with emphasis on thick description, to generate generalizable knowledge on reconfigurations post-uprising and the relationship to small-scale democratic gain/blockage; (3) Make policy recommendations to the EU regarding which EUDP policies are most effective under different configurations.
Here, the point of departure is understanding popular uprisings as moments of high fluidity and desectoralization’, leading to new configurations that are amenable to certain democratic gains being made (and, importantly, also create new blockages). The Research Topic focuses specifically on small-scale changes that are not purely top-down or executive led, and can include: actual policy shifts, new legislation or rights, or, where such types gains were not possible (such as Belarus), the creation of a new oppositional coalition or new
practices. Therefore, we call for papers who deal with multisectoral analysis of different policy shifts. The advantage is given to original research papers and policy papers done in, but not limited to, quantitative methods of comparative analysis at the level of small-scale episodes. The main sub- topics of the Research Topic are (but not limited to):
- Anti-corruption and accountability mobilization
- Independence of the judiciary mobilization
- Workers' rights mobilization
- Gender and sexual identity equality
- Feminization of Contentious Politics (gender lens)
- Media politics and media representation of bottom-up actors in popular uprising context
institutional politics.
The Research Topic on “Configurations for Democratic, Economic and Policy Shifts after Popular Uprisings in European Neighbourhood" starts from an identified puzzle: in cases of mass popular uprising in authoritarian or hybrid regimes – regardless of overall outcome – why do bottom-up social/political forces achieve some democratic small-scale gains while others are blocked? With the research question in mind, the Research Topic has three overarching objectives: (1) Make a contribution to the research on the relationship between popular uprisings and democratization by shifting the analytical focus away from top-down and institutional explanations of success or failure of democratic transition to the micro-level, bottom-up relational and interactionist dynamics within smaller episodes; (2) Through comparative analysis, identify mechanisms, with emphasis on thick description, to generate generalizable knowledge on reconfigurations post-uprising and the relationship to small-scale democratic gain/blockage; (3) Make policy recommendations to the EU regarding which EUDP policies are most effective under different configurations.
Here, the point of departure is understanding popular uprisings as moments of high fluidity and desectoralization’, leading to new configurations that are amenable to certain democratic gains being made (and, importantly, also create new blockages). The Research Topic focuses specifically on small-scale changes that are not purely top-down or executive led, and can include: actual policy shifts, new legislation or rights, or, where such types gains were not possible (such as Belarus), the creation of a new oppositional coalition or new
practices. Therefore, we call for papers who deal with multisectoral analysis of different policy shifts. The advantage is given to original research papers and policy papers done in, but not limited to, quantitative methods of comparative analysis at the level of small-scale episodes. The main sub- topics of the Research Topic are (but not limited to):
- Anti-corruption and accountability mobilization
- Independence of the judiciary mobilization
- Workers' rights mobilization
- Gender and sexual identity equality
- Feminization of Contentious Politics (gender lens)
- Media politics and media representation of bottom-up actors in popular uprising context
Keywords: popular uprising, European Neighbourhood, democratization, grass rooth resitance, EU, EUDP
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
