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Rule and Resistance Beyond the Nation State
Abstract
Rule and resistance can no longer be understood in national contexts only. They both have transnationalised over the last decades. The scholarly discourse, however, still lags behind these developments. While International Relations only sees institutional “governance”, social movement studies only see instances of resistance. Both, however, lack the necessary vocabulary to describe the dynamic interplay between systems of rule and resistance. While we are governed by transnational structures of rule, a systematic analysis of how this operates and how it can be resisted remains to be developed.
This book develops an understanding of these power relations through rich empirical case studies of different forms of rule-resistance relationships. Some resistant groups demand reforms of particular policies and institutions. Others attack institutions head-on. Yet other actors attempt to escape the rules they reject. Which forms of resistance can we expect under different kinds of rule? How can we understand transnational rule in the first place? The book gives new inspiring answers to these difficult questions.
... The case of working children's organizations reveals how IOs tend to cherry pick CSO representatives deemed to be able to assume responsibility in IO fora, whilst working children's movements as actors in their own right tend to be excluded. Thus, both cases point to the question of how to adequately grasp contestation by civil society actors raised in and against institutions of global order (Anderl et al., 2019;Zimmermann et al., 2017). ...
This article explores what youth movements do when their political participation in international organizations (IOs) is limited. Using the examples of young migrants in the European Union and transnationally organized working children, we argue that these actors resort to social media to make their arguments visible. While IOs have been striving to become more ‘open’ to affected (youth) actors, the two cases show that their access to policy debates remains limited. We argue that this is linked to the ambivalent representation of their subjectivity: young migrants and working children are considered to be particularly vulnerable and at the same time they are denied political agency. Given limited room for self-representation in IO debates, social media posts represent a practice of aesthetic reversal. Through Twitter (X) and Instagram posts these youth actors challenge the ways they are represented in and by IOs and claim political subjecthood.
... The country's unique geographic structure leads to substantial disparities in electricity generation costs between regions, particularly with higher costs in eastern Indonesia compared to Java, despite its growth potential. Pressure from international institutions and NGOs to reduce global emissions has influenced public opinion and urged the government to reassess and revoke mining permits (Anderl, 2018). Uneven electricity cost distribution underscores why renewable energy is vital for Indonesia's power generation. ...
... The guarantee of basic rights enables protest as a pervasive and legitimate form of democratic participation (Dalton 2008;Hutter et al. 2016;Norris 2011). Protest movements engage with political institutions on different levels: they demand incremental or radical programmatic changes, they call for the introduction of new political procedures, and they call into question the relation between political institutions and society at large (Anderl et al. 2019;Niesen 2019;Tilly and Tarrow 2015). In some cases, collective action relies on democratic principles for the fight against injustice and reactionary forces, as the Black Lives Matter movement did in denouncing police violence and racism experienced by Black people. ...
The introduction of this special issue elaborates a research perspective on the meaning and function of political protest in the context of democratic orders. Starting from the consideration that protest and democratic orders form a close interrelationship, we ask how and to what extent democracy is imagined, negotiated, and problematized within protest, and how democratic orders and politics shape the formation of protest. To this end, we argue for a combination of Democratic Theory and Social Movement Studies. Interweaving these two traditions allows for empirically saturated and theoretically sound interpretations of recent episodes of contention. With this research perspective, we not only gain a deeper understanding of protest dynamics, but also of contemporary social and political transformations within modern democratic societies.
... Unser Verständnis lehnt sich an den Vorschlag von Daase und Deitelhoff (2015) an, zwischen Opposition und Dissidenz zu unterscheiden: Während ‚Opposition' bestimmte politische Entscheidungen mit den zur Verfügung stehenden Mitteln kritisiert, geht ‚Dissidenz' auf Distanz zur politischen Ordnung und kritisiert diese in ihrer Gesamtheit mit unkonventionellen Mitteln (vgl. Anderl et al. 2019). Aus dieser Perspektive kann Radikalisierung als ein Wandel in Praktiken und Orientierungen widerständiger Akteure verstanden werden. ...
Radicalization is usually understood as a process that leads individuals or groups to reject a social order and to express this by using violence. This narrow definition of radicalization, however, blocks from sight other radicalized forms of resistance that do not participate in a competition for attention: such as the withdrawal from society. While researchers usually use the concept “exit” to denote the deradicalization of individuals, we use it, in contrast, to denote a form of radicalization which rejects even protest as a system-sustaining form of resistance. In order to show the analytical leverage of our conceptualization, we scrutinize the Volkish Settlers as a form of collective withdrawal and the Reichsbürger as a form of individual withdrawal in the context of German far-right extremism.
After decades of outsourcing mining activities, Global North governments have begun to domesticate production sites. This strategy aligns with decarbonization goals but also contributes to the emergence of new environmental conflicts and protest movements. The analysis of these movements provides an important insight into the changing shape of transnational rule in the context of resource extraction for the European Green Deal. Building on the approach to reconstruct rule from resistance, we reconstruct the anti-mining resistance movement against a lithium mine in Serbia. Tracing their tactics and addressees, we identify three main conflict actors that the movement is opposed to (the transnational mining company Rio Tinto, the Serbian government, and the European Union (EU)). By addressing these institutions, the protesters do not only constitute a multifaceted conflict constellation around the Jadar project, but they also submit an argument about who can and who is allowed to dictate to others how they ought to behave. While all involved parties play their part, the EU appears more as a structural force during the conflict, preconfiguring the possible conduct of others. Particularly, the accession process places contradictory expectations on Serbia, both enabling and restricting the agency of the government and domestic protest movements. Yet, transnational companies are likely profiting from this constellation in the long run, because the inbuilt contradiction between a commitment to green policies and a pressure to open markets to foreign investments in the context of the accession process is conducive to that end.
Accountability is a ubiquitous issue in international development cooperation. Development accountability means different things to different actors in the field and has been framed and negotiated in different ways. Governments and civil society groups in the South have historically played an important role in problematising development cooperation accountability, challenging ‘traditional’ donor priorities, ways of working and outcomes. In the 2010s—as Southern development providers grew in material, symbolic and political importance—accountability also emerged as a disputed issue within South-South development cooperation (SSC). This thesis follows a multi-sited and multi-scalar approach to understanding how accountability is being conceived and disputed in the field of SSC, in global and domestic arenas, using Brazil, China and India as paradigmatic sites for inquiry. The study examines how different forms of discursive problematisations of accountability in SSC—coming from different transnational and domestic stakeholders—interact with the politicisation of SSC at different scales, and generates new forms of accountability politics and new instances of negotiation of SSC by different actors. Assessing a kaleidoscopic and rapidly shifting landscape, this thesis shows instances where particular SSC accountability narratives and policy instruments are being generated and travelling across boundaries. It explores the kinds of sociopolitical disputes (development knowledges, geopolitical, bureaucratic and state-society relations) they create. Mapping, tracing and analysing contemporary forms of disputes over SSC accountability across scales and geographies, this study emphasises prevalent global development ‘measurementalities’ pushing Southern providers to craft alternative ways to measure (quantify and evaluate) their ‘development effort’; and the paradoxes counting and showing SSC create domestically. It also emphasises the materiality and thus political salience of certain SSC modalities, notably agricultural development and infrastructure building, as important drivers for other ongoing sociopolitical intermestic SSC accountability disputes in the three countries. Unpacking multiple global and domestic negotiations over responsibilities for doing development at home and abroad, this study offers a contribution to understanding the politicised consolidation of SSC in some of its emblematic protagonists. By doing so, it illuminates the shifting expectations of appropriate, good and just foreign policy and development cooperation in rising powers, like Brazil, China and India, in times of change.
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