Provoking Civilian Disruption against Popular Protests: The Myanmar Military’s Counter-Mobilisation Strategies
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Provoking Civilian Disruption against Popular Protests : The Myanmar Military’s Counter-Mobilisation Strategies. / Tran, Mai Van.
I: Journal of Contemporary Asia, 2023.Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskrift › Tidsskriftartikel › Forskning › fagfællebedømt
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Provoking Civilian Disruption against Popular Protests
T2 - The Myanmar Military’s Counter-Mobilisation Strategies
AU - Tran, Mai Van
N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2023 Journal of Contemporary Asia.
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - While mass contentious movements face a wide range of state-led counter-mobilisation strategies, existing studies have mainly focused on repression by the security forces and violence contractors. Much less is understood about the impact of governments’ more deceptive strategies to provoke anti-protester hostility among the public, including labelling protesters as criminals and engineering widespread violent crimes. This article examines the effectiveness of these two types of strategy by juxtaposing two similar cases of popular protests under military-ruled Myanmar: the 1988 Four-eight Uprising and 2007 Saffron Revolution. The analysis leverages a novel qualitative dataset consisting of content from state media, authoritative secondary sources, as well as original interviews and written accounts by 109 civilians who witnessed or participated in the protest events. It is found that while anti-protester narratives were ineffective, orchestration of criminal activities targeting civilians on a large scale fuelled civilian distrust toward strangers, leading adult men to disrupt protest events by unfamiliar activists. This finding underscores both the crucial role of nurturing inter-group trust in order to grow a broad-based contentious front as well as the challenging conditions for doing so when a regime is steadfastly committed to crushing dissent.
AB - While mass contentious movements face a wide range of state-led counter-mobilisation strategies, existing studies have mainly focused on repression by the security forces and violence contractors. Much less is understood about the impact of governments’ more deceptive strategies to provoke anti-protester hostility among the public, including labelling protesters as criminals and engineering widespread violent crimes. This article examines the effectiveness of these two types of strategy by juxtaposing two similar cases of popular protests under military-ruled Myanmar: the 1988 Four-eight Uprising and 2007 Saffron Revolution. The analysis leverages a novel qualitative dataset consisting of content from state media, authoritative secondary sources, as well as original interviews and written accounts by 109 civilians who witnessed or participated in the protest events. It is found that while anti-protester narratives were ineffective, orchestration of criminal activities targeting civilians on a large scale fuelled civilian distrust toward strangers, leading adult men to disrupt protest events by unfamiliar activists. This finding underscores both the crucial role of nurturing inter-group trust in order to grow a broad-based contentious front as well as the challenging conditions for doing so when a regime is steadfastly committed to crushing dissent.
KW - Contentious movement
KW - counter-mobilisation
KW - military rule
KW - Myanmar
KW - protest disruption
KW - contentious movement
KW - counter-mobilisation
KW - Mayanmar
KW - military rule
KW - protest disruption
U2 - 10.1080/00472336.2023.2219683
DO - 10.1080/00472336.2023.2219683
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85162998096
JO - Journal of Contemporary Asia
JF - Journal of Contemporary Asia
SN - 0047-2336
ER -
ID: 321852832