Protests and Conflict

It is argued that civil war and protests are mutually exclusive processes. However, the prevalence of protests and their proximity with or simultaneity to armed conflict contradicts this idea. Conflict and confrontation involve different types of interactions between the state and its opponents, which can involve protests, mass mobilization, clashes, and even armed conflict. Thus, we can understand conflict as existing in a continuum. Analyzing protests and protestors as related to armed conflict may serve to widen our understanding of conflict. This chapter presents the case for linking protest with a wider understanding of conflict, considering its links with other categories of contestation such as armed conflict. We can thus envision different types of contestation as being related. If we consider this possibility, we can then analyze processes of escalation and de-escalation between different expresions of contestation. This chapter reflects on the similarities and differences between different categories used to understand contestation, focusing on the categories of protests, civil conflict, and civil war. I claim that while a distinction between protests and armed violence is often made on the basis of the degree of violence involved in these proc