Political Protest in South Africa during the Process of Democratization

Research on political protest has been confined largely to liberal or ‘old’ democrac ies. A vacuum exists in the analysis of authoritarian and semi-authoritarian regimes. Do we find similar trends or patterns of political protest in societies with different types of state structures, especially new democracies? Political protest is a regular feature of democratic politics in new democracies as well as in advanced democracies. Inauguration of democracy in South Africa was in the early 1990s. South Africa has experienced massive protests by citizenry in the 1980s, which replaced authoritarian with democratic regimes. Demonstrations by the mass publics were a key factor contributing to the inauguration of democracy in South Africa in the 1980s. In addition, elite-challenging political protest in South Africa has continued during the democratic consolidation period in the 1990s. This study focuses on individual level explanations of political protest in South Africa. The purpose of the study is to examine four most discussed approaches on political protest: (1) Baseline, (2) Cognitive Skills, (3) Dissatisfaction, and (4) Value Change approaches. Various determinants from these four approaches at individual level are hypothesized to affect political protest. The data set employed in this study is derived from the first, second, and third World Values Surveys in 1981-82, 1990-93, and 1995-97 for South Africa. In order to test these main hypotheses and sub-hypotheses, this study conducts OLS regression analyses pooled data set of three countries as well as data set of each country. The results of the study define that there exist differences on the four approaches’ explanatory power to protest potential in South Africa. In addition, this study finds that the four approaches’ explanatory power to protest potential had been changed in the process of democratization.