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Most research on Chinese protests’ outcomes focuses on aspects such as the strength, resources, and strategy choices of these protests. Although studies on Chinese contentious politics have taken great consideration of the significant role played by the state in the political process, little attention has been paid to the state itself which is actually the provider of “political opportunity”. With a state-centered perspective, this thesis examines how elite division within the authority shapes the Chinese local governments’ policy responses to popular protests. Based on a case of protest in Shifang, an environmental protest targeting the Shifang local government on its construction of a chemical plant, this study shows an elite division between the Shifang local government and the police force who were dispatched to Shifang to maintain stability by its vertical professional leadership and how this division has contributed to a successful policy outcome of this protest. To further understand the Shifang case in a larger institutional background of China’s modern political climate, this chapter provides a possible explanation that the elite division in the Shifang case is an embodiment of the structural division between Chinese local governments and the stability maintenance system which has grown into a powerful interests group as a result of the policy priority of maintaining rigid social stability in the last decade.

Most research on Chinese protests’ outcomes focuses on aspects such as the strength, resources, and strategy choices of these protests. Although studies on Chinese contentious politics have taken great consideration of the significant role played by the state in the political process, little attention has been paid to the state itself which is actually the provider of “political opportunity”. With a state-centered perspective, this thesis examines how elite division within the authority shapes the Chinese local governments’ policy responses to popular protests. Based on a case of protest in Shifang, an environmental protest targeting the Shifang local government on its construction of a chemical plant, this study shows an elite division between the Shifang local government and the police force who were dispatched to Shifang to maintain stability by its vertical professional leadership and how this division has contributed to a successful policy outcome of this protest. To further understand the Shifang case in a larger institutional background of China’s modern political climate, this chapter provides a possible explanation that the elite division in the Shifang case is an embodiment of the structural division between Chinese local governments and the stability maintenance system which has grown into a powerful interests group as a result of the policy priority of maintaining rigid social stability in the last decade.

This thesis focuses on the problem of incivility within the domains of citizen politics and civil society by exploring the proclivity for popular protest in Jamaica and the intersections between popular citizen protest, civil society and governance in this context. It scrutinizes the tenor of contemporary civilian politics and assesses the consequent impact on the quality of civil society more broadly. The thesis challenges the assumption within accepted definitions of civil society that civic participation is always positive. It does so by examining the manner in which citizens engage collectively to defend their interests and make claims upon the state, as well as the extent to which this model of political participation serves the agenda and promise of civil society. Through an in-depth, country-specific, empirical case study, the thesis examines micro social processes of power at community level to raise questions about who should be represented in civil society and how the voices of the marginalized are to be heard. In this regard, it explores the role of social inequality, feelings of social injustice and political exclusion as contributory factors in the existing tenor of citizen politics in Jamaica. It also examines the challenges facing the contemporary state and the impact of violent protests on state engagement, public action and political performance. The study analyses the lived experiences, observations and perspectives of a wide cross section of Jamaican citizens, gleaned from face-to-face interviews, focus group discussions, as well as a range of secondary material, including audio-visual data, to illuminate this process of struggle and underscore the factors which drive violent protests in this political context. The thesis concludes that maximum disruption, including violence, has not only become the basis of civil protest in Jamaica, but that the varied and contradictory responses of the state bureaucracy and political actors (Members of Parliament, activists, other political iii officials), as well as the mass media, have directly contributed to the style and tenor of protest politics in Jamaica. This state of affairs reduces popular citizen participation over genuine concerns to mob-style incivility and undermines civil society as a source of positive and responsible citizenship. The growing political importance of grassroots-based citizen participation and community building within the context of a global imperative to forge 'democracy from below' lends theoretical and normative credence to emerging concerns about the current character of popular citizen mobilizations and protest. This study thus establishes the basis for a presumption in favour of civility, civil discourse and civil action as fundamental to the construction of civil society. In doing so, it extends current scholarly understandings of civil society to Third World contexts, with a specific emphasis on Jamaica.

This thesis examines 'improvement' of wetland commons in early modern England as a contested process of rapid environmental change. As a flagship project of agrarian improvement, drainage sought to alchemise pastoral fen commons into arable enclosed terra firma and promised manifold benefits for crown, commoners, and commonwealth alike. In practice, however, improvement schemes generated friction between the political and fiscal agendas of governors and projectors and local communities' customary ways of knowing and using wetland commons, provoking the most sustained and violent agrarian unrest of the seventeenth century. This thesis situates the first state-led drainage project in England, in the northern fens of Hatfield Level, in the context of the local politics of custom, national legal and political developments, and international movements of capital, expertise, and refugees; all of which intersected to reshape perceptions and management of English wetlands. Drawing on the analytic perspectives of environmental history, this thesis explores divergent ideas and practices generating conflict over the making of private property, reorganisation of flow, and reconfiguration of lived environments. This thesis argues that different 'environing' practices - both mental and material - distinguished what was seen as an ordered or disordered landscape, determined when and how water was understood as a resource or risk, and demarcated different scales and forms of intervention. Rival visions of the fenscape, ways of knowing land and water, and concepts of value and justice were productive of, and produced by, different practices of management, ownership, and use. Drainage disputes therefore crossed different spheres of discourse and action, spanning parliament, courtroom, and commons to bring improvement into dialogue with fen custom and generate a contentious environmental politics. In seven substantive chapters, this thesis investigates how improvement was imagined, legitimised, and enacted; how fen communities experienced and navigated rapid environmental transformation; and how political, social, and spatial boundaries were reforged in the process. By grounding improvement in the early modern fenscape, this thesis reintegrates agency into accounts of inexorable socio-economic change, illuminates ideas at work in social contexts, and deepens understandings of environmental conflict.