Political Power and Manufacturing Consent: The Case of the 1953 Plzeň Protests

ABSTRACT

Extant research has investigated the relationship between the powerful and the powerless in a variety of contexts. Understanding the processes undergirding political power is critical to uncovering subtle social control mechanisms, specifically as they contribute to public consent and quiescence. We draw on the case of protest in Communist Czechoslovakia to investigate the mechanisms elites employ to protect their legitimacy. Data include governmental and court archives, first and secondhand accounts, and in-depth interviews. Our findings provide a foundation for conceptualizing political power as a multidimensional interplay, and adds conceptual distinction between consent and quiescence as goals of political rule.

KEYWORDS:

• Power
• quiescence
• protest
• legitimacy
• social control

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation [SES-1411825].

Notes on contributors

Thomas E. Shriver

Thomas E. Shriver is Professor of Sociology at North Carolina State University. His primary research interests are social movements, environmental sociology, political sociology and environmental justice. He studies protest and repression in various political and historical contexts. He is currently studying dissident activities in authoritarian settings, as well as environmental activism in several contaminated communities in the United States and the Czech Republic.

Alison E. Adams

Alison E. Adams is Assistant Professor in the School of Forest Resources and Conservation at the University of Florida. Her research interests center on environmental sociology and social movements. She is currently examining community conflict surrounding environmental issues such as industrial contamination and controversial land use decisions. Her work has been published in outlets such as Social Forces, Mobilization, and Research in Social Movements, Conflict and Change.

Laura A. Bray

Laura A. Bray is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at North Carolina State University. Her research interests center on environmental sociology and social movements. In recent projects, she has studied state repression of protest and dissent, as well as mobilization under conditions of threat. For her dissertation, she is examining the historical formation of water inequality in the southwestern US, focused specifically on the intersections of rurality, race, and indigeneity.