Правительство Российской Федерации
Федеральное государственное автономное образовательное
учреждение высшего профессионального образования
"Национальный исследовательский университет
"Высшая школа экономики"
Общеуниверситетская Кафедра публичной политики
Программа дисциплины Управление конфликтами
(Freedom of Peaceful Assembly)
для направления 030200.68«Политология» подготовки магистра
для магистерской программы «Политический анализ и публичная
политика»
Авторы программы:
Беляева Н.Ю., кандидат наук, профессор, politanaliz@gmail.com
McRobie Heather PhD Scholar Oxford University
Одобрена на заседании общеуниверситетской кафедры публичной политики
«___»____________ 2012г.
Зав. Кафедрой Н.Ю.Беляева
Рекомендована секцией УМС [Введите название секции УМС]
«___»____________ 2012г.
Председатель [Введите И.О. Фамилия]
Утверждена УС факультета [Введите название факультета]
«___»_____________2012г.
Ученый секретарь [Введите И.О. Фамилия] ________________________
[подпись]
Freedom of Peaceful Assembly
Initial ideas for a taught course/ lecture series
(Preliminary Program)
Learning goals
 To give a coherent definition of freedom of political assembly, as well as
the related concepts of civil resistance, non-violent conflict, and structural
violence, and to be able to use these definitions appropriately in context,
and understand how they operate in political and policy discourse.
 To consider the historical emergence of freedom of political assembly as a
civil and political right, and contextualise this in the broader discussion of
the historical emergence of two ‘kinds’ of rights – civil and political on the
one hand and economic, cultural and social on the other.
 To analyse freedom of political assembly as a civil and political right and
situate it in the literature on civil and political rights, whilst recognising
the academic literature that points out the limitations to creating a binary
of two kinds of rights.
 To ground the new knowledge – concepts and examples – learned in this
course in the wider knowledge the students are acquiring elsewhere in
the programme on the concept of ‘civil society’.
 To consider the right to strike from the perspective of freedom of political
assembly, and assess the limitations of considering the right to strike
through this conceptual lens.
 To examine the role of gender (and other categories of identity as
appropriate) in analyzing both the concept and practice of freedom of
political assembly.
 To familiarize themselves with (historical and contemporary) significant
cases of the exercise of freedom of political assembly.
Lectures/seminars/classes to provide conceptual overviews:
These can give the students the different conceptual tools and frameworks
through which to approach the specific case studies.
1.
One class or seminar: What is Freedom of Peaceful Assembly? How is it
defined in (international) human rights law, and how is it defined and
discussed in human rights philosophy literature?
2.
One class or seminar (to build on above): Freedom of Peaceful Assembly
as a Civil and Political Right. This can introduce the idea of ‘civil and
political rights’ in international human rights law, versus ESC rights.
Some discussion on how the two ‘types’ of rights have been historically
deployed (particularly as a terrain on which twentieth-century
geopolitical power struggles played out). Also highlight the interesting
recent work using the capabilities approach by Amartya Sen, Nussbaum
et al, who argue that the division between ‘civil and political’ rights on the
one hand, and ‘economic, social and cultural’ rights on the other is
misplaced, as the two ‘types’ of rights are mutually reinforcing.
3.
One class or seminar (to build upon the introductory one; could come
second): The concepts of ‘civil resistance’ and ‘non-violent conflict’.
Introduce the ideas and literature on ‘civil resistance’, such as work of
James King, Jack DuVall, Erica Chenoweth, ‘A Force More Powerful’ (could
do a screening of this?) and the ideas within this of how ‘civil resistance’
can be effective or ineffective. Some case studies can be presented of
where tactics from the paradigm of ‘civil resistance’ were self-consciously
deployed – e.g Otpor in Serbia in 1990s-2000, anti-Milosevic movement
self-consciously trained and used language and ideas of ‘civil resistance.’
(However this class or seminar could be focused more on ideas than case
studies, of which there are many). Also include some of the dissenting
academic literature that criticizes the conceptual categories of ‘civil
resistance’ and ‘non-violent conflict.’
4.
One class or seminar (to come after all of above) The ‘conflict’ in nonviolent conflict. Keeping with the extensive literature on civil resistance,
which uses the idea of ‘non-violent conflict’ – is ‘conflict’ really a word to
use to describe peaceful resistance? Pros and cons of using this language,
raising the academic literature on this such as Garang’s idea of ‘structural
violence’, ‘institutional violence’, etc. Can also lead to teaching the
literature on police brutality and ways of conceptualising the policeprotester interaction and dynamic [I know of several academic studies
looking at case studies on the police-protesters interaction, which could
fit in well here]. Could also introduce e.g Foucauldian perspectives on idea
of ‘peacefulness’ and ‘non-peacefulness’ as constructs of state power, the
‘respectability politics’ of who is allowed to protest and how.
5.
One class or seminar (after introductory one, but can be anywhere after):
What constitutes ‘assembly’? Overview of the literature on this, such as
idea of assembly as a kind of exercising of one’s citizenship (an idea from
Rousseau onwards). Also more contemporary issues, such as whether
online protests involve ‘assembling’. Historical issues to be noted such as
discriminatory practices of not allowing people of certain groups or
identities to ‘assemble’.
6.
One class or seminar: (after introductory class, but early on) ‘Civil society’
and freedom of assembly. The content of this depends on what the
students are learning elsewhere, as do not want to repeat the basic
literature on civil society as a concept if they are being taught this
elsewhere in the Masters programme. But here we could introduce
concepts that students may not be familiar with, such as ‘protest publics’
(vs. ‘protest movements’) and literature on the sociology of protest
‘alliances’. Depending on what the students have already studied, could
introduce some literature from political philosophy from the
Enlightenment onwards on ‘the citizen-state relationship.’
7.
One class or seminar: The right to strike. The international legal
protections of this, the historical emergence of ‘labour law’ – is the right
to strike a civil and political right, or primarily a ‘labour right’? Highlight
the seminal academic literature on this. Gendered dimensions – exercise
of ‘right to strike’ historically dependent on organised labour, as labour
markets are gendered (e.g domestic workers, ‘maids’ etc often women), is
the ‘right to strike’ a gendered right? There is some interesting literature
on this. This topic leads to the literature on the interplay between ‘civil
society’ and ‘trade unions’ – this can be incorporated if it is not being
taught to the students elsewhere in their studies, but I don’t want to
duplicate.
8.
One class or seminar: Identity and freedom of peaceful assembly. This
is closer to the longstanding literature on ‘protest movements’, but could
also be brought in here, i.e identity and action in freedom of peaceful
assembly, and the literature on whether assembly is always ‘goaloriented’ or rather also ‘identity-oriented.’
Case studies to be taught
Can be taught as seminars or classes, or given to students as assignments for
them to research and then present to the other students so that the whole group
is given an overview of them. As there are of course hundreds of possible case
studies, I have listed here the ones I would be particularly interested in teaching,
and which I have prior knowledge of from my own research and academic work.
Historically significant cases that also provide us with conceptual tools:
Anti-apartheid protests in South Africa and anti-apartheid solidarity in the west;
anti-Vietnam protests in the US; the American civil rights movement in the
1960s; the ‘Prague Spring’/1968 as a ‘historical moment’; the Arab revolutions of
2011 and the ‘Arab spring’ as a ‘historical moment’.
 2014 Bosnian protests and plenums: good case study to highlight the
variable of the shift from ‘assembly’ to other forms of collectivities (i.e the
plenums)
 Occupy movement: good case study for the issue/idea/tensions within a
“leaderless movement”
 Euromaidan and Electric Yerevan: good recent case studies for issues of
identity and freedom of assembly
-Anti-austerity protests, c.2010 to present: ‘anti-austerity’ protests are a good
prism through which to explore a number of ideas such as transnational idea
sharing, the dynamic between protests and political parties, and also
encroachment on freedom of political assembly (as in the UK case where
protesters were ‘kettled’ by the police). The four countries that may work best
to explore these ideas may be: Spain, Italy, UK and Greece.