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From Reform To Resignation: Explaining Why Some Protest Movements Escalate Demands, Sooyeon Kang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

One of the unresolved puzzles in the civil resistance and contentious politics literatures relates to the fact that some movements that begin as reformist (seeking redress in a certain policy space) escalate to maximalist claims (demanding the ouster of a national leader or the entire regime) – a process I call “demand escalation.” For instance, in the summer of 2019, thousands took to the streets of Hong Kong to protest a proposed extradition bill that would allow criminal suspects to be sent to mainland China to face trial in courts controlled by the Communist Party. However, even after Hong Kong’s …