What is allowed and what is not allowed in demonstrations? What determines this? Certainly not only by laws, rules and regulations. Every demonstration is a negotiation game between local authorities and activists, who may be on opposite sides of the fence at the time, but who on other occasions may well be going shoulder to shoulder - for example, because they play together in the local football team or hang out at the bar at carnival time.
After Adriejan van Veen (2018) and Anne Petterson (2019, together with her Leiden colleague Anne Heyer), Carla Hoetink has now successfully managed to secure a research grant from the Fonds Staatsman Thorbecke of the KNAW. From next September onwards she will research for three years how protest defines democracy.
Her project, entitled Room for protest?, investigates on a decentralised level how democracy and public order collided in practices of and discussions about protest since 1919. What does this clash teach us about the space for protest in the Netherlands in the 20th century, about the changes that have taken place there, and the forms and options that have been excluded or increased? Room for Protest? tests the hypothesis that the balancing of interests between democracy and public order is not primarily and certainly not only determined by formal legal frameworks, but also by political-historical factors. The central aim of the project is to use these factors to explain the patterns of interaction between protesting citizens and the government.