The relationship between protest and democracy has gained considerable prominence in public and scholarly debate over the past five years in the UK, as recent legislation - specifically the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and the Public Order Act 2023 - has fundamentally altered the ‘rules of engagement’ for citizens, police, and the courts. This raises several important questions for democracy and how we understand it, including the possibility for ‘governance through uncertainty’, unequal risks taken by activists, and challenges to established theories of civil disobedience. This project aims to contribute to these important discussions by establishing an interdisciplinary workshop at the University of Leicester to investigate the changing landscape of protest, law, and policing in the UK, and to consider the wider implications for democratic participation and our theoretical understanding of the changing role of protest in democracy.
The workshop will be interdisciplinary and provide an opportunity for sustained reflection and deliberation between legal scholars, political theorists, empirical researchers, and activists. It adopts a methodology which combines legal analysis, normative political theory, qualitative empirical research, and practitioner testimony in a collaborative format that prioritises structured exchange, critical engagement, and tangible research and grant outputs.
It aims to make important contributions to knowledge in three core areas: evaluating the impact on democratic participation and the quality of democracy in Britain; questioning established democratic political theory regarding protest and policing; and forming an interdisciplinary "Politics of Protest" network.
The project is directly focused on the ISRF’s core aims, including the development of new theoretical insights for democratic theory, and with a central focus on addressing critical societal problems: the narrowing and changing space for dissent in contemporary democracy, and how to understand this in terms of democratic political theory.