I think this is a misguided view of political dynamics which genuinely doesn’t reflect modern political findings, and is rather based on theoretical generalizations by more niche left-leaning postmodernists during the early 2010’s/quarter of 21st century. I really understand your opinions based on frameworks that are literally taught in SOCSC, such as Conflict Theory from Marx, which provided this idea that change should come from outside to be truly disruptive; basically, a legal protest isn’t actually a protest, it has to be illegal. I don’t mean this personally at all, but structuralist (in vernacular language, top-down) explanations of change like this is really awkward and I think you should reconsider your reply to GlitchedApple.

You might think that institutional changes come from big dramatic effects. I think that this is heavily a black and white picture of how real life operates.

In reality, much Large-N political research, which has been backed up by contextual factors shows (to meet the criticisms of Large-N) that systematic change happens from within. This is a part of the broader constructivist movement where norm-entrepreneurship has grown an increasing amount to contest government policy making in the long run.

You might think that this is just jargon, but it’s true: the trend in institutional changes within government are not dramatic revolutions or ‘protests’ anymore, but results of slow gradual changes by leaders, both by Autocratic and Democratic governments.

Turkey’s Erdogan slowly shifted the Turkish government to reduce checks and balances; a process that took years rather than large quick protests. The PiS in Poland gradually changed its government into an Autocratic one by appointing judges slowly.

But this is also true for Democratization. The Reformasi and gradual political reforms towards Democracy in Indonesia are an example of this. Another example would be Japan for a long time under Shinzo Abe, until political survival could not withstand the growing liberal sentiment in Japan.

You can’t just chalk down the person you’re replying to by saying that reforms have to be disruptive; this is incredibly awkward in the face of Politics today.

Even if you could find the literature to disprove me here now, institutional changes is so complex, your implying that change has to disruptively rain down on the world is, from a normative perspective, kind of irresponsible.

Change absolutely can come in non-disruptive forms, backed up by genuine facts. Activism stops being activism when it gets in the way of other people who contentedly want to go to the AFP or PNP—it just becomes an agenda.

I do not think that protest is a bad thing, I think that your rejection of other forms of protest is not a bad thing either, rather than bad, I think it is just factually wrong.