Academic literature on the topic 'Public contestation'

This dissertation consists in an empirical study of the relationship between democracy and political confidence in East Asia, a region of our globe that goes from Mongolia to Indonesia, as Northern and Southern limits, and from Myanmar to Japan, as Western and Eastern borders. The study of individuals’ confidence in public institutions, often linked with the more general discussion about political legitimacy, arguably represents one of the most analysed and debated topics of political science. Nonetheless, the almost entirety of our knowledge about this relationship derives from theoretical discussion and empirical investigations about the impact, or potential impact, of citizens’ confidence in institutions on democratic viability. Although during the last two decades a burgeoning number of studies about the the interplay between institutions and individuals’ political confidence has been produced, studies investigating this relationship from the opposite perspective, namely the extent to which democracy impacts on individual confidence in institutions, has been seldom investigated. Institutional studies of political confidence have been increasingly focusing on the extent to which the economic or political performance of state institutions and authorities, or other features of the political system, such as the fairness, responsiveness, and honesty of political process, affect citizens’ confidence in institutions. In those few cases in which the essential features of a democratic system have been considered as potential antecedents of individual confidence in institutions these effects have been investigated in and across democratic regimes, especially in the European and North American contexts. As a consequence, what it is contended is that our knowledge of this relationship, and the largely positive view about said relationship, is to a large extent contingent on the contexts in which it has been studied. For this reason, this work steps out from the usual yard of normative debates and empirical studies about this topic, and focuses on East Asia, a region of our globe providing several opportunities (and challenges) to empirically investigate individual confidence in institutions and its interplay with political institutions. East Asia nowadays represents one of the most heterogeneous regions of our world on a plethora of structural and systemic features. Among these, East Asia presents a remarkable variety of political systems, ranging from single-party autocratic regimes to pluralistic liberal-democracies, and including several types of ‘hybrid’ regimes, fitting in neither categories. Since the late 1990s and early 2000s data about individual attitudes and behavior across this variety of regimes have been collected, allowing scholars and researchers to reassess, and in some cases challenge, issues and assumptions about a long list of political phenomena, including political confidence. In- deed, while individual-level studies of political confidence in this region have shown that the dynamics generating different degrees of confidence across individuals overlap with those seen in other regions of our globe, descriptive studies of cross-national variations of political confidence in this region have shown that individual confidence in institutions, during the last two decades, has been invariably higher in non-democratic regimes as compared to democratic countries. Several hypotheses and arguments, although scarcely investigated, have been developed in order to explain these aggregate regularities. Some authors attempted to explain these variations following socio-deterministic theories about an increasing mismatch between individual basic orientations to politics and the reality of their political systems determined by socioeconomic modernization, that is the so-called ‘critical citizens’ theory, or enduring cultural traditions, the so-called ‘Asian Values’ argument. Others have pointed their attention on differences in terms of (especially economic) performance of East Asian governments. Still others have called into question the reliability and validity of individual confidence measures in non-democratic settings. Few scholars have considered the idea that these differences may be related to structural characteristics of the political processes that differentiate democratic regimes from non-democratic ones. In this work, although accounting for alternative explanations both theoretically and empirically, this latter perspective is developed and investigated. Building on arguments and evidence concerning the effects of political competition outputs (namely, election results) on individual-level variations of confidence in institutions, and relying on the renowned theoretical and analytical comparative framework developed by Robert Dahl (1971) in its seminal study on political participation and opposition, this thesis aims to investigate how an essential characteristic of any political system, namely the extent to which a regime provides institutional guarantees for public contestation to a more or less broad share of its population, affects individuals’ confidence in institutions. In order to provide a rigorous, specific, but also comprehensive empirical assessment of this topic, this dissertation is structured as follows. Chapter 1 is dedicated to a theoretical and conceptual discussion about the notion of political confidence and the main explanations of its origins, starting from which the broad research question inspiring this dissertation is presented. About the former topic, building on relatively recent theoretical and conceptual developments, what it is contended is that the notion of confidence is conceptually distinct to the notion of trust, and the former should be preferred to the latter in order to conceptualize the relationship between individuals and public institutions (Ch. 1, Sect. 1.2.1). Furthermore, the relationship between this notion and the related concepts of regime legitimacy and political support is critically assessed in order to define the peculiar nature of the individual attitude under investigation (Ch. 1, Sect. 1.2.2). The chapter, then, continues with a reassessments of the second topic mentioned above, namely a review of theories and explanations of political confidence, based on the ubiquitous categorization of theories of political phenomena distinguishing between culturalist and institutionalist arguments (Ch. 1, Sect. 1.3). Building on these two sections the chapter ends with a discussion concerning the scope of these explanations, and briefly reviewing the debate about the relationship between democracy and political confidence (Ch. 1, Sect. 1.4). In particular, what is claimed is that, while providing opposite and to some extent irreconcilable perspectives about the determinants of political confidence, current theories and explanations of this phenomenon lack arguments assessing the systemic impact of democracy on individual confidence in institutions, for both theoretical reasons and the already mentioned focus of theoretical discussions and empirical investigation on democratic settings, driving to a contingent understanding of the relationship between democracy and political confidence. What it is contended, thus, is that for assessing this issue a different analytical strategy is needed. Chapter 2 is, thus, dedicated to developing the specific argument of this thesis (Ch. 2, Sect. 2.2), discussing the state of art of the empirical research dedicated to political confidence in East Asia, thus introducing the geopolitical context in which this work is situated (Ch. 2, Sect. 2.3), and finally presenting the research design adopted to investigate the main puzzle and related research questions of this research effort (Sect. 2.4). The first section (Sect. 2.2.1) clarifies which is the notion of democracy adopted in this study, that consists in Dahl’s (1971, 1989, 1998) notion of polyarchy and the theoretical and analytical framework that has been produced around this notion (e.g. Coppedge and Reinicke 1990; Coppedge et al. 2008; Teorell et al. 2019). The section then continues (Sect. 2.2.2) with an explanation of why varying levels of democracy are interpreted as variations of levels of public contestation, one of the two dimensions informing the notion of democracy used in this work. The following pages are then dedicated to a discussion about why and how variations of institutional features and dimensions identified by the notion of democracy used in this thesis can be related to varying levels of individuals’ confidence in institutions (Sect. 2.2.3). What it is contended is that variations of these attributes shape the structure of incentives and constraints affecting individuals assessments of institutions and authorities trustworthiness, and that higher degrees of public contestation are likely to produce both positive and negative incentives for individuals’ confidence in public institutions. The following section is then dedicated to the state of art of the study of political confidence in this region, that highlights the main findings and gaps about aggregate- level and individual-level studies of political confidence in this region. By doing so, in this section the East Asian context is presented and the opportunities and challenges given by the structural heterogeneity of this region are discussed, and the necessity of a study able to fill the the lack of contextual analyses of political confidence in this region is underlined. Then, Finally, the chapter ends presenting the specific research questions investigated in the following chapters and the research strategy employed to address these questions (Sect. 2.4.1), as well as the main individual-level and contextual-level data bases of this empirical study (Sect. 2.4.2). The following three chapters of the thesis (Chs. 3, 4, and 5) consist in the three sets of empirical analyses used to address the research questions and the main hypothesis grounding this work. Chapter 3 presents a dimensionality analysis of political confidence in East Asia. What it is claimed is that in order to properly analyse the relationship between democracy and political confidence, what is needed is a prior assessment of whether East Asians confidence in institutions represent a single and general assessment of public institutions, or rather a multidimensional attitude (an assessment seldom performed in previous research). Consequently, this chapter, building on the ongoing debate about political confidence dimensionality in Europe (Ch. 3, Sect. 3.2), and after presenting the main expectations derived by translating this debate in investigates this issue through the means of exploratory and (multi-group) confirmatory factor analyses (EFA and CFA), applied to (almost) all the studies composing the first four rounds of the ABS (Ch. 3, Sect. 3.3). The main finding of this chapter is that, despite the crucial diversities of the countries included in this study on a series of structural factors potentially affecting the way in which East Asians organize their attitudes toward public institutions, a common factor structure of political confidence in this region can be found, and that this configuration consists in a two-dimensional conception distinguishing between confidence in political institutions (e.g. national governments and national assemblies) and confidence in implementative institutions (e.g. civil services and police forces). Chapter 4 is then dedicated to an analysis of these two types of political confidence in the aggregate. In the first part of the chapter, a descriptive analysis of East Asians’ confidence in both political and implementative institutions is provided (Ch. 4, Sect. 4.2). In this part the cross-national variations of political confidence already highlighted by previous research are presented, although in a broader picture, spanning across approximately fifteen years of evidence provided by the ABS data. The stable differences between East Asian countries are then assessed through a bivariate and multivariate correlational analyses, performed in order to test alternative explanations of these cross-national patterns (Ch. 4, Sect. 4.4 and Sect. 4.5). What it is shown is that the selected indicator of political contestation levels consistently negatively correlates with the index dedicated to ABS respondents’ political confidence, representing the best predictor of cross-national variations of aggregate levels of these attitudes, outperforming all the alternative explanations. What the chapter shows, however, is that the impact of contestation on aggregate levels of political confidence is much stronger for confidence in political institutions as compared to confidence in implementative ones. Chapter 5 then represents the last empirical chapter of this dissertation, and presents a multilevel analysis of political confidence, spanning across the second, third, and fourth rounds of the ABS, and providing an assessment of both individual-level and contextual-level determinants of political confidence, and their interplay. After providing hypotheses concerning the relationship between relevant individual-level antecedents of political confidence as identified by previous research, and expectations concerning the direct and indirect effect of the contextual variable of interest (Ch. 5, Sect. 5.2), a series of hierarchical linear regression models (HLMs) are performed in order to account for both individual-level and contextual-level variation of political confidence (Ch. 5, Sect. 5.4). What these models provide is, first, a reassessment of previous findings about the direct effect of political contestation on confidence in political institutions and confidence in implementative institutions, partially confirming previous results, but also highlighting even more the different impact of political contestation on the two indices of political confidence, strong and statistically significant for average levels of confidence in political institutions, while much weaker and even not significant in affecting confidence in implementative ones. Second, the HLMs return a clear picture about the individual-level determinants of political confidence in this region, showing how institutional performance indicators represent the best individual-level predictors of confidence across all the contexts considered, and how their effects vary according to the type of political confidence taken into account. Third, these models show how the indirect effect of political contestation, considered as a moderating factor of the effect of some individual-level determinants, operates differently according to the type of political confidence considered, moderating the effect of individual-level variables when considering confidence in implementative institutions but not in the case of the other type investigated in this work. The chapter, hence, returns a rather puzzling scenario that is further discussed in the last section of this chapter (Ch. 5, Sect. 5.5). The dissertation, then, concludes with a reassessment of the main findings proposed in previous chapters, the limitations of the study, and the main implications for the empirical study of political confidence in East Asia and beyond.

The central arguments in this thesis rest on two premises. Firstly language and context are intimately bound up in the social construction of workplace gender inequalities. Secondly, organisational understandings and management of women�s access to employment opportunities and rewards in modern bureaucratic organisations are constituted through discourses or systems of organisational knowledges, practices and rules of organising. This study uses the concept of discourse to account for the productive and powerful role of knowledge and language practices in constituting the organisational contexts and meanings through which people make sense of and experience complex organisations.

In the 1990s, New Zealand's curriculum for the compulsory schooling sector was to undergo complete revision following the administrative reforms of the 1980s. The development of each new curriculum document followed a business model in which the Ministry of Education put the development process out for competitive tender. The successful bidders were to complete their tasks to strict Ministry guidelines and under the scrutiny of the Ministry's Curriculum Review Committee and the Minister's Policy Advisory Group. After the completion of a draft version, public consultation and school trials, a final curriculum document would be prepared and mandated as the legal curriculum requirements for New Zealand government-funded schools. The process that the fifth document, Social Studies in the New Zealand Curriculum, was to undergo proved to be elongated and controversial. As such, it provides a case study through which to examine, critique and theorise the nature of curriculum construction at a macro-level, in this case, at a national level. This study of the development of Social Studies in the New Zealand Curriculum illuminates three broad themes in curriculum construction - context, complexity and contestation. These themes arise from the literature and are reinforced by the study's findings. The study set out to: provide detailed description and analysis of an example of curriculum construction; use the selected case study to demonstrate the importance of the broader contexts within which curriculum construction occurs; problematise the notion of curriculum construction by highlighting the complexities in and around the process; articulate the contested nature of selecting and presenting curriculum contents; and provide insights into the personal and affective side of involvement in a macrolevel curriculum construction process. There are three main sources of data - the process itself, the products (three versions of Social Studies in the New Zealand Curriculum) and the people involved. A range of data gathering methods is used from primarily historical and ethnographic research within a qualitative framework. The main data gathering tools are archival research, document analysis and open-ended interviewing. As the data are mainly textual--either as original documents or created texts, as in interview transcripts-analytic strategies include content, thematic, semiotic and discourse analysis. Social constructionism (Burr, 1995) provides a unifying theoretical approach to frame the research design and analysis. In this dissertation, the background to the study, the findings and the discussion are interwoven and presented through three story strands - institutional, contextual and personal. The institutional strand aims to tell "what happened". The contextual strand aims to explain "why things happened as they did", "in what circumstances" and "why this might be important". The personal strand aims to give more prominence to the role of individuals in such a process, that is, "who was involved, how did individuals impact upon curriculum construction and how did the process impact upon them?" The layout of the dissertation also highlights the interwoven and complex nature of the ideas being explored. It is necessary to push the boundaries of a more traditional format to keep the notions of complexity and contestation to the fore. This manifests itself in the way that the chapter headings are based around the three story strands, the literature is integrated throughout the study and multi-layered stories and multiple interpretations are given. Within this framework, the usual features of a conventional research report - background, context, literature, theoretical underpinnings, methodological choices, findings and discussion - are still to be found but some liberty is taken to "open up the complications that [would] have been smoothed over" (Stronach & MacLure, 1997, p. 5) in more traditional dissertations. The findings are analysed and presented in a variety of ways - as a chronology and a set of critical incidents to outline the process, as textual and visual analysis to examine the products, and through personal stories to illuminate the experiences of the people involved. Theorising from the data is problematised by using a range of theoretical explanations before proffering a synthesised model of curriculum construction as a multidimensional process. The findings from this study form two clusters - those that relate to the specific case study (the development of Social Studies in the New Zealand Curriculum) and those that provide deeper understanding of the broader nature of curriculum construction. The two sets of findings also demonstrate the interrelated nature of the three data sources - the process, the products and the people. In relation to the specific case study, there is clear evidence of the acceptance of social studies as a curriculum area in New Zealand with its own identity and integrity. The study also documents the historical development of social studies as a curriculum area and provides a detailed account of the contested nature of the development of the current social studies curriculum statement Social Studies in the New Zealand Curriculum. The other finding, relating specifically to the New Zealand context but which should give heart to practitioners everywhere, is the resilience of committed educators when faced with opposing ideological forces determined to undermine their position. This is exemplified in this case study by the social studies community's ability to reclaim control over the contents of the curriculum despite strong opposition from the Business Roundtable and other neo-liberal and neo-conservative forces. What is also revealed is that in order to achieve an acceptable outcome, a curriculum construction process needs both consultation and critique. Social Studies in the New Zealand Curriculum is all the stronger as a product because of the depth of the surrounding debate and this, in turn, strengthened the credibility of both the curriculum area and its supporters. The findings that relate to broader notions of curriculum construction either confirm key themes from the literature, expand upon some that are less explicit or offer new insights. The three touchstones of this study - context, complexity and contestation - were constantly reinforced through the gathering and analysis of the data, and confirmed by the findings. That curriculum construction is subject to a range of contextual factors - historical, social, cultural, political, economic and/or educational; that the process is complex and multi-layered; that the process is highly political and contested; and that the process and products are influenced by powerful individuals and groups both inside and outside the process, are all strongly confirmed by, and even consolidated in, this study. Notions alluded to in the literature that find stronger expression in this study relate to the nature of contestation throughout the process of curriculum construction. A model using Bourdieu's notions of field, capital and habitus (after Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977) allows stronger articulation of features such as polarisation, factionalisation, the forging of alliances and the fluid status of participants. The data reveal the curriculum construction process in a constant state of flux and subject to much serendipity. The findings also strengthen the notion that the products of a curriculum construction process are not ends in themselves but reveal much about the nature of the contestation and, indeed, lay the groundwork for future contested interpretations. New insights that arise from this study include an articulation of the strategies, such as compromise, contingency and expediency, that participants use to achieve their ends. These are often at the expense of participants' underpinning principles or adherence to particular curriculum development models. Significant insights come from the in-depth investigation of the emotional side of curriculum construction. The data reveal that the struggle for control over curriculum contents is an emotionally-charged process; that participants in the process wrestle with the differences between their own personal platforms, their ideological influences, the groups they represent and the requirements of the task; that contestation occurs between those setting and those completing the task, especially in relationship to professional decision-making and intellectual ownership; and that no consideration is given to the emotional cost of involvement in such large-scale curriculum construction processes. In summary, context shapes the unique nature of curriculum construction processes and products. If an understanding of these factors is tempered with an awareness of the complex and multi-dimensional nature of curriculum construction this will strengthen the process and could lessen the negative effects of ideologically-motivated or emotionally-charged involvement in the process. Finally, as contestation in curriculum construction is unavoidable in such high-stakes processes, consultation and critique should be seen as opportunities (rather than threats), to enhance the credibility of the final product.

De la construction de centrales jusqu’au traitement des déchets radioactifs, le nucléaire ne cesse de susciter les désaccords. La thèse se focalise sur le cas de la Lorraine, qui entre dans le nucléaire français dès 1978 avec la centrale de Cattenom (Moselle) et poursuit son développement avec le projet de centre de stockage de déchets radioactifs Cigéo (Meuse/Haute-Marne). Situé à l’échelle des territoires, le travail montre comment les populations essaient d’empêcher ces projets. Cette approche questionne l’opposition classique entre « pro » et « anti » nucléaires, pour observer ce qui pose problème à ceux qui décident d’entrer dans la contestation. Pour cela, la notion de désaccord montre la diversité des oppositions à Cattenom et Cigéo, qui ne sont pas toujours menées par des écologistes. Selon leur forme, les désaccords induisent une certaine perception des situations, orientent les conduites des acteurs, produisent du sens pour ceux qui y participent ou y assistent par médias interposés. Menée en sciences de l’information et de la communication, la thèse brosse les régimes de désaccord qui marquent la contestation du nucléaire en Lorraine depuis quarante ans. Celle-ci s’organise autour de deux pôles : les controverses des « citoyens-enquêteurs » et les polémiques de militants occupants le territoire. L’enquête de terrain couplée au corpus de documents médiatiques et numériques montre que les acteurs s’expriment dans des arènes qui orientent l’action et les discours. Enfin, l’évolution de la communication vers des formes narratives comme le film ou le jeu vidéo traduisent une volonté de raconter l’histoire passée et à venir de la controverse
From the building of power plants through nuclear waste management, the nuclear energy never stops to cause disagreements. The thesis focus on Lorraine’s case, which stepped into the French nuclear program since 1978 with Cattenom nuclear plant (in Moselle) and continues its development with the nuclear radioactive waste disposal Cigéo (in Meuse/Haute-Marne).From the scale of territories, the work shows how people try to impeach those projects. This approach examines the classic opposition between "pro" and "anti" nuclear people. To achieve this, the notion of disagreement the diversity of Cattenom and Cigéo protests, which aren’t always led by ecologists. Depending their form, disagreements have an impact on the perception of situations, the actor’s behaviors, and produce sens for those participating or watching through media. Done in media and communication studies, the thesis covers the disagreement schemes of forty years of nuclear protest in Lorraine. These protests are built around two poles: “citizens-investigators’” controversies and activists occupiers’ polemics. The field work associated to the collection of media and digital documents shows that actors express themselves in arenas, which impact their action and discourses. Finally, communication evolves towards narrative forms, such as video and video games. It shows that actors will to tell the controversy’s past and future

Why and how do ordinary citizens lacking previous activist experience, come, at certain times, to stage protests, block roads, close public administrations, or occupy public spaces, in order to reclaim what they consider is their right? In Egypt, ordinary people have increasingly, albeit occasionally, endorsed protest as a means to press demands, as shown by a continuous frequency of popular mobilisations despite a very repressive context since July 2013. However, despite the persistence of serious grievances and limited results, most of these collective actions have not exceeded the local scale, remaining dispersed, discontinuous and ephemeral. This thesis argues that beyond repression and other authoritarian constraints, which only provide a partial explanation, most popular mobilisations are also prevented from expanding by the vicissitudes of leadership on the one hand, and a set of local sociocultural features on the other. Beyond traditional social movement studies, which mainly focused on urban and organised movements, this thesis analyses ordinary people’s isolated protests characterised by a basic organisation and a strong local anchorage. Based on fieldwork in southern Upper Egypt between January 2014 and April 2015, it provides an account of recent local dynamics of (de)mobilisation. Focusing on these discontinuous, dispersed and ephemeral forms of activism, it sheds light on the factors that interact in preventing a widening of local collective action. These factors include leaders’ limited ambitions, experience, and difficulties in coordinating in a highly authoritarian environment; activists’ co-optation; local logics of patronage and loyalties; gender, generational and other social divisions; and perceptions of cultural identity. The thesis also establishes that current national campaigns, mainly revolutionary change, labour protests and the proMuslim Brotherhood protest movement, do not appeal to the majority due to their lack of alternative political projects and perceived exclusionary character. This ultimately suggests why the beginning of a revolution was suspended.

A crucial contemporary public health issue is the construction and contestation of the relevance of the natural world to human health. Taking a critical approach, this thesis examines how the natural environment as a health determinant is positioned in relation to the 'social' within social epidemiological studies of health, illness and disease. Using conceptual and empirical forms of enquiry, this study shows how current constructions of natural environmental health drivers contour public health practice in the UK and that by challenging the limits of existing structures, innovative responses emerge, which can generate new frameworks for health policy and practice. Having identified a lacuna in research on the 'natural' environment in medical sociology, this inductive qualitative research project brings into conversation the findings from extensive desk and field research. Specially, a study of the elaboration of environmental health discourses within the UK public health policy arena and disciplinary wide discourse analyses of key academic journals are read together to describe the discursive practices shaping environmental public health work in the UK. Linking theory to practice, data from in-depth interviews with sixty health professionals working on health and the environment in the UK and internationally are used to investigate how public health practitioners produce the environment within their work remits. The research breaks ground for further social scientific studies of health and the environment and in particular substantiates the call for an extended notion of the 'environment' using ecological principles. Methodologically, the interdisciplinary reach of this research draws attention to the tensions that arise when working across the medical, natural and social sciences. Practical and philosophical questions about the challenge of expanding the sociological imagination in the contemporary moment are also considered. Empirically, to medical sociology the 'EcoBioPsychoSocial' framework is offered as a tool for studying health at the nexus between the 'social' and the 'natural environment.' Finally, the ways informal public health institutions are serving as 'invisible' forces impeding the uptake of prevention oriented environmental health policies are findings offered to the health policy arena.

Malgré leur position défavorable dans les hiérarchies du pouvoir, les jeunesjouent un rôle majeur dans les processus de changement sociopolitique qui ontcours dans la société burkinabè. Ce groupe social semble alors constituer un outilefficace d’analyse du politique et, plus précisément, des rapports de contestation etde domination qui sont à l’oeuvre au Burkina Faso. En effet, les jeunes développentde multiples stratégies d’inscription dans l’espace public qui constituent, à desdegrés et selon des modalités différentes, des formes de contestation de l’ordrepolitique. Ainsi, en nous appuyant sur trois catégories de jeunesse (les étudiantssyndiqués, les jeunes des rues et les jeunes rappeurs ou adeptes de hip-hop), nousavons cherché à interroger, dans une perspective diachronique, la nature desrapports de domination à l’oeuvre dans la société burkinabè. Nous constatons quela portée limitée de ces formes de contestation de l’ordre établi s’explique engrande partie par le contexte hégémonique dans lequel elles s’inscrivent. Ainsi, lesressorts de la domination caractéristiques de l’ordre politique actuel reposent,selon nous, sur une « politique de la médiation » et sur une stratégie de« cooptation néo-patrimoniale » qui permettent le désamorçage des tensions et lerèglement des conflits, selon des procédures bien précises, avec pour objectif lapréservation de l’image consensuelle de l’ordre politique. Ces deux dimensionsconstituent, selon nous, les piliers d’une « culture politique » qui irradie unemultitude d’espaces sociaux et qui permet un échange médiatisé et permanent entredirigeants et dirigés
In spite of their unfavourable position in the hierarchies of power, youngpeople play a major role in the processes of social political change, which occur inthe Burkina Faso society. Hence, this social group seems to be a good instrumentto efficiently analyse policy, and moreover the processes of contestation anddomination at work in Burkina Faso. Indeed, young people develop numerousstrategies carried out in public places, which to varying degrees and termsconstitute forms of contestation against the political order. Thus by relying onthree categories of youth (unionised students, street youth, and young rappers orfollowers of the hip-hop movement), we sought to examine in a diachronicperspective, the nature of relationships of dominance at work in the Burkina Fasosociety. We find that the limited impact of these forms of contestations against theestablished order can be largely explained by the hegemonic context in which theyarise. Therefore, in our mind, the characteristic domination of the current politicalorder are based on “the strategies of mediation” and “neo-patrimonial cooptation”,which diffuse tensions and regulate conflicts, according to very precise procedures,with the aim to preserve the consensual image of the political culture. In ouropinion, these two dimensions constitute the pillars of a “political culture”, whichspreads out from a multitude of social spaces and creates a permanent, mediatisedexchange between rulers and those who are ruled