1980 - Political Protest - 2026

Criticism of globalization, movements for democracy and self-determination, climate protests

"Go tell the Powers, stranger passing by, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie.“

This chronology was compiled in parts with LLM. Dont trust, doubt everything. Participant figures are estimates (police, organisers, media) and often strongly disputed.

Three strands of mobilization run through the last 45 years. These strands have a shared repertoire but different opponents and different vulnerabilities.

Strand A – transnational economic-ecological protest: against debt regimes, free trade, financial markets, and since ~2009 for climate justice (Zapatistas → Seattle → Genoa → Copenhagen → Ende Gelände / Fridays for Future)

Strand B – national movements for democracy and self-determination: against dictatorships, occupation, electoral fraud, and authoritarian consolidation (Solidarność → People Power → Otpor → Arab Spring → Belarus, Iran)

Strand C – hybrids: movements in which economic grievance and democratic demand fuse (Argentina 2001, Indignados/Occupy, Sudan 2019, Algeria's Hirak)

1945 - PRELUDE - 1980

After 1945, protest organizes itself around three lines that later flow into this timeline: decolonization, civil rights and the peace movement. India's independence (1947), the Bandung Conference (1955) and the Algerian War made the "Third World" a political subject. The US civil rights movement (Montgomery 1955/56, March on Washington 1963) supplied the repertoire: sit-in, boycott, mass march. In parallel, the Easter marches against nuclear weapons emerged in Europe (CND, 1958). In the Eastern Bloc, 1953 (GDR), 1956 (Hungary) and 1968 (Prague) showed that reform there was to be had only against tanks.

The 1960s fused these lines. The Vietnam War made anti-imperialism a mass issue; Berkeley (1964) brought the teach-in and the university occupation; Provos, Situationists and the New Left (Marcuse, Dutschke) criticized not only the state but authority, consumption and everyday life. In 1968 there were upheavals in Paris, Berlin, Prague, Tokyo and Mexico City, where the military fired on demonstrators on 2 October. The goals differed; the simultaneity and the mutual reference did not.

Identity politics has its roots in the struggles of the late sixties and seventies. Black Power and Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth (1961) joined the critique of racism to the critique of colonialism. Stonewall (1969) set the gay liberation movement in motion. The second-wave women's movement made "the personal is political" its slogan (in West Germany, the campaign against §218 from 1971). The term "identity politics" itself comes from the Combahee River Collective Statement of 1977, which thought racism, sexism and class relations together. In the South, the Non-Aligned Movement and the call for a New International Economic Order (1974) pursued economic equality, before the debt crisis of 1982 blocked that path.

A climate movement in today's sense did not yet exist, but an environmental movement did: Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962), the first Earth Day (1970), the Club of Rome report (1972), Greenpeace (1971), the Chipko movement in India (1973) and the anti-nuclear occupations at Wyhl (1975) and Brokdorf (1976), from which the German Greens emerged in 1980. Global warming itself remained a topic for experts.

Two ruptures matter for everything that follows.

First, the oil crisis of 1973, the Chile coup of 1973 and the turn to Thatcher and Reagan (1979/80) ended the postwar order and opened the neoliberal era.
Second, Boltanski and Chiapello argue that the demands for autonomy and authenticity of 1968 (the "artistic critique") were later absorbed by capitalism, while the social critique lost ground. That is one possible explanation for why globalization critique from the 1990s on had to reconnect with questions of distribution. W

With Solidarność, Charter 77 and the debt crisis, the timeline proper begins.

TIMELINE

1980–1993: Late Cold War, debt crisis, "People Power"

1980/81: Poland : Solidarność (Gdańsk). The trigger was meat price rises in a heavily indebted country; by 1981 around 10 million members, trade union and civic movement in one. Martial law in December 1981, i.e. crushed after about 16 months; only the Round Table in 1989 brought success
1981–89: "IMF riots" against austerity conditions (Morocco, Tunisia 1983/84, Sudan, Venezuela : Caracazo (1989), i.e. forerunners of globalisation critique in the Global South. The trigger was the debt crisis since Mexico's default in 1982
1985–88: Gorbachev: glasnost and perestroika. In December 1988 he tells the UN that every people has the right to freely choose its system, in effect the end of the Brezhnev Doctrine
1986: Philippines : People Power Marcos overthrown (EDSA, February 1986). Parts of the army switch sides, hundreds of thousands (estimates up to around 2 million) stand in the way of tanks, after four days Marcos is gone: success. The USA drop their long-standing ally only when the power apparatus tips
1987/88: South Korea : June uprising, Chile : "No" plebiscite campaign, Burma : 8888 uprising, crushed)
15.4.–4.6.1989: China : Tiananmen (crushed). The trigger is the death of the reform-minded former party leader Hu Yaobang; carried by students, but also by workers (independent workers' federations). Participants: at times around a million people in Beijing (estimates), protests in more than 100 cities; duration: just under seven weeks. Background was inflation, corruption and price reform, not only the demand for democracy. The death toll is still unclear (estimates from several hundred to several thousand). The party answered with repression and accelerated market opening (Deng's southern tour 1992): prosperity in exchange for a say
May–December 1989: Peaceful Revolution in the East Germany (GDR)
- Preconditions: Gorbachev's course, the state's payment problems (billion-mark loan 1983/84, shortage of foreign currency), the churches as a shelter (Leipzig peace prayers since 1982) and small civil-rights groups
- May–September: civil-rights activists prove the falsification of the municipal election of 7 May; Hungary dismantles border barrier, at the Pan-European Picnic (19.8., Sopron) hundreds flee, from 11.9. the border is open; embassy occupations in Prague and Warsaw (30.9.: Genscher's balcony appearance)
- September–October: founding of Neues Forum (9/10.9.), Monday demonstrations in Leipzig (from 4.9.). On 9.10. around 70,000 march through Leipzig although the "Chinese solution" looms (the SED had praised the crackdown in Beijing); the security forces do not intervene, also because Moscow stays passive
- October–November: Honecker is deposed on 18.10., on 4.11. around 500,000 demonstrate on Alexanderplatz, on 9.11. the Wall falls after Schabowski's misleading press conference
- Dynamics: "We want out" (exit) became "We are staying here" (reform) and then "We are one people" (accession). Many civil-rights activists wanted a reformed GDR ("For Our Country", 26.11.) and were overtaken by mass exodus, currency union and the Volkskammer election (18.3.1990)
- Aftermath: occupation of the Stasi headquarters (15.1.1990), Treuhand privatisation and the loss of several million jobs. The system change came as an economic shock that later reverberates in East Germany
17–29.11.1989: Czechoslovakia : Velvet Revolution. The trigger is the permitted student demonstration commemorating Jan Opletal (17.11., Prague, Národní třída), which riot police break up brutally; a rumour about a killed student spreads. It was false, and the role of the state security service St B ? (an agent played the "dead man") is disputed: on the widespread reading, power struggles within the apparatus, but no evidence of a steered revolution. On 19.11. dissidents around Václav Havel found the Civic Forum, on 25/26.11. hundreds of thousands gather on the Letná, on 27.11. a two-hour general strike follows; on 29.11. the leading role of the Communist Party is struck from the constitution, on 10.12. a government with a non-communist majority takes office, on 29.12. Havel becomes president. Background: Charter 77, the candle demonstration in Bratislava (1988), Jan Palach Week (January 1989)
1987–91: Baltic : Singing Revolution and Baltic Way. The starting point is protests in Estonia in 1987 (phosphate mining, commemorations of the Hitler–Stalin Pact) and the popular fronts of 1988 (Rahvarinne, Sąjūdis, Tautas fronte); singing and national symbols replace confrontation. On 23.8.1989, the 50th anniversary of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, around 2 million people form a chain from Tallinn via Riga to Vilnius (around 600 km). The memory of the secret protocols made independence a question of law (annexation of 1940). Lithuania declares independence on 11.3.1990; in January 1991 14 civilians die in Vilnius (television tower) in a Soviet military operation, in Riga barricades go up; after the Moscow coup attempt the Soviet Union recognises independence in September 1991. The Baltic Way later became a model for other human chains (Hong Kong Way, 23.8.2019)
Autumn 1989: Hungary (Round Table), Bulgaria (fall of Zhivkov on 10.11.), Romanian Revolution the only violent revolution in the Eastern Bloc . Ceaușescu executed on 25.12. He had paid off the foreign debt through harsh deprivation; the role of the Securitate and the National Salvation Front is disputed.
1989–91: Miners' strikes in the Soviet Union (Kuzbass, Vorkuta, Donbas), combining economic and political demands and further eroding the party's authority
1989/90: Britain : Poll Tax riots. The per-head local tax (Community Charge) is introduced in Scotland in 1989 and in England and Wales in 1990. A mass campaign of non-payment (anti-poll-tax unions) and the demonstration of 31.3.1990 at Trafalgar Square end in a pitched battle (depending on the source from several tens of thousands to 200,000 participants, hundreds of arrests and injuries). The tax contributes to Thatcher's fall in November 1990 and is replaced by the Council Tax in 1991–93. For the first time in the neoliberal era a central reform is toppled on the street.
- From this milieu (a seed of J18) non-payer groups, squatter and rave scene, anti-road camps such as Twyford Down 1992 and Reclaim the Streets (M11 protests) emerge from 1991.
19–21.8.1991: Soviet Union : August coup in Moscow, resistance around Yeltsin at the White House; on 25.12.1991 the Soviet Union is dissolved
- 1992/93: Shock therapy in Russia (price liberalisation on 2.1.1992, voucher privatisation); in October 1993 Yeltsin has parliament shelled (1993 Russian constitutional crisis), the West backs him.

1994–2001: Emergence of globalisation critique

1.1.1994: Chiapas : Zapatistas (EZLN). On the day NAFTA comes into force, predominantly indigenous Maya fighters (Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Chol, Tojolabal) occupy San Cristóbal de las Casas and other towns in Chiapas. Concrete trigger: in 1992 Mexico had amended Article 27 of the constitution, ending the distribution of land to village communities (ejido) in order to make the country NAFTA-compatible; at the same time maize farmers faced competition from subsidised US maize. After about twelve days of fighting (estimates: 100 to 200 dead) a ceasefire holds. Afterwards the movement relies on communication: communiqués by the spokesman Subcomandante Marcos in newspapers and online, renunciation of taking power, the formula "a world in which many worlds fit". In 1996 an Intercontinental Encounter "for Humanity and against Neoliberalism" follows in Chiapas, in 1997 a second one in Spain; from this Peoples' Global Action emerges in 1998.
- December 1994/January 1995: Mexican peso crisis. A memo by the analyst Riordan Roett for Chase Manhattan Bank (January 1995) demands that the government must "eliminate" the Zapatistas to demonstrate control: a rare document showing how financial markets co-defined the handling of the uprising
1.1.1995: the World Trade Organization (WTO) starts work (Marrakesh Agreement 1994). Tariffs, services and intellectual property are regulated bindingly, with dispute settlement; later the target of Seattle
November/December 1995: Mass strikes in France. For about three weeks rail, Paris public transport, post and other sectors bring the country to a standstill. The occasion was Prime Minister Juppé's plan to reform social insurance (longer contribution periods for public-sector employees, state control of the health funds) and to restructure the railways (line closures, job cuts). Why it became so big: the austerity visibly came from outside, since the Maastricht criteria (deficit below 3% of GDP) for monetary union demanded it; the population mostly supported the strikers ("strike by proxy"), intellectuals around Pierre Bourdieu backed them. Juppé withdrew the pension reform of the special regimes and the rail plan. From this milieu ATTAC emerges in 1998 (after an editorial by Ignacio Ramonet in Le Monde diplomatique, December 1997)
1996/97: Belgrade : Zajedno coalition. 88 days of protests against the annulment of opposition victories in the municipal elections , with students and a lot of humour as a forerunner of Otpor; tens of thousands daily, Milošević recognised the election victories in February 1997: success.
February 1998: Peoples' Global Action founded in Geneva - a network against free trade and "every coercion of capital, which emerges from the Zapatista encounters.
1997/98: Asian financial crisis. IMF programmes in Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea.
- 21.5.1998 Fall of Suharto after student protests, price shocks and riots with hundreds of dead.
May–July 1998: Russia : miners' strike. Miners (Kuzbass, Vorkuta, Rostov) block the Trans-Siberian Railway for about two weeks from 12.5. because of months of unpaid wages, a state of emergency applies in Kemerovo from 20.5.; the government finds money for three months' wages, in July the blockades flare up again. 17.8.1998: Russia is insolvent (1998 Russian financial crisis), the rouble collapses.
October 1998: OECD : Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) fails after France withdraws; the draft had been leaked in 1997, the campaign against it ran on the internet on a large scale for the first time.
October 1998: Otpor founded in Belgrade (students against the university and media law).
18.6.1999: J18, "Carnival against Capital", with actions in dozens of countries; the centre is the City of London (financial market), the occasion the G8 summit in Cologne. There the debt-relief campaign Jubilee 2000 (churches, NG Os ?) simultaneously forms a human chain and hands over millions of signatures.
- J18 unites three strands: the British direct-action scene (Poll Tax, anti-road protests, Reclaim the Streets, dockers' strike 1995–98), the Zapatista-inspired PGA networks and the debt campaign (derivation in section 2)
30.11.1999: Seattle : WTO protests, the WTO conference fails. Outside: blockades by the Direct Action Network, a march of around 30,000 trade unionists (AFL-CIO), environmental groups ("Teamsters and Turtles"), farmers like José Bové, individual Black Bloc groups smash windows; state of emergency and curfew. Inside there was a second cause of the failure which is often missing in the myth: developing and emerging countries refused consent to a text negotiated in back rooms ("Green Room") and blocked on agricultural subsidies.
2000: Bolivia : Water war in Cochabamba (January to April, against the privatisation of water supply by a Bechtel subsidiary; the contract is cancelled),
2000: USA : A16 in Washington (IMF and World Bank),
2000: Czechoslovakia : S26 in Prague (IMF meeting);
2000: Serbia : Overthrow of Milošević. Belgrade election on 24.9., Milošević does not recognise the result, Kolubara miners strike, on 5.10., twelve days after the election, parliament is stormed (hundreds of thousands in Belgrade, estimates), police units switch sides: success (Otpor campaign "Gotov je", "He's finished").
2001: World Social Forum in Porto Alegre (January, as a counterpart to the Davos economic forum),
2001: Québec (April, FTAA summit behind a fence),
2001: Gothenburg riots June, EU summit with Bush; police fire live rounds, one demonstrator is seriously injured.
19–22.7.2001: Genoa (G8). The Genoa Social Forum bundles several hundred organisations (commonly cited: over 700): trade unions (e.g. FIOM), Catholic groups, Attac, Rifondazione Comunista, environmental and development NG Os ?, the Tute Bianche/Disobbedienti and autonomous groups. On 21.7. around 200,000 to 300,000 people demonstrate. On 20.7. a carabiniere shoots the 23-year-old Carlo Giuliani; in the night to 22.7. police storm the Diaz school, at the Bolzaneto barracks detainees are abused; the E Ct HR ? later classed both as torture or inhuman treatment.

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11.9.2001: USA : 9/11 attacks.

In the aftermath 9/11 can be described as a change in the political opportunity structure. Consequences:

Genoa in July 2001 was the peak of global critical movements - all the currents of the time came together. 9/11 intensified some and overlaid others.
Repression and law: terror laws, broader surveillance and harder protest policing (Miami 2003). In the EU the definition of terrorism was criticised because it could have covered protest. Infiltration of activist groups by undercover officers was later scandalised in Britain and Germany (undercover policing in the UK).
9/11 hit Strand A (transnational economic-ecological protest) hardest. The 9/11 attacks delegitimised confrontation, and summit protest lost media space. Mobilisation switched to anti-war protest (Florence, 15.2.2003). The 2001 WTO summit was deliberately held in Doha, shielded from protest.
Strand B (national movements for democracy and self-determination) was barely slowed and arguably accelerated.
Arab world: a double effect. On the one hand the terror partnership stabilised Mubarak, Ben Ali & co. (rendition, intelligence cooperation). On the other hand the Bush administration propagated a "Freedom Agenda" after 2003, which was discredited by Iraq and Abu Ghraib. This made "democracy promotion" toxic for oppositionists, and regimes could brand them as "foreign-controlled".
Post-Soviet: Russia and China adopted the terror framing, and Moscow's later reading of the colour revolutions as a Western operation also feeds on this phase.
Not proven and also not necessary is the assumption that someone planned 9/11 for these effects. Who profited from the consequences says nothing about the causes.

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December 2001: Argentina after four years of recession and the bank freeze (Corralito), President de la Rúa flees (19/20.12.) after only two days of mass protest (pot-banging, 39 dead): success, but a series of short-lived presidents follows, "¡Que se vayan todos!"

2002–2010: Anti-war movement and colour revolutions

2002: European Social Forum in Florence (6–10.11.). The closing demonstration against the looming Iraq war counted around 500,000 (police) to around 1 million people (organisers)
15.2.2003: Worldwide day of action against the Iraq war. Reason: the announced US-led attack on Iraq. Participants: estimates of 6 to over 10 million in around 600 cities, in Rome about 3 million. Duration/outcome: one day as the peak of a campaign since autumn 2002; the war began on 20.3.2003, so failed
September/October 2003: WTO summit in Cancún fails (10–14.9.) because of the bloc of the G20 states. Gas War in Bolivia: the reason was the plan to export natural gas via Chile, plus poverty and disputes over resources. Participants: tens of thousands, above all in El Alto and La Paz, roadblocks, around 60 dead. Duration/outcome: about a month, on 17.10. President Sánchez de Lozada resigned: success
3–23.11.2003: Rose Revolution (Georgia, youth group Kmara). Reason: falsified parliamentary election of 2.11. Participants: tens of thousands in Tbilisi. Duration/outcome: three weeks, Shevardnadze resigned on 23.11., Saakashvili was elected in January 2004: success
22.11.–26.12.2004: Orange Revolution (Ukraine, Pora). Reason: falsification of the run-off of 21.11. Participants: hundreds of thousands in Kyiv (estimates up to around 1 million). Duration/outcome: a good five weeks; the Supreme Court ordered a re-run on 3.12., which Yushchenko won on 26.12.: success, later devalued by the quarrel of the winners (Yanukovych president in 2010)
2005: Cedar Revolution (Lebanon). Reason: the assassination of ex-Prime Minister Hariri on 14.2. and the demand for withdrawal of Syrian troops. Participants: around 1 million in Beirut on 14.3. (estimates). Duration/outcome: about ten weeks, the last Syrian soldiers left in April: success. Tulip Revolution (Kyrgyzstan): allegations of fraud in the parliamentary election, President Akayev fled on 24.3., success after a few weeks. Kefaya (Egypt, since 2004): protest against Mubarak's re-election and succession plans with only hundreds to a few thousand, without effect
27.10.–17.11.2005: Banlieue riots (France). Reason: the deaths of Zyed Benna (17) and Bouna Traoré (15) in Clichy-sous-Bois, who had ended up in a power substation while fleeing a police check; background were youth unemployment, segregation, police checks and Sarkozy's choice of words ("racaille"). Participants: no organised movement, but nightly riots, mostly by young men, in hundreds of municipalities (around 9,000 burned vehicles, around 2,900 arrests; estimates). Duration/outcome: three weeks, state of emergency from 8.11. until early January 2006; the riots ebbed without the causes being addressed (only smaller measures such as the 2006 law on equal opportunities). A repetition followed in 2023 (see below)
February–April 2006: CPE protests (France). Reason: the first-employment contract for under-26s with a two-year probation period without dismissal protection (de Villepin government). Participants: students, pupils and trade unions, occupied universities; demonstrations on 28.3. with around 1 million (police) to 3 million people (unions). Duration/outcome: about two months, Chirac dropped the CPE on 10.4.: success
19–26.3.2006: Belarus (also "Jeans Revolution"). Reason: allegations of fraud in the presidential election. Participants: on election night estimates of 10,000 to 30,000 in Minsk, afterwards a tent camp on October Square. Duration/outcome: one week, crushed: failed
2007: Heiligendamm (G8, 6–8.6.). Reason: criticism of G8 policy on climate, poverty and trade. Participants: at the demonstration in Rostock on 2.6. depending on the source around 25,000 (police) to 80,000 (organisers), plus blockades of the access roads (Block G8); no influence on the summit decisions. Saffron Revolution (Burma). Reason: doubled fuel prices in August, then monks at the head. Participants: up to around 100,000 on 24.9. (estimates). Duration/outcome: a good month, crushed on 26/27.9. (at least 31 dead according to the UN): failed
December 2008: Greece. Reason: the shooting of the 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos by a police officer on 6.12., plus the lack of prospects for youth. Participants: above all pupils and students, riots and occupations across the country. Duration/outcome: about three weeks, without political consequence, but a forerunner of the austerity protests from 2010
2008: Mahalla (Egypt). Reason: wages and rising bread prices, strike by textile workers on 6.4. Participants: thousands, unrest in the city, several dead. Outcome: crushed; the call gave rise to the April 6 Movement. Gafsa (Tunisia): the reason was the opaque allocation of jobs at the phosphate company amid high unemployment; January to June 2008, crushed (dead, trials), a forerunner of 2010/11. From September 2008 financial crisis
January 2009: Pots-and-pans revolution (Iceland). Reason: collapse of the three big banks in October 2008. Participants: several thousand in front of parliament (a lot for around 320,000 inhabitants). Duration/outcome: protests since October, peak in January; the Haarde government resigned on 26.1.2009: success
June 2009–February 2010: Green Movement (Iran). Reason: the disputed presidential election of 12.6. (Ahmadinejad). Participants: hundreds of thousands in Tehran (e.g. on 15.6., estimates). Duration/outcome: six weeks at the peak, waves until February 2010, crushed (dozens dead, thousands of arrests): failed

2010–2014: Square movements

2009–2012: Student and education protests in Europe, North America and Chile. Common background were fee increases and austerity budgets after the financial crisis, in Europe plus the Bologna reform. A lot was mobilised, rarely was anything achieved (exceptions: CPE 2006 and Québec 2012):
- September 2009–2010, California (University of California). Reason: fee increase of 32% (November 2009) amid budget cuts. Participants: occupations, on 4.3.2010 a nationwide day of action with tens of thousands. Outcome: the increase stayed, failed
- October 2009–2010, Unibrennt (Austria) and Bildungsstreik (Germany). Reason: tuition fees, regimented bachelor courses, access restrictions. Participants: occupation of the Vienna Audimax from 22.10.2009 (about two months), demonstrations with tens of thousands in both countries. Outcome: small concessions, no change of course
- November/December 2010, England. Reason: raising the fee cap from around 3,300 to up to 9,000 pounds. Participants: around 50,000 on 10.11., including the occupation of the Tory party headquarters at Millbank, further days of action on 24.11., 30.11. and 9.12. Duration/outcome: six weeks, parliament approved on 9.12. by 323 to 302: failed
- November/December 2010, Italy. Reason: university reform and cuts by the Berlusconi government (Gelmini law). Participants: occupations of universities, severe riots in Rome on 14.12., the day of the confidence vote which Berlusconi survived. Outcome: the law was passed on 23.12., failed
- 2011–2013, Chile. Reason: an expensive, privatised and debt-generating education system. Participants: strikes and occupations over months, marches with hundreds of thousands (organisers). Outcome: a delayed partial success, from 2016 gradual fee-free study for part of the students
- February–September 2012, Québec ("Maple Spring"). Reason: a 75% rise in tuition fees over five years. Participants: a strike of up to around 300,000 students (peak), mass demonstrations on 22.3. and 22.5. with tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands (organisers). Duration/outcome: about seven months; emergency law no. 78 in May, the Liberals lost the election on 4.9., the new government withdrew the increase on 20.9.: success
September–November 2010: Pension reform in France. Reason: raising the minimum retirement age from 60 to 62. Participants: demonstrations with up to 3.5 million (unions, 12.10.) or around 1.2 million (police), plus refinery strikes and blockades of high schools. Duration/outcome: about two months, the law was passed at the end of October (promulgated on 9.11.): failed
17.12.2010–14.1.2011: Tunisia. Reason: the self-immolation of the vegetable seller Mohamed Bouazizi after harassment by the authorities; background were youth unemployment, corruption in Ben Ali's clan and prices. Participants: spread across the whole country and a general strike (UGTT), around 300 dead (UN: 338). Duration/outcome: 28 days until Ben Ali fled on 14.1.: success (later partly rolled back, President Saied since 2021)
25.1.–11.2.2011: Tahrir (Egypt). Reason: police violence (the Khaled Said case), poverty, youth unemployment, Mubarak's succession plans, plus the Tunisian example. Participants: hundreds of thousands to around 1 million on the square at the peak, millions nationwide (estimates), around 840 dead. Duration/outcome: 18 days until Mubarak's resignation: success, which was squandered with Morsi's election in 2012 and the coup of 2013
February/March 2011: Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, Syria, Morocco. Common background: corruption, youth unemployment, repression, the example of Tunisia and Egypt. Libya (from mid-February): became a civil war within weeks with NATO intervention, Gaddafi killed in October (2011 Libyan civil war). Bahrain (from 14.2.): crushed in March with the help of Saudi troops (2011 Bahraini uprising). Yemen (since January): Saleh stepped down after a mediation agreement in February 2012, civil war followed in 2014 (2011 Yemeni Revolution). Syria (from March, trigger: arrest and torture of schoolchildren in Daraa): crushed, civil war, Assad fell only in December 2024 (Syrian civil war). Morocco (from 20.2.): constitutional reform in July 2011, the king stayed: partial success (2011 Moroccan protests)
15.5.2011: Indignados (15M) in Spain. Reason: youth unemployment of around 45%, austerity, corruption and criticism of the parties. Participants: tens of thousands at the start, occupation of the Puerta del Sol for weeks, worldwide day of action on 15.10. Outcome: no direct change of policy, but indirectly the rise of Podemos (2014)
from 25.5.2011: Greece (Syntagma Square). Reason: the troika's austerity programme. Participants: tens of thousands, general strikes. Outcome: the austerity packages were passed anyway, Papandreou resigned in November 2011: failed
July–September 2011: Israel (social justice). Reason: rents and cost of living (tent camp on Rothschild Boulevard from 14.7.). Participants: up to around 450,000 on 3.9. (estimates 300,000 to 450,000). Duration/outcome: about two months, the government set up the Trajtenberg Committee, whose reforms remained limited: partial success
17.9.2011: Occupy Wall Street. Reason: financial crisis, inequality and bank bailouts ("We are the 99%"). Participants: a camp in Zuccotti Park with hundreds to thousands, on 15.10. a worldwide day of action in over 900 cities (organisers). Duration/outcome: the camp was cleared after two months (15.11.); no change of law, but a shift in the discourse on inequality
December 2011–May 2012: Bolotnaya (Russia). Reason: falsifications in the Duma election of 4.12.2011. Participants: on 10.12. and 24.12. tens of thousands each (estimates from 25,000 to over 100,000). Duration/outcome: about five months; Putin was re-elected in March 2012, after the protests of 6.5. trials and the foreign-agents law (2012) followed: failed
May–June 2013: Gezi Park (Turkey). Reason: a development project in Gezi Park and the police violence against the occupiers (from 31.5.), plus Erdoğan's authoritarian course. Participants: according to the interior ministry around 3.5 million people in about 80 provinces (in total), eight dead. Duration/outcome: about three weeks intensely, the park was cleared on 15.6.; the building project was stopped by a court, politically failed (Erdoğan won in 2014 and 2018)
June 2013: Brazil. Reason: the rise in bus fares (by 20 centavos), then criticism of World Cup spending, corruption and poor public services. Participants: over a million on 20.6. in more than 100 cities (estimates). Duration/outcome: three to four weeks, the fare rise was withdrawn: partial success (political consequences later up to Rousseff's impeachment in 2016)
30.6.–14.8.2013: Egypt: Tamarod, coup, Rabaa. Reason: discontent with the Morsi government and the economic crisis. Participants: millions on 30.6. (estimates heavily disputed). Duration/outcome: four days until Sisi's coup on 3.7.; the Rabaa massacre on 14.8. cost at least around 800 lives (HRW): Morsi's fall was "successful", but ended in military rule
21.11.2013–22.2.2014: Euromaidan (Ukraine). Reason: Yanukovych's halt of the EU association agreement, from 30.11. the police violence, plus corruption. Participants: tens of thousands to several hundred thousand in Kyiv at the peak, protests nationwide, around 100 dead in the last days (18–20.2.). Duration/outcome: three months, Yanukovych fled on 21/22.2.: success, followed by the annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbas
26.9.–15.12.2014: Umbrella Movement (Hong Kong). Reason: Beijing's decision of 31.8. to pre-screen candidates for the election of the chief executive in 2017. Participants: up to over 100,000 at the same time (peak). Duration/outcome: 79 days of occupation (28.9.–15.12.), the reform bill failed in parliament in 2015 without more democracy being achieved: failed

2018–today: New waves

April–May 2018: Velvet Revolution (Armenia). Reason: Serzh Sargsyan's move from the presidency to the post of prime minister (17.4.). Participants: tens of thousands in Yerevan under Nikol Pashinyan. Duration/outcome: about three weeks, Sargsyan resigned on 23.4., Pashinyan became prime minister on 8.5.: success
since August 2018: Fridays for Future. Reason: the climate crisis, triggered by Greta Thunberg's school strike in Stockholm. Participants: on 15.3.2019 about 1.5 million in over 100 countries, on 20.9.2019 according to organisers around 4 million worldwide. Duration/outcome: ongoing since 2018 (smaller after Covid); climate policy became an election issue, emission targets are nevertheless missed: partial success
17.11.2018 into spring 2019 (fading out until 2020): Yellow Vests (France). Reason: the planned increase of the fuel and CO₂ tax on 1.1.2019, at its core however purchasing power and cost of living away from the metropolises (commuters, car dependency); organised via social media, without parties and unions. Participants: on the first day around 290,000 (interior ministry), on 24.11. around 106,000 (later corrected to 166,000), on 1.12. around 136,000, thereafter falling to a few tens of thousands; about a dozen dead (mostly accidents at blockades), thousands injured, serious injuries from police weapons. Duration/outcome: after 17 days, on 4.12., a moratorium, on 5.12. the abandonment of the tax increase, on 10.12. Macron announced purchasing-power measures of around 10 billion euros (including more money for low earners); the "Great National Debate" followed (January–March 2019). The abolition of the wealth tax (ISF) stayed. The Saturday "Acts" continued for months: partial success on tax and purchasing power, no success on the question of power
December 2018–April 2019: Sudan. Reason: a bread price rise (19.12., Atbara), economic crisis and the demand for Bashir's resignation. Participants: tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, from 6.4. a permanent sit-in in front of the army headquarters. Duration/outcome: three and a half months until Bashir was toppled by the military on 11.4.2019; the massacre of 3.6.2019 (over 100 dead) and the coup in October 2021 undid the success, since April 2023 there has been war
22.2.2019 to 2020: Hirak (Algeria). Reason: the announced fifth term of Bouteflika. Participants: every Friday hundreds of thousands to millions (estimates). Duration/outcome: Bouteflika resigned after six weeks on 2.4.2019; the movement continued until the Covid pause in March 2020 and rejected the election of 12.12.2019, the power apparatus stayed: partial success
June 2019–2020: Hong Kong. Reason: the draft extradition law to China, later five demands (including an independent inquiry into police violence, free elections). Participants: on 9.6. about 1 million (organisers; police 240,000), on 16.6. about 2 million (organisers; police 338,000), plus the Hong Kong Way on 23.8. Duration/outcome: seven to eight months; the bill was withdrawn on 4.9., the other demands remained unfulfilled, the National Security Law of 30.6.2020 ended the movement: failed
from 17.10.2019: Lebanon. Reason: the planned Whats App ? fee, behind it economic crisis and corruption. Participants: hundreds of thousands nationwide (estimates). Duration/outcome: Prime Minister Hariri resigned after 12 days (29.10.), the political system stayed; after the explosion in Beirut port (4.8.2020) the Diab government also resigned: partial success
from 1.10.2019: Iraq. Reason: unemployment, corruption, poor electricity and water supply, Iranian influence. Participants: tens of thousands in Baghdad and the south, over 600 dead (estimates). Duration/outcome: after about two months the resignation of Prime Minister Abdul-Mahdi (29.11.), early election in October 2021, the power structures stayed: partial success
from 18.10.2019: Chile ("estallido social"). Reason: the rise in Metro fares by 30 pesos as the trigger, behind it inequality, the pension and education system. Participants: around 1.2 million in Santiago on 25.10., around 30 dead. Duration/outcome: months; the referendum in October 2020 (78% for a new constitution) was a success, but the drafts of 2022 and 2023 were rejected: failed
August–December 2020: Belarus. Reason: the falsified presidential election of 9.8. (officially 80% for Lukashenko). Participants: Sunday marches with up to around 100,000 to 200,000 in Minsk (16.8., 23.8.), strikes in factories, over 30,000 arrests. Duration/outcome: about four months of mass protest, crushed (torture, exile of the opposition): failed
May–July 2020: Black Lives Matter (USA, worldwide). Reason: the killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis on 25.5. Participants: estimates of 15 to 26 million in the USA, plus protests in hundreds of cities worldwide. Duration/outcome: about six weeks intensely; conviction of Chauvin (2021), local police reforms, a federal law failed in the Senate: partial success
from 1.2.2021: Myanmar, Civil Disobedience Movement. Reason: the military coup against the NLD's election victory. Participants: millions in strikes and mass demonstrations in the first weeks. Duration/outcome: the protest was crushed and turned into armed resistance, several thousand dead: failed so far
March–July 2022: Aragalaya (Sri Lanka). Reason: the insolvency (April 2022) with shortages of fuel, electricity and food. Participants: a permanent camp in Colombo from 9.4., on 9.7. tens of thousands at the storming of the presidential palace. Duration/outcome: about four months; Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa resigned on 9.5., President Gotabaya fled on 13.7. and resigned on 14.7.: success (the successor Wickremesinghe pushed through the IMF austerity course and evictions)
from 16.9.2022: "Woman, Life, Freedom" (Iran). Reason: the death of Mahsa (Jina) Amini in the custody of the morality police. Participants: protests in over 100 cities, figures unclear; over 500 dead and around 20,000 arrests (human rights groups). Duration/outcome: about four months intensely, crushed: failed (the compulsory headscarf is however de facto no longer enforced in many places)
January–October 2023: Protests against the judicial overhaul (Israel). Reason: the Netanyahu government's plans to disempower the Supreme Court (selection of judges, reasonableness review). Participants: from 7.1. weekly demonstrations with tens of thousands to over 100,000 per week in Tel Aviv, nationwide at times hundreds of thousands (organisers); after the dismissal of Defence Minister Gallant on 26.3. spontaneous mass protests and a general strike. Duration/outcome: Netanyahu suspended the project on 27.3. (partial success), the Knesset abolished the reasonableness review on 24.7., the Supreme Court struck the law down in January 2024; the attack of 7.10.2023 ended the protest wave
October 2023–2026: Hostage and anti-Netanyahu protests (Israel). Reason: the failure of 7.10.2023, the demand for the release of the hostages and for new elections, later also the dismissal of the Shin Bet chief Bar (March 2025), the draft exemptions for the ultra-Orthodox and the demand for a state commission of inquiry. Participants: weekly demonstrations with tens of thousands, around 150,000 in Tel Aviv in June 2024 (organisers), general strike on 1.9.2024, on 17.8.2025 several hundred thousand according to organisers; in 2026 only thousands per rally. Duration/outcome: almost three years; the ceasefire of October 2025 freed the last living hostages (please cross-check), Netanyahu stayed in office; the Knesset dissolved on 17.7.2026, the election is on 27.10.2026: open
Georgia (2023 to today). Three waves with the same dispute over the foreign-agents law and the EU course. (1) 7–9.3.2023: the reason was the draft of a law on "foreign agents"; participants: tens of thousands in Tbilisi; duration/outcome: three days, the ruling party withdrew the draft: success. (2) April–May 2024: the reason was its revival as a "transparency law"; participants: tens of thousands, the biggest protests since 2003; duration/outcome: about seven weeks, parliament passed the law on 14.5., the president's veto was overridden on 28.5.: failed, the EU accession process was frozen in June 2024. (3) since 28.11.2024: the reasons were the parliamentary election of 26.10.2024, criticised as falsified, and the announcement to suspend EU accession talks until 2028; participants: initially tens of thousands daily, later mostly hundreds to thousands, but every day (the 647th day was 5.9.2026), up to 150 political prisoners (early 2026); duration/outcome: failed so far, Georgian Dream continues to govern and tightens repression
January–June 2023: Pension reform in France. Reason: raising the retirement age from 62 to 64. Participants: 14 days of action, on 7.3. around 1.28 million (interior ministry) or around 3.5 million (CGT). Duration/outcome: about five months; the law was pushed through via Article 49.3 and confirmed by the Constitutional Council on 14.4.: failed (in 2025 it was partly suspended in the course of the government crisis; please cross-check)
27.6.–early July 2023: Riots after the death of Nahel (France, banlieues, repetition of 2005). Reason: the shooting of the 17-year-old Nahel M. at a traffic stop in Nanterre. Participants: nightly riots across the country, over 3,000 arrests. Duration/outcome: about a week, then ebbing without political concessions
June 2024: Kenya. Reason: the Finance Bill 2024 with tax increases ("Gen Z" protests). Participants: tens of thousands in many cities, parliament was stormed on 25.6., dozens dead (human rights groups). Duration/outcome: about a week until the bill was withdrawn on 26.6.: success on the tax, the protests continued with violence for weeks
July–August 2024: Bangladesh. Reason: the quota system in the civil service, then the violence against students. Participants: tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, according to the UN up to around 1,400 dead. Duration/outcome: about five weeks until Hasina fled on 5.8. after 15 years in power: success, interim government under Yunus
since 1.11.2024: Serbia. Reason: the collapse of the station canopy in Novi Sad (16 dead) and corruption allegations over the renovation. Participants: months of faculty blockades, on 15.3.2025 around 300,000 in Belgrade (independent estimate; police: approx. 100,000), on 23.5.2026 according to police 34,300. Duration/outcome: almost two years; Prime Minister Vučević resigned in January 2025 (partial success), Vučić resigned as president on 27.9.2026 and is running for prime minister in the early election on 25.10.2026 against the student list "Students Win" (verified against press reports): open
8–9.9.2025: Nepal. Reason: the ban of 26 social media platforms, behind it corruption and the privileges of politicians' children. Participants: tens of thousands of young people in Kathmandu, around 70 dead. Duration/outcome: two days, Prime Minister Oli resigned on 9.9., parliament burned: success (correction after cross-check: according to Wikipedia the successor as prime minister is Balen Shah, not Sushila Karki; Oli was arrested in March 2026)
from 25.9.2025: Madagascar. Reason: water and power cuts, Gen Z protests. Participants: thousands in Antananarivo, at least 22 dead (UN). Duration/outcome: about three weeks; parts of the military switched sides, President Rajoelina was deposed in mid-October (verified: his term ended on 14.10.2025 according to Wikipedia), the army took power: success as a coup
from 27.9.2025: Morocco ("Gen Z ? 212"). Reason: dilapidated hospitals and schools amid billions of spending on the 2030 football World Cup. Participants: thousands in many cities, three dead, hundreds of arrests. Duration/outcome: about two to three weeks, without resignations, the king announced social programmes: hardly any success
May–25.7.2026: Cockroach movement (India). Reason: leaks in central entrance exams (medical courses, civil-service posts) and youth unemployment; the trigger in May was the remark by Chief Justice Surya Kant comparing unemployed young people to "cockroaches"; from this emerged the satirical "Cockroach Janta Party" (founder Abhijeet Dipke). Participants: first hundreds, in July thousands to tens of thousands (press: "thousands"; reliable overall figures are missing), sit-in at Jantar Mantar, 26-day hunger strike by Sonam Wangchuk, tear gas and batons on 20.7. Duration/outcome: about five weeks of street protest; Education Minister Pradhan resigned on 25.7.2026, the movement declared victory and ended the protests after talks with the government (verified against AP/Al Jazeera): success (the first big concession by the Modi government since the farmers' protests of 2020/21)
since 17.9.2026: Pupil and student protest (France). Reason: teacher shortage, cancelled lessons, lack of resources and fear for the future, aggravated by the 2027 budget draft (fees for BTS and prep classes) and prices; the movement began at a lycée in the Paris suburbs. Participants: on 1.10. 1,027 of around 3,700 lycées were affected, 222 blockaded, around 2,000 arrests in one day; on 6.10. between 266,000 and 450,000 took to the streets nationwide (AFP); by mid-October over 6,800 people taken into custody, 86% of them minors; comparison with the lycéen protests of 1990. Duration/outcome: so far a good month; the Lecornu government announced 3,000 substitute teachers and further decisions for the end of October, which the pupils' organisations consider too little; day of action on 17.10., school holidays, restart in early November: open

Connections?

Three families can be distinguished:

A. Anti-systemic globalisation critique (Zapatistas to Genoa): against the institutions and policies of neoliberal capitalism (WTO, IMF, debt, privatisation). Network-like, ideologically heterogeneous (NG Os ?, trade unions, autonomists), with summit-hopping and counter-summits as repertoire.
B. Democratisation protests (Manila, Belgrade, Kyiv, Tunis): against concrete authoritarian regimes. Mostly liberal-democratic in orientation, often election-centred and with strategic nonviolence (Gene Sharp).
C. Hybrid square movements from 2011: here both lines meet, because corruption, youth unemployment, austerity and autocracy belong together.

The connection exists on three levels:

Repertoire and diffusion: protest forms are taken over modularly (Beissinger speaks of "modular phenomena"). This is visible, for example, in symbolic politics, decentralised youth networks, media work and later social media. The line runs from Belgrade via Georgia and Cairo to Madrid and Occupy.
Structural: the IMF praised Egypt and Tunisia as model pupils of reform until shortly before 2011, while clientelism and price shocks (food crisis 2007/08 and 2010/11) fed the anger.
Not ideological: A is directed against the liberal world order, B partly presupposes it or is promoted by it. This is the real contradiction.

In addition, an empirical finding: Chenoweth/Stephan show higher success rates of nonviolent campaigns for 1900–2006. Chenoweth herself, however, notes a marked decline since the 2010s. Authoritarian regimes have learned (foreign-agent laws in Russia, internet shutdowns, Egypt's NGO law).

The collapse of the Eastern Bloc as a common background

The collapse of the Soviet Union worked in two directions: it carried the wave of democratisation in the East and at the same time deprived the West and the South of the counterweight that had contained the markets until 1989. This is the widespread interpretation; it is hard to isolate empirically.

Loss of system competition. Welfare-state compromises in the West lost their argument, states of the South lost the possibility of playing the blocs off against each other; IMF and World Bank conditions became almost without alternative. NAFTA (1994), the WTO (1995) and the MAI negotiations (1995–98) fall into this window, and Fukuyama's "End of History" (1989) supplied the matching narrative.
Russia as a laboratory case. Price liberalisation in January 1992, voucher privatisation and later loans-for-shares (1995) created the oligarchs within a few years. According to official figures economic output fell by roughly a third, male life expectancy dropped by several years, and state bankruptcy followed in August 1998. Miners blocked the Trans-Siberian over unpaid wages: a protest against the consequences of globalisation that does not appear in the Seattle narratives.
Western priorities. The West backed Yeltsin in 1993 during the shelling of parliament and in 1996 at his re-election (IMF loan of around 10 billion dollars, US election advisers; please cross-check details). Market reform came before procedural fidelity. Moscow later turns this experience against "democracy promotion": the colour revolutions from 2003 appear to the Kremlin as a continuation of Western influence, and for many Russians "democracy" meant the impoverishment of the 1990s.
The left without Moscow. Without "really existing socialism" movements no longer had to take a stand for or against the USSR. The Zapatistas explicitly did not want to take power, PGA and Attac were undogmatic and decentralised. At the same time parties and trade unions lost support: Cuba entered the "Special Period", the Sandinistas lost the 1990 election.
Yugoslavia as the violent variant. Disintegration, wars (1991–99), sanctions and the NATO air strikes of 1999 form the background of Otpor. That the regime fell in 2000 nevertheless shows how much economic exhaustion and election fraud mobilised.

The chain from 1989 to Genoa

The protests are connected less by a common ideology than by a chain of causes, networks and learning experiences.

Debt as a common cause (1982–89). The same debt spiral produced the IMF riots in the South, the payment problems of Poland and the GDR, and Romania's policy of deprivation. Solidarność, the Caracazo, Tiananmen (inflation, corruption) and the Eastern revolutions have economic roots that the democracy narrative hides.
1989 as a double year. In February the military in Caracas fires on anti-IMF demonstrators, in the summer Fukuyama declares the end of history, in June Tiananmen is crushed, in the autumn the Eastern Bloc falls. The standard narrative keeps the story of democracy; the story of distribution returns in the 1990s.
First successes against neoliberal reforms in the North (1990–95). The Poll Tax contributes to Thatcher's fall, in France Juppé withdraws parts of his plan. The lesson: policy can fail on the street. The repertoire (non-payment, blockade, street party) is practised in Britain via Reclaim the Streets.
The South supplies language and network (1994–98). The Zapatistas connect a local land question with a global interpretation (NAFTA), use the internet and invite people to the Encuentros; from this PGA emerges. The Asian crisis of 1997/98 and the net campaign against the MAI shift the target from individual governments to institutions and agreements.
J18 as a confluence of three strands (1999). Coming together are (a) the British direct-action scene from Poll Tax, anti-road protests, Reclaim the Streets and the dockers' strike, (b) the PGA networks with Zapatista roots, (c) the Jubilee 2000 campaign for debt relief, which organised a human chain in Cologne. The common occasion was the G8 summit. The principle that made Seattle big five months later is already here: simultaneous actions in many cities, agreed via networks, carried by very different groups.
Seattle to Genoa (1999–2001). The spectrum grew from activist networks to trade unions, churches, parties and farmers. Genoa is the point where everyone came together (over 700 groups, over 200,000 people) and at the same time experienced the harshest repression in the North. The consequence was a shift to forums and anti-war protest, not the end: European Social Forum in Florence (2002), 15.2.2003.
The parallel strand in the East (1996–2005). Belgrade 1996/97, Otpor 1998, election and fall in 2000; then CANVAS and the hand-over to Georgia (2003) and Ukraine (2004). As far as can be seen the two strands overlapped little in personnel, but learned from each other via images, symbols, handbooks (Gene Sharp) and the internet.
Feedback from 2011. The square movements take over elements of both strands. Occupy explicitly refers to Tahrir, and the Hong Kong Way of 2019 quotes the Baltic Way of 1989.

Blind spots of the standard narrative

The familiar story ("people force freedom, the West helps") overlooks at least four things:

Economics before politics. Price shocks, debt and inflation stand at the beginning of Solidarność, the Caracazo, Tiananmen, Romania 1989, Indonesia 1998 and Tunisia 2011. The demand for democracy often came later and then became the main interpretation.
The South in the WTO dispute. The failure of Seattle was also an uprising of the developing countries in the negotiating room, not only a success of the street.
Nonviolence as a winner's framing. That no violence escalated in Leipzig and Prague in 1989 also depended on Moscow's restraint; where the apparatus shot (Beijing, Timișoara), the form of the movement alone did not decide.
Security apparatuses as players. Parts of the army (Philippines 1986, Serbia 2000), secret services (St B ? on 17.11.1989, Securitate in Romania) and police units co-decided outcome and tempo. This is something different from the thesis of a steered revolution, for which there is no reliable evidence in these cases.

Intelligence services and third parties

Five levels have to be distinguished, because otherwise the debate blurs:

Open democracy promotion: NED, IRI, NDI, USAID, Freedom House, Soros foundations. Well documented.
Covert operations: CIA & co. Thinly evidenced.
Surveillance and infiltration by the regime itself: here the evidence is often strongest.
Third states: Russia, Gulf states.
Security apparatuses and army as key actors.

Otpor/Serbia

It is documented that the USA and other donors supported Serbia in 2000 with sums in the tens of millions. The Washington Post report by Michael Dobbs (December 2000) describes US-financed polls, training and logistics for the opposition, including Otpor. Robert Helvey, a retired US colonel, trained activists in Budapest, and Gene Sharp's writings served as a handbook. In 2003 CANVAS emerged from Otpor. On operational CIA involvement in the overthrow, by contrast, there are hardly any reliable sources. It is reported that contacts to the army and police helped to avoid violence, which is however hardly verifiable in detail. In the end domestic factors were decisive: election fraud, the strike of the Kolubara miners, switching of security forces. Bunce/Wolchik conclude: foreign aid diffused the model, but the mobilisation remained domestic.

Arab Spring

Documented: Egyptian activists of the April 6 Movement had contacts with CANVAS and US-funded programmes (NYT 2011). The State Department held the Alliance of Youth Movements summit in 2008. The US services were surprised by Mubarak's fall; CIA director Panetta's faulty forecasts are also documented. At the end of 2011 Egypt took action against US-funded NG Os ?.
Triggers were domestic factors (Khaled Said, Bouazizi, Wiki Leaks ? cables on Ben Ali's clan, history of strikes).
Libya is the clearest case of external interference (NATO intervention; role of MI 6 ? and DGSE according to a British parliamentary report of 2016). Syria: CIA programme Timber Sycamore (from 2013), which however already concerns the civil-war phase.
The other side: the 2013 coup in Egypt was, according to reports and leaked recordings, supported by the UAE and parts of the military apparatus, also in the environment of Tamarod (only partly proven).

Assessment

Aid, training and money can strengthen movements, but cannot produce mass mobilisation. The same tools failed in Belarus, in Iran 2009, in Zimbabwe, in Russia 2011/12, in Hong Kong 2019. The thesis "everything steered from outside" explains successes and failures badly. The thesis "everything spontaneous" hides documented support and counter-mobilisation.

Reading tips (please cross-check)

Tarrow, The New Transnational Activism;
della Porta on globalisation critique;
Bunce/Wolchik, Defeating Authoritarian Leaders; Beissinger (2007);
Lynch, The Arab Uprising;
Bayat, Revolution without Revolutionaries;
Chenoweth/Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works.

Sources of the update of 19.10.2026

Based on press reports from search results (pages not read in full); the other figures and dates come from memory and should be cross-checked.

India: Al Jazeera, 26.7.2026, AP via NY1, 25.7.2026
France 2026: Public Sénat, Euronews, 14.10.2026
Georgia: Caucasian Knot, 5.9.2026
Serbia: Al Jazeera, 28.9.2026, AP via KTLA, 23.5.2026
Israel: Al Jazeera, 17.7.2026
Russia 1998: RFE/RL, 25.5.1998, Wikipedia: 1998 Russian miners' strike
Fact-check of this version (19.10.2026): AP/Al Jazeera on India's Cockroach movement (25/26.7.2026); Euronews/AP on Vučić's resignation of 27.9.2026; German Wikipedia (K.P. Oli) on Nepal 2025 (successor PM Balen Shah, Oli arrested March 2026); German Wikipedia (A. Rajoelina) on Madagascar (term ended 14.10.2025)