The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution

Vincent Bevins is a freelance journalist and author of The Jakarta Method. With over 15 years of experience in the field, Bevins has contributed to The Economist, Foreign Policy, The Guardian, and The New York Times, among other publications. Bevins has previously worked as a foreign correspondent in Brazil for The Los Angeles Times, London for the Financial Times, and most recently Jakarta covering Southeast Asia for The Washington Post. His new book, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution, came out on October 3rd. In it, he aims to investigate the failure of the past decade of social movements and public outcry to spark significant change in society. Bevins previously published The Jakarta Method, where he explores the U.S. government’s anticommunist crusade. 

Fernando Bizzarro is a Postdoctoral Associate with the Leitner Program for Effective Democratic Governance at Yale University. Starting in Fall 2024, he will be Assistant Professor of Political Science at Boston College. A comparativist who explores the nature, causes, and consequences of political institutions, Bizzarro’s work makes use of both observational and experimental empirical strategies to study global and local questions about the functioning of democracy and of political parties. His first book project explores the nature and causes of patterns of political representation in democracies with weak political parties, treating the party systems of Brazil, Portugal, and Mexico as case studies. A second, co-authored book project will explore ​​the few late-democratizing countries where democracy has deepened in recent decades, and attempt to identify the factors that contribute to greater “democratization of democracies.

Jonathan Laurence is Director of the Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy and Professor of Political Science at Boston College. He received a B.A., summa cum laude, from Cornell University, a C.E.P. at Sciences Po, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University. His principal areas of teaching and research are comparative politics and religion and politics in Western Europe, Turkey and North Africa. Prof. Laurence's latest book is Coping with Defeat: Sunni Islam, Roman Catholicism and the Modern State (Princeton University Press, 2021). Previously, The Emancipation of Europe's Muslims, was published by Princeton University Press in 2012, and received awards for Best Book in religion and politics and migration and citizenship from the American Political Science Association. His first book, Integrating Islam: Religious and Political Challenges in Contemporary France, co-authored with Justin Vaïsse, was published by Brookings Institution Press (2006) and Odile Jacob (2007) and named an Outstanding Academic Title by Choice Magazine. Prof. Laurence assumed the Directorship of the Clough Center in spring 2022.

Mohammad Ali Kadivar is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and International Studies at Boston College. His work contributes to political and comparative-historical sociology by exploring the interaction between protest movements and democratization. His research grows out of his experience as a participant-observer of the pro-democracy movement in Iran, but his research agenda moves outward from this case to explore these issues on a global scale, using case studies, comparative-historical methods, and statistical analyses. Kadivar’s research has been published in the American Sociological Review, Social Forces, Comparative Politics, Socius, Mobilization, and Sociology of Development. His first book, Popular Politics and the Path to Durable Democracy, was published in 2022 by Princeton University Press.