The ultimate sacrifice : a comparative study of self-immolation as a tactic of political protest in India and South Korea.

Self-immolation;Collective action;Protest;Collective behavior;Suicide;Mobilization

Sean Goff

University:University of Louisville

Department:Political Science

关键词: Self-immolation;    Collective action;    Protest;    Collective behavior;    Suicide;    Mobilization;   

Others  :  https://ir.library.louisville.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1507&context=etd

美国|英语

来源: The Universite of Louisville's Institutional Repository

【 摘 要 】

In recent years, self-immolation has become a pervasive tactic of political protest. To this point, however, it has been unclear why self-immolation has become so widely employed, calling into question the social and political efficacy of the tactic. The purpose of this thesis is to determine self-immolation's impact on three target groups: the core, the periphery, and the political system. In doing so, I conduct a comparative study of India's anti-reservation movement and South Korea's pro-democracy movement, both of which experienced high frequencies of self-immolation. I demonstrate that while self-immolation was ineffective at mobilizing the core and only moderately effective at mobilizing the periphery and initiating political change, in South Korea, self-immolation was highly effective on all three groups. I argue that the differences in efficacy can be attributed to variations in social structure, political culture, issue diffusion, and institutional access to the political system.