Disruptive Protest, Civil Disobedience & Direct Action

Disruptive protest has become increasingly studied and promoted across the social sciences, not least in relation to climate protests. This paper asks what the rationale and effects of disruptive protest are. It argues that disruptive protest carries a prefigurative legitimacy, envisaging a more democratic and just society while aiming for broader appeal and legitimacy rendered by liberal discourses. The paper takes a political theory perspective through both the literature on civil disobedience and the anarchist literature on direct action. It then explores how the key attributes of these literatures render legitimacy to the practices and discourses of two social movements that have made widespread use of disruptive protest in recent years: the Spanish anti-eviction movement Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH) and the mainly British climate change movement Extinction Rebellion (XR).