Illustration by Abro
In November 2019, the American political analyst Patrick Liddiard wrote in an essay on the Wilson Centre website that, recently, the world has seen an increase in social movements by groups who feel alienated by mainstream political parties. However, even though many such movements have been successful in bringing out thousands of people to protest, according to Liddiard, their success rate in achieving their stated aims is under 30 percent.
For Liddiard, one of the main reasons for this is that a majority of these social movements were not attached to, or backed by, an organised outfit. He gave examples of the 2019 social movement in Sudan against the dictator Omar al-Bashir and the populist ‘Yellow Vest’ movement in France. The movement in Sudan succeeded in ousting Bashir because it had the backing of a large alliance of professional trade unions. Meanwhile, the Yellow Vest movement, which was not affiliated with an organised outfit, saw its influence us