The impact of the criminalization of social protest on citizen participation

Abstract

The article traces the links between the criminalization of social protest and citizen participation against the backdrop of cultural violence. Arguing the service that social movements and organizations provide for the construction of a political system and particularly for the consolidation of a democracy, it raises the little explored idea of how state repression through the criminalization of social protest perpetrated against citizen activists has repercussions beyond the act of violence itself, inhibiting citizen participation in the public sphere.