What do we want and how do we do it? Movement Claims and Repertoires in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia

Abstract

The paper aims to cover the claims-making process and the repertoires of action in two recent anti-governmental social movements: the citizens’ mobilization in Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H) from the beginning of 2014 and the “Citizens for Macedonia” (CfM) movement in Macedonia from mid-2015. Lasse Lindekilde reflects on movement claims describing them as “the conscious articulation of political demands in the public sphere, thus leaving aside more private or hidden forms of political claims-making such as voting and lobbyism.” On the other hand, Della Porta highlights that “a repertoire of contention comprises what people know they can do when they want to oppose a public decision they consider unjust or threatening.”  The goal of this analysis is to shed light on the main reasons lying behind the two mobilizations in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia, as well as to unveil the main mechanisms through which the central grievances of the government challengers were channeled towards the targeted governments. Regarding the methodological approach, I apply a political claim analysis (PCA), focusing dominantly on the claims coming from the side of the social movement actors. The PCA is defined as a quantitative method which treats political claims as units of analysis, taking newspapers as sources for the publically visible part of the claims-making process. In accordance with the methodological approach, the primary data collection tool envisages daily newspapers from the two countries: Dnevni Avaz, from B&H, and Sloboden Pechat and Dnevnik, from Macedonia.