Social movements amidst backsliding

Asian polities have experienced a new wave of autocratisation and pushback over the past decade, generating new theoretical puzzles in the study of democratisation and social movements. This chapter examines the effectiveness of two mainstream social movement theories, resource mobilisation theory and political process model with reference to mass protests in Hong Kong. It argues that these theories are relevant yet insufficient to account for the upsurge of mass and recurrent mobilizations when the space for dissent and authority of movement organisations are impeded. Instead, this chapter offers three alternative lenses: eventful approach, threat alignment, and affective solidarity. The eventful approach offers a temporal analysis, conceptualising social movements as contingent events shaping human agencies and creating ruptures in the existing order. Threat alignment explains how individual sentiments can translate into collective actions in the face of the ongoing erosion of rights and freedoms. Affective solidarity offers a relational analysis to investigate how group relations interplay with public memories and collective identities. These three alternative perspectives could complement the mainstream theories and enhance our understanding of contemporary social movements in Asia.