The Colored-shirt Politics and the Study of Counter-movement in the Tradition of Social and Political Movement Study

Abstract

The scholars in the past had largely overlooked the definitions of terms, which led to their confusion and failure to distinguish the differences between movements and counter-movements. Through the case study of the colored-shirt movements arising from the conflicts in the crucial political period, this article aims to engage in the academic debate and elucidate the understanding of movements and counter-movements from the social and political perspectives. With both quantitative and qualitative approaches, this article argues that the red shirts movement is “not” a counter-movement of the yellow shirts movement. Moreover, from my findings, the counter-movements in this transitional period can be classified into two types. Type I refers to the quite freely assembling counter-movements (the Yellow Shirts movement) and Type II refers to the hierarchical counter-movements, which are well organized by the state (the Blue Shirts movement). This article defines the term “counter-movements” relating to the concept about “social change”. Hence, at this point, the social movement is “the democratic movement” and the counter-movement is “the anti-democratic movement”.