Asia’s Gen Z Protests Are Intense. Can They Create Lasting Change?
The world has seen a wave of mass protests in recent years, often led by Generation Z, including in many countries across South and Southeast Asia. Last year, a massive student-led uprising in Bangladesh toppled the repressive government of then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her Awami League party. In Thailand, youth-led protests calling for widespread reforms have raged on and off in recent years, despite intense crackdowns. In Nepal, young people angry about corruption forced the government out of power in early September. And in Indonesia, large protests involving many younger people began in August and have continued.
Local and global media have often portrayed these demonstrations as transformational for policymaking and governance, which is understandable given the impact they have had in forcing changes in government in some countries. Gen Zers in many parts of Asia are angry over governmental corruption, poor job prospects, inequality and entrenched business interests that hamper public service delivery. The widespread use of social media at these protests is also inspiring similar tactics in other countries around the world. But these demonstrations, unlike large-scale protests in, say, the late 1980s, will not necessarily lead the protesters to wield influence over their governments.
Indeed, multiple studies have shown that modern protest movements—often diffuse, purposely leaderless and organized online—are not particularly effective at fostering real change. Most notably, Harvard political scientist Erica Chenoweth showed in 2020 that large-scale protests, strikes and demonstrations had become less successful in fostering change than nonviolent movements of the past. “From the 1960s until about 2010, success rates for revolutionary nonviolent campaigns remained above 40 percent,” Chenoweth found. By contrast, “[s]ince 2010, less than 34 percent of nonviolent revolutions and a mere 8 percent of violent ones have succeeded.”
The Arab Spring uprisings of 2010-2011 notably fit this pattern: The massive demonstrations fueled by social media initially seemed to be a watershed, but in almost every country they were crushed or otherwise undermined. Today, even Tunisia, the sole country considered an Arab Spring success story, has become an authoritarian state under President Kais Saied. Ten years after the Arab Spring, the BBC noted in a retrospective that “the revolution had no real leaders, which made it feel popular and democratic. That was also its downfall. The young people who had become prominent in the protests could not find a way to organize themselves into an effective political force.”
As with the Arab Spring, many of the current Gen Z protests across Asia do not possess the qualities that Chenoweth and other scholars have identified as critical for nonviolent movements to have long-term impacts. They often lack the foundation of “sustained grassroots civic action” that Chenoweth argues were crucial to movements like Solidarity in Poland or the pro-democratic forces in South Korea in the 1980s. These movements built up over years through face-to-face organizing, with a strong core of organized and determined activists. By contrast, today’s movements lack clear strategies for transforming protest demands into legislative priorities, finding ways to enter government and manage governance, and exercising leadership.
Contemporary social movements are also generally easier to scuttle than their predecessors. Governments can use the same social media tools to spread disinformation and turn protesters against each other, while exploiting the shallow nature of social media engagement by using force to scare off many demonstrators.
In Myanmar, a 2021 military coup was met with nonviolent protests around the country, calling for a return to the previous semi-democratic system. But the peaceful gatherings had no impact on the junta, which cracked down on them violently, causing many demonstrators to take up arms instead. More recently, in Indonesia, demonstrators initially got President Prabowo Subianto, a gruff leader with clear strongman instincts, to make modest concessions. But Prabowo soon shifted to stonewalling further change, firing some of his most respected ministers and endorsing a broader crackdown on public dissent.
Even the Gen Z protest movements that ousted their political leaders have faced challenges in the aftermath. Young Bangladeshis celebrated after Hasina fled to India, which prompted the formation of a caretaker government led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus. But in the eyes of many of the student protesters who brought down the previous regime, Yunus’ interim government has failed to tackle corruption and reform the economy. A roadmap for political reforms that was signed last week by major political parties sparked protests from students who viewed it as not going far enough. The military, the most powerful force in the country, is reportedly getting restless. Meanwhile, in Nepal’s new government, fractures are emerging as members of Hami Nepal, a youth-led NGO that helped spearhead the protests, have soured on the new interim prime minister’s leadership.
There are exceptions, however, which show how Gen Z protests could exert more political influence. As Janjira Sombatpoonsiri of Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok notes, deep reforms result not from social media mobilization alone, but from “broad-based alliances that strengthen collaboration between civil society, political parties, institutional actors, and online-based movements.”
This has occurred in Thailand and Sri Lanka. In Thailand, the protest movements of recent years generated clear leaders, who then formed a progressive political party devoted to reducing the power of the military and creating a truly constitutional monarchy. That party, rebranded multiple times and now known as the People’s Party, won the most seats in Thailand’s last parliamentary election in 2023, though it was kept out of the ruling coalition. Now, though, Thailand must call parliamentary elections within four months, and the country is revising its constitution. Future elections could easily see the People’s Party win an absolute majority of seats in the lower house. If it does, and it is not crushed by the military/royalist establishment or toppled in a coup, it would have the opportunity to push through the reforms it wants, which may be supported by a majority of Thais.
In Sri Lanka, meanwhile, protests in 2022 over corruption, a serious economic crisis and growing authoritarianism led to the toppling of the ruling Rajapaksa dynasty, which had controlled the country’s politics for roughly 20 years. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled, as did his brother, the finance minister. While the country was then ruled for two years by Ranil Wickremesinghe, who delayed new elections, the protest movement did eventually lead to seismic change at the ballot box. In the 2024 presidential election, voters elected Anura Kumara Dissanayake of the National People’s Power party. The choice of the NPP, a left-leaning party that had gained little traction before—Dissanayake won roughly 3 percent of the vote in the 2019 presidential election—was a clear rebuke to the country’s political establishment, including the Rajapaksas. Soon after, the NPP won a massive majority in parliament as well.
Although Sri Lanka still faces dire economic challenges due to years of mismanagement and the NPP’s own governing inexperience, its election and its moves toward major political change have already differentiated the results of Sri Lanka’s protests from those of other states. The NPP has moved forward, gradually, on its core promise to change the constitution to reduce the power of the presidency, decentralize power and improve political participation for everyone. Gen Z demonstrators rising up throughout Asia today could stand to learn much from this example.
This article was originally published in World Politics Review.
