Dissent

Dissent came into English in the late 16th century as both a general term meaning disagreement in outlook or sentiment and as a specific term meaning difference of opinion in regard to religious doctrine or worship. With both meanings, dissent signified the opposite of consent or assent. Important correlatives threading through the centuries astride dissent include protest, nonconformity, and collectivity.

Dissent is contentious, adversarial, nonconformist political thought and activity that contests, opposes, or [Page 467]transgresses entrenched, commonly expressed ideas, rules, topics, and norms of public interaction and deliberation. Dissent by definition is conflictual. Amid the throes of conflict, dissident citizens and groups often present significant challenges to the social order. Yet for dissident citizens, conflict is not an end;rather, it is a means toward public learning and possibly even the creation of newfound consensus.

Dissident citizens and groups meet the following three criteria: (1) They publicly contest prevailing structures of power and/or the underlying logic of public policy, (2) they engage in some extra-institutional, oppositional tactics, though they may be flexible actors that employ forms of action both inside and outside the institutional pathways of political power, and (3) on at least some issues, they have marginal stances that are not consistently entering the dominant political discourse.

While in its most general sense, the term dissent indicates the rejection of commonly held views or disagreement with the ideas, opinions, and views of the majority (e.g., a dissenting opinion in the judicial context: when at least one judge disagrees with the majority decision), dissent goes beyond disagreement or withholding assent. Dissent is a calibration more active than disagreement. Dissident citizens therefore not only disagree with predominant—or even hegemonic—political ideas of their time, but also take action to change their sociopolitical environment. In other words, dissent is the collective mechanism for initiating social change.

As such, dissent involves both a dedication to autonomous thinking as well as a willingness to act on behalf of nonconformist principles, ideas, and ideals. Dissident citizens disregard the resilient, pervasive social pressures to conform not only their thinking, but also their behavior. They often work for causes bigger than themselves, actively pushing to meet the goals and aims of these causes. Practitioners of dissent disagree with and actively oppose official, dominant, or hegemonic doctrines and explicitly express political difference with received ideas in an attempt to widen the path of freedom and improve the vibrancy of civil society.

Dissenting citizens remain outside of much democratic theory that focuses on deliberative democracy and discourse. Dissidents move beyond the activity of deliberative citizens who participate in contained politics within the institutional structures of democracy. Dissident citizens—who see the deliberative role, regardless of how critical it may be, as merely a starting point, rather than an end in itself—engage in transgressive contention using innovative political action that is either unprecedented or prohibited. They take direct action against what they see as problematic political policies, practices, and procedures. They move vigorously against taken-for-granted hegemonic ideas, ideals, and institutions.

Rather than rely on voting, petitioning, and letter writing, dissident citizens create a variety of unconventional public spaces and events—such as protest marches, picket lines, worker strikes, consumer boycotts, and street theater—on the margins and in the fractures of the polity. Dissident citizens can come from anywhere on the political spectrum, but they share a propensity to engage in alternative forms of political engagement that are democratic, innovative, and oppositional.

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