Controlling dissent
With the Olympics fast approaching, attention continues to be focused on China's human rights record. I've been particularly struck by reports that protests will be allowed, but only within designated spaces and after applying for approval five days in advance.
I've just started reading Luis Fernandez's Policing Dissent, in which he looks at how democracies, particularly the US, have changed policing strategies in order to more effectively control social movements. From what I've read so far, the use of permits and other 'social control' measures in the US (and in Singapore and other places where WTO and World Bank meetings are held) are not so very different from what's happening in China at the moment.
I argued in my APSA paper democratic governments' attempts to control modern technologies and online spaces are on the same end of the spectrum as controls exerted by authoritarian states - I think this is equally the case for these other attempts to control dissent.