ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on how globalization as manifested in the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic shaped patterns of contentious politics around the world. The concept of contentious politics, initially coined by Charles Tilly and his colleagues, has developed into an interdisciplinary subfield that has expanded beyond its initial concerns social movements to consider a wider set of conflictual phenomena, from street protests and patterns of state repression to civil wars and revolutions. Globalization and both violent and nonviolent forms of contentious politics are interlinked. Civil wars, for example, have become increasingly transnational as global trade and investment as well as the circulation of people and ideas intensified, providing new ways to finance armed conflict and to engage with global actors to support an often distant cause. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated existing tensions and created new ones, thereby heightening the grievances around which protestors already had mobilized.
