Abstract

The basic approaches of the determination of political protest’s content were considered. Destabilizing processes have occurred due to the fact that the protest movements in the geopolitical space have blossomed during the last decade. So that it’s an important research task to find the nature of the complex nature of political protests, keep track of all factors of their origin and dynamics. Detailed and depth assessment of this phenomenon is the key to success in developing of methods for effective management and minimizing of their destructive effects. It’s the relevance of the research theme. The author had a purpose to summarize the main theoretical and methodological approaches to the definition of political protest and revealed its specifics. As a result, the category of “political protest” was clarified. It is understood as a complex of active or passive political practices of individual or collective subjects in the form of conventional or nonconventional expression of discontent towards political system as a whole, its individual structures, institutions, norms, values, decisions. Characteristics of political protests were summarized and analyzed. On this basis, the multidimensionality of this phenomenon was substantiated. So that political protest may exist in the internal state of a political subject’s rejection of some political relations that dominate in the political system. It can be reviewed through the protest mood. The second dimension is a form of dissent, resistance, rejection of the dominant political course. It is provided through a certain action or protest act, manifested in the direct participation of the protests. Political protest is a phenomenon of policy, political attribute that represents opposing forces, movements, trends, which go against the basic course of political life or another specific policy. Objective legitimacy of mass protest behavior depending on the nature and direction of the political process remain unresolved and the basic elements and features of political protest are in the ratio with the current political situation in Ukraine.