The final lectures on Political Opportunity Structure and examining how protest movements grow and succeed where interesting, particularly the discussion on when/what allows anger to trump fear however what it had me thinking about was the importance of students as a genuine power bloc. The section on 'Who protests first' and that after activists it is often student/student orgs that transform dissatisfaction to genuine regime threat made me wonder if regimes had ever succeeded in using students as a way to actually consolidate power considering their seemingly inherent threat to a regime or if they are always a tool of democratisation, or atleast regime change, at large with some maybe smaller regime/loyal subsidiary like a party aligned youth-wing. I have looked around a little bit and can't find any examples of students siding with a regime against a poplar push for regime change on mass except maybe Mao's red guards however I think that would be seen as just as much action against the regime/government than for it and was itself a self described revolution as opposed to stoping one. Would be interesting to see under what circumstance it has happened under if it has or even if it's realistically possible.
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