The Revolution that Ate Its own Children: The Colourful Revolution from Consensus to Discord

Abstract

The main goal of this essay is to provide an in-depth analysis of the trajectory of the Colourful Revolution (CR) in North Macedonia as a social movement. From a more general perspective, the paper engages with the growing interest in the literature that explores the correlation between social movements and democratisation processes, especially in societies that fall into the category of hybrid regimes. The Colourful Revolution is a good example of a protest movement that has created effective regime change. It presented a complex social movement encompassing many fragmented social and political groups gathered around the idea of a common adversary. 

Additionally, the Colourful Revolution has one particularity: it is a social movement that has undergone a full developmental circle – formation through utilization of political opportunity frameworks, a period of activity and success and dissolution. Drawing on literature of the political process, opportunity frameworks and cycles of social movements, the paper argues that social movements such as the Colourful Revolution are not just temporary and unstable structures but are also highly dependent on the existence of a common target of the social activism in question. The removal from power of political actors that have been the reason for mobilisation of a complex and diverse network of social and political activism resulted in an absence of an adhesive factor holding together all the parts of this complex system. The absence initiated gradual discord and dissolution of different factions within the social movement (CR in this case) and reveals its true nature – temporary, ideologically diverse, conflictual, and even undemocratic in some respects.