Acts of civil disobedience seemingly destabilize the social order through their avowed and deliberate transgression of the law. Yet civil disobedience has, in Western liberal democracies, also become an increasingly widespread and normalized form of political protest, drawing on celebrated (and seemingly consensual) figures of struggle, such as Gandhi, or King. At the trial of the GANVA anti-nuclear activists in Rennes in January 2011 for their occupation of a high-tension electricity pylon four years earlier, for example, a Green MEP appearing as expert witness told the court that:

Civil disobedience draws on a heroic tradition of action, valorizing and legitimizing it as an ideal of democratic engagement, particularly where prosecution is used by activists to create a space for political challenge and democratic deliberation. Indeed, because civil disobedience characteristically is followed by prosecution and appearance in court, the individual activist subjects themself to two forms of vulnerability: the physical vulnerability of action, as they place responsibility for the physical governance of their body directly in the hands of their adversary; and the symbolic vulnerability of subsequent prosecution, as they subject their motives and actions to public examination and potential sanction.

In the repertoire approach to understanding social movement tactics (Tilly, 2003), major transformations in the types of action used by social movements develop as a result of major social transformations. Thus the development of the types of democratic participation familiar to Western democratic states – voting, demonstrations, political campaigns, industrial action, petitions, rallies – are the product of large-scale shifts in the organization of society: industrialization, urbanization, the development of national suffrage, markets, and communication systems. These forms of participation are inherently indirect, as they aim to secure a favourable outcome by persuading publics, political parties, and public authorities of the validity of their particular cause. Equally, these forms of action constitute a pacification of social conflict: strikes, demonstrations, elections promote negotiation rather than force as the mechanism of social arbitration (Deloye, 2007).