Since the mid-1990s, and following the movements of the squares in 2011 in particular, collective actions of civil disobedience appear to be increasingly normal aspects of political life within Western liberal democracies. For many activists, the decision to commit acts of civil disobedience comes not (or not just) from conscience, but from their understanding of their duties as citizens (and in some cases as professionals). In such cases, disobedience is felt as less a choice than an obligation: to act otherwise is an impossibility. If the range of types of action undertaken are now familiar from numerous movements, disobedient actions remain particular because of the specific set of techniques and risks that they require and entail for activists, and because of the way that they frequently mobilize media and judicial arenas in order to demonstrate commitment, influence public opinion, and beyond that, convert institutional centres of power. Accordingly, disobedient action also frequently entails the development of specific forms of organization, such as affinity groups. In this chapter, we discuss the multiple different ways that disobedience actions are carried out (the ‘repertoire’ of civil disobedience action), how they are deployed to create specific effects and to form and reflect group identities, and how they become communicative vehicles, both within movement networks and in order to connect with publics and influence opponents and allies. We then discuss the judicial consequences of these actions, focusing in particular on the case of antinuclear campaigners in northern France.

The Constraints of Illegal Action

What, in the terms defined by Tilly (2003), we can call the repertoire of disobedient action is overwhelmingly drawn from theories of non-violent action, with the specific distinction that it is designed to challenge or disrupt the prevailing legal framework. Different groups can be expected to use different types of action, and these actions can be expected to be broadly influenced by the identities and goals of the groups, the resources they command, the cultural contexts in which they operate, and the responses and counter-strategies of public authorities and political opponents. As discussed above, at the most basic level, we can categorize disobedient actions as either actions of non-cooperation (especially though not exclusively associated with the private sphere of action, such as the refusal to pay tax), or of active interventions in public space (occupations, physical obstructions, property destructions, resistances to the actions of state agents, and so on).