Naira Baghdasaryan
nabaghdasaryan@yahoo.com
The social protests are the integral part of current political life. The latter exists both in the developed countries with so called democratic systems and in the nations in transit. In this work by saying “democracy” or “democratic” we are based on the indicators of Freedom House.
Generally the social movements can be considered as the expressions of the freedom of speech and assembly. Some scholars adhere to believe that the social movements are the component of civil society. The latter is considered to be one of the most decisive parts of democratic state. From this perspective the social protests may have some democratic implications to the extent that it relates to the expressions of the freedoms. However, from the other side they arise as a result of social dissatisfaction towards some state or non state decisions or attitudes. That is why we advance the following argument: the social movements are the illustrations of lack of democracy from one side and expressions of democratic freedoms from another side. So, they cannot be judged as pure demonstrations of freedoms. The objective of the paper is to identify that ambiguity from the perspectives of the theories and to support the theoretical interpretations with practical cases from Armenian reality.