In political science, a fairly well-known basic idea is that the two ways to dissent are exit and voice. Exit means you leave and go somewhere else, and was common in early political eras when most civilizations were small and surrounded by plenty of nomadic/lawless regions to retreat to. As populations increased, voice (i.e. protest, class warfare etc.) became increasingly common. The classic reference on this is "Exit, Voice and Loyalty" by Albert O. Hirschman. It's been on my reading list for a while.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty

For developers, it is swinging back towards exit, since the Internet can be considered a kind of virtual equivalent of the nomad regions to retreat to.

"Center-periphery" dynamics is the common term in geopolitics for dissent dynamics driven by movement inside/outside a core. Class warfare is the better known kind of dissent involving unionization etc. and involves fighting up and down a class structure.

Guilds, historically, were a medieval kind of institution that had characteristics of both exit and voice. The classic guild professions (weaving, masonry and in more recent times, things like typesetting in pre-lithography days) used their portable skills to leave kingdoms/cities and move elsewhere if they didn't like their current situation. This option was not really available to laborers tied to the land, and was essentially an urban phenomenon. This is the origin of the term "journeyman" for instance... apprentices who would follow master craftsmen around until they became masters in their own right.