IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/zbw/espost/214688.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Different worlds of contention? Protest in Northwestern, Southern and Eastern Europe

Author

Listed:
  • Borbáth, Endre
  • Gessler, Theresa

Abstract

Despite the voluminous literature on the ‘normalisation of protest’, the protest arena is seen as a bastion of left-wing mobilisation. While citizens on the left readily turn to the streets, citizens on the right only settle for it as a ‘second best option’. However, most studies are based on aggregated cross-national comparisons or only include Northwestern Europe. We contend the aggregate-level perspective hides different dynamics of protest across Europe. Based on individual-level data from the European Social Survey (2002–2016), we investigate the relationship between ideology and protest as a key component of the normalisation of protest. Using hierarchical logistic regression models, we show that while protest is becoming more common, citizens with different ideological views are not equal in their protest participation across the three European regions. Instead of a general left predominance, we find that in Eastern European countries, right-wing citizens are more likely to protest than those on the left. In Northwestern and Southern European countries, we find the reverse relationship, left-wing citizens are more likely to protest than their right-wing counterparts. Lessons drawn from the protest experience in Northwestern Europe characterised by historical mobilisation by the New Left are of limited use for explaining the ideological composition of protest in the Southern and Eastern European countries. We identify historical and contemporary regime access as the mechanism underlying regional patterns: citizens with ideological views that were historically in opposition are more likely to protest. In terms of contemporary regime access, we find that partisanship enhances the effect of ideology, while ideological distance from the government has a different effect in the three regions. As protest gains in importance as a form of participation, the paper contributes to our understanding of regional divergence in the extent to which citizens with varying ideological views use this tool.

Suggested Citation

  • Borbáth, Endre & Gessler, Theresa, 2020. "Different worlds of contention? Protest in Northwestern, Southern and Eastern Europe," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 59(4), pages 910-935.
  • Handle: RePEc:zbw:espost:214688
    DOI: 10.1111/1475-6765.12379
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/214688/3/Full-text-article-Borbath-et-al-Different-worlds-of.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1475-6765.12379?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Filip Kostelka, 2014. "The State of Political Participation in Post-Communist Democracies: Low but Surprisingly Little Biased Citizen Engagement," Europe-Asia Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 66(6), pages 945-968, July.
    2. Tavits, Margit & Letki, Natalia, 2009. "When Left Is Right: Party Ideology and Policy in Post-Communist Europe," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 103(4), pages 555-569, November.
    3. Fairbrother, Malcolm, 2014. "Two Multilevel Modeling Techniques for Analyzing Comparative Longitudinal Survey Datasets," Political Science Research and Methods, Cambridge University Press, vol. 2(1), pages 119-140, April.
    4. Borbáth, Endre & Hutter, Swen, 2020. "Are Political Parties Recapturing the Streets of Europe?," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, pages 251-272.
    5. Dalton, Russell & Van Sickle, Alix & Weldon, Steven, 2010. "The Individual–Institutional Nexus of Protest Behaviour," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 40(1), pages 51-73, January.
    6. Anderson, Christopher J. & Mendes, Silvia M., 2006. "Learning to Lose: Election Outcomes, Democratic Experience and Political Protest Potential," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 36(1), pages 91-111, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hellmeier, Sebastian & Vüllers, Johannes, 2022. "Dynamics and determinants of right-wing populist mobilisation in Germany," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, issue Latest Ar, pages 1-1.
    2. Borbáth, Endre & Hunger, Sophia & Hutter, Swen & Oana, Ioana-Elena, 2021. "Civic and Political Engagement during the Multifaceted COVID-19 Crisis," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 27(2), pages 311-324.
    3. Borbáth, Endre & Hutter, Swen, 2021. "Protesting Parties in Europe: A comparative analysis," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 27(5), pages 896-908.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ali Abdelzadeh, 2014. "The Impact of Political Conviction on the Relation Between Winning or Losing and Political Dissatisfaction," SAGE Open, , vol. 4(2), pages 21582440145, May.
    2. Mijs, Jonathan Jan Benjamin, 2019. "The Paradox of Inequality: Income Inequality and Belief in Meritocracy go Hand in Hand," SocArXiv dcr9b, Center for Open Science.
    3. Borbáth, Endre & Hunger, Sophia & Hutter, Swen & Oana, Ioana-Elena, 2021. "Civic and Political Engagement during the Multifaceted COVID-19 Crisis," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 27(2), pages 311-324.
    4. Andrew Bell & Kelvyn Jones & Malcolm Fairbrother, 2018. "Understanding and misunderstanding group mean centering: a commentary on Kelley et al.’s dangerous practice," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 52(5), pages 2031-2036, September.
    5. de Jong, Abe & Shahriar, Abu Zafar & Shazia, Farhan, 2022. "Reaching out to the unbanked: The role of political ideology in financial inclusion," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    6. Arístides Vara-Horna & Zaida Asencios-Gonzalez & Dennis López-Odar & Marivel Aguirre-Morales & Ingrid Cirilo-Acero, 2024. "The Role of Subjective Well-Being in Cuban Civil Protest against the Government: A Moderated Mediation Model," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 13(1), pages 1-23, January.
    7. Neugart, Michael & Rode, Johannes, 2021. "Voting after a major flood: Is there a link between democratic experience and retrospective voting?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    8. Andrew Bell & Malcolm Fairbrother & Kelvyn Jones, 2019. "Fixed and random effects models: making an informed choice," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 53(2), pages 1051-1074, March.
    9. Lenka Dražanová & Jérôme Gonnot, 2023. "Public Opinion and Immigration in Europe: Can Regional Migration Flows Predict Public Attitudes to Immigration?," RSCAS Working Papers 2023/18, European University Institute.
    10. Leo Ahrens, 2020. "Unfair Inequality and the Demand for Redistribution," LIS Working papers 771, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    11. Hekmatpour, Peyman & Leslie, Carrie McLachlin, 2022. "Ecologically unequal exchange and disparate death rates attributable to air pollution: A comparative study of 169 countries from 1991 to 2017," OSF Preprints racms, Center for Open Science.
    12. Daniil Romanov & Andrey Korotayev, 2019. "«Non-Violent, But Still Dangerous»: Testing The Link Between Youth Bulges And The Intensity Of Non-Violent Protests," HSE Working papers WP BRP 69/PS/2019, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    13. Mumuni Abdul Wahid, 2024. "Influence of Social Policy Intervention; An Analysis of Free Senior High School Policy in Ghana as a Tool to Improve Lives or a Tool to Gain Votes in Elections," International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science, International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS), vol. 8(4), pages 906-916, April.
    14. Mark Hallerberg, 2012. "Explaining European Patterns of Taxation: From the Introduction of the Euro to the Euro-Crisis," Research Department Publications 4777, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department.
    15. Gabriel Asante, 2023. "The Politics of Social Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Configurational Approach to Fee-Free Policies at the High School Level," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(3), pages 21582440231, July.
    16. Joscha Beckmann & Rainer Schweickert & Markus Ahlborn & Inna Melnykovska, 2020. "Drivers of Government Activity in European Countries: Do Partisan Politics Still Divide East and West?," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(5), pages 1235-1251, September.
    17. Ziller, Conrad & Helbling, Marc, 2019. "Antidiscrimination Laws, Policy Knowledge and Political Support," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 49(3), pages 1027-1044.
    18. Joseph Horrocks-Taylor, 2018. "Dirty Water, Muddied Politics: Hybridisation of Local and National Opposition to Kumtor Mine, Kyrgyzstan," Land, MDPI, vol. 7(2), pages 1-18, April.
    19. Nina Lopez Uroz, 2020. "Populism Amidst Prosperity: Poland's Growth Model and its Socio-Political Outcomes," LEQS – LSE 'Europe in Question' Discussion Paper Series 159, European Institute, LSE.
    20. Mitchell Orenstein & Bojan Bugaric, 2020. "Populism Amidst Prosperity: Work, Family, Fatherland: The Political Economy of Populism in Central and Eastern Europe," LEQS – LSE 'Europe in Question' Discussion Paper Series 163, European Institute, LSE.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:espost:214688. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/zbwkide.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.