From opportunity to From opportunity to threat: how the political threat: how the political

context shapes the context shapes the protestprotest

Jiri NavratilMasaryk University

Research focus and questionsResearch focus and questions

Impact of political context on protest alliances (nationalization)

How threats and opportunities for collective action combine?

How the changes in threats and opportunities shape the frequency, ideological diversity and the size of SMO coalitions?

HypothesesHypotheses (Tilly, Van Dyke) (Tilly, Van Dyke)

1) The rise of a threat contributes more to the amount (frequency) of protest alliances than the opening of POS.

2) It is the opening of POS that increases the probability of ideologically manifold alliances and of bridging the inter-sectoral gaps.

3) The rise of a threat more than opening of POS pushes the actors to build broader (more numerous) coalitions.

4) More acute threats generate rather cross-movement protest coalitions while more distant dangers to the identity or goals of collective actors stimulate rather within-movement (intra-sectoral) partnership.

Assumptions for the Czech Assumptions for the Czech casecase

Data and operationalization I.Data and operationalization I.

Protest event analysis (n=287); triangulation of resources

Location, time, organizing and participating groups and organizations, number of participants, repertoire, number of individual participants and main claim

Action variable – SNA (co-occurrence at the event = directed tie; dir. valued 2-mode net > dir. valued 1-mode)

Overall network density, the percentage of intra-sectoral ties, the ratio of complete and incomplete connected triads in network (transitivity index)

Valued vs. binary networks

Data and operationalization II.Data and operationalization II. Context variable: 3 temporal configurations of political

context of Czech anti-war activism Distant/acute threat; split in government/parliament

on the issue, public opinion September 2002 – November 2002 (protests against

NATO, 12 protest events), January 2003 – June 2006 (protests against the war in

Iraq, 82 protest events), August 2006 – April 2009 (protests against the

location of US anti-missile base in the Czech Republic, 193 protest events)

ThreatsThreats and opportunities of Czech and opportunities of Czech anti-war activism (2002-2009)anti-war activism (2002-2009)

ThreatsThreats and opportunities of Czech and opportunities of Czech anti-war activism (2002-2009)anti-war activism (2002-2009)

ThreatsThreats and opportunities of Czech and opportunities of Czech anti-war activism (2002-2009)anti-war activism (2002-2009)

Protest networks (Protest networks (anti-anti-NATO)NATO)

Note: Red colour denotes anarchist SMOs, blue one human right organizations, green Trotskyites, grey peace group, black extreme right groups and pink communists. The size of the nodes reflects out-degree of an SMO, strength of the tie reflect the amount of cooperation between the groups during the period. Visualisation method: spring embedding layout.

Protest networks (2003-2006)Protest networks (2003-2006) Note: Olive colour denotes communist SMOs, turquoise peace organizations, lighter blue anarchists, dark blue Marxists, pink minorities, brown religious SMOs, dark green cultural organizations; light green labour unions, grey environmentalists, violet Trotskyites, and yellow social democrats. The size of the nodes reflects out-degree of an SMO, strength of the tie reflect the amount of cooperation between the groups during the period. Visualisation method: spring embedding layout.

Protest networks (2006-2009)Protest networks (2006-2009)

Note: Yellow colour denotes communist SMOs, violet peace groups; light green environmentalists, dark green social democrats, lighter blue anarchists, dark blue cultural organizations, light grey Trotskyites, dark grey Marxists, brown religious groups, and violet minorities. The size of the nodes reflects out-degree of an SMO, strength of the tie reflect the amount of cooperation between the groups during the period. Visualisation method: spring embedding layout.

Anti-war protest cooperation Anti-war protest cooperation networks (2002-2009)networks (2002-2009)

Anti-war protest cooperation Anti-war protest cooperation networks (2002-2009)networks (2002-2009)

Anti-war protest cooperation Anti-war protest cooperation networks (2002-2009)networks (2002-2009)

Evaluation of hypothesesEvaluation of hypotheses1) „The rise of a threat is more important for

the amount (frequency) of protest alliances than the opening of POS.“

Single cooperation: opening of POS induces coalitions (+6%), rise of the threat with open POS reduces them (-7%)

Routine cooperation: opening of POS reduces ties (-27%), rise of the threat with open POS too but less (-3%)

Evaluation of hypothesesEvaluation of hypotheses

2) „It is the opening of POS that increases the probability of ideologically manifold alliances and of bridging the cross-sectional gaps“

Single cooperation: opening of POS induces ideologically manifold coalitions (+80%), rise of the threat with open POS reduces them (-13%)

Evaluation of hypothesesEvaluation of hypotheses

3) „The rise of a threat more than opening of POS pushes the actors to build broader (more numerous) coalitions“

Single cooperation: both the sole opening of POS (-0.1) and rise of the threat with open POS (-0.27) contribute to the building of smaller and hierarchically shaped patterns of cooperation

Routine cooperation: POS (again) lead to smaller coalitions (-3.3), political threat rather support building larger and less hierarchical coalitions (0.25)

Evaluation of hypothesesEvaluation of hypotheses4) „More acute threats generate rather cross-

movement protest coalitions while more distant dangers to the identity or goals of collective actors stimulate rather within-movement (intra-sectoral) partnership.“

Single cooperation : comparison of the percentage of cross-sectoral ties between the second (low threat, open POS) and third (acute threat, open POS) period = decline in cross-sectoral alliances (-13%)

Possible explanation: Establishment of a broad anti-war coalition that factually absorbed a large amount of cross-sectoral cooperation?

All comments are welcome!All comments are welcome!

Thank you for attention!Thank you for attention!