Exploring the Relationship between the Configuration of the State, Protest Organisations and Characteristics of Protest

A body of literature has developed around the impact that so-called political opportunities have upon protest participation. This literature has been critiqued for three main reasons: firstly, it wrongly assumes that factors associated with the configuration of the state lead to homogenised movements within states. In practice, movements on different issues and even protests on the same issue can be drastically different from one another. Secondly, it has in its older iterations ignored how protest movements perceive of and create for themselves movement opportunities independent objectively measured reality; as has been stressed in the literature, a political opportunity is no such thing unless activists are aware of it. And thirdly it conflates structural and non-structural variables. However, this does not mean that there is nothing to learn from this branch of theory, providing these issues are ironed out. This paper draws on data from the pan-European Caught in the Act of Protest survey (with data from the UK, Belgium, Italy, Czech Republic, Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland), which collects data from individual protest participants at large-scale street demonstrations together with contextual information about the demonstration and its organisers, combined with standard measures of political opportunities. The paper considers how state level variables (type of government, executive-legislative relations, the electoral system, the extent of federation, degree of bicameralism and configuration of power) are related to a) the types of NGOs that organise large-scale street demonstrations; b) the characteristics of protest events and; c) activists’ own views. In countries where the political opportunity ‘structure’ reduces the need to protest we anticipate finding protests that are less violent, and individuals who are more positive about demonstration efficacy.