Changing Movement Boundaries: Exploring Patterns of Interaction between Civil Society Organizations, Organized Labor, and Political Parties in the Spanish Protest Arena (2000-2017)

Recent years have seen a growing scholarly interest in how civil society organizations, organized labor and political parties relate to one another in the production of social contention. Much of this research, however, has remained rather limited in scope: either by examining localized processes, considering a short time span or by looking at specific organizations only. This paper aims at broadening the scope by looking at an entire country (Spain), a relatively long time span (2000-2017) and by not limiting a priori, the types of actors considered. The study is furthermore novel in that it suggests an inductive, data-driven approach to identifying periods of relative network stability and moments of significant network change. The study relies on a protest event dataset on Spain, which was compiled through an exhaustive review of the two major national print newspapers (El Mundo and El País) for the period 2000-2017 (n=3919). Based on the information on the reported co-presence of organizations in protest events, we use multidimensional scaling and structural equivalence analyses to explore the patterns of interactions between organizations. The results show an overall network structure with a densely connected core of established organizations—notably labor unions and left-wing parties—and a loosely connected periphery composed mainly of less established civil society organizations. Taking into account changes over time, however, one finds not only considerable shifts between established organizations, but also periods in which previously marginalized groups challenge the established protest order.