How do episodes of heightened political conflict shape cooperation between civil society actors in the protest arena? How do networks between protest actors change in the aftermath of protest waves? Do protests actors focus more strongly on like-minded actors in their specific policy field or does the heightened public attention to specific protest issues lead to broader networks including actors from various policy fields?
Our paper investigates whether and how, during episodes of heightened conflict, protest actors create new linkages to other civil society organizations and other political actors. More concretely, this paper centers on cooperative ties between protest actors during and after the refugee reception crisis in Germany (2015-2020). We find that while that anti-immigration actors - far-right groups and parties - have been far more successful in increasing their mobilization capacity than pro-migration groups, they have been less successful in broadening their cross-sectoral ties. Pro-migration groups, on the other hand, have considerably expanded their co-operation network both within civil society and into the institutional sphere.
For the analysis we draw on a unique protest event dataset based on local newspaper reports.
