Who Protests and Why? Organisational and Contextual Drivers of Interest Group Mobilization in Central Europe

Since the collapse of communism, the study of Central and Eastern Europe has highlighted how shifting political and institutional arrangements have reshaped the conditions for collective action. These transformations have also affected interest groups, whose modes of engagement increasingly depend on volatile access structures and recurrent political tensions. While most research in the region has focused on insider strategies and the determinants of access to policy-makers, much less attention has been paid to the use of outsider tactics. This article contributes to filling this gap by examining protest as an outside strategy among interest organisations in Poland, Czechia, and Slovakia. Drawing on original survey data collected among interest groups and NGOs in 2023–2024, the analysis investigates whether protest mobilization constitutes a frequent component of advocacy repertoires in the region and whether its use varies across different political systems in Central Europe. The study explores how organisational characteristics—such as group type, ideological alignment, and structural resources—interact with broader contextual factors, including populist pressures, democratic backsliding and party-system configurations, to shape the likelihood of engaging in protest. Instead of presupposing that either organisational features or contextual dynamics play a dominant role, the analysis examines how these factors jointly inform groups’ tactical choices. The study therefore assesses how organisational and contextual factors jointly condition the use of protest.