Based on extensive data and analysis of sixty contentious episodes in twelve European countries, this book proposes a novel approach that takes a middle ground between narrative approaches and conventional protest event analysis. Looking particularly at responses to austerity policies in the aftermath of the Great Recession (2008–2015), the authors develop a rigorous conceptual framework that focuses on the interactions between three types of participants in contentious politics: governments, challengers, and third parties. This approach allows political scientists to map not only the variety of actors and actor coalitions that drove the interactions in the different episodes, but also the interplay of repression/concessions/support and of mobilization/cooperation/mediation on the part of the actors involved in the contention. The methodology used will enable researchers to answer old (and new) research questions related to political conflict in a way that is simultaneously attentive to conceptual depth and statistical rigor.

Provides researchers with a novel methodological tool to study interactions between governments, challengers, and third-party actors.

Based on multi-year ethnographic fieldwork on the Unemployed Workers' Movement in Argentina (also known as the piqueteros), Proletarian Lives provides a case study of how workers affected by job loss protect their traditional forms of life by engaging in progressive grassroots mobilization. Using life-history interviews and participant observation, the book analyzes why some activists develop a strong attachment to the movement despite initial reluctance and frequent ideological differences. Marcos Pérez argues that a key appeal of participation is the opportunity to engage in age and gender-specific practices associated with a respectable blue-collar lifestyle threatened by long-term socioeconomic decline. Through their daily involvement in the movement, older participants reconstruct the routines they associate with a golden past in which factory jobs were plentiful, younger activists develop the kind of habits they were raised to see as valuable, and all members protect communal activities undermined by the expansion of poverty and violence.

"The Oxford Handbook of Political Participation provides readers with up-to-date knowledge on the wide-ranging topics covered in this field and considers the key theoretical and methodological pluralism in the area as well the most recent developments. One of the aims of this Handbook is to bring together two research traditions from political science and sociology, bridging research in political sociology and social movement studies. Accordingly, the Handbook mainly brings together authors coming from both the politics and sociology research traditions, as well as key authors working on political participation coming also from other fields such as psychology, economics, anthropology, and geography. The volume provides the first comprehensive, up-to-date treatment of political participation in all of its varied expression; it covers a wide range of topics relating to the study of political participation, both from a theoretical and methodological perspective; it brings together the political science and political sociology tradition, on the one hand, and the social movement sociological tradition, on the other; it is sensitive to theoretical and methodological pluralism as well as the most recent developments in the field; and includes discussions combining perspectives that have traditionally been treated separately in the literature as well as discussions of current trends and future directions for research in this field"--

Why do communities form militias to defend themselves against violence during civil war? Using original interviews with former combatants and civilians and archival material from extensive fieldwork in Mozambique, Corinna Jentzsch's Violent Resistance explains the timing, location and process through which communities form militias. Jentzsch shows that local military stalemates characterized by ongoing violence allow civilians to form militias that fight alongside the government against rebels. Militias spread only to communities in which elites are relatively unified, preventing elites from coopting militias for private gains. Crucially, militias that build on preexisting social conventions are able to resonate with the people and empower them to regain agency over their lives. Jentzsch's innovative study brings conceptual clarity to the militia phenomenon and helps us understand how wartime civilian agency, violent resistance, and the rise of third actors beyond governments and rebels affect the dynamics of civil war, on the African continent and beyond.

The Advantage of Disadvantage provides insights for scholars and activists into how marginalized groups gain representation through protest. Drawing on formal theory, surveys, and quantitative data, the book presents an interdisciplinary analysis of representation, inequality, and digital activism.

Asks why some dissident movements adopt nonviolent strategies of resistance, while others choose to take up arms.

Uses extensive evidence to examine the Tea Party and its impacts from its infancy, through to its decline.

A study of the policymaking process and its dysfunctional outcome in the EU polity during the refugee crisis.

While much of the political science literature on populism focuses on key political actors within the party system, a good deal less attention has been paid to forms of populist contention that feature ordinary citizens protesting against elite rule and championing the cause of 'the People' around the world. Populist Mobilization redresses this imbalance and presents a novel theoretical framework for the study of grassroots populist movements by integrating Laclauian discourse analysis with collective action frame theory. Aslanidis examines two widely influential movements that emerged from the protest cycle of the Great Recession: the Icelandic Pots and Pans Revolution and the Greek indignados. Drawing from semi-structured interviews with activists and an extensive analysis of the movements' paper trail and audiovisual material, he explores organizational aspects, processes of collective action framing, the construction of collective identities, and the influence of cultural elements. Additionally, the author embarks on a historical exploration of the intellectual roots of populism to dispel the pejorative connotations attached to the concept and advocates for a collaboration between sociologists and political scientists on a comprehensive research agenda for the populist phenomenon that transcends the institutional and non-institutional divide.