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This paper analyzes the relationship between the Chilean student movement and state force action during the period 2000–2012, placing specific attention on three waves of student contention that took place at the turn of the century. During the decade under study, the Chilean students became more contentious, they broadened their demands beyond specific grievances to encompass a critique to the education system as a whole, their alliance system grew (gaining from these denser networks of collaboration more resources to mobilize), and they managed to win public opinion on their side. However, the relationship with state forces has not been static across time, and both students and state forces have experienced changes in how they interact with each other. The results of this paper are based on a mixed method approach that drew on a quantitative database of student contention in Chile (n = 491 student events) and 15 in-depth interviews with leader activists from the most salient recent Chilean student movements of three periods under study, in addition to some key informants. The findings confirm that when student protests target the government, when they use disruptive strategies that affect the status-quo, and when they mobilize alongside other challenging actors, they are more likely to be met with direct repression by authorities. The research shows that there is a “dialect of repression” at play by which state forces' direct repression of protest can be two-fold: on the one hand, it gives students visibility in the public opinion, but on the other, it can be negative for ushering support if the media and authorities are successful in portraying them as violent or a threat to public order. In this sense, the figure of the “encapuchado,” students who disguise their identity and purposefully seek confrontation with authorities during mobilizations is problematized by the movement itself. How to win public opinion and use that visibility in their favor is related to decision-making mechanisms that the movement puts at play but also to the calculations done on the part of the government and security forces about the leverage of the movement.

Drawing on 61 interviews with Mexican immigrants and ethnographic participant observation conducted over three years, I compare social movement organizing in two cities in one California County: one more progressive and the other more repressive. I profile two campaigns waged by Mexican immigrants and their allies in response to two threats posed by police: (1) car impoundments of undocumented, unlicensed drivers’ vehicles and (2) police killings. As political process theory was extended to authoritarian settings, scholars have demonstrated that both growing political opportunity and threat stimulate mobilization. Building on this trend in the literature, this study’s contribution lies in its specification of the relationship among political opportunities, threat, and mobilization tactics. I argue increasing local political opportunity gives rise to more collaborative protest tactics, while relatively more threatening environments yield more confrontational tactics. Because opportunity and threat are not objectively assessed, nor do they automatically inspire protest, I also consider the role of state targets, formalized SMOs, and the influence of coalition partners on tactics. Ethnographic methods are particularly useful for understanding the way organizers and activists, from within organizations that favor distinct tactical repertoires, perceive and attribute threat and opportunity, shedding light on the micro- and meso-level dynamics that shape the social form of mobilization.

Purpose: To examine empirical patterns of participation of allied groups in disability protests from 1970 to 2016 in the United States.

Methods/approach: Uses event history to analyze 1,268 cases of disability protests quantitatively. Internal and external allied groups and types of individual protestors are analyzed over the entire period and by decade.

Findings: Multiple impairment, single issue organizations were a more common type of “internal” ally than were either single impairment, multiple issue organizations or multiple impairment, multiple issue (truly cross-disability) organizations. External ally groups with a wide range of concerns were less common than internal ally groups but were most represented during the 1990s. Veterans groups were the most common type of external ally, while parents were the most common type of individual allies.

Implications/values: Two topics need more attention: How ally participation in disability protests compares to that in protests in other social movements, and what types of changes over time emerge. Explanations relating to movement trajectories and other social movement characteristics are presented, and the need for a more nuanced conceptualization of protest allies is discussed.

This study uses Tilly's concept of repertoires of contention as a lens to examine the utilization of eight distinct contentious tactics, ranging from nonviolent demonstrations to rebellion. Using an original dataset on Latin America, I develop a measure of tactical fractionalization of 62 contentious campaigns in Latin America, and I find that, consistent with theory, the range of tactics within campaigns is limited, compared to the range of tactics found in the country or region as a whole. Second, an examination of the sample shows that the eight contentious tactics tend to coincide into three separate repertoires of contention: protest, strikes, and rebellion. Finally, I analyze two conflicting theories on the selection of contentious tactics: Tilly's regime theory and Lichbach's substitution model. The prevalence of the three repertoires depends a great deal on the regime type in place, the level of primary school enrollment (measuring state capacity), and the generalized level of repression. These variables were all suggested by Tilly's regime theory. Contentious challengers show no sign of shifting tactics in response to repression of that tactic in the past, which contradicts the substitution model.

Hunger strikes have a long history in efforts to achieve social change but scholars have made few comparative, empirical, or theoretical contributions to understanding their dynamics and connections in the social movement and nonviolent action literature. We examine hunger strikes from 1906 to 2004 with a comparative perspective, elaborating on its use as a tactic of nonviolent change. Using data assembled from the New York Times, Keesing's Worldwide Online, and The Economist we analyze how, when, where, and why hunger strikes occur, and by whom they have been utilized to seek change. In general, findings reveal that hunger strikes over the last century have been widespread phenomena that are typically small, brief, and relatively successful tactics against the state. Several themes emerge regarding hunger strikes including their appeal to the powerless and emergence when few political opportunities exist, their significance for third-party mobilization, and the role of emotions in the protest dynamics. Taken together, the power struggle involving the hunger strike is an important example and extension of “political jiu-jitsu” as presented by Sharp (1973).

In his later works Charles Tilly extended his analysis of contention by scrutinizing the dynamics of contentious performances and the enactment of identities through them. Complementing these investigations he analyzed the centrality of trust networks in sustained challenges to authority. On a somewhat detached track Tilly developed an examination of reason giving in social life and more particularly the ways in which people do critical transactional work through stories, often with the assessment of credit and blame. In this chapter, we quilt these various pieces to offer an analysis of how storytelling is vital to the construction of trust and blame in contentious performances, both in the face of threat and opportunity. We explain how these later works on storytelling, identities, and trust can be integrated fruitfully with his many writings on contention to expand the analysis of its culture dimensions. We draw on three years of field work with a chapter of the Voice of the Faithful, an organization of Catholics that formed in the wake of the priest sexual abuse crisis, to exemplify this integration of Tilly's work. Using data from field notes and interviews we demonstrate how chapter members engage in the telling standard stories of origin, legacy and transformation, and trust in their pursuit of change and in maintaining internal solidarity. We conclude that our integration of Tilly's later work can be added to other perspectives on narrative to broaden the cultural analysis of contention.

The emerging synthesis between nonviolent action and contentious politics studies has yielded important insights. Yet it also reproduces the dichotomy between politics and culture that continues to haunt both fields. Extending recent work by Jean-Pierre Reed and John Foran, our contribution introduces the political cultures of nonviolent opposition concept to forge a new synthesis, one that recognizes the politics of nonviolent culture and the culture of nonviolent politics. We apply our theoretical framework to two empirical cases, the Indian independence movement and the Landless Workers Movement in Brazil (known as Movimento Sem Terra or MST), and conclude with ideas for further research on political cultures of nonviolent opposition.

How does state repression influence levels of mobilization in authoritarian regimes? This study argues that the relationship between repression and protest is temporally dynamic. Specifically, the short- and long-term effects of autocrats' coercive actions differ conditionally on each phase of the contentious cycle. This argument is tested taking advantage of an original database of protest events in Pinochet's Chile between 1982 and 1989. Using an Interrupted Time Series design, the results show that the State of Siege declarations issued in 1984 and again in 1986 had divergent short- and long-term influence. When the cycle was on an expansive stage, the State of Siege shows no immediate influence on the protests, followed by an increase in long-term mobilization. However, when the mobilization was declining, the State of Siege was associated with an immediate and prominent drop in mobilization, followed by a progressive decrease in the number of protests over the long term. This chapter contributes to the literature on the protest–repression nexus by providing new evidence on the dynamics shaping the relationship between state repression and civil disobedience in authoritarian regimes.

Social movement scholars use protest events as a way to quantify social movements and have most often used large, national newspapers to identify those events. This has introduced known and unknown biases into our measurement of social movements. We know that national newspapers tend to cover larger and more contentious events and organizations. Protest events are furthermore a small part of what social movements actually do. Without other readily available options to quantify social movements, however, big-N studies have continued to focus on protest events via a few large newspapers. With advances in digitized data and computational methods, we now no longer have to rely on large newspapers or focus only on protests to quantify important aspects of social movements. In this paper, we use the environmental movement as a case study, analyzing data from a wide range of local, regional, and national newspapers in the United States to quantify multiple facets of social movements. We argue that the incorporation of more data and new methods to quantify information in text has the potential to transform the way we both conceive of and measure social movements in three ways: (1) the type of focal social movement organization included, (2) the type of tactics and issues covered, and (3) the ability to go beyond protest events as the primary unit of analysis. In addition to demonstrating ways that the focus on counting protest events has introduced specific biases in the type of tactics, issues, and organizations covered in social movement research, we argue that computational methods can help us extract and count meaningful aspects of social movements well beyond event counts. In short, the infusion of new data and methods into social movements, peace, and conflict studies could lead us to a substantial shift in the way we quantify social movements, from protest events to everything that occurs outside of them.

This paper aims to examine the cycle of labour protests in Sweden, comparing the contentious actions of trade unions in public and private sectors over 40 years. Prior studies have focused on industrial conflicts or labour protests, but a long-term perspective on the broad protest repertoire across sectors is lacking. The goal is to test the argument of diversification of action repertoire and differences between the public and private sectors.

The authors apply the grievance and political opportunity theories of social movement research for explaining the cycles of labour protests and differences between sectors in Sweden over 40 years (1980–2020). The unique protest event data are combined with the official strike statistics. The research period includes the globalisation of the economy and two economic crises.

Although unions in both sectors have decreased protest mobilisation over time, private sector unions have resigned the most, whereas public sector unions continue to mobilise a diverse set of protest actions. Swedish unions have not replaced strikes with other protest repertoires. The open opportunities have allowed them to use various protests as part of “routine” operations.

Protest event data are derived from newspapers, leading to an over-representation of large events in the urban areas. Future studies should combine data from newspapers with data about online protests.

By thoroughly examining all protest events mobilised by all trade unions in different sectors over 40 years (1980–2020), the paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the cycles of labour protest. The findings should interest industrial relations and social movement scholars.