Disentangling Protest Cycles: An Event-History Analysis of New Social Movements in Western Europe

Abstract

The theory of protest cycles has informed us that the external political environment and the internal competition among social movement organizations are distinct elements leading to the emergence, development, and decline of popular protest. This theory, however, has not been examined systematically. I conduct an event-history analysis to test and refine the theory of protest cycles using a well-known new social movement event dataset. While proposing a general way of operationalizing the core concepts in social movement studies, I show that political opportunity only matters during the initial phase of social movement mobilization, rather than throughout the movement's lifespan. What explains declining frequencies of protest occurrence during the demobilization phase is the joint effect of two internal factors: the institutionalization of social movements and the growing violence during protests.