The value of sub-national data: The dynamics of contentious politics in Nepal

Abstract

Over the last decade, a renewed interest in the empirical analysis of contentious politics has led to significant improvements in the quality and quantity of data. The related wave of research has thus turned to analysis of the dynamics of contentious politics from a comparative perspective. Unfortunately, these studies use country level datasets for their analysis, creating a mismatch between the original actor-based theoretical framework and the empirical conceptualization of contentious collective action. We discuss the conceptual challenges this theoretical-empirical gap generates and highlight how contentious dynamics can be studied with a bottom-up sub-national approach. To do so, we present a new fine-grained dataset of contentious collective action in post-conflict Nepal (2007 to 2010). We descriptively show how this type of data can help us improve our understanding of repertoires of contentious politics. This paper highlights the relevance of gathering information on active organizations to study the inherent dynamics of contentious politics.