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Scholars working from the political opportunity approach have upheld the notion that the political context sets the grievances around which activist mobilizes. Inspired by Tarrow and colleagues plea to explain political activism by analyzing how activists are mobilized, this article focuses on the individual protester. The research question in this article reads how are activist’s protest emotions shaped by characteristics of the political context, specifically by their political alliances? We focus on the emotional constellation evoked by environmental issues (e.g., climate change and nuclear energy) with Green Parties as movement allies and anti-austerity issues with Social Democratic parties as movement allies. Specifically, the parliamentary position of these allies is linked to the relative stake anger and frustration have within the emotional constellation of demonstrators. Results are based on survey data collected among 6,598 demonstrators, and their emotions dispersed over 28 demonstrations in seven European countries. We conclude that having a politically well-connected friend seems to matter more to demonstrators’ emotional constellation than the ideological support provided by that friend.

ABSTRACTThis article studies how Dutch military personnel respond to austerity-related discontent. Based on the online survey (N = 579) conducted among military personnel we investigate 4 response strategies to austerity measures applied in the Dutch armed forces: voice (collective protest), exit (leaving the organization), silence (deliberately deciding not to protest), and neglect (engaging in anti-organizational behavior). We focus on how personnel combine these strategies and apply cluster analysis to identify 6 typical response patterns that we label as protesters, escapers, quiescents, conformers, obstructionists and combaters. We investigate how personal characteristics and perception of unique military environment influence the response of military personnel. We conclude that clusters we described are not only distinct in their behavior—their personal characteristics and perceptions differ as well.

Abstract.“Twitter protests” and “Facebook revolutions” imbue the coverage of contentious politics in news media and academic outlets alike. As long as such protests are not compared to conventional mobilized events it is hard to ascertain the supposed differences between connective and collective action. We report a study that does just that: we examine if it makes a difference whether people are recruited through self-organized rather than organization-centered routes. We surveyed participants andnonparticipants in both actions (N= 319), asking who participated in the respective action, how they were mobilized, and why they participated. Results reveal that in some ways the recruitment route does make a difference, while in others it doesn’t. Recruits of connective action were lower educated, felt politically efficacious, and mainly mobilized via informal (virtual) mobilizing channels, while recruits of collective action were highly educated, politically interested, and mainly mobilized via formal mobilizing channels. Social embeddedness played a crucial role in both campaigns, but more so in self-organized actions: approving networks increasethe chances of being asked, influenced, and motivated by significant others, while disapproving milieus decreasethe chance of being asked, influenced, and motivated by others. Approving networks thus expand informal mobilization, the more so for self-organized connective action.

We live in contentious times. Why are people prepared to sacrifice wealth, a pleasant and carefree life, or sometimes even their lives for a common cause? This question brings us to the individual level of analysis, and therefore to political psychology. People live in a perceived world. Indeed, this is what a political psychology of protest is about – trying to understand why people who are seemingly in the same socio-political configuration respond so differently. I will illustrate this point with an overview of state-of-the-art theoretical approaches and up-to-date empirical evidence. Discussed are grievances, efficacy/cynicism, identification, emotions, and social embeddedness. Most recent approaches combine these concepts into one model comprising two routes: An efficacy route steered by social embeddedness and a grievances route steered by cynicism. The working of the model is illustrated by empirical evidence from contemporary events such as migrants, collective action, demonstrating diasporas, and Social Media protests. Each of these illustrations exemplifies how different aspects of the socio-political context as dual identification, group status, and virtual embeddedness affect individuals’ protest behavior. As such the paper aims to provide an overview of political psychological work that may contribute to the understanding of our contentious times.