Contentious Episodes in the Age of Austerity
Studying the Dynamics of Government–Challenger Interactions

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

Abel Bojar (Edited by), Theresa Gessler (Edited by), Swen Hutter (Edited by), Hanspeter Kriesi (Edited by)

9781316519011, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 11 November 2021

350 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.5 cm, 0.68 kg

'Every so often, social scientists invent new ways to measure and analyze social movements, most of which, however, have a very short half-life. But growing out of ‘protest event analysis,’ the stock-in-trade of students of contentious politics since Tilly’s innovations in the 1970s, Bojar, Gessler, Hutter, and Kriesi have produced incremental improvements that amount to a new method - ‘contentious episode analysis.’ Applied to a major comparative dataset, and combining semi-automated and intelligent human coding, their innovations promise a major innovation for the study of contentious politics.' Sidney Tarrow, Author of Power in Movement and Movements and Parties: Critical Connections in American Political Development

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.

Part I. A New Approach for the Analysis of Contentious Episodes: 1. Introduction: A new approach for studying political contention – contentious episode analysis Hanspeter Kriesi, Swen Hutter, Abel Bojar, Argyrios Altiparmakis, Theresa Gessler, Sophia Hunger, Katia Pilati and Julia Schulte-Cloos
2. Selecting and coding contentious episodes Hanspeter Kriesi, Swen Hutter, Abel Bojar, Argyrios Altiparmakis, Theresa Gessler, Sophia Hunger, Katia Pilati and Julia Schulte-Cloos
3. The economic and political context of the episodes Hanspeter Kriesi and Sophia Hunger
Part II. Varieties of Contention: 4. Conceptualizing, measuring and mapping contentiousness Swen Hutter and Theresa Gessler
5. Actors configurations and coalitions in contentious episodes Swen Hutter and Theresa Gessler
6. Action sequences and their dynamic indicators of contention Abel Bojar and Argyrios Altiparmakis
7. Outcomes – government responsiveness Julia Schulte-Cloos and Sophia Hunger
Part III. Dynamics of Interaction: 8. Interaction dynamics in contentious episodes: path-dependence, tit-for tat and constructive mediation Abel Bojar and Hanspeter Kriesi
9. The governments' reactions to challengers and third-parties Hanspeter Kriesi
10. The effect of repression on protest Katia Pilati
11. Turning points Abel Bojar
12. The Greek case Argyrios Altiparmakis
13. Conclusion Abel Bojar, Hanspeter Kriesi and Swen Hutter.

Subject Areas: Comparative politics [JPB], Political science & theory [JPA], Politics & government [JP]