Who responds to protest? Protest politics and party responsiveness in Western Europe

Abstract

This paper addresses the questions of whether and why political parties respond to media-covered street protests. To do so, it adopts an agenda-setting approach and traces issue attention in protest politics and parliament over several years in four West European countries (France, Spain, the Netherlands, and Switzerland). The paper innovates in two ways. First, it does not treat the parties in parliament as a unitary actor but focuses on the responses of single parties. Second, partisan characteristics are introduced that might condition the effect of protest on parliamentary activity. More precisely, it assesses the explanatory power of ideological factors (left-right orientation and radicalism) and other factors related to issue competition between parties (opposition status, issue ownership, and contagion). The results show that parties do respond to street protests in the news, and they are more likely to respond if they are in opposition and if their competitors have reacted to the issue.

Protesting Parties in Europe: A comparative analysis

“…Klüver and Spoon (2016), for example, show that opposition parties respond more strongly to shifts in voters' issue priorities than government parties. Hutter and Vliegenthart's (2018) results indicate that opposition parties are more likely to respond to the signals from protesters in their parliamentary activities than government parties. Thus, we also expect that opposition parties are more likely to join forces with less institutionalized actors and to directly mobilize on the streets to challenge the government.…”

The Media as a Dual Mediator of the Political Agenda–Setting Effect of Protest. A Longitudinal Study in Six Western European Countries

“…The sponsors of the protest, the type of social movement organization, and its strength may-in line with resource mobilization theory (McCarthy and Zald 1977)-play a role as well. Regarding the receiver of the protest signal, one of the next steps is to disaggregate to the party level and test whether some parties are more reactive to protest than others-are left-wing parties more sensitive to trade union protest, for example (see also Hutter and Vliegenthart 2016)? Finally, there is much more to say about the six countries that are covered here.…”

The Contentious Politics of Social Policy expansion in Latin America

“…Protests also serve as signals that indicate pressing, unresolved issues that must be addressed by governments. Governments will be more open to consider these issues either because of their ideological proximity to protestors, or because they mount an electoral threat -by withdrawing electoral support or by endorsing political challengers (Ciccia & Guzman-Concha, 2018;Hutter & Vliegenthart, 2016). The extent to which these effects occur depends on the size and frequency of the protests, but also on the capacity of protesters to sway public opinion in their favour, forge alliances with institutional actors (e.g.…”