The Austrian Protest Arena in the 21st Century

Political protest has become a typical feature of contemporary democracies. The project aims at analysing the amount and especially the characteristics of political protest in Austria for the period 19982015. Meyer and Tarrows movement society thesis will be used as starting point. This concept emphasises the particular importance of social movements and unconventional forms of political participation. Based on this thesis the project will focus on four aspects of the protest arena, thus on four characteristics of political protest in Austria: the issues expressed, the actors involved, the targets confronted, and the modes of action used. It will be tested whether political protest as postulated by the movement society thesis has indeed become a phenomenon that transcends specific types of issues and actors traditionally associated with this arena, whether the targets of protest increasingly go beyond state authorities (and include, for example, firms or religious organisations), and whether the activists predominantly use moderate, that is first of all legal and non-violent types of action. Austria, which has only rarely been studied in this research tradition, is considered a typical case among Western democracies to test the movement society thesis. The observation period additionally allows for assessing how important changes in the political context, namely in the composition of governments, impact on the protest arena: From 20002007 the populist radical right was part of the federal government. Before and afterwards Austria was governed by grand coalitions, the type of government typically associated with this country. On the regional level, by contrast, the Greens stepwise entered six out of nine Land governments. The amount and characteristics of political protest will be studied by conducting a quantitative content analysis, a protest event analysis. This method uses various types of sources to systematically collect information on protests. In this project two related but nevertheless different types of sources will be used: news reports produced by the APA (Austria Presse Agentur), Austrias national news agency, and press releases (OTS-Meldungen, Original Text Service-Messages) of actors organising protests. While the former is a classic type of source in this research field, the latter has not been used so far. The project thus aims at breaking new ground in three ways: First, by conducting one of the first systematic evaluations of the movement society thesis; second, by assessing the specific impact of radical changes in government composition at two levels of the political system (national and regional levels); and third, by combining a well-established source (news reports) with a new type of source (press releases) in a protest event analysis.

No additional funding sources recorded.