Protest cycle

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Protest cycles (also known as cycles of contention or waves of collective action) refers to the cyclical rise and fall in the social movement activity. Sidney Tarrow (1994) defines the cycle of contention as "a phase of heightened conflict across the social system", with "intensified interactions between challengers and authorities which can end in reform, repression and sometimes revolution".

Tarrow argues that cyclical changes in the 'political opportunity structure' create incentives for collective action. Those cycles begin when the authority (like the government) is reveleaded as vulnerable to social change and there is a rising number of demands for change from the society. Tarrow defines a 'political opportunity structure' as "consistent dimension of the political environment that provides incentives for people to undertake collective action by affecting their expectations of success or failure". When the political opportunity disappears, for example because of a change in the public opinion caused by a rise in insecurity and violence, the movement dissolves.

Tarrow lists the qualities of a cycle of contention:

• a rapid diffusion of collective action from more mobilized to less mobilized sectors, as first social movements broaden political opportunities for others and make it easier for others to join in;
• a rapid pace of innovation in the forms of contention;
• the creation of new or transformed collective action frames, discourses, frames of meaning;
• a combination of organized and unorganized participants;
• sequences of intensified information flow and interaction between challengers and authorities.

Tarrow notes that "such widespread contention produces externalities that give challengers at least a temporary advantage and allows them to overcome the weaknesses in their resource base. It demands that states devise broad strategies of response that are either repressive or facilitative, or a combination of the two."

He notes that even defeated or suppressed movements leave some kind of residue behind them, and that effect of social movements, successful or failed, is cumulative in the long term, leading to new cycles of contention. This is visible especially when those cycles are analysed in the historical frame. Prior to the 18th century, rebellions were usually aimed at local targets in response to local grievances, usually withouth much preparations and withouth allies in different social of ethnic groups. This has however changed in 18th century, when social movements evolved in West Europe and North America (see also works by Charles Tilly).

[edit] References

• Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Collective Action, Social Movements and Politics, Cambridge University Press, 1994. (Spanish trans.: El Poder en Movimiento, Alianza, 1998; revised as Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics, Cambridge University Press, 1998).