Endre Borbáth

Research on political parties and social movements has long developed independently, separated by the disciplinary boundaries of political science and sociology. We see the recent successes of ‘movement parties’ as a push to bridge the two disciplinary traditions in order to describe this new hybrid party type accurately. To this end, we ask to what extent and under what conditions do we observe movement parties in European party systems, and how can we define the various subtypes? In the introduction to the special issue, we make three contributions. First, we identify existing definitions and empirical examples in the study of movement parties based on a systematic review of the emerging literature. Second, we operationalize Herbert Kitschelt’s influential definition of lower levels of programmatic and organizational investment coupled with a higher degree of protest mobilization. Third, we introduce the individual contributions to the special issue and situate them within the relevant theoretical debates. Utilizing a new set of quantitative indicators, we empirically assess how parties identified as movement parties in the existing literature score on programmatic, organizational, and protest dimensions. The analysis underscores the heterogeneity of movement parties, with only a few cases aligning with Kitschelt’s comprehensive definition.

The article examines varieties of trade union protest across industrial relations regimes, using protest event data for 27 European countries between 2000 and 2021. We present a large-n analysis of how the level and ‘movement character’ of union protest covaries with the strength and institutional settings of union movements across regimes. We show that unions remain important protest actors and that union protest in the public sphere notably outweighs workplace-related strikes. Furthermore, we find an inverse relationship between union institutionalization and the ‘movement character’ of union protest: While strong union movements in highly institutionalized regimes display a strike-heavy repertoire, weaker union movements in contexts of low institutionalization rely heavily on protest actions beyond the workplace strike. With these findings, we provide a novel empirical assessment of what unions do in the protest arena and how institutional settings can be conducive to strike-heavy versus protest-heavy union tactics.

Despite growing attention to the resurgence of environmental, and especially climate-related mobilisation in Europe, comparative assessments across countries and over time are lacking. Using classic social movement theories (grievances, opportunities, resources), we examine the frequency, profile, and drivers of environmental protest. We conduct a two-step analysis based on the updated PolDem protest event dataset covering 27 European countries from 2000 to 2021. We move from descriptive accounts to dynamic regressions, modelling the cross-national and temporal variation in the number of environmental protests, the participants involved, and their share of all events. The results highlight 2019 as pivotal for environmental protests, with a peak in participants and heightened salience in Europe’s protest landscape. Typical environmental protests are well-attended, symbolic, and confrontational actions, exclusively focussed on the issue, and draw support from both professional and non-professional organisations. Temporal variation in the number and share of environmental protests is related to proxy measures for resources in the environmental field, while participation rates correlate with political opportunities as measured by governments’ positions on environmental protection. Thus, the simultaneous presence of opportunities and resources tends to create an ‘explosive mix’, fuelling environmental protest dynamics.

Recent changes in European politics—such as the rise of so-called movement parties on both the left and the right—call for a rethinking of the links between protest dynamics and party system transformation. In this paper, we contribute to the theoretical and empirical understanding of the mechanisms that unfold in periods of intensified interactions between protest and electoral politics through a case study of the transformation of the Hungarian party system. We ask what mechanisms drive parties’ involvement in protests before and after entering parliament. We focus on two competitors: the radical right Movement for a Better Hungary (Jobbik) and the green party Politics Can Be Different (LMP). Using a dataset of protest events compiled from Hungarian news agency reports and official police records, we map the protest network mobilized by the two parties between 2002 and 2022. We analytically distinguish and empirically identify three different mobilization mechanisms: strengthening the party’s profile by protesting its own issue, using protest mobilization to build alliances with other parties and actors, or relying on protest to establish a presence at the local level. The empirical results show that Jobbik relies on protest through a combination of different mechanisms, while LMP uses protest to broaden its issue profile and build alliances with other political parties. Over time, both parties increasingly rely on protest to establish a local presence outside of Budapest.

Wie sind Konflikte um die Themen Klimawandel und Covid-19 in den politischen Raum eingebettet? Verstärken sie die Polarisierung entlang der kulturellen Konfliktdimension oder liegen sie quer zu den herkömmlichen Konfliktdimensionen? Im Buchkapitel werden die beiden Themen als Risikokonflikte konzeptualisiert und im Kontext der langfristigen Restrukturierung des Parteienwettbewerbs analysiert. Die politische Angebots- und Nachfrageseite wird anhand des Politbarometers, der Nachwahlbefragungen der GLES und Daten zu Wahlkämpfen von 1976 und von 1994 bis 2021 untersucht. Die Ergebnisse bestätigen die Bedeutung des Klimawandels und der Covid-19-Pandemie für die Bundestagswahl 2021. Die langfristige Restrukturierung des politischen Raums in Deutschland folgt Trends in anderen westeuropäischen Ländern. Zudem sind Klimawandel und Covid-19 als Risikokonflikte zumindest bis 2021 im zweidimensionalen Raum verankert und verstärken die Polarisierung entlang der kulturellen Dimension