Forms of Europeanized Protests: A Comparative Study

Political contestation has entered the world of European integration studies during the last few years (e.g., Hooghe/Marks BJPS 2009). Apart from public opinion, voting behaviour and party competition, scholars interested in the ‘politicization’ of the integration process have also examined whether and how ‘Europe’ has restructured protest politics (e.g., Imig/Tarrow 2001; della Porta/Caiani 2009). However, research on the Europeanization of protest is still rare as compared to the one on more institutionalized forms of participation and mobilization. Furthermore, the literature seems divided: While  a few quantitative protest event studies exist that mainly focus on the extent and development of Europeanized protests, researchers relying on case studies or other strategies of data collection have paid close attention to the differing forms of Europeanized protests. The present paper attempts to bridge this divide by systematically tracing different forms of Europeanization in six European countries for the period 1995 to 2010. To do so, we rely on a new  in-depth selection and coding of quality press articles on Europeanized political protest, i.e., on protest events with a ‘European’ addressee, a ‘European’ goal and/or a ‘European’ framing. The countries covered are Austria, Britain, France, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland.