Institutions, Civil Society Organizations, and Protest Behavior

In many democracies, political conflicts are increasingly resolved in the streets, not in legislatures or government offices. It is therefore becoming more and more important for political scientists to understand the logic of non-institutionalized conflicts between governments and civil society organizations. On the basis of individual-level data on political participation, this paper investigates the interactive effect of two explanatory factors on radical protests in democracies: on the one hand political institutions (particularly the electoral system); on the other hand the strength of civil society organizations (particularly trade unions). The paper argues that the propensity for protest is the highest where political institutions render the opposition ineffective and civil society organizations are neither very weak, nor very strong.