Politics and People. Understanding Dutch Research on Social Movements

In this paper, we argue that Dutch social movement research can only be understood in relation to the national political context. We show that the Dutch political culture of openness towards protest and protestors has been mirrored in the popularity of scholarly approaches that emphasize the importance of political opportunities and resources, and the lack of popularity of the NSM approach. We identify two groups of scholars – social psychologists at the VU University in Amsterdam and political sociologists at the University of Amsterdam –, who were for many years the main local schools.