Political Solidarity As a Contentious Form of Political Participation

Building on the notion of solidarity, this paper bridges a discussion between political altruism and political solidarity. It seeks to unveil how relationships between political altruism and political solidarity will vary across national context and/or beneficiary constituencies. It investigates in a comparative perspective the invariance measurement testing across groups to analyse items factor loadings and overlapping when individuals claim to engage in contentious forms of political solidarity. We propose to use structural equation modelling (SEM) to analyse the relationship between political altruism and political solidarity and to measure equivalences in the contentious forms of political participation, especially when considering three targeted vulnerable groups as solidaristic recipients (unemployed, immigrants and asylum-seekers, and people with disabilities). The paper uses survey data on individual forms of solidarity at times of crisis collected  within the EU project “European paths to transnational solidarity at times of crisis: Conditions, forms, role models and policy responses” (TransSOL).