📅 Meet us at #ESA2026 in Warsaw! 26.08, M. Muszel – From Protest to Practice: Women's Councils and Feminist Democracy in Poland 27.08, H. P. Rammelt – Transnational Advocacy Networks and Corporate Accountability 28.08, A. Melegh, N. Katona & B. Nagy – Competing Narratives of Protest in Hungary

📚 New publication! Henry Rammelt co-authors The Vital Role of Youth Organizations in Shaping Youth Participation in Nine European Countries. The study shows how funding and organizational autonomy shape youth organizations' civic and political engagement. doi.org/10.1177/0899...

The Vital Role of Youth Organizations in Shaping Youth Participation in Nine European Countries - Henry P. Rammelt, Daniel Płatek, Manlio Cinalli, Didier Chabanet, 2026

This article examines factors that influence the action repertoires of youth organizations (YOs) across nine European countries and their roles within the nonpr...

doi.org

Meet our team 🇵🇹 We are launching a new series introducing the ProTest teams and the movements they study. First up: the Portuguese team from the Centro de Estudos Sociais da Universidade de Coimbra. Meet the Portuguese team and learn more about their research: tinyurl.com/nbtzppcn

Meet the Portuguese team — ProTest: Protest as a Democracy Test

The Portuguese team introduces themselves and answers questions about their research.

tinyurl.com

📧 The 3rd ProTest newsletter is coming soon! Want updates on our research, publications, events, and upcoming activities? Subscribe via our website. We publish just twice a year, with concise project highlights and news. 🔗 protestproject.eu #ProTestProject #ProtestStudies

📢 Call for participants: Protest*Ethnography – Ethnographies of Protests, Ethnography as Protest Join us in Bremen (8–9 Oct 2026) to discuss ethnographic research on protests, contentious politics, positionality, access, and fieldwork challenges. Register by 15 July 2026: ethnografie@dvpw.de

📚 New publication!!! Saldivia Gonzatti, D., Schürmann, L., Hunger, S. et al. How Confrontational Protest Shapes Public Opinion: Experimental Evidence from Climate Mobilization. Polit Behav (2026). doi.org/10.1007/s111...

How Confrontational Protest Shapes Public Opinion: Experimental Evidence from Climate Mobilization - Political Behavior

This study examines how different protest forms shape public opinion, distinguishing between support for protest tactics and policy goals. While protest is widely recognized as a legitimate mode of political participation, its forms vary in how they are perceived by the public. Drawing on two cross-sectional surveys and two survey experiments on climate protests in Germany, we focus on the distinction between demonstrative and confrontational protest forms. We find that demonstrative tactics are broadly perceived as legitimate. Being exposed to them leads to a stronger sympathy and more support for the movement compared to a control group. In contrast, confrontational tactics—such as blockades or symbolic art attacks—reduce these responses, particularly among left-leaning citizens, while leaving the already low support levels of right-leaning citizens unchanged. Crucially, we find null effects concerning policy support: the negative impact on attitudes toward protesters neither weakens nor strengthens support for their policy goals. Thus, confrontational protest may not substantively harm its broader political cause, at least in the short run. This finding contributes to the literature on social movement and protest effects by highlighting that loss of support for the movement does not automatically translate into changes in public support for the policy goals the movements advocate.

doi.org

Where to meet us 📆 Sophia Hunger and Sebastian Haunss will present a paper at this year’s European Political Science Society conference in Belfast, 18–20 June. See the program: epssnet.org/belfast-2026...

EPSS 2026 Conference | June 18–20 | ICC Belfast, UK

Join top political scientists for the EPSS 2026 Annual Conference in Belfast. Submit papers, attend panels, and network with fellow researchers.

epssnet.org

Where to meet us 📍 Lia Tsuladze joins the BASEES Annual Conference at University of Birmingham (10–12 April). She will present on authoritarian turn in Georgia, join a methods panel on studying authoritarianism, and she will also chair a session on memory & post-socialist societies.

📣 Call for Papers Only 2 weeks left to apply for ProtestEthnography: Ethnographies of Protests – Ethnography as Protest* (8–9 Oct 2026, University of Bremen). What counts as protest? How to study it as an ongoing process? Contact: ethnografie@dvpw.de Website: www.dvpw.de/ak/ethnograf...

📣 Call for Papers On 8–9 Oct 2026 at the University of Bremen: Protest*Ethnography. Ethnographies of Protests – Ethnography as Protest. A workshop co-organised by the DVPW Working Group Ethnographic Methods and the project ProTest 🗓 Submit by 1 April. Info: politicalethnography.com/wp-content/u...

📚 New publication Henry P. Rammelt & Ruxandra Gubernat analyze how memories of communism shaped the 2017 Romanian protests. Mobilizing narratives of failed transition, these frames delegitimized post-1989 elites and opened space for new actors (USR, AUR). 🔗 doi.org/10.3828/jrns...

How can right-wing violence be appropriately dealt with at a local level? A critical look at German remembrance work: www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-7...

Rechte Gewalttaten in Deutschland

Wie kann mit rechten Gewalttaten auf lokaler Ebene angemessen umgegangen werden? Ein kritischer Blick auf die deutsche Gedenkarbeit.

transcript-verlag.de

📚 New publication An edited volume by Piotr Kocyba and Ulf Bohmann examines how right-wing violence is confronted and remembered locally in Germany. Using cases such as the NSU murders, Halle, and Hanau, it situates these attacks within a longer history and assesses democratic.

We wish you all the best as we welcome 2026, and we would like to thank everyone who has followed our work. We hope that the coming year will bring greater public attention to protest as a democratic signal! Happy New Year!!! (the image is by kjpargeter from Freepik)

Our publications 📚 Power and Protest in Central and Eastern Europe (eds. Claudiu Crăciun & Henry P. Rammelt). The book analyses protest & civic mobilisation across 11 CEE countries, showing how grassroots action reshapes democracy, institutions, and power relations. link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

Power and Protest in Central and Eastern Europe

This book offers a detailed overview of on the contemporary social movement politics in Central and Eastern Europe.

link.springer.com

Empirical Research on Protests & Social Movements in CEE Conference 2025 in Warsaw: Polish Team shared preliminary findings from in-depth interviews, highlighting shifting repertoires of action and evolving frames before and after 2023. Great discussions and inspiring insights!

🔎 In focus Following the recent Polish Independence Day, we recommend the report on the demographics and motivations of Independence March participants from 2019 to 2024. It offers a detailed look at how the marchers’ profiles and motivations have evolved over time: demonstracjepl.wordpress.com

Grupa badawcza 'Demonstracje w Polsce'

Grupa naukowców badająca marsze, demonstracje i zgromadzenia publiczne

demonstracjepl.wordpress.com

🗺️ In September, ProTest team members Lia Tsuladze (Center for Social Sciences in Georgia) and Henry P. Rammelt with Vlad Bujdei-Tebeica (Școala Națională de Studii Politice și Administrative - SNSPA) spoke about populism in authoritarian regime contexts at the University of Fribourg Switzerland.

Where to find us this week 🗓️ The ProTEST team joins the “Resistance and Opposition Beyond Institutions” workshop at the University of Fribourg 🇨🇭. Henry P. Rammelt & Claudiu Craciun (SNSPA) discuss ties between social movements and political parties in post-2024 Romania. 🔗 www.protestproject.eu

The #ProTestProject has officially launched with a vibrant two-day meeting in Budapest! Catch highlights from our kick-off meeting in Budapest, where researchers from across Europe gathered to explore the role protests play in testing—and transforming—democracy today!

ProTest project launch took place on April 7-8, 2025 in Budapest — ProTest: Protest as a Democracy Test

The project “ProTest: Protest as a Democracy Test. Protest Culture under Transformation and as a Transformative Power” was officially launched with a two-day kick-off meeting held on 7–8 April 2025 at...

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The second day of the project kick-off meeting finished successfully in Budapest today. The day was filled with valuable discussions and plans for the duration of the project. On the second day the project members focused on planning the activities within each Work Package.

The project's kick off meeting is taking place on April 7-8 2025 in Budapest. The event had the project members reflect and discuss the dedemocratisation processes and protests in select countries in Europe. The discussions of the kick-off meeting will lay foundations this exciting research project.