BRE_F_04 Protests and Social Cohesion: Local Conflict Dynamics in Comparison

Objectives / Research Questions

Protests have become a common form of political participation in Germany since the 1980s. They are both an expression of social conflicts and an indicator of a vital democracy. While protests have become an integral part of everyday political life in Western democratic societies, not all topics are suitable for successful protest mobilizations, and not all population groups make use of protests to the same extent. In this project, we therefore investigate which topics have been addressed in protests in recent years, what form these protests have taken, and how they may affect social cohesion. The focus is, on the one hand, on recording the breadth of protest activities and, on the other hand, on analysing in detail the interactions and relationships among the various protest actors and between protesters and other social actors at the local level.

During the first funding phase, the research project analyses the structure, development, and interaction of protests in four comparative case studies. The local protest data will be compared to national protest data to examine the frequency and issues of protests and the number of protesters in the four cities under investigation and in Germany over the past 20 years. The aim of the analysis is to understand and to explain how and why protest dynamics at different locations coincide or differ and how they have been shaped by national protest events. At the local level, a comparative analysis will also investigate how protests affect different aspects of local social cohesion.

In the second funding phase, the study, which initially focuses on protest dynamics in Germany, will be extended to include an international comparison. The East-West comparison in Germany will then be replaced by a comparative study of protest dynamics in an Eastern European country and in a Western European country. The aim of this national and international East-West comparison is to investigate the extent to which long-term, historical political processes influence local protest dynamics and thus lastingly structure the conditions of social cohesion. This international comparison will be prepared towards the end of the first phase, inter alia, by an international workshop.

Thematic reference to social cohesion

Social cohesion in democratic societies depends crucially on how the interests of different social groups can be heard and reflected in public debate and policy-making. Conflicts can both endanger and strengthen social cohesion. This also applies to protests, a prominent form in which social conflicts openly come to light. Not only can protests be understood as indicators of social division but they also offer the possibility for strengthening social cohesion by articulating conflicts and thus making them visible and workable. Here it is particularly important which topics are dealt with and in which way the exchange relationships between protesters and other social actors from politics and civil society are shaped.

Both aspects will be examined in the project with the help of one nationwide and four locally focused protest event analyses as well as four local network analyses. The study thus contributes to the understanding of the contribution of protests to local social cohesion.