Volume 60, Issue 1 p. 46-68
Original Article

Action repertoires in contentious episodes: What determines governments’ and challengers’ action strategies? A cross-national analysis

ABEL BOJAR

Corresponding Author

ABEL BOJAR

European University Institute, Italy

Address for correspondence: Abel Bojar, Department of Political & Social Sciences, European University Institute, Via della Badia dei Roccettini, 9, 50014 Fiesole, Italy. Email: [email protected]

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HANSPETER KRIESI

HANSPETER KRIESI

European University Institute, Italy

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First published: 10 February 2020
Citations: 5

Abstract

This paper studies the interactions between governments, challengers and third party actors in the context of 60 contentious policy episodes in 12 European countries during the Great Recession. More specifically, we focus on the endogenous dynamics that develop in the course of these episodes. Based on the combination of a new event dataset, which allows for the construction of action sequences, and a novel method (contentious episode analysis) to study the impact of actor-specific actions on subsequent actions within a sequence, we test a set of hypotheses on the determinants of actors’ overall action repertoires within specific contexts. Overall, our results are more supportive of the interdependence of cooperation than of the interdependence of conflict: the repression-radical mobilisation-external legitimation of conflictive behaviour nexus is weaker than the concession-cooperation-mediation nexus. While the literature tends to focus on conflict dynamics, we find that there is a more systematic dynamics of cooperation in the course of contentious episodes.