Europe's Changing Protest Landscape

Europe’s protest arena has grown more unpredictable and fragmented in recent years, with new actors, claims, and tactics emerging that do not fit the established left-libertarian dominance. What are the reasons for that? Do we need new terminology in research to describe this development? In their introduction to a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy, Swen Hutter and Sophia Hunger argue that the succession of major crises in recent years has fundamentally transformed Europe’s protest landscape.

Rather than steady expansion, recent developments are marked by episodic surges in mobilisation and an overall decline in protest activity, alongside the normalisation of far-right protest actors and growing diversity of claims and participants. These shifts move protest beyond the classical image of routinised, left-libertarian, and institutionally anchored activism. Swen Hutter, Director of the Center for Civil Society Research, and visiting researcher Sophia Hunger describe this complex pattern as ‘new contentious politics’. To address the new developments, the researchers call for more systematic engagement from both comparative politics and public policy scholars in their article.

The special issue of the journal empirically examines three dimensions: changes in protest levels, forms, and claims (protest supply); trends in the composition and motivations of participants (protest demand); and the responses of political elites and institutional outcomes (protest outcomes). Together, the contributions challenge established assumptions and point to a protest arena that is increasingly fragmented, volatile, and heterogeneous.

26/7/25, kes