City Research Online

Abstract

This paper analyses participation in multiple protest episodes to explore the potential for people to broker relations between same-issue and different-issue episodes. Through an analysis of original survey data from six European countries, we map two-mode networks of individuals and protest episodes in each country to identify protesters in two brokerage positions: coordinators that can broker relations via same-issue contentious episodes and boundary spanners, that can broker relations via different-issue episodes. Combining network and regression analysis, we identify the individuals occupying such positions and characterize their protest participation. We find that embeddedness in different types of activist networks is the most important predictor of brokerage positions. However, the two brokerage positions are associated with different types of embeddedness. By fleshing out the importance of individuals in shaping contentious fields, we offer a unique insight into protest networks, thus advancing the sociological understanding of collective action with an innovative mixed-methods design.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2025 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
Publisher Keywords:	Brokerage, contentious episodes, fields, networks, protest
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HM Sociology
Departments:	School of Policy & Global Affairs School of Policy & Global Affairs > Sociology & Criminology
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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