Cycles of Protest
Definition
The empirical pattern — codified by Sidney Tarrow in Power in Movement (Cambridge University Press; multiple editions since 1994) and elaborated across social-movement scholarship — that contentious mobilization rises and falls in arcs aligned with political-opportunity shifts and the spread of movement networks. [source: power-in-movement]
Each cycle has a triggering event, a phase of rapid growth, an institutional consolidation phase, a phase of fragmentation and backlash, and (often) a longer trough before the next cycle’s opening. Tarrow’s synthesis formalised the political-opportunity structure and resource-mobilisation framing as the standing academic vocabulary for tracking these arcs, with the contentious-politics lens treating movements as a sustained interaction among claim-makers, opponents, allies, and bystanders in a structured political environment. [source: power-in-movement]
Practitioners use the framework diagnostically: the question is not what is our campaign but where in the cycle are we, because the answer determines whether the right move is to escalate, consolidate, or rest.
Full page: [[cycles-of-protest]].