Northern Theory, Southern Protest: Opportunity Structure Analysis in Cross-National Perspective

The study of protest outside the industrial North is largely under-theorized. This article extends the political process model and particularly its opportunity structure component to cases of Southern protest. It begins by investigating the model's central variables and relationships and then considers how to render them with enough flexibility to accommodate new cases outside the industrial North. Three questions are asked. First, how do movement networks' internal social connections vary across settings? Second, how do variations in state strength and elaboration influence protest? Third, how does the relationship between the movement's social structure and its external political environment shape its opportunities? The article considers how political opportunity can illuminate new cases if it is used in connection with specific collective forms that are both encouraged by structures external to the movement and responsive to the needs and constraints produced by the movement's internal structure.